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The perception of VAWA

Over at Good Men Project, Noah Brand (whose work I generally like), makes an odd point on the Violence Against Women Act. Brand responds to charges leveled by some conservatives and Men’s Rights Activists that the legislation is gendered and treats women as victims.  After quoting from the legislation which he believes shows that the bill thwarts any type of gendered violence, Brand writes:

Notice anything? The complete lack of gendered language, maybe? Indeed, throughout the definitions section, gendered language is specifically eschewed, meaning that the law does, quite deliberately, provide straight men with the exact same protection under the law as everyone else. No wonder they had to fight it on the basis of Scary Scary Immigrants; it’s literally the closest thing to a leg that they have to stand on.

It’s hard for me to think that this law is not inherently gendered when its called The Violence Against WOMEN Act.  That’s like saying that a “Get White People to Vote Act” or a “Help Men Get Jobs Act” are meant to increase access to the ballot and to jobs for everyone, wink wink.  Perhaps if liberals and Democrats wanted to avoid the complaint that the legislation is biased they should tinker with the title.

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9 Responses to The perception of VAWA

  1. JoeBlowOnTheGo (@BinocularJoe) 05/20/2012 at 11:30 am

    If I’m not mistaken, the House refused to pass it with special protections for women, for gays, for immigrants or any other special category. That would be the Republicans, of course, and they got pretty beat up over it in the press. I only hope the GOP base gives them some credit….

    Personally, I care far less about the title than I do about the statutory guts….

  2. K(yle) 05/20/2012 at 12:10 pm

    It’s unlikely that Noah Brand is being on the level with this article. He’s got to know how laws go from language on paper to actual implementation via the civil service. The language in VAWA is clearly about providing government support to women and that is exactly how the civil service will implement it.

    The language in most bills is intentionally vague because ultimately the legislators have and want no part in defining the details of how a particular law will be enacted and the vague language allows the civil service the most power in enacting a law. The language of VAWA specifically describes the ‘spirit’ of the law and that is what the civil service will use to determine how the law

    Brand can’t and won’t even try to show how VAWA is an ‘equal opportunity’ law as far as funding distribution, in court et cetera is actually practiced. I’m almost positive that he didn’t actually read the bill and is simply cribbing his entire argument from some other feminist blog that did the ‘research’ for him and is in the business of making deliberately duplicitous arguments (like the gender-wage gap), which is why the article is so faulty.

    There is also the issue of ‘Disparate Impact’ so the actual language doesn’t matter; only the statistical outcome.

  3. namae nanka 05/20/2012 at 12:11 pm

    Your comment is awaiting moderation.

    There should be a violence against men act which punishes women twice for being the privileged sex when it comes to violence and grant anonymity to male victims because they it’s harder for them to come out.

    “Notice anything? The complete lack of gendered language, maybe?”

    and since it’s called the violence against the women act, there’s no need to point out that the victim is female by default? Or more correctly a ‘woman’, I am behind on the trans vs lesbian debate on what constitutes a woman.
    Even if we disregard this act, the victim is still female when it comes to domestic violence awareness, like white ribbon day in australia.

    “White Ribbon is an organisation that is working to prevent the most common form of male violence – that towards women.”

  4. doug1111 05/20/2012 at 2:11 pm

    It’s enforced by the police and courts in a highly gendered way. VAWA pays for police training where professional feminist VAWA trainers train them to enforce it in a gendered and extreme hair trigger against me. The propaganda is that small and seemingly fairly trivial domestic violence (a no injury slap) always escalates if the woman verbally stands up to her man again in the future while that problem is much less there for small female acts (with no proof of either proposition just the “expert” knowledge).

  5. Brendan 05/20/2012 at 2:17 pm

    If he were trained as a lawyer, he’d understand that the test is disparate impact, not facial neutrality, when evaluating legislation. I’m not advocating that this is the right test, mind you, but it is the current one. Remember, family law is also facially neutral, but is hardly enforced or implemented in a neutral fashion — that’s why facial neutrality is not the final test.

  6. doug1111 05/20/2012 at 3:05 pm

    VAWA is a terrible law because it’s too hair trigger and it treats uncorroborated and often rather implausible claims by women upset at the moment on a 911 call as automatically true. Sure serious and real domestic violence should be and was before VAWA illegal, but VAWA turns a non injury return slap by a husband or male domestic partner into an automatic arrest if merely claimed by her on her 911 call even if she tell police she doesn’t want him arrested. Further he’ll get an automatic temporary restraining order that will force him to move out of his house that he’s living in with her, even if he entirely owns it or is the only one on the lease and pays all the rent. This happens automatically even if she asks that it not and even if the next day after she’s sobered up she says not happened other than yelling, she just wanted to teach him a lesson by the police talking to him. The TRO is generally for 90 days at least in NYC, during which he’s not only not allowed to be with her regardless of what she wants but also he’s not permitted be in communication with her in any way. These provisions are I think designed by radical feminists to try to break up the relationship and also to keep her caring for him after he apologizes refusing to testify.

    Even her just telling 911 and police that he was scaring her by saying he “was going to kill her” even though it was obvious rhetorical and a vast exaggeration, he can be and often will be arrested under VAWA.

    The police will about never arrest women for no injury slapping – and males rarely make 911 calls for such things. They usually won’t arrest her if she’s scratched him or bruised his arm or wrist, but they will him.

    Part of the purpose of VAWA when it makes no injury return slapping or minor bruising for say holding her wrists or arms to keep her from slapping or punching him in the stomach some more, is to erode and indeed erase male physical dominance in intimate relations, which has been a part of normal male and female relationship dynamics forever, but which radical feminists hate. Indeed given how differently it’s enforced against men vs. women it really creates female domestic dominance since she can call 911 and bring VAWA down on him and make false accusations, or goad him sufficiently that he does slap her or push her onto a bed or couch or something.

    Slaps which cause no or only very minor insignificant injury and shoves etc. should not be criminalized in intimate relationships.

    VAWA should be allowed to expire, instead of expanding it even further, which is an outrage.

    When [American] society agreed with Sean Connery

  7. Firepower 05/21/2012 at 8:20 am

    Well, well: looks like all those Spearhead “activists” screaming about how “evil VAWA should be destroyed” really and finally destroyed vawa after all those YEARS complaining about it.

    Oh, wait – VAWA still there? Guess they better get back at the keyboards and do more activism…

  8. The fourth doorman of the apocalypse 05/21/2012 at 9:53 am

    The concept that women are angels and men are evil seems to have jumped the shark …

  9. Pingback: Linkage is Good for You: Week of May 27, 2012

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