VAWA and Joe Biden’s Personal Anguish
The Associated Press recently reported that on Tuesday, September 29th women’s groups gathered at the home of Vice President Joe Biden to celebrate the 15th anniversary of The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), legislation authored by then Senator Biden aimed at ending violence against women.
The party also signaled an opening day of sorts, as during the month of October the calendar will host the 22nd annual Domestic Violence Awareness Month. October 1st is the Black Friday in the Domestic Violence version of the Christmas shopping season. Women’s advocates will be reminding us of the plight of women at the hands of men that has no end, politicians will be supportive, delivering bombastic speeches replete with whatever unscreened statistics are provided to them by their handlers, and most importantly, the money raised and momentum gained will serve proponents well as we head toward VAWA reauthorization in 2010.
In other words, it will be another 31 days of fundraising, fanaticism and fraudulence; another month in which America and the western world is misinformed on an epic scale, all in the name of perpetuating the myth that the ill effects of domestic violence is a “girls only” club and that draconian legislation is the only answer.
And each year at this time men’s rights activists increasingly struggle to offer up the facts against the tsunami of slanted statistics. Those facts are simple and unassailable. Women are as violent or more violent than men in relationships. Men severely under report being victims of violence in the home due to social shaming, lack of services and the propensity of police to arrest and incarcerate whatever male is in the home, regardless of who made the assault or called for help. And there is mounting evidence that women over (falsely) report due to incentives offered them by VAWA and family courts. Many illegal aliens have used provisions of VAWA to commit immigration fraud by falsely alleging domestic abuse.
The facts around domestic violence point to the unavoidable conclusion that VAWA is legislation rooted not only in sexism, but in an ill-conceived agenda that severs men from rights and recourse with the crushing legal efficacy of Dred Scott.
Individuals who follow these issues will see further dissection of the nuts and bolts of VAWA as the month progresses. But there is another area seldom explored that might possibly explain an actual motive for the legislation to begin with.
One might be pressed to wonder why, with 835,000 men a year being victimized by violent partners, would Joe Biden conjure up a mammoth piece of legislation that outright denies that reality? Why, after being trained with VAWA funding, do police arrest men almost exclusively in domestic disputes where many of those men are either acting in self defense, or are in fact the sole victims of the abuse?
The answer may be in Biden’s childhood, as he was himself a male victim of violence in the home.
According to Biden’s own words his sister regularly beat him in his childhood and adolescence. “And I have the bruises to prove it,” he said, at a senate hearing on violence against women, December 11, 1990. To make sure the audience knew this wasn’t a joke, he added, “I mean that sincerely. I am not exaggerating when I say that.”
As with any victim of abuse, even with the Vice President of the United States, it is imperative to consider the long lasting psychological impact, especially given how the abuse was delivered.
In Biden’s brief tell-all, he acknowledged that the beatings he received were condoned and sanctioned by his parents, and that he was prevented from defending himself; That he was literally, in fact, powerless to make the abuse stop.
“In my house,” he stated, “being raised with a sister and three brothers, there was an absolute. It was a nuclear sanction, if under any circumstances, for any reason -even self defense- you ever touched your sister, not figuratively, literally.”
“My sister, who is my best friend, my campaign manager, my confidante,” he continued, “grew up with absolute impunity in our household.”
In these disturbing revelations, Biden offers us a glimpse into a tragically dysfunctional and abusive family. The rules he describes are clear. His sister was granted license to terrorize and abuse him over a period of years while the family strong-armed him into the role of her designated punching bag. This was maintained under the threat of a “nuclear sanction” if he dared attempt to defend himself or stop the beatings.
One has to infer parental enabling and complicity in Joe Biden’s childhood tragedy, either through chosen indifference to what was happening, or by outright collusion in the abuse. Whatever the failings of his parents, it resulted in the systematic degradation of a defenseless child.
These are disclosures better suited for the therapists office than the senate floor.
And indeed some form of counseling for Biden might have gone a long way. It could have even prevented the wholesale abuses under the legislation Biden authored that more resembles a reenactment of his family dysfunction -women operating with impunity while men are held under threat- than a legitimate effort to address domestic violence, which all the evidence demonstrates it is not.
Consider what mental health professionals now say about the psychological consequences of repeated childhood abuse.
From the book, Traumatic Stress- The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body and Society, edited by Bessel A. van der Kolk, Alexander C. Macfarlane and Lars Weiseath, comes the following, well researched conclusion.
“Many traumatized people become involved in social situations that bear a striking similarity to the context in which they were first traumatized. Freud thought that the aim of such repetitions was to gain mastery, but clinical experience shows that this rarely happens; instead, repetition causes further suffering for the individual or for other people in their surroundings.”
That this phenomena could manifest itself in the monumentally larger scale of government and politics is not outside possibility, nor the speculation of historians and mental health practitioners.
Alice Miller, Ph.D., in her meticulously documented book, For Your Own Good, aptly describes how the autocratic (dysfunctional) nature of the turn of the century German family played a pivotal role in the occurrence of Nazi atrocities during the Hitler regime. She bolsters the point about Hitler personally in an article in which she wrote “The Fuhrer once told his secretary that during one of the regular beatings given to him by his father, he was able to stop crying, to feel nothing, even to count the thirty-two blows that were received”
It was part of what Miller called “The concealed concentration camp of childhood,” and she postulates the possibility that it was this element of Hitler’s upbringing that resulted in an individual so detached from human suffering that he could order the torture and death of millions without feeling anything.
Whether part or all of this applies to the actions of Vice President Biden is a matter of pure conjecture. But there are two things that are not in dispute. One, by his own words, Joe Biden was raised in an environment of systemic abuse, enforced by family dictates that eviscerated his personal safety, forcing him, under duress, to submit.
And two, Joe Biden grew up to author legislation that has the same net effect on millions of innocent men. Indeed, he does this with his primary abuser at his side, guiding his political success.
Any attempt to easily insert the word ‘coincidence’ here defies reason. So it may well be that with VAWA we are not fighting a plague of domestic violence but the simply and sadly the demons of Joe Biden’s abusive childhood.
And it boggles the mind to consider that the scars of his unfortunate youth will result not in lessons learned about real abuse, but only in more damage to many, many more innocent people.
Paul Elam is the Editor-in-Chief for Men’s News Daily and the publisher of A Voice for Men
Bio available at my website | More from Paul Elam
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October 1st, 2009 at 10:36 am
Damn dude. Could we see to it that Biden reads this article some how. I don’t know if a wall of associates surround him that filter what information he sees, but someone should try. If something clicks inside him, what a victory for the MRA movement it would be. Great article. Chilling really.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I’m going to offer an alternative thesis that seems much more straightforward to me, and more plausible.
Hitler and Biden were beaten as children because they were a psychopathic pain in the arse.
Their parents could not deal with them because they did not understand their pathology.
In frustration, they hit them in order to try to get their messages into their socio-pathic heads.
As children, they seemed to care for no-one, except for themselves.
They were defiant, unloving and uncontrollable.
This was down to their genes and their anatomy.
And they were hit out of anger and frustration by those who were exasperated with them.
Then, as adults, their lack of concern for others allowed them to kill innocents – in the case of Hitler – and to incarcerate them – in the case of Biden.
My piece, …
http://www.angryharry.com/esSomePeopleHavePersonalityDisorders.htm
… looks at this further.
MRas need always to be very sceptical indeed when it comes to the claim that dysfunctional, uncaring, abusive behaviour (especially by women) is the result of poor prior experiences – particular within the family.
Of course, poorly treated individuals can be severely harmed by their experiences, but, in my view, a closer look at genes will often suggest something very different.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
I’ll have to reflect on this one Harry. At first blush I don’t see it. Too much of what you are saying relies on suppositions not in evidence, e.g. Biden was beaten for his behavior and was unmanageable by his parents.
Plus it discounts the real possibility that things were like what Biden claims, just another home with a female figure empowered to inflict pain at will with no retaliation allowed. It is hard for me to imagine that Biden was so unmanageable, but somehow followed the edicts regarding hitting his sister.
I’ll give your piece a read, though. I am sure it is very thought provoking.
Paul
October 1st, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Years ago I visited an anger management group. My husband had plastered the house of the guy who ran the group and I was asked to pick up the money he had waiting for the job.
While I was waiting I picked up this book because I was interested in Hitler and the first page gave Hitler’s story.
It said his mother had a number of babies that either died in miscarriage or at the early months of birth. Then Hitler came along. It said his mother wouldn’t love him because she was expecting him to also die.
His family was very dysfunctional it said. His father complained about work going to Jews and other non Germans who had moved to Germany. And his mother even put him in the dog kennel it said.
I have listened to some of the worst criminal’s stories during my life and when I started reading men’ sites, I phoned up feminists I personally knew in the ranks to see what was going on for myself to make men complain the way they were. I was lucky that men were giving sites for statistics because I could repeat them and I stood my ground when they shamed me by asking, “Did you not raise your sons right?” You know, don’t question me like that.
But they heard me alright. In fact, they started letting their guard down with men and they came back to share with me that the men they put in prison who they went and visited out of shame wrote them letters and poems. They were real sad after they read what they had to say. The worse cases are never about some guy lashing out for control of a woman. It is always about a victim holding it all in until they are pushed far enough they explode.
Of course I was asked to complain about feminists to my friends since they are all the top bosses in the hierarchy but I don;t have time to save feminists from themselves. But I will anyhow. I just must finish what I started. It is just a trait I pick up somewhere in life. Good role models probably cursed me.
October 1st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
@Paul E
I don’t deny Biden’s claim about his sister being allowed to whack him around, but it does requires some twist of the imagination for this to be said to account for his (apparent) very positive attitude towards women as an adult.
Surely, he should hate women.
It makes far more sense to believe that he was a manipulative so-and-so who cared only about himself – and that his parents therefore felt that his sister was quite justified in hitting him. (Well, they must have felt this, mustn’t they?)
In other words, he hasn’t changed much from when he was a child; hence his total lack of concern for justice when it comes to men (VAWA), his pro-feminist stance, calculated to attract the female vote and, of course, his success as a politician.
Surely, someone who was regularly beaten by a female would have some concern for the plight of other males in similar circumstances?
Not Biden!
He obviously doesn’t care.
Now, if you look at websites wherein men have suffered serious abuse either as adults or as children, they tend to be concerned about other men and boys facing similar circumstances.
They don’t do the very opposite – and try to make the lives of such males even worse!
Biden does.
And so, in his particular case, I would bet quite a lot that he is not doing what he does (e.g. VAWA) as a result of his beatings, but that he is simply doing what he always did – i.e. manipulate others for self gain, regardless how unfair this might be on others (in this case, men).
And this is why he got beaten as a child.
The alternative is that his sister and his parents were all scumbags, and Biden was the innocent in all of this.
Now, let us think carefully about what energises, let us say, MRAs.
They are fairly angry with feminists, and with all their lies.
So, will we find that many active MRAs were, in fact, beaten by MALES when they were boys.
I don’t think so.
But, if your Biden theory is correct, then we should surely find this to be the case.
Furthermore, we should also find that men who have suffered abuse from women are prone to support feminism.
But this seems unlikely to be the case.
There are, of course, other possibilities offering pathways from abuse-by-sister to supporting anti-male laws, and they might turn out to be true.
However, in Biden’s case, one must notice that despite his very own experiences showing him, quite clearly, that females can be violent towards men, he is such a scumbag that he won’t lift a finger to help men who experience such abuse.
Once again, therefore, we arrive back at the conclusion that Biden is a deeply uncaring person.
And I would quite happily take over from where his sister left off.
LOL!
October 1st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
See:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/veepstakes/the-case-against-joe-biden.htm
Biden has a tendency for embellishment and tends to believe his own lies and fantasies. Especially about himself. He has been proven to be a plagiarist. He was a poor performer in school lacking in natural intelligence. And Joe loves Joe.
So-being rather un-intelligent, an embellisher, and a lover of self makes him qualified to be a U.S. Senator. He fits right in.
Now I’m not a Clinical Psychologist but I’m going with:
Malignant Narcissm.
Yea-he only cares about himself and does not care (or even has a capacity to understand) what harm his lies do to others as long as he benefits.
He was a punk and if I was his brother I would’ve whipped his punk ass too.
He’s a friggin’ A**hole.
October 1st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
This is an excellant opportunity for MRM to use this infomation on Joe Bidens upbring to our own benefit since he was so willing put all men back in the fields and on the chain gangs , so to speak !. As I see it, We (MRMs) haven’t had such a popular and well known perfect public posterboy-case of domestic violence against males from females in history..EVER ! In the arena of sibling rivilary and custodial care, small boys are often beaten unmercifully by an older sister, mom, aunt etc. This is often seen by the publc as a natural way of rearing children and easily known and seen by all as normal. This platform of truths are well known and are the well understood expectations of parents everywhere in this society.Few could or would dispute this dynamic as being wrong, oppressive and abusive to any boy.and such dynamics lend themselves as equally wrong when referring to the adult male/female relationship-dynamic. The difference is….if you try to use an ADULT-MALE to portray a “female-on-male domestic violence insident…you will get saddled with the percieved ” ADULT-MALE-SHAME FACTOR “, from the public and all of its implications and associations. THRU THE USE OF A BOYS CHILDHOOD , GROWN MALES ARE QUITE NATURALLY DISOLVED OF THIS “SHAME” BURDEN AND THE SAME STORY CAN BE TOLD TO AN AUDIANCE WHICH HAS NO DEMANDS OR EXPECTATIONS OF THE MALE-CHILD OR THE RESULTING MALE-ADULT…AS LONG AS THE STORY IS TOLD USING A BOYS CHILDHOOD THRU HIS ADULTHOOD..THRU THE USE OF THIS APPOACH AND DEPICTION, YOU’D ARRIVE AT ACCEPTANCE , EMPATHY , SYMPATHY , SORROW AND A CLEAR AND UNDERSTANDING AUDIANCE !…RATHER THAN A TEASEFUL AND ALEIGNATED CROWD.. (what more could you ask for in an audiance ? ) If I were ask to make an ad depicting domestic violence against males, I certainly wouldn’t miss a beat in using this angle to show of (slow gradual-chrono-depicted-slow-morphing footage ) a small frail terrified boy being beat by a larger older psychotic female. I would start my footage as a youngster and graduate him slowly to adulthood with visuals of bruises and cuts that would have accumulated from a toddler age thru his adulthood . These historical-visual abuses would NOT be allowed to disappear as he aged, though he would cronologically age . I would then remove the sister / mom figure from the footage and promptly replace her with Grooms-Bride and carry on with the abusive affairs as if nothing ever changed or happened in the roles of the females …I would show no changes the reception of abuses by the male..this is just one of many artistic and creative opportunities that’s to be had by those in a po$ition to make it and things happen…at this time..and at no other time , in recent history, has such a opportunity of a spledid example of an abused by female-on-male,.. of such an incrediably high position in office ever,.. presented them selves to us without request ! ! !…he is so public, so candid…so unabashedly raw and open to this nation…no…this world ! I think, OUR DIRECT CONNECTION, to this particular man, at this particular time, in his Exact particular Position,……… will….NEVER… EVER…again… PRESENT itself to the MRM STRUGGLE—- AGAIN ! ! ! He has publically admitted to being a victim of domestic child abuse from the angle of a heart tugging boy….AND from a MRM’s position and angle.! AS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE ADVERTISEMENTS GO…WITH FEMALE-ON-MALE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE….THE ONLY WAY TO ESCAPE THE PERCIEVED “SHAME” ON AN ADULT MALE WHO GETS THE ***LEGAL*** CRAP BEAT OUT OF HIM BY A FEMALE ” IS TO LINK ANY ADULT FEMALE-ON-MALE—VIOLENCE..TO ANY OF HIS VIOLENT CHILDHOOD EXPERENCES !..Any other approaches, will most likely get you laughed at, or teased, at best, currently. But if the story contains women or children ?…wwwell…That’s another story to be told with much more attentiveness and gravity..now isn’t it ! ? So !…there u have it !..& go forth…and become a famed director/producer, whatever..just draw positive attention to this issue, please !
October 1st, 2009 at 4:12 pm
@ Denis
lol, I’ll go with it too. It doesn’t rule out that Biden was abused as a child. In fact it may support it.
But let me make it clear. I didn’t write that in sympathy with him any more than Miller wrote on Hitler as a form of sympathy for him.
And like I said, in the end it is all conjecture. Except your reference to sociopathy. That I believe about Biden with no problem.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Harry, I gave you the courtesy of reading your 3 segments on personality disorders. But I still disagree with you. Genocentrism (the idea that it’s all in the genes) is the single tragedy of our time. This whole thing is a big topic, and I’m under time pressure on a project, so I have to be brief.
Culture and context come into play when the cultural fashion of victimhood sees women routinely blaming men. But what if that fashion is displaced by an understanding of a more interesting and more likely phenomenon… the oppression of women by women? I write about this in my book, Sanity’s Insanity, where I reference:
1) Rachel Simmons on the topic of relational aggression;
2) Phyllis Chesler on the way that women (with emphasis on women in the family) abuse women.
Just because “victims” typically accuse men of abuse, in accordance with fashion and the cultural dictates of our time, this does not necessarily mean that abuse has not taken place. Women often look to men as “saviours” to get them out of a rut of one kind or another, and if that expectation fails to resonate with experience, then hatred of men is one possible reaction to it, especially when it is fashionably encouraged.
Let me draw your attention to the importance of this notion of women oppressing women… again, a huge topic that branches into systems theory, semiotics, etc, so I don’t have time. I can email you stuff if you are interested. Women’s psychology is very much group-bound (hugely influenced by other women). E.g., Google “social proof” – it’s the idea that “if other women want it, then it’s gotta be good and I want it too.”
Genes. You’ve displayed a keen interest in science on your site, so you will realize that DNA is a molecule. It therefore follows that all the rules of nonlocality (quantum physics) should apply to DNA molecules. Genes are clearly important. But not in the sense that most people imagine, especially if we follow the implications of nonlocality. One implication is that genes are not a repository of “stored” information accumulated through the millennia. Rather, it seems likely that there is a “resonance” factor, which has implications for how we know and learn stuff that is beyond the scope of this email. The bottom line, though, “genes-as-information” for a brain-as-computer is nonsense.
Genocentrism fails on a lot of fronts. There are no axioms or epistemology to comply with, no framework that hangs together. In genocentrism all we have is a bandaid tacked on by nerds in lab-coats in the furtherance of their own academic agendas. We do not yet have a life science that is as compelling and robust as the physical science that began with Isaac Newton. Until such a time, the life sciences are up for grabs. This presents us with a huge opportunity, not a threat. We do not need to feel threatened by the lies of “victims”, or those who fail to identify who the real abuser is, or the fashion of misandry, or the psychobabble “professionals” who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
None of this absolves Biden from having to take responsibility for his actions. Indeed, because he can’t blame genes for the programming of his behaviour, there is a much more compelling argument… Biden is CHOOSING his actions.
October 1st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
“My sister, who is my best friend, my campaign manager, my confidante,” he continued, “grew up with absolute impunity in our household.”
no sane person would say that without pointing out that it isn’t good for anyone. If he is telling the truth and this really represents what he thinks is a reasonable family situation the guy is crazy. It doesn’t make any sense.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I don’t deny Biden’s claim about his sister being allowed to whack him around, but it does requires some twist of the imagination for this to be said to account for his (apparent) very positive attitude towards women as an adult.
Surely, he should hate women.
Not necessarily. In situations like that in which one person is placed above all others an abused children might come to believe that there is a valid reason for the abuse to occur. When I read Biden’s description of what happened, it sounds like he is fully aware that what his sister did was wrong and horrible, but it also sounds like he wants to maintain the structure he grew up with because that is what he learned. He might not hate women because he may feel that what happened to him was completely deserved. After all, the message he received was that there is never a reason, even self-defense, to hit a female. To hate women would force him to question what he may have come to believe, and rather than do that he simply projects his experience onto everyone else.
That said, while I disagree that Biden is necessarily an uncaring person, I do agree that his experience may have deadened his concern for male victims.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:12 pm
@Steve Jarosek
“Genocentrism (the idea that it’s all in the genes) is the single tragedy of our time.”
I never meant to suggest that genes are the only influences on our behaviour or on our values, emotions, attitudes.
Not at all.
Why would I bother running my website if I thought that it was “all in the genes”?
BUT!!!
When it comes to deficiencies in various brain systems, the notion that anatomical and genetic influences cannot be major and highly significant cannot be sustained at any level.
If you don’t have the wires, you cannot make the connections.
You can change the environment all you like, but you are not going to cure a lesion or an absence of parts by doing so.
Anyway. The point about my piece to which you refer was really only to make it clear that the therapy business cannot just continue to claim that it is somebody else’s fault whenever a woman behaves badly – because much evidence suggests that many of these women are inherently unable to care very much about hurting people.
Furthermore, these women are the best manipulators in the business.
That’s what happens when you don’t feel for people as you grow up.
You think all the time, “What the hell is going on? Why do people behave as they do?”
You don’t have the ‘feelings’ to inform you. So you are lost.
So you think that everyone must by lying, manipulating, and doing things that don’t make sense.
Why is my mother cuddling me? It doesn’t make sense. Oh well, I’ll smile and chuckle a lot. That will keep her happy.
And you have to learn how to use body language and voice in order to pretend you have the right feelings in order to ‘fit in’.
You don’t really love him. You don’t even know what it means. But you know that if you say that you love him, then you will be doing what is expected.
Such a person is like a blind man developing fantastic hearing skills to compensate for his blindness.
And so these people become masters at manipulation.
They are really quite fantastic. – with women, I imagine, being far more fantastic than the men.
And we are barely aware that such people exist.
But they do.
And that was really the main point of my piece.
I wasn’t saying, “It’s all in the genes”.
I was saying, “It is NOT all in the environment”.
There’s a difference!
October 1st, 2009 at 6:21 pm
@ Toy Soldier
I quite agree. For many people to face some of the garbage that hits them in the nuclear family it causes many to feel like they are betraying their loved ones by even entertaining criticisms of their abuses. The angst from that can fuel even more denial.
It is easy for me to imagine that since Bidens whole family seems to have been complicit in his abuse that he would have to view the lot of them as perpetrators in order to acknowledge what happened. For many, in order to avoid the dissonance involved with this, they “normalize” the behaviors in their minds and come to accept it as the natural state of affairs. This would also be quite fitting with Bidens actions regarding VAWA.
If VAWA is just, then his family was normal, not a group of abusers.
All speculation of course, and by no means an excuse for the man.
Whether his behavior is learned, genetic or just that of another sociopath in Washington, he is ultimately responsible for it.
October 1st, 2009 at 6:56 pm
@Harry:
“You can change the environment all you like, but you are not going to cure a lesion or an absence of parts by doing so.”
But the brain adapts to the environment. This is an important inference in Norman Doidge’s book, “The brain that changes itself” and also, the work of Gerald Edelman. I think it was Edelman that first introduced a kind of “neural Darwinism”, with the idea of a brain of neurons as being an ecosystem, not unlike a forest. It parallels what I’ve had published, comparing a brain as a colony of neurons to a city of people. Doidge has been more specific than Edelman in his suggestion that culture impacts on neural wiring.
Norman Doidge:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2360105.htm
http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html
I believe that the contributions of Edelman and Doidge have serious implications for how we are to regard psychology and behaviour. I don’t agree with a lot of their premises (they too keep alluding to genocentric ideas), but this does not mean that we cannot agree on the most important premise of all… that culture impacts on how our brains are “wired”.
Bottom line… there is an increasing appreciation of how plastic our brains are, and how they adapt with experience.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:12 pm
@Toy Soldier
Nicely put. And credible too.
But you kind of contradict yourself here …
“That said, while I disagree that Biden is necessarily an uncaring person, I do agree that his experience may have deadened his concern for male victims.”
… because you are saying that he does not care very much about men.
Does he feel the same about boys too, I wonder?
But, surely, there are a zillion reasons why men (and politicians in particular) feel no need to help men.
And zillions of men feel this way.
This is one of the main problems for the MM, isn’t it?
Getting men to care.
But they are not all psychopaths. LOL!
There are many reasons why men do not care about men – as per my recent MND piece.
But to become a SUCCESSFUL politician in America, you need to know damn well from where your power comes, and you need to keep this power rolling in.
And, for example, Joe Biden (unlike most men) knows full well that domestic violence is a two-way street. But he is doing nothing about it.
And, SURELY, this will MOST LIKELY be for POLITICAL reasons rather than anything else (such as his sister beating him up).
And if so, then I must quote my good self, …
“And so, in his particular case, I would bet quite a lot that he is not doing what he does (e.g. VAWA) as a result of his beatings, but that he is simply doing what he always did – i.e. manipulate others for self gain, regardless how unfair this might be on others (in this case, men).”
So, Yes, there could be many reasons why Biden and VAWA are linked.
But, surely, the most likely reason is self-gain and political support.
As such, my BEST GUESS about him is just as I described him earlier.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:18 pm
@Paul E
“It is easy for me to imagine that since Bidens whole family seems to have been complicit in his abuse that he would have to view the lot of them as perpetrators in order to acknowledge what happened.”
If all the family happily abused him then, surely, the most likely explanation is that they all felt that he was deserving of it.
i.e. they agreed with me.
LOL!
October 1st, 2009 at 7:20 pm
monitoresvers Says:
This is an excellant opportunity for MRM to use this infomation on Joe Bidens upbring to our own benefit since he was so willing put all men back in the fields and on the chain gangs , so to speak
This has been on the Shatterdmen for several years.
We also have Joe Bidden Issue Position: Women
http://shatterdmen.com/Bidden.htm
“What I’m most proud of in my entire career is the Violence Against
Women Act. It showed we can change people’s lives, but the change is
always one person at a time. There are many more laws and attitudes
that need changing so women are treated with equal opportunities at
work, in the classroom, and in our health care system.” Senator
Joe Biden
HELPING WOMEN TAKE CHARGE (1)
Now let’s see….when men are in charge…it is evil…but it will be OK for women to take charge?
In an attempt to educate those reading it, we do show that the VAWA was actually written by radical feminist.
although the feminist claim the VAWA is gender neutral, I urge you to read for yourself and decide for yourself if it is indeed gender neutral
Also please note who had a major part in writing this act:
Senator Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who once chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, first proposed the VAWA in 1990. The bill was a collaborative effort, with key roles played by Victoria Nourse, then Senate Judiciary Committee counsel, and Sally Goldfarb, then NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (NOW LDEF) staff attorney. A broad range of feminist groups offered input and support, and NOW LDEF’s Pat Reuss lent lobbying expertise.
Radical feminist wrote this act. Would not this be like asking the klu klux klan to write laws concerning racial relations?
I ask you to substitute the word “women” in any of this with Black, Asians, or any other group. Would it be fair? Would it be Just? Would it stand the test of the Equal protection clause of the
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
Amendment XIV
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
http://shatterdmen.com/VAWA%20too.htm
Remember….it is time for it to be reenacted soon and it will once again get worse than the one before it unless we start working to stop it now.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:28 pm
… and just to follow on from my previous point… if brains are as plastic as is suggested in the work of Doidge and Edelman, then it follows that the primary nurturer (usually mothers) play a particularly crucial role in providing the initial conditions to which a developing infant’s brain is particularly vulnerable. And hence the importance of factoring child abuse (in which women are the primary perpetrators) into psychology and the domestic violence industry. We now have the ammunition to counter feminidiocy with masculogicality (if you get my drift).
October 1st, 2009 at 7:50 pm
@Steve Jarosek
One minute you are telling me that the growing brain is “particularly vulnerable”, the next minute that it is very plastic.
I wish you’d make your mind up!
LOL!
The reason that I’m teasing you is that we can go around forever in circles on this one.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:07 pm
@Steve Jarosek
Hah!
I’ve just been told that by the word ‘plastic’ you meant that the brain was being moulded at an early age.
My apologies. I thought you meant that it was particularly resilient – as when, for example, parts of the brain take on new functions to compensate for lost ones.
So, Yes. I am sure that you are correct.
But I also have no doubt that people’s personalities are very largely affected by genes and anatomy prior to birth. Their various mental capacities – such as those required for empathy – also varying as a result of such factors.
Baby female chimps prefer dolls, baby boy chimps prefer toy trucks,
October 1st, 2009 at 11:25 pm
@ Harry: “I’ve just been told that by the word ‘plastic’ you meant that the brain was being moulded at an early age.”
… yes, I was wondering… you can be such a tease sometimes Harry!
@ Harry: “But I also have no doubt that people’s personalities are very largely affected by genes and anatomy prior to birth. Their various mental capacities – such as those required for empathy – also varying as a result of such factors.”
The unveiling of some of the secrets of the universe might well be contingent on how we deal with these sorts of classically geno-centric assumptions. The fact that feral children can think and behave as wolves and other animals, together with its corollary (that domesticated animals can think and behave as humans), would seem to suggest something quite different. There are indeed gender differences. The thing that brings it all together is the relationship between mind and body… how the brain “wires” itself is dependent on the sorts of “inputs” it receives from the body (e.g., male and female bodies with culturally-determined male and female experiences), hence the relationship between “wiring” and experience. For example, the brain of a duck with a duck’s body will be predisposed to being wired in a way very different to our own.
This site on feral children might provide a lead as to where I’m coming from:
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php
Think about it for a moment… how do you know that the transmission of behaviour, beliefs and thoughts cannot in fact be explained by mechanisms completely different to genes? The word “memes” (units of “imitation”) has dropped out of favour of late, but you will know what I mean… How do you isolate the effects of imitation passed down through families and generations, from genes? If we run with the memetics interpretation, then you will appreciate that imitation can have a huge impact both in human cultures and feral packs.
Obviously I’m putting things very simplistically for the sake of illustration. There is a considerable body of sophisticated theory behind what I’m getting at.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:49 am
@Steve Jarosek
Yes, I do take you point – but I cannot see how it can explain certain characteristics that clearly arise from somewhere prior to birth; e.g. autism, dyslexia, Down’s, colour blindness etc etc.
Now, even if you were to argue that such things are not to do with simple genes, but due to some other mechanisms, it still seems to me that we have to reach the conclusion that some characteristics (or, rather, their precursors) are firmly put in place prior to birth and, further, that they are mightily difficult to change through socialisation techniques.
WRT the specific area of the absence of empathy and emotional connectedness, my own experience with many families suggests that something prior to birth (genes?) is having a huge influence.
For example, some babies are very cuddly from Day One.
Others seem to have no interest in cuddles from Day One.
And, within a few families, this can vary quite substantially.
But the point is that when you monitor the development of these babies, their future pathways seem consistent with what you saw on Day One – regardless of how much effort you put into trying to change things.
Furthermore, you often (not mostly) see cuddly children with dyslexia having siblings who have something like Aspergers (a bit “autistic”).
The children within the family seem to get one or the other.
I can see no other explanation except something like genes.
And so my position WRT this particular thread is not to suggest that the emotional systems of youngsters cannot be affected by learning and the environment, but that, for some, there are certain deficiencies that simply cannot be remedied by socialisation.
You will never cure a dyslexic child. Sure, they can learn how to compensate for their handicap and develop strategies to get round their hurdles; but their deficiencies tend to remain.
And WRT some people not having the facility to experience certain emotions and a connectedness to others, I do not have any doubt that they exist!
These people do have feelings and emotions, in the sense that they can feel sad, happy, sexy, excited, scared etc etc but they just do not ‘connect’ to others. They regard them a bit like we might regard objects.
And so, for example, imagine two sexy women – one real, and one a robot (without consciousness) – but identical in every other way as far as you are concerned.
QUESTION: Would it make any difference to you which was which if, perchance, you were offered the choice of a sexy evening with one of them, or marriage?
If you answer, Yes, it would make a difference, then you have something that some people don’t have.
LOL!
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 am
While VAWA is written in gender-neutral language, it’s facially discriminatory as schools for “colored” were for African Americans.
But what is also odd that according to this article women in power tend to abuse youngsters below them
Is the law so convoluted that a 17 years old male serving time for sex offense, after he escapes with 26 old female counselor and has sex with her, she is charged having sex with a minor.
Similarly how can military approach children under 18 years old and try to recruit them to kill. If childre under 18 are too young to have sex and under 21 to smoke in many states, they are too youg for “military molesters” who should be charged and if convicted required to register. Link, copyright Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bal-md.co.escape02oct02,0,4202689.story
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
So Paul, what can be done to get Joe Biden in touch with his damaged inner child and stop the madness of abuse,torture and death that he’s inflicting on innocent men all across America?
Are American men stuck under the jack boot of this domestic violence Hitler, ever more to suffer the atrocities that come out of the Violence Against Women Act?
When will people realize that VAWA is a systematic, feminazi “final solution” to cruelly deal torture, abuse, and yes, death on the men of America and the world?
What will be the final cost before the insanity of Joe Biden’s feminazi “final solution” is stopped for ever?
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
@ Ray
As always, I think the answer goes back to men collectively. As much as I agree with you about Biden, men are getting dealt this crap because men don’t even react to it except to comply and endorse for the most part.
This isn’t like Jim Crowe. Men actually have the resources and ability to put this stuff to a stop at any time they choose to wake up and do it. And in fact I would wager that 1000 good activists (out of a country with 300,000,000 people) could get the job done.
Where are they? Traditional masculinity, IMO, the culprit.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
@Harry: “I can see no other explanation except something like genes. And so my position WRT this particular thread is not to suggest that the emotional systems of youngsters cannot be affected by learning and the environment, but that, for some, there are certain deficiencies that simply cannot be remedied by socialisation.”
Norman Doidge provides great arguments and examples in his book, demonstrating that a lot of dysfunctions normally presumed to be incurable can actually be overcome. But you do raise a valid point, something to which I’ve also given considerable thought (e.g., your cuddly vs uncuddly babies example) and so I’m going to stick my neck out here and be unscientific for a moment. There MUST of course be a reason for this as well as the inheritance of physical traits… no doubt about it. My personal best hunch is nonlocal properties of DNA molecules. You have to know some biology on how DNA molecules replicate – and of course, quantum physics – to appreciate why this is not an unreasonable proposition. The work of Henry Stapp and Stuart Hameroff come to mind. These ideas have not been accepted by the mainstream, but I concur with your point… there absolutely must be a mechanism, and DNA nonlocality is my best bet. I first raised the question of DNA nonlocality with Hameroff about 10 years ago, and his reply was that decoherence is the reason that it wouldn’t work. But if you google around on the topic, you will realize that the matter is far from settled.
@Harry: “And so, for example, imagine two sexy women – one real, and one a robot (without consciousness) – but identical in every other way as far as you are concerned. QUESTION: Would it make any difference to you which was which if, perchance, you were offered the choice of a sexy evening with one of them, or marriage? If you answer, Yes, it would make a difference, then you have something that some people don’t have.”
Apart from the fact that a robot woman would often be more spontaneous and joyful (and conscious) than many of those we know – lol – the reality of knowing that her behaviour is programmed and not real would eventually wear a bit thin on even the most dysfunctional austistic, as the reality begins to dawn that this is not a real person with real feelings. Even the sexiest of robots – supposing that such can be created – will eventually assume the status of mechanical pornography… entertaining for some, but just not the real deal. Why is this? Because of context. ALL living things contextualize their experiences, and there is no avoiding the context that must eventually dawn, even for the most determinedly deluded among us, that they are interacting with a masterfully crafted bucket of bolts.
Here’s the situation with science as I see it. Politics now rules academia. It is my opinion that my most recent submissions to journals were declined because they had negative implications for the feminist agenda. The era of science and the Renaissance is well and truly over, especially for the life sciences. We need to make our own science. I’m serious here. It’s up to thinking people like you, Harry!
I got some deadlines to meet, so I’m going to have to pull out of the discussion for a few days… keep the fires burning till I get back! Or I can contact you via your site.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Harry wrote: But you kind of contradict yourself here because you are saying that he does not care very much about men.
If Biden were uncaring then he would not support VAWA at all. Men are a specific group. It is possible for a person to be generally caring, but specifically dislike a particular group, so there is no contradiction.
Does he feel the same about boys too, I wonder?
Most likely. I cannot imagine that it has not occurred to him that boys are also victims of intimate violence. It is very likely that he extends this attitude towards boys in general, although it is also likely that he may make an exception if the abuser is a man. Then he might sympathize with abused boys. If the abuser is a woman, he probably would not.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
@Toy Soldier
“If Biden were uncaring then he would not support VAWA at all.”
Oh really?
I’d say your credibility as a psychologist has taken a bit of a dive there.
LOL!
He’s a politician.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:57 am
It is true that he is a politician and many of them are very capable liars. However, if Biden is faking his concern for women you must admit he is doing an impressively convincing job of it.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:20 am
[...] 3, 2009 by TS On Men’s News Daily Paul Elam posted about Joe Biden and VAWA. The post included a portion in which Biden described being physically abused by his sister. In his [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:28 am
I really don’t want to get into any sort of deep psychophysical discussion about Biden’s mind, particularly as regards his sister. That said I can not help but wonder if he is not in some sense a submissive male and his sister was his Domme. I think Angry Harry might know about this.
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
@Paul
“[I] wonder if he is not in some sense a submissive male and his sister was his Domme. I think Angry Harry might know about this.”
She does sound like a Dom, doesn’t she?
But the thing is that Biden’s support for VAWA could arise from a zillion factors.
But if you have to bet on it, you would surely have to go for the Calculating Politician angle – given where he has ended up – which is, presumably, where he wanted to go.
@Toy Soldier
One thing that I know often helps people who have suffered from persistent ‘abuse’ is when they begin more fully to appreciate that their abusers were, themselves, ‘unwell’ – for want of a better word.
And so a major problem today for victims is that the discourse about these matters tends to go too deeply into the whys and wherefors in an attempt to apply some normal ‘logic’ to the abuse situation.
But if the perpetrators are actually ‘unwell’ in some way, then attempting to understand what happened is often an agonising waste of time.
Trivial Example …
You go to a nightclub, get involved in a fight, and end up severely beaten.
Now, you can agonise over all the intricacies about what happened. Who said what? How did it start? What, exactly, were the ins and outs of the various altercations throughout the evening. And so on.
But then you discover that your aggressor was, in fact, a deluded schizophrenic who had not taken his treatment for a couple of months.
The whole picture (certainly as it applies to you) suddenly changes.
And it all becomes less ‘personal’.
And I think that looking at matters this way is particularly important when the victim was bound up, long-term, with their abuser.
Very loosely speaking, people who persistently hurt others have something wrong with them.
Either, they are unaware that they are persistently hurting someone and/or they simply do not care that they are hurting someone.
Either way, they are very deeply flawed individuals.
As such, their victims are often better served if they recognise that they, themselves, just happened to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” and that the abuse directed at them was not quite as ‘personal’ as they might believe it to be.
My experience in this area (which is very limited) suggests that this kind of attitude often helps victims.
Also, it is often very difficult for victims to ‘let go’ of what happened, and put their unhappy past behind them. (This is PARTICULARLY true these days, because of all the abuse hysteria.)
But victims MUST let go of it. Or their past will haunt them forever.
In other words, they do not really have a choice.
They MUST bury this past.
In other words, they need to fill their heads with other things.
And given that you, yourself, seem to be a bit of an internet junkie, you surely have many helpful means to do this.
Finally, when it comes to one’s own sexuality, and being confused/guilty/unhappy over it. Never kid yourself that this is rare.
Au contraire!
My guess would be that the majority of men and women have problems in this area.
They just don’t talk about them – because it is far too ‘revealing’ to do so.
October 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
The FBI has busted its butt to find the culprit who took pictures of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews undressed. Now he has been captured and according to this story will be charged with interstate stalking and other charges. Most likely under VAWA
http://trends247.blogspot.com/2009/10/erin-andrews-peephole-video-taker.html
When Andrews was on Oprah, the host said said she could not think anything more terrible than this incident
What would happen if Oprah and Andrews were embedded with US troops in Afghanistan. If either woman would have to Squat in Swat Valley to relive themselves and were bitten by a poisonous sanke between both bottom orifices. Which way would the male medic turn his nose to suck out the poison and not be charged with sexual harassment?
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I have been a member of The American Legion for past 25 years. Actve service in military 1962-63 when we had advisers in
Vietnam. The latest issue of AL magazine reports mysterious illnesses suffered by Gulf War veterans.
http://www.legion.org/magazine/2950/shrouded-sickness
If reporter Erin Andrews and Oprah Winfrey had been there, maybe they would not thing what happened to Andrews is as terrible.
Quote:
“While finding that evidence strongly indicates the pyridostigmine bromide (PB) pills used to protect troops against nerve agents and pesticides “are causally associated with Gulf War illness,” the report says other exposures cannot be ruled out. They include low-level exposure to nerve agents, close proximity to oil-well fires and inoculation with multiple vaccines.
The multiple concurrent symptoms typically include some combination of chronic headaches, gastrointestinal problems, widespread pain, unexplained fatigue, chronic diarrhea, respiratory problems, skin rashes, and persistent memory and concentration problems.
October 3rd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Harry says,
***Now, even if you were to argue that such things are not to do with simple genes, but due to some other mechanisms, it still seems to me that we have to reach the conclusion that some characteristics (or, rather, their precursors) are firmly put in place prior to birth and, further, that they are mightily difficult to change through socialisation techniques.***
This is a good point.
One story that seems to be used was about a New York Mayor whose father was the town drunk. When the mayor was interviewed they asked why he was the way he is and he replied, “With a father like mine, what do you expect?” He also had a brother who became the town drunk and when he was asked why he was the way he is he also replied, “With a father like mine, what do you expect?”
2 brothers raised in the same environment came out totally different with the same excuse.
I have 2 sons. They seem opposite.
Maybe one being the eldest and one being the youngest had somehitng to do with character building as their environment looks different from each perspective but it is plain to see as their mother they were born with different characteristics.
Also in reality, for every killer’s sad background there are hundreds of others, if not thousands in society whose lives were just as bad and even worse but they didn’t kill.
What about one female or male thinking themselves a victim while another female or male considers themselves a survivor?
There has to be more to it that just the environment. Maybe both are right. Personalities aren’t made, people are born with them. IMO.
And yet at the same time environments also affects social behaviour.
October 20th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I will make no excuses for Biden in any way shape or form. I personally detest the man and make no other claim for him that that he is a certifiable, and very dangerous, idiot.
If his claims of abuse are true, and not some distortion or fabrication of reality, one factor in his case could be along the lines of Stockholm syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome
It is one possibly explanation why he is so rabidly and single-mindedly focused on this particular subject, to the exclusion of other data.
His sister, the one who abused him, is apparently still very much a part of his life, and thus he hasn’t been removed from her influence.
I also concur that it is very likely that he has a parallel disorder along the lines of gender narcissism. It’s a new term, but perhaps applicable in his case.
Either way, I wouldn’t shed a tear if something terrible happened to him tomorrow. He’s caused enough to plenty of fathers and abused men.