JohnJ,
It is very interesting that we are being told that there is no great difference between males and females, except that males abuse females.

You are saying that I have not seen a woman with a black eye because I have lived a sheltered life, but similar was found by Victoria Health. Out of all the women who claimed that they had been abused, only 0.6% were found to have an actual physical injury.

But you seem to know a lot about men and murder, so could you tell me the following.-

What percentage of men in Australia carry out murder each year, and is this percentage representative of all men in Australia, including yourself?

With all this abuse going on, should the murder rate be increasing, and if not, then why not?

I also hope that you reported to the police that the wife threw the plate at you, because you will need every bit of evidence you can get to keep contact with your children if she every decides to leave. Do not think that I am joking regards that.

Zahira,
If there are 1 in 3 girls at schools throughout the country being sexually abused, then it would be expected that the girls marks would be declining on a national basis

However they are not, and it is the boy’s marks that are declining.

So what is being said about the boys and the girls doesn’t seem to fit the actual situation.

Turnrightthenleft,
I knew that you would apologise for calling me an “ilk”, and I knew that Zahira would apologise for calling boys “Neanderthals”, and of course the ex-teacher will write a letter to a certain politician and apologise for calling him a vulgar term.

You are all doing this, because you are all so non-abusive.

If for some reason anybody wants to read more posts of a very similar ilk to the pithy pieces submitted by HRS, they could go to

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/user.asp?id=6333

There's hundreds of posts there of indistinguishable ilk, in terms of writing style and fixation on certain subjects.

Mind you, I'm not seriously suggesting anybody bothers - this is just a heads-up :)

Actually HRS, what I said was, that if I had indeed insulted you then I withdraw the 'ilk' comment, but don't change the meaning of my post.

You've yet to be able to tell me what is indeed so insulting about 'ilk' so I can assure you, I remain quite unrepentant.

It would appear that others of my ilk remain quite unrepentant as well.

HRS, you ask "what percentage of men in Australia carry out murder each year?" If you'd followed my link, http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/ti90.pdf , you'd have found most of the answers to your questions. Of the 2,024 homicides committed in Australia, July 1989 to June 1996, 214 were committed by women. There are about 300 homicides committed per year in Australia, approximately 90% by men and 10% by women. That's a murder commission rate of about 2 per 100,000 men and 0.2 per 100,000 women.

In other words HRS, if you (or I) were unfortunate enough to be murdered, chances are 10 to 1 that it would be a male that did it. If you were murderd by a woman (a remote possibility) the likelihood is that it would be your intimate partner that did it. You also ask "is this percentage representative of all men in Australia, including yourself?" Well, not having murdered anyone lately, no. Mind you, suppose a particular group (eg Freemasons, railway enthusiasts, ping-pong players, ilks, etc) committed murders at ten times the rate of other citizens, it would be tempting to say "these ilks have a problem" wouldn't it?

You ask "With all this abuse going on, should the murder rate be increasing, and if not, then why not?" I'm afraid I fail to see your point. Is the abuse rate going up? Have you got any comparative data? The good news is that the homicide trend is downwards http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/homicide.html , possibly a reflection of our increasing prosperity.

As for the state of my marriage, why would my wife leave a brilliant, thoughtful, sophisticated (and modest) chap such as myself? All jokes aside, I certainly concede that a lot of divorced men are deeply unhappy with the processes of the Family Court.

HRS,
"If there are 1 in 3 girls at schools throughout the country.....' Well not necessarily. For many children who are in difficult family circumstances, school is a means of escape and not only that the children in cases are expected to do well in their results regardless of whats going on outside. Having spoken to quite a few articulate children who are in very difficult home environment, they seek doing well at school means being able to have a good job and thus get out of home. School therefore is an escape for the home environment. . The kids then have no safe place to go. Why are the girls doing well, personally I think that this generation of women have realized that if they have to be self sufficient, and being dead honest as a woman of today I cannot depend upon my husband to provide all the income. What happens if he can't work for some reason, they it falls onto my shoulders. Secondly, having been divorced and literally left with nothing but the clothes I had on I am not going down that road to start all over again with no job, no home and no future. Women of all ages are realising that for their own security if the marriage fell apart - they would have to look out for themselves and the only way they could do that is via a good training and a good job - hence they have to do well at school.

"it is the boy’s marks that are declining" - sadly in some public schools it is not seen as "cool" for a boy to do well in his mark. He is activatly discouraged by his mates not to do well. The old tall poppy syndrome.

SO HRS Teen culture, adults culture, world culture, media culture is a confusing mish mash of values and now its a case of perhaps redefining a set of "Christian" based values upon which Australia is built; that all peoples would be happy to abide by and obviously have been able to contribute.

Turnrightthenleft
I haven’t called you an “ilk”, just Turnrighthanleft

My concerns are that nearly everything said about boys or men is now negative.

There is everything from males are “perpetrators of abuse”, through to men are “Cave men”, through to this article that males have “degrading attitudes towards women”, and now we have an “ilk” thrown in as well.

Nothing positive is said, but ironically nearly all such negative labels are coming from people who accuse males of being abusive and oppressors.

JohnJ
You could say “men are murderess”. You could also say ”99.998% of men are not murders”.

If you say “men are murderers”, you are now stereotyping yourself as being a murderer.

If you say “men are abusers” you are now stereotyping yourself as being an abuser.

But with one phone call, the police will come to your house. If there has been conflict between a husband and a wife, they will remove a husband or a wife, leaving only one adult to look after the children, and that is basically a PERMANENT ARRANGEMENT.

Because you have previously stereotyped yourself as being an “abuser”, you will be the person removed from your own house and your own children, regardless of the situation.

And that is why in countries such as the US, 40% of children are now fatherless, because the father has been previously stereotyped as being the abuser.

But there is a considerable amount of research to say that the abuse was either mutual, or the mother was the perpetrator the majority of the time.

In Australia we have a declining murder rate, but some are saying there is an epidemic of abuse.

The murder rate should follow the abuse rate, and I would suggest that the abuse rate has also been declining, and is actually quite low, which is another reason why I have never seen a woman with a black eye.

Either so much of this abuse is imaginary, or it is a part of stereotyping the father to be the abuser.

It is very convenient to have a male stereotyped as an abuser.