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.