HRS how lucky you are that you have never seen a woman with a black eye....perhaps none of them want to go out looking like that...

All violence against women, children and men is abhorrent. Some of the emotional manipulation that women use against men is as bad if not worse than physical violence itself. I know of men who have been accused by women of child sexual abuse just so they can obtain custody of children. I also know men who think it is their right to commit violence against their wives and kids. The blanket answer that men are always the problem is a myth. The statistics quoted in this article are at best suspect and misleading. Some are dumb enough to count giving a child throwing a tantrum a smack as violence. Cave men might walk the earth but so do some ape women.

Well said ROBERT,
my own searching on these matters years back came up with similar figures, as most violence by women against men goes unreported to police but not to hospitals and doctors and counsellers.
the author of the article has apparently no concerns about violence against children by adults or other children regardless of gender. And this is what I see as the main problem with violence in our society, whack a man and he'l probably whack you back same with a woman but a child.. gets it only one way... till they grow up.
Men in australia are forever tripping over themselves to bad mouth their own gender to be seen as a good sensitive male in the eyes of the anti male femenists that persist after all the equality stuff was fought for they have nothing left to do now but get angry at dad.... ' men' we need some balance in male female responsibility rather than the pathetic govt ads for breast cancer and violence by men.. against women.. both need to be included with male cancers that are at least equal in mortality and population percentages, and the same with violence.. time to get up and grow up you blokes and get it even..
Cheers thanks for the opportunity Todd.
Neil

If some of you misogynists would just take a cold shower and read the article again you would realize that to make a statement that violence against women in a particular age group is a leading cause of injury and death does NOT mean that violence against men is OK, or that men are bad and women are good.

Violence against men by women is probably mainly of a very different nature. Psychological and emotional. I know. I've seen the terrible results of this with a close family member. But, not many men end up in the ED department of hospitals with injuries from their wives. And that is what this article is mainly about.

The truth is of course that men also use psychological, emotional and verbal abuse. Just read some blogs of male politicians or hear how the legal profession speaks of their female colleagues. And that is out in the open!

Just as you can ask a policeman about domestic violence call-outs, you can also ask doctors and nurses who work in Emergency departments of our public hospitals about female admissions of injuries caused by violence perpetrated by men. I can tell you stories that would make your hair curl. And not just a few. A regular weekly new supply of stories. When I first started as a young naive 18 year old I never imagined these things happened in our nice suburbs.

HRS, the reason why you don't see women with black eyes at the shopping centre, arts festival, sports grounds is because it is very unlikely she will be there. The shame of being hit by a husband/partner is dreadful. She'll wait until it is gone/cover it up with make-up etc.

It is imperative that we teach our sons AND daughters to respect themselves and others, regardless of their gender. When partners speak with each other or argue with each other and there are children present they 'learn' how to do this.

For those who question the validity of the research which claims DV is the leading cause of death and injury and costs 8.1 billion a year.

What they did is that they took the costs of a very small sample size and then basically multiplied that number by the estimated numbers who suffered DV each year.

Lets consider the fact that around 4% of female victims of DV actually suffer physical injury and about 0.06% are killed, Female suicide kills more women per year than DV.

So basically errors in research get multiplied numerous times, making the figures look impressive, where in fact if one were to conduct some decent research the actual figures would be much less.

but then who is game enough to challanged these highly exaggerated figures, publicly.

neilium, please don't misunderstand my position. I'm pro equality feminism. I don't believe that there is nothing left to be done but see the issue more as freeing up both males and females to use their potential rather than of one sided oppression.

I am really, really over the one sided portrayal of DV. I had an abusive spouse and saw first hand the issue the Dunnedin researchers speculate on. The excuse that the article is about male on female violence is way past it's use by date. Likewise the portrayal of the extreme end of DV as the norm. Some research has found indications that the rates of serious injury while being genderised are not as genderised as commonly believed, I've not seen anything conclusive in that area rather indications which researchers suggest warrents further research.

Another finding that shows consistently in those studies which attempt to look past stereotypes is that a significant proportion of DV is two way. People who hit are more likely to be hit. The continued portrayal of DV as a male issue is in my view resulting in more women being hit as their partners find themselves with no support when trying to get the hitting to stop. People who would otherwise not hit find themselves hitting to try and get their partners violence to stop (I doubt that it often works).

On another thread touching on gender violence recently a poster suggested that if men don't like being hit by women they shoud stop hanging around with women tougher than themselves.

R0bert