'I blame everybody'

Ha, so do I. But really what you're supposed to do is identify a victim and not blame the victim. I reckon everyone's a victim and nobody is blameless.

'It gets bad, they panic, they scream for help, you help, they get back together and then suddenly her and her partner both hates you for knowing too much.'

Sounds like my neighbours. He puts holes in walls and calls her a whore, I go over to see if she's ok and they both yell abuse at me. For some reason I'm not scared of him yelling but she scares the hell out of me. In the guys drunken rants he reckons she has ruined his life (got him banned from the local pub) and owes him money. Suuuurreee.

Later I found out it is actually true and she is the one manipulating a guy with cerebral palsy for his pension money as she cant hold down a job now she fell off the wagon. He cant get out of her house because he needs her help to get his wheel chair down the steps, so he smashes it into the walls and rants at her.

There are 2 sides to all domestics. What concerns me about all this vitriol above is that the bitter menz and the white ribbon advocates are two sides to the same coin. It has to be a concern that all the advocates seem to be in the 'industry' and have traumatic experiences that have coloured their attitudes to men.

This has long been my concern about such industries and their commissioning of and interpretation of 'studies' and raising 'awareness'. You cant have gone through what Liz and and that 'happy' chick on the other thread have gone through and kid yourself you aren't carrying round a hell of a lot of bias. So the powers that be are all predisposed, as I was, to see a woman victim and a male abuser in the above scenario. It's the power of DV industry propaganda and gender stereotypes.

Ros:”She'd be thinking about getting half the dairy farm which has been passed down through generations on the husband's side.”

C’mon Ros we know Marg’s dad left her that farm as the female eldest with four male siblings, the youngest of which runs the local police station.

Houel your nieghbours suck man. Mine are two blokes, non gay and lately they’ve been getting drunk every couple of nights and beating the daylights out of each other. Rather than offering any assistance I was kinda hoping they’d eventually kill each other.

Ooo... like these two did.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10695592
“The Auckland couple found dead in their home after a panicked 14-year-old girl called 111 to tell police about a serious domestic argument...”
“When police arrived, they found the bodies of the pair. Both had sustained serious knife wounds. “

Having not been a chronic victim or perp and never having paid child support and my ex died young and I’ve seen men and women do horrid things – I’m fairly balanced.

Today in my local court a dude got adjourned or something like that, beat the Mrs up, she got AVO, he went back and did the job properly. But he musta been a bit odd cause he was in a chair with a metal plate clamped over the top of his handcuffed hands. At the local Xmas Carols on Sunday night 3 chicks pulled a chick out of the backseat of a car and beat the crap out of her… that could have been a Aussie Seasons Greetings custom I was not aware of..?

I propose we start a Black And Blue Ribbon Blame Everybody Equally Movement.

From above, with the controversial bit removed.

“Jewely:"How were they getting away with that and remaining outside of prison?"

It's because many jurisdictions, including Australia, have a crime called "infanticide", which is not regarded as seriously as murder. It exists because of the outdated notion that new mothers are not of sound mind and should therefore be excused for killing their child.

http://www.armstronglegal.com.au/web/page/infanticide

It's gradually being used less and less, thankfully. Think Keli Lane as an example. She won't get more than a couple of years for the murder, I reckon, but she may get additional time for the attempted cover-up.

Liz45:"You DO NOT supply references for everthing you assert. Where's the references for MJA"

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11331#193312

thanks for letting me clear that up for you. Are there any other references you've missed?

Liz45:"overwhelming majority of perpetrators are male I must stress!"

As discussed elsewhere, the report makes clear that mothers are responsible in about 30% of cases of child homicide, biological fathers in about 20% and people unrealted to the child in about 50%. Mostly those people are associates of the mother, including new partners.

See, it's not so hard to understand, is it?

Liz45:"You do not know how to debate women"

Oh, you mean I should leave my logic at the door and simply accept whatever I'm told? Gee, I can't imagine why anyone would have a problem with that...

Liz45:"The overwhelming body of evidence states that, women make up the overwhelming majority of victims,"

The real evidence is that it occurs about equally between men and women, while women form the majority of abusers of children, especially young children who can't fight back. Neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse are all the virtual sole preserve of women. Of course, in line with our cultural prejudice that such women must be "mad not bad", they aren't treated too harhly, in stark contrast to men who do so.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6089613/mum-not-dad-more-likely-to-neglect-kids/

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4906.02005%20(Reissue)?OpenDocument”

Jewely:"I propose we start a Black And Blue Ribbon Blame Everybody Equally Movement."

lol, I like that.

Houellebecq:"It has to be a concern that all the advocates seem to be in the 'industry' and have traumatic experiences that have coloured their attitudes to men."

Yes it is. It creates an altogether misleading impression of both prevalence and seriousness, especially when combined with the attitude that self-reported victims should not be questioned as to the veracity of their claims.

I do wonder how many of the people that form the "industry" are simply cynical self-servers rather than genuine victims.

Nina Funnell, for example, loudly claims "victim" status, yet she was actually the victor in the assault that she claims took place. She fought the attacker off, she wasn't raped. that to me means she isn't a "victim", but to those in the industry, that doesn't matter - she says she is one so she is.

What she has done is to parley that experience and a reasonably photogenic face together with some talent as a writer, into a series of public positions, the latest being the NSW Premier's Council on Preventing Violence Against Women

http://www.women.nsw.gov.au/about_us/premiers_council_on_preventing_violence_against_women

Nina's experience was not domestic, it was in a public place, which makes it atypical, according to the stats. What is typical is the standard rhetoric she churns out and that is what the "industry" wants to hear, so she prospers.

Antiseptic, you say "Nina Funnell, for example, loudly claims "victim" status, yet she was actually the victor in the assault that she claims took place."

Yes, I would have thought so too from reading Ms Funnell's story as she told it in the SMH. But then when checking to see what Ms Funnell has been up to lately, I notice the world is being told in a bio on her, on the "Steps to the Future Foundation" website, that

"...Nina sustained severe injuries and psychological trauma as a result of the assault..."

Strangely she made no mention of "severe injuries" or anything to do with the need for medical treatment in her SMH,2 July 2007, article. Must be just another one of those examples of recovered memory.

With respect to the SMH article it seems Funnell is trying promote the idea that women should fight back against any attack. You would think wouldn't you, that she would have said something about the risks in doing that and the "severe injuries" that she herself experienced when she fought back.


BTW in the same bio it says "She now uses her experience as a platform to speak out publicly against all forms of violence against women."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/how-i-stopped-a-rapist/2007/07/01/1183228954519.html

http://www.steptothefuture.com/page.php?id=30&sid=147&y=

Roscop, the article you linked to was a good example of Nina's graat promise as a writer. She asked interesting questions and she was marching to her own drum, not the beat of someone else's bandwagon.

She wrote:"Why do I cringe when I say he was of Middle Eastern appearance? I wouldn't be shy about stating that he was "Caucasian", had that been the case. Am I being too politically correct in not wanting to talk about the issue of ethnicity? Or am I right to not want to perpetuate a racial stereotype that damages a community already under fire?

I don't have answers to these questions yet."

which is a very good set of questions which I would like to know how she has resolved.

She says: "So far the police have not caught anyone and I've been left frustrated and upset. This frustration is compounded when the police label me a "victim", or worse, a "witness". A witness? I wasn't sitting on the sideline eating popcorn watching this man beat and choke me." No, she was doing what a normal person would do and fighting back, successfully as it turned out. More power to her elbow.

So it's disappointing that she chose to go down the path of the professional victim-Feminist with such promise. She could be so much better than that.