Things came to a head after she lost her temper one day & beat one of the dogs outside in front of the neighbors, who threatened to call the cops, and then when I tried to talk to her about it she lost her temper & grabbed a belt & wailed on one of her kids. We went in to the therapists the next day & I told them what happened. They said they had to report it to social services, and my ex FREAKED, went in to a total rage, and started talking about taking her kids & leaving that night. She ended up leaving about a week later after social services investigated & issued her a warning for her behavior, at the same time fully clearing me & my father. The social services lady heard about her behavior not only from the neighbors but from her own children & she was the only one who showed us any belief or support. I went back for follow up solo therapy & was informed that the female therapist would no longer be involved, as she was convinced everything had to be my fault & there must have been violence coming from me that wasn't being admitted. I have since found out via my ex's blog posts that my ex TOLD the counselor she was planning to do me & my father violence because I'd said something that had gotten social services involved, and the counselor told her "You need to get out of that house today, or the next time I see you I'll be visiting you in jail." In other words, she (the counselor) felt my ex was an IMMEDIATE THREAT to the health & safety of others, but she failed to report it as required by law or to issue any warnings about it. I am now pursuing complaints with the advisory board at her school, but the basic response so far has been "Well it was a woman making the threats, so it's no big deal." If it'd been a man doing that, he'd have been in jail or on a psych hold, as a mater of course. Yet in spite of a growing body of research that such behavior is common in relationships, it was ignored.

Here's how this all comes back to Dawkins' comments & why "rape culture" is a harmful and useless concept. I have said all along here and in corpsefairy's journal that there are real, serious problems. Women face enormous pressures & issues, and most men don't get it at all. I noted from my first reply here that joreth makes a lot of really good points & that more guys need to read & understand them. I SUPPORT changing things so that men don't behave that way & women don't have to feel the way she does, or that the SkepChick felt in the elevator. The examples I cited above from both articles on the topic & my own experiences are real, valid, and happen far more than anyone admits (I absolutely skipped mentioning that I was sexually assaulted by a female step parent when I was a child, btw) but that does NOT mean that such tings are anywhere near as pervasive as the harassment & abuse women routinely face, or that they get fair treatment on a regular basis from the law, despite laws in many areas of such things being heavily biased towards women (note that the laws being WRITTEN with such bias doesn't mean they're acted on or enforced that way).