Fair enough, gentlemen.

It's pretty clear that there's a domestic violence problem.

The Prime Minister decides to announce some prevention measures and tips back in some of the money that was taken out - suggests perhaps women should be the recipients of more respect.

This is met by howls of outrage on this thread - how dare he alienate men by suggesting such a thing!

Phanto suggests it's the women who should do a bit of soul searching:

"How about spending some of this money on educating women to dismiss rubbish like The Bachelor which encourages women into forming domestic relationships based on the attempt to replicate the romantic fantasies they see played out there? Hammer home the reality that two women are killed every week and that it is far too risky a venture to enter into for anyone who cares about their own safety. Help women take control before and not after."

Any way, you guys win! - Phanto starts a thread responding to Turnbull's announcement, which itself is in response to the appalling figures this year of female deaths - and we've spent almost the entire thread bickering about gender ratios.

Which is "always" the way these threads play out on OLO.

Btw, I'm now supposedly a very nasty lady because I reacted strongly to RObert.

He accused me (three times) of gloating and of celebrating the dearth of current male victim figures.

Woe betide if I'd done the same to him.

Things like this:

".....it's the pathetic play to special treatment whilst dishing it out that really gets up the nose.

Now it must be just about time for someone to point out that there are so few women on OLO because men don't treat them with enough special courtesy."

That's a special kind of message to we ladies on the forum - I heard it loud and clear.

(I made the mistake or firing straight back at RObert - when it's clear I should have generalised about the lot of you blokes like he did with women)

@Suseonline: "Yes, those damned feminists are just the cause of everything bad in society..." I would not use the words "everything bad". I'd probably use the words "a darn lot that is bad".

As Tony stated all DV is horrible regardless of the gender of perpetrator or victim. In my view its often not single sided, all parties involved may bring their respective strengths to the argument and hide behind whatever adavantages they find to help themselves at the others expense.

I suspect its rare that a fatal assault is the first instance of abuse in a relationship and I doubt that the fatal assualt is always perpetrated by the main abuser (but some of the time it will be).

I think the role of verbal and emotional abuse plays a far greater role in suicide rates than authorities are willing to investigate and I think there is evidence to indicate that just as men are generally physically stronger women generally have higher skills in verbal and emotional areas. I don't think capacity automatically means that people use that capacity at full strength.

I know from first hand experience and talking to others who have been through similar experiences that there are women who deliberately hide behind their protected status to hit a male partner knowing that he has few options to stop that.

I believing only talking about DV against women by men regardless of which set of stats you prefer does little to stop the root causes that turn so many relationships into toxic nightmares. That doing so is part of the problem and is based on a sad alliance between paternalists and advantage feminism.

That in context with disfunctional family law and child support system doing so leaves men with few options when dealing with an ongoing abusive situation which on top of w grossly unfair to the men involved may eventually lead a small percentage of them to snap.

That respect should be a two way thing and that when politicians address the issue they shoild be making that point rather than unnecessarily gendered statements.

R0bert

//Phanto starts a thread responding to Turnbull's announcement, which itself is in response to the appalling figures this year of female deaths - and we've spent almost the entire thread bickering about gender ratios.//

Because some posters find comments like those made by Mr. Turnbull:

"The issue of family violence, or domestic violence as it's often called – which is just violence against women, which is the way I would prefer to describe it"

To be more persuasive than the actual statistics on domestic violence. But in this case it is easily demonstrable that Turnbull's comments are either a paralogism (an unintentionally false argument) or a sophism (an intentionally false argument). Given that he's a politician and that some lackey has presumably informed him on the DV statistics, I'm leaning heavily towards sophism.

Accepting sophisms as truthful when there is hard data to refute that position is appalling reasoning, or more accurately complete lack thereof.

It also prevents male victims of domestic violence from receiving the support and assistance they deserve every bit of much as the female victims. As long as most people believe Turnbull's BS about DV being 'just violence against women' there will never be effective provision of service for male victims because so many people will have been hoodwinked into believing that male victims of DV are unicorns.

It may well be the case that the devil is in the detail, and that the new funding will be used to assist all victims of DV. Nevertheless Turnbull's comments were erroneous and harmful, and applauding and defending them is untenable.

Poirot :

“suggests perhaps women should be the recipients of more respect.”

What exactly does that mean? Why not just say women should not be victims of domestic violence? That is all you need to say unless you are trying to manipulate men into feeling guilty where no guilt should apply. Nobody needs to be shown ‘respect’. Respect is something that comes from within. There are people who are shown all the ‘respect’ in the world but still despise themselves. How you think and feel about yourself is totally up to you and is never dependent on what others do to you. Some people have experienced some of the most degrading tortures devised by human beings and yet kept their dignity and self-respect.

No person should be violent to another for any reason but it has nothing to do with respect. Women should be insulted by Turnbull’s comments, not praising them. He insuates that women are people dependent on others for their sense of self-respect.

It is another example of trying to bully men (along with the call to be ‘real men’) into behaving the way he’d like them to. Men should change violent behaviour because it is reasonable and not out of some guilt heaped upon them about women’s need for respect. Women do not need respect they can find it in themselves.

“Phanto suggests it's the women who should do a bit of soul searching”

What is wrong with that – are they so perfect that a bit of soul searching won’t hurt? If they find nothing wrong with programs like the Bachelor then nothing is lost but it will not hurt them to at least question the influence of such shows on the expectations of women in domestic relationships.

I didn’t start a thread responding to Turnbull’s announcement but to the emotional manipulation evident in his announcement.

No one said you were a nasty person but that you made a nasty comment. That is the kind of twisting of words that some women use to exaggerate the ‘attack’ of men. It is a form of aggression too.

phanto,

"I didn’t start a thread responding to Turnbull’s announcement but to the emotional manipulation evident in his announcement."

Yes you did.

How can you say you didn't start a thread in response to Turnbull's announcement - and in the next breath say you started it as a response to something contained in his announcement?

So someone suggests that employing respect may be helpful - and cites it in relation to women...and this is your response:

"It is another example of trying to bully men (along with the call to be ‘real men’) into behaving the way he’d like them to...."

I've never heard such tch...tch...clucking over a relatively benign and sensible suggestion - what is your problem?

You're going out of your way to dissect Turnbull's announcement and tripping over yourself in an attempt to paint it as some sort of attack on manhood.

"No one said you were a nasty person but that you made a nasty comment. That is the kind of twisting of words that some women use to exaggerate the ‘attack’ of men. It is a form of aggression too."

We're all aggressive in debate - some are more passive aggressive, but it boils down to the same thing. Does anybody else here agree with RObert that I was gloating and celebrating the lack of male figures?

That was a fairly "aggressive" thing for him to say to me.

I note that no-one has chided him for such "aggression".