Pynchme,

'there is a body of men now standing forth to demonstrate a new type of masculinity - a better way of relating to and valuing women and children in general, and the women and children who love them.'

Powerful stuff. So, generally, men have previously defined themselves by not valuing women, not even the women and children who love them. It's only the few men who are now willing to participate in an event designed to make the entire male sex feel culpable for an entire day in the public eye that value women and children. Stand up and profess your guilt for being male, or we will know deep down you are a violent abuser! Sounds like Salem.

'the dominant culture where violence against women and children is perpetrated and/or condoned.'
So because something exists in society or culture it's implicitly condoned? I'd say violence against men is more condoned than violence against women and children.

'If women were killing and hurting men at the same rate you'd be genuinely outraged and fed up with living in perpetual fear.'
Ah, but men are killing and hurting men at a much higher rate than women. But I suppose since men are responsible for all crimes of other men they had it coming. Men all have equal strength too, so it's always an even contest. In fact I often slap huge guys in the face when they say something I don't like, but it's ok, they never hit me back because that would be well out of order.

'To those amongst you who carry on about when I or whomever else posts a response; I post when I can. I don't feel obligated to comply with whatever schedule you dictate'
And I for one don't feel obliged to comply with any reading material you dictate. Rather than putting the onus on other readers to read what I want them to read, I do the work myself and quote the parts that support my arguments.

Pynchme:"male suicide has been a primary focus of mental health services for many years now"
"One site that you could check for that is Beyond Blue. "

From Beyond Blue's site, their page entitled "Research Topics of interest:
http://www.beyondblue.org.au/index.aspx?link_id=6.819

The four subjects mentioned are
1. Perinatal Depression
2. Pets and Animal Therapy
3. Same Sex Attracted (Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual)
4. Depression in elite athletes

Which of those research topics is specifically about males?

Further, a search for research on their site reveals just 1 document relating specifically and solely to men, while there are at least 8 documents specific to women, motly in the context of post-natal depression. I suppose we should be grateful even one got through the screening process.

Pynchme:"can you please put the exact wording in quotation marks and provide a link so that I can see exactly what you mean."

As you're so fond of links, you might like to refer to the link I provided. You might also like to check the National Crime Prevention 2001 study which was the primary source that Flood misquoted.

Ask yourself how a "peer-reviewed" paper was able to be published with such an obvious and glaring deficiency as to reverse the meaning. Then ask yourself why I hold Flood and his fellow-travellers in contempt.

Pynchme:"If women were killing and hurting men at the same rate"

As others have said and as I have said repeatedly, men harm men far more frequently and men kill themselves far more frequently. Just recetly there have been 2 high-profile men commit suicide, which each got one day's coverage in the media. When a female newsreader did the same a year or so ago, the issue was covered for weeks.

And I note you've still not condemned the horrifying statistic that 1/3 of girls regard boys as legitimate targets of violence.

At least you're a consistent hypocrite.

R0bert

‘Have a think about how many of the films you describe portray the person initiating the violence in a sympatetic compassionate light, how many of them portray the violence as something that just happens, undeserving of rebuke, undeserving of comment and possibly justified.’

OK. Let me get this straight. The astonishingly prolific serial-killer genre (and the crime genre in general), which routinely takes abduction/mutilation/rape/femocide to the level of an art form, is acceptable because a negative judgement is made against the perpetrator – i.e. he is finally caught or killed (while at the same time being routinely portrayed as exceedingly clever and often glamorous).

However, the age-old dramatic convention of female-slaps-man’s-face etc is not acceptable because no negative judgement is being made against the face-slapper. (However, it should be noted that the on-screen male who gets his face slapped has usually committed an act of betrayal or similar against the woman who slaps him. This is not meant as an excuse for the violence, but it does set a dramatic context for judging it.)

Believe it or not, I do understand where you are coming from. I’m playing devil’s advocate here because the problem I see is that you are trying to use the same moral barometer for two forms of on-screen/culture-based violence that belong in totally different moral ballparks.

This is what I TOTALLY reject about WATM arguments regarding DV and GV – however well meaning or well argued. To continue the ballpark analogy, the issues of GV against men and GV against women (except in a few extreme cases) DO NOT inhabit a level playing field.

Advocate for a better deal for male victims of GV and general violence by all means, but please stop constantly bringing it back to some perceived unfairness that women are taking away men’s 'justice' space. Women have enough GV problems to deal with, without having to feel ashamed of their struggle to get society to adequately address it.

Pynchme

Atta girl ... You're doing great!

For Pynchme, here's another link from her favourite site, the AIC.

http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/afrc8/fitzroy.pdf

Some quotes:"Women commit between 31-50 percent of physical assaults on children.
Mothers commit almost 50 percent of the recorded infanticide and women perpetrate between 2-7 percent of sexual assaults against children.8 It is worth noting that often researchers identify that, for example, 69 percent of perpetrators of such and such crime are men, but then fail to discuss who perpetrated the remaining 31 percent."
"This absence may reflect a general understanding that men are the majority of perpetrators of child assaults, however it
may also reflect a denial of the assault of children by their mothers.As a feminist researcher interested in critical analyses of violence, such silences are disturbing but not really surprising."

A "feminist" interested in critical thinking. How did she manage to avoid correction of such thought-crimes?

Another quote:
"As we got further into the work, what I discovered, he was responding to her violence. She had been belting up their disabled child, in a wheelchair. So, somehow or other, this cycle started and she was linked into the women’s outreach centre, and he was linked into corrections (Belle: 4).
This last example clearly indicates:
· the different beliefs held by the corrections and women’s services sectors as to who is the main perpetrator of family violence. Such beliefs can result in a focus on the violence of the husband and a denial of the violence perpetrated by the mother. Consequently as Belle described, the mother is defined as a ‘victim’ and referred to victim support services, whilst the husband is defined as the ‘offender’ and placed within the criminal justice system."

That sounds like a familiar claim, doesn't it? And it's not being made by a "patriarchal" man, but a social worker commenting on a case.

Women can be and often are equally as culpable for initiating and escalating violence as men. The increasingly strident claims to the contrary are simply insupportable. Allowing such an imbalance in legal responsibility for such culpability is creating a massive amount of resentment and stopping progress in combatting violence.

'...without having to feel ashamed of their struggle to get society to adequately address it.'

That's simple SJF. If you're honest in your arguments, PR tactics to 'raise awareness' and use of statistics, there is no need to feel ashamed.

Also setting up a government campaign, with the government as adjudicator on all violent domestic disputes, which designates men are at fault because only male violence (including yelling) is a problem seems to get a lot of men off side. Funny that.

If you're gonna set up a campaign based on universal male guilt, attempting to make all men feel culpable unless they repent all the sins of their gender in public, it's best to run it in an honest way to try and maintain the scarce good will you have left, or at least maintain some credibility.

SJF, thanks for the response.

I don't think that this is about "constantly bringing it back to some perceived unfairness that women are taking away men’s 'justice' space", but I do believe that many of the messages we get from a variety of source normalise or legitimise female assaults on males.

I'm fairly confident that it rarely does so for male assaults of females and pondering the messages about male violence against males. I think that the message there is mixed, I've heard enough calls from footy commentators and fans to "bring back the biff" to know plenty still see actual violence as entertaining.

I get your point about criminals being glamorised in many portrayals, I'd still see that as different to having some of the main characters assaulting a partner without any censure.

I think that those who want to reduce DV need to focus on breaking cycles of violence and that is not achieved by ignoring female violence no matter how minimal you consider the direct impacts.

Robert