Violence, whether it is on the street or in the home is an issue about excessive aggression badly handled to the point of becoming damaging behaviour. There are many triggers of aggression including low emotional intelligence, socio-economic conditions, socialisation, psychopathology and so on.

It becomes a gender issue because men are naturally more aggressive and violent than women, although, there will always be women who cross over the defining boundaries to be as males in this.

It is interesting you claim men are naturally more aggressive than women George.

National Crime Authority statistics from the last few years show violent crimes amongst young men are actually reducing, yet violent crimes amongst young women have increased by over a third in the same period.

One of the most pressing social problems at present is the increasing level of violence at schools by girls against girls.

I suggest you do some simple Google research on this, or even a search on "Girl Fights" to see the staggering volume of pages showing girls beating the daylights out of each other.

There is a current wave of study and academic research also on "Emotional Terrorism" or Intimate Terrorism, also known as the psychological violence women use in relationships.

Our culture has built up a glamourised beauty persona of women that makes it incredibly difficult for many people to perceive that women can be capable of any form of violence. It does not fit with the widely-marketed "Goddess" persona we are supposed to accept.

Women are human just as men are, and have their shadow side just as men do, as much as it enrages some people to point it out.

We have a nation of men standing up and saying yes, let's take responsibility for our violence against women. They are taking ownership and responsibility for it.

Yet when we suggest women might also like to take responsibility and ownership of their aspects of violence, it promotes the sort of indignant response some people show above.

It means children continue to suffer because we are too indignant to accept that women might abuse them also. It seems protecting the image of women has become more important than protecting the wellbeing of our children.

Men can admit their violence and do something about it. Women seemingly do not yet have the integrity or courage to self-examine and act, and provide help for the women who do abuse children.

For anyone interested, I suggest looking at the website www.oneinthree.com.au

It has a large volume of validated academic research showing that men make up at least a third of domestic violence victims. Yet most state governments refuse to provide help or services for them.

The idea there are lots of services available for fathers or male victims of DV is a complete myth. Maybe if anybody knows of any, lets post them all here.

Another website worth looking at for valid, uncompromised research is www.cafcusa.org

This is the California Alliance For Families and Children, which holds a major domestic violence conference in the USA every year amongst many of the world's leading researchers, many of them women academics.

The focus of their last two annual conferences (all paper synopses are on the website)is that the biggest issue preventing progress in resolving domestic violence is the failure of governments to recognise the equal female propensity for violence in relationships.

This prevents women who need help for "rage" issues getting the help they need.

They also advocate looking from a counseling perspective at the dynamic between men and women in relationships, rather than just criminalising the men and throwing them in prison as a quick and easy solution.

What a fun game this is - not.

One the one hand the proponents of gendered anti-violence campaigns dig out claims, stat's, stereotypes and sometimes plain lies to support their approach. Those who don't agree are then attacked if they produce evidence which conflicts with the preferred dogma as being anti-women or it all being about nasty women.

Some people just can't seem to deal with the idea that women are full human beings capable of great actions and horrible actions. That whole idea is just too confronting.

Some of that is mirrored in the CK Billboard discussion where the idea that enough women might enjoy a fantasy image of multiple partners to make it a viable component of an advertising campaign is beyond belief for some. It's much easier to assume that CK spend their advertising budget image for young women's jeans on male sexual gratification.

Women may not generally be as physically strong as men but they are just as capable of a range of emotions and behaviors as men.

Men may not generally be as skilled as women verbally but that does not make us incapable of hurting our partners with words or being the aggressor in a verbal conflict.

R0bert

Hello Paul,

Nothing you say actually counters my point because my point was modified to include.... "although, there will always be women who cross over the defining boundaries to be as males in this."

When it is that violence punished sees the figures of incarceration reverse so that more or an equal number of women are in gaol for violent crimes, then you may actually have a point.

With regard to 'emotional terrorism' could you give me a link to that study please as I was of a mind that females and males are equally capable of 'emotional terrorism' as well as 'financial terrorism'.

With regard to 'child abuse', whilst I suspect that this kind of abuse is dominantly perpetrated by women, on many levels, I have no study to support this. But agree that it is an issue for women to own and address.

George I've posted links to a variety of material on substantiated child abuse on one of the other threads recently.

Technically women do more child abuse but they tend to have more care of the children. I've not seen the detail breakdown for single parent households recently but it used to be that the rate of child abuse was marginally lower for male lead SPH's than female lead SPH's but that was at a time when male lead SPH's were rare.

My impression is that there are too many other factors at play to try and come to real conclusions other that child abuse is a human issue not a gender issue.

Two parts of your earlier comment are concerning.
"men are naturally more aggressive and violent than women"
Aggressiveness does not always end in actions that result in jail. It can be a constant pushing of someone else and bullying behaviors which don't have legal consequences. Socialisation also plays into this and gender perceptions.

"cross over the defining boundaries to be as males in this" - possibly in the context of the rest of your comment not to far out there but I'm very over what seems to be a tenancy to equate alpha behaviors with male behaviors. When a female rises to power and acts as people with power tend to do we are told she acted in a masculine manner. Feminist literature seems to treat co-operation and working together as feminine and aggressive dominant behavior as male ignoring how often males co-operate and how much as a society we reward the other behaviors.

R0bert