Hooray, finally.

But then how do we deal with the concrete thinkers?

So now, not only can women who commit planned, calculated murder, carried out in completely cold blood, & be found not guilty of murder, they are now found incapable of committing domestic violence.

Not only this, but they have a family court who almost automatically splits all family wealth 100/0 in her favour any time she decides to wander off.

Girls, please stop winging that modern men are shy of commitment.

What the hell else would you expect?

Jennifer thank you.

You do realise that by pointing out what some desperately don't want pointed out that you are clearly anti female, supporting or diminishing male violence and whatever other labels some might want to use to dismiss the valid points you make.

You might also note the themes around the push to change child custody laws based on accusations of abuse or DV and how comepletely unwilling those supporting those changes are to accept the possibility that DV or child abuse are not heavily gendered. It's a genderised campaign based on the false assumptions you have addressed. Just one of the likely vile spin offs from sexist dogma.

R0bert

>> We urgently need a far more holistic approach to the problems of domestic, intimate partner and family violence, one that demands policy makers incorporate alternative frameworks of perception, of which there are several, into the official definitions and understanding of DV on which policy is based.

Domestic violence is problem that dearly costs our society both financially, and in terms of extensive physical, psychological and emotional damage, often life-long, to the women, men and children who are its victims. <<

Agree completely. However watch the usual complainants dismiss any male violence and blame all women.

I am sure the thousands of women and children sleeping on the streets tonight because of domestic violence will be thanking you for your continued need to vilify them as perpetrators. It is an obssession for you Jennifer and you are not looking at the bigger picture. Really sad that you would try to undermine the good work being done in this area. Work that doesn't deny women are capable of abuse and violence.
Cases of women killing and harming children are held up in the media every day. You really are missing what is going on in our culture if you think women should continually shoulder responsibility for domestic violence. It has always been their fault anyway because they didn't protect their children, they shouldn't have put the children in that situation, even if they are the victims. You are making a complex issue into one that you can't see is driven by your own wounds. I say kindly that you might want to check your own blind spots rather than those you are trying to blame on others.

Also, the author failed to address the fact that bullying women are more likely to use psychological bullying, whereas bullying men tend to use physical violence.

This is why the medical profession only picks up the physical results of DV and not the psychological.

Finally, article fails to acknowledge that the vast majority of men and women manage to raise their children amicably and well.

As for DV being a gender-hate crime - not in all cases, but definitely applies in some - men hating women and vice versa.

It is amazing, reading the above posts, how it is that there are some very different views on what the lady had to say. I would suggest that most of you, and I won't point out anyone in particular, go back and read the piece again, taking off your very biased sexist hats.

I have had some personal involvement in the subject, and all I can say, is that she has presented a very objective view of the situation, which is only to be expected from someone with her practical experience in the field.

David

@Dannybear

Nowhere do I suggest that women "shoulder the responsibility" for DV. That is a complete distortion of the article.

Neither do I "vilify women and children as perpetrators."

Perhaps you can explain why you think we are continuing to use out dated and completely unsuccessful frameworks to address DV, IPV and family violence, and while you're at it, perhaps you can tell us why you are against trying other perspectives that take a far more holistic approach that the current gender based paradigm that clearly does not work?

I'm not interested in blaming anybody. I'm interested in finding a perspective that works. Why aren't you?

On what basis do you attempt to discredit the article as being "driven by my own wounds?"
Do you think you have intimate knowledge of my life that allows you to draw that conclusion? Please explain and justify that comment, otherwise I think you are obliged to withdraw it.

Jennifer you are just writing the same article over and over again and you don't take note of the valid positions that are put up against some of your claims. If you can deny that there is gender based violence then I don't know what planet you are living on. It seems to indicate a disconnect from the culture that is experienced every day by many australians.
You have previously written about your own experiences.
It is pointless to engage with you because you can only see one point of view and you just don't seem to be able to engage with positions outside your own.
you are not talking about holistic approaches - but the government actually is whilst targeting attention towards the most vulnerable.
all the best with pushing your position - you do have a fan club of people who want women to be seen in the same light as you.
I won't be checking back here - I've seen your arguments with people that just go in circles...

@Dannybear,

I have yet to see any valid positions put up against claims that are not only mine, but are made by national and international researchers, clinicians, and adults and children who've experienced female domestic violence.

The only attempts at rebuttal are invariably ad hominem, together with allegations that I'm against women.

It's sad when a important situation cannot be objectively assessed. Attacks on anybody who attempts to introduce a perspective that includes female violence usually reveal far more about the attacker than they do about either the issue, or the individual attempting to bring it into public discussion.

I do not, for the life of me, understand how you justify silencing the voices of victims and survivors of female DV, and how you can ignore all the research.

The "most vulnerable" to DV and its aftermath are actually children, they are impacted in more numbers than are women, they are subjected to violence perpetrated by both mothers and fathers, and guess what, they are boys and girls.

No wonder you are withdrawing. You don't have a leg to stand on.

Oh! this is going to get me into soo much trouble.

Watching the ABC program Catalyst, they had a segment on premenstral syndrome. The woman admitted to picking up a knife and throwing it at her husband.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3251902.htm

<Debbie Dawson
We had a dinner party, and we were clearing the table, and he was starting to put things in the dishwasher. And I said to him, 'I'll sort the dishwasher out,' because it is a common fact - we all know that men can't load dishwashers. And he carried on, and I was getting really angry. So I just picked up the nearest thing, and I just threw it at him. Ah, and it literally skimmed his ear, and stuck in the washing-up bowl. He looked back, you know and you think God, that was, that could have been really, really dangerous>

<While fifty per cent of women get multiple PMS symptoms, around five per cent get disabling PMS - mood swings so serious they're categorised as PMDD>

It would be interesting to find out if there is a correlation between PMDD and domestic violence and if there is, how big a problem it is.

But then there are two chances of this, buckleys and none. Because DV is about power and control, not hormones, mental illness or drug and alcohol abuse.

I do know that when abusers of drugs and alcohol stop, the violence that they perpetrated when under the influence also stops.

briar rose writes, "I'm not interested in blaming anybody. I'm interested in finding a perspective that works".

A very decent and commendable sentiment.

The perspective that briar is seeking is identified in her own article where she relates the policy described as being attributable to the Gillard government. It is no secret that the ALP has a socialist/communist based ideology and they practice it overtly. Destruction of the traditional family (read patriarchy) is a significant plank in the communist platform. This was established by Marx himself in his 1848 manifesto. The concept of patriarchal inheritance did not fit his economic model. It was also observable that the church (another institution which Marx saw that required dismantling) was intrinsically connected to family. So he saw that the church, marriage and traditional family with its attendant inheritance all had to go. It is a fundamental Marxist strategy. And it's standard ALP platform, although not so overtly preached under that guise.

To achieve traditional family breakdown the Marxists (ALP, NGOs etc) have created and put in place mechanisms, such as the Family Law Act, FaHCSIA, amongst others, driven by feminism, to demonise men in the eyes of society and justify their actions of family destruction.

The FaHCSIA official policy on DV (Family Violence) sets the precedent for judgements to be made against men in the Family Court, which then justifies the redistribution of their property to women and THEIR children, it all being in the child's best interests you understand.

It really is as simple as that and they don't really try to hide it. Why people can't see it after all this time I don't understand.

The academics, researchers, government bureaucrats, NGOs, etc, being of sympathetic Marxist minds create the "empirical", "peer reviewed" and "world's best practice" lies to support it all. The media lapdogs report and promote it (ABC, SBS, etc) ad nauseam to drive the message home and the gullible believe it, irrespective of the truth, facts or reality.

The perspective briar is looking for is the political perspective.

I really enjoyed this article. It is so nice to read someone who thinks clearly and can back up their assertions with research.
Domestic violence is abhorrent no matter the gender of the perpetrator or the victim and it is right of the author to criticise the governments approach which appears to be about making this a gender issue.
The critics of this piece appear intent on misrepresenting it as some kind of attack on women. This is absurd. She is only saying that policy should be based on the reality of the situation, rather than some ideology which does not reflect the reality.
I am also concerned about moves to expand the definition of domestic violence. People do get angry with each other in relationships and this can involve arguments and shouting. This is particularly the case when a relationship is breaking up. There will always be conflicts about money, particularly where one party has a tendency to spend recklessly. Provided there is no actual violence or threats of violence then this simply needs to be viewed as the normal part of human behaviour that it is. Redefining DV to include any ordinary disagreement only undermines the position of those who experience real violence in a relationship.

Ah voxUnius, if only it were that simple.

But it's not. This is a complex topic which doesn't lend itself to developing ideological explanations and approaches. Neither is there much scope to approach it in an intellectual way, as the dearth of research on some categories of domestic violence (and the subsequent encroaching suspicion of bias in many of the highly-subscribed categories) inhibits informed debate. Until we have accurate figures of the extent of *all* types of domestic violence, and an accurate picture of *all* the factors contributing to each case of that violence, then it will be extremely difficult to talk about it in a way commensurate with the complexity of the problem, and to come to solid conclusions. However as this article has pointed out, we are still a heck-of-a long way from reaching that point.

And so ok, I'd like to register here that I agree with the article: The gender bias in the National Plan is verging on the bizarre given the emerging evidence that a gendered perspective on domestic violence is unhelpful, or at least anachronistic.

But if domestic violence is not gendered, then what is it? It clearly exists, and contrary to some ursine commentators I could mention, talking about one form of it doesn't diminish the seriousness of another. There is of course the human rights framework and its exhortation that all people should be able to live a life free of violence - which is ultimately rooted in the subjective experience of "I don't want anyone to hurt me (or at least, not without my consent;-)". And this is a useful point of view, as it allows us to state that "all violence is wrong" - suggesting that governments should target it equally in all its forms.

[cont]

Fantastic, but that still begs the question, "so if it's wrong why does it still happen?". What makes domestic violence any different from other forms of violence? And here I think that both radical feminists and the Mens Rights movement, and everyone in between, would all have to concede that we just don't know. But instead of running with the same old line that "men are bound by patriarchy to perpetrate domestic violence, and women are the victims" (which I myself believed at one time, until I was subjected to the female-perpetrated variety), we should be looking broadly and in good faith at all the available evidence - and realising that men and women have much more in common than we have dividing us - in order to allow us to work together to stop this thing.

voxUnius you should have a think about the fact that it was the coalition governemnt that spent millions on a deliberatly one sided public campaign about DV. A campaign that could so easily been against all violence or all DV regardless of the genders of the perpetrator and victim. A campaign that could have addressed the massive proportion of DV where the violence is mutual. I'm a coalition voter and my comments are not coming from a political wish to attack the coalition.

While people keep trying to make DV and child abuse about gender they are masking the real issues, they may help their own causes but they don't help to reduce most of the actual violence.

I'd be interested to see some examples from OLO of male posters (and Jennifer who is attacked on similar lines) condoning male violence, pretending that it does not happen etc. That type of claim is tossed around fairly regularly whenever it's pointed out that DV is fairly much gender neutral if you don't conduct the research with the assumption that it is genderised. I don't recall any examples which could support that claim other than vanna's habit of not seeing women with black eye's.

It's a tactic but I know it does not reflect my own views and I've yet to see evidence that it's a fair comment in relation to most others who have highlighted the same issues over a period of time.

R0bert

I am not sure domestic violence is always about gender hate, even though I can see in the case of relationship breakdown attitudes around gender can be heightened through personal hurt. Just read some of the comments on OLO about the the integrity of women. One would think women are never abused and go around just making stuff up on the basis of a minority of false accusations. Women who percieve men as would-be rapists and agents of the partiarchy are equally mixed up. It is a messy subject.

Much of the commentary is not necessarily based in gender hatred but it is also a form of gender self-protection which itself is a form of insecurity.

Violence usually comes from losing power- violence takes place to redeem that power. This loss of power can be real or imagined.

In ths context DV may result from the influence of drugs or alcohol and losing control, other violence may come through unhappiness, financial problems, pride/ego or discontent with their lot (male or female). When relationships break down the tendency is for people to find someone else to blame. It is rare until perhaps much later for people to look inward and own their contribution to the break down. When you allocate blame solely to the other person, violence is easier to excuse.

This can be equally valid for men and women. We have all probably experienced bullying from both men and women and can see it as a form of insecurity or fear of losing control. Maybe it is the same for DV.

But for a DV policy to work it has to be relevant and meaningful and it can only be so without gender bias.

Policies that support and protect victims are important, but without looking to the causes of DV (social and economic) the policies will be less than useful except perhaps as toilet paper.

Pelican

>> But for a DV policy to work it has to be relevant and meaningful and it can only be so without gender bias. <<

Exactly.

Whenever I see the words “women and their children” I immediately know what is about to follow.

A bigoted, gender prejudiced attack on the male gender, with every attempt to demonize and denigrate the male gender.

The new domestic violence policy does just that.

Hands up those males who voted for the Gillard government.

I actually agree with much of this article's comments.
Domestic violence should not be a gender-hate crime, but it is often perceived as being so, by both genders.

I am all for whatever will decrease violence in our society, and especially in homes, where children can be witnesses.

I doubt it was the Gillard Government that started this though- especially given the Howard Governments stand on domestic violence over many years.

What I can't understand is that if we have all these 'statistics' saying that there are so many female violence perpetrators
(gay and straight) out there in the community, bashing both men and women, then why are the predominantly male parliamentarians carrying on with supporting the same old anti-male domestic violence laws we have had for years?

I am assuming that the medical records from both GP surgeries, and hospitals, are backing up this increase in violence-caused injuries against lesbians and against straight men, by their 'intimate' partners?

Why not change the laws to reflect this change in domestic violence statistics?

Are politicians not listening to the academics that work out the domestic violence trends, and if so, what could they possibly have to gain by ignoring all these violent females?

Suzeonline

>> what could they possibly have to gain by ignoring all these violent females? <<

That has me puzzled as well.

No doubt, Suze, you have seen many a beaten man in ER as a result of violent females. Surely records are kept in order to prosecute such violent criminals? This is an important article, neither sex should be given any special privileges over the other. Otherwise, we are no better than when women and children were considered mere chattel.

<I am assuming that the medical records from both GP surgeries, and hospitals, are backing up this increase in violence-caused injuries against lesbians and against straight men, by their 'intimate' partners?

Why not change the laws to reflect this change in domestic violence statistics?

Are politicians not listening to the academics that work out the domestic violence trends, and if so, what could they possibly have to gain by ignoring all these violent females?Posted by suzeonline, Tuesday, 5 July 2011 10:47:24 PM>

Firstly, men are much less likely to seek medical assistance than women. See the article on men's health.

Secondly, Who is going to believe them?

Thirdly, you use the more extreme examples of domestic violence, where the victim needs to seek medical help for injuries, yet the definition of domestice violence, covers things like financial, psychological, manipulation, emotional abuse.

Finally, when data is not collected, then it is easy to say that the problem does not exist.

Going by Suzie's and Ammon's definition, that the only data that counts, is actual physical injuries,that require medical treatment and is recorded in the medical records.

All other data is irrelevant if it doesn't show physical injuries have occurred to a male.

James they are fair questions. I agree with the points you've made though.
Some further comments
- Firstly it's my impression that there is less equality in serious physical injury. The difference in physical strength when all bets are off will account for that. At the same time I wonder how much male suicide rates are impacted by the alleged female superiority with emotional abuse - no evidence on that but food for thought.
- While the male is considered responsible for almost all DV (if he was hit she was defending herself etc) men will be extremely reluctant to report DV.
- While DV against men is not considered to be DV some won't even know it's DV. DV's something men do to women so it's just the missues being angry.
- I've never really noticed men being especially protective of other men outside of a peer group. Our socialisation still has elements of women and children first so I don't find it surprising that mostly male politicians act against the interests of men. Those assumptions about the genderised nature of DV are staunchly guarded by some and to challenge them is to challenge some of the core beliefs of a lot of feminists about oppression. A polly has to be fairly committed to go there.
- It's not actually a change in domestic violence statistics, Strauss and others have been showing similar for a long time (I think around 40 years). It's two different approach to researching and understanding DV and one has managed to hold the public's attention.
- One approach says that DV is about male control of women and defines female DV largely out of existance, the other asks about the behaviours without underlying assumptions about gender.
- A number of researchers have described the tactics used against those who've challenged assumptions about the gendered nature of DV, I'll reference some later if I can find them.

R0bert

As mentioned in my previous post some references to tactics used to suppress evidence that DV is not strongly genderised.

Murray Straus http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf
"This view recognizes the overwhelming evidence that women assault their partners at about the same rate as men, and that the motives for violence by both males and females are diverse. However, few others have reached the same conclusion, and some of those few will not publicly express their position for fear of the type of ostracism that I have experienced (partly described in Straus and Gelles (Straus & Gelles, 1990). Instead, the evidence on gender symmetry in prevalence and etiology is typically disregarded and often explicitly denied (Straus & Scott, In press). As will be suggested in the conclusion, this denial has crippled prevention and treatment efforts."

A paper by Straus on "Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence" http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf

I found a paper which I've not read yet which touches on the DV/suicide question http://www.mediaradar.org/docs/Davis-DomesticViolenceRelatedDeaths.pdf

R0bert

Suzanonline,

“I doubt it was the Gillard Government that started this though- especially given the Howard Governments stand on domestic violence over many years.”

The Howard government resisted the highly gender prejudiced DV ads that were to eventually saturat the TV channels (remember them), and he also wanted a presumption of 50/50 parental shared care of children .

This whole “women and their children” mantra is an attempt to portray fathers as being alien to the family unit, or an attempt to portray the father as being superfluous, dispensable, or a danger to the family.

Repeating the mantra over and over is classic mind washing propaganda, and indeed the words “women and their children” appear 1000’s of times throughout feminist literature.

Those who fight this bigoted policy, will also be fighting for fathers to be regarded as a parent.

vanna,

"Repeating the mantra over and over is classic mind washing propaganda..."

Ah, that would explain your technique then....although it also aptly describes the qualities of a broken record.

I have to agree with Vanna on the terminology "women and their children."

This is used in the title of the new National Plan. It would have been quite acceptable to use "women and children" I would have thought, except that the people who wrote the Plan apparently needed to use the possessive "their" in an attempt to negate or deny not only fathers, but all other members of the child's family as well.

This reduction of a child's family to only a mother, or female caregiver, is alarming. The undesirable effects on both mother and child when they are reduced to a dyad exclusive of other family members are enormous.

Jennifer,

Nice to see an article about DV that doesn't come from an anti-male perspective. There will always be people like dannybear:

'I am sure the thousands of women and children sleeping on the streets tonight because of domestic violence will be thanking you...'

It wouldn't take much googling to realise that about 90% of the homeless are men. Some of these men are ex bankers, laywers and other professionals who lost everything when their former wife decided to 'move on' with 'her' kids.

But, of course, if you are a feminist men don't count as people. It's all about giving women choice.

The words "women and their children" are written 52 times into the policy.

Repeating words over and over is a standard form of brainwashing.

In this case the words "women and their children" are repeated over and over, to brainwash the public into believing that children belong only to women, and men have no part in children's lives.

briar rose,

"...the people who wrote the Plan apparently needed to use the possessive "their" in an attempt to negate or deny not only fathers, but all other members of the child's family as well."

Can't you see it yet?

The political?

And Pelican,

"...without looking to the causes of DV (social and economic)..."

Social and economic = political.

All you good folk are dancing all around the issue with details, but you can't see the political forest for all those trees.

That's what they want you to do. Bog down in the fluff.

The problem is exaggerated out of all proportion for a purpose. Just ask yourself, why would they do that?

Cheers all.

I have been searching for some commentary on female domestic violence that is not a thinly veiled attempt to denigrate all women and offers something positive to male victims.

Endless circling of "he said, she said" is not helping us to deal with the problem of violence both male and female.

The following article ends with a questionnaire for men who were or are in violent relationships.

"I fell in love and then I woke up in a nightmare.” This was said to me by a man a few weeks ago but it could just as easily been said by a woman. Born and raised in a household where both my parents were dysfunctional and violent I was aware of the damage they inflicted on me and my brother and sister. Now some forty years after opening the first refuge in the world in Chiswick London in 1971, I want to learn more about how women react to their often violent and abusive childhood experiences because much is known and studied about male violence but very little is written about women and any attempt to discuss female violence is met with rabid attacks and howls of ‘blaming the victim.’

In my experience I found that in most relationships the violence is consensual – both partners are equally responsible for what goes on behind the front door. In those cases we rarely hear from either partner unless the children of those doomed relationships are drawn to the attention of the schools and then the courts or the psychiatrist’s office. However when one of the partners is an innocent victim of their partner’s violence if they happen to be a woman, they can at least find comfort and refuge but for men, at the moment, there is nothing. If he is involved with a violent woman he risks the laughter of his friends and a truly frosty reception from all the agencies."

From research by Erin Pizzey

http://www.femininezone.com/articles.php?a=read&aid=293

Suzieonline, in answer to your question "why are the predominantly male parliamentarians carrying on with supporting the same old anti-male domestic violence laws we have had for years?"

I'd say that, if we take the lead from our friend voxUnius again, this situation is in fact entirely political - in the sense that I very much doubt there would be any votes in advocating for the interests of men in domestic violence debates.

Samjandwich <"...this situation is in fact entirely political - in the sense that I very much doubt there would be any votes in advocating for the interests of men in domestic violence debates."

Why not? If nearly 50% of the population are men, why aren't they interested in domestic violence against men?
It seems to me that if all these men are upset over all this violence against men, why aren't they doing anything about it?

Women's groups have gathered themselves and advocated for violence against women and children for years. How come the men aren't out there advocating for their fellow man (and the man's children) rather than heaping all the blame on the women's groups and feminism?

If, in fact, as some posters have pointed out, all these violence affected men are not reporting their problems because they are too embarrassed or whatever, then how do we know the true scale of the problems?

I realise there are different forms of domestic violence, but I think we would all agree that physical violence injuries are the most serious in the short term at least?

Emotional or psychological violence is much harder to prove or to report, so I would say that most of the reported domestic violence would be of the physical injury kind.

Let's deal with this sort of domestic violence and get it right before we tackle the other sorts more seriously.

Whilst without doubt there are men do use physical violence and from what I understand it can be a cycle of violence.

I would however wonder if the following hypothesis were not possible.

In reference to Erin Pizzey, she wrote a discussion paper on "Working with violent women"

< The family well may be characterised as violent, incestuous, dysfunctional, and unhappy, but it is the terrorist or tyrant who is primarily responsible for initiating conflict, imposing histrionic outbursts upon otherwise calm situations, or (more subtly and invisibly) quietly manipulating other family members into uproar through guilt, cunning taunts, and barely perceptive provocations.>

So my hypothesis, is that sometimes physical violence by a male is the end result of being subjected to the above behaviour. When something finally snaps.

It is well recognised by what is known as the battered woman syndrome, so perhaps there may also be the battered man syndrome,the man who after years of emotional abuse finally snaps.

For reason that I will not go into, just recently I had contact with a number of people who were or had been involved with a person who is diagnosed with what is known as border line personality disorder.

people with border line personality disorder are extremely good at manipulation.

JamesH <"So my hypothesis, is that sometimes physical violence by a male is the end result of being subjected to the above behaviour. When something finally snaps."

In my experience, there are very few violent men or women out there who 'finally snap'. Mostly, they have a history of violence of some degree, and the final 'snap' involves a sudden escalation of that violent behaviour, for whatever reason.

In our society, the bashing or physical injuring of someone else for any reason other than to save one's life, is a crime.

I believe that observing the early signs of domestic violence and then involving mental health experts and anger management therapies is the only way we can make a difference.

And dare I say it, we should try to stop the cycle of domestic violence by removing the perpetrator from the violent home until they have had suitable punishment and treatment.
Leave the rest of the family in their home, and remove the violent person, not the other way around.

Where is the evidence that as many women are guilty of domestic violence as men? I have not seen it. It is no good arguing that there are masses of abused men out there (at the hands of women) but are not included in the statistics for lack of reporting, then on the other hand arguing that policy should be evidence based.

The reason why these sorts of policies are geared around women and children is because that is where the medical evidence lies.

Men really need to get together and start raising awareness if the problem is greater than believed. I think there is also a perception that men are stronger physically and are not at risk in the same way. Of course that physical strength may mean a man who is not naturally violent won't defend himself on principle for fear of causing injury or beliefs around hitting women or fear of being accused of violence while defending themselves. Women are equally capable of abusing children.

There are many issues and while I strongly agree that these policies should not project a gender bias, there needs to some realism around who is most at risk from DV and it is women and children who present most with DV injuries. Children witnessing DV is also thought to do untold damage to development.

As I said earlier, there needs to be research into the causes of DV and much of it has to do with economic disadvantage and education and for victims, a way out.

Suzanonline,
"Russell et al (1999) identified that 48 per cent of community welfare professionals believe that up to 24 per cent of fathers physically abuse their children and 31 per cent of professionals believed that 24 per cent of fathers sexually abused their children. These figures are higher than the national statistics on child abuse and neglect and could influence how professionals develop a trusting relationship with most fathers."

http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/families/pubs/documents/working_men/sec2.htm

This is more than likely the reason why the propaganda of "women and their children" has continued to this present day.

It is done in the hope that the public, and also practitioners, will regard the father as almost always being the perpetrator, while the mother is the hapless protector of the children.

Studies undertaken into "who started it" usually show the woman as starting the conflict, up to about 70% of the time.

Not surprisingly, no such studies have been undertaken in this country to my knowledge.

Pelican says where is the evidence?

Erin Pizzey has been writing and talking for years.

Women emerge as aggressors in Alberta survey
67% of women questioned say they started severe conflicts

http://www.franks.org/fr01060.htm

Murray Straus, Gelles, Susan Steinmetz just name a few researchers.

There was a researcher at Charles Stuart Uni Wagga, but I don't know where his work has disappeared too.

However I think the statement by Michelle Obama about, if mama aint happy, then nobody is happy. Speaks volumes.

http://www.menshealthaustralia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1026&Itemid=79

http://www.menshealthaustralia.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=920&Itemid=79

James
I don't see any evidence that women are more violent or more abusive than men. In fact the last link shows statistics support 1 in 3 victims as male. That means 2 in 3 are women.

The fact is the policy should not contain a gender bias and refer to DV victims not 'women and children' alone. While I agree this is a fairer approach I do not agree that women are the main perpetrators of DV violence as some of you are making out. The evidence in no way supports that stance even acknowledging a bias.

I'm not aware of research that claims women are more physically violent than men in families.

There is a lot of research that argues that physical violence is symmetrical, though the outcome of mutual violence is often worse for women.

There's also research into DV and IPV research that looks at researchers' gender bias, and how that affects results. After looking at these studies I no longer take statistics on this topic as gospel.

As the latest family law legislation has broadened the definition of DV and IPV to include emotional and psychological abuse, I don't think physical abuse is prioritized in that situation, but it is in the emergency room and police reports of course. Emotional and psychological abuse is also included in the National Plan's definition of DV.

There are mens' groups in Australia that have taken on the topic of abused men. They're usually greeted with howls of derision when they go public - something like what feminists had to overcome in the seventies and eighties.
Jennifer.

Suzie,
"It seems to me that if all these men are upset over all this violence against men, why aren't they doing anything about it?"

That's one of the issues that the m,uch viollified men's groups try to deal with. I don't think that men do as well with solidarity as some women seem to do. Men are socialised to protect women and children, that socialisation does not always stick but it's hard to get those who've not been on the wrong side of it to take it seriously. Combined with the massive misrepresentation of the issue that already hold the public dialog and it's an issue that's very hard to get others to take a stand about.

pelican, I've been posting references for years (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7309#112339) that show that the violence is close to equal in frequency if you take bias out of the collection methods. There are large numbers of studies available, not a lot for Australia that I'm aware of but one I've referenced a massive number of times is a good place to start
http://www.fact.on.ca/Info/dom/heady99.htm , it asks the question, the authors don't have any bias on the topic that I've been able to find.

The Dunnedin longitudinal study is also close to home http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/170018.pdf

This paper discusses the issue and gives a number of references http://www.mediaradar.org/docs/Dutton_GenderParadigmInDV-Pt1.pdf

The Mediaradar site has a lot of material on the issue, they are an advocacy site, as far as I can tell not attempting to denigrate all women but to highlight the issue's around the genderised portrayal of DV.

In the end I don't think the numbers matter that much, my efforts to highlight the equality aspect is because of the repeated use of the claim that men do almost all the DV so there is no need to do anything about the other. As typified by the Violence against Women - Australia Says No campaign. A deliberate strategy of portraying a completely one sided view of DV.

R0bert

Jennifer some of the material does show higher rates of initiating assault's by women.

I don't think that's a point most of us are interested in, it seems like a predictable outcome when you consider the effort that has gone into focussing on male violence against women and either ignoring or excusing female violence against men. That does not suggest that women are more violent, just that attitudes to violence have been changed a bit.

Likewise women do more of the substantiated child abuse but they have the care of kid's more often. That particular issue will get floated occasionally in frustration at the attempts by the maternal bias crowd to portray fathers as a big risk to children when custody is disputed but it's really a non issue.

In neither case is it a gender issue, most of the predictors are related to "disadvantage" or childhood experience of abuse. The predictor's don't say that it can't happen elsewhere.

R0bert

The links would be too numerous to list, but frequent causes of DV include poverty, mood swings from poor diet and lack of exercise, stress, drug and alcohol addiction, PMS, menopausal changes, imbalance in hormones, hysterectomy, unemployment etc.

About 25% of households are patriarchal, about 25% are matriarchal, and about 50% are egalitarian.

The idea or propaganda that men are always the perpetrators of DV has nothing to recommend it, as it would not find the root cause of the problem in the majority of cases.

Like so many others, the new policy on DV is likely to be a complete waste of taxpayer’s money.

My criticism of the National Plan is that it doesn't address female perpetrated DV, IPV and family violence against women and "their" children, and that it defines these things as overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.

I think the Plan is very confused, as is inevitable when it's based on this definition.

The Plan's conflation of sexual assault with DV is also unfortunate - while sexual assaults can occur in a DV setting, they also occur in many other settings, so to lump that crime in with DV as being experienced "mostly by women in the home at the hands of men they know" is just plain wrong.

I also think the Plan's claim that it is women who are unequally impacted by DV is wrong - this plan refers to women and children in its title - we know that children are highly impacted by DV, whether they are directly involved in the violence, witness it or hear it. In some states in the US if DV is reported to police it's mandatory that they report it to children's' services as it's regarded as child abuse. I agree with this practice.

As there are frequently more children of both sexes in a violent household than there are women, to claim that women are unequally impacted is bizarre
Jennifer

Briar Rose,
"My criticism of the National Plan is that it doesn't address female perpetrated DV, IPV and family violence against women and "their" children, and that it defines these things as overwhelmingly perpetrated by men."

I agree.

The policy is so biased it will never properly address issues.

There appears to be 2 peaks in DV carried out by women. One peak occurs when they are young, and another when they are older around menopause.

A major problem for men is how to live with a woman going through PMS, but research is undergoing in how to reduce menstrual cramps and mood swings associated with PMS. In fact there could be a simple surgical procedure developed shortly on the cervix to significantly reduce menstrual cramps.

There is also increasing research on decreasing the affects of menopause, such as reducing hot flashes, irritability and disturbed sleep. Ironically, increasing the woman’s levels of testosterone through tablets or nasal sprays may significantly reduce such symptoms.

If there is a belief that men are the cause of DV, then the real cause may go unnoticed.

I can imagine a husband going to the doctor

Husband: - “Doctor, my wife has become so irritable she is becoming impossible to live with. Could you give her a health check to see if anything is wrong”

Doctor:- “Right, what I will do is send you on a 6 month compulsory counselling course to change your patriarchal attitudes and your desire to assert power and control upon your oppressed wife”

Sex/gender is central to criminal assault at home and other forms of domestic violence. Woman as women are targetted in crimes of violence. Fortunately, the federal government recognises this in its approach to this problem. In so doing, it does not ignore the fact that sometimes women may lash out physically against male 'partners'. The dynamic, however, is different from that which informs male violence against women - see Even in the Best of Homes - Violence in the Family, Jocelynne A. Scutt, Penguin Books Australia, 1983, update 1990, McCulloch Publishing.

Ill-informed articles do not assist in addressing the issue of sex/gender based violence. Sadly, they compound the problem.

So Jocelyn, Erin Pizzey wrote 'Prone to Violence" she also wrote about the emotional terrorist.

How do respond to her? Is she ill informed?

Ill-informed commentsbased on gender bias do not assist in addressing the issue of human violence. Sadly, they compound the problem.

R0bert

@Jocelynne

In the 21 years since your book was last updated there has been a great deal of research that contests your perspective.

I don't wish to be impolite, but you have invited the question: given this 21 year lapse in your published research, who exactly is ill informed in this debate?

Disagreeing with your perspective does not equate to ignorance on the topic.

As the DV statistics have not significantly decreased after decades of attempts to address the issue from the sex/gender perspective, perhaps you can explain why we should continue to use this this failed framework?

And perhaps you can also tell us the grounds on which you dismiss all the research that apparently does not comply with your opinion
Jennifer.

Vanka <"Studies undertaken into "who started it" usually show the woman as starting the conflict, up to about 70% of the time"

Where DO you get these little gems from Vanka?
I am almost certain that when the cops are called to a domestic violence situation, both aggrieved parties will blame the other won't they?
Who on earth can say who is telling the truth if there were no witnesses?
I think the cops just work on the problem of who is bashed the most, and take it from there...

Oh well, that settles it all doesn't it then?

The woman yells at him, or belittles him or even (shock, horror!) throws something at him (all for no reason of course- except maybe the dreaded PMS or menopause?), and so he 'snaps' and beats the c##p out of her...

Does the punishment fit the crime do you think?

Well that means SHE is responsible for his violent behaviour then does it? That means it is ALL caused by women then?

Ok then, if, as we have been told on this thread, we have all these men suffering in silence after being beaten by women, should we then turn around the above assumptions and say that the MEN 'caused' these women to be violent towards them?
If not, why not?

What a load of crock!

Domestic violence is certainly seen as a gender hate crime by many contributors to this thread anyway.

SSuzeonline: Domestic violence is certainly seen as a gender hate crime by many contributors to this thread anyway"

erm, only if by "many" you mean "one" and by "contributors", you mean "poorly informed, ntellectually dishonest apron-string clingers desperate to derail the discussion by claiming superior knowledge of a subject based on nothing more that their own outdated opinion and a desire to get their discredited book mentioned"

Glad we got that sorted...

rstuart, the point that vanna makes is a good one, although as a polemicist he's perhaps lacking a certain zip. It goes to the general debasement of the humanities as a field of genuine intellectual endeavour, I suspect as a direct result of the massive influx of (mostly female) students over the past 30-40 years, as well as the compulsory nature of gender-studies units for any humanities student and many of those in the harder subject areas.

There are some who have tried to buck the trend, perhaps most notably Prof John Macdonald and Dr Michael Wood of the Uni of Western Sydney, while Dr Elizabeth Celi is a strong voice for proper recognition of the damage being done to men by the toxic version of Feminism that has become entrenched as 70s feminists find themselves having stayed in the public service long enough to have risen to near the top and hence they have authority, even if they lack capability.

The thing that I find really interesting in all this discussion is that it's all about the aftermath of violent incidents. In my experience, which includes no physical violence,but lots of loud arguments, it takes 2 to tango. If one party is not interested in an argument then there will be no argument. If a relationship fails this basic test then really, it should be examined and probably abandoned. If it doesn't, then there is no problem. The question then becomes, how do we increase the number of relationships that pass that test?

Antiseptic –welcome back.
This forum was so much the poorer for your absence.
Looking forward to reading more of your incisive and entertaining posts.
Cheers!

I beleive that instead of the simple portrayal of power and control that there is perhaps a much more complicated process involved.

It is easy to see the overt behaviours, and physical injuries, it is not so easy to the underlying covert behaviours.

In law the defense of the battered woman syndrome is well and truly accepted, where a woman can kill her husband and be found not guilty on the grounds of having experience DV. It would appear that this does not need to be substantiated.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/la-me-accused-20110626,0,6630763,full.story

Whilst the above link is about one case only and it would be unfair to extrapolate that to all instances, it does demonstrate the lengths certain people are prepared and willing to go to.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-accused-20110628,0,4711694,full.story

It would also be unfair to say that this applies to all cases, but the above story does demonstrate the need to be very careful with apparent evidence.

Historically, there has been a gender bias in the legal system, this bias was present when the debtors prisons existed, and husbands were gaoled for the debts of their wives of course this applied to the more genteel classe and not the working class.

The prevailing view was that women were the weaker sex and as a result when male and female teams committed crimes, it was the male who got the harsher sentence, because the prevailing view was that she was under his corrupting influence.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Gender.jsp

Makes for some interesting reading.

Yes, welcome back Antiseptic...
All the other boys can just step back now and let the alpha male take over :)

JamesH, I believe that for any woman to be let off murdering a violent husband, there has to be a quite substantial body of proven photographic evidence of severe violence against her by him over a long period of time.

I have no doubt that if the same conditions were found with some of the battered men mentioned in this thread, and they killed their violent wife in self defence, they too would get off...

Suzeonline:"All the other boys can just step back now and let the alpha male take over :)"

And all the girls can stand around in a circle telling each other how mean he is...

Care to have a go at the point I made above, dear, or are you waiting for Ammonite to tell you what to think?

Suzeonline:"I have no doubt that if the same conditions were found with some of the battered men mentioned in this thread, and they killed their violent wife in self defence, they too would get off.."

Actually, the defence of provocation is no longer available to men who kill their spouse. On the other hand "battered wife syndrome" is a standard defence for women who kill their spouse and/or kids, usually followed by some claim of mental illness and a demand to be given a bex and a nice lie down. Funnily enough, men seem immune to mental illness of this nature, since such a defence is rarely accepted.

I guess blokes are just mentally better-equipped...

James, interesting link. I wonder when Feminism is going to address the obvious failure of the Courts to treat women as fully equal to men in matters of personal liability? It's an insult to women!

LOL Anti,

Here is a link to a story. But beware it is not for the squeamish.

http://thomasjamesball.com/index.html

James, that's a tragedy and a real indictment on the system that has evolved. No compromise means there has to be a winner and a loser and as he points out, there are no winners at all except the parasites who infest the misery-milking industries.

There's brass in muck as the old Yorkshire saying goes and there's money in misery.

The thing I feel that is the saddest, is it would not matter how many men die in such a fashion, or by other methods. Nothing will change.

Yet as recent examples show where a child or woman dies at the hands of a male, there is this huge hue and cry for tougher penalties, tougher laws.

Take a look at this
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/editorials/we-must-not-forget-julie/story-e6frfhqo-1226090277253

Whilst I do not agree with murder, this man has been punished, served his time, yet as this link shows

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-accused-20110628,0,4711694,full.story

Some women can commit the most horrendous acts and never be charged for the things that they do.

Mind you this shows a huge media bias, where the media will saturate us with certain types of stories and totally ignore other types of stories

Why does the portrayal of DV matter?

For those who don't follow the "Mischief in the Family Law Act" parts of it paint a very clear picture of the dangers in the utterly one sided representation of DV that is portrayed. I think part of that is pertinent to this thread.

I won't revisit the whole thing but ChazP recently posted a quote from a report that forms part of the basis of planned changes to the act. It highlighted the proportion of kid's who have supposedly witnessed violence against their mother or stepmother. ChazP repeatedly claims not to be playing the gender card yet almost exclusively gives examples of harm done by men.

I pointed out the omission of stat's about kid's witnessing violence against their fathers and stepfathers. After some back and forth ChazP has responded in part with "The reasons it does not include the figures you `suspect' is because they are at best negligible, and more accurately non-existent."

I note that none of the "fair minded women" have seen fit to challenge ChazP over her earlier omission and subsequent dodges. It will be interesting to see if any do so for the latest claim.

One of the reasons that a greater degree of truth in dealing with DV is that there are people actively trying to use those lies to have laws changed on that basis.

Anti welcome back. Good to see you back with your old Id and not a new alias.

R0bert

Robert

>> I note that none of the "fair minded women" have seen fit to challenge ChazP over her earlier omission and subsequent dodges. It will be interesting to see if any do so for the latest claim. <<

Have challenged Chazp where I disagreed.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12153&page=0#210267

I do not believe that Chazp has "dodged and weaved" or I would've challenged her on this. More physical violence is committed by men, this is why there are so many anger management workshops set up for men to learn to articulate rather than using their physical strength. Emotional bullying is more evenly divided between the sexes.

To reiterate my opinion, vast majority of couples sort out their disagreements amicably (not easy but does happen for over 80% of couples) more often than not. The remainder wind up in the courts, of those only the vexatious remain unsatisfied. Unfortunately we cannot legislate for people behaving badly, just ensure that each case is evaluated on its individual merits with the best interests of children as the primary goal.

As for question of domestic violence being a gender hate crime, I can only conclude that for some it is and for others it is not. Does it matter? I would say yes, just as racially based violence matters. People who hate others for reason of skin colour or sex are more likely to have less tolerance for the object of their prejudice and this can result in violence.

Ammonite:"Emotional bullying is more evenly divided between the sexes"

Not as such. The most reputable studies have shown that women are responsible for the vast majority of emotional abuse. Men tend to shut up about their abusive, bullying, nagging womenfolk, since to speak tends to invite ridicule. I'm sure you've seen this phenomenon.

Ammonite:"More physical violence is committed by men,"

Not actually. The most reputable studies have shown that physical violence is perpetrated mostly by women, but that when things get to extremes, men inflict more serious injuries, except for the poor blokes whose wife kills them (in a fit of insanity, of course)...

Still, it's good to see you acknowledge the fact that the whole issue is a problem for only a small portion of the population, most of whom are socio-economically disadvantaged.

Annonite I look forward to your response to ChazP's latest then.

I'm guessing that you can see the problem with the claim that 1 in 4 kid's have seen violence committed against their mum's or step mum's but the number who have seen it against their fathers or stepfathers is "at best negligible, and more accurately non-existent"

Thanks in advance.

R0bert

Antiseptic <"Care to have a go at the point I made above, dear, or are you waiting for Ammonite to tell you what to think?"

No thanks deary, I don't feel the need to comment on everything you write, amazing as that may seem to you.

I will comment on some inaccuracies from you though:

"The most reputable studies have shown that women are responsible for the vast majority of emotional abuse. Men tend to shut up about their abusive, bullying, nagging womenfolk, since to speak tends to invite ridicule."
Really? Which studies are those then?
Why are all these poor menfolk living with terrible abusive womenfolk not leaving them then?
Why stay and put up with it, AND not tell anyone about it?

"The most reputable studies have shown that physical violence is perpetrated mostly by women, but that when things get to extremes, men inflict more serious injuries..."

Really? Which studies are those then?

I thought you said men never told of the violence against them by women, and yet, here we have some 'studies' saying that physical violence is perpetrated mostly by women?

At least be consistent in your views, dear.

Here we go again. This continual insistence that women are more violent than men does not match the statistics, and just saying something does not make it true. Just look a the evidence, even if the statistics do not include unreported incidents (similar to rape which is much higher than official stats reveal).

Men have consistently been shown to be more violent than women, more men are imprisoned, more men inflict violence on other men and add alcohol to the mix then it gets even more complicated.

Can you all honesty say that during your life you have never observed violent or aggressive behaviour in males, or that your observations and experiences reveal women to be more violent and more aggressive? Really? I can't agree and that certainly is not my own experience or observations.

The fact that women can be violent is not in dispute only that men are typically more violent (not that all men are violent types). Biologically we are wired differently and men have always been the hunters (the aggressors) and in evolutionary terms that was important in natural selection.

It always bemuses me when the biological argument is trotted out in subjects around rape, intimacy, promiscuity etc when it suits but completely ignored on issues of DV or violence in general. Suddenly the biological imperative is irrelevant.

It just sounds like a personal agenda with the usual levelsof self-pity that arises in these discussions.

It is just as counterproductive as those who ignore the needs of men completely in DV policy and probably explains why there is rarely any 'moving forward' on this issue.

Pelican <"It is just as counterproductive as those who ignore the needs of men completely in DV policy and probably explains why there is rarely any 'moving forward' on this issue."

I agree that there will never be any moving forward on the subject of domestic violence while we still have such denials that most violent actions in our society are caused by men, and thus we need to work out why that is so, and find out how to tackle it, as a matter of priority.

Yes, there are violent women too, no doubt about it, and perhaps if we change the DV advertisements to read :

"Domestic Violence - ALL Australians say NO MORE" ,

we could get everyone's ok to fight it together, rather than this non-productive gender squabbling?

"Domestic Violence - ALL Australians say NO MORE"

That is a good non-gender specific slogan suze.

For the record I do support Jennifer's view that the policies should be all encompassing without a gender bias, but the support services need to be improved and/or maintained where there is greatest need.

It would be positive too, if the policies also supported more research into reducing violence overall. What is driving the increase in violence and how do we fix it?

A big ask, perhaps posing insurmountable because the results will most likely go against current neo-liberal culture and the 'conditioned' reliance of economic growth, and the effects on social wellbeing. It will be unwieldy to re-think our position on these entrenched beliefs and there is certainly no leadership in Australian politics except from the Greens in challenging these positions.

I don't hold out much hope other than from the grass roots - people doing it for themselves.

<I agree that there will never be any moving forward on the subject of domestic violence while we still have such denials that most violent actions in our society are caused by men, and thus we need to work out why that is so, and find out how to tackle it, as a matter of priority.

we could get everyone's ok to fight it together, rather than this non-productive gender squabbling?Posted by suzeonline, Sunday, 10 July 2011 11:30:32 PM>

There is no such denial that generally the most violent actions in our society is generally the actions of males.

The problem is that the actions of this small number is used to extrapolate to all instances of DV.

Erin Pizzey wrote that 60 of the first 100 women to visit her shelter were as violent, if not more violent than the men that they had left(Prone to Violence)

We are faced with a problem in that our societies attitudes about gender is biased, and that female perpetrate abuse is not recognised and is even excused.

The trap is laid, firstly the types of behaviour that are defined as DV gets expanded, then for example Suzieonline almost always refers to physical violence that results in injury requiring medical treatment.

Someone once raised a good point about men who avoid going home and would prefer to either stay at work, or down the pub or anywhere else rather than go home to hostile houshold.

http://www.bodyandsoul.com.au/soul+happiness/expert+opinion/how+can+we+argue+fairlyr,13091

<We argue badly and I always end up feeling hard done by because she twists what I say and somehow it always ends up being my fault. Sometimes it is but not always.

(A) Many women are far more articulate than men. Many men have a hard time finding the words to describe their feelings or thoughts and are slow to get them out of their mouths. And in a conflict situation with a woman, they have an added burden of a lack of verbal confidence.>

Suzeonline:"No thanks deary"

Thought not... The question I asked was how do we increase the number of relationships in which arguments only occur when both parties want to argue and stop when one party doesn't?

It's nice of you to confirm that you're really only interested in whingeing about men, not in solutions.

Pelican, we expect such things from the weak-minded, but you're usally much better than that. I guess it's that ol' "girlfriend" thing, eh?

And Pelican, all of the most reputable studies, including those released by the WRD people, show that low-grade physical violence is very much the preserve of women, while women make up the greater number of victims of serios injury.

Why do you find this so difficult to grasp? A frequent trajectory of violence is thus:

argument -> she slaps him -> more argument -> she throws something or hits him again -> continue until -> he hits her, she starts screaming, police called, he gets arrested, he is recorded as an aggressor, she is recorded as victim.

How do we stop this from occurring? Clearly, pretending that it's "all his fault" is not going to do so, nor is pretending that she's as pure as the driven snow.

I say we need to be educating young women that slapping boys as a form of protest is not acceptable. We need to be educating young children of both genders in conflict resolution and teaching them about mutuality.

The great disaster that feminism has created is due to the way in which it has sought to divide the interests of men and women. Men and women are two sides of the same coin and we have the same essential needs and basic drives for the most part. By pretending that all sorts of derivative aspects of life are really, really important, feminism has diminished the importance of that common ground, reducing it to something which is fought over, rather than shared.

The suzeonline, chazP types are the result. Makes ya proud, eh...

Antiseptic
There was an attempt in the US to have a law relating to "mutual domestic violence".

This was because both parties were involved, so both parties could be charged.

Feminists opposed it, because they wanted a "perpetrater" and a "victim", and of course the man is alawys the "perpetrator", and the woman is always the "victim"

That was their idea of equality and equity.

One only has to see how daughters so often fight, or see how much mothers and daughters so often fight, to see that domestic violence is never carried out by a female.

Pelican and suze, my post above was in response to your earlier posts, which appeared on page 11 of this thread. It seems you've had a bit more of a think about it since then and I applaud your efforts to come to an understanding of the mutuality that is a feature of so much of what is called violence in a domestic context.

I had a rather weird encounter with my ex yesterday. She wanted me to do something for her involving the children, but when I aksed "why is this necessary now?", I got the response, in a very angry manner "I've had 10 years of you, I'm sick of this", follwed by a tirade of insults, to which I responded by winding up the car window and driving away.

I could have bought into the argument and no doubt she would have accused me of "violence" as she has done in the past. I chose not to participate, which means I will now have a long period in which she will not respond to the simplest queries about the children and will try to pretend that I do not exist. She'll tell the children I'm a bad father and generally make herself a PITA.

I suspect there are many reasons behind her belligerence, including resentment, a certain dissatisfaction with her own life's path, a fair degree of stress at work and the effects of the menopause. She may have a personality disorder, although my confidence in the definition of what constitutes a "disorder" and what is merely a part of the normal range is not high.

None of that is addressed by the gendered approach favoured by the Feminist lobby. Her actions are unanalysed in this model and I only appear insofar as I respond, at which point I am defined as an aggressor. Obviously you have come to this realisation as well, finally, so how do you suggest we address it?

I agree with Suze and Pelican - DV needs to be addressed in all its forms, while we continue to maintain and expand facilities for its victims. These facilities have to be prioritized so that people suffering physical violence have a place to which they can escape. Emotional violence is highly damaging and destructive, particularly long term, and it shouldn't be minimized. Physical violence needs immediate intervention for obvious reasons.

Re Antiseptic's comment that there is no method available in the Plan or in general for analysis of female violence, this is true. It's also been noted in one of the studies I referred to in the article that while women's DV is contextualised, men's is not. This inevitably leads to the impression that women are "excused" while men are not, ie there's understandable reasons for women's violence but men are just born bad. I can see no positive aspect to this attitude. Feminism like all ideologies, treats people as if we are homogenous groups, in this case based on sex/gender. Therefore using feminist ideology as a basis for addressing DV can never work and it hasn't. Feminism is a theory and not always useful as a practice.

Feminism gave us the tools to set up methods of dealing with the aftermath of domestic violence, and helping women escape. But it hasn't done anything to reduce the violence in the first place.

Briar Rose

I agree that there has not been enough focus on abuse by women. However, it is near impossible to have a reasonable discussion whenever this topic is raised, due to a minority of disenchanted people determined to prove that women are a greater threat to family life than men.

Pelican stated:

>> The fact that women can be violent is not in dispute only that men are typically more violent (not that all men are violent types). Biologically we are wired differently and men have always been the hunters (the aggressors) and in evolutionary terms that was important in natural selection...

...It is just as counterproductive as those who ignore the needs of men completely in DV policy and probably explains why there is rarely any 'moving forward' on this issue. <<

I agree completely with her. I have already stated that more needs be done regarding family law and that it is vital every case that does wind up in the courts requires/demands that it be treated on an individual basis with the needs of any children as the first priority.

There clearly is gender hatred - it is demonstrated on OLO every time this topic is raised.

Robert

Picking out paragraphs which YOU disagree with, and I may or may not disagree and then demanding I comment is not conducive to intelligent and respectful debate. It is blatant manipulation and very poor form by you.

There has been mention made of provocation - being yelled at, having objects thrown, even slamming doors. If we have children behaving like this do we respond by punching them to the floor? Beating up on someone smaller and weaker because their behaviour is annoying is NO EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE - never has been. It is certainly not the behaviour of a reasonable adult, it is in its simplest form:

Bullying.

'There has been mention made of provocation - being yelled at, having objects thrown, even slamming doors. If we have children behaving like this do we respond by punching them to the floor? Beating up on someone smaller and weaker because their behaviour is annoying is NO EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE'

That makes no sense. 'annoying'? These behavoiurs ARE violence, as defined by all domestic violence agecnies, experts and hangers-on. And you are excusing them. So you are excusing violence.

So, by Fractelles, logic, if a smaller person throws things and slams doors and yells, it's not violence. It's only when the nasty big men do it that it's violence.

I think I agree really. Violence is violence, and it isn't yelling and screaming and slamming doors and throwing things. It's hitting.

Just like rape is rape and not 'sexual asault' which includes a pinch on the bum. I love stating that I've been sexually assaulted by strangers. Twice!

These days it's impossible to discuss these topics, as not only are the figures self serving and obtained by biassed surveys and advocacy research, even the definitions are laughable. We don't have apples and oranges, we have mashed fruit puret and people attempting to count the strawberries.

Only an social 'scientist' can confuse an issue like this.

So, I recommend everyone go back to the 1950s. It worked. Women were allowed to slap men with impunity if they felt offended by anything they said, hot blooded spanish chicks threw plates and everyone laughed, but if a guy hit or threw things at women it's considered beyond the pale. That defines the true zeitgeist around domestic violence. Nothing has changed.

The feminists have muddied the waters by bringing in shouting and having a family budget as DV.

Jennifer, it's not just the fact that there is no place for the analysis of female violence, there is no scope under the Feminist-dogmatic approach for any examination of the escalating behaviours I mentioned earlier and as you say, it means there is little chance of reducing the occurrence. I'd go further and say that there is no incentive for Feminist women, especially middle-class quasi-Feminist self-promoters, to achieve a reduction in domestic violence as long as the gendered approach is taken.

If every incident is seen as a chance to promote the idea that men are always bad, then there's a positive advantage to be gained in the battle for (say) boardroom preferment, or promotion opportunities with the APS or whatever is the latest thing that women bumping their heads against the seniority ceiling might want to whinge about.

Yes, women's violences is often contextualised, but always as some form of response to male aggression. Mutuality is simply not admitted as a possibility by axiom. It's a bit like the way in which those who make their living from wholesaling a religious interpretation of the world can't admit the possibility of it having arisen without a god, because to do so would undermine the basis on which their claim to special treatment is based.

Dishonest and intellectually bereft, but it persists for a reason - someone is getting fat off the leavings.

Ammonite, women ARE a greater threat to family life than men. 80% of divorce applications or thereabouts are filed by women, usually after 12 months of softening him up via the CSA, DVOs and such-like.

See, it's easy to make sweeping generalisations, isn't it, although mine does contain the real figure for divorce initiation rates.

As for your effort to excuse abusive women, I think Houellebecq's covered it.

Ammonite, you've had no problems attacking me when you think I should attack something or someone more vigorously - eg vanna. The rebuttal of ChazP was in relation to a comment about mental health (and I agree with you on that point) but didn't show any signs of concern about ChazP's cherry picking of stats and examples to present a gendered view of threat to children.

You seem to expect a far higher standard from those you disagree with than from yourself or those you agree with. I noticed you request on a general thread on how you would like the debate conducted, a standard that you don't seem to be willing to apply to your own posts.

It's clear that DV is not always a gender hate crime, the genderised portrayal of DV does however appear to be a gender hate crime. As I've said numerous times before, the issue is not the gender of the perpetrator or the victim, the indicators are about substance abuse, mental health, unemployment etc.

btw, whilst some studies do show a higher level of initiation of physical DV by women I don't think that indicates that women are more violent. Rather that female violence in the home is more socially acceptable than that by men. When it comes to physical violence there are strong taboo's about starting a fight with someone less physically capable.

Again I don't think gender is the primary issue.

R0bert

Haha, where did jocelynne go?

'sometimes women may lash out physically against male 'partners'. The dynamic, however, is different from that which informs male violence against women'

I love it when a double standard is legitamised and enshrined in PC law. Looking at a single behaviour, Women are 'lashing out', but men are systematically terrorising and abusing?

Some PEOPLE, manipulate, yell, hide money, are controlling, use drugs and alcohol, have issues, lose their temper, yell, slam doors, throw plates. War of the Roses man.

But, men, being stronger, bare responsibility for the 'ecosystem' of all domestic disputes. They are responsible for BOTH people's safety. They are more likely conditioned to control emotion too. This responsibility is part of being a man and, well, at least we don't have periods.

I reckon, with men communicating differently to women, often women want to push buttons to get an emotive reaction from a guy, as that means he still cares, and the truth may creep out under his imbred stoicism and denial of feelings. So throwing plates often leads to an angry response full of home truths and a revealing of the core issues that are affecting a relationship.

So lets cut the crap about the expanded definitions of DV (applied to men only it seems) and go back to the simple, honest 'Wife Basher'; A guy who beats his wife because he can, and he'd rather her fear him and do as she's told than love him. That's very rare, whereas the War of the Roses lot are much more common.

Why conflate the two?

Any tactics PEOPLE use in arguments before someone bleeds are pretty evenly distributed, and NOT a different 'dynamic' (Crack me up Jocelyne!) depending on the gender of the person. But a few psychopaths have been used to demonise men generally and their handling of their prime responsibility for the 'ecosystem' of relationship conflict.

Men generally should be applauded for keeping their cool and keeping everyone safe when things just get silly. It wouldn't be blaming the victim to educate women to help them out where possible either.

Antiseptic

No re-thinking, it is all in interpretation of what one has written. Perhaps you come to a post written by particular posters you see as adversaries with a pre-conceived notion of what they are about, or what you think they are about.

I try not to take sides based purely emotion and without weighing up all the facts. I am probably not perfect but are you?

Frankly as much as the irrational radical feminist lobbies annoy me, the vitriole from the irrational radical masculinists are equally as counterproductive. As I have written on other occasions, some of the vitriole directed at women on men's fora is quite appalling. Much worse than anything I have heard from women.

Basically I agree with the premise that DV policy should reflect a non-gender bias I only dispute the assertions by most of the men on this thread that women are more violent. It doesn't stack up.

There are degrees of violence and aggression of course. A slap on the face by either party is unwarranted and unacceptable but a constant battering or assault of a person occasioning bodily harm is quite another matter. I don't approve or condone either behaviours no matter the gender of the attacker.

pelican "I only dispute the assertions by most of the men on this thread that women are more violent. It doesn't stack up."

It's not an assertion that I make. As I pointed out earlier I have seen some plausable material suggesting that women initiate DV more often than men but if so there are reasons for it and they are not about being more violent. I've not seen enough to decide how real the findings are.

Given the social stigma against male violence against women and at best luke warm censure of women hitting men that could be credible. Likewise men taking the first hit against an obviously weaker opponent has it's own taboo's (not to strong in some circles admittedly). There are also differences in social conditioning between the outside world and the home. Outside we are supposed to compete, inside the home men are supposed to be the protectors willing to sacrifice themselves for partner and kid's. None of that applies to everyone but I think that it's widespread enough to make the difference between public and private violence more credible.

R0bert

Pelican,
It could always be put to the test.

If either party has been carrying out domestic violence, then both are charged.

As well, both can be charged simultaneously.

I would think this simple system would decrease DV rates by 50% to 80% within a few weeks, and cost almost nothing to implement.

As opposed to the proposed policy, that has a projected life of 10 years, and is likely to cost the taxpayer mega millions, and has a 0 chance of success.

Obviously worth a try out.

Sorry, typo

If either party has been carrying out domestic violence, then they are charged.

As well, both can be charged simultaneously (if both have been carrying out domestic violence)

An interesting theory Vanna, but how would the police decide who 'committed' the domestic violence?

What if both parties have injuries, but one or both states these injuries were caused by trying to defend themselves?

If they were two male family members found with injuries after police were called to settle a domestic dispute, would you still advocate they both be taken into custody for domestic violence, no matter what they say?

If, as is being advocated by some posters, there are all these poor men being intimidated or goaded into committing domestic violence because of the terrible actions of their female partners, why on earth do these men stay living with them?

It seems the same sort of questions directed at female victims of domestic violence doesn't it?
The police and courts are put in a very difficult situation aren't they?

So maybe the only way the courts have of deciding who is MOST to blame in domestic violence situations, is the person who inflicted the most physical damage on the other?

Because this is the the only 'measurable' way of dealing with this sort of violence isn't it?

Suzeonline, every other matter that is brought before the judge requires him to make findings based on not just the prima facie matter before him, but on how the situation arose. Every single one, with the exception of simple regulatory matters such as jaywalking.

"who is MOST to blame in domestic violence situations, is the person who inflicted the most physical damage on the other?"

This is like blaming the driver who hit the jaywalker without looking at how the incident occurred. It might make the jaywalker feel all warm and fuzzy to know they are "never to blame", but they'll feel the broken bones a lot more, I suspect.

The Feminist-dogmatic approach that you find so comforting gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling not because it works, because let's face it, it doesn't, but because it makes you feel like a "sister", as Pelican and Ammonite have described. That sororal communal impulse is very strong and except in the well-equipped mentally, it can dominate. Solidarity, sista-girl! Hardly the basis for clear thinking.

Pelican, how long since you spent any time outside a highschool at pick-up time? I do so every day and I see, every day, girls hitting boys who make bad jokes or try on a line. I never see boys hitting boys and I rarely see girls hitting girls.

Boys who hit get suspended, girls who hit get a laugh. There's the double standard right there.

Vanna, your approach of taking them both away and letting them cool off is probably the most sensible I've heard. I can't see why emergency creches can't be funded to house the children of such relationships while Mum and Dad are in the watchhouse overnight. After all, we can find the money to pay women not to go to work...

<, due to a minority of disenchanted people determined to prove that women are a greater threat to family life than men.>
Posted by Ammonite, Monday, 11 July 2011 9:29:55 AM

That is not correct, to my knowledge the people who present the arguement about female violence are only trying to get it recognised and are pointing out how unilateral DV can be.

<here has been mention made of provocation - being yelled at, having objects thrown, even slamming doors. If we have children behaving like this do we respond by punching them to the floor? Beating up on someone smaller and weaker because their behaviour is annoying is NO EXCUSE FOR VIOLENCE - never has been. It is certainly not the behaviour of a reasonable adult, it is in its simplest form:

Posted by Ammonite, Monday, 11 July 2011 9:29:55 AM>

There are cases where the person who is bigger and stronger, are subjected to violence from the smaller weaker person.

The vast majority of males (I know a generalisation) have been raised not to ever hit females.

I have seen men who other men are afraid of, turn into jelly with their other half.

James I'm wondering how many times we need to repeat that and yet the same old lies get aimed at us. Meanwhile we have the obvious cherry picking of stat's from the women's lobby (especially the maternal bias crowd) to try and make out child abuse and DV are things that are almost always done my men and other women who claim to not like denigration based on gender pretending they can't see it.

I'm sick of it.

R0bert

Antiseptic please tell me the difference between the 'sisterhood' and mateship or the perennial boys club mentality in how they operate.

By reducing our arguments to merely 'support for the sisterhood' really means you are not listening to the arguments. Do you perceive the comments by men on this forum as relevant only in context of the feelings of being part of the 'brotherhood'. Aftherall it is easy to dismiss another's view if you just reduce it to the sisterhood. It is a bias that might influence your view of gender experiences methinks.

As for high schools and schools in general I remember one primary school I went to it was common for boys to try and grab a girls boobs, or pull their ponytails, or trip them up on the basketball court. I would not put this down as DV but certainly this is the age where lessons about violence can be taught. Both boys and girls at this age are finding their feet and I agree that both should learn the value of keeping one's fists to themselves even if the intention of the boy or girl is playful banter.

These debates lose ground for me when 'woman' is equated with 'femi-nazi' whenever a man disagrees with her point, while men apparently are free to spread their venom without similar censure. Can't see what purpose this serves other than keeping the gender debate in the gutter - but perhaps that is the intention for some of the more radical masculinists (I should qualify that I would not put most of the male posters in this category).

RObert

I get a bit sick of the anti-female comments which you seem to think are non-existent. It is disingenuous to attribute any failure in communication as the sole responsibility of female posters.

Why would one 'pretend' not to see something. I dispute your implication that female posters are shallow and lacking in moral integrity. That is exactly the generalisations that really make me sick as with the continual 'femi-nazi' labels attributed to women when they dispute a point.

Sometimes people just disagree, that does not mean 'pretending' not to see what it is that you think you can see, and for some reason automatically assume your perception has to be the right one. I do not believe women are more violent than men but you disagreeing with does not mean I label you as a masculin-nazi. You have not had the same experiences as I and vice versa, why would we necessarily think the same.

You can doubt the sincerity of the female posters, that is your right. I see a strong interest in a non-gender bias but a NGB does not mean evidence should be ignored for some greater masculinist cause. Truth should come first not some feminist or masculinist bias. Treat each case as an individual one, taking the evidence on board that is relevant to that case without bringing in a pre-conceived notion of events.

Difficult, just ask any police officer who has to deal with DV cases and the risks they place themselves in to attend such calls. A family member was a police officer for many years and said the most dangerous call out was always to a DV situation where emotions were heated and not much in the way of rational thinking by either party. Often the strategy was to remove one of the pair to let them cool down. Many times the woman would not charge the husband even if she was severely injured. These are the issues that police deal with every day, while we sit here as armchair experts trying to make sense of it all.

1. What Pelican said.

2. Disagreeing is not attacking.

3. Beating up people or children because they provoked is not acceptable.

4. Proving one sex is somehow 'worse' than the other is not only counterproductive but pointless.

Robert, Jamesh, Antiseptic et al, you only care about your perspective and no-one else's; not other men, women and least of all the children you claim to be concerned about - to which I direct you to point 3 above.

You need help:

http://www.angermanagementaustralia.com.au/

Suzanonline,

I have never seen a woman with a black eye.

If the alledged 1 in 3 female abuse victims ever did sustain an injury, then I very much doubt that the majority ever had more than a minor injury, or no physical injury at all.

I have often seen daughters fighting and bickering between themselves, and fights and bickering between mothers and their daughter is very common.

Complaints from men that their wives constantly nag them also seem to be universal, and this is domestic violence.

Because of the above, and for many other reasons, I do not believe the feminist propaganda that domestic violence is only carried out by the male gender.

I have also noticed that so many feminists support homosexual marriage, but never have a good word to say about heterosexual marriage.

Posted by Ammonite, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 1:07:32 PM

Anger management, Ah soviet style re-education or wasn't that the killing fields of Cambodia.

pelican I get a lot sick of the anti-male comments which you seem oblivious to.

I'm sick of the constant silence when women try to infer that most (or all DV) and child abuse is committed by men then the howls of outrage that men are denigrating women when it's pointed out the numbers are similar.

I'm sick of pathetic players like Ammonite being all sarcastic and nasty when people don't dance to her tune but being all put out when challenged to be more even handed herself.

I'm utterly sick of the kind of double standards that continually try to infer the worst interpretations (or just make it up if it can't be interpreted) in what some of us are saying but can't see it when someone like Chaz makes an outright claim such as the one I highlighted earlier.

Yes pelican it is all very pathetic, I'm sick of the pretences some make to fairness while they continue to support the most unfair claims and suggestions.

I don't deny that some males in these forums seem to enjoy an antagonistic approach, why do you have such trouble spotting the same thing in Ammonite and others?

R0bert

Ammontite, one piece of advice that is given to men in such situations, is to walk away from the situation.

One of the most common statements, is that when they try to walk away from the situation, the situation follows them.

Yeah, come on all you dreadful female posters... just shut up and agree with all the male posters, and all will be well!

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition." ~Timothy Leary

Pelican:"Antiseptic please tell me the difference between the 'sisterhood' and mateship or the perennial boys club mentality in how they operate."

There is no "perennial boys club mentality". Men tend to be individualistic and will happily attack the views of anyone if they disagree. The way women think has been clearly demonstrated by you, Suze and Ammonite, not to mention happy and ChazP. As soon as any man makes a comment that is not fulsome in praise of women, the pack attacks, citing "sororal solidarity".

It's the difference between a manager and a committee. As always, committees are great at making the members feel important, but not much chop at getting anything worthwhile done.

All of the men posting here have made concrete suggestions for ways to improve the situation. Instead of discussing those suggestions, the "sisterhood" chooses to attack the messengers, because they're not "nice" to the sisters. Typical committee mindset.

Pelican:"Both boys and girls at this age are finding their feet and I agree that both should learn the value of keeping one's fists to themselves even if the intention of the boy or girl is playful banter."

But that's where it all falls down. Boys are subject to censure and punishment, while girls receive approbation from their cronies if they "act tough" to a boy. As for boys pinching girls' bums, if the girls don't like it, all they have to do is go to a teacher and complain: the boy will be disciplined by some affronted female teacher who resents the fact that she never got her bum pinched at school (or since) and one more "battle of the sexes" will have been won. Of course, the fact that this is natural, normal behaviour in which both sexes have participated since time immemorial is irrelevant: it's gender warfare, you know, take no prisoners...

They can even pretend they're doing it in the name of equality.

R0bert, I choose to post in the way I do as a counterpoint to the pack menatality of many of the female posters. I am articulate, so they get upset, perhaps more than they would with Vanna or with some of the less-articulate posters, who nonetheless offer a similar view: that feminism as a social paradigm is destructive, self-serving and ultimately propped up by the fact that we live in especially fat times. We can afford, as a society, to cut some slack to those who wnat to experiment with different ways of doing things because we have huge surpluses of resources. As I ponted out in another thread, at present our income tax collections are less than handouts to individuals by around $10 billion per annum. Most of those handouts are to women, in one form or another, while an enormous amount of extra Government money is thrown at the female-dominated social sector with very little control over either spending or outcomes.

This fat time will end and where will we be? Who will pay women who choose not to work to stay home? who will pay for the hundreds of thousands of social workers who do very little except shuffle paper back and forth to "prove" they're "working".

The test of any political ideology is whether it will work in good times and bad. Feminism is purely an ideology for the good times. Presumably feminists assume that when the bad times come they'll be in charge and so can make men take the hits. Yeah, right...

Ammonite: "look at me, I'm a grrrl too"

Yes Sister, we already heard that. Do you have anything constructive to add? Thought not.

Suze, timothy Leary more famously said "tune in, turn on and drop out". sounds like the recipe for single-motherhood to me, although he was talking about another form of altered consciousness.

Antiseptic, well said. I'd been pondering why it keeps being suggested that mostly male politicians would not do stuff that disadvantaged other men. It seems to some that the idea of putting gender ahead of other considerations unless it's really close to home just does not register.

We can disagree and happily challenge each others thinking even within gender threads but the best Ammonite could offer up was rebutting ChazP over a comment about mental health (maybe a little more close to home than some other issues). None of the women apparently can even see the problem with her claim that the incidence of kid's seeing violence against dad's and stepdad's is non-existant nor the subsequent pointing out that the same report has very similar figures for that to those of kid's who have seen violence against their mum or step mum.

None seem to see a problem with repeated false claims about what we have said despite repeated clarifications, it's just what they do and it does sidetrack the discussion and keep it off those inconvenient truths.

R0bert

Now maybe back to the topic for a bit. I just came across this one while trying to find the Donnivan Research report
http://www.science.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/118532/Australian_Institue_of_Criminology-Trends_and_Issues_No195-Yound_Australians_And_Domestic_Violence.pdf

"Up to one-quarter of young people in Australia have witnessed an
incident of physical or domestic violence against their mother or
stepmother. These findings come from a survey of 5,000 Australians
aged between 12 and 20 from all States and Territories in Australia.
Data of this nature have not been available before, and it must be
noted that what is included within the rate of witnessing varied considerably depending on the nature of household living arrangements.

For example, the witnessing of male to female parental violence ranged from 14 per cent for those young people living with both parents to 41 per cent for those living with “mum and her partner”. Young people of lower socioeconomic status were about one and a half times more likely to be aware of violence towards their mothers or fathers than those from upper socioeconomic households. Indigenous youth were significantly more likely to have experienced physical domestic violence amongst their parents or parents’ partners. In the case of male to female violence, the rate was 42 per cent compared to 23 per cent for all respondents, and for female to male violence the rate was 33 per cent compared to 22 per cent."

On this topic it's noteworthy that the headline part is about violence against mothers and stepmothers yet their own figures show a 1% difference based on gender yet a massive difference based on other factors. 23% vs 22% is not statistically significant in any meaningfull way.

and
"Victimisation surveys ask women about the violence they have experienced and some of these surveys also ask women whether, to their knowledge, children had witnessed the violence."

"Thus, the gender disparity commonly recognised in domestic violence, and reflected in criminal statistics, is revealed by the subjective experience of the aggression: girls are at least four times as likely as boys to have been frightened by an episode of intimate aggression."

Out of space, more to come.

R0bert

<Robert, Jamesh, Antiseptic et al, you only care about your perspective and no-one else's; not other men, women and least of all the children you claim to be concerned about - to which I direct you to point 3 above.

You need help:

Posted by Ammonite, Tuesday, 12 July 2011 1:07:32 PM>

One of the most common comments I hear from other men, is that even if they win an arguement with a woman, they still loose.

Another male commented on how women even in a work perspective will make things personal.

Having more than my fair share of battle scars from getting involved in 'debates' with members of your gender Ammonite, I have learnt to pick (some of the times) when it gets unfair and dirty.

The twisting of an arguement usually starts with making an exaggerated claim like;

<, due to a minority of disenchanted people determined to prove that women are a greater threat to family life than men.>
Posted by Ammonite, Monday, 11 July 2011 9:29:>

or Suzies fall back position about who inflicts the most physical damage.

Then there is the labelling and name calling.

<4. Proving one sex is somehow 'worse' than the other is not only counterproductive but pointless.>

Good point, however, is that not exactly what feminism has done for the last 30 or 40 years?

Many of the current crop of feminists, will still claim that women are much worse off than men and will set out to try and prove it.

You mentioned being 'selective' or 'cherry picking' yet again that is exactly what feminist's have done and continue to do.

Over the last 30 or 40 years, awareness of DV has been carefully regulated and controlled, policies developed, yet it is claimed that these policies are not working.

So the next question would be "Why aren't they working?" and "What is being missed?"

The answer is the invisible perpetrators. The perpetrators that have been deliberately excluded from the research.

http://www.responsibleopposing.com/comment/lasttime.html

<My father explained that the world requires men only to be responsible and accountable for their thoughts, their feelings and their actions. Women, he suggested, are always permitted to blame others for what they think and feel and do. My mother, he explained, would maintain her belief that I had "made her hit me first" and would insist that I needed to change so that "she wouldn't have to yell at me or hit me ever again.">

Makes for an interesting read, but then the one's who really, really need to read it, will find ways to discount what this man has to say

RObert
I am not oblivious to anti-male comments but they are rare - please show me an example. I don't see the comments by those people named above as guilty of some blind sisterhood conspiracy. You seem to be oblivious to the tirade of anti-female comments and I am not talking about the usual fallback position which falsely labels disagreements as anti-male.

Every time a female disagrees it is suddenly anti-male. Every time a male poster happens to take a more egalitarian view they are 'sucking up' to the women or are labelled as emasculated (pomeranian comments come to mind). Are you seriously suggesting that there have not been some appalling comments made about women on these sorts of gender threads that go beyond the 'disagreement' scenario.

I care less about gender than you think despite Antispetic's generalisations about the individualism of men as opposed to the 'pack' mentality of women. While I generally get on with men better than women, I find the opposite to be true in my experience - just look at the footy culture and pack mentality of men when they have been drinking. I have witnessed situations where men are less likely to support a women if it means losing the 'respect' of his male colleagues.

The sisterhood is something some men say when they wish to diminish the views of women. I've seen it many times in RL not just on OLO. When women agree suddenly it is a grand conspiracy when men do, it just happens to be coincidental despite all that burgeoning individuality.

The generalisations tend to characterise all men and all women as the same.

I just happen to disagree with you that more women are responsible for DV or that women are more violent or equally violent as men. Why is that anti-male?

Antiseptic, vanna, JamesH and yourself often cast similar statements about women. Why the double standard?

You can ignore the anti-female rhetoric doesn't exist but that does not make it true.

As I said we have to agree to disagree, I can't say more or better than that.

All that about "poor women" and nothing about the topic. I think R0bert's comments stand.

Pelican:"I just happen to disagree with you that more women are responsible for DV or that women are more violent or equally violent as men. "

No one has said that, Pelican, so don't try arguing a straw man. What has been said is that women contribute to the escalation of conflicts that sometimes result in very bad outcomes for all concerned. Further, young women are acculturated to the view that it is acceptable to "playfully" hit a man. My daughter said to me in the car today, after I made an extended series of bad jokes "do you WANT me to hit you?", which I found a little disturbing. Why are you so unwilling to accept that it takes two to tango and to absolve women from any kind of personal responsibility? It's hardly respectful of the capacity of women to self-direct, is it?

We accept that men are responsible for their personal actions in every way, yet you seem to be demanding that women should not be. If one is to be self-determined, one must be self-directed and self-controlled. You appear to be demanding the first but eschewing either of the latter, while claiming them both for yourself.

I note that you have not addressed any of the concrete suggestions made, so presumably you have nothing to offer?

Here's another case of a "poor woman", "victim" committing what would have to be called a gender hate crime.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/12/us-severed-penis-idUSTRE76B6TZ20110712

"Becker is accused of drugging her husband's food to make him sleepy, slicing off his penis with a knife, tossing it into the garbage disposal and turning the unit on, Nightengale said. She then called 911, he added."

No doubt she was suffering from some form of mental illness at the time. The poor thing needs our help, not our condemnation...

It's fascinating how many of these penis assault incidents seem to involve Asian women. Is this some form of tradition in some Asian countries? Must be one of the benefits men enjoy from that patriarchy thing, eh?

Pelican, how do I articulate it all?

We are limited here by the written word, and word limits. Secondly there is always the communication problem.

I have many absolutely lovely women in my life, and a few who are the devil incarnate.

I often quote material published and written by other women. So how can using material written by other women, be anti-female?

http://fathersforlife.org/Sodhi/toc.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/20050302090133/http://www.nojustice.info/FearAsaWeapon.htm

< Until the early 1990's almost all research victimization was conducted by interviewing women only. Even those researchers, like Walter DeKeseredy, who conducted bi-directional surveys, published only the findings pertaining to male-on-female abuse/violence. The data on female perpetrated and initiated violence was available only to researchers.>

Have a look at the material written by Eeva Sodhi.

The usual response when confronted with material or information that conflicts with your beliefs is denial and after 30 or 40 years of feminist propaganda and distortion of facts it can be difficult to come to terms with more accurate and truthful material.

I can understand you sentiment about 'anti-female bias' afterall my own gender has been under a sustained feminist assault and demonisation for longer than I have been alive.

James, Eeva Sodhi is a "traitor" to the Sisterhood. anything she shays has to be taken as a betrayal of her sacred obligation to never question the claims of other women.

As you say, this is so ingrained after 40 years of propaganda that it's simply not questioned, even by intelligent women like Pelican. It's become an article of faith.

James not sure if you spotted it but one of the point's I mentioned from the report I referenced yesterday was the following -

"Victimisation surveys ask women about the violence they have experienced and some of these surveys also ask women whether, to their knowledge, children had witnessed the violence."

Eg when you ask only women about DV you get different results than if you ask their kid's what they have seen (and if you asked only men the right questions you could get the required answers as well - just to clarify because if I don't then it's a put down of women etc)

R0bert

Robert, I did spot it and that is how socalled research has been conducted.

Eeva Sodhi pointed out how research was conducted into fathers satisfaction with the current contact arrangments, they asked the mothers, not the fathers.

There is a saying that royal commissions are only ever held, when they are sure of the outcome. Typically feminist researchers only conduct research that supports, their own dogma.

And when research is conducted and the results differ from the feminist dogma, the feminist researchers then accuse others of doing exactly what they have been doing all along.

James I don't recall reading any of Eeva Sodhi's stuff before. I've just read a few of her pieces. Some good stuff there but also much of the same dramatic flair that marks the maternal bias crowd.

One piece http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/sodhi1.html spoke of millions of men being woken by armed police, armed swat teams dragging people out of their offices etc, whilst it's likely that some individuals have been dealt with in those terms I've not seen any evidence that it's common place.

When she does analysis of the stat's she seems to do a good job in raising the right questions (although I think she was too dismissive of the impact of absent fathers on child neglect rates, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, not all absent dad's are excluded).

Some interesting material but I'm so over the stuff that over dramatises it from both sides.

R0bert

Anti
If you go back over many threads on this issue there are swathes of comments declaring women to be more violent, to be money grubbers, responsible for their rape/assault etc. No strawman, just read back a few months and you will find many comments along these lines.

What do you define as 'instigating' violence. Is it for offences such as because the dinner was not on the table on time, or their shirt had a crease in it, or they did not like the way she spoke to another man at a party, or she nagged him to do the dishes - this is what some abusers describe as 'her fault'. So please be specific when quoting these sorts of statistics because the above constitutes what some men believe to be instigators.

Let's take a more grey area example. If a woman slaps a man and he slaps back then one could say categorically that the hostility was shared and that the woman 'instigated' the first hit. However, there are many more women who do nothing to instigate the assault they experience.

However, if the man retaliates by punching his partner into oblivion resulting in a visit to the hospital I would argue this was an inappropriate response. It is also about degrees. The same goes in law for two men in a pub where one man might push another out of the way after a few too many, the other retaliates by punching him in the head to this death. Not an acceptable response by law.

The women on these threads bar some exceptions have agreed that DV policy should be written on the premise of non-gender but that does not mean the supports should not be allocated in area of most need. The policy should be about protecting and supporting victims (man, woman or child) and focus on prevention strategies (as is feasibly possible).

JamesH
I understand where you are coming from and there is no doubt some gender self-protection in both camps. My concerns are not with statistics that show women to be capable of violence, that is not in dispute. It is the exaggeration of the extent of it that annoys me and the tone of anti-female comments on here that go beyond mere policy debates.

You cannot be oblivious to them I am sure. At times comments do fall into the realm of personal attacks. Your own rhetoric has softened over time. I have sympathy for men in the Family Court system and have said thus, but the facts around the extent of female violence don't stack up. That is not the same as recognising that women also have to take responsibility for their own violence when they behave in the same way. Why would men believe that women think other women are allowed free pass when it comes to violence. As I said it is also about degrees and for both parties to learn strategies such as removing themselves from the situation or getting a divorce. Let's face it these relationships are toxic and cannot be healthy for either spouse nor more importantly for any children that might be affected.

Why, thank you Pelican.

There is at least one man who does not make me proud to be a man and that is the man who deprived a little girl of a life jacket at Christmas Island.

And I appreciate the fact that the vast majority of mothers would never do what this woman did.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013572/Fiona-Donnison-murdered-toddlers-left-car-boot-split-husband.html

Hopefully I think we have reached the point where it is realised that DV can be extremely complicated, there is a lot of mis-information.

If it was approached more from the perspective of investigating a crash or accident where the circumstances that led to the incident were also examined dispassionately.

Sure without doubt there are people who are born violent and will use this to get what they want, without regard to others. There are others who become violent because of drugs, brain injury or illness(diagnosed or undiagnosed)for example, some diabetics can become aggressive when experiencing a hypo.

The ABC catalyst program had an interesting program on hormonal influences. (that most chose to ignore).

Pelican <"My concerns are not with statistics that show women to be capable of violence, that is not in dispute.
It is the exaggeration of the extent of it that annoys me and the tone of anti-female comments on here that go beyond mere policy debates."

Exactly! This is the most intelligent comment I have read for ages.

Good on you Pelican for continuing to argue with the OLO misogynists!
I would suggest that some of these posters are just trying to pick a fight with the others, just because they can?

Blind Freddy can see the glaring truth in Pelican's comment, which is why there is really no point in saying much more :)

I only came back here to see what was happening because I am so over the multitude of threads devoted to the carbon tax!

Pelican, domestic situations are all "grey areas". What is normal byplay for one couple may be seen as unacceptably rough to another.

My suspicion is that on the whole middle class women claim that being yelled at during an argument is violence, while working class women regard this as a perfectly normal state of affairs and give as good as they get.

I think the real problem that the women here have is that they simply don't know any working class people. Do yourself a favour and go for a meal at a pub in a working class suburb tonight. Stay at the bar for a while: you'll see lots of examples of women giving as good as they get and usually better, since the men know they aren't allowed to "win".

A common theme in these reports is that someone "didn't know they were experiencing violence" until the researchers pointed out to them that the definition of violence preferred by the researchers fit their circumstances.

The Monash correction of Thea Brown's report that I mentioned in another thread also makes mention of this effect, to the extent that a report being relied on to inform government policy overstates the prevalence of serious domestic violence by well over 50% by it's own admission, all due to the "researchers" having confirmation bias. They reported what they wanted to believe, not what the data showed, even with a carefully selected sample set. It's a serious condemnation of the peer-review process as it's applied within Gender studies "research". How many other such faulty reports have been released without proper review?

I await the Government's acknowledgement of the correction and amendments to its proposed FLA changes to reflect the vastly different picture the proper data presents. Yeah, that's gonna happen...

pelican "It is the exaggeration of the extent of it that annoys me and the tone of anti-female comments on here that go beyond mere policy debates"

Then why not more annoyed with the tone of the anti-male comments on here (see some recent posts by Suzie and Ammonite) or the much more serious exageration of DV stats by the women's lobby.

While some give lip service to the idea of gender neutral laws it's pretty obvious from other comments they don't mean it at all.

You've still not had the decency to acknowledge the lies ChazP has been caught in nor her views on misuse of information. Instead focussing your efforts into exagerating and misrepresenting the stance that most male posters here actually take.

R0bert

The emotional terrorist by Erin Pizzey.
http://www.ejfi.org/DV/dv-10.htm

<In a recent case, a Mr. Roberts described to me how, during his marriage, he and his children faced a daily onslaught of verbal abuse from his wife. Mrs. Roberts was also physically violent to the children. Now that he has asked for a divorce, she is making use of every weapon in her arsenal. In the children's presence, she has used drugs and drunk alcohol to the point of extreme intoxication. She has staged several unsuccessful suicide attempts in front of the children, threatened over the telephone to "do something stupid," promised to kill Mr. Roberts new partner, and assured Mr. Roberts that when she has finished with him he will not have a penny to his name. To Mr. Roberts, all of this behavior seemed perfectly usual.

After all, he had witnessed this sort of commotion for thirteen years of their marriage. When I suggested to him, "What you endured is emotional terrorism," he suddenly and for the first time was able to see his situation clearly.>

I think the important thing is that this man was not aware of how inappropriate her behaviour was.

Both Suziy and Pelican and others object to what they see as exaggeration.

Yet over the last 30 - 40 years feminists themselves have made many exaggerated claims and false claims about DV.

It is fair to object to exaggerations and false hoods, as long as that is applied evenly and honestly across the board.

Erin Pizzey;

<We have had thousands of international studies about male violence but there is very little about why or how women are violent. There seems to be a blanket of silence over the huge figures of violence expressed by women. Because family terrorism is a tactic largely used by women and my work in the domestic violence field is largely with women, I address this problem discussing only my work with women.>

Antiseptic <"I think the real problem that the women here have is that they simply don't know any working class people. Do yourself a favour and go for a meal at a pub in a working class suburb tonight. Stay at the bar for a while: you'll see lots of examples of women giving as good as they get and usually better, since the men know they aren't allowed to "win"."

Oh come on! I think you are aware that most of the female posters on this thread are hardly delicate, naive flowers.

I for one have spent most of my adult working life looking after 'working class people' in hospitals and in their homes.

I would suggest I am more aware of their problems than you are.
I am certainly more aware of the what and to whom the most injuries occur!

In any case, it is a well known fact that domestic violence, as opposed to pub violence, is perpetrated by people from all areas of society.

I will say again, I am well aware of female violence against family members in their homes, but I am also aware that men commit the most physical violence against others in our society.

That is not a denigration of all men, it is just a fact.

Suze, you really should get out and about more. Sick people do not usually provide the best examples of normal behavioural modes, especially after you've dosed them up with tranquilisers. Nor are the responses of elderly patients that of the typical perpetrator or victim of DV.

They're also rarely drunk and I'd have to say it's unlikely that they'd have a domestic with a nurse present.

On the whole, I'd say you've only confirmed my view that your own opinion is informed more by a latte-set feminism than by any knowledge of the subject, just as the Brown report was informed by the bias of the "researchers" instead of the data.

Back on the topic, I'd have to say this reponse by ChazP seems to indicate that for her at least, it's all about gender-hatred.

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255#212989

I discovered earlier that I'd been accepting pie charts showing percentages a bit too readily.

ChazP had posted a claim onto the Family Law thread about a woman being killed each week by a male partner. No mention of course of the number of men killed by female partners.

It turns out that "in 2006/2007 243 men were the victims of homicides and 55 women. 10% of the men were killed by intimate partners and 53% of the women were killed by intimate parters.

That as far as I can tell means around 24 to 25 men and 29 to 30 women were killed by intimate partners. "

The references are at
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12255#213058

A bit more than half the figure claimed by ChazP for women being killed by male intimate partners and the numbers of men killed by intimate partners not that much lower.

I wonder if those figures include contract killing's. Not something that was clear from the data. A different study by the AIC found "There appears to be little difference in terms of the gender of the targets involved with both males and females targeted equally (16 males; 15 females)." http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/2/2/A/%7B22A7C133-9F68-4F0D-852A-AD512115D9E6%7DRPP53.pdf so again probably litte impact on the balance.

R0bert

Robert,

Why am I not surprised? By these exaggerated claims.

James if you have the time can you check the sources and maths for me please in case I've made a mistake.

I think I've got it all correct but am not at my best today and the outcome is far enough from what I'd expected that having it checked would be worthwhile. I'd thought the figure was more like 2 to 1 rather than close to even.

R0bert

I've discovered some contradictory figures to the ones I referenced earlier on the AIC website and posted some details on the Family Law thread.

R0bert

Oh my goodness. If all the above claims are true, then isn't it wonderful that you found that info that all those men were killed by women ... just so you could prove your point to all us violent women?
You guys are sick...

Antiseptic, when have I ever said I have witnessed actual domestic violence in front of my eyes?
I haven't, thank goodness, but I have arrived on the scene to clean up afterwards many times, that's for sure.

I don't know about all the homes and hospitals you have been in, but the ones I was working in had people of all ages as patients.
And I looked after plenty of people of both genders who have been bashed by others in their homes.
What nurse hasn't? It is rife in our communities.

One thing is for certain, I am far more qualified to discuss the medical problems suffered by domestic violence victims than you are... and I know the horrible truth, unfortunately.

I don't care whether you believe me or not really.
I might leave you guys to beat chests together on your own now.
See you all on another thread.

Suze.

Suzie, I think my point stands.

You haven't at any stage tried to address the subject of Jennifer's piece, which is looking for better ways to prevent "the medical problems suffered by domestic violence victims ", preferring to focus, as always, on the most extreme cases where it ends badly for the woman and a bit of gender vilification: "you guys are sick", for mentioning that women also commit extreme violence?

While that might give you a warm glow, it doesn't actually contribute to the debate, so as usual there's no loss to the discussion if you leave. Thanks anyway and enjoy your latte.

R0bert, as I understand it, many of the older police statistics are unreliable because they were collated from a dataset that simply didn't record some aspects, including gender and in some cases familial relationship. I believe this is changing and the more recent data is better.

Either way, it's not especially relevant to a discussion on reduction in violence, since murder is usually at the end of a fairly long path of dysfunctionality in the relationship. Who eventually does it, is less important than how it got to that point, I think.

Antiseptic,
The following might be of interest.

"With the first group there were significant reductions in the potential for child abuse to occur and this ultimately resulted in fewer notifications to child protection services compared with the families on the waiting list," Dr Thomas said.

Previous research has shown coercive parenting, a lack of positive parent-child interactions and low levels of parental warmth to be key risk factors for child abuse."

http://www3.griffith.edu.au/03/ertiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=31202

Something similar could be used for domestic violence programs, but due to the bigotry of feminism, domestic violence is never carried out by women.

Suzie "just so you could prove your point to all us violent women?
You guys are sick..."

Once again Suzie does not appear to have any problem with ChazP trying to prove a point that's targeted at men, even when it's based on clear and deliberate misrepresentation of the data. It's only when men show the other side that it's a problem.

Now just what is sick here?

R0bert

vanna, that link is very interesting. It's encouraging that such programs are being trialled, but it's disappointing that they're not more widely known and that they've taken so long to come about.

There has been a widespread willingness to characterise men as inadequate parents, but little real effort to address dysfunctional mothering in recent years.

An early intervention program designed to teach people to negotiate with each other might be a good start. It might be something useful that the glut of social workers can deliver if they could be properly retrained. They'd need proper supervision, of course.

I should have said that training in negotiation might help to prevent some escalation in domestic situations. Perhaps something could be made available to older teens through schools. there seems to be room for all sorts of frivolous stuff, so why not something genuiely useful as a life skill taught as a formal topic?

Antiseptic
Well I found it interesting that a part of social science in Australia acknowledges that there can be abuse from a mother to her children.

Meanwhile, most of the rest of social science does not acknowledge abuse from a woman to a man.

Nor does social science seem to acknowledge that fathers are parents or should play a part in children's lives, after accepting a policy that says “women and their children” 52 times within the policy,

Stating "women and their children" 52 times in a policy is an attempt to marginalise and alienate fathers and men.

This comes from the QLD governments DV site: -

“How Do You Know If Your Relationship Is Healthy or Abusive...

Whether you are a young person or an older person, it's important to evaluate whether your relationship continues to be safe and respectful.

A healthy relationship:
-involves two people who feel good about themselves and each other
-is a friendship - not just a physical relationship
-accepts the need for privacy on both sides
-acknowledges that not all experiences and interests need to be shared
-allows for differences of opinion
-does not make unrealistic demands on either partner
-allows for equal sharing of power and control
-is basically calm - not frantic
-should be fun and enjoyable. “

This is one of the reasons why I am not at all impressed by the negativity that feminists and university academics have towards the male gender.

It becomes impossible to have a healthy relationship if one party has nothing but a negative attitude towards the other party.

If anything, feminists and university academics are attempting to create divisions and conflict in society.

I put nursing and violence into google and this came up

https://www.birthinternational.com/articles/midwifery/69-horizontal-violence-in-the-workplace

<For example:

•Belittling gestures e.g. deliberate rolling of eyes, folding arms, staring into space when communication being attempted - Body language designed to discomfort the other
•Verbal abuse including name calling, threatening, intimidating, dismissing, belittling, undermining, humorous 'put downs'
•Gossiping (destructive, negative, nasty talk), talking behind the back, backbiting
•Sarcastic comments
•Fault finding (nitpicking) - different to those situations where professional and clinical development is required. >

Seems to have a big correlation with Erin Pizzeys "Emotional Terrorists".

James, that's a very good example of the ways in which expanding definitions leads to poor understanding of a problem. This is simply about the ways in which some people express their authority or lack therof, not about violence. I think that authoritarianism is very strong in the nursing profession. The matron who'll brook no argument from anyone is a standard model for emulation and a figure of awe to junior staff. In general, a nurse's training involves lots of instruction in "dealing with" patients who don't necessarily want to do as they're told.

One of my enduring memories is of a period in hospital following a motorcycle accident and a repair operation (which was incredibly successful, Dr John O'Connor take a bow). I received intramuscular Pethidine injections every few hours over about 5 days, until I made an attempt, in my semi-stupor, to stop a nurse giving me one, because they'd all been given in my right thigh and it was hurting a great deal. The response was to withdraw all painkilling medication until I was practically begging for something. This was continued across several shifts, so there had been a note appended to the file and when I was finally allowed some relief, I was given a couple of Panadol tablets, which were about as useful as some of Suze's advice.

I lost a great deal of respect for nurses on that day.

However, what that piece is about is bolstering the case for social workers, as is made clear by "Access to appropriate counseling services in the workplace is essential for staff involved in this issue. Information about these services should be displayed in an easily observed place."

Can anyone tell me what this "counselling" is expected to achieve?

For anyone who remains doubtful, a look through the papers in the bibliography section of the new national DV policy shows a certain name cropping up again and again, a Mr Michael Flood, a self-declared feminist, but not necessarily a humanist.

http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/women/progserv/violence/nationalplan/Pages/nat_plan_2010_bibliography.aspx

To me the policy is simply a kick in the teeth for the public, who will be paying out a lot of money to have a national policy based on bigotry, brainwashing and feminist theory.

If this policy is accepted, then it means that as a society, we have not evolved.

You're giving young Mick a bit too much credit, vanna. However, one has to wonder at the Government preferring the stuff from the discredited WRD rabble, which refers to 3 source papers produced by Government Agencies, instead of the source documents themselves. It's not surprising, really, since the Personal Safety Survey shows very clearly that violence directed at men is far more serous a problem, while the WRD synopsis doen't mention men at all, which fits the prevailing prejudice within the Greens/Labor coalition of the shrilling.

His other great contribution is yet another review of other people's work, something that young Mick seems to do a great deal of, while not actually producing anything himself. Nice work if you can get it, I suppose, but not really my cup of tea. Perhaps when I'm in my dotage it might appeal, but as a vigorous man in my prime it seems rather like something my nan would do when she wasn't crocheting doilies.

I have to say I am a little surprised at the bibliography in general. It contains a very small selection of the enormous amount of material available, much of which is derivative and all of which is predicated on the Feminist ideological assumption that violence in the home is a gender hate crime.

As Jennifer Wilson points out in her article and has been clearly shown here time and again, the only "gender hatred" is coming through these discriminatory, prejudicial and worst of all, ineffective laws and policies.

We deserve better from our lawmakers