PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Rebecca Stewart

Telephone: 513-479-3335

Email: info@EndToDV.org

Queen Bee Syndrome: How the Domestic Violence Industry Promotes a Harmful Narrative to Stereotype Men

WASHINGTON / July 20, 2021 – Queen Bee Syndrome is becoming recognized as a major problem in our schools, workplaces, and homes. In her book, “The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls,” Rachel Simmons reveals how females “launch lobbying campaigns to turn peers into a target, or to figure out just the right insult that will cut someone down.” In a recent Washington Post editorial, Cathy Alter recounted, “Thanks to the Queen Bee, I was pushed out of a friend group, disinvited from activities, tarnished by falsehoods, and deserted by allies.” (1)

Queen Bee tactics are deployed more often by women than men. The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducts a national survey of “coercive control,” which includes interfering with family and friends, making decisions about what clothes to wear, or threatening to take away the children. Each year, 17.3 million men and 12.7 million women are found to be victims of such behaviors. Expressed as percentages, annually 15.2% of men and 10.7% of women experience coercive control (2).

The problem is the domestic violence industry is rooted in the ideological principle that a gender power differential, which favors men, is the cause of domestic violence. This belief is incompatible with the raw fact that domestic violence is a problem that predominantly affects men — each year there are 4.2 million male victims of physical domestic violence, compared to 3.5 million female victims (3).

But the domestic violence industry does not allow an inconvenient truth to stand in the way of a compelling social narrative.

Recently, domestic violence activists latched on to the coercive control issue, seeking to turn coercive control into a legal offense. In March, the House of Representatives passed the Violence Against Women Act, H.R. 1620, which dramatically expanded the definition to domestic violence to include “a pattern of behavior involving the use of physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, economic, or technological abuse.” (4) The bill does not define what is “verbal” or “psychological” abuse, so they can mean nearly anything you want them to be (5).

Similar efforts are underway at the state level. For example, the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence successfully lobbied for a new law that broadens the definition of domestic violence to include coercive control (6).

Everything about the new law reinforces the narrative that only men engage in this type of behavior. The bill’s name commemorates a female victim: “Jennifer’s Law.”  Testimony by actress Evan Rachel Wood hammered home the male-as-perpetrator theme (7). And conveniently ignoring the findings of the CDC survey, Senator Mae Flexner claimed, “The changes in this bill will be a lifeline to the more than a third of all Connecticut women who will experience some form of intimate partner violence or stalking in their lifetime.” (8)

The website of the Connecticut Coalition also features a “Power and Control” wheel that reveals a decidedly one-sided view of domestic violence. The wheel highlights the use of “Male Privilege” and consistently uses female pronouns to describe victims: “Threatening to leave her,” “Making her afraid,” “Putting her down,” and so forth (9).

If such harmful stereotypes were applied to women, Blacks, Jews, or other groups, they would be termed a “hate campaign.” But for the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, it’s “business as usual.”

Citations:

  1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/adult-bully-advice/2021/06/03/dffb8fc8-c3c5-11eb-93f5-ee9558eecf4b_story.html
  2. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf , Tables 4.9 and 4.10.
  3. CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2015 Data Brief – Updated Release. 2018. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/2015data-brief508.pdf Tables 9 and 11.
  4. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1620/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr+1620%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1
  5. https://endtodv.org/pr/lawmakers-should-not-be-fooled-by-deceptive-claims-of-coercive-control-advocates/
  6. http://www.ctcadv.org/files/2416/2137/8653/RELEASE_SB1091_SPassage_5.18.21.pdf
  7. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/actress-advocates-survivors-testify-for-stricter-domestic-violence-laws/2452295/
  8. https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/politics/jennifers-law-passes-house-heads-to-governors-desk/2502336/
  9. http://www.ctcadv.org/information-about-domestic-violence/what-domestic-violence/