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J. Steven Svoboda is a member of TheMensCenter Advisory Council, an Independent attorney active in human rights law and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC).
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By J. Steven Svoboda ... |
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By Philip W. Cook.
Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publications, 1997.
More than twenty years ago, Murray Straus and Richard Gelles published their first landmark study and Erin Pizzey wrote Prone to Violence, both documenting the dreadful truth that women and men commit violence against their spouses with roughly equal frequency at all levels of severity. And yet today, nearly all Americans still buy into the media-created myth that domestic violence is something men almost exclusively do to women.
Philip Cook's badly needed book is the first to comprehensively focus on men as victims of domestic violence. Cook's achievement is admirable. Not only does he cover his topic succinctly and thoroughly, meticulously documenting each step he takes, but he also delves into a number of pertinent related issues lesser authors might have missed entirely.
Cook starts with the facts, noting that in about half of all domestic violence cases, both partners are engaged in mutual combat. In 25% of the cases, the man is the aggressor, and in the other quarter of the cases, the woman is the aggressor. Cook succinctly summarizes differences between male and female patterns of violence and injury: men tend to use bodily force more and to injure women more severely when they do so. Men rarely use violent women's favorite weapons, knives and guns. Multiple injuries are less common for men but their single injuries caused by weapons often require medical attention.
Cook always manages to keep his eye on the larger picture, discussing the disturbing circle of violence often created when battering is witnessed by children. He ties in men's much greater chances of being victimized by violent crime in general and also comments on sentencing discrimination against male criminals. Old gender stereotypes do us all a great disservice, encouraging a reflexive blaming of one sex which makes healing more difficult by obscuring individual circumstances. Cook encourages us to give up competing to be victims, to resist the suggestion that attempting to understand a family dynamic in which both men and women contribute to violence is "blaming the victim" and instead to work together to end this abomination.
Chapter Two contains a number of real-life stories from battered men, which help depict the issue into three dimensions. The men's honesty is astonishing. We learn that often it is not so much fear of being labeled a "wimp" as a sense of responsibility toward their family which prevents them from leaving. As men's traditional supporter role comes to be devalued and diluted, tension may develop as one party in a partnership comes to see himself or comes to be seen by his spouse as not bringing much to the partnership.
Cook packs Chapter Three with practical tips including how to recognize and deal with battering as a man, how to choose a counselor, how to decide whether to stay at home or leave, visitation, restraining orders, and finding emotional support. Cook next discusses societal challenges to understanding this problem including conspiracies of silence and violence. He describes in detail the ordeals endured by writers on anti-male violence such as Gelles and Suzanne Steinmetz, including shootings, bomb threats, death threats, career threats and actions, and attempted character assassinations. Other forms of suppression, while less direct, may be no less insidious. One survey failed to report its male victimization rates, which became known only after other researchers obtained the computer tape. Lamentably, it is still true that virtually no men's shelters exist anywhere in the country, and almost no hotlines will advise male callers.
Cook concludes with a chapter offering a multi-pronged approach to reducing all forms of domestic violence. Automatic arrest laws need to be passed and enforced, particularly on behalf of male victims. Mutual rather than unilateral restraining orders should become the norm. Free or low-cost legal representation should be potentially available to both sides in a domestic dispute. Deferred sentencing programs should be expanded to involve the offender in counseling and education. Cook proposes the creation of a multidisciplinary task force which would include shelters, police, district attorneys, social service agencies, probation departments, and the courts. Concerted, standardized data collection is sorely needed. Domestic relations cases must be taken out of the adversarial court system and turned over to mandatory mediation or arbitration. A sex abuse review panel should be created to root out false accusations and eliminate the use of "hired gun" psychological experts. Cook somewhat surprisingly calls for men's shelters only in large urban areas; his data seem to suggest a broader need for them. Men's crisis hotlines are urgently needed.
Cook has written a remarkable, invaluable book. As he poignantly quotes, "Violence, like sex, never occurs in the abstract... Souls are... saved, or lost, only one at a time."
©2000 J. Steven Svoboda
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