Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

192 WHO STOLE FEMINISM?the Old Dominion study. Ringle asked her whether she did not feelobligated to challenge her colleague. "I wouldn't do that in front of themedia," Mitchell said. "She has a right to report it as she wants."Hohler's investigations fully supported the conclusions Ringle hadreached. Ringle wrote: "Despite their dramatic claims, none of the activistsappears to have any evidence that a link actually exists between footballand wife-beating. Yet the concept has gained such credence that theircampaign has rolled on anyway, unabated." 11Lenore Walker was furious with Ken Ringle for criticizing her research.She attributed his unfriendly stance to male pique at not being able to getthrough to her on the phone the day he was writing his story. As sheexplained to the Boston Globe's Bob Hohler: "He [Ringle] felt as if he wasentitled to talk to me; because he did not get what he was entitled to hegot angry and decided to use his pen as a sword as a batterer does withhis fist when he does not get what he thinks he is entitled to." 12The shelters and hot lines, which monitored the Sunday of the twentyseventhSuper Bowl with special care, reported no variation in the numberof calls for help that day, not even in Buffalo, whose team (and fans) hadsuffered a crushing defeat. As Michael Lindsey commented to Ken Ringle,"When people make crazy statements like this, the credibility of the wholecause can go right out the window."Despite Ringle's exposé, the Super Bowl Sunday "statistic" will be withus for a while, doing its divisive work of generating fear and resentment.In the book How to Make the World a Better Place for Women in FiveMinutes a Day, a comment under the heading "Did You Know?" informsreaders that "Super Bowl Sunday is the most violent day of the year, withthe highest reported number of domestic battering cases." 13How a beliefin that misandrist canard can make the world a better place for women isnot explained.How many women in the United States are brutalized by the menin their lives? Here is a cross section of the various answers that aregiven:During the 9-year period, intimates committed 5.6 million violentvictimizations against women, an annual average of 626,000. (U.S.Department of Justice, 1991) 14Approximately 1.8 million women a year are physically assaulted bytheir husbands or boyfriends. (Behind Closed Doors: Violence in theAmerican Family) 15