Autres abus, y compris abus lesbiens, dans les refuges pour femmes en crise conjugale :
http://www.fathers.ca/shelter_abuse_3.htmShelters Used In War On Men, Expert Claims
by Karen Unland
Journal Staff Writer
© Edmonton Journal, Canada, September 29, 1998
Reproduced under the Fair Use provisions of 17 USC Sec. 107 for noncommercial, educational use.
Women's shelters have become bunkers in a war against men, says a lecturer on family violence. Feminists have "hijacked the whole subject of domestic violence and made it their own," said Erin Pizzey, billed as the founder of the world's first refuge for battered women, in Chiswick, England in 1971. Men should be allowed to work in shelters to show abused women and children that not all men are violent, she said. "It's a human problem. It's not just a man problem," Pizzey told a news conference before joining a small protest Monday outside the Family Centre, a downtown counselling service. The protest and Pizzey's visit to Edmonton were organized by the Movement to Establish Real Gender Equality, an anti-feminist group founded by Ferrel Christensen, a University of Alberta philosophy professor.
Christensen is angry at the Family Centre for a pamphlet on family violence that he says promotes the idea that only men are abusive. "In five seconds, anyone can see that this is not fair literature," said Christensen, who has filed a complaint against the Family Centre with the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission. About a dozen men and women carried placards with such messages as "Stereotypes Hurt Everyone" and "Don't Fund Gender Bias." Officials from the Family Centre refused to comment.
Pizzey, who carried a sign reading "False Charges Are Also Abuse," said people have a responsibility to protest when social service organizations suggest that only men are violent. Most women who ended up at her shelter were "as violent as the men they left," she said. Reacting to abuse they suffered as children, these women often abuse their own children and tend to return again and again to dangerous relationships, she said. " It isn't a question of just saying it's only the man's fault. It's her responsibility as well," Pizzey said.
Arlene Chapman, provincial coordinator of the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters, said Pizzey's views are ludicrous. "She's obviously out of step with the sheltering movement...It was the feminist movement that started the shelters, and thank God," Chapman said. Last year, Alberta shelters housed 5,212 women and 6,232 children [ Note: According to shelter directors, 25% were not battered women, but women looking for hostels.].
Chapman said it is "absolutely preposterous" to suggest women and men are equally abusive. "There is a gross power imbalance between women and men," she said. An abused woman tends to go back to her partner at least three times before she leaves for good. But it's poverty, not a tendency to seek violent relationships, that sends the women back home, Chapman said of Pizzey: "This woman needs to be educated."
