Andresen works for men's health. he commercially offers training in supporting men who need to address issues, including violence against them in their families. Since men are his focus, he cant be a feminist, or else his research would be equally pilloried as anything any feminist reported. So is he a masculinist, and why does it matter?

For all who think we should rely on criminal law - the AVO system was introduced for two reasons - one because abused women wouldn't go thru taking their man to court - THEIR men weren't criminal, and the more important reason - the criminal 'justice' system couldn't handle the load. It cant handle what it has now. It hasn't for many years. Now stats. Stats reflect only the samples. Within careful parameters, within ethical guidelines - ergo they are often narrow, and dont get the whole picture by a long shot. snapshots, glimpses.

Then there's anecdote - shunned by the increasingly educated, no matter how closely they might describe what is actually going on.

Then there's mass ignorance and bias.

Fact is, if you think men get a raw deal and women dont, you are mistaken. Many of both get unfairly screwed. all levels of court

I have very considerable respect for Father’s Rights groups, for their expertise and knowledge in the areas of “Disregard for Truth’, and the making of 'False Statements’.
“Bringing gender politics into a serious debate” is a ploy which they use with frequency, and expertise. Greg Andresen condemns Kate Ellis for using such arguments, and then launches into his own arguments in gender politics, thereby adding his own distractions and diversionary ploys.
The proposed legislation does not `”Purport to reduce such (domestic) violence”, it would take far more legislation and resources to even begin to attempt such an objective. This legislation is so that Courts can evaluate future risks to the safety and welfare of children and young people, where there has been domestic violence in the past. The purpose is the safety and protection of children.
There are no false allegations of domestic violence and the inherent abuse of children made by mothers, only UNPROVEN allegations. For such allegations to be proven as false, would require that they had been subjected to a due process of law, with careful and thorough investigation of such allegations. This does not happen, because, as Chief Justice Diane Bryant has stated, the Family Courts do not have the powers, expertise and resources to carry out such investigations. At best the allegations are subjected to the whimsical conjectures of ICLs and the fanciful speculations of Court Reporters, neither of whom have the statutory powers, qualifications, nor expertise to conduct such investigations. Their evidence in such matters is frequently outside of their area of expertise and as such, should be declared as inadmissible in any competently conducted legal proceedings. So how can allegations be false, when they have never been proven to be untrue?.
The proposed legislation will hopefully protect children and young people from being ordered by Family Courts into contact with and even the custody, of convicted paedophiles, child sex abusers, violent aggressors, and psychopaths. In recent years, some children have paid for such decisions with their lives while many others continue to suffer the abuses which could not be proven in Courts.

As Michael mentioned, there probably is more evidence that men are responsible for more DV than women. Having said that, it isn't particularly important to prove which gender is worse than the other. This sort of one-upmanship has polluted discussion of this issue for far too long.

It is useful to note that men are on the receiving end of more DV than is commonly thought and that the most common form of DV is reciprocal or bi-directional. Our society socialises people to see male participants as horrible, horrible wife-beaters and female participants as victims. While an objective judgement might often be that both participants are as bad as each other, our society encourages people to judge him way more harshly than her. This is an appalling double standard and men have every right to complain.

Furthermore, some people want us to believe that some men simply choose to bash-up their partner, because of old fashioned beliefs about gender (the patriachy theory). This is a highly flawed understanding of DV that is not supported by any evidence and gets us nowhere. We need to be talking to boys about how to deal with violent women, not pretending that they don't exist. We need to be using pressure to stop women from being violent towards men, not showering female DV participants with sympathy and treating them as heroes.

Lets solve this problem, not use victims to stake out the high ground in the battle of the sexes.

I agree with Benk in that we need to deal with all forms of violence in our communities, not just with male violence. Obviously, women of today are more publicly and domestically violent than they ever were, most probably due to increased female use of alcohol and drugs.

Women are more likely to initiate violence or to try to fight back if they are intoxicated, as are men. The main problem is that there is no doubt men are usually physically stronger, and thus women come off worse and are more likely to be hospitalised and come to the attention of the police.

Domestic violence, which this thread is mainly concerned about, is of course the same sort of violence exhibited by both men and women in the public arena, except they are usually on their own in the family home, with much less chance of anyone breaking it up, or helping the victims quickly.

Of course, there is also more likely to be children watching this violence in the family home...and kids learn by example.

At the end of the day, it seems to me that the only time AVO's are considered appropriate by some members of society is AFTER someone has already been bashed or physically threatened.

I find this both scary and sad, and I admit to feeling very angry when a friend and her kids were recently barricaded in their home while their estranged Father and husband (an AVO had been taken out) spent the night speeding up and down their street, throwing rocks at their windows and screaming abuse.
When phoned, the police said they would do nothing unless someone was actually hurt!

<Michael,

Oh dear, you're one of those patronising men by 'engaging' and 'involving' men in their education about their innate abusive ways.

'Reach, engage, and educate men.' about their sole responsibility for violent domestic disputes, and shame them into being responsible for other men's actions.

'In engaging men, several strategies'...

Don't you mean in manipulating men? Into action out of some form of gender guilt for other individual abusive men?Posted by Houellebecq, Friday, 10 June 2011 11:11:21 AM>

Spot on and well articulated Houelly, and I second that.

Many of Floods articles, I find to be extremely convoluted and follow the female victim, male perpetrator model, even if the female is the abuser, it is still the males fault.

Men must take responsiblity for their own behaviour and also the consequences of female behaviour is also the responsibility of men.

Pelican, I'm not talking about "feminist groups", I'm talking about publicly funded university departments who are responsible for the bulk of official "gender research". My earlier point is that they are the ones who provide much of the research and stats used by governments at all levels.

They don't need to harp on about how good men are but their overwhelmingly negative view of men becomes a serious issues when the output of their work are the official facts.

Some women do lie about a lot of things in family custody disputes (as do some men). The father's groups are fighting a structure largely built on some very gendered perceptions about that, the kind of perceptions the author is addressing in this article. The response is not always where my preferences lie but I do think that most of the cristicisms of them are done out of context. The behavior of the mothers group's rarely attracts the same criticism. They are different, just concerned mum's trying to protect their kid's from those nasty men.

R0bert