'Since 2010, there has been a massive media campaign presented by what we survivors of false accusations refer to as “the victimhood industry”, that uses those words that Camilla parroted, “on average one woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK.”'
'The influence of the dogma has been incredibly pernicious in the field of strengthening attempts to police rape and sexual assault, to the point where seduction has been slowly criminalised.'
How our Queen consorts -
Two quotes by Camilla...from the BBC website last November:
'Camilla, the Queen Consort, has warned of a "global pandemic of violence against women" and called for an end to these "heinous crimes."'
She spoke at a Buckingham Palace event highlighting the threat of domestic abuse and violence against women.
'Survivors of domestic abuse need to be "listened to and believed", said the Queen Consort.'
And, a year before that:
'The Duchess of Cornwall has called for more urgent action to tackle sexual violence against women.'
She spoke of her shock at Sarah Everard's murder and warned "on average, one woman is killed by a man every three days" in the UK.
In a speech in London, Camilla said men also needed to be "on board" with tackling a culture of sexual violence.
And, she questioned whether people had become "indoctrinated into believing that violence against women is normal."
Leaving aside the statistic-free world of global trends, I focus on the UK where certain facts can be used to challenge this sort of dogma-laden campaigning speech.
I am not saying the Queen consort is factually wrong in what she says (but in part, she is) - more that it is wrong to repeat such a forlorn, misguided and partial narrative that ultimately helps to obscure the root causes of violence, and achieves very little but the opposite of uniting us in the proper human pursuit of harmony and justice.
If you were to go back through the decades you might notice a similar tone in public speeches by many public figures. Domestic violence and lack of action to tackle it was very much shouted about during my 1970-80s student years.
Since 2010, there has been a massive media campaign presented by what we survivors of false accusations refer to as “the victimhood industry”, that uses those words that Camilla parroted, “On average one woman is killed by a man every three days in the UK”.
You may have seen this statement, it has been published on average about once a week for the past few years.
You may have also noticed no one saying, by way of balance for victim identification: “...but twice as many men as women are murdered each year.”
If anyone does say this – they won't get any media coverage.
And, even more definitely, no one is saying: “...women and men are still teaching boys to be violent, perhaps we need to change this and then maybe domestic violence will fall more dramatically than it has done for 100 years.”
This brings me to the nub of my point – there seems to be a total lack of willingness to actually study the causes and effects of this violence. Domestic violence and murder is indeed a plague that needs to be stopped – but who is saying how we might study the real causes? Not Camilla or the victim industry.
Whether explicitly stated or not, all these speeches come across as a simple message: Men are perpetrators of violence, Women are their victims.
In the midst of this ocean of gender-based assumption, I should also throw in the statistic that in Cornwall, when (just pre-lockdown) recorded factual research was undertaken, more men were victims of domestic violence by women than the other way round.
(It seems to be forgotten easily, so please mark that micro-fact in the brain bank to help prevent further false assumptions as we move along).
All these Millennial gendered polemics on violence are linked to the habit, that so many have, to pontificate about “toxic masculinity”; the notion that says, in a very unsubtle way, for a man to be “Good” he cannot be masculine.
The lessons regarding entitlement, patriarchy, male power and associated history are not going to be learned by having the worst aspects of that history bluntly hammered into every reader's mind as if this idea will change our lives for the better.
What then are the causes of this violence?
What are the messages that a typical young boy experiences and hears as he grows from foetus to voting age?
And, what roles do both men and women play in turning an innocent child into an abuser?
People either don't know or have forgotten that when young men turned pacifically away from the call to the great war in 1914 -18 it was women who sought them out, planted white feathers on them, chanting 'coward!'
What type of toxic masculinity was that?
In the 1970s, Erin Pizzey set up the first women's refuge for those fleeing domestic violence.
Has society forcibly forgotten the truths she told about some women being addicted to the drama of violence, and about the need to have male workers in the refuge so that the children could learn what a good man was?
Have we forgotten how she was pilloried, “thrown out” of all good Feminist circles (in modern parlance, “cancelled”). Her crime? “Not condemning and banning all men”.
And, what are the lessons that women and girls are picking up today?
Are their role models those like celebrity victim Asia Argento, who purport to lead the #metoo movement by the use of lies and manipulation but are actually abusers themselves?
Violence is taught by men and women and learned by women and men.
Yes, the dominant gender group of perpetrators of extreme violence is men, but saying so repeatedly only helps to deny the more meaningful reality of the human, non-gendered nature of violence of all forms. After all, lesbian domestic violence runs at the same levels to that which occurs among heterosexual couples.
As late as the mid 1990s, when I was working as a community development officer in the Torfaen area of South Wales, I was prompted to set up a group I named “Men in Confidence”. Not just by the first man who came in to my shop to talk bravely about the physical assaults he had suffered from his wife, but by conversations with, and the involvement of, a worker at Torfaen Women's Aid, who told me that they received an average of two phone calls a week. These were from desperate men on the receiving end of domestic violence, who could not think where else to turn but to a women's support organisation. Two per week from a population of around 80,000 extrapolates roughly to 1,600 men per week, UK-wide, seeking help because their wives are battering them.
Fast forward to the current decade and ask if any UK Women's Aid group, today, would actively support male victims of domestic violence? I am fairly sure that even in Torfaen this would not happen.
"These are men so we should not be thinking of them as victims, no no, they are perpetrators.”
That is the narrative being perpetuated by Camilla, the Queen consort.
So, what is your reaction to being told that in Cornwall there are more female perpetrators of domestic violence against men than the other way round?
How do YOU respond to being informed that twice as many men are victims of murder than women, in the midst of a daily flow of facts about women being murdered at “such high rates”?
(Actually, the trend over the past 40 years - and 400 years - for all murders is downward).
Or, how about, being told that a majority of women dislike or despise (white feather) pacifist men and prefer those who behave in an aggressive (toxic) manner? Is it easier to deny rather than explore these facts and go back to the daily brainwash of men = bad, women = victims? In the media, social or otherwise, that is certainly what I see happen every single time the dogma is challenged.
Does all this debate I have put forward feel like it is misogynist, perhaps prompts further divide between men and women? Well it is not, as it really asks shall we continue to play the blame game on a gender basis?
I surely hope not.
For the more we fall into the black and white gender divides, the more all of us suffer from the ongoing malaise of quietly knowing that something is wrong and it is resulting in violence.
Psychologically, we need to wake up to violence and the smokescreens thrown at it. (Studies show that “NO SMOKING” signs actually prompt more cigarettes to be smoked).
This is the same aspect of psychology that knows that to make you think of an elephant I only have to say: “Don't think of an elephant.”
The problem I see with the modern day feminist dogma is that it actually promotes fear of violence, as well as avoiding tackling the violence itself, whilst making sure it is seen as “male” and “of the enemy...”
This cannot ever work if we are to have a peaceful loving society with men and women thriving together as they (always used to) do in Tahiti.
The influence of the dogma has been incredibly pernicious in the field of strengthening attempts to police rape and sexual assault, to the point where seduction has been slowly criminalised.
Of the 63,000 reports of rape made to the police in 2021, over 60% were lies. (Crime Survey gold standard statistics do NOT lie here).
Young men have been imprisoned on hearsay “evidence” for clumsy sexual approaches that hurt no one but massively offend the dogma merchants.
The mixed messages about women's sexual desires have become more extreme than ever, from easily accessed porn that implies many women like to be degraded and strangled, through to legislation that works on the basis that all women are non sexual beings and merely passive, yay or nay sayers to aggressive male sexual approaches.
The confusion engendered by these ridiculously polarised ideas about gender and sex actively harms even those who try and remain nuanced and sane in the face of it. Trans women (whose murder victim statistics are proportionally WAY worse than that of Cis women) are discarded by the feminist victim industry as “not real women, so therefore we are right to victimise them some more”.
If people are murdering those people whose existence they feel threatened by, why are so many busy amplifying the threat rather than trying to understand and diminish those feelings of fear and hatred?
Camilla, we have, indeed, been indoctrinated into believing violence is normal, but with a false understanding of it being a simple gender split.
What is so wrong about peace, love and understanding – for all genders?
By Patrick Graham
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