Most women’s rights and LGBT equality organizations are opposing the GOP’s version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which removes the protections for marginalized communities from the Senate’s version of the bill.
But at least one group is coming to the GOP’s defense. The National Coalition for Men (NCFM) has released a statement arguing that the Republican alternative will “ensure more of the abused are better served” and provide protections for the “true victims” of domestic violence — heterosexual men:
Those opposing H.R. 4970 loudly assert that VAWA serves all people, which is absurd on its face given the name of the Act. Opposing versions, by omission and lack of specificity generally exclude men, particularly heterosexual men, regardless of specious arguments to the contrary.We cannot adequately address violence related issues by excluding half of the population, allowing precious resources to be squandered for ideological purposes, empowering false accusers at the expense of the true victims, and letting malfeasance and maladministration to run unchecked without holding applicable administrators accountable.
Their accusation is hard to take seriously. The Senate version of VAWA “builds on the efforts of previous reauthorizations to better address the needs of male victims of domestic and sexual violence” and, by prohibiting VAWA-funded programs from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation (gay men) and increasing the number of visas offered to undocumented victims of domestic violence (so-called “U Visas”), it does more to help abused men than the House alternative.
But the NCFM’s long history of advancing misogynistic causes suggests that it’s not interested in addressing actual domestic violence. For instance, the group sued a strip club in California for offering free admission to women during Ladies’ Night, threatened to sue the organizers of a cycling festival for including a “Ladies Activities Day” that was intended to promote the involvement of women and girls in cycling (because women would have been admitted for free) and essentially criticized Rihanna for fighting back against Chris Brown’s abuse.