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	Empowering Men: fighting feminist lies
Police See the Light on Family Violence © Peter Zohrab 2002

Previously, the Police Managers' Guild had taken the standard male-bashing line on Domestic Violence, as I show in my book, "Sex, Lies & Feminism", where I state:

Victims Not Just Women and Children

(Excerpt from Family Violence: "don't let your child be a victim",

New Zealand Police Managers' Guild Trust, October 2001)

"Violence inflicted on men by women? It's an often untold story. Men sometimes feel as if they can't talk about it when it happens and they can feel helpless to do anything because it might not be believed. However, an increasing number of New Zealand males, some represented by an increasingly vocal network of men's groups, insist that men get abused in relationships, too. They demand that society acknowledge violence against them by the women in their lives.

Indeed, the Domestic Violence Act, 1995, gives them the same protection that it does women. Men can swear an affidavit and they can apply for a protection order against a violent partner. Female violence, like abuse by males, is also controlling. It causes physical, sexual or psychological damage or causes a man to live in fear.

Physical and sexual violence are the most obvious forms of assault. Pushing, biting, hitting, punching and using a weapon are all forms of violence. Forcing someone to participate in sex is violence. Threats are a form of violence. Other forms of violence used by women include:

Men often say these are the most insidious forms of violence and abuse because they are difficult to explain and are often regarded as "ordinary relationship problems"

If you have been in a violent relationship you might have some of the following feelings:

It might be helpful to look at some of the ways you've coped until now:

Men should never think their partner's violence is their fault. Just as men make a choice to be violent against their partners, and maybe the children in the relationship, so do women. She chooses whether she will slap a man's face because he said something she didn't like. She chooses whether she will lash out and scream at the family because she is feeling unwell.

If men's violence against women is unacceptable and without excuse, shouldn't women's be? All violence has damaging consequences. A man's belief in his worth and his sense of having rights and choices becomes eroded by constant abuse. There are many common beliefs about why women choose to be violent: "she had a sad or traumatic childhood", "she drinks or uses drugs", "she has trouble expressing her feelings", "she is oppressed as a woman , she can't control her anger", "something about you drives her to violence".

These are excuses. We all experience stress, trauma, anger and fear, hut a violent woman chooses to use violence to control and get her own way just as a violent man does. "I never believed she'd abuse me." Many men don't realise that a woman's violent behaviour to them is domestic violence. They might not have believed until recently that women's behaviour, such as described above, could be called violent. If a man feels scared and unsafe in his partner's presence something is wrong. He is the best judge of how safe he is.

Some men simply don't want to admit that they are afraid of their partner - somehow it doesn't seem "manly" for a Kiwi bloke to admit that he lives with someone who is violent to him. Police officers acknowledge that men probably don't report violence when they otherwise could.

How to help

People can help by: