You make a good point, Roger. I watched only a small part of the program and it was notable for the polarisation of the discussion in line with 2nd wave (70s) feminist principles, which have been largely discredited as a social justice model thanks to the demographic selectivity you pointed out, as well as its failure to properly grasp the fundamental drivers of human behaviours.

The Duluth model of domestic violence policing was the result of the confluence of those principles and a desire to simplify police decision-making, leading to the policy of always removing the man from domestic violence situations rather than seeking to properly investigate culpability. That model is obviously in favour in Victoria, judging from the attitude of the police representative on the Q&A panel. The problem with that model is that it can lead to enormously skewed perceptions of the nature of the problem and become a perverse incentive for violence to be escalated, if men think they will be blamed regardless. The recent case of Jon Stevens/Jodhi Meares saw him being removed and slapped with an AVO despite him being the complainant! There was much media coverage of the event, implying he had been assaulting her, but very little about what really happened when it was revealed.

I'd like to see a much more adult discussion on this topic in particular and on other topics that have become favourite debating grounds for gender warriors of both sexes.

An adult discussion is solution-oriented, blame is not the goal. It is able to encompass more than one idea at a time and to recognise that nuance is important for proper understanding. It eschews rhetoric and pat answers designed to conceal as much as they reveal.

Men and women rely on each other and we need to keep that simple fact at the heart of any of our thinking on matters of gender, which are ultimately all related to domesticity. We are natural allies, not natural enemies.

This is truly a bizarre topic. Is there a real debate? Is there anyone in favour of domestic violence? Violence of all kinds is already against the law. Murder is against the law regardless of the circumstances, except perhaps in war. And what does the writer recommend? "Radical power transfer in society from men to women". What, pray tell me, does that mean? I'm not famous for my intellectual deficiencies but I can't figure it out.

Looking at only the "victims" tells only part of the story about domestic violence. If we also look at the statistics for perpetrators of domestic violence then I suspect we will get a clearer picture of why so many people feel that the terms "domestic/family" violence implies that women represent a significant proportion of perpetrators and potentially hides the fact that this is mostly a male crime. I suspect that many of the male victims are hurt/killed by other male family members. I would like to see figures that show both victims and perpetrators so that the topic can be addressed honestly.

What both the statistics and the screams of "What about teh Menz?" neglect is the context in which family and domestic violence occurs. As mentioned, while there is plenty of information about the victims there is little about the perpetrators. Violence occurs in same sex relationships so it would logically follow that some percentage of male victims would have had male perpetrators. Then there is the actual context of the violence. Where men are killed by female intimates who initiated the violence? Was the woman the aggressor, setting out to injure or kill the male, or were they acting in self-defence? What is the history of violence within the family?

It is often pointed out by the MRAs that men are more frequently the victims of violence in general. It's a shame that they also forget that they are also most often the perpetrators.

The latest figures from the ABS show that 94% of perpetrators of partner and dating violence against males are female. The latest figures from the AIC show that 50% of perpetrators of domestic homicide against males are female. When you factor in violence in gay male relationships, you find that straight males make up some 98.1% of currently violent relationships in NSW, and the figures would be similar in other states (based upon the Fair's Fair and Private Lives studies of domestic violence in gay relationships). The claim that "much domestic violence against men is perpetrated by other men" is a red herring and not backed by data. The majority of perpetrators are female. Yes, some of these females may be using violence in self-defence, but the same can be said of male perpetrators of domestic violence. Even the respected feminist domestic violence scholar Michael P. Johnson agrees that "repeat, severe violence against a non-violent intimate is symmetrical by gender.” And who cares if some men are being attacked and abused by other men - don't they still deserve services and support as victims of violent crime?

Carz, we're talking about domestic violence, not general violence. In the case of domestic violence, there is data on the gender of perpetrators of Dv in this country, with it being found that 94% of all battered men are battered my a female perpetrator (ABS 2012 Personal Safety Survey Table 6).

Furthermore that finding is far from unique. The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in the US for example, found that while roughly half of all domestic violence was bi-directional, more than 35% of all domestic violence was unidirectional and perpetrated by female abusers, against male victims. It should be reiterated that that 35% was non-reciprocal, ie there it was solely "her" abusing "him" [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/].

Meanwhile, an annotated bibliography by Dr Martin S Fiebert of California State University found:

" SUMMARY: This bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600." [http://csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm]

Yet this data and the genderless reality of domestic violence, is disregarded by a twisted and gendered narrative on domestic violence where it is framed as "[male] violence against women", where:

"Women are [exclusively] victims, men are [exclusively] abusers [and any instances to the contrary are to be dismissed as statistical anomalies, lies and arbitrarily trivial and harmless- even when the victim is being attacked with blunt objects, threatened with knives, stabbed or set alight in their sleep]."

According to that narrative, when a man is abused, "he must have done something to provoke it" or "it must have been self-defence”; in other words, "he had it coming to him".

Furthermore, it reinforces the stigma that "real men are never victims [especially of women]" and in doing so, that battered men have 'defiled their masculinity' by 'allowing themselves to be abused [and by a woman of all people]'. This is the same warped psychopathology which underlies the demonisation of female rape victims