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Erin Patria Margaret Pizzey (; born 19 February 1939) is a British men's rights activist and novelist known for her advocacy on behalf of both men's and women's rights and for her work against domestic violence. She 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.
Pizzey says that she has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because her experience and research into the issue led her to conclude that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are as capable of violence as men. These threats eventually led to her exile from the UK. Pizzey has said that the threats were from militant feminists. She has also stated that she is banned from the refuge she started.
Pizzey moved with her family to Kokstad in South Africa, then at the age of five, to Beirut. At the end of the war the family went to Toronto, Canada. They moved to Tehran, Iran, and finally settled in England in 1948. Pizzey attended St Antony's junior school and then Leweston School at the age of 11, gaining four . Her parents were posted to Africa, where she attended Dakar University, Senegal, studying French language and English language.
The head office of the Women's Liberation Workshop (a women's workshop within the WLM) was in Little Newport Street, in Chinatown, Covent Garden, straddling the City of Westminster and the Borough of Camden. Along with her friend, Alison, and other members of the Goldhawk Road Group, Pizzey found herself at odds with Artemis and Gladiator, who led a clique of younger women within the WLM Workshop head office. 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. She 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. She also 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. Subsequently, Pizzey became aware that the police had the group and offices under surveillance. 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.
After Pizzey left Chiswick Women's Aid (renamed Chiswick Family Rescue on 31 March 1979), the organisation she had founded and moved abroad, it was rebranded as the charity Refuge on 5 March 1993. Although Refuge traces its existence back to Chiswick Women's Aid, Pizzey's name could not be found anywhere on the Refuge website for many decades. It was not until 2 November 2020 that Sandra Horley, the chief executive of Refuge since 1983, mentioned Pizzey's name for the first time again on the Refuge website in a press release on her retirement.
In her book Prone to Violence, Pizzey expressed concern that so little attention was paid to the causes of interpersonal and family violence, stating, "to my amazement, nobody seemed to genuinely want to find out why violent people treat each other the way they do". She also 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. Pizzey pointed out that marital violence was a great problem in Russia, and China addressed the issue by proclaiming wife-beating a crime punishable by death sentence. The book looks at what appeared to be learned behaviour, often starting in childhood, linked to hormonal responses. Pizzey describes such behaviour as akin to addiction.
She speculates that high levels of hormones and 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. The book contains numerous stories of disturbed families, alongside a discussion of the reasons why the modern state care-taking agencies are largely ineffective. Promotional events for the book were met with protest, and Pizzey reports that she herself and co-author Jeff Shapiro needed police protection during the promotional events for the book.
Having moved to Santa Fe to write, Pizzey promptly became involved in running a refuge in New Mexico, as well as dealing with sexual abusers and paedophiles. Pizzey said of this work, "I discovered that there were just as many women paedophiles as there were men. Women go undetected, as usual. Working against paedophiles is a very dangerous business." While she was living in Santa Fe, one of her dogs was shot and two others were stolen, which she claims was a result of racist neighbours. Her family suffered new harassment following the publication of her 1982 book Prone to Violence. Pizzey links much of the harassment to militant feminists and their objections to her research, findings and work. Describing the harassment, Deborah Ross of The Independent wrote that "the feminist sisterhood went bonkers".
Following the abuse and threats in Santa Fe, Pizzey moved to Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands, Details. where she wrote with her second husband, Jeff Shapiro. Subsequently, she moved to Siena, Italy, where her writing and advocacy work continued. She returned to London in the spring of 1997, homeless due to debt and in increasingly poor health. Her insights are still sought by politicians and family pressure groups.
In 2013, 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. Her two April 2013 articles pertained to two interviews she gave on the Reddit community "IAmA", in which she promoted her Facebook page, and the "AVFM Online Radio" podcast on BlogTalkRadio.April 2013 interviews on /r/IamA: 14th and 27th She announced her first interview a week prior on /r/MensRights. Ask Me Anything planned 6 April 2013 by Erin Pizzey
In November 2014, Pizzey became owner/manager of the AVFM WhiteRibbon.org website (since renamed Honest-Ribbon.org), which has been criticised by the original White Ribbon Campaign as "a copycat campaign articulating ... archaic views and denials about the realities of gender-based violence".
Pizzey was interviewed for and appeared in the 2016 documentary film The Red Pill by Cassie Jaye about the men's rights movement. 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. In 2022, Pizzey was listed as Honorary Lifetime President Emeritus to CPU: Children Parents United Charity founded by Greg Ellis. The charity appears to be shut down as of April 2023. Pizzey has also been a patron of the shared parenting charity Both Parents Matter for the last few years.
In 2000, Pizzey's grandson Keita Craig, who had schizophrenia, hanged himself in a prison cell. Pizzey and her family campaigned against the coroner's verdict of hanging and in 2001 a jury at a second inquest found that Keita's death was contributed to by the neglect of prison staff. The case was the first to reach a verdict of neglect in a suicide case.
Pizzey was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to the victims of domestic abuse.
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