(Open Letter to the Minister of Justice)

Dear Mr. Power,

On the webpage http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/crime+and+safety+survey+launched one can see that the New Zealand Crime and Safety Survey 2009 has been launched. I note that the parties involved are the Ministry of Justice, research company National Research Bureau, the law faculty of Victoria University, and an independent statistician. This seems to be an improvement on previous versions of this survey, where the Ministry of Women's Affairs was involved, and therefore able to inject its political agenda into the process, in all probability.

I am writing to ask if the survey will include straightforward questions, instead of questions such as the following, which appeared in previous versions of the survey:

1. Any partner ever actually used force or violence on you, such as deliberately kicked, pushed, grabbed, shoved you or hit you with something in a way that could hurt you; and
2. Any partner ever threatened to use force or violence on you such as threatened to kick, push, grab, or shove you in a way that actually frightened you; and
3. Any partner ever deliberately destroyed or threatened to destroy your belongings in a way that frightened you.

 

My reasons for raising this issue are as follows:

• Violence is unaceptable, irrespective of the emotions generated in the victim;
• The victim can experience emotions other than fear (e.g. humiliation, anger, etc.);
• Different people have different pain threshholds, and violence is not acceptable just because the victim does not feel, or admit to feeling, pain;
• A victim should not have to have to put up with frequent violence just because it causes little or no pain;
• The above questions are biased towards female respondents, since men play more contact sports and are brought up to ignore pain and suppress fear;
• The responses to these questions will be and are reported as if they describe all domestic violence, rather than just the violence that causes pain and/or fear;
• These questions are tailored to create a fictional depiction of domestic violence as something that men perpetrate on women, which is the picture which Feminists have been determined to build up and maintain for several decades now;
• This is defamatory and discriminatory, with the victims of this defamation and discrimination being men;
• Powerful and ignorant people such as the Editor of the Kapiti Observer are misled by the distorted information on domestic violence that is available and go on to promote such defamatory and discriminatory campaigns and censor attempts to correct it.

   

  The question above should only be included in the survey if it reads something like this:

1. Any partner ever actually used force or violence on you, such as deliberately kicked, pushed, grabbed, shoved you or hit you with something; or
2. Any partner ever threatened to use force or violence on you such as threatened to kick, push, grab, or shove you; or
3. Any partner ever deliberately destroyed or threatened to destroy your belongings.

As I am sure you will appreciate, I am not trying to dictate the content of the survey's questionnaire. I am merely trying to ensure that it does not attack men's human rights.

 

(UPDATE: I have since received an excellent reply from the Minister to the above letter, stating that, from the 2006 survey onwards, the issue I had raised had been dealt with.  Of course, part of my reason for writing this open letter was to publicise this issue, in an attempt to prevent the Feminists from playing this trick again -- e.g. if the Labour Government regains power).

 

Last Update: 30 April 2009