suseonline: JayB, many of the men I know constantly complain about their nagging wives, but whether it is considered 'domestic violence' or not is certainly a contentious issue.

If they complain then they must have something to complain about. If the husband subjected his wife to the same behaviour then that would be considered violence by the Feminists, & you by all accounts. If taken to a court an AVO would be issued against the husband immediately. Not so if a husband wanted one against his wife. He would be laughed out of town by the magistrate.

I was lucky, The Magistrate gave me one against my first wife & put her on a years good behaviour.

suseonline: not the victim who spoke words you didn't like.

I take it, by this statement you don't think that wives can dish out mental violence & controlling behaviour, it's only men do that.

Suseonline,

What if (say) controlling behaviour was regarded as DV when it affected women and included in reporting for DV stats?

Perhaps you might like to look at what questions are being asked of women in those 'surveys' by the health depts - the routine interviewing of women referred to earlier.

Millions of taxpayers' $$ have been spent on DV annually. Yet to date the lion's share appears to have been consumed by bureaucrats and sundry professionals.

We find too that the cause celebre of the century, gay marriage, would be fraught with partner violence. The incidence of gay and lesbian DV is reportedly much higher than heterosexuals. Why wasn't anyone aware before? Where was Tony Jones and what about the ABC's 'fact check(ing)'?

No one is saying that some women don't dish out extremely provocative and nasty comments to their partners, because of course they do, and so do men.
What I am trying to say is that it is so much harder to prove verbal and mental abuse.

I have a close friend who is going through a divorce at present, and while her ex-husband has never hit her or been physically violent towards her, he does verbally threaten her and has made the whole financial settlement so scary that she has just agreed to anything in order to get him out of her life.
It isn't right, but she can't 'prove' anything.....

I'm in agreement with Suzie's comments on this one. Its looking like some want to maintain the gender war by trying to shift the focus of this article from physical violence to emotional violence.

From my perspective whilst the emotional forms of abuse can be as damaging as the physical they are much harder to prove, physical violence is for the most part easy to identify (other than outright lies about it occuring). Nagging vs occasional reminders of obligations, being honest vs hurtful comments, being controlling over finances vs trying to maintain some financial sanity and a whole other range of actions depend very much on how people perceive them compared to what they are.

On the physical violence issue the boundaries are a ot easier to identify, the role of society is to do its best to ensure that the message is clearly against all violence and that structures around seperation treat both parties fairly where allegations are not proven.

Finding solutions to the emotional abuse is more difficult, again saner laws around divorce and child residency/support might allow some to escape abusive partners more readily (and not have those former partners continue to reek havoc in their lives for year to come).

For start the message about physical violence is still missing much of the mark, it touches on on some of the social violence that occurs but I don't know how much impact its having, I still hear retired footballers and other calling for "bring back the biff", it does rarely addresses female violence except for the occasional bemoaning of the increase in social violence between women.

R0bert

<I'm in agreement with Suzie's comments on this one. Its looking like some want to maintain
<the gender war by trying to shift the focus of this article from physical violence to emotional
<violence.

Posted by R0bert, Thursday, 24 July 2014 6:31:33 AM

Without an examination of all the details, that may or may not contribute to physical violence, then how are we as a society going to stop it?

There are in some or many instances, contributing factors that will/may eventually lead to physical violence.

In courses that are designed to teach people in how to deal with violent people, there are techniques taught to try and deescalate the situation. Before a situation eventually escalates into physical violence, there are some times many clues and trigger points that if dealt with properly can defuse a situation, handled incorrectly and it can end tragically.

Suzie before mentioned about blaming the victim. Well the elephant in the room is that at times the person who is the victim is part of the problem.

I have seen the game that is played where a person who is antagonised to the point that they explode in physical violence, and the person who perpetrated and deliberately exacerbated the situation, claims innocence.

Sure there are instances where a person just happens to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time and is the innocent one.

I wish to try and make a comparison, I get attack and bitten by a dog.

Is the dog to blame or am I?

In the situation that I am just walking past and the dog attacks me, No I am not to blame.

But in the situation where I use methods to abuse and stir up the dog and then the dog attacks me. Who is to blame? Me or the dog?

Now If I am a very nasty person, I will plead total innocence to any contributing factor that I may have contributed to the situation.

The dog gets put down, or locked in the pound, mission accomplished and I can then play the victim.

Wolly, I agree to a point but most of us would consider outselves to be somewhat more rational than dogs (or cats when the topic is about uncovered meat). What we sometimes lack is viable options to get out of situations where we risk being pushed past our limits.

I doubt that society can do much about the manipulators other than making it as risk free as possible for people to get away from them and try and avoid family law structures that support the manipulators at the cost of those trying to do the right thing.

I'm of the view that both men and women are capable of abusive behaviour, the use of particular tactics may vary but that overall neither gender is better or worse as human beings. Focussing on either genders failings entrenches the debate in gender wars and hinders movement towards solutions.

R0bert