a devastating analysis of Card and
The of redistrihuting power from the ruling
Krueger's study. Berman analyzed ac-
tual payroll data, instead of responses
to a single telephone question, and
found that Card and Krueger had got
it wrong. In fact, Berman concludes,
"New Jersey's employment growth
lagged Pennsylvania's hy 5 percentage
points." This study reaffirms what
everyone already knows: when the
price of a good (in this case, lahor) is
The Politics of Violence Against Women
THE UNFAIR SEX?
In the fight against rape and domestic violence,
men are now presumed guilty.
WENDY McELROY
T
HE April 9 march on Wash-
ington to protest violence
against women was yet another
attempt to politicize the crimes of rape
and domestic assault. Boosted hy fresh
funding from last year's Omnihus
Crime Act, feminist advocacy groups
are pushing the images of women as
victims and men as heasts. Gloria
Steinem declares that "the most dan-
gerous situation for a woman is . . . [to
he with] a hushand or lover in the iso-
lation of their own home." A massive
hillhoard campaign proclaims: "One
woman is hattered every 15 seconds."
Upon appointing the head of the
Justice Department's new Violence
Against Women Office, President
Clinton declared that rape has in-
creased three times faster than other
crimes in the last decade. Yet accord-
ing to the latest National Crime Vic-
timization Survey, conducted hy the
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, sex-
ual assaults on women declined 20 per
cent from 1992 to 1993. And the same
survey that found that a woman is
heaten every 15 seconds also found
that a man is hattered every 14 sec-
Miss McElroy, a contributing editor to Lib-
erty, is the author of Freedom, Feminism,
and the State (Holmes and Meier) and XXX:
A Woman's Right to Pornography, forthcom- year as part of the Omnihus Crime
ing from St. Martin's.
74 NATIONAL REVIEW / M A Y 1, 1 9 9 5
raised, demand for it falls.
Berman analysis even quantifies the
effect: "Every 10 per cent increase in
the minimum wage decreased employ-
ment hy 2.7 per cent."
So the minimum wage turns out to
he one of our leading killers—a killer
of economic growth and economic op-
portunity among the young, the poor,
and the minority community. It's time
to stop it hefore it kills again. D ecution hut also civil suits for "the re-
onds. This research indicates that 54
per cent of all "severe" domestic vio-
lence is committed hy women. It's
strange that we rarely hear these sta-
tistics.
In the current climate of hysteria,
those who question the conventional
wisdom are denounced as enemies of
women. Radical feminists are using
the issues of domestic violence and
rape to create a new jurisprudence
that assesses guilt and imposes pun-
ishment hased on gender. In Feminism
Unmodified, University of Michigan
law professor Catharine MacKinnon
argues that "some of the same reasons
children are granted some specific
legal avenues of redress . . . also hold
true . . . for women." Lenore Walker,
director of the Domestic Violence Insti-
tute and the leading exponent of "hat-
tered woman syndrome," explains the
political underpinnings of violence
against women: "A feminist political
gender analysis has reframed the proh-
lem of violence against women as one
of misuse of power hy men who have
heen socialized into helieving they
have the right to control the women in
their lives, even through violent
means."
The Violence Against Women Act
(VAWA), which Congress approved last
Act, advances the radical-feminist goal
class (men) to the oppressed class
(women). VAWA defines "gender-moti-
vated crimes" as federal civil-rights vi-
olations, converting domestic violence
and rape into "hate crimes." The law
recognizes men and women as antago-
nistic classes to he governed hy differ-
ent standards of law.
VAWA allows not only criminal pros-
covery of compensatory and punitive
damages, injunctive and declaratory
relief, and such other relief as a court
may deem appropriate." Just as
"crimes motivated hy race" can he tried
under federal civil-rights statutes, so
too can "crimes motivated hy gender."
In effect, a man can he tried (and pun-
ished) twice for the same crime.
Furthermore, hy making rape a civil
offense as well as a crime, feminists
avoid the need to prove rape "heyond a
reasonahle douht." All a civil court re-
quires is "a preponderance of the evi-
dence."
The success of "hattered woman sjm-
drome" as a defense in murder cases
also illustrates how standards of jus-
tice have heen warped hy the politi-
cization of violence against women.
Traditionally, a plea of self-defense re-
quired imminent danger without the
possihility of escape. Today, courts are
acquitting women who kill ahusive
hushands in their sleep.
What the Research Shows
S
UCH deviations from tradition-
al legal standards are driven
largely hy the perception that do-
mestic violence is something that men
do to women. As we have seen, this is a
myth. The research cited ahove is far
from an isolated case. In 1975 and
1985, sociologists Murray A. Strauss
and Richard J. Gelles conducted what
may he the hest availahle studies of
family violence. They found that men
were as likely as women were to he vic-
tims of domestic violence (though
women are more likely to he seriously
injured). Indeed, in the decade hetween
the two studies, the rate of violence hy
men against women dropped, while the
rate of violence hy women against men
rose. To counter the charge of "gender
hias," Strauss reran the 1985 numhers
using only the responses of women—
and came up with the same results.
Other studies also indicate that men
(Continues on page 88)
 McELROY
(Continued from page 74)
are victims of violence more often than
women. In 1994, according to the
Justice Department, 55,5 per cent of
domestic murder victims were men.
Last July, the 13th World Congress of
Sociology reported that in 1992
American husbands assaulted wives at
a rate of 4,6 per cent, while wives as-
saulted husbands at a rate of 9,5 per
cent. The latest National Crime Vic-
timization Survey found that women
were 40 per cent less likely to be vic-
tims of violent crime than men.
Dogmatic attitudes have crippled
honest research into domestic violence.
In 1988 R, L, McNeely, a professor at
the University of Wisconsin's School of
Social Welfare, and a graduate stu-
dent, Gloria Robinson-Simpson, pub-
lished an article noting that men are
the victims of domestic violence about
half the time. According to the Wash-
ington Post, a women's organization
threatened to use its potent influence
in Washington to have McNeely's re-
search funding pulled. In 1978, when
Suzanne Steinmetz published an arti-
cle on the "battered husband syn-
drome," distressed feminists called
anonymously and threatened to hurt
her children.
Such zealots are aided by others who
unthinkingly accept propaganda as
fact. In October ("National Domestic
Violence Awareness Month") of 1994,
when members of Congress rushed to
express their support for battered
women, accuracy was lost in the stam-
pede. Representative Oiympia Snowe
(R., Me,) declared, "Domestic violence
, , , is the leading cause of injury to
women aged 15 to 44, according to re-
cent research by the Surgeon General
and the American Medical Associ-
ation." The study to which Repre-
sentative Snowe was alluding actually
found that violence in general was the
leading' cause of injury to women in a
single black West Philadelphia slum.
In only 12 per cent of the cases was
the perpetrator identified as the wo-
man's husband or lover. Repre-
sentative Eva Clayton (D,, N,C,)
claimed that "in one year more than
four thousand women have been killed
by their husband or partner," Imagine
how surprised the FBI must be: its
Uniform Crime Statistics place the
number somewhere between 1,200 and
1,400,
88 NATIONAL REVIEW / M A Y 1, 1 9 9 5
The FBI, of course, is not using the
expansive feminist definition of domes-
tic violence. In its 1994 "Fact Sheet,"
the San Francisco-based Family
Violence Prevention Fund describes
"domestic violence" as "the actual or
threatened physical, sexual, psycholog-
ical, or economic abuse of an individual
by someone with whom they have or
have had an intimate relationship,"
Feminists are also pushing a redefi-
nition of rape. In 1991 Canada passed
a "no means no" rape law, which re-
versed the burden of proof and nar-
rowed the definition of consent. Under
this law, sex is rape whenever a man
fails to "take reasonable steps" to make
sure he has the woman's consent. Even
if the woman yells "Yes!" repeatedly
during coitus, the sex act could be con-
sidered rape if she is in a "diminished
state"—say, drunk or on drugs.
Courts are coming dangerously close
to accepting the definition of rape of-
fered by Catharine MacKinnon: "Polit-
ically, I call it rape whenever a woman
has sex and feels violated." The new
feminist definition of rape reverses the
presumption of innocence. Tradition-
ally, a man accused of rape was consid-
ered innocent until lack of consent was
proved. Now the onus is on the man to
prove that the woman, in a sane and
sober state of mind, gave an explicit
"yes," And since sex is rarely preceded
by explicit consent, such proof is hard
to come by,
A man's sincere belief that he had
consent is no longer a defense, Susan
Estrich, a law professor at the Univer-
sity of Southern California, maintains
that women should be empowered "in
potentially consensual situations with
the weapon of a rape charge," Consent
can never be assumed, even in the
light of cooperation or a past history of
romance.
Even explicit consent may not be
enough. Dr, Andrea Parrot, a Cornell
University psychiatrist, defines a rape
victim as "anyone who is psychologi-
cally or physically pressured into sex-
ual contact," By this standard, a
woman who is persuaded to have sex-
ual intercourse is a rape victim.
In the rhetoric of radical feminists,
false rape accusations almost never
occur. The data say otherwise. A recent
article by Eugene J. Kanin in the
Archives of Sexual Behavior reported
on a study of rape allegations that had
been brought in a small community
over a nine-year period. Of 109 allega-
tions, 45 were officially declared false,
meaning the complainant later admit-
ted that no rape had occurred. i,
Rape allegations can have a disas-
trous impact on the accused man. Last
summer the New York Times reported
that a male student at Pomona College
had been denied his diploma because a
woman decided to denounce a sex act
that had occurred two years earlier.
She claimed rape based not on the use
or threat of force but on the lack of ex-
plicit consent.
This sort of injustice is the inevitable
consequence of treating men as a sepa-
rate and antagonistic class, rather
than as individuals who share the
same humanity as women. Men are
not monsters. They are our fathers,
brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers.
They should not be made to stand be-
fore a legal system that presumes their
guilt. Feminists must resist the temp-
tation to wield power as unjustly as
men have in the past, D
RODMAN
(Continued from page 42)
realism—and likewise our China pol-
icy. Foreign aid needs to be put on a
firmer grounding of strategic interest.
The U.S, role in UN peacekeeping
must be based on strategic judgment
and constitutional accountability. A
foreign policy motivated by the un-
ashamed defense of freedom will not
apologetically seek the blessing of the
UN for things we need to do in our own
interest, nor will it look to the UN for
guidance as to when and where we
should spill our blood and treasure.
Republicans shouldn't be anti-inter-
vention all the time, or pro-interven-
tion all the time. Tbey can be the
grown-ups, asking the tough questions
about our strategic interests and mili-
tary realities, so that we commit our-
selves only where it's important and
when we commit ourselves, we prevail.
This is hardly isolationism, as
President Clinton has lately charged.
On the contrary, this approach is syn-
onjrmous with a strategic view of the
world. The mushy multilateralism of
the Clinton Administration has meant
deference to others to the point of abdi-
cation—what Walter Lippmann once
called the "internationalism of the iso-
lationist," The Republican opportunity
is to rebuild domestic support for the
job that America must continue to do:
keeping the world safe for freedom. D