What is Fair for Children of Abusive Men?

I will first critically examine the criterion at the base of all custody laws today, “What is in the best interests of the children?” I will the talk about children’s choice in these matters. Then I will examine the actual effects of wife-battering on children, and develop an alternative paradigm for custody based on those effects.

Manhood and Violence: The Deadliest Equation

by Michael Kimmel, PhD

In the days and months following the tragedy at Columbine, the nation stared at the pictures of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold trying to understand the unfathomable - how these two young boys could arm themselves to the teeth and open fire on their classmates and teachers.

The Myth of the "Battered Husband Syndrome

By Jack C. Straton, Ph.D.

The most recurrent backlash against women's safety is the myth that men are battered as often as women. Suzanne Steinmetz [1] created this myth with her 1977 study of 57 couples, in which four wives were seriously beaten but no husbands were beaten. By a convoluted thought process [2] she concluded that her finding of zero battered husbands implied that men just don't report abuse and therefore 250,000 American husbands [3] are battered each year by their wives[4], a figure that exploded to 12million in the subsequent media feeding frenzy [5].

Men have never before been shy in making their needs known, so it is peculiar that in 17 years, this supposedly huge contingent of "battered men" has never revealed itself in the flesh.

Roles of Men with Feminism and Feminist Theory

Can Men do Feminist Theory? 

There are perhaps as many definitions of feminism and feminist theory as there are people who declare that they are feminists. Ben Agger (1998) states that the major achievement of feminist theory is to make the politics of sex and gender central to understanding oppression. However, feminist theory is not only about understanding but also about action.