Huggins, I don't know what you wrote to get yourself suspended.

Expanding the debate about domestic violence, to include the fact that men also experience violence perpetrated by women, has nothing to do with shifting the focus away from female victims of violence.

Alot of reseach points to incidences of mutual violence between male and females.

If we really want to end violence then it must be gender inclusive not exclusive.

Most of the feminist research pre dates the mens rights or fathers rights groups and as such the research conducted by those groups is in response to "Confimation bias"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

of feminist research tactics.

<Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.[Note 1][1] As a result, people gather evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs.>

I note with interest White Ribbon Day Foundation chairman Andrew O’Keefe’s use of sexist jokes demeaning fathers and men over child custody on live TV this morning.
On Weekend Sunrise, O’Keefe joked: “Before getting married, women should look at the guy and ask themselves ‘Do I really want the kids spending every second Sunday with him?’ “
I suggest he would have been screamed off morning television if the gender roles of his joke had been reversed.
The WRD Foundation claims to not be biased against men, but rarely acknowledges that men suffer from high levels of abuse also, despite overwhelming statistical evidence. It is a shame that O’Keefe, as the head of an organisation promoting a message of respect for women, uses his powerful position as a presenter on national media to actively promote the disrespect, abuse and demeaning of men and fathers with crass jokes over child custody.
I note the majority of domestic violence legislation includes “put-downs” and “demeaning comments” as recognised forms of domestic abuse.
The proposed changes to domestic violence legislation currently recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission includes any form of “taunts” being regarded as grounds for legal action against men.
Despite the publicity given to the need to respect women, Mr O’Keefe seems to believe it is still perfectly acceptable to promote an attitude amongst women and girls that demeaning men and fathers is okay, and not covered by the proposed or any legislation.
Is this really a mindset that serves the encouragement of family values and the building of respect between men and women that will ultimately lead to preventing abuse against both genders?
Is Mr O’Keefe a public role model we really want for our children if he actively promotes values of disrespect towards men and boys? Again, if the gender roles of his jokes were reversed, he would be decried for promoting attitudes of disrespect towards women, the very values WRD purports to stand for.
Is this not a double standard – one law for women and a different law for men?

I question also why the WRD campaign does not have the integrity to promote the full statistics on all violence, including the well-researched government statistics that at least 25 per cent of all violence against women is perpetrated by other women? Where are the women or men speaking out about this?

And also the statistics released last year under Freedom of Information by the West Australian Government Department of Child Protection, showing women perpetrate THREE TIMES more verified cases of child abuse than men.

Academic researchers pointed out that these statistics were accurately indicative of the child abuse situation nation-wide, yet all other State Governments have refused to release their child abuse perpetrator statistics by gender. Why not break ALL silences if we are genuinely concerned about children's safety? Or are some silences sacrosanct and permanently protected?

Why does WRD not have the chivalry to speak out also about the violence perpetrated on these children overwhelmingly by women? Does that not count? Does Breaking the Silence not extend to protecting our children also?

Below are some qaulified links to video interviews.

The first is an interview of Dr Erin Pizzey, original founder of the women's shelter movement and now a men's services advocate, talking about how the Domestic Violence Industry has become a multi-million dollar business based on distorted statistics and cover-ups.

Second is how men's issues are seriously ignored in favour of women's.

Third is an interesting public TV experiment on how people react completely differently to violence by women or men. This demonstrates clearly why men are so reluctant to report violence by women.

http://www.youtube.com/user/trueswordsexpert0909#p/f/0/Kccm4KbQtrU
http://www.youtube.com/user/trueswordsexpert0909
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks&feature=related

Oh well done boys! You have now started alienating the guys on this subject too.

I have changed my mind about white ribbon day now. I agree it is a waste of money when the domestic violence issue has not improved at all.

I say we spend more money on educating victims of any sort of domestic violence(male or female of course) to immediately have the violent offenders removed from the home and taken to government funded 'aggression houses',
where they are to be forced to remain until they have either the help they need to calm down, or else sent to prison.

Now that I have come to my own comfortable conclusion, I will leave you boys to hold hands together and sing about nasty women....

I think you should be exploring what makes men do this to women.
I can't imagine anyone abusing women because they wanted something to do. If you find out what triggers this, a solution should be at hand.
I don't think just talk will do a thing,
'the help they need to calm down' Why are they in a state that needs to be calmed down.
There is something missing from the discussion.

"Now that I have come to my own comfortable conclusion, I will leave you boys to hold hands together and sing about nasty women...."

Suzie that's about as honest a representation of our views as Huggin's little game was.

Let me guess, you like the men in your life so that means that your support for things anti-male is not really anti-male but any male who tries to reform a corrupt and dishonest portrayal of DV obviously dislikes women not matter how much they happen to love the women in their own lives.

You can do a lot better, get over your own bias's start thinking about the issue in realistic terms rather than along gender party lines.

If your comment "You have now started alienating the guys on this subject too." referred to Huggin's, GrahamY has come to the conclusion that Huggins was CJM. If so his defense of WRD fit's in really well, all based on lies, false accusations and misrepresentation.

Your plan for having the offenders relies on the assumption that there is an adult victim most of the time rather than two parties playing the same game. The evidence shows that all too often the violence is mutual. Not always but often enough to rule out simplistic solutions.

If your plan relies on having the physically stronger one removed for physical violence will it also see the verbally stronger one removed when it comes to verbal abuse?

As you may notice I'm getting pretty annoyed at the continuing lie that our opposition to gendered anti-DV campaigns is about nasty women. It's dishonest and pathetic.

R0bert