Tag gender feminism

Further Reflections on MSNBC’s Coverage of the First Annual International Conference on Men’s Issues

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Rereading MSNBC’s article on the first annual International Conference on Men’s Issues, I have to marvel that so firmly has feminism taken hold that even reporters (whose watchword is objectivity) may respond with Pavlovian menace to an act of civil disobedience—which challenging feminism is.

Consider that feminism originates with the 19th-century suffrage movement, that is, with some ragtag groups of women banding together to oppose second-class citizenship and demand the right to vote. Consider, too, that reactions to their early rallies to assert their rights presaged those of the MSNBC reporter who wrote about last month’s men’s conference.

His rhetorical strategies (which, like an apt pupil—or myrmidon—he lifts straight from the feminist playbook) were these:

  • Underrepresent the opposition. The MSNBC piece is surmounted by a photograph (snapped and cropped by the writer) showing a sparsely populated conference room. Some 16 people are visible if you count the odd pair of hands or feet poking into the frame. Though in a passing nod to journalistic accuracy the writer later reports attendees numbered “more than 100,” the first impression the reader is clearly meant to draw is “handful of nutters.”
  • Distort and caricature. Quotations featured in the piece were plainly culled for sensationalist impact. Commentary—for example on the phrase equity feminists, coined by a female feminist philosopher whose acumen is redoubtable—was confidently careless and pandering.
  • Distract. “The conference comes amid increased focus on women’s rights,” the writer observes saliently. Later he quotes a feminist post-grad as saying, “[D]ue to concerns for physical safety, we have decided the best way to oppose the conference that is now going on…is to keep our distance.” The source of fear was unspecified.
  • Ridicule. Pick a paragraph, any paragraph.

Attacks on the efforts of the early suffragists to have their grievances answered were…right, exactly the same.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Victims Are Important, but They’re Not More Important than Anyone Else: Amending Priorities and Reconceiving Restraining Order Policy According to the Principle of Equality

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“While some municipal court judges acknowledge that the domestic violence law can create injustices—one calls it ‘probably the most abused piece of legislation that comes to my mind’—there are counterpoints. Melanie Griffin, executive director of the Commission to Study Sex Discrimination in the Statutes, a legislative commission that drafted much of the 1991 law, says that for every individual who files a false report, ‘there are 100 women who don’t come in at all and stay there and get beaten.’”

—“N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs”

This quotation comes from a nearly 20-year-old journalistic exposé, yet you’ll find the same starkly meretricious apology for restraining order abuse routinely voiced today.

This quotation from the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) means that all people should be treated equally under the law, not that women should be privileged. Anyone who’s for women’s being afforded special treatment by the authorities and the courts, as proponents of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) are, opposes the ERA.

This quotation from the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) means that all people should be treated equally under the law, not that women should be privileged. Anyone who’s for women’s being afforded special treatment by the authorities and the courts opposes the message of the ERA, as do proponents of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).

The argument, basically, is that it doesn’t matter if restraining order defendants’ rights are ignored, and it doesn’t matter if defendants are falsely accused, because there are many more victims of abuse who suffer in silence than there are false accusers.

The argument equates apples with orangutans. Its reasoning is partisan and purely emotion-based—and betrays ignorance of the fact that women, too, are falsely accused of domestic violence. Its thesis is that since there may be multitudes of unacknowledged victims of domestic violence, the state’s creating victims by abetting false prosecutions is of no statistical significance.

While everyone should feel for women who are “beaten” at home, no one should be forced by the state to endure “sympathy pains.” The falsely accused man or woman whose life is upturned or undone by hyped allegations or gross lies credited by careless judges is absolutely blameless for the suffering of strangers.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights guaranteed to all citizens under the Constitution, and equality and fair treatment under the law are among its mandates that brook no compromise. Denying the latter to anyone, ever—even if the motive is a sympathetic one—is categorically wrong.

The statement in the epigraph says: It’s okay if you, Mr. or Ms. Doe, are falsely accused and battered by the system, and it’s okay if it deprives you of your kids and home and livelihood and dignity and sanity, because some people you don’t know and never will know are reportedly “beaten” by some other people you don’t know and never will know.

It says there are women who suffer unjustly, so never mind if we make you suffer unjustly, too.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

False Restraining Orders That Allege Emotional Abuse ARE Emotional Abuse

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A theme that emerges upon consideration of restraining order abuse is lack of empathy—from impulsive or false accusers and from those who abet them. Plaintiffs who act either spitefully or viciously seldom appreciate the ramifications of their actions. They may possess what we call a normal conscience but either don’t think or, in the heat of the moment, don’t care.

The horror is that this same indifference extends not only to authorities and officers of the court but to feminist advocates for restraining orders and the public at large, who are persuaded that the gravity of violence against women trivializes all other considerations. Their indifference may in fact be unconsciousness, but when people’s livelihoods and lives are at stake, unconsciousness is no more pardonable.

It’s ironic that the focus of those who should be most sensitized to injustice is so narrow. Ironic, moreover, is that “emotional abuse” is frequently a component of state definitions of domestic violence. The state recognizes the harm of emotional violence done in the home but conveniently regards the same conduct as harmless when it uses the state as its instrument.

From “Are You a Victim of Emotional Abuse?” by Cathy Meyer:

Emotional abuse is used to control, degrade, humiliate, and punish a spouse. While emotional abuse differs from physical abuse, the end result is the same….

Note the writer’s conclusion that emotional abuse is equivalent to violence in its effects.

Her orientation, of course, is toward victims of domestic violence, but her judgment is just as applicable to false allegations, whose intent is to “control, degrade, humiliate, and punish.”

Plainly the motive of most reasonable feminist arguments and appeals, at least as that motive is understood by those making them, is to induce empathic understanding. They want people to care.

Here’s yet another irony. Too often the perspectives of those who decry injustices are partisan. Feminists themselves are liable to see only one side.

“But my side’s more important” isn’t a rebuttal but a confirmation of chauvinism.

In the explication quoted above, the writer compares the conduct of emotional abusers to that of prison guards toward prisoners of war, who use psychological torment to achieve compliance from their wards. Consider that victims of false allegations may literally be imprisoned.

Consider further some of the tactics that Ms. Meyer identifies as emotionally abusive:

  • Isolating a spouse from friends and family.
  • Discourag[ing] any independent activities such as work; taking classes or activities with friends.
  • If the spouse does not give into the control, they are threatened, harassed, punished, and intimidated by the abuser.
  • Us[ing] the children to gain control by undermining the other parent’s authority or threatening to leave and take the children.
  • Control[ling] all the financial decisions, refus[ing] to listen to their partner’s opinion, withhold[ing] important financial information and mak[ing] their spouse live on limited resources.
  • Mak[ing] all major decisions such as where to live, how to furnish the home, and what type of automobile to drive.

Now consider the motives of false allegations and their certain and potential effects: isolation, termination of employment and impediment to or negation of employability, inaccessibility to children (who are used as leverage), and being forced to live on limited means (while possibly being required under threat of punishment to provide spousal and child support) and perhaps being left with no home to furnish or automobile to drive at all.

The correspondence is obvious…if you’re looking for it. Opponents of emotional abuse need to recognize it in all of its manifestations, because the expectation of empathy is only justified if it’s reciprocated.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

WomensLaw: A Domain Name That Says All You Need to Know about Where Restraining Order Reform Needs to Start

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The biggest challenge to sensitizing people to abusive restraining order policies that are readily and pervasively exploited by malicious litigants can be summed up in a single word: sex.

Women, who are often victims of abuse of court process, don’t want to implicate women in their injuries; they want to blame their false accusers, who are frequently men. Appreciate that this urge to blame men is the reason why restraining orders as processes of law exist in the first place.

Appreciate also that men aren’t the force behind the perpetuation of the status quo, and pointing fingers in their direction isn’t going to change that fact.

In the last month, I’ve sifted the Internet to discover what types of restraining order are available where and how to undo their misapplication. The most thorough source of information on restraining orders offered by the various states that I’ve found—and one I’ve repeatedly returned to—is WomensLaw.org.

It’ll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about restraining orders in your neck of the woods. Its domain name will also remind you why restraining orders exist and what they signify (there is no MensLaw.org).

After decades of rampant abuse’s being tolerated and with restraining orders’ having become a familiar institution, men have hopped onto the abuse industry bandwagon, and their malicious exploitation of restraining orders will probably continue to escalate with the passage of time.

The authorship of restraining orders, however, is by women, for women. Anyone with an interest in social justice or in reforming a handily abused process that fractures families and derails lives every day must acknowledge this fact and resist the reflex to divert blame from where it’s due.

The women who advocate for restraining orders don’t necessarily understand that they’re abused, why they’re abused, how they’re abused, or what the consequences of their abuse are. And they’re not going to take men’s word for it.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Redeeming Feminism”: Making It about Equality and Not Victimhood

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Since the publication of this post, the feminist blog it cites and criticizes has been made private.

When criticizing injustices wrought by prejudicial, feminist-motivated laws and court procedures like the restraining order process, restraint isn’t easy to pull off.

It’s nevertheless worthy of striving for, because the gender divide that fosters the perpetuation of these prejudicial laws and procedures needs to be bridged—for the sake not just of their male victims but of their female victims, too.

I came across a blog yesterday titled, Redeeming Feminism. It arrested my attention, because its banner reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

The dramatic irony is lost on the blog’s author, but this is, of course, the argument against feminism, whose “second wave” has done at least as much to promote and enforce sexual bigotry as it has to eliminate it. (First-wave feminists, who sought to dissolve gender discrimination instead of cement it, were those who pushed for the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment from which the quotation above derives.)

Some feminists categorically can’t be reasoned with. They’re the equivalents of high-conflict courtroom litigants who reason with their feelings. But I don’t get the impression that the author of this blog is one such, and I think there are many self-styled feminists like her out there. She seems very much in earnest and without spiteful motive. Her intentions are well-meaning.

To judge from the wattage of her smile in the photograph of her on her blog, however, she’s never been stalked by someone only to have that person publicly and persuasively accuse her of stalking, or had it falsely suggested to authorities and the courts, for example, that she’s violent or a danger to children.

To quote a falsely accused woman I’ve corresponded with for the past six months, a professional nurse and mother of three who’s been through years of hell, that sort of thing “changes a person on a cellular level.” Had the blog author been subjected to what my correspondent has been—or what most of the respondents to this blog and to other blogs and petitions it links to have been—her smile would be considerably more muted (which would be a shame, because it’s a good smile).

This is the shortcoming of most vigorous feminist advocacy out there: It tends to see only what it was looking for in the first place. Its argumentation is based in the abstract. I wouldn’t wish the real on anyone, but before taking up arms, advocates of one position or another have a moral obligation to look up, down, and sideways.

The post on the referenced blog that I read is called, “Anti-Feminist Memes pt.3: ‘Domestic abuse, Men are the real victims’.” It rebuts the rhetorical strategies of counter-feminist “memes” on the Internet.

This is a meme.

This type of meme is extremely popular. In looking for memes to write about for this blog project, this theme was one of the most prevalent. Memes like these send a lot of messages simultaneously. First, they suggest that feminism is rooted in hypocrisy. They want us to assume that feminists not only support negative gender restrictions on men, but that they also encourage policy that will oppress men. A lot of these memes have phrases in them like “according to feminists,” “feminists believe,” and “feminist logic.” It’s not enough for these memes to suggest that men are oppressed more than women claim to be, the meme must also suggest that feminism causes and supports violence against men, with the aim of total male oppression.

Her criticisms, though spirited, lack balance. The “memes” she refers to don’t actually “suggest feminism is rooted in hypocrisy” (though this is certainly true of today’s feminism) or posit that “men are oppressed more than women,” nor do they appear to want anyone to “assume” anything. What they do is point out and denounce a double standard, which is an endeavor every true feminist should commend. The author of the blog doesn’t address the double standard; she takes a defensive tack and asserts that women are victims of violence and that such “memes” insensitively ignore this urgent fact.

This line of (emotional) reasoning basically says never mind if there is a double standard, because women are victims. It’s a logical bait-and-switch—and one that betrays unawareness that women are also injured by the same double standard.

meme2

These, too, are memes.

Laws that have arisen and been fortified in the last three decades in response to demands for the curtailment of violence against women are applied unequally and unfairly (which is another way of saying they disregard the most basic tenets of our Constitution). The prevalence of violence in the world is completely beside the point. John Doe isn’t his brother’s keeper and can’t justly be held to account for the actions of others. The fact is whenever anyone makes a complaint of domestic violence today, whether a woman or a man, his or her allegation may be presumed valid, especially in civil court, and the reason why this is so owes to feminist lobbying, which has engendered prejudice against defendants (who, once upon a time, were only men). When allegations of abuse are exaggerated or false, the consequences are often the same as they would have been had the allegations been true. Innocent men and women are rubbed out every day by procedures that are virtually automated. They’re criminalized, exiled from their families, stripped of property and resource, and sometimes barred from employment and even left living out of their cars or homeless.

The blog writer, a young woman, is piqued by domestic violence, as should we all be. Matters peripheral to it, like legal inequities, are lost in the shadows cast by its specter—and shouldn’t be. Even the specter itself is seldom scrutinized.

It must be considered, for example, that the authority for the statistic “1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime” cited by this writer (and which is commonly cited) is a pamphlet: “Domestic Violence Facts.”

Consulting its footnotes, you’ll find that this stat is derived from something called the National Violence Against Women Survey. In other words, the figure’s based on what women report on questionnaires.

Last week, I was sitting outside of a Starbucks in a posh strip mall and observed a couple standing 20 feet distant from me in the company of two others. The woman repeatedly belted the man in the shoulder and chest with a closed fist, and then proceeded to pinch him a series of good ones. He laughed and cringed from the attack. “Did you fart?” she demanded. He giggled. She punched him a few more times—good, resonant thwacks like you’d hear if you slapped a ham. She was still punching and pinching him when I turned back to my laptop.

What someone like the author of the blog I’ve cited would never conceive is that had this man called the cops and alleged that his wife assaulted him, there’s a very excellent chance that horseplay like this could cost her everything she owns, including her identity. “Did she punch him?” an officer might ask of witnesses. “Well…yeah, but….” And that might be that (criminal restraining order to ensue). It happens. Sometimes even the reports of onlookers precipitate arrests.

What everyone must be brought to appreciate is that a great deal of what’s called “domestic violence” (and, for that matter, “stalking”) depends on subjective interpretation, that is, it’s all about how someone reports feeling (or what someone reports perceiving).

Important to recognize is that how someone reports feeling about being punched or pinched may depend a lot on how that person is feeling toward the puncher or pincher at the time (or at a later time). In other words, actions that are harmless can be represented however a person wants to represent them.

When the state gets involved in private, interpersonal matters, consequences can be severe. What the “memes” the referenced blog writer confronts are concerned with is public perception that translates into law. Fervent condemnations of domestic violence don’t simply inform general opinion; they inform legislation and the application of laws by police officers and judges.

Feminist predilections, both to blame men and to perceive “violence” everywhere, encourage and, consciously or not, endorse exaggerated, impulsive, and/or false allegations. Feminism’s basic message to women today is, “You’re a victim.”

Is there any person walking the face of the planet over the age of five who hasn’t been slapped, punched, kicked, spanked, pinched, poked, or threatened? That’s a rhetorical question. Everyone has been the “victim of violence” if not the “victim of domestic violence” sometime in his or her life. The difference is not everyone is going to characterize him- or herself as a “victim.”

When someone like the author of the blog I’ve referenced uses the phrase domestic violence, she means wanton physical abuse and household terrorism, which is what the phrase used to mean. That’s not, however, how domestic violence is any longer defined by the law. The same phrase may be applied to angry phone calls—even a single angry phone call (which may easily be misrepresented or not even real). This blogger’s outrage is sympathetic; she’s just unconscious—as most people are—that the messages she’s outraged by aren’t veiled arguments in defense of battery; they’re rejections of a feminist message that has jaundiced popular perceptions and corrupted our laws and how they’re applied.

The zealousness of the public and of the authorities and courts to acknowledge people, particularly women, who claim to be “victims” as victims has produced miscarriages of justice that are far more epidemic than domestic violence is commonly said to be. Discernment goes out the window, and lives are unraveled based on finger-pointing. Thanks to feminism’s greasing the gears and to judicial procedures that can be initiated or even completed in minutes, people in the throes of angry impulses can have those impulses gratified instantly. All parties involved—plaintiffs, police officers, and judges—are simply reacting, as they’ve been conditioned to.

When everyone’s simply reacting, nobody’s actually thinking.

The road to feminism’s redemption will only be paved when feminists begin making observations like this.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

SPITE: Feminism and Restraining Order Rampancy

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“I wasn’t thinking when I wrote my domestic abuse statement in Virginia against my boyfriend.”

“Can I get a permanent protection order against my spouse’s lover?”

“How [do you] bait someone into violating a restraining order?”

—A few recent search terms leading to this blog

I stumbled upon a video presentation the other day by a self-styled anti-feminist activist Karen Straughan, who’s blogged for a couple years under the moniker “girlwriteswhat.” I thought her talk, “Feminism: Socialism in Panties,” was evenhandedly confrontational, nervy, and smart.

Responses from feminist quarters that I hastily gleaned yesterday suggest that this activist’s denunciations have raised some hackles. I noted, though, that more than one woman respectfully remarked that she’s “articulate,” if “biased.” She’s in fact very articulate. And something I don’t think her female critics are able to appreciate is that her “bias” is a counter-bias and that she isn’t employing rhetorical strategies that are any more tendentious or inflammatory than those used by the people she draws a bead on.

For feminists to argue that turnabout is foul play is silly, and it’s interesting to observe that when dogma’s challenged using its own tactics, it pitches a fit.

The same impulsive emotional reasoning exemplified by this foot-stamping is what’s suggested by the search terms that introduce this post (to which I could have appended thousands more of a similar nature).

The large-scale injustices perpetrated by the restraining order process (on both men and women) are the product of impulsive emotional reasoning, as is the process itself. What may have started out as a sober guard dog 30 years ago has transformed into a manic dragon that arbitrarily spits fire when fingers are snapped, particularly nail-polished fingers. It doesn’t warn its targets to back down; it torches them.

There’s an ancient philosophic principle called the golden mean that advocates avoidance of extremes (“moderation in all things”). According to this principle, if something gets too far off-kilter in one direction, you have to counteract the imbalance by excessively striving in the contrary direction. If the above-referenced activist strikes some as overstating her case, they might consider that she’s endeavoring to knock things back toward equilibrium.

Reading through online comments about her, I was familiarized with the acronyms MRM and MRA, which apparently stand for “men’s rights movement” and “men’s rights activist,” respectfully. One thread about her I found was titled, “What do Feminists think about YouTube blogger ‘Girl Writes What,’ a Female MRA?”

You see from this question how far abroad feminism has strayed and why equity feminists are appalled by what they call the “feminist establishment” (a.k.a. “The Sorority”). The motive of the feminist movement that was underway when I was a kid was to dissolve distinctions and dichotomies between the sexes. Yet as conversational prompts like this one show, today’s so-called feminism promotes division: Us versus Them. Its compulsion is to split everyone into camps. The original idea was to have everybody recognized as the same, irrespective of whether they had an innie or an outie between their legs.

The thrust of today’s mainstream ideological feminism is to blame, subjugate, and punish, not unify. Feminism has betrayed itself.

It has also betrayed women. Something that’s long been a source of curiosity to me is that while the feminist establishment is often criticized as misandronist (man-hating), it’s rarely criticized as misogynist (woman-hating).

Yet inducing women to self-identify as victims can hardly be called “empowering.” If the source of power isn’t you, the power isn’t yours. What inducing women to self-identify as victims is, rather, is denigrating to feminine self-respect. The feminist establishment doesn’t encourage women to cultivate or rely on personal agency; it infantilizes them and urges them to apply for paternal protection (and the abuse and domestic dispute industries have been glad to profit by the ensuing strife).

Contemporary feminism has conditioned women to identify themselves respective to men, namely, as their victims. It’s thoroughly preoccupied with men—to the point of fixation. (The online conversational threads I’ve just looked at either concerned bitching about men or bitching about women who don’t bitch about men.)

The original feminist platform argued that women should identify themselves as independent people. Feminism, however, has become entirely male-centric. There is no feminist identification independent of men.

Prejudicial laws and court processes criticized in this blog and elsewhere are a societal response to women’s conceding that they lack personal agency. Consider that the reason why infants cry for help is because they’re incapable of meeting their own needs (incapable, literally, of standing on their own two feet). Women are much more capable than they’ve been led to believe.

Restraining orders are by and large sought impulsively—in the millions every year. Both motives and the engine that generates them are virtually automatic.

Interesting to me, finally, is that men have adapted to the new status quo (“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”). Most of the complainants of court abuses who’ve responded to this blog are women, some of whose lives have been shattered by lies and fraud. Men have hopped onto the abuse industry bandwagon, too, and the time may come that the equality that feminism is supposed to be advocating for is realized in the form of both sexes’ exploiting state protections to bash each other into a uniform goo.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Disdain for a Feminist Institution of Law Isn’t the Same as Disdain for Women

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“I am the victim of false accusations [by] a female with sociopathic tendencies. She stabbed my husband [and] threatened to kill me, but for whatever reason filed for a domestic violence protective order on me. I value respect from people, so I do and act morally to maintain my relationships, but because any given person, whether sane or not, can go file a petition with its being granted depending on how it’s worded, I was treated like a criminal and not one time given the opportunity to inform even the judge that the petitioner had committed perjury. Only in [West Virginia] a felony can be committed and go unpunished. This is [an overlooked] flaw that needs immediate attention!!!! This not only jeopardizes my future, but my kids’ future, because if the petitioner wouldn’t have dropped it, it would [have been] filed in a national database, popping up whenever a background check is done on me, including [by] my college for my admission into Nuclear Medicine Technology…and this is all based on a drug-addicted, manipulating, vindictive person’s false accusations.”

—Female e-petition respondent

“Dangerous law easily used as a sword instead of shield. A Butte man died over this. His girlfriend, after making the false allegations, cleaned out his bank account. He committed suicide. His mother, Ruth, had no money to bury him. The girlfriend depleted his assets partying.”

—Female e-petition respondent

“I can relate to this topic, because I once made false allegations against my lover because I was a woman scorned and wanted to get even with him and make him feel the same level of pain that he made me feel. Luckily for him and me, I was convicted in my spirit and confessed to the court that I’d lied, and the matter was dropped. If I’d not been led to do that, my lie could have ruined this man’s life….”

—Female e-petition respondent

“It makes me sick that there are so many families affected by false allegations. The children [who] are affected break my heart. We have been living this nightmare for over a year now—over $40 thousand dollars spent, and this woman still keeps us in court with her false allegations…. At what point will the courts make these people accountable???”

—Female e-petition respondent

A recent comment to this blog from a female victim of restraining order abuse (by her husband) expressed the perception that criticism of feminist motives and the restraining order process, a feminist institution of law, seemed vitriolic toward women.

Her reaction is understandable.

What isn’t perceived generally, including by female victims of fraudulent abuse of process, is that the restraining order was prompted by feminist lobbying just a few decades ago and that its manifest injustices are sustained by feminist lobbying. It’s not as though reform has never been proposed; it’s that reform is rejected by those with a political interest in preserving the status quo.

Political motives, remember, aren’t humanitarian motives; they’re power motives.

So enculturated has the belief that women are helpless victims become that no one recognizes that feminist political might is unrivaled—unrivaled—and it’s in the interest of preserving that political might and enhancing it that the belief that women are helpless victims is vigorously promulgated by the feminist establishment that should be promoting the idea that women aren’t helpless.

It’s this belief and this political might that make restraining order abuses, including abuses that trash the lives of women, possible. Not only does the restraining order process victimize women; it denies that women have personal agency.

Nurturance of the belief that women are helpless victims puts a lot of money in a lot of hands, and very few of those hands belong to victims.

The original feminist agenda, one that’s been all but eclipsed, was inspiring women with a sense of personal empowerment and dispelling the notion that they’re helpless. The restraining order process is anti-feminist as is today’s mainstream feminist agenda, which equity feminists have been saying for decades.

Restraining orders continue to be doled out (in the millions per annum) on the basis of meeting a civil standard of evidence (which means no proof is necessary), pursuant to five- or 10-minute interviews between plaintiffs and judges, from which defendants are excluded.

So certainly has the vulnerability and helplessness of women been universally accepted that the state credits claims of danger or threat made in civil restraining order applications on reflex, including by men, because our courts must be perceived as “fair.” Consequently, fraudulent claims are both rampant and easily put over.

Restraining orders aren’t pro-equality and don’t contribute to the advancement of social justice. They do, though, put a lot of people’s kids through college, like lawyers’ and judges’.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Victim-Blaming: The “Patriarchal Paradigm,” Discrimination against Male Victims of Domestic Violence, the Frequency of False Allegations, and Abuses of Men and Women by Restraining Order Fraud

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“Accounting for the discrepancy between the empirical data and current public policy has been the gender paradigm (Dutton and Nicholls 2005), also known as the patriarchal paradigm (Hamel 2007b), a set of assumptions and beliefs about domestic violence that has shaped domestic violence policy on arrest, treatment, and victim services at all levels for the past several decades. A product of feminist sociopolitical theory, the paradigm posits that the causes of domestic violence can be found in patriarchy and male dominance…. Despite data that are inconsistent with the feminist perspective…it remains a dominant influence….”

—Journal of Family Violence (2009)

In a recent post, I wrote about false allegations of domestic violence and quoted a male victim who was arrested when he reported to police that he was being assaulted. The ensuing ordeal cost him his “career, [his] name, and three years of income” before the police department copped to wrongdoing and settled with him out of court.

DV1Deplorably, this is what comes of asking for help from a system that’s been conditioned to perceive men as stalkers, batterers, and rapists (despite the fact that best population-based studies reveal as many as half of victims of partner violence are men).

According to findings by Dr. Denise Hines, more than a quarter of male victims of domestic violence who call the police are themselves arrested as a result (26%). Half of the time, responding police officers do nothing, and in less than one in five cases (17%) is a reported female abuser arrested.

Imagine the outrage of the National Organization of Women if half the women who reported being battered were blown off by authorities, or if one in every four women who reported being battered was herself arrested and prosecuted for assault.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the “patriarchal paradigm” promoted by feminist advocates and the Violence against Women Act (VAWA) doesn’t also brutally injure women.

Alternative to filing criminal complaints is the filing of civil protection orders—and this knife cuts both ways. Diminished standards of verification applied to allegations made in connection with restraining orders ensure that women, too, are abused by the state according to false allegations leveled against them by conniving men. The frequency of female victimization by men is lesser; the damages of that victimization are not.

Returning to the journal article quoted in the epigraph (Muller, Desmarais, and Hamel), consider:

Every state in the United States now authorizes its courts to issue civil orders of protection against domestic violence. Typically, a temporary domestic violence restraining order (TRO) is issued ex parte at the request of any plaintiff who expresses an “objectively reasonable subjective fear of being injured” (Miller 2005, p. 74), without the respondent (i.e., the alleged perpetrator) having to be present in court. TROs are granted for two- to four-week periods, at which point a hearing is held to determine if a permanent order is warranted, valid in most states for a period of one to four years. In California, as of June 6, 2003, there were 227,941 active restraining orders (including temporary and permanent) issued against adults, almost all of them for domestic violence. Of the domestic violence orders, approximately 72% restrained a man from a protected woman, 19% restrained a same-sex partner, and 9% restrained a woman from a protected man (Sorenson and Shen 2005). Of particular significance to family court cases, the protected parent almost automatically obtains custody of the children, without a custody hearing or a custody decision being made (Kanuha and Ross 2004; Sorenson and Shen 2005).

Various motives for lying to the court are both obvious and confirmed.

“Many TROs and POs [protection orders],” concludes a Hawaiian task force on restraining orders, “are obtained by one party to a dispute to try to gain advantage over another party in future or ongoing divorce proceedings or a custody dispute” (Murdoch 2005, p. 17). In California, the Family Law section of the state bar expressed concern that domestic violence restraining orders “are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody and/or property litigation and in cases involving the right to receive spousal support” (Robe and Ross 2005, p. 26). A retired Massachusetts judge revealed to the press that, in his experience, one-third of restraining orders are strategic ploys used for leverage in divorce cases (“Retiring Judge” 2001). Attorneys Sheara Friend and Dorothy Wright, the latter also a former board member of a battered women’s shelter, estimate that 40 to 50% of restraining orders are used to manipulate the system (Young 1999). In some cases, mothers secure custody despite a history of abuse against the father or the children (Cook 1997; Pearson 1997).

As I prefaced these quotations by remarking, they shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that men don’t also lie to inculpate women (who may be the actual victims of domestic violence), because they do, as the study these quotations are drawn from suggests. The rate of false allegations between the sexes may in fact be equivalent (and as high as 50%).

The difference is that women far more often make allegations (and thus false allegations) against men than vice-versa.

Absent from all analytic studies and contemplations is the toll of false allegations and victim-blaming on those devastated by them, which can’t be quantified.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Who or What Can’t Be Published on CafeMom?: On Ad Hominem Attacks, Feminist Hatemongering, and the Victimization of Moms by Both

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I was concerned to see that someone was brought to this site recently by the search term “Tara Palmatier [X].” I’ve omitted the final word of the phrase not because it’s vulgar but because I don’t want an anomalous Google query to put an idea into the head of some crank with too much time on her hands.

Dr. Tara J. Palmatier is a psychotherapist whose writing I’ve come to admire and respect, and which I’ve consequently quoted many times. She has what distinguishes the brilliant from the intelligent: bold candor. I did a hasty Google search of my own to see what would have prompted someone to use the keywords cryptically quoted above and nothing correspondent appeared except a page that appeared to be a spoof.

I did, however, notice this post, published eight months ago, on CafeMom: “Just ‘Who’ or ‘What’ is Dr. Tara J. Palmatier?” (which was deleted subsequent to the publication of this post).

In several pieces I’ve published over the last couple of months, I’ve given critical scrutiny to feminist rhetoric, because I believe the gross civil injustices this blog concerns owe their ontological debt and perpetuation to such rhetoric.

Consider the rhetorical strategies of this writer, who identifies herself with a picture of a kitty cat and the alias “joyfree” (prompting this writer to wonder whether she’d be less catty if she were more joy-ful).

Note first that the question that titles the post disdains to recognize Dr. Palmatier as human. Why? Apparently because she wrote about women’s entrapping men by getting pregnant. Assuming she did, how this observation could be “one-sided against women” is baffling, not for the least of reasons because it’s impossible for men to entrap women by getting pregnant. The actual source of the beef, of course, isn’t its writer’s perception of Dr. Palmatier as unfair; it’s kneejerk resentment of a woman’s criticizing women. That’s why instead of offering a reasoned critical response, the writer simply denounces a (“supposed”) woman with a doctorate in clinical psychology as a “fake.” (William Buckley called this “rebuttal by epithet.”)

There’s little point in my spending an hour parsing (and thereby dignifying) the facile hatemongering of an anonymous writer who probably invested half that time cobbling her post together. What I would bring to the attention of this blog’s audience (particularly its female readers) is that this vitriol was published on a site called CafeMom. This isn’t a forum of radical feminist academicians; these are your everyday householders. And the question I would hope scrutiny of public statements like this arouses is when did it become okay to attack someone’s sexuality and qualification as a human being, because she voiced an eminently informed, professional opinion that wasn’t favorable to female exaltation?

If Dr. Palmatier were black, would it still be okay to suggest she wasn’t human? Not so much, right? Observe, though, that this writer’s rhetorical strategies (like those of any number of like-minded writers) pretty much mirror those of racial bigots of centuries past.

And it slides under the radar.

What shouldn’t slide under the radar of this blog’s readers is that the acceptability of these kinds of views is an indicator of the breadth of feminist influence, and it’s this coercive influence by women that allows this to continue (quoted from the e-petition “Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence”):

“My ex has used the law and the justice system, and destroyed my life and those of my minor children! He lied and said he had a witness to testify to his false accusations and bullied me into a deal with the devil eight months ago, and has filed five emergency ex parte motions to remove my kids…. He has put me in debt. I lost my job. I have no money, no friends. Therapists will not help my children as they are afraid he will ruin their lives, too…. Lawyers drop the case because of the constant verbal abuse he does to me and eventually to them, too. I have no friends left. Everyone has left me, and my family is far away, and their hands are tied. He has told teachers and principals and camp counselors these horrible accusations and caused me to have to move to a different town. My five-year-old told me his mind is telling him to die because his mommy is never happy. So what about the [woman] who [doesn’t] cry wolf and [leaves] an unhealthy marriage to save [her] kids and [has] a scorned, mentally ill, narcissistic ex-husband who is torturing every single day and using the law to harass [her]? He is a doctor and has deep pockets, and I am now in debt with no income. Had they been ethical the day of the hearing and admitted that they had no witness anymore, this would never have happened. So what about the tortured women?”

Over to you, CafeMom.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

“Rape Culture” and Restraining Order Abuse

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“During the early 1970s, feminists began to engage in consciousness-raising efforts to educate the public about the reality of rape. Until then, rape was rarely discussed or acknowledged: ‘Until the 1970s, most Americans assumed that rape, incest, and wife-beating rarely happened.’ The idea of rape culture was one result of these efforts.”

—Wikipedia, “Rape Culture”

I think I’d heard the phrase rape culture before reading this Wikipedia entry, but I’d never really contemplated its offensiveness. According to this entry, “rape culture is a concept that links rape and sexual violence to the culture of a society…in which prevalent attitudes and practices normalize, excuse, tolerate, and even condone rape.” While I can accept that, prior to the ’70s, people discounted the incidence rates of “rape, incest, and wife-beating,” I find the allegation that Americans as a social collective “excuse, tolerate, and even condone rape” or ever have to be facile and extremist.

I hear weekly if not daily from victims of second-wave feminist rhetoric and the influence it’s exercised over the past 30 years on social perceptions that translate to public policy. Today most Americans assume that the instrument born of 60s and 70s consciousness-raising efforts by equity feminists, the civil restraining order, is rarely abused. This falsehood is promulgated through the unconsciousness-raising efforts of radical feminist usurpers who’ve left proto-feminists like philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers asking, Who Stole Feminism?

Injustice, in the wake of the radical feminist movement, has merely performed an about-face.

Not un-ironically, more than one female respondent to this blog whose life has been trashed by false allegations legitimated through the medium of the restraining order has characterized her treatment by the state as “rape.”

Since it’s been projected that as many as 80% of the two to three million restraining orders issued each year by our courts, instruments that can completely dismantle their targets’ lives and are easily got by fraud, are based on frivolous or false allegations, users of the phrase rape culture—who have unquestionably contributed to the genesis of the “abuse industry”—should assess their own culpability in the manufacture of social injustice.

The Wikipedia entry I’ve cited explains rape culture includes behaviors like “victim-blaming” and “trivializing rape.” Considering that a significant proportion of restraining order abuses may be instances of victim-blaming, that is, of abusers’ (including violent abusers’) inducing the state to harass, humiliate, and drop the hammer on their victims; and considering that this abuse (characterized by some as “rape”) is arguably trivialized by its being categorically ignored or denied, a case arises for the reverse application of the phrase rape culture.

Acknowledging that restraining orders may be motivated by malice and do malice doesn’t somehow trivialize violence against women. I had occasion to talk with a victim of multiple rapes not long ago whose assailants were never held to account for their crimes. I certainly don’t discount either rape’s immediate trauma or the proximal trauma that results when its perpetrator gets off scot-free. Nor do I discount the claim by rape victims that perpetrators too often do walk even when victims are intrepid enough to report them, which may be only a small percentage of the time. Social justice, however, isn’t a zero-sum game played between men and women. Wrong is wrong, whoever its source or target. That’s what equity and equality denote. Since victims of restraining order abuse may be female, moreover, acknowledging the harms done by restraining orders does the opposite of trivializing violence against women. It’s denying that restraining orders are abused and abusive, rather, that trivializes violence against women.

It trivializes people and the value of their lives.

Copyright © 2014 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

The New Domestic Violence: Restraining Order Abuse

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Daughter: “He hits me, Ma.”

Mother: “Well…I can’t say I’m surprised. What’d ya do?”

Daughter: “Whaddya mean, what’d I do?”

Mother: “What’d ya do to make him angry? He didn’t just hit ya outta the blue.”

Daughter: “I guess I didn’t do what he wanted me to.”

This exchange is extracted from a recent Hollywood movie set in the 1970s immediately preceding the advent of the restraining order and illustrates the social mindset that ’70s-era feminists sought to counteract, namely, one that tolerated spousal abuse and placed the blame for it on its victims.

Living in an environment of insecurity and intimidation is a daily torment no one should have to bear, and no one can deny that the motives that led to restraining order legislation’s being drafted were very sympathetic ones.

What this blog and others like it seek to bring to light is that restraining orders have become the arbitrarily brutal hand that they were originally conceived to check—and they’ve put brass knuckles on it.

Restraining orders’ abuses arise from the same impulse: anger, jealousy, or control, for instance; but they’re much worse in many ways than slaps and threats, because their consequences are more exacting, enduring, and inescapable.

As in the exchange above, the answer to why someone had a restraining order petitioned against him or her is too often: “I guess I didn’t do what [s/he] wanted me to.”  The motive for the abuser’s action may be identical. Only the means of abuse are different.

Because those means may, and often do, include lying and lying publicly and savagely, abuses accomplished with restraining orders don’t fade like bruises do. A man falsely accused of domestic violence, for example, is publicly recognized as a batterer for the rest of his life, and that label may follow him from job to job or relationship to relationship. Years of his life may pass in agony before his ordeal in the courts has even concluded. A lie impulsively told to a judge in a few minutes may be something its victim has to continue to counteract forever, and though counseling may help him reconcile himself to the lie and its injuries, no amount of it will ever erase that lie, because it’s branded on his public face.

And while women alleged to be batterers may not be perceived as harshly as men accused of domestic violence, women, too, may be abused by restraining orders in exactly the same way, making a process that was designed to protect women a convenient means of brutalizing them that has the sanction of both the government and the feminist establishment.

Fraudulent allegations, furthermore, don’t need to be of domestic violence to lay victims low. Falsely characterizing them as stalkers or sources of sexual harassment or threat may be just as damning and damaging, both socially and psychologically. The implications of the phrase “protection order” or “restraining order” are alone sufficient enough, because their resonance never diminishes. It and its ramifications persist indefinitely.

The horror of the woman in the domestic situation suggested in the scene recited above was that she was stuck in an untenable situation, a situation she was powerless to correct or extricate herself from. Thirty years ago, a woman might have had nowhere to turn. Even mom and dad might turn her away and remind her that she swore a vow of fidelity she was obligated to honor (which is what the mother in this scene does).

Today, a (female) victim of spousal abuse has options. Public and familial reactions to her plaints are liable to be very different. She can move out and divorce without any stigma affixing itself to her, and if she lacks the wherewithal, there are shelters that may take her in until she’s able to provide for herself.

For the victim of restraining order abuse, there are no escapes. The stigma, which may be debilitating, is permanent and may be accompanied besides by his or her being denied access to home, kids, pets, property, and money. In other words, s/he may find him- or herself robbed by the state of all resources and values on top of having to bear a psychic wound there’s no staunching.

Restraining order frauds go over easily, because three decades later authorities and the courts are still responding to what they imagine are scenarios like the one sketched in the scene above. Irrespective of the actual circumstances, it’s what sparks and fuels the indignation that meets many defendants on the faces and in the conduct of judges they’re brought before, conduct that verges on retributive vigilantism.

It’s time to dust off the misperceptions and the process itself. Restraining order laws, which originated in the 1970s, have “evolved” retrospectively, seemingly aiming to amend injustices that occurred before many or most recipients of restraining orders today even drew breath.

The sins of our fathers and forefathers, however villainous (and they assuredly were), aren’t anyone’s but theirs.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Rape and Restraining Order Fraud: On How Men Betray Women, How Women Betray Men, and How the Courts and the Feminist Establishment Betray Them Both

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I had an exceptional encounter with an exceptional woman this week who was raped as a child (by a child) and later violently raped as a young adult, and whose assailants were never held accountable for their actions. It’s her firm conviction—and one supported by her own experiences and those of women she’s counseled—that allegations of rape and violence in criminal court can too easily be dismissed when, for example, a woman has voluntarily entered a man’s living quarters and an expectation of consent to intercourse has been aroused.

Her perception of judicial bias against criminal plaintiffs is one shared by many and not without cause.

By contrast, I’ve heard from hundreds of people (of both genders) who’ve been violated by false accusers in civil court and who know that frauds are readily and indifferently accepted by judges. (Correspondingly, more than one female victim of civil restraining order abuse has characterized her treatment in court and by the courts as “rape.”)

Their perception of judicial bias against civil defendants is equally validated.

Lapses by the courts have piqued the outrage of victims of both genders against the opposite gender, because most victims of rape are female, and most victims of false allegations are male.

The failures of the court in the prosecution of crimes against women, which arouse feminist ire like nothing else, are largely responsible for the potency of restraining order laws, which are the product of dogged feminist politicking, and which are easily abused to do malice (or psychological “rape”).

In ruminating on sexual politics and the justice system, I’m inexorably reminded of the title of a book by psychologist R. D. Laing that I read years ago: Knots.

In the first title I conceived for this piece, I used the phrase “can’t see eye to eye.” The fact is these issues are so incendiary and prejudicial that no one can see clearly period. Everyone just sees red.

Under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), federal funds are doled out to police precincts and courts in the form of grants purportedly intended to educate police officers and judges and sensitize them to violations against women, which may have the positive effect of ensuring that more female victims of violent crimes see justice but simultaneously ensures that standards applied to the issuance of civil restraining orders slacken still further, allowing casual abuse of a free process to run rampant and destroy lives. The victim toll of false restraining orders negates strides made toward achieving justice for female victims in criminal prosecutions. What is more, though restraining orders are four times more often applied for by women than men, making women their predominant abusers, the laxity of restraining order administration allows women to be violated by men, too.

Not only was a woman I’ve recently been in correspondence with repeatedly assaulted by her short-term boyfriend, a charming and very cunning guy; he also succeeded in petitioning a false restraining order against her, alleging, among other things, violence. She had even applied for a restraining order against him first, which was dismissed:

There are no words for how I felt as I walked to my car that afternoon. To experience someone I had cared deeply about lying viciously in open court, to have a lawyer infer that I’m a liar, and to be told by a judge that, basically, he didn’t believe me (i.e., again, that I’m a liar), filled me with a despair so intense that I could hardly live with it. You know how, in trauma medicine, doctors will sometimes put grossly brain-injured patients into medically-induced comas so as to facilitate healing? That afternoon, I needed and longed for a medically-induced emotional coma to keep my skull from popping off the top of my head. I don’t know how else to describe it. It was that day that I learned that the justice system is rotten, that the truth doesn’t mean shit, and that to the most depraved liar go the spoils.

As many people who’ve responded to this blog have been, this woman was used and abused then publicly condemned and humiliated to compound the torment. She’s shelled out thousands in legal fees, lost a job, is in therapy to try to maintain her sanity, and is due back in court next week. And she has three kids who depend on her.

The perception that consequences of civil frauds are no big deal is wrong and makes possible the kind of scenario illustrated by this woman’s case: the agony and injury of physical assault being exacerbated by the agony and injury of public shame and humiliation, a psychological assault abetted and intensified by the justice system itself.

The consequences of the haywire circumstance under discussion are that victims multiply, and bureaucrats and those who feed at the bureaucratic trough (or on what spills over the side) thrive. The more victims there are and the more people there are who can be represented as victims, the busier and more prosperous grow courts, the police, attorneys, advocacy groups, therapists, etc.

What’s glaringly absent in all of this is oversight and accountability. Expecting diligence and rigor from any government apparatus is a pipedream. So is expecting people to be honest when they have everything to gain from lying and nothing to lose from getting caught at it, because false allegations to civil courts are never prosecuted.

Expecting that judges will be diligent, rigorous, and fair if failing to do so hazards their job security, and expecting civil plaintiffs to be honest if being caught in a lie means doing a stint in prison for felony perjury—that, at least, is reasonable.

The obstacle is that those who hold political sway object to this change. The feminist establishment, whose concern for women’s welfare is far more dogmatic than conscientious, has a strong handhold and no intention of loosening its grip.

Typically both criminal allegations of assault or rape and civil allegations in restraining order cases (which may be of the same or a similar nature) boil down to he-said-she-said. In criminal cases, the standard of guilt is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a criterion that may be impossible to establish when one person is saying one thing and the other person another, evidence is uncertain, and there are no witnesses. In civil cases, no proof is necessary. So though feminist outrage is never going to be fully satisfied, for example, with the criminal prosecution of rapists, because some rapists will always get off, feminists can always boast success in the restraining order arena, because the issuance of restraining orders is based on judicial discretion and requires no proof at all; and the courts have been socially, politically, and monetarily influenced to favor female plaintiffs. However thwarted female and feminist interests may be on the criminal front, feminists own the civil front.

And baby hasn’t come a long way only to start checking her rearview mirror for smears on the tarmac now.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Also, Restraining Orders Don’t Work

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“Few lives, if any, have been saved, but much harm, and possibly loss of lives, has come from the issuance of restraining orders.”

—Justice Milton Raphaelson (upon his retirement)

There’s no denying that the restraining order is a forceful instrument and a nasty one to be on the receiving end of, especially when the behaviors alleged against you are trumped up. The question is, what good are restraining orders when they’re used legitimately?

Dr. Charles Corry, president of the Equal Justice Foundation, has compiled a horror-show list of examples in support of his thesis that court orders that purport to protect women only exacerbate the male rage they promise to defuse or avert.

In The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker cites two government investigations that support Corry’s conclusions: “In a study of 179 stalking cases sponsored by the San Diego District Attorney’s Office, about half of the victims who had sought restraining orders felt their cases were worsened by them. In a study done for the U.S. Department of Justice, researchers concluded that restraining orders were ‘ineffective in stopping physical violence.’” De Becker, whose book was published 16 years ago, offers this perspective: “Lawyers, police, TV newspeople, counselors, psychologists, and even some victims’ advocates recommend restraining orders wholesale. They are a growth industry in this country. We should, perhaps, consider putting them on the New York Stock Exchange, but we should stop telling people that a piece of paper will automatically protect them, because…it may do the opposite.”

How many women who trusted in the protection of restraining orders, I wonder, have been maimed, lamed, scarred, or killed since de Becker’s book was printed?

The restraining order’s advent arose in response to feminist outcry for legislative redress of domestic violence. It has since become a judicial quick fix for any complaint involving an allegation of harassment or even vague apprehension. Its original purpose, one for which it has never adequately served, has been obscured; and the ends to which it’s often wielded today are starkly less sympathetic.

Feminist scholars Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Daphne Patai have publicly criticized the feminist influence that squelches a reasoned consideration of these issues; and conservative commentator Phyllis Schlafly  has published columns openly deriding the value and validity of restraining orders and the judicial processes from which they originate.

(I was unsurprised to find a page on Wikipedia entitled, “Restraining order abuse,” that had been deleted. The explanation for its removal reads, “No indication that this article…covers a notable and/or neutral topic.” A related article, “Restraining order,” did acknowledge that abuse of restraining orders “is claimed to be widespread.” That verbiage has been redacted. When I began this blog in 2011, it included these stats, also, which have since been edited out: “A 1995 study conducted by the Massachusetts Trial Court that reviewed domestic restraining orders issued in the state found that less than half of the orders involved even an allegation of violence [note that over 15 years have gone by since then]. Similarly a West Virginia study found eight out of 10 orders were unnecessary or false.” Once you could find an eHow article explaining, “How to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Restraining Order Abuse.” Its URL now redirects to “How to Get a Harassment Restraining Order in Chicago.”)

My own contempt for restraining order laws and how they’re applied couldn’t be keener. But I’m also angry for women legitimately at risk. Not only are restraining orders prone to casual abuse—making them a mockery—they don’t answer the problem for which they were enacted.

The dominant political influence in the perpetuation of the status quo in all matters related to restraining order legislation is that exerted by dogmatic feminists (a.k.a. “gender feminists”). And money talks. Feminism’s representatives have received billions in federal funding under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). A cynic might propose that the interests of the cause are being protected over the welfare of the victims of restraining orders, male and female.

If vengeance for past injustices and leverage over men are feminists’ intent, then defense of current restraining order policies certainly has a lot to recommend it (just ask any attorney who practices family law). Here’s where honest self-examination of motives by feminists, specifically those of the academic stripe (a.k.a. “The Sorority”), is due.

Feminists should realize, being in the main acutely intelligent women, that sexual discrimination and role reversals—however spitefully gratifying they may be—don’t signify an advance toward gender equality but rather a resignation to its unattainability that parades as social progress. Encouraging women to crouch behind the legs of parental policies, policies both biased and in some cases dangerously or even fatally ineffectual, isn’t encouraging them to stand on their own two feet. Feminist used to mean brassy and independent.

Let’s be clear here: assault is already a crime. The answer to it is a barred cage.

Let’s be honest, too. The common function of restraining orders is tactical terrorism. They don’t empower women; they just diminish men (and feminist and judicial credibility). They’re exploited as expedients—and often for ends ulterior to the ones their petitioners profess.

Turnabout may be fair play, but it’s still just gamesmanship that we’re talking about, not equity. If feminists are sincere when they say they want to be taken seriously, their aim should be nobler than dominance of the sandbox by baseball bat.

You know something’s gone very wrong when the question becomes, who’s battering whom?

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Why Judges Are Scared of Girls: On Sexual Politics and Restraining Order Injustice

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A not insignificant reason for judges’ pandering to women who claim to be afraid of this man or that man is their consciousness of the impact that a feminist backlash would have on their careers if they were to discount a woman’s allegation of fear and then that fear were to be proved valid. So long robe and gavel.

It’s happened.

Knee-jerk feminists, to quote philosopher and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, are “brilliant work-shoppers, networkers, [and] organizers…. There has never been a more effective army of busybodies. And they know how to work the system.” They’re a political force to be reckoned with and one today’s society has been conditioned to truckle to. Seven or eight years ago, Harvard President Larry Summers was given the bum’s rush for making statements construed as derogatory to women at a conference on gender imbalances in science. And a judge is no less vulnerable to the feminist chopping block than a university president.

In theory, civil rulings are based on a preponderance of evidence. In practice, at least in the fast and loose arena of restraining order administration, they observe the rule that it’s better to err on the side of caution.

And it isn’t only men who suffer the consequences of this dereliction. Because the court must be seen to be fair and balanced, women are conversely victimized by unscrupulous men in accordance with the same politically slackened evidentiary standard. (In fact, though only one in five restraining orders is issued to a woman, at least as many women as men have submitted comments to this blog chronicling torturous restraining order ordeals—and some of these women even report they’ve been victimized by other women.)

The rationale echoes that of the witch trials: if a person was never a threat at all and doesn’t violate the restraining order, s/he appears to have been tamed by it, and the court can congratulate itself; if s/he was a threat and violates the restraining order, the court was right to intervene…and can congratulate itself.

Bottom line: We did our job.

Which is of course untrue. The court’s job isn’t to protect and serve the public. That’s the job of the police, which is why it says so on their cars. And it certainly isn’t the court’s job to protect and serve the career interests of its judges. The court’s job is to protect the dignity of our legal system and to impartially and diligently serve the cause of justice.

And none other.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Order Fraud and Female Victimization of Men

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It shouldn’t be any mystery why with millions of restraining orders being issued each year in the Internet age complaints of abuses aren’t louder and more numerous: stigma.

A woman’s having taken out a restraining order against him—particularly one alleging violence or fear of violence—isn’t something a man is apt to broadcast, even if the order was grounded on sheer lies (and especially if those lies aren’t ones he’s able to expose as such). Allegations of fear or threat by women aren’t held to any standard of substantiation. They can be completely vaporous (pardon the oxymoron), and judges are cool with that.

Also, the experience of being publicly shamed is a harrowing one and one a man isn’t likely to want to revisit. (There’s always, besides, the apprehension of incurring further malice from the courts. For many injunction defendants, ever again having access to home, property, or children is entirely subject to judicial impulse.)

An unscrupulous woman not only enjoys the gratification of being rewarded for her fraud by a paternal system that regards her as a fragile fledgling in need of special protections; she also enjoys the impunity guaranteed by her victim’s fear of humiliation and social and professional condemnation.

Society today condescends to give a sympathetic ear to women’s plaints; men are still expected to suck it up. Feminists promote a double standard they profess to oppose to reap the benefit: not gender equity but political advantage.

There are a number of sites on the Internet that advocate for “men’s rights” (see how even the phrase sounds absurd?) like A Voice for Men and Men’s Activism News Network. You’re unlikely to hear them cited on NPR. Feminism is chic and trendy: VAWA! NOW! AAUW! The Vagina Monologues!

“Masculinism” isn’t a word.

Copyright © 2013 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

Restraining Orders Are Hurting You, Too (A Call to Moderate Feminists)

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Some reject the notion that moderate feminists exist, a misapprehension that arises from labeling. I know many, though they don’t readily identify themselves as feminists. Their agenda isn’t the subjugation of men. “Equity feminists” is what philosopher and feminist scholar Christina Hoff Sommers calls them, a term she applies to women who promote (and justly expect) equal rights, representation, and recognition to distinguish them from “gender feminists,” her term for embittered female chauvinists. Ms. Sommers makes the distinction, because she believes feminism has since the eighties been coopted by influential extremists. And she’s right.

This post isn’t directed at them.

Its subject is the reform of restraining order legislation, and it’s a subject that should be of concern to the liberal feminist majority. Rampant abuse of restraining orders has now been allowed to persist for decades. The number of restraining orders issued is estimated at two to three million a year in the United States alone, and as many as 80% of these are said to be frivolous at best and at worst utterly fraudulent. Consider then the proportion of the voting constituency who have been abused and alienated by a process originally conceived by the state to appease feminist activists.

Take a second to do the math.

This number swells by two citizens a minute. One of these guys (or gals) may be a sociopathic creep. But at least one will be a normal, law-abiding Joe who will have had his faith in government permanently compromised and may feel very jaded toward any measure advocating social change on behalf of women, no matter how worthy.

Add to this the friends and family members of victims of restraining order abuse who’ve been lastingly affected, and the number may double, treble, or quadruple.

That restraining orders are routinely abused isn’t a secret. With tens of millions of them having been issued in the last 30 years, chances are you encounter people every day who’ve received one or who know someone who has. Two women I’ve corresponded with recently—one of them an anonymous critic of this blog—have brothers whose lives have been ruined by false allegations of violence made by women. And this fact was completely coincidental to the reason for their contacting me.

Moderate feminists take note: the crimped convictions of the influential minority that preserves this persecutory status quo are actively eroding the sympathy you rely on (and should be able to rely on). The solution is reform. The same activist zeal you apply to advancing worthy feminist aims must be brought to bear on ensuring that down the road there’s still going to be someone listening to you.

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