1. Erin Patria Margaret Pizzey is a British activist and novelist known for her advocacy on behalf of both men's and women's rights and for her work against domestic violence.
35 Facts About Erin Pizzey
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Erin Pizzey is recognized for founding the world's first and largest domestic violence shelter in the world, Refuge, then known as Chiswick Women's Aid, in 1971.
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Erin Pizzey has said that the threats were from militant feminists.
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Erin Pizzey has stated that she is banned from the refuge she started.
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Erin Pizzey was born Erin Carney in Qingdao, China, in 1939, along with her twin sister Rosaleen.
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Erin Pizzey's father was a British diplomat and one of 17 children from a poor Irish family.
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Erin Pizzey is the sister of writer Daniel Carney, who settled in Rhodesia and is known for his 1978 novel The Wild Geese.
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Erin Pizzey moved with her family to Kokstad in South Africa, then at the age of five, to Beirut.
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Erin Pizzey attended St Antony's junior school and then Leweston School at the age of 11, gaining four O-levels.
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Erin Pizzey's parents were posted to Africa, where she attended Dakar University, Senegal, studying French and English.
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In 1959, Erin Pizzey attended her first meeting at the UK's Liberation Movement at the Chiswick house of a local organiser, Artemis At Artemis' urging, Erin Pizzey agreed to convene a "consciousness-raising group" at her home in Goldhawk Road.
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Erin Pizzey distanced herself from this clique when she witnessed what she described as "irregular and disrespectful behaviour" towards the money donated by desperate women across the UK.
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Erin Pizzey confronted them over this behaviour, which, according to her, included claiming that telephones were tapped, and labelling of people they did not like as MI5, police and CIA informers or agents.
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Erin Pizzey was concerned about overhearing discussion of plans to bomb the London store Biba; she reported on this to the police after warning the people involved.
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Subsequently, Erin Pizzey became aware that the police had the group and offices under surveillance.
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Erin Pizzey says that she and her fellow members of the Goldhawk Road group were seen as troublesome, because they did not accept others' behaviors and views.
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Erin Pizzey set up a women's refuge in Belmont Terrace, Chiswick, London, in 1971.
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Erin Pizzey later opened a number of additional shelters, despite hostility from the authorities.
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Erin Pizzey gained notoriety and publicity for setting up refuges by squatting, most notably in 1975 at the Palm Court Hotel in Richmond.
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Erin Pizzey reached this conclusion when she asked the women in her refuge about their violence, only to discover most of them were equally violent or more violent than their husbands.
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Erin Pizzey expressed concern for the view expressed by government officials that solutions to the issue of domestic abuse and violence could be found in socialist or communist countries.
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Erin Pizzey speculates that high levels of hormones and neurochemicals associated with pervasive childhood trauma led to adults who repeatedly engage in violent altercations with intimate partners despite the physical, emotional, legal and financial costs, in unwitting attempts to simulate the emotional impact of traumatic childhood experiences and manifest the learned biochemical state linked to pleasure.
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Erin Pizzey's family suffered new harassment following the publication of her 1982 book Prone to Violence.
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Erin Pizzey returned to London in the spring of 1997, homeless due to debt and in increasingly poor health.
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Erin Pizzey's insights are still sought by politicians and family pressure groups.
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Erin Pizzey is still active in helping victims of domestic violence.
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Erin Pizzey has been a patron of the charity ManKind Initiative since 2004, when she received a Roger Witcomb Award.
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In 2013, Erin Pizzey joined the editorial and advisory board of the men's rights organisation A Voice for Men, serving as an Editor and DV Policy Advisor and from January to August wrote thirteen articles for the group's web site.
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Erin Pizzey was interviewed for and appeared in the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill by Cassie Jaye about the men's rights movement.
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Erin Pizzey is a patron of registered charity Compassion In Care which works to "break the chain of elderly abuse" and she wrote an introduction for the book Beyond The Facade by founder Eileen Chubb.
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In 2022, Erin Pizzey was listed as Honorary Lifetime President Emeritus to CPU: Children Parents United Charity founded by Greg Ellis.
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In 2009, Erin Pizzey was successful in a libel case against Macmillan Publishers over content in the Andrew Marr book A History of Modern Britain.
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Jack Erin Pizzey was a naval lieutenant whom she first met in Hong Kong.
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Erin Pizzey divorced him in 1976, and divorced her second husband, Jeff Scott Shapiro, in 1994.
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Erin Pizzey was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to the victims of domestic abuse.