Sir, - I refer to the report "Women's groups working in 'a hostile environment'" (The Irish Times, November 28th), which I read with nausea and a growing feeling of dismay at the latest defensive onslaught by women's groups against the growing awareness about the truth in the debate on domestic abuse.
They whinge that they are working in an environment hostile to their dogma. Let me tell you what a hostile environment is for someone trying to uncover the "truth" in the nature of domestic abuse. Having for years researched female victims, as an academic working in universities in Britain, and drawn into the politically correct current, I dared to question the feminist position on domestic violence in the mid-1990s. I wrote a paper based on a two-year research project into male victims of domestic violence.
The response from feminists (male and female) was unadulterated, vitriolic hostility. My research assistant and I were threatened with violence - she was accused of being "a traitor to her sex" for daring to address this issue. I was "advised" by colleagues not to pursue the research or to seek dissemination, as it might have damaging consequences for my career. Social policy journals refused to publish it, academic conferences would not allow me to present the findings, and I was denied promotion. But at least my research has contributed to an opening up of the debate and subsequent emergence of the dangerous truth - that women are just as abusive to their partners as men, if not more so. Thanks to the work of groups such as Amen and individual commentators such as John Waters, who have shared the hostility spewed forth by women's groups, the plight of abject, suffering men will not go away. The silence is over.
My career has been ruined by hostile feminists, but now, given the clear, growing defensiveness of the women's groups, it is their sexist ideology, redundant dogma and poisonous cul-de-sac whose days are numbered.
The privileged position enjoyed by the women's movement, in which their approaches to social policy in general and domestic abuse in particular have been afforded the status of articles of faith by the Government, is now under threat, and they do not like it one bit. Their ability to dictate "the truth" has stifled debate and has created a one-way, women-focused social provision process. Now that feminist/anti-men bias is on the run, they predictably trot out the old masculine hostility line and try to portray all men as patriarchal oppressors.
Men are constructing a pathway out of the cul-de-sac of domestic abuse, health care, housing, judicial decisions. Few citizens now believe the women's groups any longer. Like many men, I have been left with nothing to lose as a result of a feminist-created hostile environment. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Sean Stitt, Seashore Homes, Knocknacarra, Galway.