Now, I was simply buzzing about on facebook, as I am known to do, when I came across this little gem. “It’s extreme masculinity – not love or despair – that drives a father to kill his children“. Hahaha, ok – lets go a head and simply put things in perspective.
Women abuse and kill their children more than twice as often as men. Are those women suffering extreme femininity? Are those WOMEN suffering “Extreme Masculinity” ? From the breakingthescience.org article:
“data from the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (DHHS) tells a completely opposite story regarding who abuses children. The DHHS publishes an annual report called “Child Maltreatment”, and each year’s report contains a table detailing the parental status of the perpetrator(s).
Shown below is an analysis of data drawn from the “Child abuse and neglect” and the “Child fatality” tables from each of the DHHS’ “Child Maltreatment” reports between 2001 and 2006.
The DHHS calculates the percentages of perpetrators in various categories such as Mother, Father, Foster Parent, Daycare Staff, Friend or Neighbor, etc. The percentages are often used to argue whether, on average, it is fathers or mothers that pose a greater risk of harm to their children. But when trying to determine which parent, on average poses the greater danger, categories like Foster Parent, Daycare Staff, Friend or Neighbor, etc. are entirely irrelevant. The calculations below factor out those categories to produce a more accurate picture. The resulting calculations show the percentage of child abuse and deaths caused by one parent acting either alone or in concert with someone other than the child’s other parent.
The DHHS data shows that of children abused by one parent between 2001 and 2006, 70.6% were abused by their mothers, whereas only 29.4% were abused by their fathers.
And of children who died at the hands of one parent between 2001 and 2006, 70.8% were killed by their mothers, whereas only 29.2% were killed by their fathers.
Furthermore, contrary to media portrayals that leave the viewer with the impression that only girls are ever harmed, boys constituted fully 60% of child fatalities. (Table 4-3, p. 71, Child Maltreatment 2006, reports that 675 boys died in 2006 as compared to 454 girls).
The pervasive media bias cannot help but influence judges. Thus the newspapers, TV shows, and movies that promote this bias must bear a significant part of the responsibility for child abuse and deaths of children at the hands of violent mothers. “
Also, if it’s “Extreme” (or “Toxic”) Masculinity which leads men to kill their children… well what about this woman who killed her two daughters before turning the gun on herself? Was she, a woman, suffering from Extreme/Toxic MASCULINITY? Or should we ascribe it to Extreme/Toxic Femininity?
Now that we’ve gone and performed a nice hard reality check: Lets address the habit of “Toxic Masculinity”/ “Extreme Masculinity.”
“Toxic Masculinity” (used more often than “Extreme Masculinity”) is a red herring. It’s a way of stating that behaviors they don’t like or agree with are wrong and should be changed so that men behave more like women. Instead of an out right demonizing of masculinity – it’s a collusion tactic, like the HeForShe speech, an appeal to emotion in order to exert manipulation and therefore collude neutral parties to your cause.
In one part of Watson’s speech she says that if men start acting more like women they will have, and I quote “permission to be human.” I did an un-edited but fully annotated version of Watson’s speech for one of my articles on HBB.
While working on this particular article my editor, the brilliant word smith and one of the founders of Honey Badger Radio, Hannah Wallen pointed something out in conversation:
‘That’s true but it’s not the whole story. That’s one of two ways I’ve noted feminists using “toxic masculinity” to demonize men. The other is by treating dysfunctional behavior as if it is gendered. For instance, to them, homophobia isn’t a dysfunctional human response to cognitive dissonance that occurs when one’s upbringing and one’s neighbors aren’t compatible. It’s the rough end of men’s fear of seeming unmasculine. Or… violence isn’t a dysfunction people resort to when they haven’t learned to control how much their temper directs their behavior. It’s a manifestation of the masculine impulse to dominate by force. To arrive at those beliefs they have to ignore female homophobia, female violence, and so on. They also have to ignore the fact that human beings have a vast and varied spectrum of motivations behind our behaviors. Otherwise, they’d never be able to fit them all into the oversimplified “toxic” narrative.’
They also ascribe “toxic masculinity” as a way to define criminal behavior amongst men: in order to create subliminal connections – Masculinity = criminality. Criminality = male. This creates subconscious associations between between men being criminals by nature and masculinity being criminal by nature. That way they can pretend “toxic masculinity” is real, and -pretend- they’re not ascribing all negative events to being men’s fault.
Never mind the fact – that women enact the same behaviors, the same crimes, and in most arenas: they actually do it more often. Society simply chooses not to pay attention to what women do. This is why when you say “Domestic Violence” you think of a man beating a woman – in reality: according to the CDC, Harvard University and over 300 large scale studies on the subject: that’s ardently contrary to reality.
CDC Researchers discovered interesting facts when examining their own data.
The study, by CDC researchers Daniel J. Whitaker, PhD, Tadesse Haileyesus, MS, Monica Swahn, PhD and Linda S. Saltzman, PhD, found that a surprising 70% of cases of non-reciprocal violence were perpetrated by women.
The researchers studied 11,370 18- to 28-year-olds who had been in a total of 18,761 heterosexual relationships. They found that about 50% of cases of intimate partner violence were reciprocal, which they define as “perpetrated by both partners”, and 50% were non-reciprocal. Cases of violent women and non-violent men accounted for 70% of non-reciprocal cases, whereas cases of violent men and non-violent women accounted for 30% of non-reciprocal cases.
Thus: 50% of all cases of intimate partner violence among heterosexuals involve violence by both partners
35% of all cases involve a violent woman and an non-violent man
15% of all cases involve a violent man and an non-violent woman”
Women are twice as violent in relationships, yet we have the Violence Against Women Act and the “predominate aggressor policy.” You can egregiously abuse a man, including mentally, emotionally, or even physically, and if he hits you back, once, as response to anything but a near life threatening injury, he goes to jail.
Harvard did their own study on domestic violence, independent of the CDC, and come up with the same results by the way.
One set of researchers even came out and said that it’s women’s own violent tendencies which MOST put them at risk of domestic violence. That men are actually UNLIKELY to enact violence on a woman if she does NOT do so first.
“As in many studies of IPV, the OYS found that much IPV is bidirectional (meaning both are violent), and in unidirectional abusive relationships, the women were more likely to be abusive than the men.
The study found that a young woman’s IPV was just as predictive of her male partner’s future IPV as the man’s own past IPV. In other words, whereas we often think of men as the only abusers and also as serial abusers, the OYS found that a woman’s violence against her man was as predictive of his violence to her as his own history of violence.
Moreover, the study found that men’s physical aggression changes significantly when they find a new partner. Instead of a man being either a batterer or not, often it was his female partner’s violence or nonviolence which heavily influenced whether he would be violent to her.”
In spite of all of this: when we hear the words “Domestic Violence”, we think of a man beating a defenseless woman. The reality of the situation is, not only are women twice as violent in relationships, they’re more than twice as likely to initiate violence – and, the pièce de résistance – men are literally unlikely to be violent unless women initiate violence upon them first.
And Feminists will exclaim: Domestic Violence is the result of “Toxic Masculinity”. In order to associate masculinity with being toxic, masculinity with being criminal and men by definition being inherently violent. MOST importantly: it is in order to ignore the fact that women are the primary SOURCE of domestic violence. If you can incriminate men by association of being male, you can alter the focal point of blame and thus ignore the fact that women are the ones who are actually violent.
It’s the exact same method being employed by the above article. “Extreme Masculinity” is the source of criminal behavior. Which negates femininity and women from being associated with murdering children: in spite of the fact that as stated well above – they do so more than twice as often as men.
You’ll find no better example of this kind of activity than Anita Sarkeesian’s Murdergasm. Another one of Hannah Wallen’s writings, on which I personally interviewed Hannah about, you can listen to that show at this location.
As Hannah pointed out in her article Murdergasm, Anita Sarkeesian took advantage of a school shooting to promote herself and was tweeting about it before several of the children were even off the operating table. That’s the depths to which she sunk, she was tweeting her gender rhetoric while people’s children were still in surgery clinging to life, and before the dead had gone cold. As if that weren’t enough: as Hannah so skillfully pointed out in her article…. women have been responsible for plenty of school shootings. Not only was it an act of inhumanity to tweet self promotion using people’s dead, dying and or barely alive children – she went full Goebbels propaganda-machine by relaying false information.
As I stated in my article “Feminist End Game: The Final Solution“. These are all (literally) textbook examples of Dehumanization.
Michelle Maiese, research staff at the Conflict Research Consortium, from “What it Means to Dehumanize”:
Deindividuation facilitates dehumanization as well. This is the psychological process whereby a person is seen as a member of a category or group rather than as an individual. Because people who are deindividuated seem less than fully human, they are viewed as less protected by social norms against aggression than those who are individuated. It then becomes easier to rationalize contentious moves or severe actions taken against one’s opponents.
She goes on to say:
Once certain groups are stigmatized as evil, morally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of those groups becomes more psychologically acceptable. Restraints against aggression and violence begin to disappear. Not surprisingly, dehumanization increases the likelihood of violence and may cause a conflict to escalate out of control. Once a violence break over has occurred, it may seem even more acceptable for people to do things that they would have regarded as morally unthinkable before.
- Collectivists: Seen one, You Seen ‘Em All - July 28, 2016
- Law of Causality: Actions Have Consequences - July 23, 2016
- Fiamengo File #22: The Doublethink is Palpable! - February 2, 2016
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Great article. Thanks for putting the work into it. I think you’re absolutely right. Ideology is used to direct people away from thinking critically about actual facts. It’s all too easy to believe that men are just naturally violent, but that is not actually true of most men any one of us actually knows.
Greta article. You ask the obvious question. That question is so painful that the only answers I have heard so far come down to deflections or hypoagentive excuses.
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/06/1375922/-Wal-Mart-will-sell-these-violent-books-but-refuses-to-sell-Ronda-Rousey-s-autobiography
Toxic feminists don’t believe in violent women. Rhonda Rousey. The top fighter, model, and face of women’s MMA can’t sell her book because Walmart says its too violent. Yet they sell books with zombies and patriots that kill. You don’t see feminists jumping to protect this star athlete. I’m sure many out there would but the extremists won’t touch a woman like this at all. Pretty much the same as the conservative religious folk out there.
One, I’m pretty sure DKos is a largely pro-feminist site, given that they’re the source of that “Elliot Rodger is an MRA” meme. Two, there’s a difference between fantasy violence, and recounting real-world violence.
The “Violence Against Women Act” codifies the idea that, in domestic violence, men are the perpetrators and women are the victims when it’s been known since the 1970s, based on numerous studies, that there is, in fact, parity in domestic violence. Women are just as much perpetrators of domestic violence as men, initiate it more often, and not in self-defense and where a weapon is used it is more often women wielding it.
The “Violence Against Women Act”, the perfect example of Congressmen who violate their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. Every time they vote for renewal of this sexist bill which violates men’s Bill of Rights guarantees.
Sod it im off to become a gerbil. sod all you humans.
We’re always hearing how women retain custody of the children in 90% of the cases… why then do women only represent 70% of the DV against the kids? If men only retain custody to their children 10% of the time (as is oft-quoted), then how is it possible that we account for 30% of DV against the children?
Mathematically, I do not understand how men account for 300% more likelihood of hurting their kids. We have them 10% of the time yet hurt them 30% of the time. Women have the kids 90% of the time, yet only hurt the 70% of the time. This makes us look worse y’all, not better.
You are assuming child abuse only occurs after divorce or separation.
Hi i have hear about you and i want to debate.
I think that the word “toxic masculinity” is used for people like trpers. It isnt a word to use in all men. I dont know because i have read this word only a few times. In my country this word dont exist.
I
I want to say for describe trpers. This word is used only for describe misoginists.
Came across a news story a while ago about a man and his children who died in a house fire. Police automatically blamed him for setting it deliberately. The wife, who was ‘out at the time’ was never even considered as a suspect.