by Trudy W. Schuett
I’ve followed the issue of Climategate with great interest, as it has seemed that the issue has mirrored events in the field of domestic violence and partner abuse. Abusegate also occurred due to money, political power, and careers at stake.
Where Abusegate is concerned, however, there is one more element – the life or death of feminism, and its determination to liberate women from the so-called “oppression” of marriage and family. The story of Abusegate is as much about the attempt by feminists to obscure their real intentions as it is about feminist attempts to conceal the reality of partner abuse, in order to claim the issue as their own, and possibly the only issue available at the time to keep this essentially destructive philosophy alive.
As Joanne Nova, [1] Australian science writer has said, “Science has come full-circle, taking a page from the medieval Church by using fear and persecution to silence skeptics. The oppressed have become the oppressors. Given that most professional scientific bodies and peer-reviewed journals have been active accomplices in this scandal, one wonders how many other so called scientific consensuses have been similarly engineered and waiting for their own ClimateGates before truth is known.”
That quote is important because it addresses the politicization of science and research. Dean Esmay, the owner of Dean’s World, [2] where I blog occasionally as part of a group, has often commented that politics and science don’t mix. While I haven’t been in the field of research myself, it’s fairly well-known that going after grants and funding has become a difficult process, often fraught with politics and cronyism.
What feminism is supposed to be about is the definition provided by Merriam-Webster.
1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests
This is a current popular definition, however, and has little to do with the goals of feminism, which has its roots not only in Marxist ideals, but also in anti-male hatred and a desire for power and control over society where it is most beneficial to feminists themselves. According to [4] Erin Pizzey: “There never was a feminist movement. A bunch of disenchanted women refused to support their left wing men who were fighting capitalism. They changed the goal posts and said capitalism was no longer the battle ground it was now 'Patriarchy' and declared war on all men and the family.”
In the 1970s, and into the 1980s, feminism was still an emerging movement. Except for the halls of academia, which began to offer “women’s studies” courses, and a few academicians pushing “feminist law,” and “feminist psychology,” the general public had little interest in a movement that was so clearly designed to create antipathy between not only the sexes, but between career women and those choosing more-traditional paths for themselves.
It was about the same time that the issue of partner abuse began to emerge as an issue on the public radar. In 1971, Erin Pizzey founded the first shelter for abused women in the UK. There were also a few shelters for women developing independently in various places in the US.
This did not escape the attention of the zealots of the feminist faith and other opportunistic women. Surely there was profit and power to be gained in promoting this cause.
According to the [4] Herstory of domestic violence, “In the 1970s ‘We will not be beaten’ becomes the mantra of women across the country organizing to end domestic violence. A grassroots organizing effort begins, transforming public consciousness and women's lives. The common belief within the movement is that women face brutality from their husbands and indifference from social institutions.”
A theory regarding abuse was formulated, relying almost entirely on feminist supposition and the input from self-identified abused women. There has never been any kind of formal research or investigation of the feminist theory of abuse; it has simply been presented as a fait accompli and seldom, if ever, questioned. A look through the “Herstory,” (on the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse website, funded by your tax dollars) reveals a stunning lack of mention of research of any kind behind the feminist concept of domestic violence.
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Del Martin [5] a lesbian activist, wrote one of the earliest works on the issue in 1976. She says, “At the outset I was told I had to produce extensive and verifiable statistics on the incidence of violence against women…I concluded that incidence and incidents of violence in the home reached into the millions. My editor deleted my estimate on the grounds that I couldn’t prove it. Since then, academia has confirmed my virtual estimate and admitted that lacking uniformity in the way data are accumulated makes it impossible to provide actual statistics.”
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Lenore Walker [6] author of "The Battered Woman" “When I first began my study of the psychological impact of domestic violence on the battered woman, it was the mid 1970s and the feminist movement had a negative reaction to anything that came with a clinical psychology label…”
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Ellen Pence Duluth [7] Domestic Abuse Intervention Project “Many things that we did were new and groundbreaking. We introduced the power and control wheel and its accompanying theoretical framework, which tried to shift away from seeing violence against women as the problem of a few psychologically distorted men and lots of bad marriages, by linking men’s violence toward their partners to other forms of domination—class, race, gender, and colonization. We built on the work of previous projects that held individual agencies responsible to protect women and proposed a fairly bold notion of linking agencies together and forming a community-based advocacy program.”
This is probably the most astonishing fact of Abusegate: While Climategate has at least some basis in research and scientific theory, there is none whatsoever behind the myriad programs and laws established since the 1970s by the so-called, “Battered Women’s Movement.” Even the term itself was created for its impact by feminists whose goals had very little to do with providing aid for women.
As radical activist Susan Schecter [8]said, "I believe it is most urgent for this movement's future to declare that violence against women is a political problem, a question of power and domination, and not an individual, pathological, or deviant one. Continuing to make violence against women public is itself a crucial continuing task. We also must become a movement led by battered women, women of color, and working class women. We must develop a progressive agenda, a long range vision of what kind of society is needed so that violence against women would not exist, and to ally with groups sharing a vision of a just society" This statement appears on the main page of the website for the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence, [9] also funded by your tax dollars.
Since the early days of the Battered Women’s Movement, nearly everything that has come after has been based on feminist principles devised out of thin air. Even today, in the US there is no standard definition of what domestic violence is or is not. Yet thousands of men are incarcerated, families destroyed, and women and children thrown into a permanent condition of life in turmoil because of nothing but the aberrant personal beliefs of a few women a generation ago.
While the feminists of the 20th Century are dying off or retiring, their ugly legacy of opportunism remains. Legions of divorce lawyers, shelter advocates, and organizations providing feminist education all benefit from the multi-billion dollar industry that now forms the basis of society’s approach to partner abuse.
The real tragedy of Abusegate is that victims of genuine partner abuse are still left without hope and support. They have been doubly victimized by a society that has been too willing to accept answers without first considering the problem.
Trudy W. Schuett has advocated for unserved victims of partner abuse since 2000. She currently publishes New Perspectives on Partner Abuse at http://partnerabuse.com
1. Joanne Nova2. Dean's World
3. Erin Pizzey
4. Herstory of domestic violence
5. Del Martin
6. Lenore Walker
7. Ellen Pence
8. Susan Schecter
9. West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence
