"Media Matters" Condones Women's Violence
By David R. Usher (11/27/07)
When Marc Rudov and Lis Wiehl debate issues of sex on Fox News, the first thing that comes into question is credibility. This is especially true when roasting the dubious qualities of women's "Taser Parties".
Lis Wiehl feels that women having taser parties is somehow tantamount to a Tupperware party (video). Rudov realistically pointed out that under the Violence Against Women Act, all a woman has to do is claim “fear” as justification for tasering and even killing man.
Wiehl’s dangerous position explicitly reveals the in-vivo tragedy of VAWA: Where one’s subjective state of “fear” is the legal standard justifying most any action by a woman (as opposed to a “real threat” standard), there is no telling what women will do (and try get away with). Civil Rights advocates need to wake up on this issue: racist white women can throw high-tech war parties too.
The problem with tasers as a “standard female accessory” is the unconstitutionally-low standard for female behavior established by the Violence Against Women Act. In the VAWA environment, use of a taser to prevent a rape is no different than abuse of a taser for an entirely scurrilous reason. VAWA makes it impossible to discern the difference between the two.
During the debate, Rudov pointed out the well-documented (and now incontrovertible) fact that women are “equal opportunity domestic abusers”.
Feminists really hate the truth. So, a self-proclaimed liberal “media watchdog” named “Media Matters” decided to pile on the debate, hoping to score a win from perfume-infused rooms. Media Matters launched a major campaign last week apparently intended to get Marc Rudov removed from Neil Cavuto’s show.
Media Matters claims that women are not “equal opportunity domestic abusers” -- essentially calling Rudov a liar. It went on to display arrogant defiance in the matter, censoring virtually every thoughtful or studious comment made to their website inconsistent with their gender agenda.
Instead of posting the many thoughtful scientific comments submitted to their website (I have geek friends), Media Matters approved a number of insane comments about Rudov such as “like so many right-wing macho men, he probably has a little, itty-bitty pee-pee”, and even suggested he is a “date rapist”.
Then, Media Matters claimed it was unable to find CDC cites supporting Rudov’s position. Here is one that I had no trouble finding published by both the CDC and the American Journal of Public Health, titled “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence”. This report finds that women initiated 70% of the violence in non-reciprocal situations. (The long list of intelligentsia running Media Matters should be paying close attention to the giant flushing noise sucking their credentials straight down the toilet).
The truth is this: there are many different kinds of studies on domestic violence. Some study the front end of the issue, others the results. Some are conducted according to accepted scientific principles, and the ones conducted by feminist organizations generally are not.
Some are based on crime reports. It is well-documented that men do not call domestic violence hotlines after being assaulted by a wife. If a man responds with physical force, he is most likely the one to be arrested (because she has a bruise). When family conflict becomes chronic, women end up dead or severely injured. Crime reports only show us the lopsided outcome of VAWA laws. While feminists would like to believe differently, this does not conflict with solid studies based on the Conflict Tactical Scales (CTS), which consistently report that women are responsible for initiating at least half of all domestic altercations.
Some studies are conducted by feminist organizations who uniformly apply conveniently-modified versions of CTS in their surveys. “Convenient” means that a survey was done that did not ask women what they did to men. This is the methodology used to create the National Institute of Justice Report “Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence”, which flowed directly into the Department of Justice Report “Family Violence Statistics”, which is the basis for statistics alleged in the CDC’s fact sheet “Intimate Partner Violence”. These studies are the real lies that Media Matters should be jumping up and down about.
Dr. Murray Straus (who is the first leading researcher that called for federal domestic violence programs in the 1970’s), dislikes feminist political abuses of statistics as much as I do. Straus has an excellent paper titled “The Controversy Over Domestic Violence By Women” that explains why data from different reports varies, what it means, and why crime data does not imply that we should continue ignoring the fact that women initiate at least half of all serious spousal altercations. Recently, Straus came out point-blank calling for women to stop abusing men.
Dr. Straus has thousands of excellent reasons for insisting that science trump radical feminism when it comes to very important matters such as domestic violence. To condone non-serious violence by women and blame it on men is to guarantee that many women will continue a pattern of dangerous behavior that gets some of them seriously injured or killed.
Anyone who truly cares about women must support the work of Dr. Murray Straus, the National Family Violence Research Center, Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR), Marc Rudov, and the many others who know we must (for the first time) address the endemic problem of female-on-male violence in order to reduce serious domestic violence outcomes.
Media Matters is in big trouble. Promoting or condoning violence by women (which we know it ends up with some women being seriously injured or dead), places Media Matters in an anti-woman position that no sane human being can possibly agree with.
Moving forward, Fox News should consider following through with some serious news journalism on the topics Cavuto covers. These debates often reveal public policies of great national consequence that are as mindless and destructive as the weak positions Lis Wiehl often assumes. A series on the Violence Against Women Act would be an eye-popper to start with.
David R. Usher is Senior Policy Analyst for the True Equality Network.
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