I live in a block of units, and two of my neighbours are arguing. I heard today from a female neighbour that the male next door to her verbally abused her. She now occassionally fears leaving her home when this male person is outside. I asked her if she has told the police, and was surprised to hear that they will not do anything about it. Verbal abuse is a form of violence and should not be condoned.

The issue with going in to hard to begin with that although verbal violence can be terrifying and seriously threatening there isn't much they can do. Worst case senario on verbal violence is them being taken away for a time....but they'll be back, and angry. Domestic violence is horrific and a massive challenge for everyone to deal with.

I lived in a rough neighbourhood where there was a guy that beat his missus. One night the 'rough neighbours down the road' went round and kicked his head in when he was beating his missus. Very effective.

Cops used to do these things.
The thing was, most of the deaths of police were at domestic disputes.
I think this eventually in some way had an effect.
Another reason is governments that dont fully support police.
Always they want cost cutting and this pressurised cop administration to cut corners.
Anarchy will one day reign if things dont change.
Morris IIemma needs to double cop numbers...just for the safety of our good, decent people.
He also needs to closed those foul porn shops and make it an offence to possess porn... to try and elliminate sex criminals.
If you want to save a society...you will.
I think the MacQuarie Street politicians live in a fairy world of pheasant under glass and cut price alcohol in the first floor bar. The lady needs prayer. I quite often pray and ask Jesus to move people on. This is a solid beginning for the lady to have a new life:)

If someone is in fear of their physical wellbeing as the result of a verbal tirade, that included direct threats or implied a likelihood of stronger action, then the police should be called if the person on the receiving end so chooses to call them. The police should act decisively, if they have the confidence that the complaint is genuine and not exaggerated.

One of the major problems with our policing regime is its reactionary nature. That is; reactionary after a crime has been committed, despite the signs leading up to an incident often being obvious, and mitigating measures being relatively simple.

This is particularly obvious with road safety. I see many examples of rank dangerous driving of the sort that should most definitely be reported. But despite the basic principle of policing that a complaint should be dealt with, the police rarely do!!

You can't make a complaint about a chronic tailgater, speeder or aggressive and offensive driver and expect it to be acted on, unless an accident has actually occurred.

OK, so with domestic violence, road safety and lots of other matters, it is still going to often be hard for the cops to decide when to act and when not to. But crikey, they need to improve the balance a long way towards pre-emptive action.

Currently, they are effectively training drivers, who have any inclination to be aggressive and take unnecessary risks, to just go right ahead and do it!!

I guess the situation is similar with domestic violence, or at least the loud, aggressive and threatening carry-on that often precedes or accompanies it.

The police did the right thing. They can't and should NOT act on speech or agument.

Hi Ludwig,

In this case, there were implicit strong arm tactics. Whether the bloke is capable of physical violence I don't know. Nevertheless, his words were violent and have noticably shaken up my female neighbour. I know that the police should act, and immediately. There's another way of approaching this. Men who are violent, and there are many, should learn how to control their anger. Furthermore, society should stop endorsing aggression as an acceptable masculine trait. What do you think?

Steel,

Is verbal abuse "speech or argument"? My neighbour fears for her safety. Do you condone this? Take a stand, be a man.

Hi StG,

Payback sounds effective, but is it? I think it just leads to more violence. Lets lock em up for awhile so they can stew on it.

Yes I do condone it. You do not know what was said or by whom. It doesn't necessarily follow that the "female one who is crying" is the victim or not cause of the problem. Some people are simply more paranoid/fearful/emotionally fragile than others, or they are liars:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgxwPU0W-Wg

If shouting or verbal abuse or "aggressive behaviour" was criminal, you may as well live in 1984 where behaviour is socially engineered by people who can't even dream why someone might "need" to get angry. Lets criminalise anger! Do you know how depressing that sounds coming from someone in a supposed democracy? If I've misrepresented your position point out how or where, though in this case since you are calling for police to detain or arrest the 'evil' male then I don't think I am.

Steel, I understand what you are saying, but if the police can’t act on the “speech or argument” of a complainant’, then they would have to either witness an unacceptably threatening verbal tirade themselves or only act after they have physical evidence of abuse.

Do you think the police should act if they have hard evidence such as a recording of an abusive session?

What about if there was a witness willing to support a complaint?

I will maintain that they should act on any complaint regardless of evidence.

But of course, they need to carefully suss out the possibility of a complaint being spurious or exaggerated, which it easily could be in the tense arena of domestic violence.

They need to make it patently clear to the complainant that a false or misleading complaint is a serious offence.

At any rate, I think that they should NOT even have the option of doing nothing about a complaint.

Haralambos

“Furthermore, society should stop endorsing aggression as an acceptable masculine trait.”

Absolutely.

I haven’t had any experience with domestic violence (thank goodness), so I’ll relate it to my passionate concern about road safety….

Aggressive driving, almost entirely by young males, with a very noticeable increase on Friday and Saturday evenings, is one of my pet hates. I find it absolutely extraordinary that chronic tailgating, speeding, darting in and out of a line of traffic on duel carriageways, risky overtaking on single-lane roads, etc, etc, can just be accepted or at least tolerated as normal behaviour by the rest of the community! It should be absolutely clamped down on.

Similarly, aggression of the sort that you have witnessed needs to be dealt with head on. But with my example, there is no excuse for it whatsoever, it is just a pathetic testosterone-driven phenomenon of the subintelligent, whereas in your example, the causes need to be very carefully examined before the male is condemned for his aggressive behaviour. He may indeed have a totally legitimate cause to his frustration. But of course, rank aggression is not the right way to deal with it.

Aggression is a natural human trait of the male sex and part of their identity. Manipulating society is social engineering which is unacceptable.Ludwig you are trotting out some old and worn feminist attacks on masulinity about aggression. Think about your position a little and the subtle indoctrination you may have had over the years and what you are proposing. I doubt you would have posted had it been a man who "was verbally abused" by a female. You would have instead said suck it up or walk away. It's normal and healthy for young men to be aggressive and their various outlets are necessary for them to express themselves.

Haralambos is an extreme feminist of the destructive and influential kind that likes to utilise propaganda to influence the gullible. I only found this out after browsing the thread titles after making my first comment here. See this characterisation of normal biology here that s/he uses to make his/her thread: Women are "slaves and machines" because of "patriarchy and men" It's both disgusting and disgraceful http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=1818

Steel: << It's normal and healthy for young men to be aggressive and their various outlets are necessary for them to express themselves >>

Nonsense. Steel should learn the difference between aggression and assertion, the former being unacceptable in civilised society, but the latter being desirable for both sexes. An aggressive man shouting at a woman (or indeed another man) to the extent of causing fear is actually committing assault.

Learning to control our aggression is part of growing up. One of the causes of the problems with violence in our society is because some people haven't done so.

CJ Morgan, what you are saying is nonsense and feminist propaganda. Aggression is a natural human emotion most often found in males. You only have to look at male competitive sport to see through it and to see that you are wrong. Your comment does not recognise biology at all or the demands it places upon the different sexes. Nor does it recognise that some people are extremely sensitive and can "become afraid" at the slightest, briefest raised voice.

You, Ludwig and halambolos are actually trying to socially engineer it away, like a communist, perhaps kim jong il.

Steel - "It's normal and healthy for young men to be aggressive and their various outlets are necessary for them to express themselves". Gotta agree with the others on this thread.

In areas where aggression is indeed "normal" so is anarchy and violence.

As for "healthy?" Do you have any friends who are shrinks? If you don't then access websites: there is absolutely nothing healthy about exhibiting aggression. There is a reason why there are laws against it, y'know.

I think we would all agree that there are many humans (I do not agree it is a prerogative only of young males)who have inherent aggressive tendencies. We no longer live in packs but in societies and a huge efforts in education, counselling, law enforcement etc. are in force in all societies to teach such people how to control these tendencies.

I cannot think that you have seriously considered your words: if all who experienced aggression were encouraged to express it and indeed such actions were condoned as healthy and normal any progress that humanity has made in the last few thousand years would be wiped away and we would be living life in concrete bunkers.

So add me to the growing list of posters who do not simply disagree with you but think this particular view is just plain incorrect.

Steel, one of the defining features of being human is that with us, culture and society outweigh biology.

No offence, but I'm really glad I'm not your neighbour.

Hi all,

Thanks to a few of you, C J Morgan, Romany and Ludwig, for renewing my faith in humanity. Violence is unaccepatable, no matter how you dress it up.

God damnit, you morons don't even know what you're talking about. Aggression is a fact, just like any other emotion. Socially engineering it to 'stamp it out' is a crime against humanity. What you're proposing is equivalent to elements of 1984, where the state decides what are 'good' emotions and what are bad ones. Honestly, the even the law is on my side (let alone REALITY). You people are hardcore communists.

Romany: ": there is absolutely nothing healthy about exhibiting aggression. "

Oh yes, far better to bottle up one's anger and make oneself dysfunctional. Thanks for that.

The problem is not aggression per se, as others have said, but the control of that aggression and the response of others. Why should one person's possibly irrational fear response be regarded as valid and another's possibly valid anger response be regarded as "absolutely...[un]healthy"? They are two sides of the same "fight or flight" coin that we all flip every time we are placed in a situation of hazard or confrontation. Lack of control of either reaction is likely to be counter-productive.

Frankly, as much as the abuser in this case may need to keep their anger under control, the "victim" needs to take some measure of responsibility for their own response as well, rather than expecting to be given preferential treatment because of it. There is far too much of this pandering to stupid "fears" in our nation and far too little analysis of how well they are founded.

CJ Morgan: "one of the defining features of being human is that with us, culture and society outweigh biology."

Culture and society have evolved out of the biology. Any time culture and society deviates from the biological imperatives it leads to inevitable backlash and frequently to widespread disobedience of the artificial "norm".

Steel: "What you're proposing is equivalent to elements of 1984, where the state decides what are 'good' emotions and what are bad ones."

Didn't see this before I made my own previous post, but that's absolutely correct. Provided an individual doesn't attack someone else in their anger ("attack" doesn't mean "yell at", BTW), then they should have every right to express their feelings. If the other person is aggrieved by that expression of emotion, they have the right to express that feeling too. neither should have the right to coerce the other into changing their response, nor should they have the expectation that the State will do so for them.

Only when the individual loses control and attempts to coerce another in some way should the State have any role at all, ISTM.

“You, Ludwig and halambolos are actually trying to socially engineer it away, like a communist, perhaps kim jong il.”

Not at all Steel. Aggression needs to be dealt with where it is inappropriate and either channelled to where it can be harmlessly expressed or reshapen into a non-threatening expression of concern or frustration.

You could possibly interpret that as social engineering I suppose. But of a totally appropriate type.

Society would be an ugly place indeed without any sort of social engineering, wouldn’t it?

I cannot see the corollary between condemning aggression and accepting communism. Except perhaps in the last section of this definition of in Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers.(Saunders. 2007)
where aggression is "manifested by destructive and attacking behavior, by hostility and obstructionism, or by a self-expressive drive to mastery."

The On-line dictionary defines aggression as "Hostile or destructive behavior or actions.". You two truly believe that such behaviour should be encouraged as healthy and normal? By what possible reasoning can you sustain this belief?

As for anger: - yes it can be a psysiological reaction to a fright or flight reaction. Its purpose is to get our adrenalin pumping and initiate safety inducing behaviour. But we are programmed to the fright-or-flight response only when in situations of life-threatening intensity. A poster who doesn't agree with us, or someone who queue-jumps (I cite these only as day-to-day situations which seem to incite anger in some people, not as personal accusations) are hardly life threatening.

The following is cited on http://www.csulb.edu/~tstevens/b-anger.html
"If anger prompts aggressive behavior toward other people, it can permanently harm relationships--especially with those we love. Prolonged or frequent resentment (mild anger) has been shown to be a significant cause of cardiovascular problems and heart attacks." Which is not exactly esoteric knowledge.

Rather than venting anger on those of us who disagree, could you perhaps provide a convincing argument to back up your contentions?

While anger is a normal emotion, and frustration can sometimes cause stressed people to lose it for a moment, people who REGULARLY show anger through aggression towards others should seek help with anger management because they lack proper communication skills since they aren’t able to assert themselves, have difficulty with controlling their own mind, possibly have a low EQ, are arrogant and lack empathy- basically, the person is an emotional and social cripple and should seek help.

Haralambos, do you know what the fight is about?

Celivia: "basically, the person is an emotional and social cripple and should seek help."

Couldn't agree more, but if the person is merely aggressive, rather than actually threatening or carrying out threats, should another person's response be enough to have him taken down to Plod's lockup? He may merely be a socially-disadvantaged loner or have an unfortunate manner. What if "he" were a wasp-tongued woman who makes the life of her victim hell with snide remarks or nasty comments? Should the police lock her up too? Where is the line drawn? If her victim responds aggressively and she becomes afraid, who is the victim?

Romany:"a self-expressive drive to mastery."

And that is a bad thing how?

Vanilla, you've got to the crux of the matter, as you often do. the law exists in the way it does so that differing points of view can be expressed and defended for the purpose of allowing someone to work out the right of it. The reason for the dispute is a pretty important part of that, which some here would like to have abolished in favour of a Police-State solution.

Funny how some people are so keen to lock everyone ELSE up...

Antiseptic -

Hope you are not including me amongst the people who want people locked up and police nannying us? That goes against everything I believe in or have ever striven for.

I believe, however, that we might have a semantic problem here - we attach different meanings to the word aggressive? That's why I provided both the dictionary and medically literal meaning of the word...and there is still nothing on the gods' green earth that would convince me that aggression by those definitions is acceptable.

However, you write "but if the person is MERELY aggressive, rather than actually threatening or carrying out threats, should another person's response be enough to have him(sic) taken down to Plod's lockup...? (My caps.)

Aggressive behaviour IS threatening, so clearly you mean something else by the word aggressive, I think? We would then appear to be arguing at cross purposes.

As to what is wrong with a drive to mastery? Mugabe, Pol Pot et. al. are the clearest indications of what a drive to master the world - or one's own small part of it - leads to, surely?

Why is the bloke swearing at her? is he? a 73 year old lady called the police because her neighbors tree was shaking at her.
Every time the wind blew she rang the police, every time.
Cop advised her to take out an AVO, yes true she did!
It was given.
Even police surprised by it but it was given.
She needed help but the neighbor? swore his head of and cut down the tree.
Comrade Gibo the cop was a born again Christian, I still know him, and both sides of my story.
He had one mate in the force, met him every morning as he shaved.
He is now a minister of a church like yours.
Police get calls to stop kids being kids sometimes we ask too much of them.

Romany: "a semantic problem"

I don't. I'm specifically differentiating an aggressive attitude from physical aggression or threats. One may be aggressive without being bellicose. I suspect that many people on forums I contribute to would characterise me as an aggressive poster, for example, but I rarely resort to personal abuse.

A little anecdote: soem time ago, my ex-wife decided that she needed more child support money from me and that the best way to get it was to get the Courts to give her more custody and me less. As part of that process she asked for a DVO, which I disputed (aggressively), finally agreeing to the nasty little lie-sheet because the matter was distracting from the real issue of custody, which I also contested (aggressively). During that period, I became a very angry man, which I and a couple of psychiatrists I saw reckoned was pretty understandable. Now, the point of all that? the turning point in the case came when her lawyer said to me during his examination when I raised my voice "You're a very angry and aggressive man" and I replied "Yes, I am, but never out of control". He literally slumped and suggested that he wished to talk to his client, after which he came back and agreed to the terms we had discussed, which was 50:50 care. The point being that my ex claiming she was fearful was unable to be backed up with a demonstrated reason for that fear, whereas I could easily demonstrate that despite nearly 12 months of anger and aggression, she had suffered no threat or injury from me, so I was clearly not uncontrolled.

Now, let me ask a question: during that whole process, my ex-wife never raised her voice (I did and sometimes still do thinking about it) and she had a lawyer doing all the work, yet she made a great threat against me and my children that caused me a great deal of distress and fear. Was she being "aggressive"? If so, should Plod have carried her off to the cells, if not, why not?

cont...

Romany: "Aggressive behaviour IS threatening,"

No, that was my point: it may be perceived by others as threatening, which is not the same thing and those others' response should not, in the absence of evidence of genuine threat, be enough for the police to act. At most they should appear to warn ALL concerned against escalation.

I note that the shallow end of the discussion pool seems to have gone quiet on this one now. Funny how some don't like being asked to actually think while their knee is jerking.

Romany: "Mugabe, Pol Pot et. al. are the clearest indications of what a drive to master the world - or one's own small part of it - leads to, surely?"

I'd have thought that Shakepeare, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Nicklaus, Fangio, Churchill, Franklin, et al were the clearest exemplars of what a drive to master a field can achieve. The examples you provided are sociopathic at best, which is hardly relevant. The fact is that aggressively competing and disputing is what has lead to the current high state of our culture. Aggression is one side of the common "fight or flight" response in humans which must be accommodated. "Flight" or fear is the other side and must also be accommodated, which is the balancing act that must always take place if one wants a decent society.

Steel, you mention sport but my question is why, if being verbally aggressive is so normal and acceptable, are players sent off the field when they are verbally aggressive toward the referee or coach?

Antiseptic, it can be hard to draw the line between verbal aggression and miscommunication.
To anwer the topic question, no I don’t think that verbal aggression should be a reason to lock someone up but if there are serious threats made which caused the victim to be scared for their safety, then I'd say getting an AVO is not unreasonable.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions and words, no matter how much the other person frustrates us. Nobody is responsible for other people's aggressive behaviour.

I was browsing at a jewellery store a while ago where a young shop assistant was on her own and a male customer loudly threatened her with these words, “Make sure you don’t run into me in the street because I’ll take your head of your shoulders!” All because he lost some of his deposit when he cancelled his lay-by.

If I’d been that assistant I’d have pushed the security button- even though I'm not easily intimidated, if verbally aggressive people continue to get away with threats they think it’s acceptable. There should be a consequence for threatening others.
The young shop assistant was upset and frightened so I stayed with her till her manager came back.

If there are no threats involved I suppose there is not much that can be done, we have to learn to deal with verbal aggression and other people's bad behaviour best we can because we can’t make others to behave in a certain way.

Then again, I’m not sure whether I’d class non-threatening language as verbal aggression. Just strongly expressing an opinion without the intent to hurt someone would, IMO not be verbal aggression.

>"Steel, you mention sport but my question is why, if being verbally aggressive is so normal and acceptable, are players sent off the field when they are verbally aggressive toward the referee or coach?"

Depends what sport you are talking about. Sometimes it depends on whether the sport is being feminised into bland, uninteresting sludge. Other times it's simply the rules and part of the character of the game. Or both.

Antiseptic –I’m sorry, but I’m pretty confused now.

1). My original entrance into the thread was to disagree with the proposition that aggression was a normal and healthy state for young men, yeah? Your rebuttal was to discuss the bottling up of anger – a different emotion - and then to refer to the two emotions anger and aggression interchangeably. Which is when I sought clarification, and provided a couple of dictionary and psychological definitions for both.

2)You then agreed with Celivia that a person who couldn’t control anger was an emotional and social cripple but seemed to be arguing that “mere” aggression was the lesser of two evils. And responded to me only concerning the interpretation of the word mastery.

Which is when I assumed we had semantic differences all round.

3). You replied however that this was not so and “I'm specifically differentiating an aggressive attitude from physical aggression or threats”. I guessed that by then you had left aside your defense of aggression as normal and healthy to turn instead to the question of whether your specified definition of aggression warranted incarceration?

Until then I don’t think anyone had introduced incarceration – wasn’t it all about when to call in police? Whether to diffuse the situation, calm people down or whatever?: And weren’t the subjects Hara’s nieghbours?

4). Your next post agreed that police intervention was o.k. but not incarceration. ( No argument from me). However, you seemed to be linking this to your own case now and not Hara’s neighbours?

So I’m not sure at all now where we’re at now. Sorry, not trying to be obstructive or anything, just totally balllsed-up.

But as to the word “mastery”?
In the given context the word obviously referred to the meaning as• “one who controls or rules” and not “one who possessives consummate skills” ( On-line Dictionary)..

Romany: "refer to the two emotions anger and aggression interchangeably."

That's obviously the first point of confusion. I didn't conflate the two at all. One may be angry and not aggressive, or aggressive without anger. It seems you were right about the semantic issues, so please accept my apology.

Romany: "wasn’t it all about when to call in police"

Yep, which I suggested could be appropriate if it was only to issue a warning against escalation to all parties. Up here in Qld the Police will happily send a couple of coppers to "keep the peace" if they get a request. Read everyone the riot act and buzz off. There is no "intervention" from the State, however, unless an actual threat is made, although the lady could probably get an AVO for the asking.

My own anecdote was to illustrate the point that one may be both angry and aggressive and yet controlled and non-threatening and that the law recognises that fact, thus preventing the knee-jerk response chain of "she's being fearful, he's being aggressive, he's a b@stard, lock him up".

As to the use of "mastery", I disagree that the context you gave represented what you claim. "A self-expressive drive to mastery" would perfectly describe any of the great figures I mentioned. I don't know how self-expressive organising a genocide or running a dictatorship can be considered...

Was there something else in the text that changes that?

Antiseptic I can empathise with your comments about aggression being a natural reaction to some situations without necessarily indicating loss of control. Trouble is an outsider to the situation cannot necessarily make that judgement about a person they do not know very well (in the context of Haralambos' first post). And as your rightly state 'aggression' can come in many forms including manipulation by an ex-partner with an agenda.

You can see what a dilemma these situations pose for police. A wrong judgement on whether to attend can lead to complaints about police interference. Conversely failure to attend a complaint might lead to accusations of police negligence and complacency.

Police are not psychic and they are not able to assess over the phone (in most cases) where an act of perceived 'aggression' may escalate into harm to another party.

Haralambos most of the time police will respond to a domestic dispute because it is known to be one of the most dangerous sitations for both police and the people involved. Tempers and emotions are heightened and if you throw alcohol or drugs into the mix there is even greater risk.

I am talking in general terms as none of us know the exact nature of your neighbours dispute nor the intensity of emotion.

We should not underestimate aggression or rage to escalate which is plainly becoming a greater problem in our stressed out society - even road rage has led to murder on numerous occasions worldwide.

Celivia, Pelican - yes, it can be difficult for the police to make determinations about the seriousness of a situation, but that's their job after all and they are (hopefully) well trained to do it. There are political moves to make laws that give the police little latitude to make their own decisions, but make it mandatory to remove men from their homes in the event of a domestic incident, regardless of the circumstances. Those laws would no doubt find favour with the original poster (unless he happened to be the one involved in the domestic, of course). I suspect that many police would do so anyway, if confronted with a "fearful" woman and an "aggressive" man. In reality, of course, the two states are both sides of a coin, yet the "fear" engenders a protective response from others, where the "aggression" is likely to do the opposite. Some use this response to expressed "fear" to manipulate situations or people to their advantage. "Passive aggressive" behaviour is sometimes of that nature, when a person uses their "fear" to get someone else, often a policeman, to take action against a third party. Having been on the end of just such a situation, I'm very much aware of how much harm can be done.

Celivia, in the case of your anecdote about the shop assistant, I would have called security as well in that situation, because an actual threat had been made. That is not an acceptable way to behave, regardless of the situation. I think I made my own abhorrence of threats designed to intimidate quite clear in a recent thread, as well as my own preferred way to deal with such bullying

Antiseptic -

Thank you for taking the trouble help to sort that out.

As I said I only came in on the issue of aggression being normal and healthy thing. Now that the thread has, quite correctly, gone back to addressing the original query I'll back out.

Seeya elsewhere.