Prof Michael Kimmel delivered a devastating attack on the view that men and women hurt each other in equal measure and degree when he wrote recently in this newspaper. His report on domestic violence and the 50-50 theory for the Department of Education talks equally tough.
Men and women are victims of domestic violence, yet it is untrue and downright dangerous to claim the damage done is one and the same.
"Claims of gender symmetry are often made by those who do not understand the data, what the various studies measure and what they omit," he stated. "Others make claims of gender symmetry based on disingenuous political motives, attempting to discredit women's suffering by offering abstract statistical equivalencies that turn out to be chimerical."
Men's group Amen this week called Prof Kimmel "a propagandist". His report, it says, is "a shoddy polemic consisting of a mish-mash of the opinions and prejudices of its author and other like-minded feminists" designed "to undermine the emerging truth about the reality of domestic violence." Amen argues that Prof Kimmel was commissioned primarily to protect civil servants involved in the Exploring Masculinities programme and to undermine the still unpublished report by Dr Kieran McKeown for the Department of Health.
The Department of Education commissioned Prof Kimmel (by tender) to examine the domestic violence research on which part of Exploring Masculinities was based after complaints by groups such as Amen itself.
Amen does not like the results. Kimmel, it says, is operating from a position of "prejudice", whereas McKeown is a "reputable, independent, experienced, professional researcher [without] a vested or ideological interest in any particular portrayal of domestic violence". The personalised nature of Amen's critique puts two good men into conflict, in much the same way that 50-50 claims of domestic violence pitch men and women victims (and perpetrators) against each other.
A key document quoted selectively by Irish supporters of the 50-50 theory is the British Home Office survey (1999), the biggest in the world, which shows similar reply rates between men and women. Yet what the report actually says is that when victims of assault were asked whether they had been injured, however slightly, on any occasion within the last year, women were twice as likely to say they had and three times more likely to say they were threatened. "These findings suggest that the experiences of female victims are qualitatively different from that of most male victims," the survey concluded. "Not only are they more likely to be injured in assaults, they are also far more likely to be living in fear of their partners".
The lose-lose recipe of the debate is already showing. At the intergovernmental Conference on Domestic Violence yesterday, the Minister for Justice told delegates that "Ireland has extensive measures in place to deal with domestic violence. We have strong legislation, we regard it as among the best in Europe." In fact, Ireland's measures remain among the least well-developed in the EU.
Little support is offered to violent men and none at all to violent women. The level of gravity with which domestic violence offences is ranked is well below that in Britain, which upgraded them last month; the availability of shelters and temporary refuges is grossly inadequate in urban areas and almost non-existent in rural ones.
As alarming is the persistent drop in rape convictions, in line with US trends. In 1998, only three convictions were secured, although 292 were reported and 108 brought to court. Although rape crisis centre reports show that more men are reporting sexual abuse, the falling rate of convictions is discouraging many from pursuing their cases in court.
The backlash against Kimmel is not supported by fact. The professor is a leading US academic who has consulted and written widely. He makes no secret of his commitment to the equality agenda, whether the subjects are men, women, children, disabled people or African-Americans.
This agenda has been under sustained attack by the American right for more than a decade. Budgets for delivering it first began to suffer during Ronald Reagan's presidency and, although they picked up under Bill Clinton, supporters claim the same level of commitment is not shown so far by George Bush's administration.
Among the more alarming side-effects of the anti-equality movement is the rise of hate speech on various websites which lump together many minority groups. They share a deep contempt for feminism, seen as a key-turner to equality for people who are gay, belong to a racial minority or otherwise challenge a status quo identified as being truly American. Such sites coined the phrase 'feminazis' to describe what they perceive as the demasculinisation of the US - what they mean is any attempt to redress historical power relations within US society, including among men.
The irony is that without such redressing, men who are victims of domestic violence are unlikely to be heard. This is the ideological paradox into which Amen's work may fall.
If one narrow masculinity is destiny, then men who don't fit have no place at all - and no one will listen. If, on the other hand, Kimmel and others are correct that societies define masculinity in radically different ways at different times, the door is open for listening to men whose experiences don't fit received assumptions about what makes a real man real.
mruane@irish-times.ie