Imagine a major social problem. Hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds have been thrown at it over the past few years in the hope of effecting a solution. Millions more have been allocated. The same types of solutions based on the same philosophical approach have been funded time and time again. And yet instead of the problem getting smaller, the people responsible for both allocating and for spending the money, are saying it is getting worse and worse.
In most other situations people would be saying “hey, it’s time we looked at the problem from other angles and tried different solutions“. But not in the case of domestic violence. Because here sensible pragmatism is well and truly trumped by the imperative of remaining safely within the confines of feminist dogma.
The other day The Age newspaper published an article entitled ‘The part women play in domestic violence‘ It was written by Sallee McLaren, a Melbourne-based clinical psychologist. With a title like that I thought it was going to be about female perpetrators, but that was not the case.
In fact, there was not ONE WORD about violence perpetrated by women. Yet despite that, feminists still reacted with fury. That’s a testament to the reality of just how distorted and one-sided the debate about domestic violence has become.
You see Sallee had the audacity to suggest that women in abusive relationships had some limited measure of control over the situation. That their behaviour sometimes exerted some influence over the circumstances that they now find themselves in. That they are something other than completely helpless victims. Yes, in the eyes of feminists, she was a VICTIM-BLAMER.
If this sounds like a familiar story, it is. You might recall the case of Tanveer Ahmed.
Miki Perkins, who also writes for The Age, was first cab off the rank for Team Feminism with an article entitled ‘Don’t play the victim blame game with family violence‘ (with 100 reader comments at last count).
Further examples of the feminist backlash against Sallee’s article can be found here, here and here. Naturally, social media is also awash with harsh comments about both Ms McLaren and The Age (for publishing such heretical and insensitive material).
And now I see that both Sallee and Tanveer Ahmed rate a mention in this article regarding the feminist infiltration of the Australian trade union movement.
To be continued.
I do not feel that this is about blame, or victims.
I believe that this is more to do with an intergenerational cycle of mistreatment, which for so many families becomes a familiar ‘way of being’ and interacting with others, that it (abusive communication and disrespectful treatment of self and others) becomes a norm.
I feel that for a person who has grown up around it, and was raised by a person or persons who have also grown up around disrespectful behaviours, within an environment where there is a presence of some level of dysfunction in the family; many behaviours described within the definition of domestic violence can be so integrated into the family beliefs and practices to the extent that they essentially become invisible.. and to suggest that these behaviours are abusive can be quite confronting & shocking- and many families likely do not recognize it as such.
And so any suggestions that there is abuse in the home are frequently met with denial.