I was once beaten so badly by a boyfriend that I am legally blind in my right eye. In our culture, being a "victim" makes me an expert on domestic violence. The truth is quite different. Being on the wrong end of a hurled fist doesn't make me an expert on anything. The only insight I have on domestic violence comes from endlessly turning one question over and over again in my mind: why did I stay?

Feminist explanations have been worse than useless. I was not oppressed by patriarchy -- I was battered by one specific man. I didn't suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome -- an emotional interdependence between captor and captive, which is often used to explain why women stay. I find that explanation to be an insult because part of my choice came from the best qualities in my personality. I refused to give up on a commitment. I assumed personal responsibility, worked harder at the relationship and hoped for the best.

Clearly, I made a mistake.

Battered women are not generally portrayed as responsible adults with free will, who strike a bad bargain or misjudge a situation. But that scenario is probably as common as any of the ones sketched by mainstream feminism. For example, a growing trend among Latinas, for whom family and children are often paramount, is for couples to work out their relationships, often with the aid of a priest or counselor. These women are choosing to put trust in their relationships and stay.

Another popular misconception about domestic violence is that men are perpetrators and not victims. Yet the frequency with which women batter men is less and less disputed in political circles. There is just too much statistical evidence. According to a 1998 Department of Justice report on the National Violence Against Women Survey, some 1.5 million women and over 800,000 men are abused by an intimate every year.

"Behind closed doors: Violence in American Families" by researchers Murray A. Straus, Richard Gelles and Suzanne Steinmetz appeared in 1980. It caused a sensation by exposing the extent of domestic violence in America.

The research indicated that men and women initiate physical abuse at about the same rate but the abuse of men was virtually ignored. It was politically incorrect to view men as anything other than perpetrators, as Steinmetz already knew. Her earlier research, "The Battered Husband Syndrome Victimology" (1977-1978), had indicated that wives initiated attacks as often as husbands do but caused less injury. The politically correct backlash was furious. Steinmetz eventually left her field, alleging, among other charges, that radical feminists had threatened to harm her children.

Erin Pizzey, who founded the first battered women's shelter in England, had much the same experience with her book "Prone to Violence" (1982) which provided anecdotal support for Steinmetz's findings. Pizzey was met "with a solid wall of feminist demonstrators. ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS, ALL MEN ARE BATTERERS, read the placards. The police insisted that I have an escort all round England for my book tour."

Pizzey argues that domestic violence, as an issue, has been highjacked by advocates who have a political and financial interest in denying men are battered.

In Los Angeles County, Marc Angelucci is running up against those political and financial interests. Representing the activist group Stop Abuse For Everyone (SAFE), he is lobbying to establish the county's first battered shelter for "men-only."

In an interview with FOXnews.com, Angelucci described how the county maintains over twenty shelters for "women-only" at taxpayers' expense. Only one is willing to admit men as well, and it had to fight to do so. That shelter, in the remote desert community of Lancaster, is 80 miles away from downtown, a 3-hour drive. This makes it virtually inaccessible to men who must work or live in the city.

The shelter's former director, Patricia Overberg, commented on the authority's refusal to fund shelters for men. "What L.A. County is doing is discriminatory and illegal, and...it is leaving itself vulnerable to a class-action lawsuit." (Los Angeles Daily News, 8/21/01) On the other hand, in liberal L.A., it might well be political suicide for an elected official to support battered men.

Angelucci determined to fight battered men after witnessing the abuse of a close friend whose wife became violent when drunk. Despite frequent abuse, the friend didn't leave: he would have almost certainly lost custody of the three children. He did not fight back because he had been taught since infancy that men do not hit women. He did not call the police for fear of being arrested himself.

Or being laughed at. The stigma attached to battered men is so enormous that many researchers believe the best statistics we have badly understate the situation. Like women who were raped in the '50s, men who report spousal abuse should expect to be further humiliated by the authorities, family, "friends," and co-workers. The silencing shame these men feel is one of the reasons that feminism has been able to ignore them while claiming to care about "victims."

By focusing upon victimized men and by suggesting that women who stay may be making a choice rather than exhibiting a syndrome, I will be accused of trivializing domestic violence. But when such critics wake up tomorrow, they will view the world through two eyes. Because of domestic violence, I will never see the world completely again.

It is because I take domestic violence so seriously that I want October to bring "awareness" and not just politics as usual.