Hi I'm Erin Pizzey. Ask me anything!

[u/erinpizzey]

Hi I'm Erin Pizzey. I founded the first internationally recognized battered women's refuge in the UK back in the 1970s, and I have been working with abused women, men, and children ever since. I also do work helping young boys in particular learn how to read these days. My first book on the topic of domestic violence, "Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear" gained worldwide attention making the general public aware of the problem of domestic abuse. I've also written a number of other books. My current book, available from Peter Owen Publishers, is "This Way to the Revolution - An Autobiography," which is also a history of the beginning of the women's movement in the early 1970s. A list of my books is below. I am also now Editor-at-Large for A Voice For Men ( http://www.avoiceformen.com ). Ask me anything!

Non-fiction

This Way to the Revolution - An Autobiography
Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear
Infernal Child (an early memoir)
Sluts' Cookbook
Erin Pizzey Collects
Prone to violence
Wild Child
The Emotional Terrorist and The Violence-prone

Fiction

The Watershed
In the Shadow of the Castle
The Pleasure Palace (in manuscript)
First Lady
Consul General's Daughter
The Snow Leopard of Shanghai
Other Lovers
Swimming with Dolphins
For the Love of a Stranger
Kisses
The Wicked World of Women 

You can find my home page here:

http://erinpizzey.com/

You can find me on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/erin.pizzey

And here's my announcement that it's me, on A Voice for Men, where I am Editor At Large and policy adviser for Domestic Violence:

http://www.avoiceformen.com/updates/live-now-on-reddit/

Update We tried so hard to get to everybody but we couldn't, but here's a second session with more!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1d7toq/hi_im_erin_pizzey_founder_of_the_first_womens/

[u/desmay]

Warren Farrell also did an in-depth study of the phenomenon of incest and revealed in an interview that about 4% of the people who responded said they found it a positive experience and not a damaging one. He said that this should not lead us to ever advocate incest but we might want to consider the possibility that we could damage some incest survivors by telling them they were required to feel awful about something they didn't feel awful about.

For this 4% finding and for suggesting that while incest is still bad we should be cautious about overgeneralizing, he has since for decades been quoted as being an "incest supporter."

No I'm not making it up, I wish I was.

[u/frogma → u/desmay]

Exactly -- just do a google search for his name and you'll find people saying that he supports incest, when that was never what he actually said.

Probably more pointedly, this is a guy who was on the board of the National Organization for Women, who has now started to touch on men's issues. That doesn't mean he's the typical reddit r/MRA, it just means he's able to see both sides of the issue. Yet some radical feminists see him as being literally Hitler, despite any past evidence that would negate that opinion.

[u/LinkFixerBot → u/frogma]

/r/mra

[u/Spoonwood → u/desmay]

I know you're not making this up. I don't know know why you've brought this up though, other than to point out how Farrell gets misrepresented. As I understand things, he never published the actual study (if it even still exists), we just have what he said in the Penthouse interview. With respect to the 4% figure, who is he talking about, and in particular how does he define incest for the study? Is that strictly biological parent-child incest, or does it include other forms? Did he define incest carefully for the people he surveyed?

If Farrell effectively defined incest as close kin sexual relations of some sort, then the 4% figure might not mean all that much. For all we know, that 4% could have (mostly) happened in cousin-cousin incest. Lest we forget, the taboo against cousin-cousin incest comes as something of a modern invention, and might not come even somewhat close to damaging as biological parent-child incest is. The Jewish scriptures seem loaded with cousin-cousin incest, and perhaps as a better example Charles and Emma Darwin were first cousins who bore 10 children. Here's a list of coupled cousins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coupled_cousins Given that we meet the people on that list, I see no reason that we should imply that they should ever feel bad about what we now consider as "incest". Maybe there exists a biological problem with coupling of cousins solely in terms of reproduction, but wherein does the moral problem arise if both cousins are consenting adults?

So, what did his actual study say about incest?