San Diego Men’s Center Helps Men – and Women too!
Trudy W. Schuett
Give a men’s issues program a little money and a place to work in, and what do you get?
Equal services for all comers. Of the first two people helped by SDMC’s new domestic violence program, one was a man, the other a woman. See, they don’t mess around with apportioning their services based on gender. A person in need – military or civilian – is a person in need, period. They don’t care about your chromosomes.
Here’s what Harry Crouch, the mover and shaker behind this program had to say in his recent newsletter:
“Friday, October 13, We provided our first emergency shelter for an abused man who was chased out of Los Angeles by members of a gang [with] which his abusive and threatening wife was somehow affiliated. On Monday, October 15 a residential women's facility psychologist referred to us a homeless young woman who recently lost her children through a divorce. As the story goes apparently both she and her Marine ex-husband were abusive. The abuse escalated after the husband was caught screwing around with another Marine -- a female. Even in DV-Central San Diego there is a dearth of facilities for single women who are abused. But, we now had a place for her to stay too, plus she'll get help with job search and basic life skill training. So will the man if he chooses, though his situation is very different.”
If you’re a federal employee who donates to United Way through the Combined Federal Campaign, please consider designating your donation for the San Diego Men’s Center. As you’re probably aware, San Diego is a big military town, and SDMC understands the needs of military people. Not just men, but all the human beings who protect our country.
On the other side of the country, the home office in Maine of the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men & Women, also provides equal services for everybody. They have provided aid for both men and women who were unable to get the help they need in their communities.
If we can fund and support these agencies, perhaps their egalitarian approach can provide some real answers and practical solutions to domestic violence. If you take away the politics and gender bias, what you have is a human problem that is quite simply, not addressed by the majority of the 2000+ services nationwide.
--|PW|--
I'm sure they're finding their way as they go.
--|PW|--
Read Insult-to-Injury: Rethinking Our Response to Intimate Abuse by Linda G. Mills. Mills was of predictably savaged by both right and left for her work, but was especially savaged by the so-called "feminist" (read: raging misandrist) set. Cathy Young and others have risen to her defense nobly, but sadly very few on either the right or the left are willing to look at this issue rationally. I've about convinced myself that the problem is genetic: no one can conceive of the abusive woman. Lefties are forever in thrall to the image of the Oppressive Male, and righties are forever in thrall to the image of the Female Who Must Be Protected. There seems to be no way out of the cycle. None of it will penetrate the dedicated partisan's soul.
The only thing that seems to shake people out of their complacency is to see their innocent son or brother falsly accused by a brutal child-beating woman. And even that doesn't seem to penetrate for most (even though women commit by far the vast majority of violent child abuse).
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.