ELEVEN YEARS OF PROMOTING AWARENESS AND SERVICES FOR UNDER SERVED VICTIMS

Eleven Years by Jan Brown

From Our October 2011 Newsletter:

On October 27th we will celebrate our eleven year anniversary of serving victims of intimate partner violence.  Quite an accomplishment when you consider that we have maintained a nationally available toll free helpline manned by an all volunteer staff with a budget that averages $15,000 or less  in contributions and small grants each year.

As further testament to our fortitude, despite the lack of funding for  supportive services, we have also managed to safe house, emergency shelter , and provide other necessities to victims and their children who were determined to move away from the violence in their lives.

That’s not to say that we couldn’t benefit greatly from having the financial resources to enhance our ability to make a much larger impact on fixing this social problem.  It’s more to clarify that we continue to hang in there, holding out the hope that one day  we will achieve our goals.

Back in October of 2000 we entered into the fray knowing that social change doesn’t happen overnight.  However, given that family violence was already considered a social problem of grand proportions and that all we were asking was that male victims be given the same respect and services that female victims are afforded, we didn’t think it unreasonable to expect that change would occur in the not too distant  future.

Early on in this journey I came across a quote by Arthur Schopenhauer that pretty much sums up what it takes to make social change, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self evident.”  This quote has been the guiding maxim for the work I do at DAHMW.  

I distinctly remember one of the first reactions I received when I mentioned male victims in a public place.  I was at the local post office speaking with our Post Mistress about setting up a post office box for our new agency.  An elderly woman came in and heard me mention that our agency specialized in bringing more awareness and services to male victims of domestic violence.  The elderly woman scoffed at the idea that a men needed such services and told me in not so many words that men were abusers not victims. 

Back then I didn’t have any logical pithy responses for the nay-sayers so I stood silent as she walked away. Over the years that I have been doing this work I have heard many comments such as this and more. 
I have been told men can take care of themselves...men don’t need services, they can just leave, they have jobs etc....men need to wait their turn, they can have services once violence against women has been taken care of...if men want services they should create them just like the women did for battered women.  

I have come to accept that in certain circles I will need to defend my beliefs with some common  sense arguments  that are difficult to refute for those that open their minds just a crack.  For instance, when someone tells me that men can’t be victims of women’s violence because men are bigger and stronger I ask them politely,  “What about the non  aggressive, non violent man whose parents ingrained in him as a young boy that he should never  hit a girl? “  After all, not every man is brought up to be brute and barbarian.   

I have spoken to my share of young men in their 20’s and 30’s on our crisis line who were brought up in single and two parent homes that were led by feminist mothers and fathers. Many  have stated that they were brought up to view women as equals and not subservient creatures to dominate and control.  These young men who have suffered verbal, emotional and physical attacks at the hands of their intimate partners aren’t likely to have the characteristics commonly found in abusive men. 

When someone makes the argument that men can just leave and/or that they have jobs so they don’t need help I suggest they tell that to the man who is disabled and whose wife puts his monthly check in a bank account that he has no access to or the man whose significant other has told him she will kill herself if he leaves or the guy that is told if he leaves he will never see his children again. Men stay for many of the same reasons women do.

Even though,  for all intents and purposes, we still seem to be in Schopenhauer’s “violently opposed” stage of the truth I have noticed that there has been a growing concern and acceptance of men as victims of intimate partner violence by the general public over the last two to three years.  The media in some states seem a little more aware.  They are including words like, “domestic violence, domestic assault, and domestic violence related,” more frequently when reporting on news stories where the woman is the aggressor in a domestic dispute. 

Our helpline volume has increased a great deal as more men recognize the signs of domestic violence and call for support and more family members call about their concerns over their son’s, brother’s, father’s, and grandfather’s, who they define as men in relationships with abusive partners. 

What seems to be one of the biggest obstacles for abused men is what I call the “fear factor.”  When a domestic dispute ensues and the police are called in to investigate, in most states, the police are required to make an arrest if they have reasonable cause or suspicion to believe that one person is the predominant aggressor (the man) and the other person is in fear of bodily harm (the woman). 

The “fear” abused men feel is, in general,  less about the physical assaults they may sustain from their intimate partners and more about what their abusers will do to them, i.e. take away their children, their personal belongings and their good reputations by falsely accusing them of heinous crimes. Even if a man is in “fear” of bodily harm he will be hard pressed to admit it to the police. 

The only “fear” that matters to the police in a domestic dispute is the one society reserves for women.  Until that fact changes abusive women will continue to use “fear” to abuse men. 

All in all the last eleven years have been eventful and educational.  I have learned a great deal about intimate partner violence, human nature, and what it takes to make social change. I continue to hold out the hope that Schopenhauer’s third stage of truth, “accepted as self evident,” will happen in my lifetime so that we may spare future generations of male victims and their children from suffering needlessly.

What Did He Do to Make Her Abuse Him?

One of the age old myths about a man’s use of violence against a woman is that the woman must have done something to make her male intimate partner angry enough to hit her. This myth that she did something to provoke his violence has been summarily taken to task and dispelled over the last two decades by those who advocate for battered women. A search on myths about domestic violence on internet will bring up a plethora of sites with information ever reminding us that there is no excuse for physical violence against a women i.e. Instead of asking, “What did she do to make him hit her?” remember that no one has the right to inflict bodily injury upon another; The question, "what did she do to make him hit her?" is an almost instinctive response ingrained in the fabric of our society, and on that ultimately places the blame on the victim. Unfortunately, the assertion that domestic violence victims somehow "provoke" batterers has been repeatedly used to both justify domestic violence and reduce the culpability of the perpetrator; What did she do to make her husband angry? This question blames the victim for the abuse and excuses the abuser. However, what about when the victim is a man and the abuser is a woman? Recently a video on youtube.com (which is an excerpt from an ABC news show) titled, "Reaction to Women Abusing Men in Public,” was shared on a Facebook wall. The ABC news show asked the question, “How will people react when they witness a woman abusing a man in a public place?” Over 160 people went by as a female [actress] berated, slapped, kicked, shoved and pulled the hair of her male [actor] partner as they were sitting in a park on a bench. Most who went by just looked over at them and kept going. One woman looked and as she was passing them she made hand gestures and smiled as if she was cheering the abusive woman on. Only one group of five women showed any concern for the man being abused, one of the women in that group confronted the abuser and another called 911 and reported what was going on. An off duty cop walked by and looked on as the woman was shoving, pushing and yelling at the man. He kept on walking without saying a word. When the reporter asked the cop why he didn't do anything the cop basically said he felt that there wasn’t a problem, however, he said had it been the man hitting the women he would have approached them. He said that he was raised to believe that you don't hit women. The woman that made the hand gestures of approval told the reporter that she assumed he was getting what was coming to him because he cheated on her or something.

One of the comments made on the facebook wall about this video brought to mind one more huge hurdle male victims must face on top of how to prove that they fear their abuser (see previous blog entry for the discussion on that issue). The facebook commenter pointed out that in order to assess the situation properly i.e. the woman beating up on the man; we needed to look at intent. The commenter went on to say that while all physical violence is wrong, since the woman asked the man “How could you do this to me” during her tirade that indicated that he did something to cause her anger and physical violence.

The commenter and the woman gesturing, “Hip Hip Hooray” for the abuser in the video are not alone in their thinking. While some continue ignore female on male violence, as many of the onlookers did in the video, there are a number of advocates, researchers, academics, law enforcement officers, and people who work in the court system who surely believe the myth of, “he must have done something to provoke her physical violence against him.” Researchers have written articles and published papers discussing the need to look at women’s intent when they use physical violence against their male partners. These articles and papers were written in mostly in response to studies that indicate that women are as equally violent as men.

The same myth that advocates worked so hard to dispel for female victims still persists and haunts male victims. When a man physically abuses a woman his intent has no bearing. It's taken for granted that men make conscious choices to be violent towards their intimate partners. However, when a woman uses of physical violence we are told that we must look at her intent before determining if she is the aggressor or the victim fighting back or making a preemptive strike against her abuser.

A great deal of effort and money has been spent to dispel the myths surrounding violence against women. I agree that intent is an important thing to question in some instances of domestic violence such as when one partner has a history of arrests for domestic violence and/or a partner has sought medical attention for injuries that appear to be domestic violence related even when the victim reports otherwise. In those situations there is reason to believe that a victim may be defending themselves or striking out preemptively. However, if we are to consider intent we should do so without bias.

Domestic violence in LGBT relationships is as prevalent as it is in heterosexual relationships. Do we ask the question, what was her intent for physically assaulting her female intimate partner?

Male helpline callers have reported instances where their exits have been blocked, they have suffered excruciatingly painful kicks to the groin and been assaulted with everything from kitchen knives to vehicles in unprovoked attacks by their intimate female partners. In those situations a man has the right to defend himself, however, if he does and he leaves any red marks on the woman’s wrists, arms etc it’s highly unlikely that law enforcement will consider the man’s intent before they haul him off to jail.

We need to make room for the fact that some women use unprovoked violence against their intimate partners and some men are victims of those unprovoked assaults. We seriously need stop making excuses and blaming men for all of women’s violence so that abusive women can get the help they need to change their abusive ways and abused men can trust that the system will work to protect them.

It's Not a Conspiracy Guys, It's the Law! Or Is It?

I happened upon an article in the Lawrence Journal World News (LJWorld) that caught my attention. The article was about how the Douglas County (KS) prosecutors and Lawrence Police Department were awarded a one year STOP grant, made available through the federal Violence Against Woman's Act (VAWA).

The article mentioned that obtaining this grant would allow these prosecutors and police to create a new position within the prosecutor’s office to fight domestic violence and other crimes against women, promote a police officer to detective so that he/she could investigate domestic violence and other crimes against women and hire on a new police officer to replace the promoted one. Good news for victims in Douglas County right?

Of course, being the ever vigilant domestic violence victims advocate that I am my keen eye focused in on the fact that this grant would be used exclusively for investigating and prosecuting domestic violence and other crimes against women. So I wondered as I often do in reading articles such as this, "Why just female victims, why not for domestic violence and other crimes against both women and men in heterosexual and same sex relationships?" After all, didn't these fine folks realize that at least 30% of the domestic violence victims ages 20 to 59 were male and 25% of the suspects/offenders age 20-59 were female in the State of Kansas in 2009.

By the way I found no mention of sexual orientation of victims or suspect/offenders in the crime stats report so your guess is as good as mine as to how many male victims were perpetrated against by their female or male intimate partners and how many female suspect/offenders perpetrated against their male or female intimate partners. The report also stated that roughly 38% of the victims and offenders were boyfriend/girlfriend, about 16% were spouses, 4% were ex-spouses and in 12% of the cases the victim was the suspect...not sure what to make of that last statistic.

Douglas County has a population of about 115,000 people. More than likely there were male victims and female suspect/offenders in the 975 domestic disturbances that the police responded to and 598 incidents of domestic battery and 11 stalking cases that were investigated in that County in 2009.

Now gender inclusive domestic violence advocates like me in reading this LJWorld article might think it's a conspiracy, the police and prosecutors (and the battered women's advocates) will do anything to keep male victims from being acknowledged, seeking services and receiving help. However, it's not a conspiracy guys, when it comes to using VAWA i.e. STOP grant monies it's the law.

Dr. Richard Gelles, who is a Dean at the University of Pennsylvania and has done extensive research on family violence over the last four decades, testified in from of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in May 2010 on, "The Economic Downturn and Violence Against Women," made these remarks (in part):

"...VAWA...not only...ignore[s] services and resources for male victims of intimate partner violence but the law is unique in terms of federal legislation aimed at the problem of violence and abuse in families. No other federal legislation dealing with an aspect of family violence, including child maltreatment, sexual abuse, and elder abuse singularity focuses on one sex. Even though females are much more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than males, federal legislation on various aspects of sexual abuse does not limit programs funding and protection to only females.
...While funding and regulations from VAWA may well protect a portion of the victims of intimate partner violence current funding and programs fail to provide the appropriate spectrum of care for all victims of family violence..."

VAWA, this unique law first enacted in 1994, has placed billions of federal dollars (in fiscal year 2009 alone the STOP Program awarded almost $116 million in grant funds, VAWA funds for 2007-2011 $ 3.935 billion) into the prevention, intervention and prosecution of crimes against women. While laudable on its face from the onset over the years its discriminatory nature has taken a devastating toll on male victims of heterosexual and same sex domestic violence and left them in harm’s way with nowhere to turn for help.

Five years ago, after lots of persistence and knocking on legislative doors, male victim advocates were finally able to get mention of abused men included in the 2005 reauthorization of VAWA, almost a decade after it was first voted into law. Finally, male victims would be recognized and granted the same respect, support and services that female victims were given. Not so fast…

According to a 2007 document, Frequently Asked Questions on STOP Formula Grants, on the US Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women website;

Q: Can STOP funds support services for men?
A: "Yes. However, funding may only be directed to those entities whose primary focus is combating violence against women...."The STOP statute states that "[t]he purpose of this subchapter [part] is to assist States, State and local courts (including juvenile courts), Indian tribal governments, tribal courts and units of local government to develop and strengthen effective law enforcement and prosecution strategies to combat violent crimes against women, and to develop and strengthen victim services in cases involving violent crimes against women." 42 U.S.C. § 3796gg (a). However, sub grantees must provide services to a similarly situated male victim in need who requests services. Under the anti-discrimination provision of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 42 U.S.C. § 3789d(c)(1), STOP-funded programs may not exclude any person from receiving grant-funded services on a number of prohibited grounds, including that person’s sex. In addition, in the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005), Congress specifically provided that "Nothing in this title [which includes the STOP statute] shall be construed to prohibit male victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking from receiving benefits and services under this title."

For years advocates for LGBT victims had questions about whether or not VAWA funding could be used for victims of domestic violence in same sex relationships. That question was clarified to some extent in April of 2010 in a memorandum opinion from the Justice Department regarding whether or not the criminal provisions of VAWA apply to conduct when the victim and offender were the same sex. http://www.justice.gov/olc/2010/vawa-opinion-04272010.pdf

So the good news as of the 2005 reauthorization of VAWA is that the entities that primarily provide services to female victims must now provide services to male victims who request services. The bad news...prior to that 2005 reauthorization attention, funding, outreach and services had been focused exclusively on female victims for nearly a decade. After nearly a decade of promoting domestic violence as a social problem who's victims are female and perpetrators are male how many "similarly situated" male victims are going to come forward and request services? Nothing in the reauthorized VAWA mentions that male victims are entitled to the same outreach or that those entities that primarily focus of domestic violence and crimes against women now need to educate the public about domestic violence and crimes against men.

Is there any reason to think that male victims will ever be anything more than a teeny tiny footnote to battered women's advocates?

We Need to Stop Excusing Women's Violence

For the past few weeks one of the the stars of MTV's hit show, "Teen Mom," Amber Portwood, has been the focus of a whole lot of media attention for her domestically violent behavior caught on tape towards the father of her toddler child Leah and boyfriend, Gary Shirley. Every news outlet from CBS to CNN to TMZ has written or spoken about the on-camera verbal and physical assaults that Amber has directed towards Gary. Gary, to his credit, has never physically retaliated.
Although I don't know Gary personally I know thousands of "Gary's" in similar situations. Gary, like other men in these situations who do not hit women or defend themselves against a woman's violence, know the rules of the game i.e. if a woman hits you stand there in take it because if you defend yourself you're going to jail. There is no excuse for abuse, unless it's a woman doing the abusing.
For years women's violence against men has been ignored, minimized and excused. However, this young women's violence, caught on tape, has been hard to ignore or brush off. Had her violence not been caught on tape it's likely that it would still be going on behind closed doors and no one would be the wiser...men don't tell.
To view a 55 second clip of her physical and verbal abusiveness towards Gary click here And there is a lot more where that came from. One wonders how long the camera crew and producers would have let Gary get away with hitting, slapping, choking and berating Amber before stopping or reporting the domestic violence had roles been reversed.
Still some will choose to make excuses for Amber's verbal and physical violence because Amber is a female and Gary is a male. Nothing new there, those entrenched in domestic violence issues have been making excuses for women's violence for decades.
Take, for instance, Lynn Harris's article for Salon, "Is female-on-male violence on the rise? '"Teen Mom's"' Amber Portwood has turned a spotlight on women who hit. We take a closer look at the supposed trend," (catch the "supposed" innuendo there?). Ms. Harris claims that women use violence out of frustration to get attention i.e. women are weak and needy of attention, while men use violence to assert their power and control over women, i.e. to keep them in their place and subservient to men. However, according to the comments made it seems few viewers of the show agree:

"I live in ambers hometown and...this crazy bit?h is 100 percent real! The stories about her fighting her neighbor over a parking spot, true! Her abusing Gary, true! She is an embarrassment to her entire town...." "...I think Amber and Gary need help, but i defiantly (sic) think Leah is better off with Gary then Amber I do not think she is safe with Amber." "...Gary is far calmer and needs to have custody of Leah...Now she dumped Gary and has a new guy that she's bringing around the baby. Has that new guy seen the show? Cause he might want to buy some protective gear." http://tinyurl.com/25awxz6
"...GREAT JOB GARY 4 putting LEAH first! Amber would love it if u were 2 b sneaky & disobey the laws..thus hurting Leah. Keep that monster AWAY until she is fit & allowed the privilege 2 b a mother again. If it ever even happens!" http://tinyurl.com/25udo6j "I am so happy that the Amber abusive chick is getting what she deserves. Not only does she smack Gary around, but she is a risk for the baby. what if she goes crazy? like the time she locked the baby in the room because she was crying for her daddy. She can snap at any x and at anyone it is scary to have a person like that in your home." http://tinyurl.com/37h2rfm


Bill at Bill's Pro-feminist Blog in his posting on (although not on the subject of Amber's violence but women's violence against men in general), "But women do it to! On acknowledging female violence towards men," also makes excuses for women's violence. He reiterates what Ms. Harris says about women's violence, ""First, we need to understand how women’s violence in relationships is often very different from men’s violence in relationships,"" and then he discusses how, and I'm paraphrasing here, women's violence is less injurious and more about attention seeking while men's is about, "...putting you back in your place, bitch."" Additionally according to Bill men are in full control of their faculties, their use of violence is patriarchal in nature used to dominate and control while women use violence is because (here comes the excuses) they have a mental illness and/or abuse hard drugs i.e. they can't help it. Hello, mental illness and hard drug use is not exclusive to women just as using violence as a means to control and gain power in a relationships is not exclusive to men.

Now back to Amber Portwood and Gary Shirley's (and their toddler who witnessed Amber's abuse of her father) situation, even with hard documented evidence of verbal threats and physical assault it took seven weeks before the police decided to charge Amber with two counts of felony and a misdemeanor. At this writing there has been no arrest because the DA still hasn't even filed the charges yet. I think we can all agree that the investigation might have taken tops 48 hours if Gary was doing the hitting and berating on camera. He would have been arrested and locked up before you could say "Patriarchy." ;-)

Although there are plenty of gray areas when it comes to domestic violence some still choose to continue to look at domestic violence as a black and white phenomonom; men's patriarchy and men as a group are the cause of domestic violence. These same people continue to turn a blind eye to research that doesn't fit their beliefs (see Dr. Daniel Whittaker et al http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941 Dr. Denise Hines http://www.clarku.edu/faculty/dhines/results.htm, and Dr. Murray Straus http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm for info on female domestic violence and male victimization) and continue to perpetuate the myth that women's violence should be excused for the most part because it's not as harmful or being used as a means to control and maintain power over an intimate partner. This thinking does a grave disservice to male victims, female perpetrators and the innocent children who are caught in the middle. As long as society continues to view female violence as harmless there will be people who believe that, "...shes not going to hit the baby she hits him because shes frustrated hes a big fat lazy bum I'd hit him too in fact I'd kick him to the curb." http://tinyurl.com/2bk2t9k and male victims and their children will suffer the consequences.

Don't We All Want the Same Thing - Violence Free Homes

In honor of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month the Co-Directors of DAHMW put together a press release/letter to the editor which read:

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and throughout the month domestic violence advocates and the media’s attention will be focused on bringing more public understanding to and promoting the eradication of men’s violence against women. However, not all intimate partner violence (IPV) fits into this neat little package.

IPV against men, especially against men by their female intimate partners, has always been a hot button issue. While domestic violence advocates may know men are victims they insist that their victims service agencies should focus exclusively on ending violence against women by men because women are the most injured and prevalent victims. As a result, serious outreach and services for male victims of IPV are sorely lacking.

Studies indicate that men are victims of assault by their partners in 36% of the reported cases in the U.S. each year. This disparity between the needs of those victims and the services available are large. The gap must be closed.

While resources for men are still scarce, awareness is increasing and hopefully more services will follow. IPV is not a gender issue, it is simply a human issue. The Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women envisions a world where services are available to victims and survivors without prejudice.

In the past when we have sent out press releases and letters to the editors there wasn’t much, if any, response from the media. However, such was not the case this time. We asked our advocates who live in States all around the country (because as most know we are a virtually non profit agency) to send the letter to some of their local newspapers. Know that newspapers usually won’t publish letters that don’t have a local contact on them we asked them to send it out with their contact information on it. In hindsight we suppose it would be have been wiser to also include the names of the original writers too. However, just as those who work in battered women’s programs are in unison on their message, mission and philosophy, so to are the advocates of DAHMW. In addition, as we said, past responses being what they were we didn’t think we would get much response.

Were we ever surprised when newspapers in over six State published our letter! Finally, people want to hear our message.

One of the newspaper that published our letter was in the immediate area of a blogger named Suzie Siegel. Suzie is friends with the executive director of the local battered women’s shelter program, Linda Odmundson. I guess our letter touched a nerve because it prompted a call from Suzie to DAHMW.

Ms. Odsmundson, it seems from what Suzie said, was more than a little miffed by our letter. She claims she does help men at the program she operates. We understand that Ms. Odsmundson wrote a letter to the editor in reply to ours to the newspaper but we have not seen it.

A snippet of Suzie’s blog entry and the link to the rest is below.

To give you a little background information on why Suzie and Ms. Odmundson were so upset by our letter;

Over the years since the battered women’s/women’s rights movement began two camps have formed; the women’s rights camp and the men’s rights camp. For the few of us who are in the “middle of the road” camp there are no camp fires, marshmallows on sticks, sleeping bags or tents to sleep in. According to those in the women’s rights camp you are either with them or against them, there is no “middle camp.” You either believe what we believe, that domestic violence solely exists due to men’s patriarchal need to dominate, oppress and control women or you are in the men’s rights camp.

But what if you are a nonprofit agency that specializes in supportive services for male victims and also helps all other victims equally without prejudice? You don’t really fit in either the women’s or men’s rights camp. Still by some you are relegated to be part of that (what they consider) evil mens rights camp where all men who hate women congregate.

There has never been an agency quite like ours so no matter what we do, to some, we can never be seen as that middle of the road camp. We are an anomaly in the domestic violence service area, an organization to be criticized and then summarily dismissed as (in the words of some women’s rights advocates) just another men’s right group that is trying to send women back to the days when women were men’s chattels.

So the fact that we have emergency sheltered a homeless female victim, taken care of her needs for food and clothing, taken her to doctor and other appointments and helped her to get into her own apartment doesn't matter. The fact that we have called around to other shelters on behalf of female victims (who didn't know where to call and who were not in an area where we could make direct services available to them) who were told that the local battered women's shelter couldn't accommodate them because they had too many children or the shelter was full doesn't matter. The fact that we have worked in conjunction with anti violence programs that specialize in supportive services for LGBTQ victims and survivors doesn't matter. And by the way, our lack of funding is the only thing that holds us back from offering more services. Yes, we have made more services available to male victims and their children. DAHMW was created due to the void left in this service area so it is only natural that we would do this. As comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "I get no respect, I tell ya." All we want is to be respected and accepted for what we are, the middle of the road camp that helps victims of intimate partner violence without prejudice. Why can't we all just get along and work together? After all, we are all after the same thing aren't we, to put an end to domestic violence.

Arguing over men’s rights during Domestic Violence Awareness Month (by Suzie)

Do domestic violence programs ignore men who are victims of women? Your answer may depend on whether you think feminism should focus on a gendered analysis of women in society or feminism must fight all injustices equally. We’ve often discussed these definitions on this blog. Or, perhaps you're a feminist who thinks feminism has gone too far, with society now discriminating against men, at least in some areas. Jan Brown, executive director of the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women, seems to fall into this category. She says she’s a feminist but doesn’t want women to dominate services anymore than she wants men to dominate. Brown says she founded the helpline 10 years ago after a friend, a man abused by a woman, could find little help. Her web site says: “We specialize in offering supportive services to men abused by their female intimate partners.” The site lists resources where male victims can find help, including a lawyer who helps men fight false allegations of abuse and a law firm that has a father’s rights blog and “works hard to offset gender bias that minimizes or trivializes the importance of good men.” read more