Were you in an abusive relationship? Kansas says "TOO BAD!"

[GreenKirby]

Oh sure, there's not enough money for justice for abused women but GOD FORBID the rich don't get their tax cuts.

A bitter argument over money in Topeka, Kan., means that city and county authorities have neglected to prosecute or charge people suspected of domestic battery since Sept. 8.

In other words, the local justice system has spent a month effectively sending the message that misdemeanor domestic assault will go unpunished--at least for now.

The dispute started last month, when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut to his office in 2012 meant he would no longer be prosecuting any of the city's misdemeanors, effective immediately. Topeka city council members say they can't afford the estimated $800,000 yearly cost of prosecuting those misdemeanors and jailing offenders--and that they want the county to continue carrying out misdemeanor prosecutions as it has for the past 25 years. The county continues to insist that the jurisdiction for these prosecutions should shift to city prosecutors, but the Topeka City Council says that none of the city's five attorneys has any recent experience prosecuting domestic violence cases.

Next week, the council will vote on a measure that will strip domestic battery from a list of crimes that are illegal in the city. The vote is a tactical bid to force the county to take those cases on again.

City Council member Larry Wolgast told The Lookout he's opposed to that tactic, since there's no guarantee that the county will actually prosecute domestic battery cases just because the city decriminalizes the offense. But Wolgast also says the city cannot find the money to prosecute the cases themselves. "If we could just solve this by taking them over, that would be great to do. But the people aren't there," he said. He added that the most severe cases of domestic battery would be written up as felonies, which are still prosecuted by the county.

Karen Hiller, another City Council member, tells The Lookout that the county already has the resources needed to prosecute these kind of cases, while the city--which doesn't even have its own jail--would have to build from the ground up. Taylor would need an extra $200,000 to continue prosecuting them, while the city would have to spend nearly $1 million.

"How could we possibly do this on 10 minutes notice?" she said.

A domestic abuse survivor and activist, Claudine Dombrowski, told Fox4 that the city is sending the message that it's OK to beat your wife or husband.

"They need to invest in headstones, because these women are going to end up in cemeteries," Dombrowski told the station. She said she was hit with a crowbar in a domestic violence incident classified as a misdemeanor 16 years ago.

Wolgast says he's not sure when the jurisdictional dispute will end. When asked to address potential victims of domestic abuse whose perpetrators are not being prosecuted, he said: "We're working to solve the situation. I don't know what more I can say at this point."

According to James Anderson at the Topeka Police Department, city authorities have arrested 20 people on suspicion of misdemeanor domestic battery since Sept. 8. Anderson said he doesn't know how many were charged, but Shawnee County court data suggests that all of the suspected offenders were released and not charged. One man was arrested twice over the month, both times on suspected domestic battery, and released both times. Their cases will be brought up for prosecution again once the city and county resolve their dispute, according to Hiller.

In Kansas, domestic battery is defined as "intentionally or recklessly causing bodily harm by a family or household member against a family or household member," or intentionally physically contacting a family member in a "rude, insulting or angry manner." The third time someone is convicted of domestic battery within five years, the offense becomes a felony.

Oh sure. You go to jail to smoking weed but you get off scot free for basically ASSAULT

I can also see this spreading to other conservative states.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Huh, I always thought domestic abuse was felony. o____O

 

[-Jumpman-]

Sorry bro, can't prosecute, no moneyz.

 

[OmegaXXII]

So in other words....since the city budget is low, they rather have convincts roaming around than to punish them due to budget-cuts and such?

Sad!

 

[Strife]

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess.

 

[Evil Eye]

Except the desperate measures should be taken from other slices of the pie, not basic ****ing justice and public safety.

 

[Strife]

Where else should they be taken from? And in times like these everywhere gets a budget cut, I'd bet that law enforcement's budget wasn't hit as hard as some other branches of government were.

 

[frotaz37]

I wonder if you understand how ridiculous domestic abuse laws have become in this country...

If you're arguing with a girl, and you punch a wall during the argument, it's considered domestic abuse.
If you throw an object during an argument, it's domestic abuse.
If you break stuff during and argument, it's domestic abuse. Even if it's your stuff.
If she rushes you violently and you push her away, it's domestic abuse.
If she hits you and you hit her back, it's domestic abuse because she's a girl and you're a guy.

There literally does not have to be any evidence for police to arrest you for domestic abuse. A girl can lie and say you hit her, and you will go to jail because "she could be telling the truth and if they do nothing you might end up killing her" or some nonsense like that. You have OJ Simpson to thank for that. She could even just say "I feel like I'm in physical danger" and you will go to jail, even if all you were doing was yelling, or even slightly raising your voice.

I know there are often extreme cases where people get hurt really badly, but this line addresses that:

he added that the most severe cases of domestic battery would be written up as felonies, which are still prosecuted by the county.

So if you beat your wife, there's a good chance it will be a felony. Yeah it sucks that some extreme cases are labeled misdemeanors when they should be felonies, but to paint all people who have been charged with domestic abuse misdemeanors as violent psychopaths who will end up brutally beating their partner if they aren't dealt with by the justice system is totally inaccurate.

I support this. They may not be doing it for the right reasons, but they hardly ever do anything for the right reasons, so yeah.

 

[eighteenspikes]

I'm wonder if you understand how ridiculous domestic abuse laws have become in this country...

If you're arguing with a girl, and you punch a wall during the argument, it's considered domestic abuse.
If you throw an object during an argument, it's domestic abuse.
If you break stuff during and argument, it's domestic abuse. Even if it's your stuff.
If she rushes you violently and you push her away, it's domestic abuse.
If she hits you and you hit her back, it's domestic abuse because she's a girl and you're a guy.

There literally does not have to be any evidence for police to arrest you for domestic abuse. A girl can lie and say you hit her, and you will go to jail because "she could be telling the truth and if they do nothing you might end up killing her" or some nonsense like that. You have OJ Simpson to thank for that. She could even just say "I feel like I'm in physical danger" and you will go to jail, even if all you were doing was yelling, or even slightly raising your voice.

I know there are often extreme cases where people get hurt really badly, but this line addresses that:


So if you beat your wife, there's a good chance it will be a felony. Yeah it sucks that some extreme cases are labeled misdemeanors when they should be felonies, but to paint all people who have been charged with domestic abuse misdemeanors as violent psychopaths who will end up brutally beating their partner if they aren't dealt with by the justice system is totally inaccurate.

I support this. They may not be doing it for the right reasons, but they hardly ever do anything for the right reasons, so yeah.

Lol, I have to corroborate this as a victim of "she said, don't care what he said" justice. Not that the change in question is a step in the right direction, but it's true that the whole system is busted. In my case, she ended up submitting a handwritten letter admitting everything she said was a lie and to absolve me from the charges. I was told this was just "an example of the reconciliation phase of the cycle of abuse" and my punishment continued.

Don't date crazy chicks.

 

[frotaz37]

Lol, I have to corroborate this as a victim of "she said, don't care what he said" justice. Not that the change in question is a step in the right direction, but it's true that the whole system is busted. In my case, she ended up submitting a handwritten letter admitting everything she said was a lie and to absolve me from the charges. I was told this was just "an example of the reconciliation phase of the cycle of abuse" and my punishment continued.

lol yeah the reconciliation phase or honeymoon phase as some call it is one of the most ******** parts about the law. They're so willing to believe any random accusation but when the woman admits to lying/falsely implicating somebody, NO WAY.

Don't date crazy chicks.

In other words, don't date chicks

 

[Strife]

I wonder if you understand how ridiculous domestic abuse laws have become in this country...

If you're arguing with a girl, and you punch a wall during the argument, it's considered domestic abuse.
If you throw an object during an argument, it's domestic abuse.
If you break stuff during and argument, it's domestic abuse. Even if it's your stuff.
If she rushes you violently and you push her away, it's domestic abuse.
If she hits you and you hit her back, it's domestic abuse because she's a girl and you're a guy.

There literally does not have to be any evidence for police to arrest you for domestic abuse. A girl can lie and say you hit her, and you will go to jail because "she could be telling the truth and if they do nothing you might end up killing her" or some nonsense like that. You have OJ Simpson to thank for that. She could even just say "I feel like I'm in physical danger" and you will go to jail, even if all you were doing was yelling, or even slightly raising your voice.

I know there are often extreme cases where people get hurt really badly, but this line addresses that:


So if you beat your wife, there's a good chance it will be a felony. Yeah it sucks that some extreme cases are labeled misdemeanors when they should be felonies, but to paint all people who have been charged with domestic abuse misdemeanors as violent psychopaths who will end up brutally beating their partner if they aren't dealt with by the justice system is totally inaccurate.

I support this. They may not be doing it for the right reasons, but they hardly ever do anything for the right reasons, so yeah.

I agree domestic abuse laws are exaggerated and something needs to be done about it(a lot needs to be about sexism against men in this country actually), but I simply don't believe that some of what you're saying is true.

You aren't going to get arrested if she simply says ''I feel like I'm in physical danger'', she has to have some kinda legitimate cause to think so. And if she has no bruises and there is no sign of a struggle and you deny what she said I don't think you'll get arrested either. They'll probably ask you to come in for questioning but I don't think it's as bad as you're making it seem, but maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part.

But yeah, I guess this is a good policy. Things are never going to change if we keep us the must cater to women attitude and chivalry bull****.

 

[Evil Eye]

That kind of abuse of the system doesn't come from chivalry. Damn, the internet counter-feminism thing has gotten out of hand. And I say this as someone that rolls their eyes at extreme radical feminism.

This abuse of the system comes from overcorrection to past mistakes. Specifically, the exact cycle of abuse that is being cited. That was a thing before. It was a thing because the battered female's struggle had little exposure. No cops wanted to deal with it, no lawyers want to push it to the next level, society didn't want to hear about it. Patriarchy at its finest. So it escalated and escalated until abused women started taking on kill-or-be-killed mentalities. Dead women resulted in one-off investigations and, generally, pretty easy prosecutions. Appropriately enough, it was the bodies of dead men that pulled society's collective head out of its ***.

Unfortunately, there is a very real shift in power at hand now. And the majority of the public, I would say, are aware of this; as such, too many will be all too happy to abuse it for personal gain. I see no dishonesty in eighteenspikes's words, and I think it's a tragedy of the justice system what happened to him and what is happening to other men right now.

But let's cut the bull **** and not pretend this is delicate-flower-medievel-chivalry-strikes-again. Identify the problem as what it is, restore balance, profit.

God all my current events posts end up following a formula it seems.

 

[Mic_128]

Where else should they be taken from?

How about the elected officials damn salaries? It's amazing how when budget cuts come around there's almost always enough to keep their paycheck untouched, if not with their yearly raise.

 

[Deleted member]

How about the elected officials damn salaries? It's amazing how when budget cuts come around there's almost always enough to keep their paycheck untouched, if not with their yearly raise.

yeah... our system is busted as hell, i wouldn't expect that one any time soon. power is a little too adept at protecting itself.

 

[Evil Eye]

33% of people in my province are employed by the government, and we have constant infrastructure problems like basic allegedly-first-world-country **** like road repair and power lines. We apparently just re-elected the government that said there's nothing wrong with that.

My city, the only metropolitan one in my province, elected a mayor on a campaign to clean up bureaucracy and red tape. He then added bureaucracy and red tape, and got re-elected shortly thereafter. Twice. His opposition had nothing to say about red tape. The only one that wanted to fix things decided cranking taxes way up was the only way to do it.

But of course, nobody ever understands **** like this or cares, because our voting populace have all the care and intelligence of a bucket of mud. Yeah let's can domestic abuse prosecutions. No it's okay, we'll prosecute the severe ones. Y'know, like if you kick her head until it almost caves in. That's pretty severe. But hey, if Wayne Brady has to choke a *****, it's all good. Dumb ***** was just overreacting and had to be put in her place a little, you know? Plus she made that comment about my hygiene, toootally asking for it. Good law imo will re-elect.

 

[OmegaXXII]

How about the elected officials damn salaries? It's amazing how when budget cuts come around there's almost always enough to keep their paycheck untouched, if not with their yearly raise.

This is a prime example of corruption, whoever is in charge of the city's budget should rethink and consider all option when a budget shortfall is occuring, obviously they aren't.

This case is pathetic because it shows of bad the justice system can become if it isn't ran in a mannerly order which is ****** up.

 

[Falconv1.0]

Raising taxes on the rich doesn't equal justice being served when, you know, the government keeps finding new and exciting ways to keep ****ing up with the money already given to them. Oh not to mention the massive unemployment that WILL happen if income taxes are raised, and that totally doesn't lead to increased crime or anything right?

Sucks to live in Kansas!

Edit-Gah, forgot to mention my other point. What we really goddamn need is some SERIOUS reforms with our prison systems. I mean holy **** this country will put you in jail for so many nonviolent borderline victimless crimes, or at least crimes where it didn't exactly destroy a person, and then the people come out more violent than before since, you know, prison's a piece of ****.

 

[Shadic]

Where else should they be taken from? And in times like these everywhere gets a budget cut, I'd bet that law enforcement's budget wasn't hit as hard as some other branches of government were.

Drug offenses. Almost 25% of the people we've got sitting in jails right now are in there because of drug offenses. Source: Justice Policy Institute, "Substance Abuse Treatment and Public Safety," (Washington, DC: January 2008), p. 1.

Policy around it in general is absurd.

A study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that every dollar spent on drug treatment in the community yields over $18 in cost savings related to crime.23 In comparison, prisons only yield $.37 in public safety benefit per dollar spent. Releasing people to supervision and making treatment accessible is an effective way of reducing problematic drug use, reducing crime associated with drug use and reducing the number of people in prison

Source on page 8.

I'd rather lock up people beating on their spouses than people smoking pot.

I think it's an absurd lack of priorities, really.

 

[NTA]

This world needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. I'm waiting on the aliens to do something already. Someone has to be watching...

 

[UltiMario]

The best part is that misdemeanors are like by far the largest percentage of crime.

So most of the crime in the city is now going unpunished.

 

[Falconv1.0]

This world needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. I'm waiting on the aliens to do something already. Someone has to be watching...

There's no way they'd let you survive, just putting that out there.

 

[Glöwworm]

^ Where's your evidence?

 

[NTA]

There's no way they'd let you survive, just putting that out there.

We're all going down.

 

[Luigitoilet]

There's no way they'd let you survive, just putting that out there.

Stop posting just to be a ****.

 

[Claire Diviner]

The fact that domestic abuse is so easy to file, whether it actually happened or not, is one of several reasons why I'm in no hurry to be in any relationship. I've had my fair share of run ins with crazy, and sometime manipulative *****es, and frankly, I think I'd rather just have my me time.

Also, I seriously doubt the budget cuts and what not will ever affect political figures, seeing as they run this country, and I'll hazard a bet they're just too greedy to want to make such sacrifices such as cutting their paychecks or raises. Politics are always crooked.

 

[frotaz37]

Stop posting just to be a ****.

Oh the irony.

The fact that domestic abuse is so easy to file, whether it actually happened or not, is one of several reasons why I'm in no hurry to be in any relationship. I've had my fair share of run ins with crazy, and sometime manipulative *****es, and frankly, I think I'd rather just have my me time.

I agree with this strategy. Relationships for the most part seem like a terrible idea. If you don't end up in jail you'll end up with a child. OR BOTH T_T

 

[Luigitoilet]

Oh the irony.

Hey, at least I'm usually a **** in addition to actual discussion. I rarely have a post that is JUST insulting someone.

 

[Shadic]

Hey, at least I'm usually a **** in addition to actual discussion. I rarely have a post that is JUST insulting someone.

Didn't you ruin an entire thread by bringing up an entirely unrelated point, continuing to argue about it with shallow, utterly pointless posts just to eventually lock what you created?

 

[Luigitoilet]

You are not really going against my point. Look at all that fine posting and discussing I did in those posts!
also, reddit hosting childporn is not a completely unrelated topic to a thread about reddits.

oh and for the record, I closed that thread because there were people just taking shots at eachother, ...which is not something I initiated. but thanks for the credit anyways.

But, if you are really sour about it, go to forum support.

 

[Vinylic.]

Wow, what's going on in this world today.

First was Arizona taking immigrants back to their country.
And now Kansas is making domestic violence.

Just what more do we need to get the united states back to its feet.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Didn't you ruin an entire thread by bringing up an entirely unrelated point, continuing to argue about it with shallow, utterly pointless posts just to eventually lock what you created?

I don't mean to butt in, but this has nothing to do with the topic.

Wow, what's going on in this world today.

First was Arizona taking immigrants back to their country.
And now Kansas is making domestic violence.

Just what more do we need to get the united states back to its feet.

A better economy I would guess. At this rate, I'll predict the only way to fix the economy now is to have a World War III. Hell, World War II got the U.S. out of The Great Depression. Of course, WWIII could end up sending America back to the Dark Ages instead.

 

[Strife]

That kind of abuse of the system doesn't come from chivalry. Damn, the internet counter-feminism thing has gotten out of hand. And I say this as someone that rolls their eyes at extreme radical feminism.

This abuse of the system comes from overcorrection to past mistakes. Specifically, the exact cycle of abuse that is being cited. That was a thing before. It was a thing because the battered female's struggle had little exposure. No cops wanted to deal with it, no lawyers want to push it to the next level, society didn't want to hear about it. Patriarchy at its finest. So it escalated and escalated until abused women started taking on kill-or-be-killed mentalities. Dead women resulted in one-off investigations and, generally, pretty easy prosecutions. Appropriately enough, it was the bodies of dead men that pulled society's collective head out of its ***.

Unfortunately, there is a very real shift in power at hand now. And the majority of the public, I would say, are aware of this; as such, too many will be all too happy to abuse it for personal gain. I see no dishonesty in eighteenspikes's words, and I think it's a tragedy of the justice system what happened to him and what is happening to other men right now.

But let's cut the bull **** and not pretend this is delicate-flower-medievel-chivalry-strikes-again. Identify the problem as what it is, restore balance, profit.

God all my current events posts end up following a formula it seems.

Sorry I'm respondng to this so late, my personal computer broke and I've been busy/stressed.

You're wrong if you think that chivalry isn't a large part of the cause of the discrimination against men. It's basically an ideology which preaches that women should be treated with more regard than men. Someone tell me why ladies should be served or catered to before gentlemen? People disregard this as harmless but it's implanted into children's mentality since preschool(''girls before boys''), it's ******** and feel like the reason it's never talked about much is because men don't alike to admit(even I hate it) that: power is being shifted away from them, women's rights are impeaching on men's rights and we are now often the victims of discrimination.

Just a few things to keep in mind are that women win the overwhelming majority of child custody cases. Statistically not only are they almost always given a lighter sentence for the same crime committed by a man, but they are found not guilty over twice as much as men. Crimes such as domestic abuse and sexual harassment/assault when committed by women are often overlooked or ignored, and a whole bunch of other things which I'm too tired to name right now.

Granted the discrimination against men isn't quite the same as the discrimination against women used to be, as men are discriminated against usually because of problems stemming from our culture, and not instead problems stemming from problems with our government or laws. Since this is essentially an issue of culture I think it's important to call out chivalry for what it is, a ****ed up ideology. The notion that some people will think it rude if a man enters an elevator or a bus before a women is both ridiculous and insulting.

 

[GoldShadow]

You're wrong if you think that chivalry isn't a large part of the cause of the discrimination against men. It's basically an ideology which preaches that women should be treated with more regard than men. Someone tell me why ladies should be served or catered to before gentlemen? People disregard this as harmless but it's implanted into children's mentality since preschool(''girls before boys''), it's ******** and feel like the reason it's never talked about much is because men don't alike to admit(even I hate it) that: power is being shifted away from them, women's rights are impeaching on men's rights and we are now often the victims of discrimination.

Just a few things to keep in mind are that women win the overwhelming majority of child custody cases. Statistically not only are they almost always given a lighter sentence for the same crime committed by a man, but they are found not guilty over twice as much as men. Crimes such as domestic abuse and sexual harassment/assault when committed by women are often overlooked or ignored, and a whole bunch of other things which I'm too tired to name right now.

Granted the discrimination against men isn't quite the same as the discrimination against women used to be, as men are discriminated against usually because of problems stemming from our culture, and not instead problems stemming from problems with our government or laws. Since this is essentially an issue of culture I think it's important to call out chivalry for what it is, a ****ed up ideology. The notion that some people will think it rude if a man enters an elevator or a bus before a women is both ridiculous and insulting.

First of all, that's not quite what chivalry is. Chivalry is a relic from the middle ages with strong roots in Christianity and military knighthood. Chivalry is not the same as just being nice to women. It is probably one of the most misused terms around these days.

More importantly, it's entirely unrelated to the topic at hand. The reason crimes of abuse or sexual assault by women are less prosecuted than those by men is precisely because of what EE said earlier. It's an institutional bias that was brought about by overreactive laws. Generally speaking, domestic abuse is (and was) more commonly committed by men than by women. In the past, the laws (and the system) weren't very responsive to the domestic abuse of women. It was only when some battered women, left with no other recourse, eventually took it into their hands that the system took notice--because the system was now faced with murdered, abusive boyfriends/husbands.

It was sort of a wake up call for the system. So laws/changes were enacted that made it easier for women to have legal recourse for domestic abuse than it had been in the past. And that's where the institutional bias has stemmed from, a steady overreaction to spousal abuse problems (specifically, man on woman violence). What needs to happen now is that the institutional bias has to be corrected.


The stuff you're talking about, that there's a different societal standard for how men should treat women and how that's wrong, is valid (ie, I think a lot of people agree with you that there's no reason men should give women preferential treatment)... but it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

 

[Kason Birdman]

If you're arguing with a girl, and you punch a wall during the argument, it's considered domestic abuse.
If you throw an object during an argument, it's domestic abuse.
If you break stuff during and argument, it's domestic abuse. Even if it's your stuff.
If she rushes you violently and you push her away, it's domestic abuse.
If she hits you and you hit her back, it's domestic abuse because she's a girl and you're a guy.

lol this is so sad and true... im tired of this bs.

where I come from I know so many cases where the guy did nothing and the girl claims domestic abuse and gets all his **** the house everything. its total bull crap. the world is so damn sexist, and only because they're trying to not be sexist towards females. they have created a sick and twisted doube negative lol. and its really frigged up.

 

[El Nino]

Two examples of the system going the other way. My ex-coworker's niece was arrested for domestic abuse on her boyfriend. In his account of things, they were just play fighting, but they lived in an apartment, and the neighbors called the police, thinking they were fighting for real. The police got there and saw that the boyfriend had a mark on his neck, so they arrested her.

In a local murder case around here, the female suspect was mentioned in the news as having had a restraining order put against her by her ex-boyfriend (though she is suspected of killing someone else, not her ex-boyfriend).

I just wanted to point out that the same rules that are meant to protect women from abusive men can also work in reverse. Domestic violence laws are, generally, not gender specific. Last statistics I heard put domestic violence as affecting 1 in 4 (or 5?) women and 1 in 9 nine men in the U.S.

If you're a guy, and your girlfriend is trying to get physical with you, your best course of action is to leave. If she pushes you and you think that you're justified in punching her, you need to ask yourself whether or not you are seriously at risk of physical harm from this person, or if you're just mad. The former can be considered self-defense, but the latter is not.

And, as mentioned above, in extreme cases, you can call the cops on her.

(ie, I think a lot of people agree with you that there's no reason men should give women preferential treatment)

The historical reason for that (in case anyone cares about social/cultural evolution) is probably because back in pre-industrial times, infant mortality was extremely high, and women had to be given preferential treatment if a small hunter-gatherer clan wanted to survive into the next generation. You don't put your childbearers on the front lines of a war if the majority of your pregnancies fail and most children born die before their third year.

Now, Westernized, industrialized societies are not overtly concerned with infant mortality. However, in some more traditional societies, which are in the process of modernizing, women are taking on multiple roles, often expected to play the part of breadwinner, childbearer, and parent/domestic caretaker at the same time. This was/is definitely the case for my own mother. I see this transition as being more stressful on women and girls than on men. No matter what happens socially, biologically, women still bear children. But now, in modern societies, they are also expected to take on other responsibilities.

I remember a female coworker of mine still showing up at work well into her eighth month of pregnancy. She's this short little Malaysian lady, and she was waddling around a chemical lab with a gas mask on. That image messed with my head.

As for allegations of sexism against men being rampant in Western societies, I used to entertain than notion, but I want to know if anyone can think of any other case in which society as an institution favors women over men except in domestic violence or sexual harrassment laws. I really can't.

I do see problems with domestic violence laws and how they are implemented, but I see it more as a policy problem, not a battle of the sexes problem. The people who make the laws are politicians, but the people who have to enforce it are the police. They don't always communicated well with each other, and it takes time for problems to show up in enforcement and for that information to trickle over to lawyers and politicians. If a procedure is not well designed, if officers or social workers are not well trained, if there isn't enough funding for more thorough investigations, then a lot can go wrong.

 

[Evil Eye]

I feel kind of silly saying this now, but I didn't bring up that domestic abuse policies apply equally [in principle] to men as to women because I took it for granted that everybody would understand and be aware of that. Rereading... I'm not so sure. Silly EE. You mod these rooms, you should know better!

Strife your talk about chivalrous attitudes was, as Goldie said, completely irrelevant to the discussion. The depths of your misinformation actually astound me if you believe that the "women first" social quirks like holding a door open for a lady have more to do with the evolution of the related criminological and sociological trends. I gave you a timeline of facts, and you said "you're wrong" and proceeded to offer a social insight founded completely on your own opinion and speculation. Well, ****, man, I wish you told me how little I know about this subject area before I spent like eight grand on this degree I'm just finishing.

As a man myself I'm obviously not going to condemn my own sex to the depths of hell for the way society turned out, and as any open-minded sort tends to be, I try to look for cultural and developmental explanations of social behavior before I start playing a lazy blame game. But society ended up in a bad way for the womenfolk in pretty much every way they might intermingle with men, and so you have patriarchy. You wanna talk about legal privilege? Back in "the day" women would get tossed to the curb after a divorce with no car, no house, no kids, and no job skills because they've been keeping house for sixteen years.

Men used to get to beat all kinds of hell out of their wives, too, and when wives ended up dead, the police would investigate a homicide, not a social problem. When the shoe went on the other foot and husbands started dying, they began to appreciate that there was a problem. Feminist movements didn't hurt things, either. And it wasn't all willful ignorance on the part of the cops, either. Often-times the cycle of abuse thing (which was so thoroughly scoffed earlier, fair though that was to do in that one case alone) is very much a reality.

I'm a bouncer. Sometimes when couples get drunk they start to lash out at each other. Pull an abusive husband or boyfriend off a woman and you might have red fingernails lashing out for your eyeballs, much to your surprise. There's battered woman syndrome, and it's the reason police have an obligation to push forward with spousal battery investigations even when a battered spouse does not want to press charges or insists nothing is wrong. Props to Nino for providing an example with the gender roles reversed. Anecdotal evidence or not, it at least shows that you have some consistency with this activation of policy, and that it's not all about sex.

The fact of the matter is, unfortunate stories such as eighteenspikes's are not the norm. They are unfortunate, and they're certainly more common than they should be, but that does not make them the standard practice. What a lot of people forget is that when their knowledge of a subject comes from personal experience, telephone-game-gossip, or sensationalized news reports, you're not exactly getting reliable information. Personal experience will forever taint your view on related subjects, regardless of how common your experience actually was. Your cousin's uncle's brother-in-law may have had a rough divorce with a ballbuster of a biased judge, and the media maybe be reporting about, hell I don't know, some woman that concocted a crazy story to get her boyfriend incarcerated because she wanted to have the house to herself for a while and is cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

You hear stories likes this, but you never, ever hear the stories about everything going exactly as it ought to. Not unless you're really looking for it, which you don't -- not if you have a particular opinion you don't want to be colored away.

A good comparison is all the controversy that has sprung up over police officers using Tasers. People cite the news as evidence enough that something is institutionally wrong with this weapon and its deployment, but ask yourself this: Would a newspaper sell a lot of print with a headline like Man resists arrest; officer makes use of force; situation is defused without issue?

No. And that's the point. Something that goes off without a hitch and is entirely mundane is not a story. The men in your family don't pass stories from one household to another about how their friend Bob had a nice, clean divorce, still lives in the house, and maintains perfectly split custody with the kids. Newspapers don't sell headlines and evening news programs don't achieve ratings with slice of life stories that don't have some form of scandal.

Stories don't get told unless they at some level contain bull****.

Think on all that and ask yourself if you're really all that well-versed in divorce proceedings or spousal battery investigations. I bet you aren't.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Yeah, domestic violence claims can be made easier by women, and it does seem biased and unfair, but as stated before, domestic violence wasn't taken very seriously in earlier years, and as a result, women would get beaten, maimed, and even killed despite their cries for help. Maybe the institutional bias is a way to overcompensate for their lack of action during those earlier times. Whatever the case, as much as I dislike the bias, I can understand why it's there.

Also, it isn't just women either, men can just as easily file domestic violence and be treated with the same protection that women get. The thing is, you rarely hear of men being victims of domestic violence, even though it's obviously there.

 

[frotaz37]

I gave you a timeline of facts, and you said "you're wrong" and proceeded to offer a social insight founded completely on your own opinion and speculation.

You didn't give facts, you posted words on a forum. There is a big difference between the two. Stop condemning people for not accepting your statements as fact when there is absolutely no difference between what you're doing and what they are doing.

The fact of the matter is,

No, see. You're doing it again. Stop it.

Well, ****, man, I wish you told me how little I know about this subject area before I spent like eight grand on this degree I'm just finishing.

"I have a piece of paper that says I turned in my assignments on time, so what I say is more valid than what you say."

Hmm. No. Just no.

 

[Glöwworm]

"I have a piece of paper that says I turned in my assignments on time, so what I say is more valid than what you say."

Hmm. No. Just no.

"hello"

 

[Evil Eye]

You didn't give facts, you posted words on a forum. There is a big difference between the two. Stop condemning people for not accepting your statements as fact when there is absolutely no difference between what you're doing and what they are doing.

"Historically, domestic abuse of women has been inadequately addressed and prosecuted for various social reasons. In need of reform, "

"The Dallas Cowboys are a bad football team."

"Bush did 9/11."

"Medieval social practices influence present day policy-making more than the events of the last century, for some reason."

"Jews control the world's banks and are the reason poverty exists."

"Women just have to accuse you of being a space alien and then the government locks you up in Area 51, I heard it from my buddy's friend's cousin. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME, trust me."

"I am the world's greatest writer; I just haven't written anything yet."

"A woodchuck would chuck all the wood if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

"One plus one equals two."


Everything I just wrote consists of "words on a forum". And yet, the truth, objectivity, and credibility of each statement varies greatly. It's a simple matter to discern which statements are reasonable provided you have certain amount of relevant, unbiased knowledge on the topic at hand, which also varies.

No, see. You're doing it again. Stop it.

Ah, that's mature. Take not even a complete sentence out of context and throw an asinine little barb in there.

The burden of proof in an alarming hypothesis such as that eighteenspikes's story is not only common, but common enough that it is the norm in domestic battery investigations, falls to the person making it. There are no studies that suggest this to be the dominant trend, and only two things can explain that -- either the idea is completely preposterous, or sufficient studies to suggest as much either don't have enough exposure to be widely read and studied or (more likely) don't exist. As things stand, the complete sentence of what I said is indeed a fact, as far as facts exist outside of mathematics and scientific laws. If you would like to debase that position, you have to do it with more than a little bit of internet snark.

"I have a piece of paper that says I turned in my assignments on time, so what I say is more valid than what you say."

Ah, that classic strawman. And as infantile as they come. For future reference, this is only a valid snark point if the person is actually trying to leverage themself as some kind of all-encompassing renaissance genius for having one degree, or they majored in like, Studies or some equally useless/irrelevant ****.

My point was that I was being thrown an absurd, misogynist claim with nothing to back it up that ran counter to decades upon decades' worth of studies, much of which I have read or studied myself. Studies of, wait for it, facts.

Funny enough, I rarely turn in my assignments on time. However, my "piece of paper" applies to the study of criminology, and unlike many students I actually do my reading. Which means I have read numerous texts on the subjects of criminology and sociology -- with a little bit of urban development in there -- and an immeasurable number of studies, articles, and research papers. I've also written my share of the latter, which involves putting in more than a bit of research. You know what these things tend to include? Facts!

Aren't petty semantics are fun!

So, no. I am not automatically smarter, superior, more knowledgeable blah blah strawmanstrawman than someone else. However, it is a (teehee) fact that I know a whole hell of a lot more about these specific subjects that I have studied than people who have not studied them. And with what do these people fill in their views? The media, which I've addressed as inherently flawed for such study, and their own anecdotal experiences and network of information, which is statistically insignificant.

Here, go nuts.

Herstory of domestic violence - Normally I'd be cautious to trust the objectivity of an information bank that uses the word "herstory", but hey, it's a feminist issue, and it looks objective enough at a glance.

Cycle of abuse - It's wikipedia, but hey, it's plenty well-referenced.

Some actual spousal battery case studies, as uprooted by visits to their physicians or other medical personnel.