I agree with you on the Duluth model thing. Well, agree with your conclusion that the thing itself is useless, but not really with your alternative. Seriously unhealthy romantic relationships aren't meant to be salvaged because its almost impossible to do. Normally the excuse for "one of us has cheated 5 times but we're still going to make it work" is that you have kids, but the thing is that that argument is completely invalid where it comes to abuse because an abusive parent is absolutely worse than a single parent when it comes to kids. Sympathy for abusers is a luxury that you can't afford if you're actually in an abusive relationship, because as long as you believe anything about the relationship is worth saving you aren't gong to be able to leave. Any medical or therapeutic advice that promotes sympathy for abusers is toxic and useless. Now if an abusive person wants to actively seek out something to change themselves then yes, they should have a relatively judgement free avenue for that. But we aren't talking about that since the Duluth model is intervention based. In a situation where the abuser themself has not taken the first steps, on their own, of admitting they have a problem and seeking help, what is required is support for the abuser in the form of support networks and a legal system that is at least not shit about it (which is a much longer conversation). An abuser that hasn't admitted they have a problem isn't going to benefit from support, or well they will but not in the sense that they'll stop being abusive. And its very silly to expect that you can bring love and kindness to the abuser while they are STILL in a relationship, and that will do anything other than extend the suffering of their victim. It would be like trying to rehabilitate a mugger while they were still mugging somene. You can only help a perpetrator rejoin society once you've stopped them from hurting the victim, anything else is nonsense. And to be blunt the Duluth model sounds like a relic from an age were divorce was heavily stigmatized.
I don't buy even a little that women and men on the workforce are on equal footing. A consistent pattern I've heard from both studies and descriptions from people I know, is that women don't get respect. Every female person I know well enough to have talked about it says they have to work to make doctors believe them on their symptoms, and several of them have told me stories where multiple doctors tell them they're fine and their symptoms are a result of stress or weight or something, only to be told by a later doctor "WTF were those other guys smoking." Women also don't tend to rise to leadership positions, and when they do they get a lot of shit. Studies have consistently shown that women expressing anger, or giving commands, will register as far more angry or demanding then men even if their actions are exactly the same. This produces great difficulties for women in authority because they have to very carefully toe the line between losing their subordinate's respect for being a doormat versus for being overly demanding. Women interacting with clients also have to work much harder to get the respect of the client and have things they say believed. On top of all that, "correcting for seniority and hours worked" is bullshit because job security is status nowadays. That would be like saying "if we adjust income based on spending, poor people and rich people make about the same amount of money." The people who have been with a company for twenty years are going to be the ones that weren't downsized, fired, or driven to another job by a lack of advancement prospects. Most people in the US don't have the luxury of staying in one job for years. And on top of that, hours worked is directly, 100% related to the level of your job. Poor or unskilled workers in the US tend to work 2-3 jobs, 10-30 hours each, and non-exempt workers in most US jobs are literally prohibited from working overtime. Meanwhile salaried employees get at least 40 hours, and the more important they are the more likely they'll be pressured into paid or unpaid overtime. High level executives tend to be high stress workaholic types that pour 50+ hours into their one job (the main complaint people have with high paid workers in the US isn't that they don't work hard, its that their compensation is 100x the rest of us). So yeah, if you adjust for the things that indicate high wages, everyone makes the same wages. Who'd a thunk it.
You are absolutely right that we should not ignore child abuse victims. But I don't think feminists are particularly against you on this one. Don't me wrong, I'm sure if you gave a survey to people who call themselves feminists about who they think are typically victims and if various abusive acts are worse male on female, the result would be disheartening. But I personally believe they would still be better than the general population, because to average human right now female on male abuse is impossible due to men's physical strength and "in the family abuse" is something happens, but only in other places. The flip side of "empowerment" is that if you view someone as capable, you can view them as potentially dangerous. So a lot of feminists are totally onboard with what you're saying here, especially younger feminists. A good example would be after Lena Dunham released her autobiography in which she talked about her teenage self molesting her infant sister (and apparently saw no problem with this?) in about three days she went from a "feminist figure" or however you want to word that to essentially dead to most feminists. The whole "feminism is bad because women can abuse men too" thing is a talking point invented by MRAs that doesn't reflect reality. Again, due to the decentralized nature of feminism and the fact that its a common strawman I don't doubt you could find shitty forum posts somewhere where feminists are bad about this, but I do believe that feminists are on average better about this than the general population. I also believe that the primary force pushing down abused men, well I mean its their abusers. But the primary social force is toxic masculinity. If you view yourself as stronger or better than women, if you don't believe men should cry or see it as a weak to express emotions other than anger, if you think that your ability to punch someone in the face or make money is what makes you a man, you are simply not going to be able to admit that a girl is destroying you. For example, most men are ashamed to not be the breadwinner in a relationship. That is EXACTLY the kind of insecurity that a female abuser could use to pick a guy apart. And so I do believe that feminism, while it focuses on women, does have some things to offer men here. And I also believe that the LGBT movement does as well, because if men everywhere can let go of their judgements for how other men can act it will expand how they believe they can act.
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