I should point out that I the excert I referenced in the previous post appears to have been first published in 1990 so Murray Straus may have changed his views since this was written but I've not seen anything by him which indicates that he has. The points made in the document are still valid.

R0ber

The claim that women only hit to fight back against an abuser is an old excuse that is bunk. We keep hearing there is NO excuse for abuse but suddenly a man fighting back is still abuse but a woman doing so is and excuse. Research shows it is wrong as many of the links I posted demonstrate. One link even has a study of 32 nations and the results were consistent in that women were much more likely to stalk, threaten, harass and hit than men in a relationship.

http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=1828

Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling of the University of South Alabama specializes in Juvenile, Family, and Intimate Partner Violence.

At the conference, she co-presented the Plenary "Family Roots of Adolescent Violence in Relationships and Effective Interventions: A Developmental and Relational Perspective"

1) When grappling with the emerging reality that women commit Intimate Partner Violence as often as men, she said, "Every time we tried to say that women's intimate partner abuse is different than men's, the evidence did not support it."

I also suggest before claiming Strauss has any problems with his methods and how they are used that you read up. He states he disagrees with how his critics have misused the scale and data more than anything else. The reason is many modified it heavily to create surveys intentionally weighted against male victims.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS4.pdf

Here is his home page for his various publications.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ctsb.htm

Now, even if we use the claim of only one in seven victims are male, then it still doesn't work that 100% of campaigns, help and other resources are aimed strictly at helping women. Would one in seven women being violently raped be acceptable and ignored? If not then why is it acceptable to ignore one in seven victims of domestic violence or that one in 4 victims of molesting as a child be ignored because their attacker is a female?

If any are interested in a more engaged and fuller debate on the issues with me, try me here. Moderated with strictly the two of us debating. http://www.standyourground.com/forums/

@SJF...

Maybe looking at Strauss' work in the decade since would be of benefit. Remember also that he's in a position where if he doesn't play ball to some extent with feminist dictates he gets no funding or coverage. RObert's cite is older again but that piece is worth the read anyway.

@pelican...
Rape laws in Australia have been gender neutral for only ten years. We have yet to actually punish a woman for heterosexual abuse even though many counsellors and psychologists believe male victims have greater problems. The application of the laws is not gender neutral.

Up to twenty percent of male victims will become offenders. Between two thirds and three quarters of the men who go to prison for violent rape have a history of sexual abuse by a woman. By not taking the sexual abuse committed by women seriously we create rapists of women and girls. And so it goes.

The training of police and judiciary has been provided by advocacy groups which grew out of the feminist rape activism of the early eighties. It will not allow the implication of women in any way. That's reflected in the treatment of male heterosexual victims by police, courts, media and public.

What we get by way of advocacy research in Aus comes from the like of Freda Briggs who claims that male same sex victims will commit heterosexual abuse(rubbish!) and also asserts that all teenage boys should be assumed to be paedophiles.

"...men are often too afraid to speak out about rape and other issues to do with DV for the reasons that arcticdog outlines"

arcticdog "outlines" no reasons at all and alleges that the vast majority of child abuse is committed by men. That is patently false. arcticdog is engaging in the same sort of stuff as Freda Briggs and even resorts to a form of "blaming the victim" where male victims are concerned. It’s precisely the thing I’m talking about. arctigdog sheets responsibility home to HIM no matter what. This is what stands for help for male victims in much of the existing structures.

The title of Melinda Tankard Reist article is Not Rape just boys acting up, and then the byline is "Many young women don’t even seem to understand the meaning of sexual harassment: it’s become so normalised they just expect it."

Daphne Patai in Heterophobia made an interesting point in that Rape and sexual harassment are used in the same sentence as an inflammatory analogy in order to get our brains to see rape and sexual harassement as the same thing.

Even though behaviour which is classified as sexual harassement is miles away from committing rape. However according the Human rights website, for behaviour to classified as sexual harassment the behaviour must happen in a work place and public places on crown land.

Also the behaviour must be unwelcomed. So if bloke says to a girl "show us your tits" and she does or appreciates the attention, it is not sexual harassment, it is crude behaviour Yes.

Patai also raise the issue of the ambiguity of human sexual relationships and sadly this is one really really hot potatoe.

James,

Since the author states 'Many young women don’t even seem to understand the meaning of sexual harassment...', you could also infer she is deciding what other women should feel is harassment. Obviously individuals vary greatly in this regard, and one woman's harmless flirting can be another woman's harassment. I've always failed to see how you can define standard universal rules to what is a very personal and individual way that people interact.

Anyone who saw the SBS documentary on Footy Girls, showing the Rugby League groupies would have a far more balanced opinion of the sub-culture. But of course as always we only see articles here attempting to perpetuate women as the victims.

There are many other ridiculous double standards too. If women athletes were persued by men in the same way male athletes are persued by women as illustrated in the Footy Girls documentary, I'm sure there would be articles like this one berating the behaviour of the groupies instead. But since they're women, it's not harassment, and their behaviour is excluded as a contributer to the attitudes to women the men are seen to posses.

I also wonder whether male sports journalists are allowed into the woman's netball change rooms the same way women journalists are allowed into the men's League change rooms;-)

Whitty, yes it is interesting in that Melinda an expert in sexual harassment is telling other women how they should feel.

A typical senario would possibly go something like, "why don't you find that behaviour offensive?"

"That sort of behaviour oppresses all women and he doesn't respect you."

"but i think its fun, cute etc"

"You are letting other women down and contributing to your own oppression by not objecting to that sort of behaviour"

"He only sees you as a sex object. he isnt concerned about your feelings."

Bingo! after being re-educated the woman will then find offense in behaviour that she once found to be fun, cute, attractive, a turn on etc.

I found an interesting article on women and lying, it appears that women are better liars than men.

"Many women use the "betterment lie," as Barash calls it, as a means to an end. "
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03022008/news/regionalnews/miss_leading_100063.htm