Uproar over gender violence survey in Australia
August 19, 2006
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Posted by ANCPR
Very interesting article – biased as can be. A majority of people surveyed were of the opinion that men and women are equally prone to committing domestic violence. Yet commentators say they are wrong, without actually citing any statistics! Amazing. Especially disturbing to me is the discussion in this article about a television public service announcement showing the angst of a father saying goodbye to his child after “visitation”. The article says this is “demonising” women!
Women hit in message of violence – National – theage.com.au
RADICAL men’s groups appear to be winning the propaganda war against their former spouses, with a new survey showing that one in five Victorians believes that women are just as likely as men to violently assault their partner.
Experts say that a dramatic shift in public opinion is stemming from the rise in volume of fathers’ groups who say women are as violent as men in relationships. One organisation has also said that the federally funded Mensline television advertisement could also be a factor.
Just 9 per cent had the same view in a 1995 survey.
The survey, released to The Sunday Age, follows last week’s release of the Australian Bureau of Statistics personal safety survey, which showed women were seven times more likely to be assaulted by a partner or former partner than a male assault victim.
VicHealth chief executive Rob Moodie, who commissioned the Australian Institute of Criminology survey, described the attitude shift as disturbing given that domestic violence was the leading cause of preventable death for women aged 15 to 44 in Victoria.
Dr Moodie pointed to the personal safety survey which found that 31 per cent of assaults on women were perpetrated by current or former male partners while just 4 per cent of male victims were assaulted by their female partner or former partners.
Men’s issues expert and La Trobe University academic Michael Flood said he attributed the misconception to the success of some fathers’ and men’s rights groups in describing domestic violence as gender-equal.
“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,” Dr 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,” he said.
Lone Fathers Association national president Barry Williams said he agreed with the premise that women and men were equally likely to perpetrate violence on a partner.
He said men were reluctant to report violence and police often failed to take action.
Danny Blay, manager of the No to Violence peak body responding to men’s violence, said that while fathers’ rights groups were partly to blame for the attitude change, the federally funded Mensline Australia television ad had a lot to answer for too, as he said it demonised women in family breakdown.
The ad depicts a father with a child, the child gives a flower and hug to the father and then a mother leads the child away. “There is no context to it,” Mr Blay said. He said it demonised women further at a time when community attitudes were skewed to believe that women instigated as much violence as men.
But the chief executive officer of the Mensline operator Crisis Support Service, Wendy Sturgess, said it accurately reflected data showing 88 per cent of under-18s lived with their mothers and that fathers suffered in family breakdowns.
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Refreshing to see such a balanced study – the truth & justice are coming – yahoo
in solidarity – dad4justice
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10396934
National News
Domestic violence goes both ways, study finds
Saturday August 19, 2006
Where only one partner in a relationship is violent, it is more likely to be the woman, University of Otago researchers have found.
Researcher Kirsten Robertson, of the university’s psychology department, said the finding indicated a change of thinking was required on domestic violence.
The researchers found that among people in violent relationships, 13.8 per cent of women said they were the sole perpetrators of violence, and only 2.4 per cent of men said they were the only violent one in the relationship.
“The problem is our society just accepts female violence – it accepts violence in general,” Ms Robertson said.
“But there are always campaigns aimed at stopping male violence – we need to accept no violence.”
People tended to find female violence amusing.
“When asked, ‘does a man deserve to be hit’, women often laugh. They said they did often deserve it as they did things that wound you up.”
The research was done for Ms Robertson’s PhD thesis on “intimate partner violence” studies.
She talked to three sample groups – students, a general group, and prisoners in Rolleston and Christchurch Women’s Prison.
In the student and general samples, one in four people had used physical violence in the past year in their relationship. Among those in jail, the figure was more than half.
The violence often went both ways, and men and women were equally likely to be on both ends of it.
Ms Robertson said she did not look at whether incidents of female violence were in self defence, but the fact that in quite a few cases women were the sole perpetrators indicated that could not be the only explanation.
Those involved in the violence – men or women – tended to have a more hostile attitude towards others, and were more likely to blame their victim for their problems.
It indicated a lack of conflict resolution skills, Ms Robertson said.
“I wouldn’t say victims were causing the violence – I would never say that – but in these relationships both partners were lacking those skills and that increases the hostility.
“We need to be teaching in schools how to deal with conflict.”
Ms Robertson is now doing some lecturing at the university and studying conflict in flats.
Police Minister Annette King this week issued figures showing domestic violence arrests had doubled in the past 10 years.
- OTAGO DAILY TIMES
I see we picked up on the same article in The Age.
I have a blog at http://injurysupport.blogspot.com where I’ve done a couple of low-level critiques of that article, reports, and some press releases.
My critique of the article is here:
http://injurysupport.blogspot.com/2006/08/deborah-gough-on-disinformation.html
And the critique of the report cited by Rob Hulls and Vic government spokespeople is here:
http://injurysupport.blogspot.com/2006/08/abs-survey-on-safety.html
I do compare the two reports. The Personal Safety Survey discredits many of the propaganda points that femi-nasties (James Adams’ term, aka radical feminists) have put forward in the last few months.
BTW, did you happen to see the ad by MensLine?
If that’s an example of demonizing women, I must have missed a something somewhere.
It just shows a man sad because he has to be away from his child.
I sit and watch advertisements that show men as idiots, dolts, lazy, slovenly pigs, incompetent of caring, showing sensitivity or providing nurture. These ads are presented in a forum of humour. From the earliest age our children are exposed to such misandry. Our daughters are taught from the earliest ages that the opposite gender is a violence risk, ‘boys are smelly’, ‘No boys allowed”. By the time they reach their child bearing years, they have a deeply ingrained sense of the “poor value of the opposite sex”.
16 years in health care has taught me some shameful truths.
1. Abused fathers and their children will not be offered counselling or support. Turning a blind eye is accepted practice.
2. It is not “politically correct” to list a male assault victim as a DV victim – unless the assailant was a male. It is however expected to list a female victim as such.
3. Women who abuse their partners may visit them in long term care – resultant from their assault – and may continue their assault in that environment. Female victims are however vehemently protected under these circumstances.
4. Women are much more likely to use weapons against men and cause serious, permanent brain damage – if he is not lucky enough to die. THeir children will remain in her care as she will successfully claim extenuating circumstances – all other evidence of her abusive nature rejected.
5. Men who harm their children will be reported on the first 5 pages of the newspaper, women only ever after page 14 – he is much more likely to face the full force of the law over his crime. She is likely to walk away, portrayed as a vicitm of circumstances.
We have shelters, church groups, soceities, associations, support services etc, etc, etc, for female victims of DV. A man reporting such a crime is riduculed, demeaned and even laughed at by the authorities – as such – so are his children – also victims. There are little, if any funds, allocated to his and his children’s protection and support.
The crime that society commits in rejecting DV victims due to their gender only is committed more gravely against their children, and the results of this neglect will become more and more apparently as these generations grow to become parents themselves, widening the circles of societal misfits, mental illness, criminals, failures and abusers.
Ever heard people say “kids these days – they have no respect!!” Give me one good reason why these children should respect the negligence around them. The family courts, the law and the “support services” perpetuate the abuse of the children of male DV victims every day, then stick their heads firmly into the sand and take no responsibility for their actions.
It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.
Thomas Jefferson