Interpersonally Abusive Men: the work of Feminist Kajsa Ekis Ekman and Pro-feminist Lundy Bancroft

 

book cover

Although this was published several years ago, this book is new to me. It was put on my radar by Swedish feminist Kajsa Ekis Ekman, a writer, journalist, and activist. I found her via this audio recorded lecture wherein she mentions it. She addresses interpersonally abusive men's tactics and behavior in the initial stages and how those tactics may mirror and mimic the country's oppressive male supremacist government and its leaders. The audio link was sent to me from a friend in Serbia. I believe the close translation of the title of the lecture is: Types of Abuse: How to Recognize Your Relationship is Violent. NOTE: It may be very distressing to anyone who has lived through or witnessed an abusive relationship.

https://www.mixcloud.com/TNT_BeFemTalks/s03e03kajsa-ekis-ekman-deset-vrsta-zlostavlja%C4%8Da-kako-prepoznati-da-je-va%C5%A1a-veza-nasilna/?fbclid=IwAR31xA4HeQV2U4mSrSqbzNJZbVSPEeW6GjW_Xne8DTFSfVTclULwBCsyP6Y

Here is a PDF of the book by Lundy Bancroft: Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men 

A summary:
Has your partner changed dramatically from the man you originally got involved with? Do you struggle with trying to understand what is bothering him and how to keep him from exploding? Do you feel like you’re always messing things up in his eyes, and you can’t figure out how to get it right?
Why Does He Do That? has become the go-to book for women who have partners who are angry, controlling, or unfaithful. It answers the 20 questions that women most ask about their partners’ behavior.
Here are just a few:
* “Why did he used to think I was so great and now he often seems to think I’m terrible?”
* “Why does he make everything he does my fault?”
* “Why does he want to have sex after being terrible to me?”
* “Is he going to escalate to physical violence?”
* “How come everybody else seems to think he’s so perfect?”
* “What can I do to get him to change how he treats me?”
This book will help you to sort out whether your partner’s behavior is just “normal relationship stuff” or whether he is trying to control you. And if he is controlling, Lundy will guide you in how to keep yourself safe and sort out the way forward for your life.

Abusive Husbands? Are you listening? "Wife-beating is unacceptable", says Dora Byamukama. So, men: stop beating women already!!!!

image is from here

It's not that hard to get, men. If you think women believing in their own inferiority entitles you to beat them, then you need to be removed from the home, permanently.

What follows is from NewVision: a leading feminist website. Click on the title to link back.

Wife-beating is unacceptable

Wednesday, 27th April, 2011

By Dora Byamukama

ACCORDING to the World's Women and Girls 2011 Data Sheet, Uganda records the highest percentage of women internationally who agree that wife-beating is acceptable if a wife argues with her husband. This state of affairs is totally unacceptable.

Sadly more women than men find wife-beating acceptable! One wonders why this is so. India was ranked second with 30% and Ghana came third at 21%.

In the East African region Ugandan women are considered gentle and submissive. Whether this is a positive or negative trait is a subject for debate. This notwithstanding, when gentility and submission have the potential to contribute to self-hate then this attitude calls for change. Change can only be effective when the causes are known otherwise whatever action is taken may be like mopping a wet floor, when the tap is left open.

Causes of acceptance of violence against women are several. These are basically beliefs and practices that treat women as inferior human beings and thus undermine their self-esteem. These beliefs and practices perpetuate an attitude that makes men and women believe that women are inferior and less intelligent--thus the need to punish them for arguing with their husbands.

Beliefs and practices permeate the human soul to the extent that women who are likely to be harmed by such a negative attitude internalize it and thus not only accept the degradation but also pass on the same to their children over time.

It is, therefore, not uncommon for a woman to be told to endure violence in a marriage by her mother on the basis that this is the wear and tear of marriage. While growing up, I heard of a story of a woman who reported such violence several times to her parents who kept sending her back to the marriage until their daughter was sent back to them in a coffin! In fact the coffins were two because the woman had been eight months pregnant.

Beliefs and practices that wife-beating is acceptable are rooted in several factors which include religion, culture, social pressure as a result of war, poverty and alcoholism. Most religions emphasise that women are inferior to men. Christianity, however, categorically states that all human beings are made in the image of God.

When some religions read texts to support oppression of women out of context then the resultant effect is to misinterpret and misapply the very same religion that is fundamentally based on respecting the person created in the creator's very image.

Religion shapes attitudes fundamentally because it is personal and the frequency with which one is exposed to it on a daily and weekly basis ensures that the belief is sustained and that is enforced through social pressure.

Culture is another aspect that shapes attitude that may promote women's tolerance to wife-beating. Culture is a form of religion because it dictates a person's way of life, and shapes what is socially acceptable. In fact most cultures do not condone wife-beating but because domestic matters are considered private, this privacy is abused and used to commit crimes.

Culture is dynamic and is also shaped and influenced by globalization through internet interaction, videos and films. Globalization has introduced what is termed as modern culture, which has large doses of violence and in some instances is spiced with witchcraft. One such good example is the growing consumption of Nigerian films in Uganda.

When one is exposed to such films over and over again, the resultant effect is that they will copy and put into practice what they see.

The World's Women and Girls Data Sheet also indicates that 31% of Ugandan women and 19% of Ugandan men said that it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife if she refuses to have sex with him. This indeed is an interesting and deeply disturbing finding. The question is, if after a beating the woman agrees to sex, does it make the man feel any better?

Apart from wife-beating being a human right abuse and a crime it also has the potential to spread HIV/AIDS and other venereal diseases.

In most cases when one talks about wife-beating people imagine that it is a mere slap. A mere slap has the potential to cause the destruction of an eye. More importantly no one has capacity to pre-determine the kind of beating that may be meted on a woman in any given circumstance.

The anger of a spouse can lead to grievous harm and even murder! Wife-beating also has the potential to turn the victim into a violent person with the potential to avenge the torture any time.

Uganda has set the trend in the East African region for the empowerment of women significantly since the NRM came to power in 1986. The law is clear. Wife-beating is a crime prohibited by the Constitution, the Penal Code Act and the Domestic Violence Act. All people have a right to freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The fact that less men than women find wife-beating acceptable is cause to celebrate. However, more work needs to be done in order to make wife-beating totally unacceptable by religious and cultural leaders and the media.

Champions that promote and practise respect for the dignity of the person are needed at all levels of society--beginning with you.

Disaster Relief For Battered Women in Canada

image of book cover is from here

When I hear about disaster from CRAP-loaded media it is usually presented as something "natural", even while few disasters are naturally caused. This includes when fierce weather systems or deep Earth shifts contribute to the catastrophe. Nature wasn't responsible for Haiti being deforested, nor for unstable structures being built, nor for poverty being plentiful. Nature didn't destroy the wetlands off the coast of New Orleans that could have dissipated the force of a hurricane named Katrina. Nor did nature create a straight man-made path up Louisiana for a hurricane to travel uninterrupted, wreaking havoc across the interior of the state. Nature didn't make nuclear power plants in Japan either.

Here's something else nature didn't create: men's battery of women. Specifically, men who live with women and beat the shit out of them, terrorise them, threaten and control and dominate them for days, weeks, months, years, or decades as if they were powerless things to be subordinated sexually, emotionally, psychologically, and politically. That's not what women are, and any het man who believes that IS what "his" woman is for ought to pay a price. There's good news out of Canada: there's a new price to pay.

Let's hope this helps all Canadian women who live with or date physically, psychologically, politically, and sexually abusive and terroristic men, including women in systems of prostitution; impoverished and financially destitute women; Indigenous women raped or beaten on reservation land by non-Indigenous men; women who are immigrants married to immigrant men or to men who are not; and girls in the family who are similarly terrorised and abused.

Women systematically and chronically battered and terrorised by men don't really have a syndrome, in my view. They have acute survival skills honed in the most atrocious conditions of marriage (or some socially approved facsimile of it) to misogynist men. Those survival skills are grossly limited and punished because they exist in a context of patriarchal support and protection of men's violence against women--interpersonally enacted violence and institutionalised violence. That's how I view the condition of being brutalised by a tyrant. What women need is social permission to take out the patriarchal fuckers and male supremacist thugs and adult bullies who believe they have a right to beat and rape women (and children) they live with.

I firmly believe any man who threatens a woman's life and attempts to beat or rape her (or who does beat or rape her) spiritually abdicates his right to life. May any woman terrorised by one man or many men be lawfully, economically, socially, and culturally protected when using any means necessary to defend and protect herself. And let there be laws passed that forbid abusive husbands, boyfriends, and fathers from ever getting custody of children whose mother was beaten or raped, threatened and terrorised, by the grossly inhumane man who committed the crime.

Patriarchal laws and het men's peer-protected codes of conduct have ruled homes and courts long enough. At least hundreds of years too long, in fact. Every male supremacist violent act against women and girls and each and every political vestige of patriarchy needs to be wiped permanently from the Earth. ASAP. By any and all means necessary. Women who kill their male abusers, however they manage it, should be heralded socially and publicly, in media and in their cities, towns, and villages, as heroes. Speaking about and within North America, the offering of medals, honors, and "hero status" to mass murdering U.S. soldiers and generals who rape and slaughter people of color abroad is a disgusting display of racist-misogyny that is a core political practice in war, not a peripheral one.

Thank you to all the women--most of whom have never been honored or heralded as heroes, across the globe, who have been fighting for decades to liberate women from the atrocities endemic to institutionalised het marriage and other systems of subordination and lethal woman-hating harm.

What follows is cross-posted from Ms. online. Please click on the title below to link back.

Canada Offers “Duress” Defense for Battered Women

April 14, 2011 by Marla Kohlman

Nicole Ryan had endured more than 15 horrific years of domestic abuse when, in 2008, she plotted to have her husband killed. Unbeknownst to her, the hired “hit man” was an undercover police officer who quickly had Ryan charged with “counseling to commit murder”.

But last week, Ryan was acquitted in a Nova Scotia provincial court under the defense of duress–a new plea for abused women in Canada. The decision represents a beacon of hope for traumatized women who lash out under extreme violence.

The defense of duress provides a new standard against which to judge the so-called “criminal” actions of battered women. Previously, only women facing imminent threats of violence or death had a hope of pleading self-defense in Canadian courts. The same is true in the United States, where women must be able to prove their safety was immediately threatened by an abusive spouse in order to successfully argue self-defense. In light of Ryan’s case, Canadian judges can now account for rash, out-of-character actions taken against violent spouses by abused women who are “living in a state of terror.”

Said Chief Justice Michael MacDonald:

The rationale for the defense of duress is quite different. It involves excusing a wrongdoing in circumstances where the accused is left with no other alternative. Therefore, unlike self-defense, it is not the type of action society would support, let alone applaud.

From the time Nicole Ryan and her husband married in 1992, it was clear that Michael Ryan’s temper was out of control. He frequently pummeled his wife with his fists and threatened her with guns.

She was separated from her husband at the time she was arrested in 2008, but, she testified, her husband “was sexually assaulting her weekly, threatening her life and specifying where he would bury her.”

Given the circumstances, the court ruled, her actions were a result of normal human instincts of self-preservation.

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal has raised the bar for courts all over the world in adjudicating cases involving battered women who have sought to defend themselves against their attackers. Elizabeth Sheehy, a Canadian legal scholar, called the decision a “legal breakthrough.” She told The Globe and Mail,

This was a planned and deliberate murder because she had no other way out. It was her life and her child’s life versus his.

Lenore Walker, the foremost advocate for battered women and battered woman’s syndrome in the U.S., has argued that women like Ryan may turn to murder in self-defense as a result of “learned helplessness.” Walker argues that women in such violent relationships come to believe that any attempt to resist their batterers is doomed to failure. This is compounded by the batterer’s repeated threats to kill the woman if she leaves, and his insistence that she has no escape. Moreover, as in Ryan’s case, battered women’s actions are often taken in an effort to protect the lives of their children.

For abused women in the U.S. who find themselves before the court as Ryan did, the plea of self-defense will rarely succeed unless the woman kills her abuser while he’s abusing her—and even then the defense is not without risk. As in Canada, the defense is frequently rejected, and battered women who may not otherwise pose a threat to society can find themselves behind bars. The defense of duress may very well change that.

On Beliefs about Men's Complete Inhumanity: a Clarification and a Call to Arms

image of button is used with permission

image of button is used with permission

NOTE: This post has been revised somewhat on 27 April 2011.

I have had several occasions over my life to discuss with radical lesbian women, and many men across a white male supremacist political spectrum, the condition of men's humanity--or lack thereof. What is agreed upon is this: radical feminists, almost without exception, argue for men's humanity; argue that men are not naturally rapists, and that human males do not come into this world ready to enact horrific and terrifying acts against girls and women, as soon as they are old enough to do so.

It is only because these radical feminists critique men's social behavior that they get termed man-haters. What seems to go unnoticed is all the men who argue--if pressed--that men are natural-born rapists, and do just simply grow up, without social influence or peer pressure, to become what men themselves call "monsters", and what I'd more accurately term "terrorists", and woman-hating, male supremacist abusers of all sorts. I find this view held primarily by men, that men are born rapists, not only without merit, but historically and cross-culturally wrong.

About the terms hurled at women who don't believe males are rapist by nature: Men hate and abuse men a great deal, but will not, it appears to me, call one another man-haters or, in the newest parlance, misandrists. No matter how many men terrorise, assault, and kill each other, "misandrist" is a term men reserve for the ladies, not the--ahem--"gentlemen".

I know some gentle men. I know some men who have been interpersonally obnoxious, condescending, abusive, callous, and cruel to girls and women but who now see that their behavior was wrong, and endeavor to do better; and most of those men do better a great deal of the time. They are a minority of men, in my experience, and I've had occasion to meet and deal with a great many men in my life.

The vast majority of men don't engage with matters of "feminism" at all, even when they are literate and academically educated. They always appear to have more important things to do, like play video games, for example. Or discuss comic book or graphic novel superheros. Or drink alcohol or smoke weed. Or discuss sports or food or whatever they wish to discuss that doesn't lead them to stumble on the topic of what men do to women systematically that is horrendous, terrifying, and sexually and socially subordinating.

This matter of taking up men's political, moral, and ethical responsibility to get other men off women's backs seems to not register in the hearts and souls of most men, who I do believe are fully human, despite their unwillingness to lift one finger to assist women in the struggle to obtain sustainable liberation from men's political abuses and social and economic degradations.

What I'm realising is that the discussion of whether the vast majority men behave they way they do due to natural causes or socialisation is in some ways a huge waste of time. The fact is that most men do behave in anti-feminist ways, or in misogynistic ways, or in ways that encourage men--interpersonally, structurally, systematically, institutionally, and as a political class of human beings--to pretend they are not waging war against women and girls (and anyone deemed not manly enough, if male).

I believe men can and will stop this oppressive and horrendous behavior but something will have to happen first. No, it's not that men will need to learn to cry. Many men already know how to do that and it hasn't gotten us very far. What men will need is to become terrifyingly afraid of women as a class, and individual women interpersonally. I mean as afraid of women as any man is of the men they are most afraid of.

What may well need to happen is for it to become legal for women to take out their male abusers (and I don't mean on a date)--whether the abuser be a father-rapist, a husband-rapist, a boyfriend-batterer, or a predatory pimp or procurer. If it became legal--let's pretend, shall we?--for women to retaliate against male abusers who assault and terrorise women and girls, using any and all means necessary--I believe something would shift quite dramatically and radically: the power men have to hurt women without negative consequence to men as a class and to male supremacist power carried on, generation after generation, by interpersonal and institutional actions.

So I'd like to propose that it become legal for women to engage in armed struggle, and in every other form of self-defence known to humanity, if they so wish to do so. To engage in resistance and revolution against terroristic, incesting, molesting, raping, battering, pimping, procuring, trafficking, slaving men. And I believe males must work with accountability to feminists, to support anti-rape, anti-oppression, pro-liberation struggles, and to take out terroristic, normally sociopathic, routinely sadistic, and unrepentantly and serially abusive misogynist men (again, not on a date). I also believe that while women's self-defence against male abusers should be legally supported, the ending of patriarchy is not women's job. It is men's.

That's my proposal. Given what men get away with doing to girls and women by the hour and by the millions, it seems rather modest, don't you think?

To any man who thinks this post is "anti-man", what do you think about what men do to girls and women by the hour and by the millions that is terrifying and horrifying? What do you think an appropriate politically organised response to that might look like? And, if you think this post is anti-man, you didn't read it very carefully. Because no where do I say men cannot willfully and collectively stop the egregious and atrocious behaviors terroristic, sadistic, normal men engage in that other men call "natural" and "inevitable". That I call these men "normal" is to say there is nothing exceptional about them. They are not a few aberrant men. They are men who are celebrated, esteemed, and honored in patriarchal societies across the globe, sometimes because they have done such violence to women. Two words: Charlie Sheen. Two more: Mel Gibson. They are unusual in their level of fame; they are normal in their misogynist practices.

Dear Andrea... A letter to Andrea Dworkin on the sixth anniversary of her death

Dear Andrea,

Another year, another set of atrocities, which means--as you knew--actual people suffering and dying for no good reason at all, except because of men's greed, selfishness, and quest to rule and dominate everything on Earth, including the Earth.

In this past twelve months I see reasons for hope and reasons for despair. Usually it's only the latter.

The despair comes from a growing awareness of just how common rape is, and just how little men will do about it, other than to commit it, and protect it, legally and culturally, for other men to commit. What is clearer to me than ever was one piece of analysis of yours, and many of your contemporaries, that rape and control of women in heterosexual prostitution and in heterosexual marriage shows just how similar that system of misogynist exploitation and that institution of misogynist control are, in fact, not in theory. Both demonstrate that, to me, women exist for men, for men to have sex on and against, for men to use in whatever ways they wish to use other human beings, and for men to degrade and dominate, terrorise and traumatise.

What has also come into sharp focus for me this past year is how much in denial most people are, particularly and especially men. Men, it seems, are utterly incapable, as a group, of getting just how cruel and callous to women males are, routinely, regularly, normally, but never naturally or inevitably. I have seen such cruelty and callousness all my life in and from men--also in boys. So this shows that the forces of denial are strong; that even while I know what I know from personal, direct experience, and even while every woman I know has stories to tell of men's horrific behavior towards women, I can still drift away from the full horror of it if some of that pain is kept away from me.

It surely appears that defences manufactured by media and one's own psyche, determine how much we can know and feel about anything at all. If one isn't living in close proximity to war, for example, one gets to think war can be just. Allegedly wise men believe in this concept of "just war".

If one's female friends aren't being battered, raped, or trafficked, one gets to pretend those atrocities aren't so bad or so prevalent, or so whatever one wants to not know is true about them. The truth is the issue. And the truth was what you told. But because most of us, for many different reasons, need or wish to live in denial, with delusions about reality, people have targeted you as so many negative things rather than accept that what you said is true. To reject you as [whatever] is to put the focus on the messenger not the message, and thus functions to enable the defences and the denial, which on a larger social scale means the atrocities get to continue unchallenged and uninterrupted. To accept what you said is true would mean--quite possibly--having to feel something and do something about the misogynist atrocities you so thoroughly and painfully identified.

I have learned that heterosexual marriage--is not a realm of equality at all. And even while white gay men, especially, fight for the right to marry, they will not acknowledge that marriage, historically and presently, is the site of so much racist, anti-immigrant, heterosexist abuse, so much male supremacist tyranny, so much sexual assault by men against women, that one has to question why any oppressed person would want "in". I have gone back and forth here on my blog, due largely to persuasive conversations with friends, about whether or not to support what, in the media, is sexistly called "gay marriage". And the answer today and for the foreseeable future is that I do not. I don't support it any more than I support heterosexual marriage. I don't support it for a very simple reason: it supports practically unfathomably cruel violence against any heterosexually married women, and especially against particularly marginalised groups of women, such as immigrant women. There's nothing holy about this institution at all, as practiced globally. For far too many women it's hell on Earth.

Why there isn't more protest and organised challenge to marriage, to dissolving it, to ending it as a social institution that is about as romanticised and glorified as any patriarchal institution. The media constantly prop it up as wonderful, beautiful, cheerful, and good. Entertainment Tonight informs us of nightly of every celebrity marriage that is heterosexual, and the occasional lesbian or gay marriage--but those are few and far between. And the program, and many other entertainment shows, promote the news of every celebrity pregnancy too.

Marriage and motherhood: what women supposedly exist to partake in and organise their lives and identities around, according to men's misogynist media. The way these two institutions are supported, with violence both internally and externally, ought to call attention to just how much violation and exploitation each requires to exist at all. And if any woman who is famous speaks out about how they both can totally suck, how these two institutions both take too much from women, including their freedom, those women are demonised in and beyond the media. And if any woman wishes to partake in one and refuse the other, she too will be demonised. Whoopi Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Nadya Suleman have both been targeted for not doing what all women are expected to do: marry a man and fuck him and have "his" children.

Usually, the media wants to portray rape as something that one insane man or wild animalistic groups of males do to girls and women. Corporate media pretends this is how rape happens most of the time. But most of the time it happens to women who are thought to belong to one man: one father, boyfriend, husband, or pimp; or to many men: casual partners, serial boyfriends, or a gaggle of procurers of girls and women who are trapped in systems of prostitution--whether merely grossly exploited, or trafficked and enslaved. That's where rape happens most: at home and in apartments, hotels, and motels. The media makes those rapes invisible.

Why is that? Because to alert us all to the problem of rape as a problem of men's sexual behavior that men consider normal and natural, or, at least, inevitable, would be to implicate men in protecting an atrocity in a much more serious way than to only focus on gang-rapists and rape inside far less isolating and intimate systems of horror such as military warfare. Warfare is public. Prostitution and marriage are largely private "affairs", beyond the media lens which either celebrates or misrepresents them as victimless.

The atrocities of all of them are held secret by the abusers and the abused--for entirely different reasons. We know prostitutes and wives exist; we don't know what men do to each group of human beings behind closed doors. And we'd be horrified if we did; those of us who have experienced it know the horror and the trauma, and often we seek to forget about it as much as possible, until triggered back into those rooms.

The abusers don't want to be held accountable to their gross inhumanity against girls and women. The abused don't want to have to be assaulted all over again by media and men beyond the one who committed the rape he called "sex".

Add to this the particularly patriarchal protection of fathers--fathers who are often enough also boyfriends and husbands of abused children's abused mothers. And add to them the men in the lives of women with children who are not the fathers. What we see is such an alarming rate of incest, child molestation, and rape of girls that to even note that it is double that what happens to boys is only to illicit in the media and in society a response that goes like this: "I didn't know that many boys were being abused." The intentional or unintentional message is this: Fuck the girls. Literally.

The protection of fathers' patriarchal entitlements, power, and privileges to dominate, harass, terrorise, and systematically threaten girls and women is something that you'd only know about from women and girls, and the few boys who will speak out against their fathers' abuses, such as Derrick Jensen. The protection racket among men to ensure that fathers get to beat women and rape girls is far more ugly and vicious than I'd imagined, and is far more institutionalised in custom and criminal justice than I'd realised. It's so much worse than I thought. So many women and girls are being ruled and raped by men who are supposed to love them that it makes me wonder if men know what love it at all. And, in most cases, they sure didn't learn anything about love from their own fathers. Yet the protection of fatherhood as an institution of abuse and atrocity remains stronger than ever, globally--including in industrialised countries. In Japan, for example, men own their children and women who take them away are guilty of theft. Not of rescuing their children from abusive pricks, but of taking the man's property from him. It's not terribly different in many other G8 nations.

I think the part that gets forgotten, honestly, is how the systems all work together against women and girls. Because to be raped is one thing. That's enough trauma and terror. But to charge a man who raped you with rape is an entirely other trauma and form of terrorism--this time public and social, not private and personal.

I've always known, just from my own female family members and friends, that most girls and women do not report to "authorities" the fact of being assaulted by men or boys--ever. Most women I have known personally will likely take the assaults against them to their graves, never outing the perpetrators. I know from my own experience how simultaneously easy and difficult it is to keep traumatic memories locked away. Most of us, it seems, want to think about other things. And why wouldn't we?

What differentiated you from most people I've known, Andrea, is that you refused to not know. You refused to dissociate from the pain and horror of what you know happens to women and girls globally. And you refused to call it anything other than an atrocity. For that, you were--and are--either insulted or ignored. But that's not all. I honestly don't know how you endured all the threats and the terrorism.

I think of you often, Andrea. I usually ask two things: "What would Andrea do? And "How did Andrea do it?" (I find you to be a Jew of far greater insight and wisdom than what has been reported to be true about Jesus. And my readers might keep in mind here that I've only ever known Jesus to be a man, not a god.)

There's quite a personal and political cost to not ignoring and being silent about atrocities that are socially believed to be normal, inevitable occurrences that produce no harm at all. And generally most institutionalised and interperonalised atrocities are seen to exist for some greater good: "man's".

In the West and beyond it, the "greater good" is always the same: the maintenance of patriarchal control and abuse of girls and women. Increasingly there is an elite super-wealthy class who controls so much power institutionally, systemically, and organisationally that they must be challenged and taken down. For "the greatest good" is really only for them--for the few richest, generally whitest, most heterosexually active men.

One quarter of all wealth in the U.S. is now owned by the top 1% of the population. Imagine that. And the vast majority of all of the wealth is owned by the top few percent. What this means is that all economic policies and social policies are controlled by them and are crafted to make them ever richer--and fuck everyone else, a lot. Especially girls around the world who white het rich men travel to abuse, or import to enslave.

At the same time, poor whites and poor people of color are at greater risk of everything that isn't "good": lethal illness, lack of housing, AIDS, lack of health care, exposure to the most toxic pollutants, including radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, but far more than that. Poisons put in our plastics, in our food, and in our waterways. Dumped into our oceans and pushed up into the air.

What gives me hope is there is a new revolutionary spirit emerging--carrying your spirit and the spirit of so many radical feminist women, Indigenous, Black, Brown, Asian, and white women, so many activist women who have been in resistance for decades out of great necessity, like the women of RAWA. And because of those women, the truth is continuing to be told about those rich male fuckers and the other men who think they can rule every girl and woman and have the rest of us do nothing at all to stop them. Feminists are organising in places where, just a few years ago, there didn't seem to be any feminist resistance.

I predict that within the next ten years, through the teens of this century, we will see unprecedented revolution among many people, including women. And, this time, I hope the women win. And I hope the richest men pay dearly for what they do. And that men, across class, race, region, and age, also are held fully to account. They can become humane or they can die: the choice is theirs, as always.

I am thinking of you today, Andrea, as I do most days. Thank you for the honesty and inspiration of your words and work, and thank you for the example of your life lived in devotion to women and girls everywhere. I pray that you stay with me and guide my actions.

Love, Julian

What Peter Rothberg at The Nation forgot to tell you about International Women

image is from here

A problem for U.S. reporters and journalists is that they don't know how to understand the plight of women internationally if by international we mean women in the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds. What most U.S. writers want us to know is that it is very, very, very bad for those women over there. And that it is "infinitely better" for our women over here. But what is the relationship between what's happening to those women and what's happening to our women? And what is going on globally that isn't named below? Given the ways that various patriarchal systems of misogynist harm are globalised by the Western world, I'd say that we had better take responsibility for the crimes against women and girls globally that are our fault. And this means taking a hard look at what is happening to women and girls everywhere.

Why is there no mention of white U.S. men trafficking women and girls in the U.S.? Why aren't connections made between women and girls trafficked in the U.S. and women and girls trafficked internationally? Rape is a weapon men use against women. It is not a product of other conflicts. It is the defining feature of THE conflict of men's war against women. Why no mention of that war in those terms? When I say "THE conflict" I don't mean there's only one. I mean the one that the U.S. media refuses to name, is the war that men wage, as men, against women and girls because they are women and girls.

Around the world, in many places, but not all places, women and girls are sexxxualised, harassed, incested, molested, pimped, procured, beaten, raped, and enslaved. Around the world in many places, U.S. white het men travel to have unlawful sex with nine, eight, and seven year old girls and will not ever face one day in prison for doing so. In the U.S., white het men will rape one in four women, nationally, but one in three women among American Indians. At least 80% of the rapists of American Indian women are white men who do so knowing they will face no days in jail for committing such racist-misogynist atrocities.

Across the U.S., and elsewhere, men rape their daughters, step-daughters, the daughters of their girlfriends or wives, the daughters of neighbors, and the female friends of their daughters. Why is this not understood as part of the problem of men's war against girls and women? A percentage--who knows what percent--of those girls who are raped at home will run away, and on the streets waiting for them will be pimps and procurers, eager to season them to be prostitutes. This happens in many countries internationally.

Among that population of girls raped at home who are runaways, who are pimped and procured, a percentage--I don't know what percent--will show up in pornography videos and still images with their legs spread for het male viewers to consume as if her open legs didn't tell a story of rape that is on-going. Are men--all the many millions of normal het men who consume pornography, really so callous and inhumane as to not notice an atrocity when it is staring them in the face?

Among that population of girls and women in prostitution and pornography, some will be trafficked, bought and sold into slavery and sexual servitude. This happens to First, Second, Third, and Fourth World women.

What women also face is the patriarchal nature of capitalism and white supremacy, militarism and law, religious teachings and medical invasions. Across the globe, women who are good parents will lose their children to men who are batterers and rapists because the courtrooms where a percent of these women get to testify are told by their attorneys not to mention the violence they experienced by the childrens' fathers. And the judges and juries don't want to know either. They want, instead, to believe the men who beat and otherwise terrorise women and children domestically. And they do. And so women lose their children to rapists, batterers, and incest perpetrators. It happens often. We can leap around from the U.S. to the UK to Australia and see it happening. And in many other countries too.

Women of color, globally, face additional problems created by white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism: poverty, loss of life during childbirth, forced sterilisation, assault by U.S. and NATO military weapons and by U.S. male soldiers--who also systematically rape U.S. women soldiers. When will The Nation make the connections explicit among those systems and the above practices of gross violence, exploitation, and subordination of girls and women, by men?

Mr. Rothberg, the women of RAWA are not fighting for "gender rights". They have been fighting, militantly, since the 1970s, to end patriarchal atrocities: men's violent assaults against women and girls. There's quite a difference there in language and meaning, don't you think? Please start talking about patriarchal harms that men do to women, domestically, nationally, and internationally, in those terms. And don't forget to mention the region of origin, race, sexuality, and gender of the predators and perpetrators--particularly when they are U.S. white heterosexual men. Because that group of men, unlike all men of color and all gay men, are not stigmatised as dangerous predators.

The problem isn't "gender violence", Mr. Rothberg. It's MEN'S violence against human beings who are female, of all ages. It is not until the next to last paragraph that you mention the perpetrators' gender at all. Why do you keep hidden the fact that all of the atrocities you name are men's? White men's. Heterosexual men's.

You mention fashion parades as something women do to celebrate. But women also take up arms against men, Peter. And more women probably should. Because unless and until men start fearing being held immediately and directly accountable for the violence that men--including rich, white, heterosexual men--do to girls and women, unless men are terrified, collectively, of being shot to death, point blank, by any woman who attempts to rape, beat, pimp, or sell her, we likely won't see much change in the condition of women globally. And you can bet that any woman who kills more than one male predator will see the inside of a jail cell. But men rape hundreds and girls and see little to no time. Why do you think that is? And what is The Nation going to do about it?

Will your magazine support laws that make it not a crime for women to shoot to kill any man who is raping, beating, pimping, or selling her? Would you see such a law being more inhumane that all the rapes, beatings, pimpings, and murders of women men commit with impunity? If you would not support making women's self-defence when attacked or enslaved by a man not a crime, what solutions to patriarchal men's against women and girls, right here in this nation, do you propose?

image is from here

What follows is from *here*.

100 Years of International Women's Day

Peter Rothberg

March 8, 2011  

The world has been celebrating International Women’s Day since 1911 when it was established thanks to the efforts of activist Clara Zetkin. The idea was to create a global forum for celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women and provide a forum for women's issues to be raised, discussed and addressed. This video offers a nice capsule history of the occasion.

Today, the occasion is 100 years old. Yet, women around the world still face a phalanx of abuses ranging from wage inequality to femicide. The most urgent cases are those of women in war zones; seventy-five percent of people killed in war are women and children, and places like the Democratic Republic of Congo where tens of thousands of females have been terrorized by the widespread application of rape as a weapon, are downright horrific.

To help women living in the most blighted and war-torn countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sudan, Women for Women International have started the "Join Women on the Bridge” campaign, which will bring women from Rwanda and Congo together in peace on a bridge between their countries to demand an end to war and to demonstrate that women can build the bridges to peace and development.

In Guatemala, women also have it rough; more than 4,000 women and girls have been raped and murdered in the past decade. In response, Guatemalan-based Women Worker’s Committee, a sister organization of the international women’s human rights group Madre has organized neighborhood watch groups. Flashlights and whistles -- inexpensive asks -- are essential for this project.

In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, although no accurate statistics are available, almost 500 women have been said to have been tortured, raped, murdered, and dumped onto the streets since 1993. Groups of women have been demanding justice, yet despite international support, the majority of the cases are still “unresolved.” The “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” project, part of the civil organization Las Hormigas, is trying to raise awareness about gender violence and discrimination by supporting a female cooperative that promotes women’s rights while providing a safe space serving hot food.

The plight of women in Afghanistan has been well documented, as has the role of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) in fighting for gender rights since 1977. Yet the group still faces many obstacles, compounded by a lack of international support. Despite a struggle with finances, RAWA is helping female Afghan refugees in Pakistan by running schools, mobile health teams, and handicrafts workshops among other things.

And though conditions are infinitely better for women in the United States than the aforementioned nations, 1,181 women were murdered by their intimate partner last year; reproductive rights are still practically restricted through both state and federal legislation, and women earn just 78 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Annually on March 8 and throughout the month, thousands of events are held throughout the world to inspire women and celebrate achievements. A global web of rich and diverse local activity connects women from all around the world ranging from political rallies, business conferences, government activities and networking events through to local women's craft markets, theatric performances, fashion parades and more. Find an event near you and help spread the word.

Peter Rothberg

Associate Publisher, Special Projects

Peter Rothberg, the Nation's Associate Publisher for Special Projects, has been writing the Act Now blog covering the world of activism since 2003. His previous positions with The Nation  include publicity director, web editor, special projects director and intern. A former contributor to Air America radio's daily Nation Minute commentaries, Rothberg is also a former speech-writer for civil rights leader Julian Bond. A member of the Brooklyn Literary Council and the board of Living Liberally, Rothberg lives in Brooklyn, where he was born and raised.

A piece of writing about men and masculinity: "Fighting Dogs"

image is from here

This is a short piece of writing by my new friend, Miki, who is a very dear and smart bisexual male who lives in Spain and usually writes in Spanish. For the English readers/speakers coming to this blog--I'll go out on a limb and say that just might be a majority of y'all!!--I am glad to have this piece in English to post here.

I told Miki recently that this sort of image does NOTHING for me. I'm gay; I'm not interested in males who put lots of effort into making themselves look like steroid cases. I am disgusted by the media obsession with males-as-rough-and-tumble-fighters.Who have to murder someone to be considered heroic.

You may click on the title just below to link back to the source website. 

Fighting dogs

Posted by: mikiencolor on: August 9, 2009

This is a translation. Original post: http://mikiencolor.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/perros-de-pelea/

They want soldiers, not companions.

They want men, not humans.

Violent, rough, brutes, not lovers, manly men in a perpetual search for blood and submissive female to mount. Implacable to compete, violent to war, fierce to triumph and make proud.

Warriors and conquered is that they want, not citizens. Warriors to invade and subjugate. Sociopaths to execute without a second thought, dead from the waist up to do what needs to be done, not empathic beings with whom to share. Love is conquest, they say, which is consummated by invasion. Conquest, invasion, occupation.

Rough, harsh for working is how they want us, and productive. Disgusting, repugnant, vomitous, repulsive, that’s how they want us. Frightening, terrifying, not sweet, not fearful. Dangerously handsome they want us, not impotent and ugly, soldiers in reserve forever ready for a fight.

Warriors to war with other warriors they want, survivors to initiate future warriors, executioners to educate future executioners, an endless cycle of tyrants, experts in pain and cruelty, they want. Fighting dogs, that’s all they want. What shame gentleness causes them. What contempt they feel for tenderness. Fighting bulls, they want, not docile. Fierce bulls for the ring, bread and circus and unappealable insanity, that’s what they want.

Where are the objectors? Where are you? This is some hell.

Feminist Action Alert: Please Stand with Women in Afghanistan to oppose a new bill that would significantly control, imprison, and endanger abused women seeking safety and justice

photo of Afghan women is from here

The first article is from AsiaOne News, *here*. I have edited the first paragraph as it was, to me, exploitive. Everything else in this post is hyperlinked back to the original source. At the end is a link where you can show your support by signing a petition to block passage of the profoundly misogynist and dangerous bill.

Abused Afghan women fear for future of shelters

Sat, Feb 26, 2011
AFP KABUL - At a secret women's shelter in Kabul, a mother with her children [has fled her abusers--family members who assaulted her. She] explains her fears over Afghan government plans to take over the refuges.

The 28-year-old left her home in Laghman province, east Afghanistan, three months ago and now lives at the shelter, which keeps its windows whitewashed and curtains drawn so neighbours do not guess what it is.

"My husband wasn't a good person and all the time he was out and we didn't have any food. When I told my husband's father and his brother to bring food, they abused me," she told AFP while breastfeeding her youngest, aged six weeks.

She plucked up the courage to flee her home but now her father-in-law has followed her to Kabul to try and force her to come back, she says. "He came to the Ministry of Women's Affairs and said 'I want the children.' I'm very worried about this," she explains, speaking on condition of anonymity because of safety fears.

Her story highlights concerns among activists that plans, announced last week, for the women's ministry to take control all 14 of Afghanistan's women's shelters will make it easier for abusers to track down their victims.

The move has drawn criticism from the United States as well as rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Activists say government-run shelters are more likely to yield to pressure from families to hand back abused women than if they are run by independent NGOs, as is currently the case.

HRW has accused President Hamid Karzai's government of making the announcement under pressure from powerful conservative, religious elements in Afghan society.

"The government is increasingly dominated by hard-line conservatives who are hostile to the very idea of shelters since they allow women some autonomy from abusive husbands and family members," HRW's Afghanistan researcher Rachel Reid says.

Shafika Noori of NGO Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA) says the new rules would force women to appear before an official committee and face intimate forensic examinations before being admitted to shelters.

"When the women are with us, we can make them safe but when it belongs to the ministry, we think they will give back the women to those people (abusive families) and there will be a deal between the influential people and the ministry," she adds.

She and the 28-year-old rape victim are speaking at a HAWCA-run shelter which was forced to move a few days ago after a controversial national TV show threatened to broadcast the location of all safe houses.

The same show previously suggested that women's shelters acted as a front for prostitution.

In fact, most residents end up at shelters because they face domestic violence or being forced to get married while still children, Noori says.

Another resident, who did not know her age but said it was "less than 20", told of how she fled from war-torn Helmand province in southern Afghanistan because her brothers disapproved of her lover.

"I wanted to marry him but when I told my brothers, they didn't accept it and they beat me," she said, scars still visible on her arms.

The man bought her a mobile phone so they could stay in touch but her brothers heard about this, she added.

"When my older brother found out, he said: 'Now I don't want to beat her, I want to hang her tonight.'"

As the rest of the family ate dinner, she escaped to a nearby international military base. "I put on my brother's clothes and turban and left the house," she said.

Karzai insists the government does not plan to take control of all shelters, saying that only "one or two" were causing problems with corruption and "wastage."
But the US says it is "concerned" by the issue, while Amnesty calls the proposals a "terrible piece of legislation."

Women's activists in Afghanistan say the issue highlights how their work overall has become harder in recent years, despite efforts by the international community to encourage gender equality.

"There are some political issues behind this. It's not just safe houses, I think it's to close down the voice of women in Afghanistan," Noori says.

Another campaigner, speaking in a low voice on condition of anonymity during a meeting at a cafe, adds: "Every year it becomes more dangerous for us. The government is with dark-minded people, you can't be open any more."

*          *          *

Women for Afghan Women writes:

The government of Afghanistan has recently introduced a bill that wrests control of women’s shelters in Afghanistan from the local Afghan women’s NGOs that have founded and run them, and transfers that control to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA).  This bill could become the law of the land ANY DAY NOW.

If this bill becomes law:

Women and girls seeking shelter will be required to plead their case before an eight-member Government panel, including conservative members of the Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice.  This panel will determine whether a woman needs to be in a shelter or should be sent to jail or returned to her home (and her abuser).

Women will have to undergo “forensic” exams (virginity tests) to determine whether they have had sex and therefore committed adultery. The tests are medically invalid.

Once admitted to a shelter, women will be forbidden to leave. Their shelter will become their prison. If any family member comes to claim her, even her abuser, she will be handed over to that person, in most cases to be subjected to the harshest retribution for shaming the family.

Also see the NY Times and the Ms. Magazine Blog for more information.

And please, please take a minute or two to sign this petition:

Women for Afghan Women has a petition to save the women’s shelters.

Thanks to Cara at The Curvature for posting on this.

Feminist Resources: Protective Mothers Alliance: Working to Make Justice Real for Women and Children. Working to Hold Accountable Abuser Husband-Fathers and their Pro-Patriarchal Attorneys

image is from here

We must realise that courts are patriarchal spaces. Juries are people who, often enough, see the world through the lenses of patriarchs. Male supremacy is the law of most lands which means men rule and men are presumed to be truth-tellers unless proven otherwise. Male supremacist rule means women are perpetually seen as wh*res, b*tches, and unrepentant liars, unless or until, as a class, they can prove otherwise, to the satisfaction of men as a class.

In such a world, women who speak out against their husbands' or ex-husbands' abuses of them are targeted by the abusers' attorneys as unfit mothers because they endured abuse and because they are committing abuse--against the patriarchal perp-parent. They are painted in ugly portraits by misogynistic attorneys who make the case that such liars, such anti-man monsters should not be custodial parents. This is accomplished while the husbands, ex-husbands, and their attorneys lie through their terroristic teeth.

The few women who are able to get to a courtroom are encouraged to keep silent about men's private violence, his private predation, his private abuses, because it will reflect badly on HER and make her custody suit less likely to result any mother having sole or primary custody of her children. If courts see the mother as putting down the holy husband he gets full custody, including of children he emotionally, physically, and sexually assaults.

This is so common as to be normal. And it is a normal violation of any understanding of human rights. When men fight for "father's rights" or "men's rights" what they reveal is something they don't intend to reveal: they are not humane and they care not at all about human rights for oppressed people. They only care about preserving the rights patriarchal societies and its institutions give them, unjustly.

"Domestic violence" is not the problem. Patriarchal violence is. The social atrocity is men terrorising and abusing women and children globally. That some women might occasionally "strike back" doesn't mean "domestic violence goes both ways". And if there are women who yell at their husbands and hit them without leaving a bruise, that isn't "both ways" either, because most women learn that raising their voice to their husbands will result in them being beaten, raped, or killed. So the few women who do raise their voices to their terrorist husbands are doing so at great risk. What risk is there to husbands, globally, who raise their voices and their fists to their wives? Usually, none. There is usually no risk because it's a man's world where women have not "come a long way, baby".

image of U.S. 1970s print ad is from here

Ads like this one proliferated in the 1970s in the U.S. as a way of corporately co-opting the Women's Liberation Movement. Suddenly, "liberation" meant having access to "your own cigarette". (Cough.) Anyone who believes feminists of any color control advertising media are delusional. Women aren't in charge and never were. Men have ruled every economic, social, political, legal, medical, educational, and religious institution since those institutions, globally while not universally, since they came into existence. That some men think feminists have "gone too far" only means that for many men, the mere existence of feminist campaigns to end sexism and misogyny equals "going too far".

We must keep in mind that even within the G8 countries, there are some where homosexuality and transsexuality for men is allowed to exist, but lesbianism is not. Not that homosexuals and transsexuals have the same rights to be free of men's exploitation and abuse that heterosexual men have. But, at the very least, they get to exist. Did you know there are countries, industrialised, "developed" countries, where lesbianism isn't allowed and doesn't socially exist? Did you know there are countries which socially, tacitly permit men (who are heterosexually married to women) to have sex with other men on the side? Women who marry men cannot have sex with women at all, unless the husband demands it for his own entertainment. How "equal" does that sound to you? Did you know there are countries--developed, industrialised ones--where men's rape of women, if it happens inside a marriage, is not legally considered to be rape because it is her duty to fulfill his sexual needs, as he and the court and the government defines them?

We must keep in mind the conditions in which most women live: poverty, patriarchy, and predation. Men are at war against women, not with women. Men terrorise women and it is never called Terrorism by governments such as the U.S.'s. Why? What part of terrorism isn't happening to women by men? To those who answer "It isn't organised", I'll remind you that Men's Rights groups and Father's Rights groups are very well-organised indeed, and are usually run by white class-privileged men. They have influence in many countries. They are the gendered equivalent of White Rights and Aryan Rights groups--which are also all run by men, often men with less class privilege than the Men's Rights groups. This means, structurally and politically speaking, Men's Rights groups have more power than White Nationalist groups. Whether in the service of men who are white, or whites who are men, these organisations are well-networked and international. This means women of all colors are not free, baby.

All that follows is from Protective Mothers Alliance.

Please Listen to our latest BLOGTALKRADIO Show...click here

	Welcome to PROTECTIVE MOTHERS ALLIANCE INTERNATIONAL  Protective Mothers Alliance International (PMA) is an international organization co founded/codirected by Lundy Bancroft and Janice Levinson. The PMA family consists of protective mother-driven advocates working together as a tight team for change. PMA is working toward bringing about dramatic reform in family court for protective mothers and their children. PMA advocates for change through education, legislation reform, enforcement of current legislation, community and media outreach and other strategies that may be effective and beneficial. PMA supports the efforts of protective mothers in keeping themselves and their children safe from the abuse of a former partner, and in empowering these mothers to become advocates for themselves and others. Among the many common family law practices we work to stop are: Custody of children granted to men who abuse women; those who abuse/have abused children; those who are perpetrators of sexual abuse towards children; and the granting of unsupervised contact with children to abusers with no requirement that they overcome their abusiveness. Other issues include: Labeling protective mothers as parental alienators and punishing them for their appropriate protective efforts; using biased tests, and misusing psychological tests to support abusers; forcing protective moms to spend excessive amounts of money on prolonged, unnecessary litigation, and much more. PMA administrators, chapter leaders and members are working together as a tight team to change harmful practices that eliminate, or restrict loving, biological mothers from the lives of their children.
	Disclaimer: A note to all protective mothers and advocates who are interested in solidarity, teamwork and joining Protective Mothers Alliance International with the goal of helping us stop family court abuse. PMA International is an advocacy organization. We do not get involved in personal cases and cannot give out legal advice, as we are not attorneys. However, we may be able to give some referrals and guidance because of our personal experiences with family court. Due to the sensitive nature of the work that we do, PMA has a professional security team and a small group of attorney's who protect our organization and our protective mothers. Protective mothers and advocates interested in joining PMA or receiving some referrals and/or guidance from our staff, must undergo a screening process. Anyone who desires to join our many groups on facebook and other venues must also undergo a screening process. This is for the protection of our organization, children, mothers and advocates. For more information on this screening process and how you can help join us in our fight to stop family court abuse, please email us at lb.jlpma@gmail.com. Thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

http://protectivemothersalliance.org/index.html

NEW: Purple Dial Number for Domestic Violence in Japan! DV is no "Two-way street". It's women and children being run over repeatedly by men.

Yuka, right, and Democratic Party of Japan member Kumiko Hayashi, launch a support line for victims of domestic violence.
SANKEI

There is a new, and seemingly temporary, free domestic violence (men beating and controlling women and their children) hotline in Japan. I hope it becomes permanent. Two news stories about this appear below. I posted a comment, responding to the sexist-misogynist men's CRAP flowing freely online, *here*, at Japan Today.

With thanks to Yuka, Kumiko Hayashi, and all the other women working diligently to make safety and freedom for women in Japan, from men's violence and terrorism, more of a possibility. Just so you know, white men are known for flocking like demon birds to Japan and many other East and Southeast Asian nations to sexually abuse girls and women. And Japanese men have their own shameful history of sexually and physically abusing women too. My response is last in the list, as usual.

Before the article and comments at Japan Today, please see this, from Japan Times, dated Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011. Please click on the title to link back.

Multilanguage hotline opens for domestic violence victims 

By ALEX MARTINStaff writer 

The government opened a hotline Tuesday for victims of domestic violence, with counseling staff available for consultations in Japanese and six other languages. 

The Purple Dial — Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence Telephone Counseling, hosted by the Cabinet Office's Gender Equality Bureau, will be receiving calls toll free until March 27. The number is 0120-941-826. 

Phone calls from women are accepted around the clock, and men can use the service between 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. weekdays and from noon to 11 p.m. on weekends. 

Counseling in English, Chinese, Spanish, Korean, Tagalog and Thai is available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day of the week. 

A Cabinet Office representative said a recent poll indicated 10.8 percent of female respondents were victims of repeated physical or psychological abuse from their spouse, and that around 60 percent of such victims have never consulted others. The poll showed 7.3 percent of female respondents have been raped at least once in the past.

Next up, the article from Japan Today. You may click on the title to link back.

Yuka campaigns for victims of domestic violence 

Thursday 10th February, 01:00 AM JST
TOKYO — 

TV personality Yuka, 30, this week attended a PR event in Akasaka to raise awareness for “Purple Dial,” a 24-hour support line for victims of domestic violence. 

Joined by Democratic Party of Japan member Kumiko Hayashi, Yuka helped commemorate the establishment of the free consultation service by switching on the lights of what the organization dubbed the “Purple Tree.” 

As the thousands of lights twinkled gently, Yuka said: “Domestic violence can take many forms, including being verbally abused or having your emails read. If you are a victim, I’m sure you feel like you’re suffering alone, but you’re not. You can call for help.” 

The Purple Dial number is 0120 941 826. Free consultation is available until March 27.

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