Congratulations to George McAulay from the UK
Men's Movement in Scotland.
Hats off to the Scots press, which hasn't yet lost its marbles.
Woe to the Scots taxpayers, whose government is using large sums of taxpayers'
money to manufacture the attitudes with which to sow hatred and dissent, to bring about
the destruction of families in Scotland.
[Scotland] Daily Mail, Wednesday, March 27, 2002 (page ?)Executive is ordered to drop claims about 'wife-beating' Scots
By Jonathan Brocklebank
THE Scottish Executive was last night accused of
falsely portraying Scots as a nation of wife-beater's as a watchdog rapped its campaign
against domestic abuse. Advertisements highlighting violence against women have been
criticized for saying one in five women live with the constant threat of abuse.
The completely unfounded claim, repeated almost daily in newspapers and
television advertisements as part of a £4.5million campaign to raise awareness of
domestic violence, has infuriated family groups who said the Executive was vilifying not
just men but entire families.
Yesterday the Advertising Standards Authority said it had ordered the
Executive to withdraw the 'one in five' claim from the newspaper advertisement after it
emerged that the actual figure was nearer one in 20.
But the Executive last night insisted its figures were accurate and
disputed the authority's judgement.
It also defiantly continued to screen the Behind Closed Doors
television advertisement - which repeats the controversial claim - pointing out that the
ASA only had authority over Press advertisements.
The claim is based on The Scottish Crime Survey 2000, conducted in 1999
by Edinburgh firm MVA. which works for the Executive.
Daily Mail, 2002 03 27
Comment
Abuse claim that insults a nation
DEFAMATION of a nation: that in what the Scottish Executive's misleading advertising
campaign on domestic abuse amounts to. Its Behind Closed Doors advertisements on
television and in newspapers claim that 'one woman in five lives with the constant threat
of domestic abuse'.
Yesterday the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ordered the
Executive to withdraw that assertion from newspaper advertisements, after it emerged that
the nearest figure that could be justified was one woman in 20.
Since the ASA has no authority over television commercials, the
Executive is defiantly continuing to run them, despite the fact that the information they
carry is now thoroughly discredited.
Domestic abuse is a real problem: it exists, it makes life intolerable
for a significant number of women [My note: what about men? DV
is a 50/50 issue. -WHS] and it must be eliminated. That is
beyond dispute. But extravagantly inaccurate statistics are counter-productive.
Nobody seriously believes that, in every fifth house in their street, a
woman is being beaten up. Such claims slander Scots men, patronise women as
institutionalised victims and undermine family life. This propaganda campaign comes out of
the same anti-family stable as the proposed law against smacking.
The 'one woman in five' claim even featured in Jack McConnell's keynote
speech at the recent Labour Party conference.
The reality behind this inflated Executive claim, as the ASA
adjudication points out, is that 95 women (4 per cent) in a 1999 crime survey reported
force or threats by a partner that year. The extrapolation from that statistic to a claim
that one Scot in five is a constant wife-beater is indefensible. Yet the Executive is
spending £4.5million of taxpayers' money on insulting its own people.
What impression must these advertisements make on visitors? And how can
the Executive talk about a New Scotland, while simultaneously depicting...... [The rest of that line was unintelligible. -WHS]
The survey said that 19 percent of the 1,500 women who responded [My note: So, it was a self-reporting survey, hmm...-WHS]
Under fire: The Executive advertising campaign
had at some point in their lives been the victim of threats or force from
a partner. [My note: How many of them spoke the truth? How many
of the "partners" were other women? How many of the women were lesbians? -WHS] Using this figure, the Executive's domestic abuse campaign claimed that one in
five women was living 'with the constant threat of domestic abuse.
The same report found that 6 percent of women had been the victim of
threats or force from their partner in the previous year. The number of women who had
experienced both threats and violence from their partner was 4 percent.
The ASA adjudication issued yesterday reads: "The survey showed
'A dishonest and
Sexist campaign' |
one in five women had experienced domestic abuse during their life, not
that they lived with the constant threat of abuse.
'The survey stated that only 95 respondents said that they had had
force used against them or had been threatened by a partner in 1999 and that its findings
had to be interpreted with care.
'The authority considered they had not proved that one in five women in
Scotland lived with the constant threat of domestic abuse and asked the advertisers to
change the claim.'
While the Executive has undertaken to drop the 'one in five' claim from
the newspaper advertisement, the television commercial continued to be screened yesterday.
An Executive spokesman said the advertisement had been approved by the
Independent Television Commission.
She said the TV advertisement which uses the Charlie Rich song Behind
Closed Doors as its theme tune, will be changed shortly, to concentrate on the public's
response to the Executive's domestic abuse website. The 'one in five' claim will be
dropped at that point. [My note: Why not drop it right now and
demand that the harpies responsible for the scam give taxpayers their money back?
Isn't there any accountability in the Scottish Government Administration? -WHS]
Yesterday Robert Whelan, director of Family and Youth Concern, said:
'Government bodies are driven by the agendas of the people on them and anti-family
politics in some areas of the government are very strong.
'It has become a political football used against men and disguises the
very real issue of domestic abuse.'
George McAulay, of the UK Men's Movement, accused the Executive of
conducting a 'dishonest, sexist and anti-male campaign'. He said that domestic abuse
affected women and men and should be dealt with on a 'gender-neutral' basis.
The survey showed that while 19 per cent of women had experienced
threats or force from a partner at some time in their lives, 8 per cent of men made the
same claim.
Tory social justice spokesman Lindsay McIntosh said: 'My preference
would be to see an amendment in the newspaper and the television campaign. It's still
important to raise awareness of the issue.'
An Executive spokesman said: 'One in five women has experienced
domestic abuse. These are the figures and the ruling does not affect the integrity of the
campaign.'
Comment - Page 12
My Note (F4L):
In other words: "I've got my mind made up. Don't confuse me with facts.
Besides, the people will pay."
It may help you to get a hold of undeniably reliable and realistic
statistics on the incidence rates, and let nobody tell you that Scots are more violent
than Canadians.
Statistics Canada pub.: "Family
Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile 2000" Cat. no. 85-224
It showed that in 1999, women perpetrated 53 percent and men 47 percent
of partner abuse.
That means that violence by women is on the rise, because the average
figures for being victimized by a partner for the five-year interval ending in 1999 were:
Women: 8%; Men: 7%
See also the related article in The Report Newsmagazine,
April 1, 2002, p. 26, "FAMILY STRIFE, The violent wife – An Ottawa couple goes
public to focus attention on spousal violence against men." Donna Laframboise reported (in "Princess at the Window", p. 199) about the
scam by which Marion Boyd (former attorney General of Ontario, and she never finished her
law studies. -WHS] launched in late 1991 an $858,000 government-sponsored ad campaign
directed at vilifying Canadian men that featured the slogan: "WIFE ASSAULT; IT IS A
CRIME. THERE'S NO EXCUSE."
"Marion Boyd used alarming statistics in her hype: According to
the minister:
Research shows that one in five men living with a woman admits to using violence
against her. [Could that be the source of the 'one in five' fiction?
-WHS] This violence takes many forms, including slapping, throwing
objects at her, beating her up, threatening her with a knife or gun and even using weapons
against her.
Some people admitted to doing things that fell into more than one category, but when
the dust finally settled it was determined that 17.8 percent of the men and 23.3 percent
of the women among the 1,530 people surveyed admitted to behaving in a "violent"
manner toward their spouses. (Full story)
The most horrible aspect of Marion Boyd's scam was, as reported from Ontario, that
the material she handed out to the Ontario legislators consisted of Xerox copies of
various tables in the study by Lupri and Brinkerhoff. The tables contained information on
both sexes, but the Xerox copies that Marion Boyd distributed had been made so that the
figures pertaining to assaults on men and husbands had been blotted out.
That was more than ten years ago. How much longer before this terrible
hate crime against a visible minority will be corrected?
Instead, the scam expanded into a wave of anti-male propaganda that by
now engulfs all of Canada and reached its current apex of Ontario Bill 117.
Chaos in the courts to become a principle of the justice system of Ontario (Sen. Cools on Bill 117) Standing Committee on Justice and Social Policy, presentations by
Ms Cynthia Wasser and by Mr. Walter Fox Injuries Due to Violence Against Women's an
Insignificant Fraction of Hospital Emergency Room Visits
For every woman seeking help for injuries
inflicted on her, there were three men who sought help for comparable reasons.
According to the
Emergency
Department Injury Surveillance Report, South Fraser Health Region, women's
visits to emergency departments due to injuries purposely inflicted by others comprise an
almost insignificant fraction of total emergency department visits.
Men made 359 and women 117 visits for such reasons, out of a total of 10,509 visits to
emergency departments in four hospitals over an interval of three months in 2001.
They told me that they will attempt to determine the
proportion of the injuries due to DV, but that as of now it appears to be difficult to
come up with answers. It's not really so surprising. If there are so few injured women,
and if even far fewer of them are inured in DV incidents, why bother giving the virtually
non-existent problem undue attention?
What is truly surprising is that in regard to DV, an issue that is of such
overwhelming concern and receives billions of dollars to combat it, (hundred of millions
per year in Canada), the militant feminists that manufacture concern don't exert a bit of
pressure to have the statistics tracked accurately, so that we don't have to rely on
self-serving, propagandistic advocacy research and politically-biased editorializing.
In the absence of anything better, the one-in-three ratio is a good rule of
thumb; if statistics in the US are anything to go by. Reality is most likely somewhat less
serious than that.
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