What I proffer is the attempt by many in the women's rights movement to inflate the number of victims and to paint all men as batterers and all woman equally at risk of being battered has resulted in driving many men and woman away from the issue. The victims of battering, the majority who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic, educational ladder, become marginalized because of the claim that all women are equally at risk for battering. All studies document quite clearly that women who suffer social, economic, and educational deprivation and lack family support are at a greater risk of severe battering. These victims are the ones who most need our help and their batterers need sure, swift, and just sanctions. The constant attempt by the women's rights movement to paint all men as batterers has caused many men to minimize or deny or ignore this type of behavior even when they suspect a friend might be a batterer.
Many men fear being caught in the women's rights legal dragnet for batterers.
After all, many in the women's rights movement continue to profess that these witnesses, are men and hence they must be guilty of something. The continued drumbeat by many in the women's rights movement and some researchers that all men are demonic batterers and all woman angelic victims has resulted in the majority of men and women in America, who are not abusers or victims, to ignore the plight of many battered women that lack resources or family support. Many women and African American women in particular, during the 1800s, came to distrust white suffragettes led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton because of their repeated attack on marriage and in particular when both turned their support away from the rights of African American women in the South to vote. Today, many men and woman, who are neither batterer or victim, have come to distrust many in the women's rights movement because of their repeated attack on all men and because they continue to present flawed and dramatically differing numbers of abusers and victims simply to support their position. And once again many very real victims are marginalized in society because of their social, economic, and educational status.