women’s law | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

“Congressional sources have revealed some significant changes will be made to federal domestic violence laws. Bowing to pressure from men’s rights groups who for years have claimed that the Federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is biased against men, congressional leaders will soon announce a revamping of this legislation.

“In recognition of the fact that there may be a few men out there who get beaten up by their wives but are too ashamed to admit it, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) will be renamed the Violence Against Women and Wimps and Wussies Act (VAWAWAWA).”

—“VAWAWAWA: Federal Law Finally Catches Up with Reality”

That’s Lisa Scott, a Bellevue, Washington, family attorney who knows a whole lot more than almost anyone about the reality of domestic conflict, satirically poking defenders of the Violence Against Women Act (as biased an act of legislation as has ever been conceived) squarely in the eye.

The Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, which demonizes men, takes as granted that they’re always the villains and could never be victims themselves.

Ms. Scott is one of those rare, intrepid women of parts and integrity—see also Cathy Young, Christina Hoff Sommers, Wendy McElroy, and Phyllis Schlafly, among a few select others—who made a determined effort to temper the iniquity of “women’s law” in the years before the most recent decade or so, during which light has been smothered by heat and noise (or what might be called “Tweat”).

Victims of VAWA, who were powerless to begin with against a billion-dollar federal juggernaut flanked by thousands of media-savvy minions, have today been marginalized by the #MeToo movement to the point of invisibility.

This post, which is meant as an homage to writing Ms. Scott did between 2001 and 2011, endeavors only to highlight her perspectives, if not simply because they’re right then for those who will appreciate them.

They are no less current today than when they were first published.

Lisa Scott’s Top 10 Things I’ve Learned in 10 Years of Divorce Wars
Biased VAWA Pushes Gender Supremacy
Gender Profiling Prevalent in Domestic Violence (Eastside Journal, 2001)
Gender Bias No Cure for Domestic Violence
Gender Bias We’d Like to See [in which she proposes a Male Suicide Prevention Act, among others]
When Terrorists Have More Rights than Men

*For more on male suicide: “First Amendment Rights from Beyond the Grave: Defense of a Suicide’s Publication of His Final Words by the Randazza Legal Group”; “False Accusations and Suicide: Some Headlines about the Effects of Finger-Pointing and Legal Abuse (Culled for the Empathically Challenged)”; Wendy McElroy (Fox News, 2002); Prof. Augustine J. Kposowa, Ph.D. (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 2000); Dan Bilsker, Ph.D., and Jennifer White, Ed.D. (BC Medical Journal, 2011); Christie Blatchford (National Post, 2017); Suzette Reynoso (Eyewitness News, 2017); Lindsay Holmes and Anna Almendrala (Huffington Post, 2016).

It isn’t just the men disparaged as “MRAs” (men’s rights activists) who denounce the injustice of feminist-inspired “women’s law.” Women also lose their homes, their families, their dignity, and their lives to misapplications of restraining order and domestic violence statutes. Unlike the men whose lot they share, these women aren’t distinguished with a label.

I propose the acronym “BRA,” which could stand for any of the following:

Beleaguered rights activist;
Baffled, boggled, buffaloed, or bewildered rights activist; or
Buggered rights activist.

The latter of these, especially, would evoke the same mockery shown the men’s rights activist to whom “MRA” is applied like a markdown sticker.

Make no mistake: Women who complain of procedural abuses are no less ignored than the men who do. They’re not saying anything anyone wants to hear—not the ACLU nor the Southern Poverty Law Center nor battered women’s advocates nor feminists in general. They’re misfits, and they’re accordingly denied status. No one dares contradict them, because that might sound misogynist. So they’re just disregarded.

Here are some different proposals for what BRA might represent: bypassed rights activist, betrayed rights activist…or balanced rights activist.

You want the straight dope about false accusation and the need for procedural reform? Ask the ex-wife who’s had her child taken from her, ask the disabled girl who’s been accused of domestic violence and cries herself to sleep every night, ask the mom who can’t attend her child’s school functions or keep a job, ask the ex-girlfriend who was nearly parked on the curb, or ask the professional woman who’s been denied protection against a brute and then framed.

But only ask if you can tolerate an inconvenient truth.

*A woman is the best rights activist, and more women’s voices should be heard in coordinated public protest.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag women’s law