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Participatory Design and Inmates

Community Arts Network has an article on artist Peggy Diggs' participatory design projects with prisoners. The projects range from anti-violence t-shirt designs that benefit children's charities to furniture designed to accommodate the particular needs of people in prison cells. Here's a brief description of a project she worked on with women convicted of murdering abusive husbands:

One of her best-known works originated in interviews with women in prison who had been convicted of murdering their abusing husbands. One of the women she interviewed said her activities were so limited that the only public place she was allowed to go was the grocery store. Diggs saw a need to connect with women unable to reach out for help. The result was the "Domestic Violence Milk Carton Project," in which a graphic message was printed on the sides of 1.5 million milk cartons and distributed across New York and New Jersey. The image was the silhouette of a hand superimposed with these words:

WHEN YOU ARGUE AT HOME DOES IT ALWAYS GET OUT OF HAND? If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, call: 1-800-333-SAFE.

[via Art Threat]

Comments

Very few cases of domestic violence fit the profile presented by the media, the shelter industry and treatment programs (for men).

Statistics Canada first collected data on intimate partner abuse of both men and women through its 1999 General Social Survey (GSS).

Respondents were asked 10 questions concerning abuse by their current and/or previous spouses and common-law partners during the 12-month and 5-year periods preceding the telephone interview. According to their responses, almost equal proportions of men and women (7% and 8% respectively) had been the victims of intimate partner physical and psychological abuse (18% and 19% respectively). These findings were consistent with several earlier studies which reported equal rates of abuse by women and men in intimate relationship.

The men indicated that their disclosures of abuse were often met with reactions of disbelief, surprise and skepticism from the staff of domestic abuse shelters, legal-based institutions and hospitals, as well as friends and neighbors. These reactions may cause male victims to feel even more abused.

Men felt emasculated and marginalized, and tended not to express their fears, ask for help, or even discuss details of their violent experiences. During the interviews, the abused men repeatedly expressed shame and embarrassment.

The occurrence of abuse by women against men, and its consequences, warrant attention. It is important for the victims of abuse, whether they be men or women, to know that they are not alone – that is, that such experience is not unique to their personal situation. It is also important for the perpetrators of intimate partner abuse – men or women – to recognize that violence in any form is both morally and legally wrong.

The way to change this is for those in the shelter industry to become honest about the violence inflicted by women on men and children and demand that they be treated just like violent men.

Complete report from the Government of Canada can be found in pdf form at:
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/ncfv-cnivf/familyviolence/pdfs/Intimate_Partner.pdf

In addition to the Canadian Government's statistics, the Government of Australia has also found women to be almost as abusive towards men as men are towards women. Even if only, say, .5% of women are guilty of domestic abuse they should be held accountable and sent to batterers counselling. Or is there a double standard? Is your group not concerned about the innocent children victims of criminal women?

Dr. Martin S. Fiebert at the University of California, Long Beach also did a study on domestic violence. His REFERENCES EXAMINING ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS is a bibliography examining 196 scholarly investigations: 153 empirical studies and 43 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 177,100. Available at: www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault

Cathy Young, a journalist, has also studied the anti-male bias in the domestic violence industry.

Ms Young writes, It would seem that broadening outreach to a more diverse group of victims should be an unequivocally good thing for those concerned with domestic violence. But that's not the way many advocates see it. Nancy Scannell, legislative director of Jane Doe Inc., a Massachusetts-based domestic violence coalition, has told The Boston Globe that the recognition that men are sometimes victimized did not in any way affect the organization's basic outlook on the causes and nature of domestic violence: ''It happens because of sexism and power and control of men over women in our society.''

This ideology has dominated the battered women's movement since its inception in the 1970s and still remains powerful. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence and its member coalitions in various states require participating organizations to endorse it.

Yet a vast body of research suggests that the reality of family violence - which includes child abuse and elder abuse as well as spousal or partner violence - defies this simplistic gender analysis.

Ever since the 1970s, most domestic violence studies have shown that men and women are equally violent toward their spouses. Reports of female violence were initially dismissed as self-defense by battered women. Yet subsequent research has found that women are as likely as men to admit being the aggressors, and only slightly more likely to cite self-defense as the reason for their violence.

A cumulative analysis of dozens of domestic violence studies, published by British psychologist John Archer in the November 2000 issue of the journal Psychological Bulletin, found that overall rates of violence were roughly equal for men and women. While women were more likely to be injured in domestic assaults, a third of those sustaining such injuries were men.

The numbers remain a subject of heated dispute. Battered women's advocates point to Justice Department surveys which find that only 15 percent of domestic assault victims every year are male. But because of the context of these surveys, they may miss many attacks which the victim does not regard as a crime. (They also find considerably lower numbers of female victims than the 2 million or 4 million a year commonly cited by the advocates.) The National Violence Against Women Survey, co-sponsored by the Justice Department and the Centers for Disease Control, estimated about 1.3 million women and 900,000 men are assaulted by spouses or partners every year.

Studies also consistently show that violence is no less likely to occur in gay and lesbian relationships than in heterosexual ones - which also undercuts the notion that domestic violence is a product of male oppression of women.

Yes, some batterers believe that a man should keep his wife ''in line.'' But domestic violence has many other causes, ranging from drug and alcohol abuse to economic stress to dysfunctional relationships and emotional disorders.

Battered women's advocates claim that female violence toward men is too much of an aberration to warrant a change in social policy. Yet today, our domestic violence policies are all too often influenced by an outdated, one-sided, and sexist view of abuse. The result is pressure on police and prosecutors not to arrest or charge violent women, lack of support for domestic violence counseling programs that do not toe the party line, and lack of meaningful assistance for male victims as well as gay victims of domestic violence. It is indeed time for a change. (See: www.cathyyoung.net/bgcolumns/2002/ menabused.html)

IFeminists has the following to say about domestic violence:

What is the ifeminist position on domestic violence?
Violence, except as used in a defensive capacity, is abhorrent, especially within the bounds of family or other intimate relationships. Ifeminists oppose the use of non-defensive violence by any person regardless of gender. We recognize that the conventional wisdom- that men are the perpetrators while women are the victims- is based on politics rather than on fact.
Because governments are controlled by power-seeking special interest groups and because they impose blanket solutions on very diverse individualized problems lumped into a single category, ifeminism recognizes that governments offer little in the way of solutions to domestic violence. We support the private development of solutions that take into account and respect the rights of those individuals involved in or accused of being involved in domestic violence situations. (www.ifeminists.com)

AMEN, a group in Ireland dedicated to helping male victims of domestic violence has this to say: Our study shows that there is a problem of domestic violence against men. Acknowledging this in no way intends to ignore or negate the very real problem of domestic violence against women and children. Cook reiterates this by saying : 'It is not 'victim blaming' to understand that both men and women can and most often do contribute to this most significant societal problem'.
(Source - Cook. 1998. p.34).

If Irish Society does not accept that male victims are part of the domestic violence issue it will be responsible for perpetuating the 'cycle of violence' into the next generation.

Acknowledging that men and women can be both perpetrator and victim opens the door for working together on solutions which reflect the true social realities.
(Source - Szabo. 1998. p.31) ).

There is no doubt that change is a slow process. This is evident from the achievements of women's groups over the years. Will the same be true for men ? (http://www.amen.ie/library/hwc/20010.htm)

Patricia Pearson, a Canadian author wrote the 1997 best-selling book When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence - Ms Pearson marshals a vast amount of research and statistical support from criminologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, and includes many revealing interviews with dozens of men and women in the criminal justice system who have firsthand experience with violent women. When She Was Bad is a fearless and superbly written call to reframe our ideas about female violence and, by extension, female power. See: (http://www.amazon.com/When-She-Was-Bad-Innocence/dp/0140243887)

From the jacket: Our culture...is in denial of women's innate capacity for aggression. We deny that women batter their husbands. We forget that the statistics prove that children in America are abused mostly by women. While national crime rates have recently fallen, crimes committed by women have risen 200 percent, yet we continue to transform female violence into victimhood by citing PMS, battered wife syndrome, and postpartum depression as sources of women's actions.

From Australia,

Inanity on domestic violence (no url)

As part of my work for my current client I’m looking at social support-services in general throughout the state. And one of the more obvious glaring holes is that of domestic-violence support services for men.

There are services for women - the state-funded domestic-violence line proudly states on its brochure that it has “all-female staff”. There’s also a state-funded service for gays and lesbians. But nothing - nothing - for straight men.

Well, fair enough, you might say - aren’t men the vast majority of perpetrators?

Pretty much the only perpetrators, in fact? I’d agree, that’s certainly the impression you’d get if you read the standard info on the issues.

But the moment you look a little deeper, some worrying points start to emerge.

In the State policy on DV, the sole ‘proof’ provided that men are the majority/’only’ perpetrators is the relative count of AVOs (apprehended violence orders). The policy document - written for the state by the state-funded Violence Against Women group, by the way, with apparently no other input or cross-checks at all - does grudgingly admit that “some men do take out AVOs against women” (the only reference in the entire policy-document that there might just possibly be a rare occurrence of violence by women). But no-one seems to have noticed that there are massive free support-services for women to take out AVOs - the many state-funded ‘Women’s Legal Resource Centres’, and automatic creation of AVOs by police pretty much at any woman’s request, on the same policies - whilst men have no such support: and AVOs ain’t cheap. So here we’re using an outcome of an already skewed policy to ‘prove’ that the input is skewed - a classic circular-proof.

It gets worse. A few years back I did a detailed analysis of a press-release for ‘National Stop Violence Against Women Day’, put out by the (Australian) Office for the Status of Women (OSW). A colleague did the simple, obvious thing: he asked OSW for their sources - and we checked. Not one of their figures matched up with the sources they gave: for example, in their supposed ‘facts’ from the Census, they’d classed all men in homeless shelters as female victims of domestic violence.

Another example: the most-quoted study in Australia , Routley & Sherrard’s “Domestic Violence: patterns and indicators in Victoria ”, states clearly that the female:male ratio of victims of domestic violence is 5:1. (In other words, 16% male: considerably higher than the 0% allowed for in the this State’s policy.)

The study’s based on from hospital data: and it’s true the data themselves are pretty solid, and nominally gender-neutral. What’s not solid is the analysis: every mistake - and there are plenty of them, methodology and arithmetic, as that same analysis shows - skews the apparent results towards women. The actual ratios, from their actual data, are as follows: positively identified as DV: 280:85 (c.3.2:1) female:male; probable DV: 250:500 (1:2) female:male; injury and context suggestive of DV: 250:700 (1:2.8) female:male. Yup, that’s right, more men than women - a lot more. So where the heck did that 5:1 ratio come from?

Their exact quote, I kid you not: “the results were not what we expected”, so they simply divided the female figure by five. They invented a 5:1 ratio from out of thin air, then published as fact that that’s what they’d found. And that, folks, was one of the best studies we found, in the sense of methodologically-defensible: most didn’t even get past the first hurdle of circular-reasoning…

So here we are, with a State policy based on ‘facts’ that are just plain false, and that - and again I kid you not - asserts that any man who requests help from the DV Helpline has proven that he is the sole perpetrator because he has asked for help - and is to be passed on to police for an automatic AVO to taken against them. In other words, direct to a criminal record - no check; no court-case; no nothing - for having asked someone for help. An interestingly bleak twist on gender-equality…

Don’t quite know what to do about this: I’ve already been told that I’ll lose my job if I bring it up outside of my own workgroup. Everyone running scared. Absolutely inane; absolutely insane.

Not funny. Not funny at all.

Glenn Sacks writes the following about the United States Department of Justice Survey on Domestic Violence:

The Department of Justice's highly publicized new findings on domestic violence are good news. Domestic violence appears to have declined by more than half from 1993 to 2004. Unfortunately, misleading press reports and the study's limited methodology have served to further minimize the often-ignored problems faced by male victims of domestic violence.

The department's National Crime Victimization Survey was conducted by interviewing members of a representative sample of households regarding crime, including domestic violence. Respondents were asked, "Has anyone attacked or threatened you?" "Did you call the police to report something that happened to you which you thought was a crime?" and "Did anything which you thought was a crime happen to you, but you did not report to the police?" Although these are reasonable questions, male victims of domestic violence are far more likely to answer "no" to them than female victims, thus skewing the survey's results.

Research shows that male victims are far less likely than female victims to report such attacks to the police. Many men feel, with some justification, that officers will not take their claims seriously, or that once they report violence in their families, their female abusers will claim abuse, and the women will be believed. Perhaps most important, fathers trapped in abusive relationships do not want to report abuse because it may create a divorce or separation, and they fear losing custody of their children to the abuser.

Survey respondents were told that they were being asked "crime questions," yet research demonstrates that men are less likely to see the abuse they suffer as a "crime" or a matter for public intervention, and often don't mention domestic violence in crime surveys. Also, seeking outside help because of a spouse's violence - or even complaining privately about it - is seen as unmanly and cowardly. And men tend to see a female partner's attacks or threats of violence as isolated examples of her being "angry," "hormonal" or "moody," instead of as part of a pattern of violence.

That women are frequently the aggressors in domestic combat cannot be reasonably denied. The National Institute of Mental Health funded and oversaw two of the largest studies of domestic violence ever conducted, both of which found equal rates of abuse between husbands and wives.

Women often employ the element of surprise and weapons to compensate for men's greater strength. An analysis of 552 domestic violence studies published in the Psychological Bulletin found that 38 percent of the physical injuries in heterosexual domestic assaults are suffered by men.

Last year, more than 50 domestic violence researchers and treatment providers signed a letter urging the California legislature to stop the state's policy of excluding male victims and their children from domestic violence services. Signatory John Hamel, author of the book Gender-Inclusive Treatment of Intimate Partner Abuse: A Comprehensive Approach, told legislators: "Men account for half of all DV [domestic violence] victims and incur a third of DV-related injuries. Ignoring female-on-male violence inhibits our efforts to combat domestic violence."

The Justice Department survey has also been the subject of misleading reporting. For example, the most widely published news article on the report states that in intimate relationships, "women are far more likely than men to be battered or assaulted. While crimes at the hands of an intimate partner represented nearly one-quarter of violent assaults against women in the period of the study, they accounted for 3 percent of such incidents against men."

This is misleading. According to the Justice Department, the survey found that "males experienced higher victimization rates than females for all types of violent crime except rape/sexual assault." Domestic violence inevitably constitutes a much smaller percentage of the overall violence men experience.

The survey found only a 3-to-1 ratio of abused women to abused men, not 8-to-1, as the article implies.

Press reports have also focused on the legitimate possibility that women in the survey have significantly underreported the domestic violence committed against them. Yet no major press report has even mentioned what is not simply possible but instead very likely: The survey undercounted male victims.
(http://www.glennsacks.com/new_doj_domestic.htm)
Erin Prizzey, the founder of the first shelter for battered women also studied violent women and found many women who came to her shelter were in fact the abusers. A google search of Ms Prizzey will give you an idea of the scope of her work.

Ron Austin wrote the following on May 28, 2007,

System prejudicial
I commend Ron Jones for having the courage to say that which is politically incorrect regarding domestic violence. Jones' May 18 letter, "Men victimized, too," pointed out that domestic violence has been promoted as a male against female problem. I suggest that the problem is far worse and far more endemic.

I spent 23 years as a counselor including 12 years as a probation counselor. Arrests, prosecutions and sentencing in domestic violence cases are primarily based on gender, not on behavior. It so ingrained into the system that the authorities usually do not know that they are being prejudicial.

...The result is that the programs in place successfully meet certain political objectives, but in doing so damage the relationship between men and women. I am convinced that these programs increase the level of family dysfunction.

...I found that both those presented as perpetrators of domestic violence and those who were supposed victims were nearly always honest about their behavior. It is those in authority who operate by a political agenda.


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