Chaz links would help to put the findings you report in context. I have looked at the AIC site previously. Most of what they publish seems to be intepreted findings and not a lot of the detail. It also appears to be running to the "script" on gender issues.

Coverage of Emerging issues in DV is almost entirely written in the context of female victim, male perpetrator except for a brief foray into GLBTI DV
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/1-10/10.aspx

Other material I've found on the site seems to run to the same script, lot's of repeatts of "women and their children", much harder to find "men and their children".

The piece on "Community perceptions of domestic violence" seems to be attitudes to violence against women. Eg again domestic violence is framed entirely along gender lines.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/121-140/cfi138.aspx

The closest I've seen to asking the core questions was in "Detainee experience of partner violence" http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/141-160/cfi154.aspx

Most of the material I've seen on the site showed all the hallmarks of much of the gendered research around, it uses phrases like "women and their children" and "violence against women" regularly, it never really seems to try to show the other side of the equation.

R0bert

Robert - there is no gender bias or prejudice in simple statistics, they merely report what has and is occurring. In such statistics, males are shown to be the major perpetrators of physical and sexual violence in the home and females and children are the main victims. The major concern has to be therefore for those victims. How hard is that to understand as a rational and logical outcome?. There is no conspiracy or prejudice and bias against males in such statistics, despite the mythologies and false memes propagated by FR groups. There is also considerable differences in the types of violence experienced by females, the majority of which are physical and sexual with very serious and longlasting injuries, whilst males report the violence they experience is mainly emotional and psychological, and the effects are only temporary.
I still cannot get a straight answer to questions regarding the false memes of FR groups, as to the claims they are propagating that the Shared Parenting law has in any way affected the number of child deaths, and for any evidence from a Coroner's Inquest that any male has committed suicide because he has been denied contact with his children. The silence of FR groups on these two points is deafening.
If males are experiencing the amount of violence in the home which they claim, and are concerned to protect their children (as you have shown to be), then very simple logic would suggest that they have every reason to support the proposed legislative reforms. Why oppose something which is in your favour and for the benefit of your children?.

ChazP

>> males report the violence they experience is mainly emotional and psychological, and the effects are only temporary <<

I feel you have discredited your otherwise reasonable posts with the above sweeping claim.

I agree with you in general - most physical violence is perpetrated by males both in the home and in the public sphere. However, psychological abuse is an issue for both sexes and it is NOT necessarily temporary. This is a very dismissive comment for an extremely nasty type of abuse. Until mental illness is taken as seriously as any other, bullies will continue to get away with ruining many lives.

ChazP, I work in child protection, because I think there is no greater dilemma facing rich and poor alike than the abuse and neglect of children.

And I'll qualify my below remarks by saying that I am at home sick today, and naturally am under the influence of my chosen combination of painandfever relieving agents, Panadeine, Sudafed (you can still get the real stuff in NZ), and Campari, so I reserve the right not to make sense.

I don't dispute that most statistical measures turn up that males are often the perpetrators of domestic violence against their female partners and their children. But firstly, I take this with a grain of salt because there are so many imperfections and inconsistencies in the way research on this issue is done. "violence" is almost always defined differently, and the questions posed, and to whom, produce widely-ranging results as to who reports what.

Secondly, the linking of the preponderance of men-as-perpetrators in statistics to the claim that there is some sort of normative that causes men to resort to violence is a non-sequitur. There are so many factors that contribute to a relationship's spiraling out of control in that way - and rObert has helpfully pointed out that mental illness and substance abuse play a large part (thank you rObert for those references. I promise to check them out forthwith) - that it is impossible to have them represented properly in he-said-she-said dialectics. It is, to use a currently fashionable term, a "wicked problem".

And then there's, I feel personally insulted by the claim that as a man I might have a tendency to use violence. I find such behaviour abhorrent, and unthinkable. and I have yet to see any intellectual argument which doesn't have its origins in the way the person making it feels about themselves, and the projection of same - and thus reflexivity is achieved by writing from a position of self-awareness. And if there are exceptions to a logical relationship, then it is not a logical relationship.

[cont]

So essentially, I think it is quite dangerous to try to combat the problem of domestic violence by focusing on men's tendency to perpetrate it, as to do so oversimplifies the problem, and prevents us from addressing the actual, individual case-by-case reasons why it occurs. What we in the child protection field seek to do is to understand each family's dynamics by spending significant amounts of time with them, observing how they interact, and figuring out how the dysfunction is caused through the interaction, rather than through the individual (though of course individuals are often to blame, and in these cases they are referred to the police).

In sum, to blame maleness for domestic violence is to put the cart before the horse.

Chaz of course there can be bias in simple statistics, if those who collect the stat's are so imersed in their own bias's that they fail to do anything except try to confirm what they already believe the simple statictics will normally give the result's they seek.

I know I'm wasting a post telling you that, this is for the benefit of others who may not love the bias. Ask yourself how many pieces of research have you seen that gave any real indication of testing the underlying claims of massive gender disparity in family violence. If you think about it most will start with an introduction including a statement that the majority of domestic violence is perpetrated by men then go on never questioning that assumption.

There are papers which do ask the question, you will find Flood going all out to try and discredit the methodology but you won't find Chaz quoting the relevant sectiond from them.

For a start a somewhat dated piece of Australian research which set's the theme for what I'm trying to describe about asking the question
http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/heady99.htm - to get in ahead of the almost inevitable claims about CTS some material by Murray Straus on the criticisms http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS4.pdf

The section on DV from a NZ longitudinal multidisciplinary
health and development study http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/170018.pdf

Strauss and Gelles have been asking the question for a long time and finding little difference in perpetration rates. Perhaps start with this piece by Gelles http://www.breakingthescience.org/RichardGelles_MissingPersonsOfDV.php

A small edited quote from that article (word limit - check the link for the rest)
"Murray Straus has found that every study among more than 30 describing some type of sample that is not self-selective has found a rate of assault by women on male partners that is about the same as the rate by men on female partners."

There is a lot more that shows the same thing but it does not help the cause of those trying to make this stuff about gender so they do whatever they can to discredit it and the researchers involved.

R0bert