Thursday, September 29, 2005

more anti-women, anti-VAWA rhetoric

From an angry post about how radical feminists are hijacking the cause of domestic violence prevention, I ended up here, at a site called "Hate Male Post," one of those crazy "men's rights" bloggers.
Normally, I just laugh these fuckers off. Because when they use words like man repellant and seriously post beliefs such as this:
1) Men don't have any rights anymore, and

2) Unfortunately, many, even the majority of rape and assault claims ARE made up, irregardless (sic) of what NOW and the gender-feminists tell us.

it makes me want to either vomit or punch a wall.

But the most recent post on this "men's rights" blog about the problems of the VAWA legislation has a teeny bit of merit (when you ignore the majority of the post, which is so anti-feminist that it gives Jerry Falwell a run for his money).
Mainly, this: that there is, in fact, an undercurrent of domestic and sexual violence against men, especially sexual, that goes almost universally unreported. While it remains that the majority of these men's perpetrators are also men, there are women violators of this as well.
I haven't studied the language of VAWA ad nauseum (or at all, really), but it seems to me that the name of the legislation -- Violence Against Women Act -- implies that it may, in fact, not extend these protections to male victims of domestic violence. In that sense, at least, it is perpetuating the underreporting of these incidents.

These men's rights' groups do have at least some relevance, then, in their pleading for VAWA to be a gender-neutral piece of legislatio. This seems reasonable enough.

So, my question is this:
Can this be done without minimizing the fact that the majority of domestic violence is perpetrated by men against women? Would neutralizing the gendered language in the legislation make it less effective or less of a "feminist issue"?

I have my thoughts, but I'd like to hear others.

1 comment:

Fred Vincy said...

I noted this in more detail at the media girl site, but I don't think there's much to worry about here. Despite the title and legislative findings, most of VAWA is in fact sex neutral.