Happy Bullet,

Thanks for the info. I’ll do some reading. It seems Flood has no intention of engaging criticism directly.

Ronnie Peters,

The responses we get from you are quite astounding. You appear to completely ignore context, and, as aqvarivs has rightly accused Anthony Merinac of doing, focus often on single words and twist their meaning beyond all recognition.

For example, my comment about abuse committed by nuns in the Catholic Church was in response to your ridiculous accusation against JamesH that he was motivated by religious zeal, rather than a genuine quest for justice. You then attack JamesH’s imaginary argument with reference to paedophilia committed by the Catholic Church. Given that you appear to be ignoring the issue of abuse committed by females, I felt it was safe to assume that your reference to this paedophilia was made only in the context of abuse committed by male priests. Thus, in bringing up the subject of abuse committed by nuns, I was showing that even in the Catholic Church, the abuse committed is gender-neutral in nature.

Indeed any reference I make to DV, abuse, violence, are in gender neutral terms. I highlight the way in which DV and abuse committed by females is suppressed because feminist organisations, the media, and campaigns such as WRD present the issue of DV and abuse in a gendered manner- ie, they focus on violence committed by males, and ignore violence committed by females.

Peters employs a cynical tactic, whereby those attempting to de-gender the debate on DV are in turn accused of gendering the debate.

If the level of violence committed by females was miniscule, you may still be able to argue that you are right to criticise us for using it as a diversion to avoid dealing with the issue of male violence. But as has been constantly shown by others on this forum, and what you constantly avoid acknowledging, is that a huge body of evidence suggests that at the very least, DV committed against males by females makes up a sizeable proportion of all DV in Western countries,

JamesH the things I mentioned were not comparable to you blaming a poster, myself, for a man, Bill, committing suicide. No doubt it will come out the end of your rumour mill that Ronnie Peters caused Bill’s death. Low tactic JamesH - says a lot about you. You need to grow up and take a long hard look at yourself – maybe your apparent bitterness is clouding your perspective and behaviour. Some posters attitudes towards feminists and the article in question have been unhelpful, irrelevant and unfair.

Here’s advice from Virginia Woolf.

“It was a thousand pities that the woman who could write like that, whose mind was tuned to nature and reflection, should have been forced to anger and bitterness. But how could she have helped herself? I asked, imagining the sneers and the laughter, the adulation of the toadies, the scepticism of the professional poet. She must have shut herself up in a room in the country to write, and been torn asunder by bitterness and scruples perhaps, though her husband was of the kindest, and their married life perfection.”

Follow VW’s advice and put your bitterness aside and don’t allow your mind to be forced to anger.

For instance: had you all set aside your venom and ego - you may have noticed that the ABS has no starts for male victims of DV. No nasty conspiracy just a cultural thing. You may have even viewed “opponents” as genuine enquirers instead of an enemy.

The authors and I use our real names- we don’t have a public self and a private self – what you see is what you get. Your non-de-plume affords you the ability to slander, smear and behave foolishly without consequence –without people knowing the real you. You have taken child-like offence and retaliated at genuine enquiry and opinion. You have confirmed my concerns rather than shown where I was wrong.

JameH you say you sleep well. I can see why. You have an apparent limited sense of justice. This orchestrated attack on my person and motives says a lot about certain men’s groups.

RObert for a sensible and reasonable approach please go to:

http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/topics/rtf_files/Men_as_Victims.rtf

This paper says that “further analysis of men’s experiences of abuse is required…”

The authors conclusion:

"Clearly, men’s experiences as victims of domestic violence, either in heterosexual or gay relationships, are quite different from the experiences of women. Analysis needs to focus on the experiences of men in their own right and to not fall into the trap of asserting that men are just as likely to experience violence and abuse as women. It is recognised that men’s experiences of abuse are insufficiently acknowledged and the challenge for those making criticisms is to conduct research to improve men’s access to supports. It is evident from the current discourse on this issue that future research could look to further understand the contextual, power and impact differences between men’s experiences and women’s experiences of partner violence in heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Research methodology that results in material being used inappropriately to substantiate a particular viewpoint about violence can only create division and does nothing to inform the field about the complexities involved."

I think men’s groups need to shift away from the adversarial approach and start a positive campaign to bring their problems foreword without the negative attacks on women’s groups. This has been my position from the start and vitriol directed at myself and attempt to demonise me for holding this view suggests an agenda other than eliminating domestic violence against men and women.

Why don’t you all put a sensible and logical submission together and send to

clearinghouse@unsw.edu.au ? They have requested helpful information from DV victims.

You won’t get far unless you take a mature positive approach and I suggest you find a men's group that is driven by genuine concern rather than vindictiveness and oneupmanship. I make this assessment on the attitude and behaviour of posters on this thread.

RObert et al: that the general population supposedly portrays men in a particular way hasn't influenced my thinking.

FMI go to

http://www.austdvclearinghouse.unsw.edu.au/topics.htm

“Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.”

Henrich.

Best wishes.

cont...

and at best is committed at the same rate. Thus, a campaign focusing only on violence committed by males does not deal with the problem of DV and violence in general, and is in fact discriminatory.

My apologies to others on this thread who have basically said the same thing, but until Peters actually engages this argument directly, we will keep having to spell it out. It constantly amazes me how those arguing in favour of WRD continually refuse to even acknowledge this argument. I have read about academics who have tried to raise the issue of the gender neutral nature of DV who have confronted the same problem.

Peters and Flood have variously described opponents of WRD as being anti-feminist, anti-equality, misogynist, rage-aholics, and cynical abusers who either perpetuate or cannot face their own crimes. They have erroneously argued that research pointing to the gender-neutral nature of DV is flawed methodologically, and refuse to acknowledge its size, (let alone its existence.) And they refuse to acknowledge rebuttals to these arguments.

It has been argued before that this refusal to acknowledge that the other side even has a point a key tactic of feminism, and we are experiencing it at first hand.

Regarding Peters’ accusations of bullying behaviour, (another diversionary tactic on his behalf,) I would repeat what I have argued on another thread- It is nigh on impossible to bully someone engaged in a debate over the internet. There is no physical presence to reinforce verbal intimidation. Verbal machine-gunning is useless, as when responding to a written argument, no matter how extreme its level of invective, the respondent always has time to analyse the argument, cool down if necessary to avoid an emotional response, and draft and redraft a rebuttal.

Regarding “myths and related facts.” Facts and opinions. Iran Iraq. So what.

I agree with what was written in that post. (Could it be that you cannot even handle the thought of someone such as myself agreeing in principal to something you have said?) The point I made was that the words male and female were interchangeable.

Peters,

Basically that paper makes the same erroneous criticisms that Flood makes, which is dealt with in the CTS author's paper at:

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS44G.pdf

but is even more nitpicky, stating that because the CTS ranks acts of violence, it therefore is not "really really really specific like it needs to be". It's an obviously lame attempt at discrediting the most well refined research methodology in the field. The places feminists get THEIR data is FAR more unreliable.

It also makes the claim that men do not "feel" as threatened as women. Really quantifiable, and objective as to actual abuse.

Most of the paper attempts to JUSTIFY FEMALE VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN by saying that the CTS doesn't take into account the supposed context of patriarchy that the violent acts (according to feminists, with ZERO data behind them) occur in, therefore the 50/50 figure surveys taken with it are to be disregarded because violence against men is about
control and violence by women is "courageous self defence against oppression".

From the references they used (they even used Flood), you can see that feminists have once again hijacked the discussion on domestic violence. Not surprising considering the DV industry is basically made up of feminists.

This "patriarchy" thing is the realm of radical feminists. I was shocked when I first heard they actually thought that and thought that feminists had moved past something so ridiculous. Not in the DV industry it seems.

Does anyone here not find it in the slightest bit contradictory that in this supposed "context of patriarchy", feminists have completely dominated and institutionalised the area of male/female relationships in which government intervention is seen to be required?

At least you can forget about getting any help or sympathy from men as soon as they hear what your theory on the cause of domestic violence is, given that it an obvious ridiculous attempt to demonise men and justify female violence and emotional abuse.

Ronnie Peters
As a male, I should be carrying out domestic violence, rape and it now appears that I should also be carrying out murder. This is how I am being portrayed by the media, and also by a number of University academics such as Dr Bronwyn Winter.

But at present it would be rather difficult for me to carry out domestic violence, rape and also murder, because the 2 other members of the family are presently visiting relatives in another town during the school holidays.

So to live up to my stereotyped reputation, I’ll have to figure out how to carry out domestic violence, rape and also murder, when there is no one else in the house.

Yourself and the authors speak about “men’s rights groups”. The authors say that there is a “proliferation” of these men’s right’s groups. The authors are unlikely to name them, so could you actually name them.

I’ve only heard of 2 groups that support men’s rights in the whole of Australia, and they’ve been around for over 10 years.

So if you want to talk about “men’s rights groups”, could you name them please.

At present I only belong to a P&C association, but if there is a “men’s rights group” in my local area, I might be interested in joining it. In those groups I might find like minded people who are totally fed up with the way the media, domestic violence organisations and University academics are portraying me as being a domestic violence perpetrator, rapist and now murderer.