US-Bildungsministerin trifft Männerrechtler – News vom 13. Juli 2017

1. So etwas möchte man in Deutschland mal erleben: Betsy DeVos, Bildungsministerin der Vereinigten Staaten, wird sich dieser Tage nicht nur mit Vertretern von Opfern sexueller Gewalt treffen, sondern auch mit Männerrechtlern, die sich für die Bürgerrechte von Falschbeschuldigten einsetzen. Etliche Publizisten sind breitflächig empört und beschimpfen die Männerrechtler als "frauenfeindliche Hate-Groups". Gewünscht wird offenbar, dass so wie bei vielen Campus-Gerichten nach Vorwürfen sexueller Gewalt und eigentlich der Geschlechterdebatte insgesamt, weiterhin nur eine Seite zu Wort kommt.

Etwas ähnliches fand kürzlich im israelischen Parlament, der Knesset, statt. Die Jerusalem Post berichtet, und ich zitiere mal etwas ausführlicher, da wir über Israels Männerrechtler sonst nicht so viel hören:

Two meetings on women’s issues took place simultaneously only steps apart in the Knesset Monday, but their perspectives differed by miles.

The Knesset Committee on the Advancement of the Status of Women and Gender Equality held a meeting on helping women get out of sex work and abusive situations, while the Committee on Distributive Justice and Social Equality discussed women who make false complaints to the police about their ex-husbands.

(...) The latter meeting was deeply controversial and faced attempts to prevent it from taking place.

Feminist organizations petitioned the Knesset, saying the discussion was an attempt to silence victims of domestic violence, and Knesset Legal Adviser Eyal Yinon ruled that the topic doesn’t fall under the committee’s purview. In response, Knesset House Committee chairman Yoav Kisch held a flash vote to extend the authority of his fellow Likud MK Miki Zohar’s committee.

Hundreds of divorced fathers have joined the Likud in recent years who are hopeful the party’s MKs will pass laws more favorable to them.

(...) In the end, the discussion took place with no one representing the side of the apparently large number of domestic violence complaints that are legitimate.

Asked about the absence of feminist organizations at the meeting, Israel Women’s Network spokeswoman Eleanor Davidoff said: "The men’s organizations can talk to themselves."

Knesset Committee on the Advancement of the Status of Women chairwoman Aida Touma- Sliman said: "It’s horrifying and shameful that someone in this Knesset has the audacity to hold this meeting after 16 women were murdered by their husbands in Israel this year, four in one week this month."

Zohar said: "I’m sorry women’s organizations chose to boycott the meeting, but it’s their choice and I respect it."

The MKs leading the meeting, titled "Dealing with False Complaints - Are Men Equal in the Eyes of the Law?" defended their position.

"I respect women’s organizations and understand their concerns," Zohar said. "The fact is, many women are victims of violence, and some were murdered ... At the same time, we have to say there are men who paid a heavy price because of false complaints. There is a phenomenon of many women deciding this is an efficient tool to reach goals related to custody, promotions at work, revenge for cheating men or things like that."

Zohar took police to task for not looking into more of the closed cases, and for not providing information as to whether men or women are behind most of the false complaints.

Kisch said some divorce lawyers suggest that women lie to police and say they were abused because there are no consequences for doing so.

"It’s absurd that they can break the law and ruin the other side’s life. Why do divorced men commit suicide? Because normative men are thrown in jail. I want to tear the mask off this phenomenon," he said.

Likud MK Nava Boker said that false complaints hurt true victims of domestic violence and called for greater punishments for those who lie to the police.

"No one can accuse me of being against women," Yisrael Beytenu MK Yulia Malinovski said, adding: "When a woman complains, the man is not considered innocent until proven guilty, and then, how can he prove anything?"

Jesse Shalev, a divorced father whose wife filed two false complaints of domestic violence with the police, said Malinovski’s point is the real problem.

"Men need to be treated as innocent until proven guilty, like every other crime," Shalev told The Jerusalem Post. "If there’s no benefit to making a false claim, then they won’t make them. At the first complaint, he is automatically considered a criminal with a two-week restraining order, and only the questions are asked. False claims are a tool used against men to punish them ... False claims are often used to ‘prove’ the husband is not worthy of being a parent, to get the wife more custody and child support – and that’s without any proof. So many problems would be solved by removing the guilty-until-proven-innocent standard," he added.

2. Der Blogger "Lotosritter" hat mehrere sexistische Passagen im aktuellen Wahlprogramm der Grünen ausfindig gemacht und wendet sich in einem Blogpost dagegen, wie diese Partei ihren Anteil an sexuellem Missbrauch schon wieder unter den Teppich kehren möchte.



3. In der feministischen "Edition F." versucht David Müller, sich als Frauenversteher zu profilieren. Die Bloggerin Miria gibt ihm die verdiente Antwort.



4. Ein interessanter Kontrapunkt zu meinem Rant über linksextreme Gewalt gestern: Die Gewerbetreibenden des Hamburger Schanzenviertels sehen sich durch die Autonomen weniger geschädigt als beschützt.