For those of you who read my last Opinion piece, you know that October was Breast Cancer Awareness month. What you may or may not also know is that October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. That's pretty solid, right? Especially considering some of the unsettling statistics that have recently been released by a variety of organizations. Consider the following: according to a UNICEF study, 90% of women in Jordan believe that, under certain circumstances, it's A-OK for a husband to beat his wife. Further consider that another study conducted by the Department of Justice found that 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the U.S. If that's not enough, in 2000, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner. And, perhaps most disturbingly, women who leave their abusers are 75% more likely to be severely injured or killed than those who stay.

Thus, it's disturbing to me that last month, a group called RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) congregated in front of the Capitol to reveal the "truth" about domestic violence: women frequently make false allegations about violence, a feminist-run court system malevolently separates children from fathers, men are the real victims of domestic violence, and, my personal favorite: domestic violence shelters are secretly and illegally sending federal dollars to feminists (I assume my check is in the mail, then - there's a puppy-print romper at Anthropologie I've had my eye on for awhile). In fact, a RADAR press release compared current domestic violence laws to - get ready for it - the "largest roll-back in Americans' civil rights since the Jim Crow era." As absurd as this is, I am not making it up. RADAR claims to be responsible for blocking passage of four domestic violence bills - one would expand VAWA internationally, and one was a grant supporting pro bono domestic violence advocacy. Nice work, guys! But what do you expect from a movement that counts convicted batterers as some of their leaders?

RADAR, along with radio host and columnist Glenn Sacks are part of the growing ranks of Men's Rights Activists ("MRAs") intent on taking back all the rights that the feminist movement has stolen away - like, um... I actually can't think of any. But men's rights activists apparently can - and they're mad. Bernard Chapin, an MRA, said in an interview that he never refers to "feminists" by their "real names", since they are "wicked." He referred to the interviewer only as "Feminist E." Keep it classy, Chapin! In 2008, an "antifeminist" lawyer sued Columbia University for offering Women's Studies courses, arguing that the feminism is a religion, and the classes "[spread] prejudice and [foster] animosity and distrust towards men with the result of a wholesale violation of men's rights due to ignorance, falsehoods, and malice." And, of course, he wondered why Men's Studies classes weren't being taught (a judge threw out the claim, finding the core of the complaint to be "frivolous"). Another MRA, "Angry Harry," defended George Sodini, the man who opened fire in a gym filled with women, killing three, wondering if the threat of MRA violence would be enough to advance their agenda.

Sadly, these "activists" are totally missing the point of the battered women's movement - not to mention the feminist movement in general. Do I devote more brain power to thinking about the huge numbers of women who are victims of intimate partner violence, rather than men? Absolutely. Do I spend more time thinking about the fact that society tends to sexualize violence against women (see America's Next Top Model Cycle 8, Episode 4; use of rape as a war tactic; or the fact that between 2004 and 2009, television depictions of violence against women increased by 120%, while depictions of violence irrespective of gender only increased 2%) but not men? You bet. Do I care about male victims of domestic violence or sexual assault? Of course I do. Are all my shopping trips funded with "secret feminist money"? Um, no. They're funded with my student loans and my total lack of self-control when it comes to buying clothes.

Along with assuming, incorrectly, that feminists don't care about violence perpetrated against men, RADAR and others are also mistaken in their characterization of the legal system as one that is increasingly concerned with protecting women at men's expense. For example, in D.C., of the 4, 799 misdemeanor domestic violence cases with dispositions, 43% were left unprosecuted, 25% were dismissed, and 9% were declared inactive. A mere 18% of the cases resulted in a plea agreement, with only 6% actually making it to trial.

In custody battles, "Parental Alienation Syndrome" is a pseudoscientific theory used to explain a child's allegations of abuse or estrangement from one parent by blaming the other - usually the mother - for "brainwashing" the child. This "theory" has been repeatedly used, and has resulted in children being separated from the caretaker they prefer and placing them with the parent who has allegedly abused them - generally the father.

On an international level, the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is intended to prevent child abductions by a parent by creating a mechanism for speedy return of the child to the home country where custody can then be adjudicated. However, various studies have indicated that many women who abduct their children are fleeing violence in the home. While the Convention provides certain defenses to return of the child - one of them allows a court to refuse return if the child would be in grave risk of danger in the "home" country - courts have chosen to interpret that defense so narrowly that, while still acknowledging the nature of the abusive environment from which the mother and child have fled, they order the child (and implicitly, the mother) to return to that very same environment.

As you've probably been able to gather from past columns, I'm biased. But it's not as if the evidence is on the MRA's side. Unfortunately, they've begun to move into the mainstream and convince others with shoddy statistics and misleading methodology. I've nothing against men's rights - as long as they are also women's rights. I do, however, have something against a movement whose members identify with batterers and murderers, and who use junk science and less-than stellar statistics in an attempt to prove a misguided point.