One of the most disgusting and callous things that feminist domestic violence advocates do – and they do it regularly – is to dismiss and minimise the abuse suffered by male victims. It is especially galling when they do this to a man who has already been through the ordeal of being told by police, friends, and society that he’s the wrong gender to be a victim of family violence. Worse again is when they do it right to his face in a public forum for all the world to see. These people wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing to a female victim but they apparently feel completely justified in doing it to a man; a perfect illustration of the empathy gap that exists in society.

This is exactly what was done to an audience member during the Monday 24th February, 2015 episode of the ABC’s Q&A. An extremely courageous man named Steve, who is a survivor of family violence, had the guts to stand up, tell his story, and pose the following question (paraphrased below):

With research showing that at least 1 in 3 victims of family violence are male, why is all of the funding, services and discussion focused solely on female victims and how can we raise awareness for male victims?

Given that Steve had to wait until the last five minutes of the show before they allowed him to ask his question – the only question that even mentioned male victims – it seemed to me to be a highly pertinent and important question and one that was well and truly worthy of discussion. However, true to form, even though feminists are always banging on about how men need to stop being so macho and seek help when they are victimised, Steve’s question was deftly sidestepped by the panel and the discussion was quickly returned to focus solely on female victims. Simon Santosha managed to achieve this feat in a record-breaking 18 seconds before passing the ball to Natasha Stott-Despoja who continued to run with the standard “woman good, man bad” narrative thus carefully avoiding Steve’s question completely.

Fantastic Job Simon! I thought you were supposed to be a men’s counsellor? How much psychological damage do you think you did to Steve by completely dodging his question about male victims and then immediately shifting the focus back to female victims and male perpetrators? What do you think Steve will be inclined to do next time he considers speaking up about the abuse he has suffered? What sort of message did you send to other abused men who saw the way that people like you and the rest of the panel treat men who speak out about the abuse they have suffered? Since you seem to have a tin ear when it comes to the pain and suffering of male victims, I’ll help you out and tell you exactly what sort of message you sent: you just told every male victim watching, in no uncertain terms, that their abuse simply doesn’t matter. You just told them that their pain is insignificant and that they should suck it up, walk it off, and keep their mouth shut because only female victims are really worthy of our concern and the only response they are worthy of is disdain. Not that Natasha Stott-Despoja did any better. At the mention of male victims, she seemed to be desperately concerned with convincing everyone that men are hardly ever the victims of family violence and that the feminist model – which insists without evidence that family violence is a gender issue – is the only valid perspective. This, despite the the enormous body of peer-reviewed data available that shows that near parity exists between male & female victims.

The only person on the entire panel that showed even a glimmer of compassion for Steve and the many other men in his position, was Rosie Batty who at least managed a sympathetic look and nod as Steve was asking his question. Of course she didn’t go so far as to actually say anything – no, that might have been construed as supportive to men and therefore anti-woman. Still, a sympathetic look is more than male victims can usually expect from the “Stop Violence Against Women” (and presumably nobody else) crowd.

As if all of that wasn’t bad enough, much of the audience, chocked full as it was with sour-faced, rebarbative middle-aged feminists with a massive chip on their shoulder, felt it necessary to add insult to injury, and simultaneously expose their complete and utter ignorance, by responding with a chorus of “That’s not true!”, “No way!”, and other assorted scoffing when Steve quoted the entirely accurate statistic that at least one in three Australian victims of family violence are male. I suppose it was just too much to expect from these egregious windbags for them to show Steve the same level of respect that he and the rest of us had extended to them and their appalling cronies while they spent close to an hour slandering our entire gender with half-truths, appeals to emotion, cherry picked factoids, and a series of carefully selected questions. Not only did these questions account for nearly 55 of the episode’s 60 minutes, they were largely a waste of time because they were basically just the same question worded slightly differently and asked five times in a row by five different feminists, that question essentially being:

How can we better protect the poor innocent women from those evil, evil men

Those of us that attended the show in the hopes of bringing attention to neglected male victims knew well before time that Q&A were probably going to be using the control they had over audience selection, question selection, panelists selection, moderation, and time constraints to push the standard feminist narrative on family violence. Nevertheless, Men’s Rights Sydney submitted the following question in the, perhaps naive, hope that it would be selected for the show:

The dominant narrative promoted by government and victim advocacy groups is that family violence is a gender issue and is almost entirely something that men inflict on women. However, in reality, there is an enormous body of research, over 1700 peer-reviewed studies in total, which clearly show that in most, if not all, western countries, male victims are almost as common as female victims. In fact, all the scientific evidence points towards family violence being generational rather than gendered. Isn’t the ideological obsession with this gendered explanation, which flies in the face of all the scientific evidence, getting in the way of addressing the problem, as well as disenfranchising male victims and providing cover for female perpetrators?

In the waiting area before the show began, quite a few of us congregated to chat and we soon discovered that no less than 4 of us had submitted questions along the same lines so we had some hope that, even if our particular question was rejected for one reason or another, that one of the other very similar questions would be selected. Of course, as anyone who watched the show knows, not a single one of them was. An extremely telling state of affairs IMHO.

The truth is that this show was not the open discussion on family violence that it was billed as but was simply yet another excuse to trot out the tired old feminist stereotype of men as violent oppressors and women as innocent helpless victims so that feminist-run victim advocacy groups can continue to justify their existence, and their funding. The entire show was simply propaganda designed to provide justification for their refusal to address the very real and widespread problem of violent women and the lack of support available to the men and children that they abuse. The reason for this is the same as ever, the truth poses a serious problem for feminist theory and calls into question their entire ideology. This is because, according to feminism, family violence is a manifestation of men seeking to assert their patriarchal dominance over women. However if, as the evidence shows, women are just as violent as men in domestic relationships, this entire theory – a foundation stone of feminist family violence victim advocacy – is called into question and the entire feminist house of cards starts to topple.

Thanks to the actions of Men’s Rights Activists, and those that support them, Feminism is already standing on some very shaky ground. People are increasingly starting to question their theories and are asking more and more often for them to supply some evidence to back up their claims so the last thing they can afford is to have some of the facts that contradict their ideology publicised on national TV. However, as desperate as these people are to maintain their grip on the public narrative, it is nevertheless waning fast. On a TV show like Q&A where they have total control over the entire process, these people can still manipulate the questions, the panelists, and the tweets displayed on screen, to engineer a false impression of public consensus but the Internet is a very different animal altogether and is arguably already more influential than old media. It is on the Internet that this battle will inevitably be fought and the Internet is a place where no single voice can control the narrative and bury the facts. The days of feminism having sole control over the narrative on family violence is already long gone and more and more people are realising that feminist “theories” are nothing more than dogma based on no solid evidentiary standard whatsoever. With opposition growing ever more rapidly every day, it’s only a matter of time now before a critical mass is reached and people start to reject their lies en masse.

In the mean time however, it’s up to those of us who already know the truth about family violence to support these neglected male victims and to continue to expose the ineffective ideological solutions of feminism while promoting any evidence-based solutions that are proposed. This is an issue that’s devastating the lives of far too many people for us to do anything else.