Senator Harry Reid's Offensive Remarks About Jobless Men

Millions of people lost their jobs in this recession. Imagine, as soon as a manager gives a pink slip, he calls 911 and informs police that he has just sacked a male employee and he is afraid that, " this jerk will go to his home and beat up his wife".

Recently, Senator Harry Reid termed unemployed men as "abusive". This kind of rhetoric and stereotyping causes harm not only to unemployed men, but also to the entire society.

“I met with some people, while I was home, dealing with domestic abuse,” Reid said. “It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don't have jobs. Women don't have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time. Men, when they're out of work, tend to become abusive. Our domestic crisis shelters in Nevada are jammed; that’s the way it is all over the country.”

Abusegate has become a full blown scandal now with Senator Reid's outbursts.

Senator Reid is down in the polls in his home state of Nevada. Former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee tweeted,

“Jobless men = domestic abuse. Is he saying we should be worried about Mrs. Reid after the November elections?”

Harry Reid’s spokesman isn’t laughing at Fred Thompson’s Wednesday tweet — musing whether the majority leader would beat his wife if he loses reelection in November — calling the comment “despicable” and invoking Reid’s own violence-plagued childhood.

It is certain that in this tweeter age, people have no patience to tolerate such outbursts anymore and get even within hours. The situation was different 20 years back.

Ifeminists reports,

During the Senate hearings held on December 11, 1990 to probe the problem of violence against women. Senator Joe Biden (now Vice President of US) went on to say:

"In my house, being raised with a sister and three brothers, there was an absolute - it was a nuclear sanction, if under any circumstances, for any reason, no matter how justified, even self-defense - if you ever touched your sister, not figuratively, literally. My sister, who is my best friend, my campaign manager, my confidante, grew up with absolute impunity in our household."

"And I have the bruises to prove it."(laughter)

"I mean that sincerely. I am not exaggerating when I say that."(laughter)

One should not create Government policies in democratic countries out of anger, guilt or chivalry.

Lets talk science.

Many studies have shown that mutual domestic violence is the most prevalent form of domestic violence and in one-sided domestic violence, the women initiate more domestic violence than males.

Professors Murray A. Straus (Family Research Laboratory, University of New Hampshire, Durham) is a world renowned expert in the subject of intimate partner violence and here is peer reviewed research from him.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41-PR41-Dominance-symmetry-In-Press-07.pdf

The study investigated the widely held beliefs that physical violence against partners (PV) in marital, cohabiting, and dating relationships is almost entirely perpetrated by men, and that the major risk factor for PV is male dominance in the relationship. The empirical data on these issues were provided by 13,601 university students in 32 nations who participated in the International Dating Violence Study. The results in the first part of this paper show that almost one-third of the female as well as male students physically assaulted a dating partner in the previous 12 months, and that the most frequent pattern was bidirectional, i.e., both were violent, followed by “female-only” violence. Violence by only the male partner was the least frequent pattern according to both male and female participants.

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

The bibliography at Department of Psychology, California State University examines 271 scholarly investigations: 211 empirical studies and 60 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 365,000.

It is to be noted that if violence spirals out of control and increases in intensity, the female may often end up with severe injuries or the male may commit suicide.

Everyone wants a peaceful life. There is no scientific study, which states that most men do not want peace in their lives. The policies to create more peaceful homes need to be scientific, holistic and inclusive. Ideologues should not be drafting the state policies.

The law makers should educate themselves in stead of implementing policies in anger, frustration, guilt or chivalry.