I'm with Anna52. My finger has hovered over a few posts, but I think the problem is the cumulative effect rather than any particular one. It's not so much that posters want to disagree with her, but the unpleasant boof-headed way in which some of you express yourselves.

So to try to get a reasonable conversation going I'm going to delete the next comments that are unreasonably aggressive towards Julie. If the comments aren't relevant to the article they will go too.

Graham (Moderator)

GY

I do believe that those posters to whom you refer prove the validity of Julie McKay's article. They demean us all.

Reality Check: More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined. If that isn't gender hatred, I wouldn't like to see what is......

It might help to provide some illumination of these - quite staggering - statistics, upon which the article relies.

"[VAW] in Australia alone will cost an estimated $15.6 billion in 2021-22."

Whom does it cost, and how is it measured?

And this one is even more staggering, almost to the point of defying belief:

"More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they are girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century combined."

The claim "precisely because they are girls" clearly indicates gender hatred. But I'm curious as to how the motivation is determined.

Any chance of some clarification? Or am I just being boof-headed?

Pericles, my guess would be the one child policy in China. I doubt that there are definitive figures for that but its the only thing I can think of where millions "could" have been killed just because they were girls.

Might be educational to see what if any figures are around on that topic and how they are derived.

R0bert

I would agree that there could be domestic violence occurring in some of the South Pacific countries, as I have lived on one of them years ago, and unemployment was very high.

That nation was kept afloat by handouts from other countries, with very little local industry except tourism, and who wants tourists gawking at them all day.

With high levels of unemployment, domestic violence can increase, and that is a fact.

However I am totally circumspect regards claims of endemic or large scale domestic violence in this country.

I have seen innumerable women with self-inflicted tattoos (normally on their backs, shoulder or ankles).

But I have never seen a woman with a black eye, and I can't remember the last time I ever saw a woman with a single bruise.