Open Letter to the Minister of Social Development

Dear Paula Bennett,

The Families Commission and the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse

The Families Commission should be abolished, because of its support for the so-called "New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse" and for the White Ribbon Campaign.

The White Ribbon Campaign is clearly discriminatory and anti-male, but I would like to concentrate here on the New Zealand Family Violence Clearinghouse, because it is fraudulent and deceptive.

On its "About Us" page the NZFVC states that its "Vision" is to "provide accessible, comprehensive and up-to-date information on family and whanau violence." It also states that it operates "under a contract funded by the Families Commission." It lists a total of 22 staff or advisory personnel, and all but two are female.

The NZFVC does in fact provide comprehensive information on family violence through its searchable database. However, that library/database also serves as a front to give the NZFVC the appearance of being an authority on family violence. If you look at its so-called "Family Violence and Gender Fact Sheet", you will see that it downplays the evidence from ideologically inconvenient studies which are on its own database (see listing below), and concentrates on attacking men in a sexist manner.

In its section headed "Differences in violence by men and woman", the fraudulently entitled "Factsheet" (which is actually a propaganda sheet) states that "Research has repeatedly demonstrated that once attention to the issues of context, meaning, motivation, and consequences of violence are included it becomes clear that there is not a gender symmetry in partner violence -- it is men's violence against women and children that is the most significant social problem." The words "context, meaning, motivation, and consequences" are categories which enable Feminist researchers to ignore the objective studies and inject vast amounts of bias and subjectivity into the issue. They interview women only, treat them as victims, and report the women's one-sided interpretation of every incident as the only valid interpretation. This is in blatant disregard for the principle of Natural Justice "Audi alteram partem" (hear the other side). Feminist researchers only interview men who are prepared to (or have been brainwashed into) consider(ing) themselves purely and simply as perpetrators. Thus the Feminist research design presupposes female victimhood and male perpetratorhood from the outset.

This section of the so-called "Factsheet" then provides 16 bullet-points in support of the above assertion. Refuting all 16 of these would make this a very lengthy letter, and would necessitate my getting hold of copies of every Feminist diatribe that they refer to, so I will concentrate here on five of them, because they demonstrate the low intellectual level at which the NZFVC operates.

1. They say that the Police arrest more men than women for family violence. This is their very first bullet-point. In fact, the Police never arrest unless there has been a complaint (or the Police have witnessed an offence themselves), but there have never been any advertisements that specifically urge men to report female domestic violence, although there have been many that specifically urged women to report male domestic violence -- by making all violence look as if it was committed by men on women. Men quite rightly feel that the Police may not take them seriously if they report female violence. Another point is that the Police do not at present specifically collect statistics on the offence of "domestic violence", because there is no such offence.

2. Four of the first nine bullet-points refer to women's feelings, rather than to objective facts. They say, in effect, that male violence is more "significant" than female violence because women have the psychological defect of feeling fearful more often than men do. Either women are equal citizens with men or they are not. Men are not slaves who have to ensure that women have particular feelings. In fact, the Domestic Violence Act 1995 does make men the slaves of women, because section 13 says that the judge must have regard to "the effect of that behaviour on the applicant or a child of the applicant's family, or both", when considering an application for an ex parte protection order (see dvpobora.html). There is biological research evidence that women's brains do in fact operate in a more emotional manner than men's brains do, but that is not men's fault. The article: Hall, Geoffrey B.C., Wittelson, Sandra F., Szechtman, Henry and Nahmias, Claude, Sex differences in functional activation patterns revealed by increased emotion processing demands, Neuroreport 15 2004, 219-223: states that:

" Recognition of emotion in cross-modal stimuli produced sex differences with men showing greater unilateral left frontal activation and women showing greater limbic activity.... These findings suggest that men tend to modulate their reaction to stimuli, and engage in analysis and association, whereas women tend to draw more on primary emotional reference."

Men have tougher lives than women and have to look after themselves -- they can't just scream and have some man come running to their rescue, the way that women can. Men automatically take the woman's side when she is in a dispute with a man, whereas modern Western women are so Lesbian that they also automatically take the woman's side!

 

Studies Ignored or Downplayed by the NZFVC's so-called "Family Violence and Gender Fact Sheet"

• Magdol, L., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., Fagan, J., Newman, D. L., & Silva, P. A. (1997). Gender differences in partner violence in a birth cohort of 21 year Olds: bridging the gap between clinical and epidemiological approaches. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, 68-78. (Used CTS with a sample of 861 21 year Olds <436 men, 425 women> in New Zealand. Physical violence perpetration was reported during the previous 12 months by 37.2% of women and 21.8% of men, with severe violence perpetration by women at 18.6% and men at 5.7%.)

• Moffitt, T. E., Robins, R. W., & Caspi, A. (2001). A couples analysis of partner abuse with implications for abuse-prevention policy. Criminology & Public Policy, 1 (1), 5-36. (A representative longitudinal sample of 360 young-adult couples in New Zealand completed a 13 item physical abuse scale. Results reveal that 40% of males and 50% of females had perpetrated at least one act of physical violence toward their partners.)

• Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Ridder, E. M. (2005). Partner violence and mental health outcomes in a New Zealand birth cohort. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 1103-1119. (Examined extent of domestic violence experience and perpetration in a sample of 828 <437 women, 391 men> young adults who were 25 years old. Subjects were part of a long term longitudinal study and were administered the CTS2. Results reveal that "there were more men exposed to severe domestic violence than women" and that mild and moderate rates were similar for men and women. Overall, 39.4% of women and 30.9% of men reported perpetration scores of 3 or higher. Authors report that men and women reported similar rates of injury <3.9% for women vs. 3.3% for men>. In terms of initiation of partner assaults, 34% of women and 12% of men reported initiating physical assaults.)

• Ehrensaft, M. K., Moffitt, T. E., & Caspi, A. (2004). Clinically abusive relationships in an unselected birth cohort: men's and women's participation and developmental antecedents. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 113 (2), 258-270. (Assessed 980 individuals, ages 24-26, who were participants in longitudinal study in New Zealand. Subjects were examined with the CTS, the Partner Conflict Calendar, PCC, a measure of the consequences of abuse and a variety of personality and psychopathology scales. Findings reveal that 9% of the total sample, with an equal number of men and women, were victims of clinical abuse in their relationships with partners.)

• Jackson, S. M., Cram, F. & Seymour, F. W. (2000). Violence and sexual coercion in high school students' dating relationships. Journal of Family Violence, 15, 23-36. (In a New Zealand sample of senior high school students <200 women, 173 men> 21% of women and 19% of men reported having been physically hurt by their heterosexual dating partner).

 

The Families Commission, which I would call the Female Family Violence Promotion Commission, should be abolished.