Scroll Top

The domestic violence industry demonizes men

Sarah Jane Parkinson

 Update: Extreme anti-male bias by Canberra police and courts results in innocent man’s jailing for four months on false rape allegations

 (The following is an excerpt from Chapter seven of my book, Western Civilization under Siege.)

It has been shocking to watch the attempts to reduce domestic violence morph into a worldwide domestic violence industry determined to ignore evidence showing the complexities of violence in the home while avoiding prevention strategies that would tackle the real risk factors underpinning this vital social issue.

The whole thing is based on the erroneous notion that domestic violence is caused entirely by men, out of disrespect for women.

Key organizations all sing from the same songbook, regularly distorting statistics to present only one part of this complex story.

This type of omission is everywhere today, with most of our bureaucracies downplaying statistics that demonstrate the role of women in family violence, while highlighting evidence of male aggression.

The fact remains that almost a quarter (23.1 percent) of victims of intimate partner homicide are male – and we hardly ever hear about these deaths.

It is not serving our society well to downplay the fact that female violence can also be lethal, towards men and towards children. Women account for more than half of all murders of children (52 percent).

“If a woman turns up to a police station claiming her man has yelled at her, the chances are that she’ll end up with a police report and well on her way to obtaining an apprehended violence order, which puts her in a very powerful position”, says Augusto Zimmermann, a commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, who explains that AVOs can be used to force men to leave their homes and deny them contact with their children.

feminismOften men are caught up in police proceedings and evicted from their homes by orders that are issued without any evidence of legal wrongdoing. “It is a frightening reality that here in Australia a perfectly innocent citizen stands to lose his home, his family, his reputation, as a result of unfounded allegations. This is happening to men every day (as a consequence) of domestic violence laws which fail to require the normal standards of proof and presumptions of innocence”, Dr Zimmermann says, adding that he’s not talking about genuine cases of violent men who seriously abuse their wives and children but “law-abiding people who have lost their parental and property rights without the most basic requirements of the rule of law”.[i]

Given the shame and stigma associated with being a male victim of family violence, it is not surprising that men downplay these experiences in victim surveys such as Australia’s Personal Safety Survey.

The evidence of the complexities of domestic violence does exist,[ii] but on an official level, no one is listening. The reason is simple, the deliberate distortion of this important social issue is all about feminists refusing to give up hard-won turf.

The truth about domestic violence statistics

The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project

In the largest ever such research project, and in an effort to bring together, in a rigorously evidence-based, transparent and methodical manner, the existing knowledge about partner abuse with reliable up-to-date research, the senior editor of the peer-reviewed journal, Partner Abuse, recruited family violence scholars from the United States, Canada and the UK to conduct an extensive and thorough review of the empirical literature related to family violence in March 2010.

In this unprecedented undertaking, a total of 42 scholars and 70 research assistants across 20 universities and research institutions spent two years researching their topics and writing the results. Approximately 12,000 studies were considered.

Here is a brief summary of the findings:

Section One: Rates of Male and Female Victimization. The group studying information in this area analyzed 249 publications comprising over 1 million subjects. They found that, over their lifetimes, about 23% of women reported physical victimization versus 19.3% of men.

As to public policy, the authors stated the obvious:

This comprehensive review… documents the need for gender-inclusive responsiveness to this wide-ranging public health problem. In particular, there are currently few services for male victims and the high rates of violence experienced by women and men suggests a need for treatment and intervention strategies for victims of both sexes.

In other words, the roughly half of all DV victims who are men have nowhere to turn for help, and they need it.

Section Two: Rates of Male and Female Perpetration. The authors studying data in this area analyzed 111 separate data sets comprising about 250,000 subjects. They found that about 25% of those subjects reported perpetrating physical violence against a current partner or one in their last relationship. That represented 28.3% of women and 21.6% of men who perpetrated violence against an intimate partner. Subjects came from across the industrialized, English-speaking world.

The authors note that “gendered explanations of IPV do not adequately account for our findings.” Of course, the domestic violence (DV) establishment will hasten to say that rates of domestic violence perpetration don’t deal with the severity of violence, only the incidence.

True, but the authors of the study anticipated that argument. They stated:

Findings should be used to support the development and implementation of interventions that acknowledge the use of violence by women in intimate relationships but also recognized how participants’ treatment needs may differ.

That is, the difference in the severity of domestic violence should no longer be used by the DV establishment as an excuse to deny services to male victims or female perpetrators. Those interventions should be tailored to the needs of those victims and perpetrators.

Section Three: Rates of Bi-Directional and Uni-Directional IPV. In this area, 50 separate studies that recorded rates of bi-directional versus uni-directional violence were analyzed. Researchers found that, in the largest samples studied, among couples reporting domestic violence, 57.9% reported reciprocal or bi-directional violence with the remainder, 42.1%, reporting uni-directional violence. In the uni-directional group, women were over twice as likely (28.3%) to perpetrate violence when compared to men (13.8%).[iii]

Feminists’ firm grip on Australian Prime Minister’s testicles

Considering that the results of the above study were released in November 2012, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s media release (below), on September 24, 2015, makes him look a proper goose and illustrates his captivity, orchestrated by the feminist-controlled domestic violence lobby. His office announced:

Women and children in Australia have the right to feel safe and live without fear of violence.

Yet, one in six Australian women has experienced violence from a current or former partner, and 63 women have been killed so far this year.

For Indigenous women the situation is even worse – they are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence.

In recent weeks, we have seen yet again the devastating impact that domestic and family violence has on our community. The tragic and avoidable deaths of women and their children at the hands of current or former partners or family members highlight the need for urgent action.

We must elevate this issue to our national consciousness, and make it clear that domestic, family or sexual violence is unacceptable in any circumstances.

Today the Australian Government is announcing a $100 million package of measures to provide a safety net for women and children at high risk of experiencing violence. The package will improve frontline support and services, leverage innovative technologies to keep women safe, and provide education resources to help change community attitudes to violence and abuse.[iv]

Announcing the policy, Turnbull said that domestic violence was a “cultural problem” that started with disrespect for women.

“Disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women, but all violence against women begins with disrespecting women,” Turnbull said.

“We as leaders of government must make it, and we will make it, a clear national objective of ours to ensure Australia is more respecting of women, women must be respected.”

“Disrespecting women is unacceptable, it is unacceptable at every level – at home, at the workplace, wherever.”[v]

Out of the $100 million of taxpayer funding for women, an amount of $2 million was set-aside for men. However, even that minuscule amount was just to fund MensLine so that men can “get help” if they feel like disrespecting women.

feminists[i]       Augusto Zimmermann, quoted in Bettina Arndt, “Domestic violence: data shows women are not the only victims”, The Australian, August 20, 2016 [paywall-protected article].

URL: www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/domestic-violence-data-shows-women-are-not-the-only-victims/news-story/2749c4517a57c33aca8bc2da9a40e2f9

        See also: Augusto Zimmermann, “Denying female domestic violence”, Quadrant (Australia), Vol. 60, Nos. 7-8, July-August 2016.
URL: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2016/07-08/denial-female-domestic-violence/

[ii]       Miranda Devine, “The brutal truth about domestic violence”, Daily Telegraph (Sydney), April 4, 2015.
URL: www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/miranda-devine-the-brutal-truth-about-domestic-violence/news-story/6912df910701f0c249272fd9fecfa4eb

        Melanie Phillips, “The scandal of women’s violence towards men”, The Times (UK), March 11, 2016 [paywall-protected article].
URL: www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-scandal-of-womens-violence-towards-men-hcbggrqkz

        Bettina Arndt, “Fiona Richardson’s story fails the gender test”, The Australian, March 30, 2016 [paywall-protected article].
URL: www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/fiona-richardsons-story-fails-the-gender-test/news-story/62b2a1cb2a0ce510ee8cdfae09c7ef60

[iii]      “The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge (PASK) Project manuscripts and online data base: Overview of findings by the authors”, sponsored by the peer-reviewed journal, Partner Abuse (Springer Publishing Company, New York). From Partner Abuse issues: Vol. 3, No. 2, April 2012; Vol. 3, No. 3, July 2012; Vol. 3, No. 4, October 2012; and Vol. 4, No. 1, January2013.
URL: http://media.springerpub.com/media/springer-journals/OverviewofFindings.pdf

[iv]      “Women’s safety package to stop the violence”, Prime Minister’s Press Office (Canberra), media release, September 24, 2015.
URL: www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/release-womens-safety-package-to-stoptheviolence

[v]       Prime Minister the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP speech, “Transcript of joint press conference: women’s safety package to stop the violence”, Prime Minister’s Press Office (Canberra), September 24, 2015.
URL: www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-09-24/transcript-joint-press-conference-womens-safety-package-stop-violence

Related Posts

Leave a comment