Suzeonline: Well I do know enough about you to express certain opinions about your motives. I am not telling lies I am just expressing opinions – if they are wrong then there is no need to be defensive.

As a woman you are always likely to change your mind – you don’t need an excuse such as that to change your mind. Everyone has a right to change their mind but my question was why do you change your mind. What is it that keeps driving you to try and win a pointless argument?

It is very patronising to assume that you have seen horrors that no one except those involved in domestic violence could imagine. Have you ever been to war?

There is no need to speak out for people who have been bashed etc. It is too late then. Why are you not speaking about the dangers of entering into domestic relationships in the first place or remaining in them now so that you do not have to wait until it is too late? How many women have to suffer and be killed before those who claim they care begin to agitate for the dismantling of domestic relationships? One in three are in danger – that is several million Australian women and women like you will not lift a finger to help them to safety until it is too late.

I don’t need to know you I just need to observe the hypocrisy between the care you claim you have for women and your complete lack of action in protecting them until the damage is done.

“The vast majority of those I have seen bashed like this have been women, and that is not a statistic, it is personal knowledge after 30 years of nursing.....” And still you go on trying to prove a point which does not matter. You do not care about the safety of women you only really care about your own selfish agenda.

@Roscop It should be noted there that the breakdown was 60,887 female victims (66%), 31,328 male victims (34%), 57.542 male perpetrators (70%) and 24,230 female perpetrators (30%). No figure in there is under 25%, meaning that where minorities do exist, they are significant minorities, therefore they cannot justifiable be dismissed or ignored.

The other thing to note is the under-reporting rates found by the ABS 2012 Personal Safety Survey [http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4906.02012 ] which found in Table 25, in terms of then current victims, that 80.2% of battered women and 94.7% of battered men who were currently the victims of domestic violence had never reported it to police. In terms of previous abuse, Table 26 notes that 57.6% of battered women and 80% of battered men had never reported it to police.

Those rates of under-reporting suggest that, if anything, those figures need to be adjusted by a factor 2.36 to 5.05 for battered women. In the case of battered men, those figures need to be adjusted by a factor of 5-18.87. I would also remind everyong here that Table 6 reveals that 94% of male victims of intimate partner abuse are abused by a female partner

The ABS data makes it abundantly clear that certainly what the police are seeing firsthand in terms of the ordeals of battered women, is the tip of the iceberg. However the data also reveals that it even more the case with battered men.

What this goes to prove is that if we really want to end domestic violence, then the first step has to be removing barriers to disclosure. That can only truly happen when sexism has no place in the issue of domestic violence - whether that sexism is peddled by masculinists or feminists.

That includes vile, stigmatising sexism like "At the end of the day, men can physically block violence against them a lot easier than most women, so don't tell me there are lots of scared men out there because no one will ever believe that."

Those of us who are, or have been battered men and battered women, deserve far better.

Vr041: “What this goes to prove is that if we really want to end domestic violence, then the first step has to be removing barriers to disclosure.”

What happens in the mean time? Thousands of people are going to get hurt when they do not need to be. Why would you place your safety in the hands of politicians, legislators, police and public sympathy when you can take control of it yourself?

You can end domestic violence by not having domestic relationships. This is totally within the control of every individual adult in the country. Changing attitudes and policies toward the outcomes of domestic violence could take decades.

There are enough dangers in life without deliberately putting yourself in harm’s way. Either the proliferation of domestic violence is not as bad as indicated or people in domestic situations do not really care about their own well being. It is time we stopped looking for governments and the legal system to protect us from situations that are under our own control.

You have quoted the figures and these are only the tip of the ice berg so domestic relationships seem a very dangerous proposition. It seems to me that you are trying to draw attention to these figures for no apparent reason other than to refute the arguments of feminists. Let them have their delusions but they cannot have then without exposing themselves as hypocrites. Men who are battered have the same power of control that women do. Often they may not feel like they have that control but they do and if they do not feel like they have control then that is a personal problem which only they can work on.

Phanto, I fail to see how I can be out there 'protecting' the women (and men) when all the police, courts and Governments fail to do so miserably now?
And if I was out there marching in the streets, you and others here would label me a feminist activist who hates men anyway, so nothing would change, right?

At least I am involved in caring for them after they are hurt.
What do you do for them?

Ur041, why aren't you out there ranting and raving about all the men hurt and killed by other men in their homes and out on the streets?
There are far more men hurt this way than by DV, so you should be out there advocating for all the 'one-punch' victims etc.
You won't do this though, because that wouldn't suit your mysoginistic views....

@phanto "What happens in the mean time?"

In the meantime people should be mindful of the situations their friends are in- both male and female and do what they can as soon as warning signs present themselves.

"Men who are battered have the same power of control that women do."

That can only happen when battered men are told that what they're goibg through is wrong and that they deserve better, instead of "just man up".

@suzonline Let's review your feminist contempt for male victims of abuse.

"your mysoginistic views"

Translation: "you're a man hating homosexual and if you were more of a man you wouldn't have been abused".

This is clearly the case as evidenced by the following:

" At the end of the day, men can physically block violence against them a lot easier than most women, so don't tell me there are lots of scared men out there because no one will ever believe that."

In other words, battered men are clearly effeminate scum in your mind.
"I don't think you were ever a victim of DV."

Translation: "You're a liar who hates women."

You bring up "men hurt and killed by other men", yet even then our perpetrators become the focus rather than us- due almost entirely to feminism exploiting our ordeals to advance it's agenda.

"There are far more men hurt this way than by DV"

Which is your justification for treating us like nonexistent, lying, effeminate scum who "had it coming to us".

"You won't do this though"

And yet as someone who has been both, what I am doing is helping victims of male violence far more than the feminist exploitation of us is. The fact is that feminism's 'concern' for us does nothing but shift the focus entirely onto the perpetrator meaning we're still treated with chauvinism and indifference. Conversely, what I am doing helps all male victims by breaking down the stigmatisation of male victims at its most culturally inconvenient.

Stop hiding behind your gender and face up to your own sexist contempt for male abuse victims.

We are not going to stop family violence, Stott Despoya and Batty think they can, they can rave and rant all they want to but it will be to no avail, human nature being what it is we all, men, women and children tend to become arguementire very quickly, this being our nature, this is obvious with the people writing on this subject here, arguments can lead to violence then to killing, no matter where, perhaps marriage or living together is not the answer to continued hate of one another, but the way society is structured all sorts of issues come forth with money and children etc, so killing will continue.
Writing here on our manipulative and violent mother we do feel she had a mental problem, we do not know the cause of her being like she was all her life, was it hereditary, was there other undisclosed problems as a child, we will never know, but it did leave a scar with us mentally