Domestic Violence

Let me start by saying that domestic violence is a terrible scourge on our community and victims of this crime (regardless of gender) deserve all the help they can get. However, there is an assumption in the media campaigns being run in Australia that domestic violence is about men beating their partners. This leads to a men are only perpetrators and women are only victims dichotomy. Thus, the message is that men who are beaten by their female partners do not exist. However, research into this issues suggests that one reason there are few statistics for male victims is that men often dont report the crime. Domestic violence is a reprehensible act and both men and women are victims of this crime. So we need programs that highlight this fact not misinformation that only casts men in the role of perpetrators.

Furthermore, as many posters and stickers assert "women can do anything", and if this is the case we can assume that 'anything' includes both positive and negative behaviours. Feminism has vastly improved the plight of women in western society, and we now know that women are capable of doing everything that a man can do. Unfortunately this includes being violent.

A survey by Bruce Heady and Dorothy Scott of Melbourne University and David De Vaus of La Trobe University exposes the feminist lie that only women are victims of domestic violence. The survey of 1643 persons found that men are assaulted more frequently than women in domestic situations, as the tables below reveal.

Per cent assaulted by their partners in the past 12 months 1996/97. Survey of 804 men and 839 women

	% experiencing this type of assault
Type of assault	Men	Women
Slap, shake or scratch	5.1%	3.2%
Hit with fist or something in hand, or thrown	4.1%	2.5%
Kicked	2.1%	1.4%
Any type of assault (one or more of the above)	5.7%	3.7%

Table 4. Injury and pain due to assaults (N=1643). Australia 1996/97

	% Victims
Type of assault	Men	Women
Injured, needed first aid	1.8%	1.2%
Needed treatment by a doctor or nurse	1.5%	1.1%
Pain as bad as hitting thumb with a hammer, or worse	1.9%	1.9%
Called the police or other government authority	1.3%	1.7%

“A May 2006 survey by Western Australian Police: 58 women murdered their partners

A domestic homicide register compiled by the Western Australian police force's Major Crime Division and released in May 2006 exposes the lies and propaganda of the Violence Against Women campaign. This report details all domestic homicides in WA for the past ten years. The report reveals that of the 221 homicides resulting from domestic violence, 58 murders were committed by females, including wives, mothers and daughters.

The worst domestic killing detailed in the report was committed in July 1999 by Barbara Wyrzkowski who gassed to death her five children - Mark 8, twins Luke and Sarah, 5, Jessie, 4 and Jade,1. It remains Australia's largest domestic child killing.”

A report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, NSW, Oct 2005. (For full report click here), shows that males comprise 30% of victims of DV, and that in cases of DV against women, other women are initiators of violence in 19% of cases. It also shows that incidents of DV are frequently compounded by effects of alcohol, and that poverty is the single most powerful predictor of rates of DV in NSW

"I do think that violence by men towards women does have special characteristics, but I don't think that it can be divorced from the general violence of all types within our society. Women as well as men support state violence from police, prison officers, the army and teachers in schools. Violence by the state far exceeds the acts of any individuals."

Julie McCrossin

Almost 200 studies on partner violence have reached the consistent conclusion that women are equally likely as men to engage in domestic violence:

• Irene Hanson Frieze concluded in the September 2005 issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly that “research indicates that women can be just as violent as their partners.”
  
• A 2000 meta-analysis by Dr. John Archer in Psychological Bulletin concluded, “Women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more act of physical aggression.”
  
• Dr. Martin Fiebert of California State University recently summarized his research, “women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.” http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm