Cotter,
You seem to be saying that the campaign is not gender biased, but consider the list of names attached to the bottom of the article.

Betty Green, Pauline Woodbridge, Julie Oberin, Annie North, Marie Hume, Veronica Wensing, Beth Tinning, Desi Achilleos and Julieanne Le Comte.

And the author herself comes from the University of Sydney, which is the University that awarded an honorary doctorate to Gemaine Greer last year, who then went on to write an article in a UK newspaper saying that men were “surplus to requirements”.

Does any of that indicate gender bias to you?

When the public is being asked to send in pictures of men with amputated arms, it becomes very, very, very difficult to see how the White Ribbon Day campaign has got much to do with domestic violence.

Viviane, the one sided approach to DV taken by the organisers of WRD amd various other campaigns may contribute to violence against women. The total lack of public sanction against female initiated DV leaves victims of female initiated DV with very few options.

- From my own experience and that of other most of the other men I've spoken to who have had abusive wives it is fairly much impossible to get counsellors and others to take the issue seriously and tell a female that their violence has to stop.
- Others seem to hold the view that if a woman assaults a male then "he must have deserved it".
- Television adds continue to show women assaulting male partners in various forms and treating it either as appropriate or humerous. A recent classic being the add from some months ago where the woman hit the man with a weapon because he had been silly enough to put a car part in the dishwasher.
- Adds claiming to be about stopping DV continue to be (from what I've seen) 100% targetted at male initated DV.
- I've heard reports of some police areas refusing to attend DV situations where the complaint is made by a male. I've also read that in the UK about 30% of the time a male lodging a DV complain will be arrested.
- Male DV shelters are almost non existant.

What is a victim of DV going to do when those who should help won't and where the perpetrator cannot acept that their actions are wrong?
Some will suffer in silence realising that any attempt to sort it out for themselves will leave them as the bad guy. Others will take that risk.

By a continued refusal to take a clear stand against all DV we also leave children exposed to witnessing ongoing violence.

It's time for the one sided campaings to end and for the stance to be against all relationship violence.

Then we might have a real chance of limiting this menace.

R0bert

I thought Leigh was being tongue-in-cheek when he remarked that ..."Violence against women could result from the fact that some of them are always whingeing and complaining about their lot,"...

Nice one Leigh - a good slap's the only way to shut them up, huh?

But what really got me was Leigh's conclusion: "How about women taking responsibility for themselves and getting out of and avoiding situations where they are subjected to violence?"

And I thought Leigh and Sheik Hilaly would never agree on anything...

Perhaps we should reverse the direction of this campaign and change the focus from "Violence against women" to "Violence from men".

Crime statistics show that men are most commonly both the perpetrators and the victims of violence. That is, male-on-male and male-on-female are respectively the two most common categories of assault.

So if we concentrate on the source of the violence, rather than its intended target, we might mollify the brigade of people who don't like listening to "whinging wimmin", for long enough to consider the real issue: men are the cause, and the victims, of most assaults - let's look at why and how to prevent it.

Mercurius,

Surprised to see you doing a "Second Hand Rose" post - commenting on someones else's comment. That's usually the refuge of people who are incapable of making a personal comment on the subject at hand, preferring to lurk until someone says something thay can rubbish.

Your presumption that I'm into slapping women and that I have something in common with Sheik Hilaly is juvenile and stupid. I'll put it down to your youth.

I will freely admit that I am not comfortable with women and have a mysoginstic streak. Probably something that happened in my young days; that's an acceptable exuse isn't, or does it just apply to generation Y? However, I've been married to the same woman for 38 years, have two daughters, two granddaughters and a great grandaughter, all of whom I get along with famously. Can you match that,or are you just big on your feminine side at the moment? I have always thought that you were good on theory, but bereft of practical experience.

If you did have any experience that counts, you would not have made the silly statement that "men are the cause (of)" as well as the victims of violence.

Women, for all their lovable traits, can be the most provovative, irritating and trouble-making creatures on earth. They simply (often) do not know when to shut up and live and let live. Still no excuse for thumping them, though.

Perhaps you will learn this in time, and not presume to correct your elders.

As a man who’s highly involved in the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC), I welcome Bronwyn’s and others’ input.

First, the ads. Yes, they’re deeply problematic. I’ve said so on the WRC blog I’m writing, about a quarter of the way down this page: http://whiteribbonday.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/the-advertising-campaign/. We need much more appropriate and effective ways to inspire men to take action to end men’s violence against women. (At the same time, other members of the National Leadership Group have been more supportive of the ads. I’m pushing for a much better process for producing them next year.)

Second, the issue of the involvement of women and women’s organisations in the WRC. Yes, it’s a key one. The contemporary campaign is a far cry from the effort in which I was involved in the early 1990s, when it was organised by grassroots men’s groups of Men Against Sexual Assault.

I’m enormously grateful to UNIFEM for reviving and organising the WRC, and to women’s groups for their support. At the same time, like you, I’m concerned that it’s losing its defining focus. Internationally, the WRC has been defined by a focus on encouraging *men* to wear white ribbons, in a campaign run largely *by* men (working in partnership with women). The Australian effort is unusual, although at a national level it’s now very much organised by women *and* men.

I’m concerned too that the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAW) is *becoming* “White Ribbon Day”. The WRC should be one aspect of IDEVAW, not define it.

However, I’m pleased to note that these issues are very much on the agenda of the National Leadership Group. And more and more men and mainstream men’s organisations *are* taking up the WRC.

There will always be a challenge in getting significant numbers of men, rather than women, to support the WRC. Women offer support more readily than men to the issue of ending men’s violence against women. But this should remain the core goal, and challenge, of the WRC: to mobilise men to play a positive role in helping to end violence against women.

We should be concerned about violence from any source:

Lesbian Domestic Violence:
unseen, unheard and discounted
Jude Irwin
Department of Social Work, Social Policy and Sociology,
University of Sydney

"There is little dispute about the existence of lesbian domestic violence but there is dispute in the literature
and research about how widespread it is. In the USA some studies estimate that seventeen percent of
lesbians experience domestic violence while others estimate the numbers to be as high as seventy three
percent ((Marguiles 1996). In Australia there have been no prevalence studies which makes it difficult to
estimate the extent of lesbian domestic violence. However anecdotal evidence would suggest that it is
widespread. Many of the forms of abuse that lesbians experience are similar to those experienced by
heterosexual women including physical (eg hitting, kicking and use of a weapon, destruction of
possessions), emotional (eg public denigration, belittling, blackmail, threats of abuse, interruption of eating
and sleeping patterns), sexual (eg forced sex and rape), financial (eg not contributing income, having
control over all assets and money, demanding financial support) and social (eg isolation from family and
friends). However as well as similarities there are also differences. Most of these are related to the
homophobic views about lesbians and the consequent discriminatory attitudes and behaviour. This has
many implications for lesbians who are abused including the lack of appropriate support services and
negative attitudes and practices of some personnel in mainstream services."

http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/policewomen2/Irwin.pdf