I spent 13 years in a job that put me in direct contact with literally hundreds of domestic violence situations. These ranged from yelling and screaming to murder and everything in between. My own personal observations are:

1. Men are the overwhelming instigators of domestic violence against women.
2. When is comes to non-sexual child abuse, men and women are as bad as one another.
3. When it comes to emotional abuse, men and women are as bad as one another.
4. Men being victims of physical violence by women is unusual. And when I did see it, I’m sorry to say, usually the man absolutely, 100% deserved everything he got and more.
5. If alcohol consumption was made illegal the rates of domestic violence against women and children would fall dramatically.

I realise that point 4 above might upset some, but I found that a lot of instances where a woman physically attacked a man was a direct result of intense provocation. One example is a woman who returned home to find her husband sexually abusing their 3 year old son.

Another relevant fact is that a man physically abusing a women does so in the knowledge that he can inflict as much or as little damage upon her as he wishes. Women generally can’t inflict the same sort of damage upon a man and know this (unless they use a weapon). Generally men punch, women slap.

The people involved in trying to curb domestic violence should really concentrate more on addressing the alcohol problem that is present in our society. I don’t think that people realise the extent of this problem. We all hear about the drunken violence that takes place in our inner city night-club districts every weekend, but most alcohol consumption takes place in the home and is a real destroyer of lives. I know that it is a major factor in domestic violence. If there was no such thing as alcohol, the work loads of our police, ambulance and casualty ward doctors and nurses would drop by half.

PEOPLE !!

can we try to turn this thread away from a discussion on domestic violence and bring it BACK to 'what does it mean to be a man' ?

I've pretty much said what I wanted to in previous posts, but this repetition of statistics about DV is getting monotonous and irrelevant to the point. (and to the point of 'oh no, they are STILL on about that')

At the moment its filled with morbid self analysis and speculation on 'who beats the crap out of the other more' and frankly, that is more about 'social problems' than 'male identity'.

MIcheal touched on an aspect with his "Men dont want to report DV against them because they don't want to be seen to be weak" (words like that) so.. lets explore more about male psychology.

EXAMPLE One of my suppliers bounced a survey of me yesterday, She said "What does this mean "Mr right and Mr 'right now' " ? I said "clearly its about the bloke u want to spend your life with and the bloke you want to bonk now" It turned out that 90% of the guys she had surveyed answered like that, and most of the women saw it more as 'Ok for now as a partner, but not long term' The 'bonking' bit did not figure so largely in female thinking.

So, perhaps this tells us something about ourselves.