This is what it looks like

Child abuse does not happen in a vacuum. As much as it remains hidden from plain sight, it is predictable. We can usually tell when an abusive situation exists, and once we know a little about the players, we can usually tell why it happened. It is only because of our desire to keep out of other people’s business and pretend the world is a generally good place that we “miss” the warning signs.

There is not just one cause of abuse. A myriad of things come into play, such as drug abuse, mental illness, religious views, personality issues, prejudice, and political views. It is the latter two that prompted this post.

Hugo Schwyzer recently had a son. He wrote about his son’s birth on Role/Reboot. You would think it would be a joyous occasion, but Schwyzer had a fear: 

Stop the Abuse: Living Well

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.

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Living Well

LivingWell is a Queensland resource which offers a range of services specifically designed to assist men who have experienced childhood sexual abuse or sexual assault, their partners, friends and family and service providers. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual abuse as a child, or adult, please know that you are not alone. Support and assistance is available. LivingWell currently provides the following services.

Please donate and help make a difference.

Feminist researchers find female sex offenders get slaps on the wrist

Many people have noted the stark difference in the sentences male and female sex offenders receive. Female offenders tend to walk away with probation, time served, or very low jail sentences compared to male offenders. Some have denied this bias, others have ignored, and others have rationalized it as extension of “Patriarchy.”

Ironically, members of the latter group recently published a study about that issue. The study Sex-Based Sentencing: Sentencing Discrepancies Between Male and Female Sex Offenders published in Feminist Criminology confirms that female offenders do indeed receive lesser sentences than male offenders do.

Curiously, the study set out to determine whether the “evil woman” hypothesis is true. The hypothesis is that women face harsher sentences compared to men because they break gender roles. As the researchers Randa Embry and Phillip M. Lyons, Jr. explain:

The current study provides an exploratory analysis of sentencing discrepancies between male and female sex offenders and provides a theoretical rationale for possible discrepancies. Relying on previous theoretical explanations for response to female offenders by the criminal justice system, the current research looks to the chivalry hypothesis, and more specifically, selective chivalry or the “evil woman” hypothesis to explain possible sentencing discrepancies in the current data. (p. 147)

The devil in the details

Rob Brown wrote a piece on the Good Men Project about the Etan Patz. Patz was 6-years-old when he went missing 33 years ago. Last week Pedro Hernandez confessed to kidnapping and murdering the boy. It remains unclear whether Hernandez’s confession is true. Some of his family members say that he confessed to them years ago. The police are currently trying to corroborate Hernandez’s claim while the man, who has a history of mental issues, gets a psychological evaluation.

But Brown’s piece is less about Hernandez and more about a sad truth: there are a lot of Etan Patzes out there. Not all of them are missing. Not all of them were killed. Many managed to cope with the pain other caused them, while others are lost in their suffering.

As Brown says, these boys and men are in a brotherhood of pain.  

A Dose of Stupid v.69

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:

Teh menz don’t get raped.

A commenter on The Good Men Project graced us with a wonderful gem of misandry I feel compelled to share. Here is Kit’s comment in full: 

A Dose of Stupid v.68

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:

Feminism never causes problems for men

When I read that David Benatar wrote a soon-to-be published book about sexism against men call The Second Sexism, I knew there would be a feminist backlash. There is always feminist hostility directed at anyone publicly talking about men’s issues, especially when that person wants to present a reasoned argument.

So it comes as no surprise that some feminists are taking Benatar to task over a book none of them have (or likely will) read. Melissa McEwan offered her insightful commentary:

The primary decision-makers—the legislators and cultural leaders—who shape and facilitate societies in which violence against men is tolerated and in which men are not valued as nurturers (some of Benatar’s other complaints) are not women, but men. And privileged men, at that.

The oppressions of men identified in the article are natural outgrowths of the Patriarchy—and of the Kyriarchy, which disadvantages queer men, men of color, men with disabilities, poor men, etc. But MRAs are so intractably invested in the idea of the binary “battle of the sexes” that they cannot see their argument is not with feminists/womanists, never has been and never will be.

[...]

Men like Benatar shake their fists and aim their rhetorical arrows at feminists, because they don’t want to hold other men accountable. Thus do they effectively mask the real sexism that is directed at men—the Patriarchal narratives that continue to encourage displays and expressions of a “traditional masculinity” (and the systemic misrepresentation of that construction as evolutionary imperative to discourage alternative displays and expressions) which are increasingly at odds with modern culture.

Child abuse in India

A 2007 study on the rate child abuse in India made news recently. Earlier this month, Aamir Khan mentioned the Study on Child Abuse: India 2007 on his show Satyamev Jayate. He and his guests cited one of the findings of the study: 53.22 percent of Indian children experience sexual abuse, and most of the victims are male.

The results fly in the face of people and the researchers’ expectations. According to the study’s preface:

• Two out of every three children were physically abused.
• Out of 69% children physically abused in 13 sample states, 54.68% were boys.
• Over 50% children in all the 13 sample states were being subjected to one or the other form of physical
• abuse.
• Out of those children physically abused in family situations, 88.6% were physically abused by parents.
• 65% of school going children reported facing corporal punishment i.e. two out of three children were
• victims of corporal punishment.
• 62% of the corporal punishment was in goverment and municipal school.
• 53.22% children reported having faced one or more forms of sexual abuse.
• 21.90% child respondents reported facing severe forms of sexual abuse and 50.76% other forms of
• sexual abuse.
• Out of the child respondents, 5.69% reported being sexually assaulted.
• Children on street, children at work and children in institutional care reported the highest incidence of
• sexual assault.
• 50% abuses are persons known to the child or in a position of trust and responsibility.
• Every second child reported facing emotional abuse.
• Equal percentage of both girls and boys reported facing emotional abuse.
• Most children did not report the matter to anyone.

These are just some of the results that the Women and Child Development Ministry’s found. Once one gets into the numbers, the extent of the situation proves to be much worse.