New Zealand Equality Education Foundation

(incorporating the International Ex-Fetus Association)

Female Academics' Power and Control over Male Academics

© Peter Zohrab 2006

I am a great admirer of the recent research carried out by Murray Straus on Domestic Violence. However, he is an admitted Feminist, and this leads him into error.

"A year or so later I was in the audience when my colleague Murray Straus presented the results of a study on which we had collaborated with Suzanne Steimetz …. The study included data on violence by women towards their husbands or male partners. Straus was unable to complete his presentation because the yells and shouts from members of the audience drove him from the stage. To even discuss female offenders, I was told later, could only undermine the case for battered women. Straus, who also considers himself a feminist, was, in his own words … “excommunicated” from the mainstream feminist community. He was rarely invited to speak at conferences on wife abuse, many of the speeches he gave were boycotted, and he has received threats, including death threats, over the past 15 years!" (Richard J Gelles, Research and Advocacy: Can One Wear Two Hats ? Family Process 33, March 1994).

There are various things we could say about this passage.

1. It demonstrates the domineering way in which women can and do behave, which is relevant from a Domestic Violence point of view.
2. It demonstrates the corrupt and perverted atmosphere that pervades modern Western academia, which atmosphere necessarily must pollute the teaching and research going on in such institutions.
3. The sheer political pressure of organised Feminist lies and half-truths must necessarily affect Straus' own work, as he struggles to survive professionally in this surreal atmosphere. What compromises is he forced to make?

In his otherwise excellent paper Dominance and Symmetry in Partner Violence by Male and Female University Students in 32 Nations (presented at a conference on Trends in Intimate Violence Intervention at New York University on May 23, 2006), Straus states:

"At the same time, service providers need to remain alert to cases that do not fit the typical pattern, including cases which fit the classical image of an oppressed and battered spouse. Although there are men who fall in this category, it is more often women. In addition, the harmful effects of all levels of violence are greater for women, physically, psychologically, and economically."

I have no hesitation in saying that this passage, which is unsupported by evidence, constitutes utter rubbish. What you find with academics (and I could give examples from Linguistics), is that even very good ones sometimes assume things without having evidence for them, and this is a case in point. The first issue is the phrase the classical image of an oppressed and battered spouse. The word image has no place in serious discussion of domestic violence. What scholar with self-respect would stoop to referring to a (media-imposed) image of a social phenomenon ? The word battered, similarly, has no objective denotation, but was created for the image that it connotes (see battery.html ). And the knock-out blow is the word oppressed. There is absolutely no chance that Murray Straus is employing a scientific definition of this term, or that he is referring to studies where both parties to such relationships have been impartially interviewed and an objective diagnosis of oppression arrived at. The people who use such terms in a domestic violence context avoid interviewing both parties on the same basis like the plague.

It follows, if I am correct, that Murray Straus has no objective reason for asserting that this image fits women more frequently than it fits men. He also has no objective basis for saying that the effects of violence are worse for women than for men. I am certain that no objective study has been done into this, because it would involve assessing the psychological impact on men of being automatically treated as the sole perpetrator by the authorities -- irrespective of whether they are in fact the sole victim or both victim and perpetrator. It would also have to take into account the impact on men of being denied custody of or proper access to their children after separation or divorce, as a result of being unjustly branded the sole perpetrator of domestic violence. It would further have to take into account the impact on men of the need to refrain from retaliating to violence, in the fear that any retalition would get them arrested -- whereas the authorities would probably not take his complaint of his spouse's violence seriously if he complained about her. It would also have to take into account the impact of the child support payments that the man would have to make as a result of the separation or divorce that followed the violence. These and similar factors are sure never to have been investigated properly, because of the nature of our Feminist-dominated universities.

The following link (to a newsletter from Colorado) gives an insight into other effects of domestic violence on men: legltctc.html .

I am certain that Murray Straus committed these serious errors because of the totalitarian feminist (Feminazi) nature of the modern Western university, where female academics assert and exercise power and control over male academics. Since modern Western universities have been so dumbed-down and politicised by the influx of women, only the exertion of organised political force from men can resore balance and rationality there.

 

Last Update: 24 July 2006