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Neither
Chaitra Shenoy's "Myths belittle female population,
problems relevant to culture" (Daily Bruin, 5/11/01)
nor Barrie Levy's "Bruin ad Misleading" (Daily
Bruin, 5/11/01) do much to defend feminist statistics
against the evidence presented by the Independent Women's Forum
in its April 18 Daily Bruin ad. The research‑based,
methodical IWF ad tells us what serious researchers already
know‑‑that feminist statistics and claims are often
terrible distortions based on unprofessional and dishonest
methodologies.
Shenoy
repeats the discredited feminist factoid that "30 percent
of emergency room visits by women...are the result of injuries
from domestic violence". The origin of the figure is a 1984
article "Domestic Violence Victims in the Emergency
Department" in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. It
turns out that 38% of the 492 patients who make up the
"30%" figure were men! The survey is also flawed because it was a small sample taken
at only one, violence‑plagued and poverty‑stricken
inner‑city Detroit ER.
The survey's authors never claimed that it was
comprehensive or representative of the population as a whole.
When
the Family Violence Prevention Fund did a survey of all 397 ERs
in California hospitals and asked the (mostly female) Nurse
Managers how many female patients whom the managers believed
were DV victims were treated in an average month, the total
averaged between two (for small hospitals) and eight (for the
larger ones).
Shenoy
attacks the IWF for disputing the feminist claim that women make
only 75% of what men do for the same job but provides little
substantive evidence. As I explained in my recent LA Times
column ("Is Pay a Function of Gender Bias?", 5/12/01)
and in more detail in "Wage gap reflects sacrifice of men,
not discrimination" (Daily Bruin, 6/2/99), men make
more money than women largely because full‑time employed
men work, on average, eight hours a week (or over 400 hours a
year) more than full‑time employed women.
In addition, full‑time employed women have, as a
whole, 25% less job experience than their male counterparts.
Also, men are the victims of over 90% of American
workplace deaths and serious injuries and many of these
"male" jobs pay more than other jobs at the same
relative skill level specifically because of the hazards
involved. The 75% figure compares apples and oranges by adding
up what the average full‑time employed male and average
full‑time employed female earn.
Both the IWF and the Cato Institute did studies with
realistic comparables‑‑comparing
men and women who worked the same number of hours in the same
job and at the same level of experience--and found the gender
wage gap to be less than 2%.
Shenoy
also has been misled about rape figures and attacks the IWF for
debunking the infamous "1 in 4 college women victim of rape
or attempted rape" hoax.
As I explained in three Daily Bruin articles
(3/8/99, 4/13/99, and 11/9/99), the famous 1 in 4 figure comes
from a 1985 survey by feminist Mary Koss which was sponsored by Ms.
magazine. I wrote
to Koss (12/3/99) and while she still defended her work she
herself confirmed for me that her rape/attempted rape figure
includes women who were not in any way forced to have sex but
instead "had sexual intercourse when [they] didn't want to
because a man gave [them] alcohol or drugs." Many dissident
feminists have protested this infantilization of women and asked
“how does a guy ‘giving you’ a drink mean you have to
drink it and keep drinking until you've had enough that you'll
have sex ‘because of’ the drinks?”
To get “1 in 4" feminists turn a consensual
act--drinking and having sex--into “rape”.
Researchers have noted that if we use Koss’ definition
of “rape” and apply it to men, a large percentage of college
men are “raped” too. When Tina Oakland, director of the UCLA
Center for Women and Men, defended “1 in 4" against the
IWF (“Women’s groups demand apology from Bruin for ad”,
Daily Bruin, 5/17/01) she cited the AMA and the Department
of Justice, even though the source for both is, in fact, Koss.
Real
rape figures are hard to estimate because, as Shenoy correctly
notes, many women understandably do not report rape.
The most methodologically sound and unbiased estimates,
as I mentioned (with sources) in my previous articles on rape,
place the percentage of women raped at about 4% over a
lifetime‑‑not 25% by mid‑college career. The
total number of reported college rapes on all American campuses
combined is less than one per campus per year.
Shenoy
also believes feminist distortions on domestic violence. As I
explained in my articles "Domestic violence is harsh
reality for men also" (Daily Bruin, 5/12/00) and
"Cancer, violence major problems for men; research money is
needed for both sexes" (Daily Bruin, 5/17/99), most
child abuse and murder of children is committed by women, not
men, and domestic violence against men by women is roughly equal
to that of men against women. I also presented studies which show that violence in lesbian
couples is at least as high as that in heterosexual couples.
According
to the US Department of Justice, 70% of
confirmed cases of child abuse and 65% of parental
murders of children are committed by mothers, not fathers.
According to the US Department of Health and Human
Services, adjusting for the greater number of single mothers, a
custodial mother is five times as likely to murder her own
children as a custodial father.
Longtime
domestic violence researchers Richard Gelles and Murray Straus,
who were once hailed by the feminist movement for their
pioneering work bringing domestic violence against women to
national prominence, have repeatedly found thatfemale domestic
violence is as prevalent as male domestic violence, in both
minor and serious assaults.
Psychology
professor Martin Fiebert of California State University, Long
Beach compiled 117 studies (http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/)
which found that women were as responsible for initiating and
engaging in domestic violence as men.
Researchers,
including Dr. David Fontes, the director of Stop Abuse for
Everyone (SAFE), have also found that only a small percentage of
female batterers batter in self-defense (www.safe4all.org).
Shenoy
also overstates the prevalence of domestic violence against
women in our society. What
she doesn't realize is that feminist domestic violence studies
are notoriously inaccurate because they lump together common,
trivial acts which men and women do equally (such as slamming
doors, yelling, etc.) with serious abuse in order to get high
figures, which they then present to the public as strictly
serious abuse and as strictly male.
The
IWF's ad isn't "hurtful to a huge chunk of our student and
faculty population" (Shenoy), nor does it "ferment
intolerant, anti-woman... sentiment and action on campus"
(Levy) and "incite hate" (Levy).
Instead, the IWF is a valuable dissident voice which
should be heard not only in the Daily Bruin but in the
Women's Studies classroom as well. The Daily Bruin was
correct to stare down the feminist would-be censors and print
the ad. What are
Shenoy, Levy, Oakland and the Women's Studies Department so
afraid of?
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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