Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    re .0
    
    Try contacting the Mass. Coalition of Battered Women's Service Groups.
    They have an office in Boston and should be listed in the phone
    book.  The coalition should be able to tell you what you can do
    to make your concerns known, what efforts already exist, etc.  They
    can also let you know about shelters and support groups in
    your area.  Shelters are always looking for volunteers to do crisis
    intervention and community out-reach work.  You might, for example,
    be able to help out with training sessions for local police.  I
    haven't heard about any training for judges, but who knows?  The 
    Battered Women's movement is only about 10 years old, and in that 
    short time great strides have been made in gaining cooperation from 
    local police with regard to informing women about their to get restraining
    orders.  If you have trouble finding the number for the coalition,
    send me mail, and I'll see what I can find out for you.
                                                              

    Good news!!  Judge King apparently has had several complaints lodged
    against him.  In this morning's lead story, it turns out he was
    yesterday removed from the bench of the Dorchester District Court
    and can no longer hear criminal or domestic abuse cases.  Basically,
    they gave him the most severe punishment they could at the moment.
    Yesterday's article was full of outrageous comments by Judge King-
    today he was unavailable for comment.
    
    !!!  Made my morning.  
    
    SHL
    

    
    In yesterday's article, King said that he had no proof that the
    woman had been beaten. He required visible evidence, and since she
    was wearing a coat during the hearing, he couldn't see any bruises.
    The woman could not satisfactorally answer questions such as 
    "Where would your husband go if he was kicked out?". King also said
    that he was reluctant to ban the husband from the apartment because
    he didn't like to break families up. He had not read the guidelines
    for dealing with battered spouses -- he felt that reading all
    guidelines was too time-consuming.  
    The actions taken with King are probably in part due to the Globe's
    (front-page) coverage.
    

    I wonder if the level of indignation would have been equal if the
    plaintiff had been the husband and the judges reaction had been
    that "any man who cannot protect himself from a woman half his size
    needs more than the protection of this court. he needs a pair of
    &*^#$."

re: 109.4
>    I wonder if the level of indignation would have been equal if the
>    plaintiff had been the husband ...

well, it might not have been as high, but then there's not much of a
history of women abusing men. Much of the indignation comes from the fact
that the usual case is men abusing women, and that until very recently, it's
been allowed and accepted.
					-- hs

RE:   < Note 109.5 >   -< not very likely >-

>there's not much of a
>history of women abusing men. Much of the indignation comes from the fact
>that the usual case is men abusing women, and that until very recently, it's
>been allowed and accepted.

    I want to posit several possible explanations for the lack of history
    
    1. It doesn't happen because women aren't violent
    2. It doesn't happen because women are too afraid of the violence
       in men to risk the inevitable violent response 
    3. It happens and men are ashamed to admit it for reasons suggested
       in 109.4.
    
    To the degree that the third reason seems plausible to you, please
    consider the similarity between that reason and the reason that
    wife abuse was not broadly recognized until recently.  
    
    

    I would add another possible explanation:
    
        Women abusing men occurs, but it doesn't happen as 
        often as men abusing women because most men are bigger 
        and stronger than most women. 
        
    -bs

RE:< Note 109.8 - Men are bigger and stronger >-

>I would add another possible explanation:
    
>Women abusing men occurs, but it doesn't happen as 
>often as men abusing women because most men are bigger 
>and stronger than most women. 

    Does that suggest that the only cases where women can abuse men
    is where the woman is more physically capable?  If yes, how is
    a husband who doesn't respond to violence with violence
    defined?  Note that one answer to the second question was given
    by the judge in 109.4.    
    

    
    Bullies beat up people who are smaller and weaker than themselves.
                    
    This holds true for both male and female bullies. 
    
    -bs
    

    re .9  "How do you know it doesn't happen as often?"
    
    Of course I don't *know* that women don't physically attack men
    as often or more often than the other way around, but there is
    certainly no evidence and there seems to be *lots* of evidence that
    men physically attack women.  When was the last time you heard of
    man being raped by a woman?  How *often* have you heard of a man
    being raped by a woman?  Now answer the same questions for women.
    Aren't you willing to admit that the numbers are at least a *bit*
    different?

   	-Ellen

RE: < Note 109.11 >   "How do you know it doesn't happen as often?"

    I didn't express that well.  If I were betting, I would put long
    odds on there being more domestic violence by men than by women.
    The point I was trying to make is that we couldn't settle the bet
    because we can't currently know the truth.  Further, the main reason
    we cannot know the truth is that men don't believe/accept other
    men when they "cannot handle their women".  I have had occasion
    to discuss this with law enforcement folks who indicate that the
    incidence of apparent husband abuse is a significant part of the
    domestic violence scene, but few victims are willing to seek 
    help from the courts, and the response given in .4 is close to
    a quote for one of those few incidents.
    
    Again, I did not intend to say that husband abuse is more prevalent
    than wife abuse

My father was a social worker who single handedly quadrupled the child
abuse rate in Mississippi simply by moving there and starting a graduate
school of social work.  Better trained SWs were more adept at identifying
the problem.  Child abuse was part of his work with domestic violence.  His
research and experience shows that yes men do get physically abused in
relationships.  However, the numbers don't approach even a 1/10 ratio. 

There is a high connection between abuse and joblessness or perceived
failure.  Abuse is often the abuser trying to act out or demonstrate the
ability to control and impact (!) their surroundings.  Unfortunately, this
requires someone who can be subjugated (either physically or emotionally).
Equally unfortunate it is women who are most often in the position of
powerlessness and therefore the ones to be subjugated and/or beaten. 

O.k.  Enough psychobabble from me.  And on to philosobabble. 

Marilyn French in her book on power says that the idea of Power Over is 
masculine rising out of differentiation, and is in direct opposition to the
idea of Power With which is feminine and arises out of the earth
mother/goddess image.   If indeed abuse is an acting
out of Power Over, it follows that whether the abuser is male or female,
the action itself requires masculine perspective.  Until this society
learns that overpowering is not the only embodiment of power, spousal abuse
will be a significant problem and women will continue to bear the brunt of
this particular ignorance.

Having said that I'll put on my asbestos suit and shut up.

Re: .13 (The second half; the first half I agree with.)
                                                                     
Set Flame/On

This flame is not directed at the writer of .13 but rather to the 
assumption of some feminist writers to link the masculine with 
Power Over and the feminine with Power With.  Although I'm 
unfamiliar with French's writing, I'm very familiar with another 
writer (Starhawk) who is involved with the growing Goddess/Earth 
Mother movement and makes a similar distinction: Power Over as 
masculine, Power from Within (as she calls it) as the feminine.  

My issue is that Power Over is a sexist association of the 
masculine, but has gained acceptance because feminist writers 
have looked at the world and observed it's dominated by men in 
power pushing helpless countries/people around and therefore 
(because they're men) that's what the masculine is...Power Over.

This is *not* what (the archetype of) masculine is!  Within the 
context of Earth religion (since that's what was referenced in the 
previous note) the masculine is Father Sky, Pan, the Fairy 
tradition (strongly linked to communication with the spirits of 
living things throughout the planet), and familial/tribal 
connections, to name but a few qualities.

Set Flame/Off

We live in an unbalanced society.  The images of our sexuality
represent that imbalance.  Masculine and Feminine are viewed in
contrast to each other rather than complementing each other.
Unfortunately, there's good reason for this historically. 
Language betrays the attitudes of the society, and the images
contained in our symbols of masculine and feminine have to change
in order to facilitate and promote the changed behavior we so
desperately need. 

/chuck

You did a nice job.  I don't feel flamed at all :-).  Your right that 
in the book on power, MF does put masculine in opposition to feminine.  Her
specific supposition is that in prehistory, society (,culture, religion . ..) 
was matriarchal.  One of the means of men enforcing patriarchy in more
recent times was religion; specifically, men and male religions "invented"
communications with external spirits as a means of investing themselves with
power.   Women were excluded from these rites of communications.   I find MF
very difficult reading sometimes, but always stimulating weather I agree with
her or not.  I'm more inclined to agree with her in the context of writings
such as Carol Gilligen (discussed elsewhere in this file).  

Archetypes always confuse me.  What is inherently feminine?  Masculine?  I
don't know.  What do you folks think?  Is it even worth asking the
question?  Does that question help us with sexist judges?  Don't know. 

-Byron

O.k. O.k. I know I'm talking to myself now but . . .

While rereading my reply (aside from noticing weather/whether confusions.
Spell checkers only go so far. . .)another thought cropped up.  Why when
we're building archetypes, do we seem to start out with a bias?  Rarely,
are archetypes a blend of positive and negative characteristics.  The
dictionary simply defines the word as "the original pattern, after which
models are copied."  I don't know many men who are pure evil or for that
matter many women who are are all nurturing earth mother types.  Why do we
seem to want to thing of ourselves in this black/white way?

    Judges will often defer to mental health professionals in addressing
    contested domestic violence situations.  One of the favorite tools
    of the mental health professionals is a test called the MMPI.  One
    of the things that the MMPI measures is androgenousness. I have
    only the foggiest idea what that means to a psychologist or judge,
    but it suggests that our cultural archetypes are fairly rigorously
    defined and measurable, at least from a judges perspective.

Although I've never acted on violent feelings that have surfaced 
in tense times with SOs, even having them makes me realize that 
if I'd been brought up with family violence, I would have acted 
on them (with all the guilt and remorse that would have incurred 
after the fact).

Regardless of what the exact ratios are of men vs. women violence
is, I feel that (and here's a generalization for you) men are
more prone toward violence because they've lost the connection
with the feminine within them. 

As images, the masculine reaches out and moves forward.  Without 
the feminine to complete the cycle of taking in and nurturing, 
the masculine archetype is vulnerable thus promoting projection.  In 
this case, the projection is fear of being taken in and nurtured.

Unfortunately for the male, ego differentiation in boys involves
making a separation from the mother, usually never to return.  
This truama is reinacted over and over again as feelings of 
closeness overwhelm the (now adult) man, forcing a reinactment of 
the initial experience of differentiation to "keep a lid on" the 
anxiety.

Unfortunately for the female, ego differentiation never fully 
takes place (more often than not), and so the (now adult) woman 
is put in a dependency situation again and again, acting out of 
an ego that is also not fully differentiated, but with a 
completely different history.

In both histories, (assuming heterosexual parents for the sake of 
this explanation), the absentee father (emotionally/physically) 
creates a dependency situation for both the boy and girl, because 
there's no psychic "catalyst" that would allow the developing ego 
to differentiate (each according to its own pattern).

The feminization of our society is the greatest blessing that's 
ever happened in the history of industrial society.  Men can now
reunite with their feminine sides to facilitate the process of 
connecting with his woman, and the woman now has the opportunity 
to contact her own separateness and relate from her own center.

"You sound JUST like my mother!!" (he used to say). "Oh yeah? 
Well, where were you when I NEEDED you!!" (she used to say). 
Eventually, violence would have followed.

But no more.  (We can hope.)

/chuck

    A friend who works in a domestic violence prevention center and
    safehouse tells me that she runs accross lots of cases of domestic
    violence amoung lesbians.  That clearly implies that women can be,
    and are the abusers.
    
    She tells me she has never seen a homosexual man come in or call
    reporting abuse from his male lover.  
    
    Maybe it is just easier for women to admit that they are being abused
    and seek help, because they don't have to keep up any kind of 'macho'
    image.
    
    Elizabeth

        I did a DIR/TITLE=ABUS and this topic seems to closest to where
    this belongs.
    
         I hear on the radio yesterday the more than 1500 women died
    last year as a result of domestic violence, and that tens of
    thousands of women were injured.

    Yes, I heard from a woman who works with battered women, and has
    just worked with a group to produce a (well, "manual", I guess)
    for such workers:
    
    A woman is killed by her batterer every 22 days, in Massachusetts
    alone.
    
    I heard this at just the same time the ATV law was going thru Congress
    because a TOTAL of 500 people had been hurt in the last n months.
    Made me once again, wonder about the priorities of "those who would
    protect us".
    
    Lotta women gettin' hurt..
    
    --DE
    

Do you happen to have information on what the total population involved was? How
about comparative information on men?  It's hard to make a comparision without
that information.

Jim. 

    
    RE: .22
    
    	Jim,
    	 Why is it each time one of the women bring up domestic violence
    	or rape, etc. towards women you follow it by stating that this
    	indeed also happens to men? I'm sure we're all aware it does,
    	I fail to see why you keep insisting to slant it towards men
    	and away from the women. I'm not attacking you, so please don't
    	feel that way, I'd just like to try to understand your reason(s).

    The reasoning of .22 would suggest that the value lies in the numbers
    of men involved, i.e. if there are a significant number of men injured
    or killed when raped or a significant number of men injured or killed
    during domestic violence it would then be a significant
    problem/question.  Therefore if only a small percentage of the total
    population of men incurs injury or death from rape or domestic violence
    then it must follow that it must be an insignificant problem.

    At least in the case of battered women, I know that there are people
    out there working on the problem, bringing it to the attention of
    our lawmakers, helping to support the victims.  That it good.
    
    I fear though that there are many other victims that noone cares
    about.  Although they suffer no more than the people whose suffering
    is someone's caus they have little or no hope that things will ever
    change.  Perhaps when the popular cause is won the fighters will
    have energy left to take on a new cause in the long forgotten.
    In the mean time it is the forgotten that I really fear for.
    
    					MJC O->
    
    P.S. There are many, many, many people in line for the next cause
    in front of abused men in my mind.

    	  They have just instituted a policy in some counties of
    	Florida that has been used in several other places in
    	the U.S.  Wish I had saved the article, but basically
    	it *requires* the police to arrest the perpetrator
    	when they respond to a domestic violence call and there
    	is evidence of abuse (battering).  Even if the victim
    	does not want to press charges, the county does.
    	  The article stated that traditionally the police officer
    	would intercede to stop that instance of battering, but 
    	nothing would happen to prevent another occurance.