Romany's last paragraph deserves repeating:

"You once said you would never stop highlighting this situation - just as I will never stop highlighting women's position. But if there is a two pronged attack - and a lot more co-operation - perhaps, working from both angles, we can all work together lessening domestic violence in all its manifestations."

R0bert there is not a single female poster here who has dismissed your experience or derided your claims. You have a great deal of support here, Domestic Violence is an abhorrent abuse of trust. The one place where we should feel secure, safe and the one person with whom we are most vulnerable, exploits that situation. While I have only rarely (once) encountered the threat of female violence, I have encountered the most appalling bullying by women in the work-place. I have no doubt that similar occurs in the home.

However, when this issue arises on OLO and elsewhere, I often feel completely abused by a cadre of posters who treat all female opinion on this topic as trivial, emotive and lacking in substance. After having revealed painful experiences and receiving the type of commentary by people like HRS and Antiseptic, I feel bullied, abused.

Like, Romany, I will continue to speak out against abuse be it in the domestic or public sphere. I have found a comprehensive analysis conducted from domestic crime reports in the ACT throughout 2003 to 2004.

As follows:

http://www.afp.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/20631/AnalysisOfFamilyViolenceIncidentsFinalJuly03June04_.pdf

Analysis of Family Violence Incidents
July 2003 June 2004
Prepared for Australian Capital Territory Policing, Australian Federal Police
By Dr Natalie Taylor
Australian Institute of Criminology
2 June 2006

Table A35. Criminal action taken for adult male and female offenders 2003-04

MALE
Arrest 384
Summons 29
VATAC 1
Caution 18
FIWT 4
Fresh Charge 26
Other 5

Total 467

FEMALE
Arrest 52
Summons 2
VATAC 0
Caution 1
FIWT 1
Fresh Charge 1
Other 1

Total 58



During the 2003-04 financial year there were 2793 separate incidents of family violence recorded on the FVIP data base (compared with 3188 incidents in 2002-03 and 3618 incidents in 2001-02).
Tuggeranong registered the highest proportion of incidents, followed by Woden.

Eighty six per cent of incidents occurred at private homes.

The most frequent confirmed incident type was "disturbance" accounting for 46 per cent of incidents. About two thirds of incidents were described as "verbal" and "verbal and physical".

Family violence relationships were most prevalent between ex-spouses and spouses, accounting for 52 per cent of incident relationships.
Involvement of children 1625 children (aged 17 or less) were recorded as being present in 44% of all family violence incidents. The majority of children present were aged between 11 and 17 while eleven per cent of children were aged under 2 years of age. Of all children present in family violence incidents, the vast majority were biological children of the offender and/or the victim.

231 children were recorded as victims in family violence incidents, while 181 children were recorded as offenders.

Of child victims, 60 per cent were female and 40 per cent were male.

Of child offenders, 61 per cent were male and 39 per cent were female.

Approximately two thirds of incidents involving child victims were verbal and physical.

Sexual offences accounted for 13 per cent of all charges laid where the victim was a child, compared with one per cent of all charges laid where the victim was an adult.

Cont’d

Cont’d

2.13.2 Children as victims

Of the 231 children who were victims in 2003-04, information about their relationship to the offender was available for 229 children (see Figure 23). Child victims were most frequently biological children of the offender (58%), with 11 per cent of child victims being step
children of the offender.

2.5 Characteristics associated with people involved in family violence incidents.
The numbers and proportions of offenders, victims and participants who were male or female, affected by alcohol, affected by drugs, used weapons, sustained an injury or had a psychological problem in 2003-04.

It can be seen that:

79 per cent of offenders were male while 21 per cent of offenders were female.

23 per cent of offenders were affected by alcohol

Seven per cent of offenders used a weapon during the incident.

Three per cent of offenders sustained an injury during the incident while 18 per cent of victims sustained an injury

Eight per cent of offenders were, in the opinion of AFP, suffering from a psychological episode at the time of the incident.

48 victims reported to police that they were pregnant."
(extracted from full report)

I believe it is fair to posit that the above analysis may be extrapolated to Australia wide. Of course, these statistics only reveal the cases where police were called to attend – many more go unreported. However it does give an indication that about 30% of offenders were female. Even 1% of either sex is unacceptable

Fractelle:"After having revealed painful experiences and receiving the type of commentary by people like HRS and Antiseptic, I feel bullied, abused."

Give me a single example where I have generally trivialised the experience of women. Just one. If you feel that way it is entirely your own feeing, so don't try to project your emotional pain and blame me for what you alone are responsible for. I jhave constantly reiterated that I simply want men and wome treated equally, rather than allowing one gender to be lauded while the other is demonised. Once, you agreed with that position.

Like Usual Suspect, I'm fed up with the dishonesty of posters who misrepresent my statements and who will not under any circumastances address what I say rather than making stupid rhetorical points. You used not to be among them. Unlike Usual Suspect, I am not prepared to allow the collective bullying of you and some of the other grrls to stop me having my say. If you don't like the message, tough.

There are about 3 or 4 regular male posters to topics such as this and many more women. The situation means violence is not possible, yet you still try to claim that the big, bad men are intimidating you. What a pissweak response.

So far, you're the 5th recent female poster to accuse me of misogyny, yet not one of you has been able to point to a specific incidence in my posts. Frankly, that's also pissweak. Either put up or shut up, the lot of you', instead of crying about the big, bad men and running when challenged. You'd get much more respect, if that's what you're after.

Meanwhile, the collective henpecking continues unabated. I suppose I should simply ignore that and "be a man", eh?

I have not seen any person here dismiss female upon male domestic violence. NOT ONE.

There's posts that point out the overwhelming prevalence of male offenders , just look at the statistics from Fractelle. Presenting reality as it is, is not being anti male. But antiseptic is way, way too thick to know that.

Antiseptic is very welcome to talk as much as he likes about female upon male violence, I doubt even one person here would even slightly object to that. It's been said time and time again here that we all object to female upon male domestic violence. I've figured him out quite well, you see the reason he concentrates on female upon male violence, when replying to posts that write about male upon female violence, is because it turns out he's actually not the least bit interested in male upon female domestic violence, his real motivation is he just can't accept that women get the better of him in debate here. Therefore he adopts an opposing, rigid stance, and does it just for the sake of adopting an opposing, rigid stance (he doesn't necessarily believes what he writes in totality). "THE" motivation is that he gets the better of those women.

He sees defeat by a woman as a knife to the heart.

Look at his language in his last post. He believes he's superior to the women here and it's shown within his language, "what a pissweak response"; "collective bullying of you and some of the other girls" (isn't it interesting how bullies are always the first to complain about being bullied); "don't try to project your emotional pain and blame me"; "I'm fed up with the dishonesty of posters"; "stupid rhetorical posts"; "you still try to claim that the big bad men are intimidating you"; "crying about the big bad men"; "the collective henpecking continues unabated"; "running when challenged".

His language says it all, and gives a great insight. He blames those nasty women for all his pain in this topic. It's THEIR fault: Hmmm, I've heard that before!

He's incredibly thick.

phillips, no one denies that serious offenders are often male. In fact, they're very often the same males, time after time, assaulting paople of either gender. The response, however, has projected women as always sacrosanct and men never rate a mention except as offenders. I have not genderised the situation, nor have I emphasised female-initiated violence. Glad to have cleared that up, thanks for the opportunity for setting the record straight.

Your responses to my posts seem to indicate that you struggle with English comprehension. I hope you don't occupy any sort of responsible position?