From The Age:
A new survey shows that one in five Victorians believe women are just as likely as men to violently assault their partner.
The dramatic shift in public opinion stems from the rise in fathers’ groups who say women are just as violent as men in relationships, reports Fairfax newspapers.
[...]
Mr Moodie said the change in attitude was disturbing given that domestic violence was the leading cause of preventable death for women in Victoria aged 15 to 44.
[...]
“There may be a reluctance to see men as the more violent sex, and an appeal in the idea of gender equality in regards to domestic violence. But the data simply doesn’t support this view,” La Trobe University men’s issues expert Michael Flood said.“Men’s and fathers’ rights groups have been pushing this myth for some time and draw on some actual research, but they are very selective in that research.”
A lot of that research is American studies rather than Australian studies, and is widely cited by Men’s Right Activist (MRA) groups as “proving” that most domestic violence is initiated by women, as in the woman is the first to strike a blow. That’s because the studies use a widely criticised and essentially discredited metric to adjudge the initiation of violence which has been summarised well by Trish Wilson:
Those studies use the Conflict Tactic Scales, which isolate individual “hits” without taking them in the context of the abusive incident or the abusive relationship. They have been criticized for many years for not being representative of the true nature of domestic violence. If a man had been following his wife around the house, screaming at her, threatening her, and then cornered her against the wall, if she shoves him out of her way to get past him, she is seen as inflicting the first blow. She’s labeled by the CTS as “starting” the fight. It’s so bogus.
There’s more from Trish on Conflict Tactic Scales at The Myth of “Battered Men”.
Here’s another CTS debunker’s vivid description of a “domestic dispute” that is actually a wifebeating and how it would be rated by the Conflict Tactic Scales metric as the wife initiating the violence.
From The Age again:
Lone Fathers Association national president Barry Williams agrees with the premise that women and men are equally likely to perpetrate violence on a partner.
Mr Williams said men avoided reporting violence.
Why then the concrete and inarguable discrepancy in the number of women murdered by men who are or have been their intimate partners, Mr Williams?
I’m going to preemptively speculate that Williams would probably answer using more American statistics, and if one tracked down the source of the figures used, one would find that they derive from before 1990. Ampersand, from Alas a Blog, details Why Men’s Rights Activists Prefer Data from before 1990.
Summarising, data from the USA on intimate partner murders show that in 1976 there were approx 1600 women murdered compared to approx 1400 men, a reasonably close rate. However, the rate in 2002 is approx 1250 women murdered to approx 450 men, a picture that the MRAs don’t like to illuminate quite so brightly. MRAs cite studies that do a similiar legerdemain using figures only from urban areas before 1988 rather than countrywide figures that are up-to-date.
One of the reasons for the declining rate in men murdered by their female partners is the existence of women’s shelters and other resources which mean that women can get out of abusive relationships without having to resort to the horrific last resort of murdering their abuser in his sleep because they feel “trapped”. Yet the rate of women murdered by male partners has not decreased accordingly, with many women murdered by men from whom they have separated.
Why such a gender difference? It seems to be revenge. Women from abusive relationships hardly ever murder ex-partners, but women are murdered by their ex-partners all the time. This gender discrepancy in intimate partner fatal violence is utterly irrefutable – dead bodies are not open to defensive misinterpretation in the same way as the Conflict Tactic Scale.
Why do MRAs misrepresent these statistics on intimate violence? Because the members of such groups consist disproportionately of men accused of domestic violence, many of whom are accordingly denied child custody or access visits, and they resent having to pay child support to their ex-partners for the financial support of children they are not allowed to see. I accept that some of the men accused of abusive violence may be innocent, but that doesn’t mean that they can manipulate statistics using the CTS and outdated murder rates to misrepresent women as being just as violent as men.
It’s simply not true, and it does victims of domestic violence no favours to pretend that women are just as likely as men to batter or kill their intimate partners. This is not to discount the 4% of Australian male assault victims who are battered by their female partners/ex-partners, but to allocate resources equally to them as to the 31% of female assault victims battered by their male partners/ex-partners would be madness.
Some MRAs demand that battered men should have equal access to domestic abuse shelters, saying that it is discrimination to only accept battered women. This ignores the fundamental idea of such shelters, as safe spaces for women and children where they can feel unthreatened by male violence. Gay groups around the world have set up shelters for men battered by their male partners, based on the successful model of women’s shelters for battered women, and there is absolutely nothing stopping MRAs from doing the same. Then they can have their own safe space, free from the scary women. Go for it, Mr Williams.
IMHO violence in the context of relationships has to be understood in terms of both physical and psychological violence. And if they are both (rightly) seen as forms of abuse, then I believe that we would find that in many many examples women and men are both equally culpable.
Cheers…
I have no trouble believing that women are just as likely as men to be verbally abusive, psychologically manipulative and generally nasty to their intimate partners as men are.
That is a big distinction from abuse that threatens life and limb, however. The evidence from hospitals and morgues shows that women just don’t compete when it comes to physical violence.
Not to mention the courts Tigtog where there is by comparison a dearth of women up for GBH.
It’s impossible to know, of course, but how many men physically assaulted by women would never report it because it’s not the ‘manly’ thing to do?
Without any evidence to give but with the active, public campaign to stop violence against women, I would say women were more likely than men to report physical violence.
Highlighting violence against women is sexist. Women are evil, and men are second class citizens because women are evil and mercilessly subjugate men. Women have all the best jobs, and men merely flounder whilst being pinned down by the corporate stiletto.
PS – I don’t have a girlfriend.
PPS – Women are evil.
Then go sit in the children’s court for a few days, watching the endless procession of heartbreaking cases that in most cases are initiated by third parties. See how many involve violence by women.
I think there are a number of valid and worthwhile ‘mens rights’ causes. This one is a dead end.
Didn’t realise you’d been around that long, Alex.
Heh.
You should have met my Mother.By fuck did she give me some beltings.She could have flattened Mundine in the first round.
Great post, tigtog.
Indeed, good post, tigtog.
Alex, if you were around in the Evil Pundit era you ought to remember that it’s pretty unfair to bait someone who can’t properly respond.
I am generally in favour of domestic violence initiated by women because it’s good for the economy. Or the War on Terror.
I can’t remember which.
Well said, Armaniac.
I have nothing against fathers working for custody and child support provisions that they feel are fairer and better reflect the strength of their relationship with their kids. Mothers’ groups may well disagree with certain of their positions, but an open dialogue between the parties is valuable and ultimately for the best situation for the kids.
Using misrepresentations of women generally as physically violent to the same degree as men is not a strategy that will bring such reasonable efforts much community respect, though.
* * *
Thanks, Kim.
Even if it were true that women initiated or engaged in better than half of all domestic violence, it isn’t who starts it but rather who finishes it. Hospital emergency wards attest to who that is.
I’m sick of hearing “mens groups” whining like little girls with a skinned knee everytime the rest of the world fails to appreciate their pain. Get real boys there’s more to being a man than standing up to piss.
Liam,
Go tell someone who gives a fuck.
I’ve come across another blog post on this Age article at Fair Crack of the Whip.
I know nothing of the statistics but do have experience with domestic violence having been married for over 20 years to a formerly lovely woman who gradually became alcohol addicted and overtly violent. Pretty much the whole system – health professionals, counsellors and the courts – is pro female: all accepting my wife’s ravings as fact; immediately assuming I was the aggressor.
Only those who experienced my wife at the top her form, the police, acknowledged my wife as the initiator of the violence. Had the police not shown good judgement I would have many times been arrested.
On one occasion many years ago I snapped when under attack. My wife had thrown a number of girly roundhouse rights at my head. Fending off the punches was no problem but my left arm took quite a pounding from the large wood bracelet she was wearing. When I couldn’t take any more I slapped her a beauty, tackled her to the floor and held her in a headlock until she calmed down. This incident saw me tagged a wife beater. The systemic bias is atrocious. I can understand why many men end up completely losing the plot.
HB, I sympathise with anyone who has been repeatedly physically abused. To tag someone as a wife-beater for doing what you describe is, in my opinion, wrong.
Unfortunately, a lot of men in violent relationships where their women partners are also violent but in a largely ineffective way such as you describe don’t stop at a slap and a headlock, which is proportionate and defensible.
It’s the men who respond to “girly roundhouse rights” by breaking cheekbones, jaws and ribs that are the problem.
Tigtog, if I were not such a passive person I might easily have reacted by punching my wife fair in the face. That was after all what she was trying to do to me. If I had seriously injured her, having been provoked, would my retaliation have been justified. My point is, is it not reasonable to expect that anyone attacking a larger and stronger opponent has made a bad move?
Oh, absolutely. It is. Sounds like you were stuck in an awful situation, and an attack is an attack. Good on you for restraining her without hurting her more than was absolutely necessary to save yourself.
However I had a boyfriend who used to frighten me by jumping in my face in the hope I would respond with a girly hit so he could belt me back. Hard. Still have the scars on my upper lip to prove it. I’ve never looked back on that relationship with anything other than a shudder, and have never been with a violent bloke since, but boy did I learn a lot about dysfunctional psychologies and relationships (and I take responsibility for my own contribution to them).
His view was that a friend who was in an abusive relationship actually drove her boyfriend to it with her tongue lashings, and that she somehow wanted to be as badly beaten as she was. We are talking hospitalisation for her. That’s what I think of whenever someone says that psychological abuse somehow justifies violent response.
OK, consider the following.
In May of this year a large-scale study found that only 15.7% of domestic violence cases involved male-only violence against women.
The objection that the women who were violent were so in self-defence doesn’t hold. First, in 29.4% of cases the violence was female-only; the man restrained from any response.
Second, in the 54.8% of cases involving mutual violence, the researchers did consider what had prompted the violence and concluded that “the most usual motivations for violence by women are coercion, anger, and punishing misbehaviour by their partner” – rather than pushing a violent man out of the way.
As for the hospital statistics, it probably is true that men are more capable of inflicting severe injuries due to greater physical strength. However, violent women do manage to hospitalise men.
For instance, a 1995 report found that women made up the majority of those who were injured in domestic violence cases by being pushed or hit. However, men were 64% of the victims of lacerations, punctures and penetrating wounds (The Age, 11/1/95).
Its not easy living with a violent women believe me I know.Late last year when my wife was in hopital giving birth to our tenth child,I asked just after she had delivered Michelle, a lovely little girl, if it was o/k to pull the cutain around the bed and have sex with her?Consequently she belted me in the head with a bed pan the selfish bitch.I can’t understand her attitude,they get like that when they’re pregnant.No consideration at all.
She told me when she got out of hospital I would have to get a job for once as she wasn’t going back to work at the brick factory.It’s tough being married to a woman like that.
The conviction rates for family related murder, rape and sexual molestation show that men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators.
Men who claim that they are being assaulted by their female partners nearly always find leaving a safe option. On the other hand, violent men often consider women and children their private property and will hunt down and torment or kill the wife and/or the children.
It is hilarious when male conservatives bang on about the dangers of the Muslims in our midst but fail to acknowledge that males per se perpetrate the overwhelming majority of violent crimes irrespective of the cultural context.
Steve Munn’s vilification of men is a reminder of why we need to respond to false stereotypes in which men are always presented as the perpetrators of violence and women always as the victims.
Steve, do you think that children have the option of leaving violent mothers? The highest murder rate of all is actually of babies under the age of one (it’s almost double the murder rate of people in the 16 – 29 age group). 70% of these infanticides are committed by mothers.
A 1980 study on domestic violence “Behind Closed Doors” found that violent mothers were more frequently violent than violent fathers: the fathers beat their children on an average of once a year, whilst the mothers did so more than once every other month.
Yes you’re right, Mark, however fail to mention that in nearly all these cases post natal depression was the actual killer.
Once again another misleading statistic that makes no provision for the fact that Women are generally the primary care giver and therefore spend far more time with the children than the father does.
Your summary above gives no indication that slash/stab wounds are a far smaller number of injuries than those due to being pushed or hit. I can’t find a reference, but would estimate that the ration of push/hits injuries to slash/stab injuries could easily be as high as 100 to 1, and almost certainly is more than 10 to 1. Do you have a figure to contradict that?
Also, a 1998 study of Emergency Department admissions had found that men who presented with injuries inflicted by their female partners also had a higher rate of domestic violence perpetration and arrests than men injured by other assailants, which would tend to support the hypothesis that most women commit domestic violence in response to attack, and a repeated pattern of attack at that.
(Muelleman, R. L. & Burgess, P. 1998, ‘Male victims of domestic violence and their history of perpetrating violence’, Academic Emergency Medicine, vol. 5, pp. 866-870.)
Mark,
You need to work on your comprehension skills. “Overwhelmingly” and “always” are not synonyms.
If I get the time and can be bothered I’ll dredge up some crime stats so that we can have a more substantive discussion.
One reason could be that lesbian relationships tend to reproduce the structure of relationships in which lesbians have grown up. It’s also possible that the level of reporting is higher.
It’s not clear from your excerpt though what “abuse” constitutes. Or “violence”. It would really help if you could post links and give us citations for what you’re quoting as methodology and the specification of variables are often key to interpreting these studies, as tigtog’s post suggests.
I am aware of the fact that there is concern within the lesbian community about domestic violence.
I’d also point out that there’s an obvious fallacy in suggesting that domestic violence within lesbian relationships in any way disproves that men initiate violence in heterosexual relationships.
I don’t know if it bears on the statistics but I’m inclined to think women are much more likely to report violence perpetrated by a partner than are men. In the bad old days my wife frequently called in the police despite initiating the violence. She stopped doing this when she eventually realized the police weren’t going to buy into her nonsense. (She was invariably drunk at the time while I was sober.)
Kim, the link to the last quote is here.
The reason for citing violence in lesbian relationships wasn’t to prove anything about heterosexual relationships (though it does strongly suggest that women are capable of initiating domestic violence).
It’s more to show, once again, how false it is to always categorise men as the perpetrators of domestic violence and women as the victims. In a lesbian relationship it is obviously a woman who must be the perp.
Maybe it’s because their body rythms get aligned and there’s the legendary fight for the chocolate around that time…
Rather that debating the issue of who hit who first, I think understanding power and control differentials is key to understanding the dynamics of abusive relationships, and the resources one has access to, and the capacity one has to extricate oneself from such situations.
Relationships where DV is a feature range from the situationally violent, to the pathologically sadistic. Each has its own unique circumstances.
A couple who share an equal power base, who both use disfunctional actions when facing conflict (shouting, shoving slapping etc) but who have , arguably, relatively similar ( or no) levels of intimidation and fear of the other, are quite distinct from couples where dysfunctional patterns of conflict are also present, but one is substantially more powerful/intimidating than the other party.
Gender plays a significant role in realtionships with discernable power/control differentials, and overlayed with culture, race, religion, class, mental illness (and dare i say amphetamines), women in Australia are still overwhelmingly the victims of DV.
220 women and kids go into refuge in Qld each month, btw, and many more have to leave their homes but are able to stay with friends or family.
Ther is also a smaller proportion of men who also experience control and abuse in their personal relationships, and this can be a very isolating experience due to the stigma involved (men can also get breast cancer too).
Amen to that, tanja!
“This is not to discount the 4% of Australian male assault victims who are battered by their female partners/ex-partners, but to allocate resources equally to them as to the 31% of female assault victims battered by their male partners/ex-partners would be madness.”
You need to be careful here tigtog, lest you fall into the same error as those you are criticising. Without looking up the exact figure, I believe that some 80% of all assault victims are male, which means that (if I read you aright) only about 3.2% (0.04*80)of total assault victims are male victims of female partners. On the other hand, it means that 6.2% (0.31*20) of total assault victims are female victims of male partners. Still a big difference I grant you, but not the headline stuff of our original statement.
Mark, HB, et al – I’m certainly not trying to suggest that females never perpetrate domestic violence and other forms of partner abuse. I am willing to stipulate that it is a statistically significant problem that should be addressed so that battered men feel more confident in seeking help.
That still doesn’t mean that as a class women are as violent towards their partners as men are as a class.
Mark R, I think I’ve found that study that the Age wrote about in 1995.
The VISS study showed that of men attending casualty due to injuries from partner assault, 54% presented with lacerations and abrasions, and 11% with puncture wounds. That and a few other injuries represented 70% of partner-assaulted men attending casualty with open wounds, compared to 26% of partner-assaulted women. Those percentages translate to 35 men and 62 women among the subjects in the study.
The VISS study also noted how many cases involved wounds inflicted by a knife – a knife was used by 15 women and 7 men. So the other 20 men and 55 women who sustained open wounds during an assault from their partners were at least not deliberately slashed/stabbed with a blade.
This does show an approximately 2:1 ratio of knife usage by women compared to men, but we also have a nearly 2:1 ration of women sustaining open wounds compared to men. It’s an interesting figure, but hardly a conclusive one either way.
However, the 28 women reported by the Coroner as dead due to partner violence compared to 2 men over the period of the study is hard to interpret as anything other than a much higher incidence of fatal violence from men towards their partners than from women.
[VicHealth/Victorian Injury Surveillance System/Monash University Accident Research Centre report "Domestic Violence", prepared by Virginia Routley and Jenny Sherrard, and published in 'Hazard', edition no. 21, December 1994]
Thanks, PeterTB for a different slant on the statistics. You are of course correct that men are much more likely in general to be assaulted than are women (again, the perpetrators are overwhelmingly men).
My argument about resource allocation was specifically about domestic violence support resources, not medical or police resources that are needed in cases of assault generally. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify.
The original 1990s study also failed in a very important way, or was misused rather, as its terms of reference were kept strictly to episodes of violence in a relationship. Therefore, instances of women being killed after they have left a violent partner were not included for the purposes of this survey. However, that’s one of the commoner ways for a woman victim of domestic violence to die, and so the results were heavily skewed.
Thanks tigtog. Yet another way of looking at the same statistics we are discussing is that men are about a third of all assault victims of partners. As you say, statistically significant.
In wading through all the statistical material, have you come across any information on how many male victims of domestic violence suicide compared with females? I expect there would be many more.
Not much about suicide at all in what I’ve read thus far, PeterTB, despite the huge discrepancy between male and female suicide figures.
The general figure constant across a lot of studies in the West is that female DV victims presenting with injuries requiring treatment outnumber men about 5:1. There may well be some underreporting from men there who don’t have open wounds and prefer not to seek treatment for serious bruising.
The first domestic violence programmes that offered special services for men (mid-80s) were focussing on men as perpetrators who wanted to change. It’s only slowly grown since the 90s into offering services for men who identify as victims of DV.
Significantly, most studies on male DV victims report very few who claim to be afraid of their partner, most men tend to be annoyed and angry at their partner’s violence but very few are fearful that their partner might one day kill them. This is very different from female DV victims, nearly all of whom claim to be afraid of their partner and a clear majority are concerned that their partner might one day kill them.
This continues in most cases where the relationship has ended, for male victims that is the end of physical abuse and the end of any fear they may have had of their partner, whereas female victims of DV report a high incidence of continuing violent assaults from their ex-partner and still being very afraid of them. Going by the gender discrepancy in partner-murder, the different rates of fear are not surprising and quite realistic.
It seems pretty obvious to me that men are more likely to use physical violence, and the threat thereof, as an exercise of power in a relationship. It would be very surprising if this weren’t the case, as outside intimate relationships it most certainly is.
But we’ve got to be careful about what we DO with the stats, and how we approach the problem. It really hasn’t mattered much to me that I’m in a minority when I’ve been physically abused – actually it feels even more like I’m on my own. I don’t know what solidarity or solace I would have gotten from TV ads where maybe one of the five-odd situations was an abused male like me, but it couldn’t have hurt. And it would have removed some ammunition from the bitter woman-hating elements in some men’s rights groups.
“most men tend to be annoyed and angry at their partner’s violence but very few are fearful that their partner might one day kill them.”
Again, “most men” haven’t had a bottle of wine thrown at their head when their back’s turned. This is not much comfort to me.
Sadly, FDB, discussing trends is rarely any comfort for the outliers, and you have my sympathy for what good it may be, but trend analysis is the only reasonable way to set broad policy such as the structuring and funding of DV shelter programmes.
Unfortunately, the government doesn’t actually set up DV shelters themselves so much as acknowledge them when a community sets one up, at which stage it can apply for public funding. Abused women and their sympathisers set up the orginal women’s DV shelters, and abused gays and their sympathisers followed the same model.
The problem of male DV victims is real. But women’s DV shelters already don’t have sufficient resources to cope with all the women victims who need help. It’s not practical to introduce men into existing women’s shelters operating under “safe-space” principles. So men need their own shelters, but the most vocal MRAs aren’t stepping up to learn how to set up such spaces, they’re just demanding that they get a slice of the pie of existing DV shelters under some distorted anti-discrimination argument.
I have no problem with men having a proportionate number of DV shelters and counselling programmes dedicated to their needs. I do have a problem with MRAs not doing the groundwork to get their own shelters up and running and instead trying to hijack the hard work of other groups.
Fuck. FDB, my response above comes across as more dismissive than I meant it to. Sorry about that.
That’s fine, TT. I’ve got no chip on my shoulder, and obviously resources should go where they’re most needed.
It wouldn’t have cost much to put a token reference to violence against males in some of the literature, though. And to make, say, the helpline counselling less one-sided. How many extra resources would be needed for them to solicit and field calls from abused men too? Not many.
I don’t normally call for tokenism, but then I’m not usually a repressed minority myself.
Definitely, the actual govt initiatives such as the DV literature and helpline counselling could and should be more inclusive of battered men.
It’s a shame that most of the noise and fury about female DV perpetrators comes from the misogynistic monomaniacs at the more extreme end of the MRA movement. They’re so repulsive that they hurt a more rational approach to meeting the needs of male DV victims.
Exactly. That’s one of the half-arsed points I was trying to make. The last thing I want is some men’s rights crusader turds going in to bat for me.
Speaking of Maximus, his absence on this thread is conspicuous.
10….9….8….7….6….
Extremists on either side of the spectrum have usually arrived at the their positions as a reaction to significant pain, which is somewhat understandable, even if its not particularly constructive.
Queenslands Crisis DV service actually provides both a statewide Womens and a statewide Mens Domestic and Family Violence Crisis counselling service – though the womens service is 24 hr and the mens one is 9-5.
The Justice Dept has also just funded a Mens info and counselling service at the BRisbane Magistrates Court for men appearing for DV matters, both respondents and aggrieved to assist them access balanced and strategic info on the spot. The service is staffed by men experienced in the dynamics of domestic violence and child protection…who understand that the 48 hours after separation is a very critical time for the health and safety of all parties, and also when men are vulnerable to ‘less balanced and informed’ influences.
TT is right is saying that Womens refuges often develop at a community level, then apply for govt funding. In fact, of the 60 refuges in Qld a handful of of them do not have Govt funding at all, funded and staffed run by dedicated churches, and community groups.
There is absolutley nothing preventing men setting up similar models, quantifying demand and then applying for gt funding if they could justify their existence.
Love the posts very thought-provoking.
Another blog I discovered I think you guys and readers might enjoy is called “The Notebook” good stuff on relationships there.
check it out :www.the-note-book.blogspot.com
Josh, I’m not going to moderate your post, because right now I’m operating on the “if you can’t be a good example you’ll have to serve as a horrible warning” principle for others.
You are either very new to blogging or astroturf of some sort for a TV series you mention in the first post on your blog. Either way, none of your posts thus far have anything to do with domestic violence, and thus your blog really isn’t relevant to this thread.
The way to get people to visit your blog is to make a substantive addition to the discussion, so that folks want to click on the URL (that’s linked to your name above the post) to see what other insightful commentary you have to offer on other matters. What you’ve done above is right on the borderline of spamming, and is seriously frowned upon netiquette-wise.
That study uses the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS); the post gave links to a few excellent criticisms of the CTS. At the risk of being a self-promoter, I’d also add this post at my own blog to the list.
Helen already mentioned one huge problem with both studies cited in the posts you link to: the samples excluded people not currently in a relationship, so all violence by ex-partners was excluded. This is important, for the reason people here have already mentioned: a huge amount of male-on-female relationship violence happens in the context of break-ups. In addition, the particular study you quote statistics from used a convenience sample of students, not a representative sample, so you can’t extrapolate from this study’s results to the general population.
Another sampling problem – one actually mentioned in the study you quote – is that the small minority of people battered so severely and frequently that they need the use of a shelter, isn’t really represented by large-scale studies of general populations (or of students). To quote the same study you’re citing:
The total picture is more complex than “women are more violent” versus “men are more violent.” There’s a lot of evidence which shows that many couples have infrequent and relatively less severe violence; this violence is as likely to come from women as from men, and is often mutual. But there’s also considerable evidence that the large majority of victims of the most severe, chronic violence are women.
Thanks for dropping by, Amp. I’d run out of energy for hunting down that study, but I’m not surprised that just like the other study cited by Mark Richardson the area highlighted by his cite is a cherrypick (said cherrypicking probably arising from a secondary source that MR is cut’n'pasting).
That comment may just have been spam, tigtog. We could probably find out by actually going to the site but I kinda can’t be bothered on principle.
Though on the other hand spammers normally know how to post links properly.
Quite possibly just spam, Kim. If he is genuinely new maybe I’m being a bit hard on him.
I think you had the tone right, tigtog.
I’ve got a copy of the Qld crime stats from the Qld Police Service (reported and cleared) for prop offences and offences against a person
2002/03 and 2003/04 . It breaks down assault into the category of the relationship of the offender to the aggrieved etc so you can get a picture of the actual homicides, perpetrators etc etc. (I havent seriously looked at it myself)
I also have the stats on DV Orders applied for and granted by the Magistrates courts from the same period -email me if you want copies.
Off the top of my head…i recall around 1 in every 50 adult Qlders are mentioned on a DV order as either the respondent, aggrieved or named persons. Yet, only about 40% of callers to the Emergency DV Crisis service have had any contact with the Police regarding their experience of DV.
We are all missing the point.
What do all these stats tell us? Whether the violence is instigated by men or women is irrelevant.
The point that is constantly being missed is that all these statistics indicate that men and women should not co-habitate.
Many species in the wild meet for sex then go their own ways. Why can’t humans do this ?
Better still, NO contact at all sounds the ultimate lifestyle. The key to happiness is for men and women to stay away from one another.
Other species have male and female belonging to the group or herd but they live apart within that group. This sounds like a scenario for those who simply cannot do without sex.
Sex is great but it’s not that great!
The peace and tranquility I’ve found since living alone cannot be compared to any percieved happiness we may think we find by co-habitating with a member of any sex.
I love my life. I could not have said this honestly when I lived with a woman
The question isn’t,”Can men and women live together?” It should be, ” can humans live together without trying to kill one another?”
I believe the answer is no. Just look around the world. See how well we are doing?
I’ve been victimised by women since birth. Abandoned then adopted at 2 months of age by a loving father and a cruel and vicious adopted mother.
My childhood is full of horrible memories where she constantly reminded me of my worthlessness and stupidity.”What will people think of you” blah blah blah blah etc etc etc.
Not only verbal cruelty but also many beatings. She used to knock the wind out of me.
She mellowed out in her later years but would never admit her verbal and physical attacks were the direct cause of my lifelong addiction to alcohol and hard drugs, my wide mood swings and explosive temper. “You were mad when I got you” she’d say. Or “I didn’t really want to adopt, it was for your father” Translation? “I never really wanted you”
Two divorces resulting from my abusive attitude towards women (a couple of rare token physical attacks i.e. controlled, designed to terrorise without any real physical damage but never the less wrong and unforgiveable) An inability to deal with intimacy and express or accept love without suspicion. Although I have a good relationship with my ex, she’s my best friend, I trust her implicitly but simply find intimacy tenderness etc impossible to deal with, makes me uncomfortable, always waiting for the rejection. I like individual women but hate the species.
My little dog is the only one who’s love I accept without suspicion.
I live alone and love my solitude I don’t feel lonely. I feel safe on my own, no possibility of pain or hurt.
I hold no grudge my adopted mum was treated cruelly by her step mother. I understand her pain.
BUT don’t tell me a woman has to beat the crap out of you to be considered violent and dangerous. I was a hair’s breadth from ending up a sociopath a crazed woman hating murderer. It was my dear adopted father’s love and kindness that pulled me back from the abyss. A kinder more loving person I’ve never met. “He” taught me right from wrong. He gave me the self control that prevented me from turning my hatred of women into cruel and violent murderous acts.
Women are inherently evil they can do much more harm than any man could. They break hearts, not men, because you can’t break something that doesn’t exist.