Domestic Violence, Predetermination, and the Feminised Bureaucracy

OPEN EMAIL TO THE MINISTER OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Dear Ruth Dyson,

I sent the following email (which is in italics) via your Ministry to Denise
Lievore and/or Pat Mayhew, the Victoria University
(http://www.victoria.ac.nz/cjrc/) authors of the report "The scale and
nature of family violence in New Zealand: A review and evaluation of
knowledge,"
(http://www.msd.govt.nz/work-areas/families-whanau/scale-and-nature-family-violence/index.
html)
which was commissioned by your Ministry's Centre for Social Research and
Evaluation (http://www.msd.govt.nz/work-areas/social-research/).

It is worth noting that all the researchers at Victoria University's Crime
and Justice Research Centre are female, and that Victoria University prides
itself on having "mainstreamed" Feminism, which means that academic freedom
has been abolished. Consequently, all research and teaching emanating from
that institution is tainted with Feminist bias.

I have received the reply below (in bold typeface) from Ross Mackay,
Principal Advisor in your Ministry. I have inserted his reply at the
appropriate places in my email, for your convenience, and I have commented
on his reply at the appropriate places, in red.

P.Z.: I have read with interest your paper "The scale and nature of family
violence in New Zealand." It is admirable in some respects, and deserving
of criticism in others.
R.M.: I reply to your message of 15 July 2008 addressed to Denise
Lievore and Pat Mayhew on the report on the scale and nature of family
violence in New Zealand published on the MSD website in 2007.
P.Z.: I am writing with a question, which I would be grateful if you could
please
answer:

Where do you state your evidence or citations (or what is your evidence,
if
you do not state it) for the statement: "there is rather more consensus
that
more physically serious and psychologically threatening assaults are more
likely to be perpetrated by male partners...." (page 34), as regards
"physically serious" assaults ?

As far as New Zealand is concerned, you do not give any evidence as
regards
"physically serious" assaults, although you do refer to the 2001 NSCV --
apparently in relation to "psychologically threatening" assaults only.
R.M.: You raised a question about evidence for the statement on page 34
of the report that "there is rather more consensus that more physically
serious and psychologically threatening assaults are more likely to be
perpetrated by male partners".

As you will be aware, the question of gender symmetry or asymmetry in
couples' violence is a highly contested issue.
P.Z.: I am appalled at Ross Mackay's reference to the contested nature
of the debate about domestic violence, because my email was directe to two
academics about theoretical issues. What I wanted was a consideration of the
theoretical points I raised -- not a reference to the politics of the
debate.

He is supposed to be an apolitical civil servant.

I know that the Ministry of Social Development is biased against men,
because the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the National Collective of
Women's Refuges both sit on the Taskforce for Action on Violence within
Families, where no Men's representative is allowed to sit. This taskforce is
organised by the Ministry of Social Development -- see
http://www.msd.govt.nz/work-areas/families-whanau/action-family-violence/taskforce-info.ht
ml
However, I am not naive, and I know from plenty of first-hand experience
that Feminist academics are more interested in politics than truth
(http://equality.netfirms.com/edpwrcnt.html).

The point here is that for Ross Mackay to turn a scientific question
of mine into a political answer means (in the context of the anti-male bias
of his Ministry) that he is biased towards commissioning research findings
that will please the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the National Collectiv
of Women's Refuges, which is a discriminatory, anti-male organisation.

Undoubtedly, it was the Feminist Movement which initially made a big
issue of Domestic Violence, but they were (and are) only interested in it
insofar as they could use it as a stick to beat men with.
R.M.: As one of the officials who commissioned this report, I should say
that I am fully satisfied with the way the authors treated this question.
The statement you point to constitutes a judgment by the authors based on
their considerable experience in this field and a wide knowledge of the
literature. In my view, this was a well-founded judgement.
P.Z.: Ross Mackay's reply, at this point, is unprofessional. It is not
credible, in an academic context, to rely on someone's judgment --
especially when I had asked for evidence and, in fact, had provided some of
my own: the page http://equality.netfirms.com/dvsumary.html (see below),
which Ross Mackay completely ignores.
R.M.: The statement was backed by a range of evidence (indeed, in the
same sentence the authors point to evidence relating to domestic homicides,
which is a highly significant indicator).
P.Z.: This is grossly unprofessional. I asked for evidence, and all I
got was a vague statement about "a range of evidence." It is not competent
to refer to data on homicides, when that is not what I was asking about.
P.Z.: There are serious methodological problems with the NSCV (and
probably with
its overseas counterparts, as well), as you would know if you had read the
relevant chapter of my book at
http://equality.netfirms.com/4dvlies.html#2002
R.M.: In addition, they cite other sources including the 2001 NSCV,
which (despite your reservations) uses measures which are now
well-established,
P.Z.: The term "well-established" is meaningless hand-waving. All it
means is that people who like its conclusions ignore its defects and keep
quoting it, in order to make it "well-established." Ross Mackay ignores the
criticism of the NSCV which I make at
http://equality.netfirms.com/4dvlies.html#2002 , which is that the NSCV
questionnaire does not ask the survey participantsnts straightforward
questions about their experience of violence, but adds in the biasing issue
of the participants' emotional response to the violence (which will differ
as between men and women).
R.M.: and the British Crime Survey. They also note that the New Zealand
cohorts have not generally contradicted this conclusion.
P.Z.: The point here is that the report I was writing about made it
clear it was concentrating on New Zealand research evidence. But then it
mentioned the British Crime Survey. My point is that it is unprofessional to
pick and choose overseas studies that support your point of view, if you
choose to mention any overseas studies at all.
P.Z.: You mention the 1996 British Crime Survey, so I think you should
have
surveyed the international literature systematically, rather than citing
one
study in isolation. I refer you to my systematic analysis at
http://equality.netfirms.com/dvsumary.html where you will see that (as at
2005) there is almost an equal number of studies showing that women suffer
more injuries than men in domestic violence as show that men suffer more
injuries than women do.
R.M.: On the use of the British Crime Survey and your suggestion that
the authors should have surveyed the international literature more widely, I
would simply note that their brief did not extend to the international
literature. As the authors noted in their introduction to the report, they
drew on the international literature sparingly and primarily "to
contextualise debates or point to robust overseas findings that could be
applied to local gaps in knowledge."
P.Z.: As I said above, there is no apparent justification for
selecting just the few overseas studies which support their point of view.
R.M.: By way of further evidence, Dr Lievore has provided me with
another reference: The World Report on Violence and Health, published by the
World Health Organisation in 2002. This is an authoritative source
P.Z.: In religion, it is appropriate to rely on authoritative sources.
In Law, it is also appropriate to rely on authoritative decisions. However,
in science -- even in the social sciences -- there is no such thing as an
"authoritative source." The World Health Organisation is, in many respects,
just a collection of Feminists and incompetents, selected on the basis of
what part of the world they come from. Green Party MP Sue Kedgley, for
example, has worked for the United Nations. She has recently been working
hard to prove that she is not just a pretty face, but no one would consider
her to be an authority on anything much. For more on the World Health
Organisation, see International Pro-Male Association letter to the World
Health Organization (http://equality.netfirms.com/margchan.html).
R.M.: that brings together a range of information from around the world.
The chapter on intimate partner violence identifies two distinct patterns of
such violence:
a severe and escalating form of violence characterised by multiple
forms of abuse, terrorization and threats and increasingly possessive and
controlling behaviour on the part of the abuser; and

a more moderate form of relationship violence, where continuing
frustration and anger occasionally erupt into physical aggression.
The report notes that researchers hypothesise
P.Z.: The operative word here is "hypothesise." The opening sentence
of this chapter, which Ross Mackay refers us to states:

"One of the most common forms of violence against women is that
performed by a husband or an intimate male partner."
http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/chap4.pdf

It is clear that the WHO is only interested in violence against women,
and anything that is "hypothesised" by the WHO, or its preferred sources,
will be dreamed up in order to shore up the myth that women's violence is
somehow less important than men's violence. This is also the myth that Ross
Mackay is supporting. This is called predetermination -- not research!
R.M.: that community-based surveys are better-suited to detecting to the
second, more moderate form of violence than the more severe type of abuse
and that this may help to explain why community-based surveys of violence in
industrialised countries frequently find substantial evidence of physical
aggression by women, even though the vast majority of victims that come to
the attention of service providers and the police are women.
P.Z.: Ross Mackay has no proof of this. Surveys which contain
objective questions throw up objective facts. Anyone who has studied Social
Science research methods (as I have) knows that the sample of the population
that so-called "service providers" and the police come across is not
representative of the relevant population. What publicly funded organisation
ever encourages men to report violence by women?
R.M.: The report goes on to note that:
"Although there is evidence from industrialized countries that women
engage in common couple violence, there are few indications that women
subject men to the same type of severe and escalating violence frequently
seen in clinical samples of battered women (32, 33).
P.Z.: The two works referred to by the nubers 32 and 33 are surveys of
research. This surveying would necessarily have treated Feminist research on
the same basis as objective research. Feminist research routinely involves
interviewing just women, and taking their account of events as being true
(See the review of "The Battered Woman" by Lenore E. Walker
http://equality.netfirms.com/batwmrev.html). This approach is contrary to
common sense -- let alone natural justice.

If you actually want to know what happened, you have to interview both
parties and compare their accounts of the same events. Since Feminist
reseaarchers are intent on using research as a stick to beat men with,
whereas the objective researchers are merely interested in finding out the
truth, the almost total lack of any research that is only interested in the
emotional response of men to female domestic violence will obviously skew
the picture thrown up by such surveys of research.
R.M.: "Similarly, research suggests that the consequences of partner
violence differ between men and women,
P.Z.: This ignores the page http://equality.netfirms.com/dvsumary.html
, which I had already referred him to (see above).
R.M.: and so do the motivations for perpetrating it.
P.Z.: This is merely sexist, discriminatory, Feminist theorising, as
discussed above. See also the article: There is No such Thing as Battering
(http://equality.netfirms.com/battery.html).
R.M.: Studies in Canada and the United States have shown that women
are far more likely to be injured during assaults by intimate partners than
are men, and that women suffer more severe forms of violence (5, 34-36).

P.Z.: Item 5 is yet another study which is only about violence against
women, and therefore cannot be taken seriously as regards violence against
men. I have not read items 34-36, but these are overseas studies, and Ross
Mackay keeps emphasising that the study which he commissioned is only about
New Zealand.
R.M.: In Canada, female victims of partner violence are three times
more likely to suffer injury, five times more likely to receive medical
attention and five times more likely to fear for their lives than are male
victims (36).
P.Z.: Fearing for your life is a psychological state, and has little
to do with reality. Men are socially not permitted to be afraid, whereas
women's every little fancy is taken as a national emergency by the Feminist
media. To receive medical attention, you have to ask for it. Women receive
tons of sympathy at the drop of a hat, whereas men are expected to be
stoical, and are ashamed to admit that they have been injured by their
wives. Therefore, men are less likely to ask for medical attention, as a
glance around any doctor's waiting-room will show you. If the statistics
about injury quoted above come from medical sources, then they are biased
against men, for the reasons just mentioned. The above comment by Ross
Mackay also ignores the page http://equality.netfirms.com/dvsumary.html ,
which I had already referred him to (see above).
R.M.: Where violence by women occurs it is more likely to be in the
form of self-defence (32, 37, 38). (WHO, 2002, p. 94)"
P.Z.: Professor Martin Fiebert's annotated domestic violence
bibliography at the webpage http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm has
this entry:
"Sarantakos, S. (2004). Deconstructing self-defense in
wife-to-husband violence. Journal of Men's Studies, 12 (3), 277-296.
(Members of 68 families with violent wives in Australia were studied. In 78%
of cases wives' violence was reported to be moderate to severe and in 38% of
cases husbands needed medical attention. Using information from husbands,
wives, children and wives' mothers study provides compelling data
challenging self defense as a motive for female-to-male violence.)"
Ross Mackay is demonstrating gross hypocrisy by ignoring my objective
data on these matters, stating that the research he commissioned was on New
Zealand research, and then citing overseas research which, from its opening
sentence, is clearly biased against men.
R.M.: On the question you raise, then, the WHO report confirms the
judgment in our 2007 report.

[Note: You will find the full citation details for the various sources
cited in this passage at the following address:

http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/global_campaign/en/chap4.pdf]
P.Z.: It is completely hypocritical of Ross Mackay to cite this
one-sided WHO Feminist propaganda report, when I had criticised the New
Zealand report for selectively citing overseas reports. Here he is
selectively citing a single overseas report.
P.Z.: I would be grateful if you could please answer the question above.
R.M.: In summary, in publishing this report, both the authors and I were
aware that this aspect of the topic was highly contested terrain. In my
view, the authors got it exactly right, using their judgement to come to a
judicious conclusion based on a careful reading of the evidence.
P.Z.: The Ministry of Social Development has no credibility on
domestic violence, and Ross Mackay should be sacked for bias and
incompetence.

Peter Zohrab

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