Alas, a Blog

[This is the third post in a series, criticizing the recent campaign by anti-feminist Glenn Sacks against The Family Place. I’d like to remind readers that “Alas, a Blog” will match any contributions you make to The Family Place this week (up to $800 total), so please donate, and then let me know in comments or by using the form!]

(Links to the posts in this series: One Two Three.)

This post continues the interview with Paige Flink, the executive director of The Family Place. The Family Place, a Dallas-based group providing shelter and services to victims of domestic violence, was the subject of a recent campaign by men’s rights activists, led by Glenn Sacks.

Once again, thanks to Ms. Flink for being nice enough to talk with me.

Did Glenn Sacks, or any other men’s rights activist, contact you about these ads prior to beginning their campaign?

No. They started blasting before I ever heard from him.

Did Glenn Sacks directly call or write you once his campaign had begun?

He did call me later, kinda the way I remember it happening, our bus ads had been up for about three weeks, the Dallas news ran an article about it. He [talked about the ads] on a Sunday radio show, and then on Monday DART was deluged with emails. Then I got a call from him the following week. He called saying, and I’m paraphrasing, “I have a way for you to get yourself out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into.” I did not return his phone call. ((Glenn, on his own blog and in “Alas” comments, recalls his voicemail message differently: “in my voice mail I did commend her for the good work that her organization does on behalf of abused women.”))

Why didn’t you return his call?

Well, I didn’t return his call.. at that point, we were being attacked. It wasn’t a conversation I had started, and I didn’t feel like my point of view would make any difference.

Does The Family Place provide services to male victims of domestic violence?

Yes we do. We do. Of course, there’s a huge difference in the number. On an average year we’ll shelter between 700 and 900 women and children, and we’ll council 8-20 men who are victims.

We do not shelter men in the facility, but we do provide hotel vouchers. We have a suite we can use. Most of the men who have come to us have been men in same-sex relationships, so we work with the Dallas Resource Center, which provides services for gays and lesbians. And when they come with kids we help them too; we have sheltered men with children.

Would you consider bus ads designed to reach out to male victims of violence?

We would certainly consider it. This was our 30th anniversary and we had been saving money for a campaign, and we targeted women specifically because our experience has been that when women think about what their children are witnessing, they are more likely to take action. We are ultimately trying to prevent murders, and women are the most likely victims of murder in these situations.

It was a small campaign, but we wanted it to be memorable.

Would you have been open to, for example, the idea of Glenn and his audience raising funds to help pay for an ad campaign reaching out to abused men?

Sure. My experience has not been that with these father’s rights groups, but if a father’s rights group had contacted us and said we want to help raise money to provide counseling services and to provide shelter, that would have been incredible. But that’s never happened.

How would you respond to a men’s rights activist who said “men aren’t using the services because there hasn’t been enough outreach to men”?

I would talk about the reality of the person who seems harmed the most, and with limited funds, we have to serve the people who are in the most danger. The lethality in family violence of a women who’s being harmed by a man is greater. We don’t have unlimited funds, and the most vulnerable are the women who have children. The women in our shelter usually come because their children have become a target. That is the very specific response we were targeting in our campaign.

We weren’t trying to make a big point about “sexism” and all of those other things — that wasn’t the point. We had a very specific point we were trying to make: There is a cycle of violence. We want to reach the people who most need our help. We want to reach them before they get murdered.

What advice would you give a men’s rights activist who is sincerely concerned about male victims of domestic violence?

I would say, get together another group of men and raise the money to provide the services for the people you say are needing them. And go out there and say “we are the new men’s shelter, and we are here to serve men who have been victims of family violence and sexual violence in their homes.” Do it just the way the women’s shelters stared 30 years ago.

Then show when you open the doors — when The Family Place opened the doors in 1978, it was full, because so many people needed help. Then show the numbers, go back to your donors, and say “I had to turn away 100 men because I lacked the funding.” Everything that happened with shelters for women, happened because of the demand.

Don’t put me down because I’m trying to help somebody. Go out there and help somebody.

Instead of bashing women’s organizations, stand up and help somebody yourself. That’s what I’d say.

(Links to the posts in this series: One Two Three.)

[This is the second post in a series, criticizing the recent campaign by anti-feminist Glenn Sacks against The Family Place. I’d like to remind readers that “Alas, a Blog” will match any contributions you make to The Family Place this week (up to $800 total), so please donate, and then let me know in comments or through this form.]

[Links to the posts in this series: One Two Three.]

Prominent right-wingers Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin recently praised Glenn Sacks’ campaign against The Family Place, a domestic violence shelter that provides help to both female and male victims of intimate violence. Reynolds said:

They didn’t try to get anybody fired but they contacted them and asked them, “Did you realize that your money is supporting these ads? Is this what you want to do?”

They made a very big point of being very polite about it and not making any threats. They did get some action and did it without trying to get anybody fired or booted from their jobs or doing anything vicious.

Because there’s nothing vicious about attempting to cut off the funding of a domestic violence shelter.

I suspect that Reynolds learned this from Glenn Sacks’ site, where Glenn claimed this “achievement” for his campaign:

A sub-group of our protesters who I selected called over 50 of The Family Place’s financial contributors to express our concerns about the ads. Most contributors said they sympathized with us, and many told us they thought the ads and the subsequent protest were an embarrassment to The Family Place. Many contacted Family Place Executive Director Paige Flink with their concerns.

Several of The Family Place’s financial contributors withdrew or reduced the financial gifts they planned for the end-of-the-year giving season.

Like Roy Eduso in The Village Voice, and the blogger at Glenn’s Cult (warning: that link makes an annoying noise), I was concerned when I read this; I’d hate for the anti-feminists to succeed in depriving abused women and men of desparately needed support and services.

Fortunately, according to Paige Flink, Glenn vastly exaggerated the effects of his campaign. Unfortunately, contrary to what Glenn Reynolds (and, probably, Glenn Sacks himself) believes, the calls made to The Family Place’s volunteers and donors due to Glenn’s campaign were anything but polite.

Ms. Flink was kind enough to talk to me on the phone. Glenn Sacks declined to make any “on the record” comments to me.

Can you tell me how long you’ve been at The Family Place?

I have been on staff at The Family Place for seventeen years, and I was a volunteer for three years prior to that.

Is it a difficult job?

It is hard work, but when you see success… It’s unbelievable the families that we help. Even if they’re only in the shelter for 45 days, the difference is incredible. If we help them get a job, or go to school, it really improves their life for years to come. It’s awesome.

Plus I see bad things happen to women and it just makes me mad. The oppression is true, it’s real.

Glenn Sacks claimed his activists convinced some regular Family Place supporters to withhold donations. Have you seen any evidence of that from your end?

The only thing I know for sure is I got an email from a man who said he’d never give again, because of this. He once gave $25, in 2003.

It’s possible that [Sacks] convinced somebody besides that one donor.

Have you heard from any of your donors who had been contacted by Glenn’s campaign?

Yes. They were horrified.

What were they horrified about?

They were horrified that they were contacted. Not about the ad campaign. Horrified that someone from outside the state of Texas would call and say “don’t give money to The Family Place.” There was one of my board members who received 25 calls from the same woman.

What did the people calling them say?

It was… they were paraphrasing, so I don’t know exactly. They were told that you should not support The Family Place. This is a terrible campaign, they’re not a good organization, you should not support The Family Place, and we’re asking you to stop donating to The Family Place.

Some of the vile language and verbal abuse we took on the phone was horrific. The kinds of things they said to our staff about what they’re going to do to them was awful. I’ve had some “you’re going to go to hell, you’re a fat lesbian luring women into those shelters so you can prey on them.”

If I reply back to a victim I really am cautious in how I speak to her, because how do I know it’s a victim? We screen our clients on the phone, but…

I didn’t know there was this atmosphere out there of people who would say… horrible things to people they don’t know. They’d write in all caps like they were screaming and yelling. This is not a world that I’m used to. And the people would would say verbatim what he had said, like they’d drank the kool-aid… It was just amazing. It lasted a very short window of time. It was not much more than 10 days and then it fell off.

Did the campaign succeed in doing damage to The Family Place?

No, as a matter of fact, what he did was make us even more visible, in venues where we wouldn’t necessarily have been visible. We are not an AM radio organization. So even though some of it was negative… For example, he was on one of the radio stations here, and a huge organization, a very conservative group, emailed the radio station saying we support The Family Place. So just the name of The Family Place being out there might, in a perverse way, help, because we might reach someone who needs our services.

So I’m still thinking the campaign was very successful. When Glenn went on CNN, we got so many positive phone calls to our hotline that night, saying go for it, don’t back down, don’t let him do that to you.

I want to make sure it’s clear that we had a 60 day contract on those buses. It is not true that we took down our ads down. That’s not true. It was always going to end on November 30 — that was all the money we had.

I feel very strongly that the donors in this community understand what we’re doing in the family place. We have a lot of credibility. So I feel like our donors are going to stand beside us. It’s a shame that we’ve had to take anything away from the mission of this organization to even waste time in defending what we’re doing. It’s been a drain on time … it isn’t productive.

How much time did you have to spend dealing with this controversy?

I don’t know… hours, I had to spend hours. Thinking about the right strategy and how to respond and how to stay true to the message of The Family Place. If it’s five hours then it’s five hours too many.

We have a page on our website that we did make gender-neutral in response.

I’d like to thank Ms. Flink for talking with me.

My next post in this series will feature more from my interview with Paige Flink, including her advice to men’s rights activists who want to help male victims of violence. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to donate to The Family Place! Even very low donations are worthwhile, and remember, this week they’ll be doubled.

[Links to the posts in this series: One Two Three.]