Ringtail

Thank you for sharing your very sad account. It brought many horrendous images of violence by my ex flooding in on me. I too escaped - some 18 years ago now.

But I guess that I am lucky. I did not allow my 13 years of DV to permeate my life after separation/divorce and I have not felt the need to generalise my experience across to all males (I am not saying that you have). I have a wonderful husband now and many of my dearest friends are male.

I am also saddened that a large percentage of posts in response to the article seem to have become quite abusive personal attacks on the opposite sex - both male and female.

I am wary of stats on Web Sites. Let's face it - any one of us can set up a Web Site and claim expertise in an area. I am very careful about what I read and what I believe (on Web Sites I mean).

Cheers

Ringtail, just in case it has been missed I don't believe that any posters are justifying male violence. I have made clear statements against all DV as have many other posters.

You should never have been hit. You should certainly never have suffered serious harm as a result of physical violence. There is no excuse for that.

My posts on this type of topic are a response to the continued finger pointing of those who continue to assert that this is a male problem rather than a human problem. It is a response to those who make this claim as justification for opposing changes to family law. To those who make the utterly unsupportable claim that maternal bias in family law protects children. It is not about saying women are bad, rather that women are human just as men are human. We have our good points and our bad points. Our genders both contain great individuals and individuals who we could wish had never been born.

Those who knowlingly use false statistics about DV and false claims about child abuse to support gender bias in family law are making a difficult situation much worse. They are contributing to thousands of kids growing up without their fathers. They are contributing to kids being abused by parents who should not have prime care. They are adding to (but not responsible for) the small number of cases where some parents cornered by a corrupt and biased system crack and harm others and themselves. They are contributing to the pain of the thousands of men who reportedly take their own lives each year due in part to the damage done by that family law system.

I don't think you fit in that category, rather your own experience has made it difficult for you to see the other side of this issue.

Again nobody has made any effort to critique the material I referenced. I believe it to be legit and independent. Not material driven by a gender agenda.

R0bert

Congradulations Michael Gray for standing up to be counted.

For those of you that dont beleive that the statistics are manufactured!
http://www.nojustice.info/Research/ManufacturingResearch.htm

A flood of garbage
http://www.kittennews.com/kn_mag/2004mag/02_feb04mag/jamesh_09.htm

For men who have experienced domestic violence there are two good articles.

The Anatomy of Abuse by George Rolph
Working with Violent women by Erin Pizzey

The RAPE of justice
http://www.kittennews.com/cgi-bin/kn_opinion/opinion.pl?topic=999913

Ringtail,
I can't find any contributer references in the thread to DV as a result of "self defence", nor accusations that you lie. I also see only few hostile responses from the supporters of Michaels paper on bias DV reporting. I do see a lot of hostility from those who are unwilling to acknowledge male victims of DV.

I agree that "more men suffer from violence committed by other men than ever at the hands of women". I have read that men are the victims of 80% of all violence. Those victims need support.

Garra said that this is "an organised effort by a small minority of men to deny our gender's overwhelming collective responsibility for human violence. "

Erin Pizzey, Founder Of The DV Movement is not a man. There are many women who research male victimes of DV. I have quoted 2 and can provide others. Women are also the losers when DV policy fails through gender blindness.

But Garra's comment highlights the real agenda behind this DV blind spot - a commitment to ideolgies that rienforce the belief in pathalogical male deficiency - this is a political act.

An article from the UK ...
Still suffering in silence
PAUL BOWEN
http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1455622004

Most may be too humiliated to report it, but PAUL BOWEN bears testimony to the fact that men endure domestic abuse at the hands of their female partners

My ex was violent and abusive, but I never saw myself as a victim until the very end. It didn’t take me long to decide there was no merit in remaining one. There were fleeting moments where I felt sorry for myself, but this was insignificant to the deep feelings of sympathy and sadness I held for my children.

While we were together, she called police several times, and each time I was lucky enough to have been deemed rational and harmless. A couple of times, they took her away with the children, to stay with friends or relatives. I had never called the police until after the split when on one occasion the children called me to tell me that their mother was going nuts, and they were asking for help. One of those children then moved in with me. Later, another.

I still pay significant child support for the youngest. She gets less than a third of what I pay, and this surplus is not being saved for her future. I am resigned to the fact there is nothing more I can do, but remain certain that this is not in her best interest and that at some point in the future she will realise this, and feel even more disappointed.

I’m no super dad (nor was I a battered husband), but do make a better parent than some mothers. Yet, as a man, I have no rights to my children and would be laughed at if I complained about violence and abuse. It seems quite acceptable for her to go psycho every so often because of pressures of motherhood, while fatherhood at best is deemed not only easy, but unnecessary. At worst, it is the accepted source of all abuse and misery.

Seeker, I can really identify with your experience. I did not recognise the presence of DV until released from that nightmare. I share-parent a child with my ex, and now regularly give him support when he comes home from her house traumatised by her aggression. Giving support is tricky as I am committed to never putting her down in front of him.

The following helped me to identify men's experience, and to recover.

An Enquiry Into The Adult Male Experience Of Heterosexual Abuse
Lewis, A. (2000) M.A. thesis, University of Western Sydney.

http://www.familylawreform.com.au/family-advice-wm-1.html

Lewis's conclusion echoes Pizzey's call for women to lead DV policy to the next step.

CONCLUSION

"My hypotheses were confirmed concerning both men's suffering at the hands of their female partners and also the prejudices of society. However I underestimated both the extent of the suffering and the degree of discrimination against men by the police, the courts and child welfare agencies, and in the overall implementation of public policy.

In giving abused men a voice and the opportunity to tell their stories in an atmosphere of trust ... As an abused person, I was giving myself a voice. The men's pain became my pain, their injustice my injustice, their anger my anger. … I freed myself. My inner processes were facilitated by the validation which I as a woman receive from society, and I sought to bring something of that hope and vision to the men whose stories I was privileged to share.

In support groups all over the country, men are learning about their emotional life. They are seeking the kind of inner freedom which women rightly enjoy. But the fight for their emancipation is not theirs alone. Just as men in positions of power originally gave women their social and political rights, so women today must exercise their power in standing for the rights of those men who are struggling against overwhelming odds, and whose pain has no name."

While I understand her recognition of the overwhelming odds, I don't particularly identify with her dramatisation of pain - but I accept her point.