Chosen

Originally posted on December 16, 2008

I saw a post about the film Chosen on MaleSurvivor. It is a documentary directed by Brian Woods. From the site:

Chosen is testament to the power of a compelling story, simply told. The film deals with a subject often whispered but rarely spoken about – the sexual abuse of boys by teachers in Britain’s private schools.

For thirty years the boys, and the men they became, stayed silent, nursing the dark secret of the abuse they suffered. But in this film, Tom, Mark and Alastair break that silence with spellbinding articulacy and breathtaking honesty – telling their stories straight to camera.

Standing apart from more tabloid models of talking about paedophilia, this film is sensitively told, allowing the men to talk directly about their experiences and the effect it has had on the rest of their lives.

Chosen reveals how these boys were groomed, how the private school system is poorly regulated, how abuse goes undetected, and why we need to listen.

Pardon any oddness of speech. I just finished watching the film and I am still disconnected. I found the film quite raw. The men shared their stories with an amount of detail one normally does not hear from victims. Tom, Mark and Alistair show how deeply and how emotionally sexual abuse effects a person. Few people realize just how some sexual predators operate. We have in our mind the lustful predator, the person who snatches a child, rapes and kills the child. We have in our mind men like Michael Devlin or eccentric figures like Michael Jackson.

However, the people who prey on child often are quite normal and quite liked. They choose their victims carefully, spend months winning the child over, building his confidence, earning his trust, affection and even love. That is what makes the violation so unthinkable.

A Dose of Stupid v30

It happens every day. In fact, it is pretty hard to avoid it. There are some things that can only be understood with a slap on the forehead. Things so mind-boggling that one wonders how humans managed to evolve thumbs while being this mentally inept. Case in point:

Why Superbowl Ads Are So Sexist, Racist, and Homophobic

It was bound to happen. After the Dockers ad I was sure someone would complain about the commercials being evil because there frankly was not much else to complain about. The Tim Tebow pro-life ad turned out to be a tame as a kitten. No “abortion is evil,” no “ban abortion,” no “kill women who have abortions” and no “Tiller the Baby Killer deserved to die.” Instead we were greeted with a so-so spot featuring a mother who values her son’s life when she could have aborted him. The spot did not even mention abortion.

So there was nothing left to really go on. However, there is still a need for a pound of flesh, ergo Amanda Hess felt the need to excoriate a few of the spots. The only criticism she mounts that makes any actual sense is the her response to the Metro PCS spot. That ad was not only poor marketing, it is was also tasteless. The rest of her complaints, however, come across as someone who just needs to be upset about something since the Tim Tebow ad was not the anti-abortion screed she wanted.

Like a lot of advertising, the Superbowl ads were mostly satire, including all the ones that pushed Hess’ buttons. It is curious that she failed to notice the sarcastic tone of most of those ads considering she routinely engages in sarcasm. However, what is truly remarkable are the leaps in judgment she makes. For example:

Bibliography on Female Offenders

Blogger T sent this to me a few weeks ago. I meant to post it earlier, but it slipped my mind. Below is a sample of the list:

Below is a listing of various research studies, articles, and publications about the issue of female offenders and their victims. I am hoping to maintain this list and add to it as I find more studies. I would ask ask that if anyone has some material that is not listed to please feel free to send it to me or post it in the comments section of this post and I will add it.

(Last updated 1/31/10)

Abramson, P. R., & Pinkerton, S. D. (2001). A house divided: Suspicions of mother–daughter incest. New York: Norton.

Adams, Eve M. (1988). Sex of the Victim, Offender, and Helper: The Effects of Gender Differences on Attributions and Attitudes in Cases of Incest. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.

Adams, Kenneth (1991). Silently Seduced: When Parents Make their Children Partners – Understanding Covert Incest. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc.

Adshead, Gwen, Howett, Mimi, & Mason, Fiona (1994). Women who sexually abuse children: The undiscovered country. Journalof Sexual Aggression, 1(1), 45-56.

Allen, C. M. (1990). Women as perpetrators of child sexual abuse: Recognition barriers. In Horton, A. L., Johnson, A. L., Roundy, B. L., & Williams, L. M. (Eds.), The Incest Perpetrator: A Family Member No One Wants To Treat, pp. 108-125. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Allen, C. M. (1991). Women and Men Who Sexually Abuse Children: A Comparative Analysis. Orwell, VT: Safer Society Press.

Never Deemed A Threat

Female-perpetrated violence occurs for a host of reasons. One of the reasons which seems to be most common is that women, particularly mothers, are never deemed a threat to children around them. Even in violent households the working assumption is that if the man is removed and the woman receives some training all will go well. However, that is not always the case:

Through last Monday, the caseworker made 26 other scheduled and unscheduled visits and became increasingly confident that the boys’ mother, Elyse Marsyl Colon, was becoming a better parent, a CPS official said.

But the day after the caseworker’s final visit last week, the young brothers were stabbed to death. Police said Colon, 22, met officers outside the house Tuesday and held out her hands, saying: “I just killed my babies.”

Colon was charged with two counts of capital murder and remains jailed in lieu of posting $2 million bail. The slayings of Guillermo Garcia, 19 months, and Jose Luis Garcia, 3, marked the first child killings this year in San Antonio.

This is in light of the what CPS thought was the real problem:

The silent victims: Battered husbands

Silent victims is putting it somewhat nicely. Male victims of domestic violence are invisible unvictims. That is the impression one might be left with after reading most of the literature about domestic violence. A great deal of the available material goes out of its way to present violence against men as benign or the result of women’s self-defense. Likewise, many of the women’s advocates dismiss research showing that males experience a similar rate of violence and are physically harmed by women’s violence. As Trudy Schuett explains:

Yes, the U.S. Dept. of Justice says there about 840,000 male victims of domestic violence each year. But those are just the ones who’ve reported it.

Not that the numbers really matter: What matters is that it’s happening, and it’s no joke.

There’s a popular presumption that men should somehow be able to “control” the woman in their lives, and if they can’t, then they deserve what they get. But the fact is that today a man who tries to defend himself is more likely than not to end up in jail.

Several decades of awareness campaigns devoted to shedding light on the issue of battered women have resulted in laws that have tipped the scales so far that not only do male victims have little or no legal recourse, abusive women have learned to take advantage of these women-friendly laws and public policies as an aspect of their abusive behaviors.

Stop The Abuse: The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women

Often times people want to help others but do not know how. This cannot be any truer than when it comes to helping abused men and boys. The resources sometimes are not apparent and are often difficult to find. Sometimes the resources are hidden or even barred by other groups who wish to polarize the issue. The intent here is to provide those who wish to help male victims with the opportunity to do so. Every month I will post a new link to an organization that provides services for male victims. As the list grows, I will create a page where all the links can be found.

Please remember that you do no have to empty your wallets to help. Even a small donation can go a long way. And for those on the other side of the issue, it would go a long way to demonstrating real concern for all victims if you donated as well.

——

The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women

The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women (DAHMW) is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization, and is a member of the Maine Association of Nonprofits. DAHMW is at the forefront of today’s new perspectives on Intimate Partner Abuse and actively assists the research community.

OUR MISSION

To provide crisis intervention and support services to all victims of domestic violence and their families in order to help survivors recover from the trauma of domestic violence. We work toward the elimination of domestic violence by increasing public awareness and decreasing tolerance of domestic violence through community collaboration and education. DAHMW will strive to improve the quality and safety of the lives of victims who are seeking peace in their homes and in their daily existence.

Please donate and help make a difference.

Bindel, Misandry and Transphobia

It appears Julie Bindel’s position on transwomen caused some real-world repercussions. Bindel previously voiced her opinion regarding transwomen in an article several years ago. However, someone caught wind of this last year and sought to have Bindel removed from a panel discussing feminism and women’s issues. Beatrix Campbell writes:

Transgender people who used to live as men and now live as women persuaded the May 2009 NUS women’s conference to mandate its officers to share no platform with Julie Bindel. Proponents say they are offended by Bindel’s critique – aired in the Guardian since 2004 – of “trannies”‘ perceived cultural conservatism and anatomical violence.

The NUS women’s campaign shows no solidarity with women who are offended by the presence in their safe spaces of people who used to be men telling them which women they may listen to and who qualifies as queer. This month, her enemies mustered a picket outside Queer Question Time in a London pub. They’re not censoring her, they say, you can read her, they say, just don’t go to hear her. That renders her “audience” passive consumers but not engaged debaters.

Campbell is not one to parse words, going on to write:

They’re offended? So what? Offensiveness is a discourse shared by both politics and comedy. “Offendedness” is a privileged, protected category in the NUS against, specifically, rightwing extremists, racists and Julie Bindel. The women’s officer Olivia Bailey insists this is “not no platform” for Bindel. “The expression of transphobic views directly discriminates” against “valued members of our campaign.” It’s just that, “We welcome our trans sisters” and a group of them “had been made to feel uncomfortable”. Again, so what? This solidarity does not extend to women who feel unsettled by the presence of people who used to be men in women-only spaces and services. [...] The transgender vigilantes should listen up, wise up and grow up, participate in, not proscribe, the debate they started. And their best friends in the NUS should do what best friends do: tell them to stop it, their politics stink.