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Domestic Violence Law Fuels Big
Government
A chance for gender sanity is coming. The Violence
Against Women Act (VAWA) expires in 2005 and
www.vawnet.org/Funding/FVPS/VAWAApprop.pdf
[.pdf] a new appropriation request for over
www.house.gov/budget_democrats/pres_budgets/fy2004/fy04update/fy2005/harmful_cuts.htm
$360 million will soon hit Congress. VAWA is based
on gender myths, anti-male bias and an infatuation
with Big Government. The answer to renewing this
Clinton hand-me-down should be a thundering
“NO!”
What is VAWA? In 1994, Congress passed VAWA as
part of an Omnibus Crime Bill. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/vawo/laws/vawa/vawa.htm
The Act pitted the sexes against each other by
focusing on “crimes of violence motivated by
gender"; victims were defined as female and only
women were offered the massive tax-funded benefits.
VAWA institutionalized the political belief that
women, as a class, must receive special protection
from men and privileges from government.
www.papa-help.ch/downloads/kelly.pdf
[.pdf] Domestic violence (DV) was a
specific focus. When male victims protested their
exclusion, VAWA advocates dismissed them as
statistically insignificant.
Today, www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
an impressive body of research shows that men
constitute anywhere from 36% to 50% of DV victims.
(The situation is similar with rape. Women are the
victims only if you exclude prisons where male rape
is prevalent.)
But VAWA is more than an attempt to establish
women as a protected class at the expense of men.
If this were its only flaw, then including men
under its umbrella would have solved the Act’s
unfairness.
The Act seeks to create new gender attitudes
through the social engineering of society. The most
aggressive example was also VAWA’s biggest
failure to date: namely, its attempt to revise the
judiciary system in order to benefit women.
A key section of VAWA ’94 allowed a
“rape” victim to sue her alleged attacker
for compensatory and punitive damages in federal
civil court on the grounds of having violated her
civil rights. The federal claim did not replace
criminal punishment on the state level; it was a
supplement.
In 1995, Christy Brzonkala brought a federal
lawsuit over an alleged rape at Virginia
Polytechnic Institute. The two accused men had been
cleared by both a university judicial committee and
a criminal grand jury. Under VAWA, however,
Brzonkala could pursue a case that was too weak to
be admitted into criminal court.cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/vaw/
The U.S. Supreme Court found VAWA’s civil
rights remedies and access to federal courts to be
unconstitutional.
VAWA 2000 was rewritten to exclude the
unconstitutional bits and to broaden the Act’s
mandate to areas such as “Strengthening
Education and Training to Combat Violence Against
Women.”
In short, to change society’s attitudes on
gender through education, research, and training
programs. The underlying ideological bias is
illustrated by the fact that, after spending
millions of dollars on DV research, VAWA advocates
couldn’t seem to find male victims. Or, if
they did, the data did not induce them to rename
the Violence Against Women Act.
VAWA’s attempt to educate new attitudes on
gender into society has contributed to what some
call “the domestic violence industry.”
www.massnews.com/past_issues/other/8_Aug/domviin.htm
The Massachusetts News offers a glimpse into
the programs in its state. “Every month, it
[the woman’s safety
movement]…spawns new sub-programs,
clinics, shelters, research institutes, counseling
centers, visitation centers, poster campaigns. The
state disbursed about $24 million for domestic
violence services last year, but that certainly is
not all the money spent… “
Women’s “safety” has become a
tax-funded growth industry for lawyers,
consultants, researchers, staff, counselors,
professors and other “experts” who always
seem to conclude that more funding is needed.
VAWA advocates point to the Act’s funding
of DV shelters, and it is difficult to argue
against helping a battered woman. It is not clear,
however, that the bureaucratic and
“industrialized” approach to DV is an
effective form of help. Every dollar spent on
ideological programs is a dollar snatched from a
victim. Moreover, the ideology blinds VAWA
advocates to many real victims. The Massachusetts
News also reports that the state has 37 tax-funded
women's shelters, but no “shelters or services
for men”, except homosexual men.
Battle lines on VAWA 2005 have been drawn. A
prominent www.mensactivism.org/articles/04/12/19/0019245.shtml
men’s rights site claims, “According to
inside sources, the Washington Post is about to
launch its publicity campaign to renew the Violence
Against Women Act (VAWA).” The referenced
campaign is the Post’s recent and
www.slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2111390&
heavily criticized front-page series on the
www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/1229.html
murder of expectant mothers by intimates. The Post,
a supporter of past VAWAs, is accused of trying to
create fear in women and sustain the image of a DV
victim as being female.
The accusation is lent credibility by www.now.org/nnt/fall-2023/vawa.html
the National Organization for Women, which states
of the Post series, “In compelling
detail” it “exposes the extent of murder
and violence directed at pregnant women and new
mothers in the U.S. NOW and our allies will be
paying special attention to these needs as the
Violence Against Women Act is up for
reauthorization.”
Unfortunately, many VAWA opponents are focusing
on www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/1229blumhorst.html
the inclusion of men within the Act rather than on
its defeat. At the Men’s Rights Congress 2004,
speaker Dave Burroughs www.trueequality.com/booklet/
recommended, “The re-authorization…should
be re-titled to the Intimate Partners Violence
Act” and funding should “encompass
sheltering and services for all victims of domestic
violence regardless of their gender…”
VAWA is a fundamentally flawed piece of social
engineering that appeals to Big Government. The
proper response is not “Me Too!” It is a
flat “no,” followed by an insistence on
rethinking our entire approach to issues like
DV.
©2007, Wendy
McElroy
* * *
Wendy
McElroy is the editor of ifeminists.com
and a research fellow for The Independent Institute
in Oakland, Calif. She is the author and editor of
many books and articles, including her latest book,
Liberty for Women: Freedom and Feminism in the
21st Century. She lives with her husband in
Canada. E-Mail.
Also, see her daily blog at www.zetetics.com/mac
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