RONA your local
building center largely with a male customer base has bought the
feminist propaganda that men are abusers and the Domestic Violence
Industry needs their money to rebuild shelters. They will have the
effrontery to ask these males customers for a donation. What the
clearly chivalrous brain trust who dreamed this up at Rona doesn't know
is the initiation of DV is often done by the female in upwards of 70%
of situations. Harvard Medical School and the American Psychiatric
Association both recently announced a major national study in the U.S.
that found half of heterosexual domestic violence is reciprocal and
that: "Regarding perpetration of violence, more women than men (25
percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, 71 percent of the
instigators in nonreciprocal partner violence were women."
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/42/15/31-a
Part
of their verbiage is found here:
http://www.rona.ca/rona/servlet/rona/women.jsp?storeId=10001&jspStoreDir=rona&langId=-1
Help
us rebuild lives
Our objective is to raise $100,000 – we
can do it with your help
RONA is
proud to be associated with an organization that works every day to
help women facing serious challenges and give them a second chance.
To
highlight this commitment, RONA is launching a fundraising campaign
online and at all RONA stores across the country, backed by a
commitment to match the donated funds with labour and building
materials to renovate women’s shelters.
Supporting
the Canadian Women’s Foundation reinforces the role the company plays
in society by giving these women an opportunity to rebuild their lives,
not only for themselves but for their children as well.
Here's
what else RONA doesn't know: Domestic Violence is pretty much equal in
Canada
Family
violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2005. An estimated 7% of
women and 6% of men representing 653,000 women and 546,000 men
in a current or previous spousal relationship encountered spousal
violence during the five years up to and including 2004, according to a
comprehensive Statistics Canada report on family violence.
Canadian
Homicide Stats 2008
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/091028/dq091028a-eng.htm
Total 611, 465 men 146 female
Rate of homicides with firearms has increased 24% since 2002.
Handgun use on increase (gangs don't register their weapons)
Women victims 24% - lowest proportion ever
Men Victims 76%
Both the rate of females killed (0.87 per 100,000 population), as
well as the proportion
(24%), were the lowest since 1961
62 spousal homicides - no change from 2007
Lowest rate in 40 years
45 women 17 (27.4%)men
Do biased family law regimes in
Canada complete with the acceptance of false allegations of abuse as
truth, the denigration of dads and men have anything to do with the
murder suicides in families?
RONA
doesn't know about single moms in the USA and Australia being the most
likely to kill or maltreat their children.
Australian
Data on Children killed. Total of 16 by mother and new partner and 5 by
biological father.
Of the total substantiated cases of abuse in 2007-08, including
by parents and where the gender of the perpetrator was determined, 463
were carried out by women and 353 by men.
University of Western Sydney academic
Micheal Woods said yesterday that the statistics debunked the myth that
fathers posed the greatest risk to their children.
Mr Woods, co-director of the university's Men's Health
Information and Resource Centre, said if similar data was available in
other States it would show similar trends.
Victims by Perpetrator
Relationship, 2007
This pie chart presents victims by relationship to their
perpetrators. More than 80 percent (80.1%) of victims were maltreated
by at least one parent. Nearly 40 percent (38.7%) of victims were
maltreated by their mother acting on her own.
Note the rate by mom and
other is 44.4% while dad and other is 18.8%. The rate by the mother
is 2.36 times higher than dad. That is 236% greater. Now how to
explain that away to those who believe only men are abusive.
RONA doesn't know these
shelters are used for many other purposes including criminal behaviour.
At any time 25% of the capacity is shown to have residents not there for
DV. Others may say they are there for abuse but may not be as follows.
One woman was able to hide successfully from Police for several weeks
after kidnapping a child. They are used by drug addicts who after
abusing their families go to these shelters to "unwind" but can access
drugs while present, illegal immigrants and bogus refugees can hide
undetected by immigration officers, some are used by transient women as
rest stops. No independent financial or operational audits are
undertaken and all clients are forced to sign non-disclosure
agreements.
DV is a serious issue in
Canada but all RONA's behaviour does is support the notion it is a
single gender only issue.
There are 569 tax supported female shelters in
Canada. There is not one tax supported Domestic Abuse shelter for men.
I'm suggesting men who believe in fairness to both genders, as DV is
serious but not gendered, take their business elsewhere. There are lots
of building centers to choose from.
Rona is no
stranger to male bashing. Peter Regan took them on in 2007 and the
following column appeared in the National Post:

National Post
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Excuse my gender
David Menzies, National Post
Published: Wednesday, November 28, 2007
To adapt the old Molson Canadian tag line: I
am ... an idiot. You read it right: I'm an incompetent goof. A pathetic
primate who can barely function in our oh-so-complicated world.
Why the lowly self-assessment? No, I didn't
invest in Bre-X. Nor do I drive an Aztek. Rather, it's the advertising
industry that's convinced me I'ma loser due to one glaring
prerequisite: I'ma guy.
For the last several months, I've taken note of radio and TV
ads that involve situations involving two people: one a man and the
other a woman. In every spot except one (by FedEx), men were portrayed
as imbeciles. Even if the script established the male character as a
successful business owner, he still came across like the classic Phil
Hartman character, Unfrozen Cave Man Lawyer from Saturday Night Live.
(The defrosted Neanderthal continually grunted that common-place
things in today's world -- "flashing neon signs" and "fast-moving
cars" -- would "frighten and confuse" him.)
In today's advertising world, unfrozen cavemen
abound.
In
a recent Toyota radio ad, a male Toyota owner comes across as
virtually brain damaged when he addresses a female Toyota
customer-service clerk. He can't remember (or doesn't know) what needs
to be serviced on his car. He doesn't even know what he wants to drink.
Thank goodness for the know-it-all service rep who tells him what
needs to be done to remedy his engine (without even popping the hood).
She also informs him he's experiencing a craving for caffeine.
A CIBC radio ad establishes "Tom" as a
successful businessman. Along comes a female customer who's not in Tom's
line of business but, naturally, is an expert when it comes to Tom's
trade. She tells him to install a CIBC e-commerce solution in a tone
reminiscent of a principal addressing a kindergarten student.
Of note, one man recently had enough of the
male-bashing. Peter Regan, a single parent in Calgary, filed a complaint
with Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) after he took exception to a
Rona ad. The spot depicts a female Rona employee dealing with a female
customer who laments that her husband never helps around the house.
The clerk responds: "That's OK. They [husbands] are all like that." In
August, ASC decided the commercial indeed contravened regulations and
"disparaged men and/or married men" and asked Rona to remove or alter
the ad.
What
is the unspoken strategy of having men cast as dimwits? It cannot be
random chance. In fact, it's statistically impossible that in almost
all ad scripts, the male is the one who is dazed and confused while
the woman (or child) is portrayed as an oracle of wisdom.
My hunch: When it comes to getting slagged,
men tend to take it, well, like a man. Aside from the aforementioned
Rona complainer, men tend to be stoic and silent about such slights.
York University marketing professor Alan
Middleton adds another noteworthy point: Since women in many households
control the purse strings, ad agencies figure it's not a prudent idea
to upset the individual who is likely to make the purchase. Thus, if
the script calls for a dolt, it's a no-brainer the man will play the
fool.
Indeed, as
long as complainers such as Peter Regan remain the exception as
opposed to the rule, expect men to be depicted as dumbbells in
advertising for decades to come. Then again, what do I know?
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