A great article Adam. One important thing it's important to mention is that while couple counselling, relationship skills training and individual therapy may work well for most domestic violence (the 'common couple violence' you refer to), it's essential that a triage system is in place so that those (rare) cases of 'intimate terrorism' aren't referred on to counselling as this can be extremely dangerous for the victim (male or female), but instead referred on to the appropriate authorities.

RObert, I know I will never change your mind either, but as I said before, I am only looking at the cold, hard facts from official Australian crime statistics that overwhelmingly show that women come off much worse in Domestic violence situations.

I doubt these elusive 'feminists', that apparently drive this conspiracy against all men in society, have anything to do with compiling actual crime statistics.

Thanks Men's Health, at last a voice of reason.
Yes, counselling may work for those couples who are willing to look past the previous violence in their relationship, as long as it wasn't too longstanding or violent I suppose.

However, there are many women who clearly would not want to continue these relationships, whereas the men would prefer to stay with 'their' women, regardless of the violence.

These are the men that need to be locked up much earlier than after waiting until they have severely maimed or killed their 'intimate' partners.
We see this sad scenario far too often...

Feminism is more of a religion than anything else. It begins with a maxim - that men are the cause of all evils in the world - and interprets all (bad) phenomena to coincide with this maxim. The maxim itself is saturated with value judgements, and when applied to interpret phenomena, ends with committing numerous errors in reasoning. Feminism particularly does damage to the notion of cause and effect; because, it won't look at the circumstances surrounding every DV incident and the multiple elements that led to the incident in question. Rather, it begins with the maxim 'man is aggressive and violent' and then interprets the DV incident to coincide with this maxim. Any disagreement with the maxim is then interpreted as sexist or misogynistic. And around it goes in circles, ad infinitum. It commits the error of circular reasoning and begging the question.


It's important to look at the methodology in feminist literature on DV. They do telephone interviews and surveys, but only for women. So, if you're only going to investigate one half one the population, then obviously the results are going to be skewed toward that half.


Hopefully with the recent reforms of the University, 'women's studies' and all related courses will be de-funded. It only currently lives off tax payers' money, but deregulated university fees should see it crumble.

Suzie, crime statistics carry a number of pre-filters that alter the outcomes in terms of understanding the dynamics of DV.
- Police are trained to some extent to see DV as a male thing so are far less likely to recognise or deal with female perpetrators
- Given the treatment men receive when they do report DV we are far less likely to report it in the first place and in some cases even recognise it as DV ourselves. It took me a long time to get past the stereotypes and rcognise that being punched by by ex was DV, a mental block that many share.
- Reports to police and charges are far more likely to happen when the violence gets to the point of physical injury. The stats and most of the men pointing out that initiation of DV is not gendered acknowledge that women get seriously hurt more often because of the difference in size and strength

If the debate was just about who suffers greater physical injury there would be very little debate, its not. Feminists rely on the extremes for their hard evidence then discuss the issue as though that covered all emotional, financial, social and lower level physical abuse of an intimate partner.

R0bert

Killarney, Yeah right...wars are fought for Men's interests, that's why they used posters like this in WWI to guilt trip men into enlisting.
http://goo.gl/wKpBmU
http://goo.gl/fhfmbD
It turned out that the atrocity stories coming from the invasion of Belgium were a lie, a propaganda fabrication, yet here we are 100 years later, same propaganda, same lies:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8499578.stm
Wars are always fought for the interests of a class of people, not a gender, men are shamed into enlisting by being called cowards because they won't sacrifice their lives to protect women and children. The reason this works, time after time is precisely because men have no group interests beyond the protection of women and children, they will either unite to struggle against nature to build a safe home for their families or to struggle against other men to ensure the safety of women and children.

A lot of the arguments seem to revolve around statistics as if such facts tell the complete picture. The statistics are based on the number of reported cases. This does not necessarily equate to the actual number of cases. It is reasonable to assume that there are probably many women who do not report for a variety of reasons. Many women still do not report because for them the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. We do not have an accurate figure which shows how many actual acts of violence are committed against women. What we have is reliable information that there are more cases reported by women than by men. There can be no argument about this.

We also have some studies that show how many cases are reported by men but men also elect not to report for a variety of reasons. We also have no real indication of how many children are victims of violence nor what gender they are abused by unless it is reported. Most children are incapable of reporting violence and they have a lot more to lose if they could.

Arguments which claim that men are more violent than women based on the number of reported cases are clearly false arguments. The reported facts do not necessarily show the complete picture. Men may well be more violent but you cannot deduce this based simply on the number of reported cases. It is an illogical and very unscientific way to mount an argument.

There was a time not long ago when women never reported domestic violence. Did we then deduce that it did not exist? If men decide to report more and children are watched more closely will it one day turn out to be that women are the more violent gender?