Background: I've started a blog-based collection of bedtime stories for children, both stories I've told my kids and stories that other parents (and grandparents) tell their kids. If you've got a good bedtime story, please send it to me for consideration in this collection.

The core of these stories will be those I tell my 9-year-old daughter. She's pretty demanding--sometimes I pretty much have to come up with a bedtime story every night, which isn't easy.

My daughter is very interested in racism (which she's studied in school), baseball, and daddy's childhood, so many of the stories reflect those. She's only 9, but she enjoys learning about adult issues. Sometimes if I tell her a story she thinks isn't sufficiently adult, she'll say, "C'mon dad, that's just a baby story."

The stories I tell are usually just things that I remembered, sometimes recent but often from 20 or 30 years ago. Some of them are stories my father told me when I was a kid. I write these down as I told them, and they are NOT up to my usual standards of journalistic accuracy--given the limits of human memory, many (if not most) probably have at least one factual error in them, sometimes far more. They are also simplistic. I'm not going back and fixing them to make them more accurate or nuanced--they are here as I told them.

If you have a bedtime story you'd like to add to my collection, please send it to me at glenn@glennsacks.com. With your submission, please let me know how you want to be identified, if at all. To read all of the Daddy's Bedtime Stories so far, click here.

Sometimes people need to stand up for themselves, no matter how powerful or rich or famous the person treating them badly is.  Kids need to respect adults, such as their parents and teachers, but sometimes kids need to stand up for themselves too.  Let me tell you of one example I saw of a kid standing up for himself.  I was so surprised I could hardly believe it at the time. Many years ago one of the best players in baseball was an outfielder named Andy Van Slyke.  He played for the St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates during years when those teams often made the playoffs.  He was a very good hitter and a very good fielder, and was also very fast. 

One time I went to a game at Dodger Stadium and was sitting in the bleachers in the outfield when he was playing.  It must've been maybe 1987 or 1988.

Now before each inning all of the players warm up.  The pitcher throws to the catcher, the first baseman throws ground balls to the shortstop, to second baseman, and to the third baseman, and they throw the ball back to the first baseman. However, there are three outfielders, and they are too far apart to play catch.  So what happens instead is that the centerfielder will play catch with one of the other outfielders, and a bat boy will play catch with the third outfielder, in order to warm him up. 

Well, we were watching this at Dodger Stadium one day, and this bat boy, who was probably 10 or 11 years old, was warming up Van Slyke.  However, the boy could not throw the ball all the way to Van Slyke.  Instead, he would throw it on one hop.  This is not a big deal, but Van Slyke apparently got annoyed with it.  So Van Slyke, to show his irritation, started tossing the ball back to the boy on one bounce. 

Van Slyke was strong enough to throw the ball from deep centerfield all the way to home plate on the fly, so he wasn't doing this because he couldn't.  He was doing it as a dig at the bat boy. 

Well, even though the bat boy was young, he understood what was happening.  After the second ball came to him on a hop from Van Slyke, he caught it, turned his back on Van Slyke, and walked back to the dugout.  Van Slyke called after him, with his hands extended, asking him to come back.  The bat boy wouldn't hear of it, and instead ignored Van Slyke--a Major League baseball star who earned millions of dollars a year--and walked back to the dugout.

My friends and I were watching this and one friend of mine said, "Did I just see what I thought I just saw?"  It was a small incident, but I always respected that kid for standing up for himself.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Parental-Alienation-Awareness.com Stop Parental Alienation--a terrible form of Child Abuse. Nine states have now officially recognized Parental Alienation Awareness Day. To learn more, go to Parental-Alienation-Awareness.com.

The Rogue Wallet: a Scientific, Stylish Solution Sometimes great ideas come in unexpected shapes. The Rogue Wallet, the only wallet with a revolutionary curved edge, is designed to fit comfortably in your front pocket. Carrying your wallet in your front pocket makes sense for many reasons, in particular because doing so alleviates back pain caused by sitting on a traditional wallet. Inventor Michael Lyons designed the Rogue Wallet specifically with this purpose in mind. www.roguewallet.com

Feminist 'Hate Statistics' on Display at George Washington University

How should we describe the false, male-vilifying statistics that are ubiquitous on the modern college campus? Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? calls them "Hate Statistics." That seems apt.

To follow the recent controversy over the feminist "1 in 4 college women are raped" myth, see my recent blog post 'It’s a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center...you wait for the casualties to show up but no one calls' or click here.

The photo above was taken at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. by Alex, a reader. Such displays can be seen at practically every university.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

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I'm in the military...my wages are garnisheed at 65% and my ex will not let me see the kids regardless of court orders

From Carl, a reader:

I'm in the military. Divorce took place the month I departed California. I was there for training and was not a resident. CA. took complete jurisdiction. Kids and ex were in Florida at the time. Ex took kids to Mississippi same time divorce was filed. Divorce took place Oct 06, and is still open.

Since then my wages are garnisheed at 65% and I'm still in arrears by $400 monthly. My ex will not let me see the kids regardless of California court orders. California will not enforce the order, Mississippi will not enforce the order. It seems no agency will help me to see my children.

Also at this time I'm in jeopardy of losing my job of six years because of the arrearages. I'm on salary--I can't make the amount California wants.

Everyone says I have to get a lawyer, but I have no money. I make enough for food, shelter, and gas to get to work, usually with less than $100 in my bank at any given time. Any help or suggestions appreciated.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'Girls love jerks!...too many women who could easily be in a healthy relationship instead choose the cliffhanger...'

"As much as I hate to say it, girls love jerks!...too many women who could easily be in a healthy relationship instead choose the cliffhanger ending of dating a jerk that walks with a swagger, winks at anything that moves, and always has a one-liner at the ready."

Though feminist bloggers often fall all over themselves to deny it, I think one of the very real grievances young men have is the way women, despite all of their complaints about men, are usually not interested in nice guys.  I saw one men's activist several years ago write on his website, "Women say they want one thing, but they sleep with another," and it's often true.

When I taught high school, students often came to me with their problems.  Sometimes the girls would come to me with problems about their boyfriends.  Often they would come in groups. Time and time and time again I would see a girl who could have had practically any guy in the school she wanted instead go way, way out of her way to have a relationship with a jerk. (The jerk was often a gang member).  Then, when things don't work out with the jerk, or when the jerk acts like, well, a jerk, they are shocked and angry.

I remember one time asking a girl the following question -- "You could pick practically any guy you want.  Why don't you just go find a guy who thinks he's lucky to be with you?  Who will be good to you because he's a nice, good-hearted guy, who is pleased with his good fortune?  Why don't you just find a nice guy, and have a relationship with him?

The girl and her two friends giggled, and all three of them practically said the same thing at once -- "Nice is boring."

The article below by Christine Hassler (pictured) and Jason Ryan Dorsey discusses the problem with girls and "jerks."   I have mixed emotions about it.  On one hand, I think that men sometimes get stereotyped unfairly as jerks.  On the other hand, I think it is true that often women do not like "nice guys," and it is time to acknowledge this problem.

Thanks to Dutch Martin, for sending me the story.

DATING TIPS
She Says vs. He Says: Do Girls Really Like Dating Jerks?

By Christine Hassler and Jason Ryan Dorsey
Yahoo! Personals, Feb 24, 2008

SHE SAYS: No, but we think we do. As someone who dated a jerk, whom I now refer to as my "learning experience," I admit to falling under the jerk spell.

Here's how the jerk spell works: we meet the jerk and in some twisted way are seduced by his confidence, charm, and passion. We don't see these as the disguises they are: confidence is really arrogance, charm comes from him being a player, and his passion is being the center of his own universe.

The jerk sniffs out our insecurities and uses them to reel us in with compliments that eventually turn into criticisms. And if we see a red flag, like the time my "learning experience" told me his definition of a relationship was "light, fun and physical," we play mind games with ourselves. We use our normally rational inner voice to convince ourselves that we can tame him or that with the right kind of girlfriend he will lose his jerk armor and transform into a leading man fit for a romantic comedy. Come on ladies, what are we thinking?!

A jerk loves being a jerk -- way more than he loves us. I guess if they've always gotten away with treating people poorly and nobody ever set them straight, why would they change? Besides, a jerk seems to always have an attractive woman on his arm laughing at his mediocre jokes and ignoring his wandering gaze. How? I think it's because deep down every woman wants a challenge or a little danger. It's not really the jerk we like; it's the thrill of the chase, the rush of adrenaline when the jerk's phone number pops up on our cell (which is usually right after last call).

However, it's been my experience that "jerkdom" isn't some phase we can pull a guy out of. Guys only outgrow that phase when life no longer succumbs to their demands. Any woman who has dated a jerk for more than a week knows that it's a hollow relationship that ultimately leaves you disappointed, hurt, and commiserating with your friends.

The only challenge worth overcoming when dating a jerk is to not let him affect or define your self worth. So if there is a jerk out there making your heart go pitter-pat and estrogen is messing with your reasoning, go ahead and let him woo you, but when he asks for your number tell him that you only date guys who prove their value by respecting a woman. If he's a jerk he'll roll his eyes, say you have an attitude and snicker as he leaves. If he sincerely accepts your ground rules, then chances are you should give him at least one date to prove he's relationship material. Although you may not be spellbound at first, the nice guy without all the smooth answers may ultimately fulfill your needs in more meaningful ways.

HE SAYS: As much as I hate to say it, girls love jerks! At least until the jerk stops calling, which is usually right after he gets what he wants. Speaking from the guy's perspective, I've never quite understood what draws sane, attractive, bright women to guys who act like jerks. Maybe it is the thrill of the unexpected. Maybe it is trying to outplay him in his own game. Maybe it is hoping that deep down he is a nice guy and you are going to prove it to your naysayer friends. What I do know is that too many women who could easily be in a healthy relationship instead choose the cliffhanger ending of dating a jerk that walks with a swagger, winks at anything that moves, and always has a one-liner at the ready.

Truth be told, there aren't many nice guys who haven't considered acting like a jerk, especially when they steal your girl (here I speak from experience). However, daydreaming of jerkdom fades as soon as nice guys remember one thing: being a jerk means acting like a jerk all the time. That means causing the mental pain and emotional anguish that drives a girl to phone her friends -- guy friends included -- crying about what the jerk did to her in public on their first date. Even guys bear the brunt of girls who fall head over heels for jerks.

Read the full article here.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

'I was on the board of the women's resource center. I didn't agree with the annual 'Take Back the Night' program proclaiming the victimhood of women'

Background: I discussed the recent controversy over the feminist "1 in 4 college women are raped" myth, see my recent blog post 'It’s a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center...you wait for the casualties to show up but no one calls'. I noted that "the ladies at www.Feministing.com have responded with boiling rage and obscenities, without attempting to factually critique Mac Donald's research and arguments. The Feministing blog post is LA Times: What rape crisis?"

Below is a blog comment on www.feministing.com by Ophelia Blake, a woman who identifies herself as a leader of a college Women's Resource Center. The WRCs are feminist-run centers designed to help college women who have been raped or assaulted, or who are having a variety of other problems. Ophelia wrote:

"When I was in college, I was on the board of the Women's Resource Center, and I am, of course, a feminist. But one thing I didn't agree with the WRC about was its annual 'Take Back the Night' program proclaiming the victimhood of women. Mac Donald is correct on this account:

"'Campus rape ideology holds that inebriation strips women of responsibility for their actions but preserves male responsibility not only for their own actions but for their partners’ as well. Thus do men again become the guardians of female well-being.'

"It's a very '50s mentality. Considering that the boy in the scenario that the Harvard rape victim described was probably just as drunk as she was, what makes him the rapist and her the victim? The problem with the campus rape mentality is that it holds up the Laura-Session-Step idea that sex damages women. Calling it 'rape' is not empowering, it does in fact 'strip women of moral agency,' as Mac Donald said.

"Mac Donald's argument is that if one in four college women were in fact raped, then there would be a national crisis of the kind that demanded action, not just lip service from campus protest organizations. It takes a lot of doublethink to say the fact that so few rapes are reported is evidence for how many there really are...

"Saying that any woman who has had sex and can't remember was raped paints a picture of women as passive creatures who are acted upon. The guy might not remember what happened either, but no one would ever suggest she raped him, even if she initiated the sex."

One might think that Ophelia, being a feminist who had been part of the women's movement and feminist rape prevention efforts would get a little respect from the readers of Feministing. Apparently not. My favorite response was this gem from "Sera":

"Reason #500,000,000,000,000etc that Ophelia Blake is a fucking idiot...I hate you passionately now."

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

A thought about the way newspapers cover shared parenting legislation, child custody, fathers' rights, etc.

Background: The Boston Globe recently discussed Fathers & Families' shared parenting bill at great length in their editorial A fair role for fathers. While the Globe did not endorse the bill, the editorial essentially agrees with the main arguments behind shared parenting. Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Executive Director of Fathers & Families, responded to the Globe in his blog post A Win or a Loss? You Decide.

A couple thoughts about the way newspapers cover shared parenting legislation, child custody, fathers' rights, etc.:

They always seem to quote a string of attorneys opining on why shared parenting is not best for kids and why somehow dad shouldn't see his kids more than a few days a month, yet none of them have any training or expertise on children. They're not child development experts. They're not child psychologists. They're not psychologists of any stripe, nor have they usually had extensive experience with children.

I'll freely admit that the attorneys seem more credible on this stuff when they agree with me than when they don't, but I always wonder why the people who spent their graduate years studying tax law and wills and trusts are quoted as the experts on this vital children's issue, whereas the people who actually are experts on children aren't.

In the Globe piece, for example, Charles Kindregan, a law professor at Suffolk University, and Fern Frolin, a lawyer and the chair of the Massachusetts Bar Association's family law section, are both quoted against the bill. They do quote psychologist Marsha Kline Pruett who, not coincidentally, is in favor of the shared parenting bill. The lawyers oppose shared parenting, the psychologist is in favor--hmmmm.

Also, why are Holstein's credentials and expertise on children ignored? Ned is identified as "the founder and executive director of Fathers & Families," which is OK, but he also has a background in psychology, psychiatry, and pediatrics. He has a Masters Degree in psychology and cared for many children when he practiced medicine. He is on the faculty appointment at Mt Sinai School of Medicine in NY and is a member of the Public Health Committee on the Massachusetts Medical Society. Some of that certainly seems worth mentioning.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #11: Feminist DV Expert Criticizes Pizzey, Defends Excluding Teen Boys from Shelters

Background: At the conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" (held in Sacramento, California February 15-16), Erin Pizzey told me about domestic violence shelters' policies of excluding all males ages 12 or older from going to the shelters with their mothers. I wrote about it here.

Evan Stark, a prominent feminist advocate for domestic violence victims and the author of Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life (Interpersonal Violence), took issue with Pizzey's criticisms of battered women's shelters' policy of excluding boys. To read his views, click here.

Pizzey saw Stark's comments and was not pleased. She wrote:

"I am outraged at the inference that boys have never been able to go into shelters in America or refuges in England because the shelter/refuge can't monitor the boys' sexual or violent behaviour.  Why does this man think that the boys will be violent or sexual towards the girls/young women in the shelter?  This shows an appallingly biased mindset. 

"Of course some of the girls and some of the boys will be violent and sexual, but it is the job of the shelter/refuge to work with those children just like they should work with some of the women in the shelter/refuges to help them learn appropriate behaviour. 

"It is untrue to say that my refuge did not take boys into the central refuge.  I made it quite clear that the boys could, if they wished, live in the boy's project.  Many boys chose to stay with their mothers. 

"Chiswick was a therapeutic community and everyone within the community worked to see that we treated each other with respect and love.  The problem with the shelters/refuges is that most of them are hostels and their purpose is to fund the feminist movements so they exclude young boys because they are the potential enemy."

Stark counters Pizzey's views below.

Feminist DV Expert Criticizes Pizzey, Defends Excluding Teen Boys from Shelters

Pizzey is "outraged" that I support excluding older male children from all shelters. But I never said anything of the kind. What I did was explain that some shelters exclude older boys because they lack the staffing to regulate violence and sexual acting out by these adolescents, females as well as males. In fact, this is no longer as much of a problem as it was 25 years ago, when Pizzey worked in a shelter.

Today, most refuges in England use free standing apartments, so families stay in tact. Here, the picture is mixed. Many of our shelters lack the funding or staff to regulate violence or sexual acting out in the facility and are not equipped for older males. Pizzey admits "some boys and girls" may be violent or sexual, but she thinks we should monitor these behaviors rather than try to prevent them by separating older boys from girls.

Shelters in this country and most in England are not social service agencies. They are spaces where women can be temporarily safe and consider their options. Critical to this experience is the idea that we do not tell women how to lead their lives or set any but the most basic rules to maintain the house.

Pizzey's approach was more like a mother superior who treated the residents at Chiswick as if they were immature and needed her personal guidance. We treat women who use the shelter not as problem women but as women who have had problems with abusive partners. In many of these relationships, they were punished, often brutally, for any behavior their partner considered inappropriate or disloyal. Restoring confidence in their own decision-making is a critical phase in recovery. This means letting women make their own mistakes. But many shelters feel they can't extend this philosophy to violence or sexual acting out.

Painting all shelters as feminist is also wrong. While many shelters in the U.S. were started by women's groups and some remain feminist in their orientation, the majority of U.S. facilities were started by the Y, the Salvation Army and other religious, community-based or free standing organizations. Unless these facilities have the staff and space, they too exclude older boys. So this policy has nothing to do with feminism or man- hating. And it is designed to protect boys as well as girls.

Many shelters also exclude women with addictions or serious psychiatric problems. Since many battered women suffer from these problems, this policy also sets limits on what we can do. Again, however, it reflects widely held beliefs about what is safe, not a bias against addiction or mental illness.

I pointed out that Pizzey herself segregated older males in a house behind the main refuge. She admits this, but claims boys had the choice to stay in the refuge with their moms. This may be true. But when we visited Chiswick several years after it opened, there were no male adolescents in the refuge.

The most absurd part of Pizzey's response is her description of Chiswick as a "therapeutic community." When we visited, there were 90 women and children staying in the 5 bedroom house, more than l5 in a room. Pizzey claimed, "If they can manage this, they can manage anything." Since even this chaos was preferable to the violent situations women and children had left behind, it may ultimately have helped women gain confidence in their ability to survive on their own. But there was nothing even remotely resembling therapy taking place.

As several letter writers and Glenn Sacks note, I am a feminist, as well as a man. This means I believe in full equality, liberty and justice for women as well as men. Women in the U.S. earn a third of what men do for the same work; still do 90% of child care, 90% of housework, 85% of all cooking; represent a tiny proportion of those in political power (though they register and vote in larger numbers than men), etc.

It is only in my lifetime that women in many advanced countries got the right to vote, to sit on juries, to go to the top universities and professional schools, to charge husbands with rape or to enter corporate boardrooms.

I have no question that women can be as violent and abusive as men. But these inequalities and numerous others I could list with more space, mean that women enter personal relationships on an unequal footing with men, though ostensibly both have the same formal rights. It is this unequal footing, exploited by too many men with coercion and control, that drives the millions of women to seek shelter or legal or police protection each year.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #12: 'Every time we tried to say that women's intimate partner abuse is different than men's, the evidence did not support it'

Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment's stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog--to learn more, click here.

Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) of the University of South Alabama specializes in Juvenile, Family, and Intimate Partner Violence. Her email address is jlr@usouthal.edu.

At the conference, she co-presented the Plenary "Family Roots of Adolescent Violence in Relationships and Effective Interventions: A Developmental and Relational Perspective" with Marlene Moretti, PhD. Some of the points Jennifer made include:

1) When grappling with the emerging reality that women commit Intimate Partner Violence as often as men, she said, "Every time we tried to say that women's intimate partner abuse is different than men's, the evidence did not support it."

2) Jennifer interviewed women in shelters about whether they had stalked their intimate partners.  She wanted to ask them if they had committed violence against their intimate partners, but was not allowed to.  She says that 25% of the women who were being stalked by their intimate partners said they had stalked their partners too.

3) Jennifer wondered why some of the women were leaving the battered women's shelter in less than a week.  The answer, she said, is that they too were engaging in violence against their partners, and in some cases had left to pick up the battle again.  Jennifer explained, "We weren't helping these women because we were ignoring their paradigm."

4) Jennifer also said that many women who stay with their batterers or abusers are not staying out of fear or because of their kids. "Love has a lot to do with it," she explained.

5) She said that some of her work has been "suppressed," and that people in positions of authority have refused to publish it.

6) She believes that in some ways Intimate Partner Violence researchers have not done enough to bring their findings to the media and to present it in ways that are commonly understandable and digestible.  She says that among researchers in many fields, there is a perverse desire to make the academic journals as difficult for the layperson to understand as possible.  She criticized this.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #13: 'I had a 10-year contract but within six months of mentioning female abusers, my contract was canceled'

Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment's stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog--to learn more, click here.

One of the presenters at the conference was Claudia Ann Dias, MSC, JD, who provides education and training in the fields of substance abuse, family violence, cultural awareness, sexual harassment and communications skills to both public and private sectors. She has been featured on 20/20 and Oprah for her work with male and female family violence perpetrators.

Dias (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) said that she had a 10 year contract with a Sacramento County Jail to counsel newly arrested male domestic violence perpetrators. She says that within six months of mentioning the problem of female abusers and of mutual abuse, her contract was canceled.

She had some interesting things to say about the way kids handle domestic violence. She says that when kids are four or five years old, they will often try to step between warring parents and stop them from fighting or hitting each other.  By age six or seven they begin finding hiding places when mom and dad are fighting.  By age 11 or 12 the kids come back out and intervene in the conflict. 

Sometimes an 11 or 12-year-old child will hide the younger sibling down the hall from where the parents are fighting.  Interestingly, Dias says that regardless of who is at fault in the fighting, children will intervene on mom's behalf.  She says it is inherent.

One of the significant aspects of this is that because kids will inevitably intervene on behalf of mothers against fathers, even when it is the mothers who are instigating and engaging in abuse, kids often have a skewed and distorted description of the violence.  In other words, kids will remember their mom being abused, even if the abuse was mutual, or mom was the real instigator or perpetrator.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #14: 'Groupthink' on Their Side--and on Ours Too

Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment's stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog--to learn more, click here.

Dr. Donald Dutton (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft)  is one of the premier domestic violence authorities in the world. He co-founded the Assaultive Husbands Project in 1979 and has published more than 100 papers and books, including the Domestic Assault of Women, The Batterer: A Psychological Profile, The Abusive Personality, and his latest work, Rethinking Domestic Violence. Dr. Dutton can be reached at dondutton@shaw.ca.

At the Sacramento conference, Dutton criticized the way the domestic violence establishment--of which he was once very much a part--has distorted the research to minimize and ignore female and mutual domestic violence. He also criticized feminist "Groupthink," but what I found most interesting about it is that his analysis could easily apply to elements of the men's and fathers' movement, too.

According to Dutton, Groupthink occurs "when an activist group with a predetermined direction confers in isolation from dissenting views." In these situations, Dutton says:

1) Status is gained from taking more extreme positions (in the pre-determined direction).

2) People with strong needs for dominance will advance more extreme positions in order to gain status, power and control of the group.

3) These traits will then be projected onto the outgroup (“battering is all about power and control”).

In our movement, one can certainly find people who seek to gain status "from taking more extreme positions." One can also find people projecting the worst traits onto the outgroup, in our case, the feminist movement.

Personally I have no use for the ludicrous pretense that our side is always good and right and virtuous and their side--the feminist side--is always bad and wrong and evil and sleazy. As I've noted on many occasions, as our movement expands and builds, I hope we won't simply replace one set of Groupthink with another.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

DV Conference Report #15: 'Many men claimed their female partners were more abusive than they were...I had been trained to disbelieve such claims'

Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference "From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence" was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.

Many of these researchers are part of the National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center, which is challenging the domestic violence establishment's stranglehold on the issue. The NFVLRC promotes gender-natural, research-based DV policies.

I have been and will continue to detail the conference and some of the research that was presented there in this blog--to learn more, click here.

John Hamel, LCSW, is a court-certified batterer treatment provider and author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse.  A leading authority in the field, John was one of the principle organizers of the Sacramento domestic violence conference. Springer publications did an interview with John (pictured, photo by Kevin Graft) which encapsulates many of the major themes of his work. It is reprinted below.

An Interview with John Hamel

Both of your books are based on the concept that men and women are equally capable of abuse against each other. This runs completely counter to conventional thinking, which insists that men are always aggressors and women are always victims. What first led you to this line of research, and what prompted you to begin writing about it?

In 1991, I took over a domestic violence caseload and was trained in a variation of the well-known “Duluth” model. In the Duluth theoretical framework, domestic violence is caused by a patriarchal society that sanctions violence by men against their female partners. Women are assumed to be either victims or, when they are found to aggress against their male partners, to be doing so in self-defense.

In group, many of the men I was working with claimed that their female partners were equally or more abusive than they were, and wondered why I wasn’t treating them as well. I had been trained to automatically disbelieve such claims as victim-blaming. However, while many of my clients did in fact seek to displace responsibility for their actions onto others, I found other claims to be quite credible, so I changed my assessment procedures and began to insist on interviewing victims separately. According to the victims themselves, the majority of these cases did indeed involve mutual abuse and, and some featured a dominant female perpetrator whose partner was arrested after fighting back. This clinical data contradicted much of what I had been taught, and led me to conduct an extensive review of the research literature. What I found more than corroborated my clinical findings.

Would you say that the idea that both females and males can be both aggressors and victims is becoming more accepted among those in the field? Why or why not?

These notions are not new; they had found support as far back as the 1970’s, in the work of Murray Straus, Peter Neidig and other researchers. For years, studies conducted by these mavericks were dismissed, and in some cases suppressed, because of the long-dominant patriarchal paradigm advanced by victim advocates...

To read more and to discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

Jennifer Lopez's Violent, Anti-Male Music Video 'Do It Well'

In the music video "Do It Well," singer Jennifer Lopez packs all of the following into a 3 minute, 17 second video:

She pushes a man down a flight of stairs

She kicks a man in the head

She wraps a man's arm behind his back and shoves him

She hits a man in the head (twice)

She kicks a man

She throws a man

She pushes a man over a stairway railing, and he flips back head first.

The video is considerably more violent than Carrie Underwood's anti-male Before He Cheats, which was bad enough.

To watch the video, click here. Thanks to JC, a reader, for sending it.

To discuss this issue on my blog, click here.

False Accuser Almost Ruins Innocent Man's Life, gets Whopping 90 Day Sentence--and Her Attorney Calls It 'Harsh'

"Prosecutions for filing a false police report are relatively rare in San Mateo County and often don't result in much jail time, if any, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

"Defendants convicted of the offense and sentenced to jail often serve that time in the sheriff's work program, picking up roadside trash or similar tasks, Wagstaffe said."

It's rare that a woman goes to jail for making a false rape claim, even though false claims are common. In this case it happened, though--see the San Francisco Chronicle article below.

(As an aside, note her idiot husband--she cheats on him and makes a false rape accusation, and he apparently still wants her. I'll give you 10 to 1 odds that within five years he'll be filling out my Family Law Help Form.

He'll be under a restraining order, booted out of his house, unable to see his kid, and in arrears on his child support, and then he'll write to me for