One aspect related to false allegations is reciprocal violence. One party does physical violence to the other, and the other retaliates. On paper, retaliation may seem to be fair -- "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" as the Bible says -- and yet in domestic violence law an abused man is permitted no such right. In fact, there are laws on the books in many U.S. states which specifically exclude female violence from consideration, even when women are the initiators. These laws are called "primary aggressor" statutes, and they give police the authority (in some cases the mandate) to arrest and serve a restraining order to the party assumed to have the greatest capacity to do violence, regardless of who initiated a violent altercation.

California's primary aggressor law is one such example. From the California Penal Code, section 836(c)(3):

(3) In situations where mutual protective orders have been issued under Division 10 (commencing with Section 6200) of the Family Code, liability for arrest under this subdivision applies only to those persons who are reasonably believed to have been the primary aggressor. In those situations, prior to making an arrest under this subdivision, the peace officer shall make reasonable efforts to identify, and may arrest, the primary aggressor involved in the incident. The primary aggressor is the person determined to be the most significant, rather than the first, aggressor. In identifying the primary aggressor, an officer shall consider (A) the intent of the law to protect victims of domestic violence from continuing abuse, (B) the threats creating fear of physical injury, (C) the history of domestic violence between the persons involved, and (D) whether either person involved acted in self-defense.

Clearly, as the sex typically larger in stature, men are effectively prohibited under the law from using defensive violence to protect themselves from a woman's violent attacks. If this is the state of the law, does it not follow that a woman only needs to allege that she has been hit, threatened, or intimidated, in order to cause the target of her anger to be arrested?

If you can see the above video (YouTube version here), you'll notice that even when the man used retaliatory and equally severe violence, it was he who was attacked by an angry mob. In most cultures, sympathy is in short supply for men who retaliate against violent women. In such an environment, abused men are particularly vulnerable. Their only recourse is to flee; even an abused man calling law enforcement for help is likely to be named as the primary aggressor, and thus abused men have zero options beyond escape.

DontMakeHerMad.com advises men to leverage one of their few remaining rights under the law, that being a jury trial. If you have been charged with a crime -- and only if you've been charged -- that is the time when surveillance of your innocence in a particular event will prove useful. We encourage all of our male users to become familiar with surveillance equipment and techniques, as a method of minimizing legal assaults upon your liberty (as well as avoiding further physical assaults upon your person, when applicable). Surveillance should be used to exonerate the accused!

One footnote to the phenomenon of reciprocal violence:

According to a 2007 study by researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, in non-reciprocally violent relationships women are the initiators of violence over 70 percent of the time. This should put to bed the notion that women who initiate violence are doing so to "fight back" against an "environment" male intimidation. It's a feminist-inspired myth that is spun out of pure political dogma, as the following study by government researchers reveals.

Published in the American Journal of Public Health
May 2007, Vol 97, No. 5, pp. 941-947
"Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence"
Original URL: http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/97/5/941
Full study: http://www.dvstats.org/pdf/Reciprocal%20violence%20AJPH.pdf
Authors: Daniel J. Whitaker, PhD; Tadesse Haileyesus, MS; Monica Swahn, PhD; and Linda S. Saltzman, PhD

Labels: primary aggressor, reciprocal violence, surveillance

Here at DontMakeHerMad.com, we advocate the use of surveillance to expose false allegations of domestic abuse by women against men. This is not only to capture the absence of a man's abusiveness, but also to accurately portray the context in which a man may very well be constantly abused (emotionally or physically) by a woman. The reason why this is necessary is because of a prevailing attitude that doubts the veracity of a man's claims that he is being abused -- more specifically, doubts him when his word clashes with that of a woman.

It is with this in mind -- the tendency to accept a woman's word as true more often than a man's word -- that we highlight the following story. In this case, it is the word of an adult female teacher against the word of a child in her classroom. A 5-year-old boy, Gabriel Ross, had been complaining to his parents about how terribly he was being treated by his female teacher. The teacher denied any form of abuse, claimed she was being calm and professional to the boy, and suggested that the boy needed remedial counseling. To find out the truth, the boy's parents placed an audio recorder in the boy's pocket and sent him to school -- the same kind of extended play audio recorder that we recommend on this site. What the recording later revealed shocked the community.

Here is a video news story that includes a news anchor interviewing the parents, and playing excerpts of the recording:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4945581&page=1



In it, the teacher can be heard using the power of group shame, humiliating the boy in front of his classroom, calling him pathetic, telling him he is "done, period," calling him ignorant and self absorbed.

In an adult context, it is considered power and control -- even labeled as domestic abuse -- when an adult male humiliates and degrades his wife or partner within earshot of others. It is thus considered domestic abuse because he is considered powerful, controlling, and intimidating -- and she is considered helpless and powerless. We believe it's possible that, for adults, the sexes can be reversed in such a scenario (and research demonstrates it). But in this case, we have the powerful -- an adult (in a position of authority, no less) vs. a child (not only a child, but sensitive to the approval or scorn of his classmates). The notion that women who obtain social or authoritative power are not capable of emotional violence is clearly debunked in this case. What is worse is the sheer degree of the power differential between the teacher and the student:

• Group-based abuse: The teacher had the power to manipulate the class as a group, so that it would impose shame. She did so.


• Abuse of social authority: The teacher was in a position of authority, and used this authority as the leader of the class, and also used her professional standing to conceal her actions to the parents and the administration.


• Abuse of physical advantages: The teacher's size advantage over the child was also used to intimidate. Size advantage alone does not convey guilt (contrary to what feminists assert). But in this case, we can infer that the teacher abused her advantage in physical stature because of what is said in the above news interview between the news anchor and the parents. The parents claim that the teacher put her face right up to the boy's face, and berated him. This would be considered battering in a domestic context, and rightly ought to be considered child abuse in a scholastic context.

Feminists love to claim that women who do violence (including emotional violence) in the domestic sphere are only reacting to a context of male-imposed domination and intimidation. They justify laws that punish males more severely (in sentencing and also in arrest) because they think of female abusers as mere victims, lashing out at their oppressors. Such feminist ideologues would never dream that a woman can be abusive and intimidating on her own -- either in the domestic sphere or in a professional setting. Yet, here we have proof of it.

The lesson to be learned is this: an allegation by a male against a female can be deflected by a simple denial by the female of its truthfulness. Trying to determine the truth of female-on-male violence is frustrated when all we have to work with are words; the abuse suffered by males is then considered a case of "he said, she said" and dismissed as a squabble. This is not the case when the allegations of abuse are being made by females against males; law enforcement (and, in this context, professional authorities) are usually inclined to believe a female accuser without any further argument. It is because of this bias that DontMakeHerMad.com so strongly advocates the use of surveillance to reveal the truth.

We praise the parents of Gabriel Ross for their courage to expose the truth using surveillance. We urge anyone who is facing emotional or physical abuse to record it using the equipment we have identified. Finally, we urge victims of abuse to leave such abusive situations as soon as they have collected sufficient proof revealing just who the true aggressor really is.

Remember, retaliation with abuse against an abuser tends to backfire. Keep this point in mind: Don't Make Her Mad -- just record her abuse. Record it, and show the world the silent hell that males have been living in within our hyper-judgmental culture.

Labels: surveillance