Jay of Melbourne  "...women are just as violent as men and they initiate violent confrontations far more often than men do."

Really?
Where are the official stats that tell us that, or is that the truth according to Jay?

"There's no scientific data to back the theory that family violence is a gendered issue..."

Really?

I tend to follow the official police stats that tell us that at least one woman a week is killed by an intimate partner in Australia.
I haven't seen many reports on men being killed by their intimate partners, have you?

In fact, almost all the news I read and watch each day involve men on men violence.
I doubt all of those altercations are 'caused' by women.....more likely drugs or alcohol.

I would have thought that death was the ultimate act of violence.
It is certainly very final, in that the bad women will never annoy those men again....

Womyn and right-thinking males, everyone gather round Jay of Melbourne and chant SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

Lest he uncover the vicious untruths told by the author. Using PNG Highlands male rapists as same-group proxies for Australian anglo males is the foulest statistical dishonesty I have struck in a long time - and I am right now in the Highlands.

If this is feminism, it's time dishonesty and manipulation are universally acknowledged as its essential values. If it wasn't for double standards, they would have no standards.

JoM,

"There's no scientific data to back the theory that family violence is a gendered issue..."

There was plenty of scientific data in our house when I was a kid.

Dad used to lose all his money "every" Saturday at the TAB, then get drunk and come home and give us merry hell - often he would slap mum around for good measure.

(But I'm sure it was all our fault:)

Yes men in trouble, especially in their relationship with women has been, and still is the principal theme of all of the worlds great literature.
Shakespeare gave the best examination of the dealy consequences of perennial unresolved conflicts in the male psyche, as it was projected both on to the world stage in general, and on to the bodies of both (other) men and.
The same dramas described by Shakespeare are still being dramatized on to the word stage. Modern stagings of his plays are mostly staged in contemporary settings. This includes films/movies. Richard III some years back, and Coriolanus last year.
Meanwhile the book The Natural Superiority of Women by Ashley Montagu gives persuasive arguments which essentially support the argument of Andee's essay

Andee,
I was guessing a structuralist/post-structuralist orientation based on the quotes earlier, about "patriarchal identity formation" etc. Whereas my position is that, conscious or not, we suspend disbelief apropos the social constructs. A great many people probably believe credulously in their "reality", but it remains role-play for me. Plus, in my limited acquaintance with feminism I've found social constructionism the usual rational.
The overwhelming view of patriarchy you posit strikes me as just such a "grand narrative" as the postmodern present was supposed to have put to bed.
Don't you find patriarchy rather vague and unsophisticated as the orientation within which we're all forged? Indeed, as you describe it, it seems to make feminism null and void, being that both sexes are mercilessly gendered.
But I don't really buy it. I grew up in as hardcore a working class, patriarchal/militaristic/intolerant family as I can imagine and I spontaneously rebelled from a very early age.
I'm not a Marxist but if we're going to have grand narratives it seems to me that late capitalism offers more tangible rationales for the world's ills, as well as those of individuals. We're surely all utterly commodified and patriarchy too serves capitalism as the greater power.
To what extent, I wonder, is patriarchy the villain because you're a feminist? If I'm correct in gathering that you are. On the other hand, capitalism is admittedly the invention of male ingenuity.

As someone said before, asking a Feminist to be impartial and honest in discussing men is like asking a Jew to be impartial and honest when discussing the Waffen SS.
How feminists corrupt DV research
http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/how-feminists-corrupt-dv-research/
Men and women use violence against each other in equal numbers but, and here's that word again "context", the context is usually different because men and women think differently.
Women are more likely to lash out in anger or to use sustained but low level violence discipline a partner, men are more likely to use violence instrumentally to get their own way or to control and isolate a woman.
Feminists use arrest records and casualty reports as primary sources because they show a preponderance of male offenders, non Feminists or Anti Feminists will also include information such as CTS and other surveys of heterosexual relationships in their presentations.
For the record on this issue I'm an Anti Feminist, someone who is the opposite of a Feminist (and the opposite of a Men's Rights Activist) so I don't care either way since I don't accept the idea of equality in the first place. It'd be no skin off my nose if DV really was a gendered issue it's just that when you look at all the data gender symmetry in DV is apparent.