And how about my ex-wife, who uses fear of the children’s future (“I want full custody,” “I guess I won’t bring the kids by today”) in arguments about practical matters to threaten and cajole me into agreeing with her POV? And not wanting your guy to spend too much time at the pub is one thing. “Call me when you land, and when you go to bed, and make sure you’re phone’s on so I can reach you any time so I know you’re not cheating on me” is abusive controlling behavior, especially when it’s based on all kinds of spurious assumptions about one’s likely behavior (like “You went to a strip club before we were married, how do I know you’re not going to cheat on me while you’re away at that funeral? How do I know?” “Because I won’t. I’m a dedicated, good husband, and besides, that was before we met.” “How do I know? How do I know? How can I trust you?”).

Oh, and I had zero knowledge about our finances for 5 years because every time I mentioned taking over for a couple of months to see what was going on, it led to a huge argument. That’s after three to four years of threatening to abandon me (“I don’t want to be married to you!”) when we disagree, threatening suicide (knife to throat a couple of times), attacking my values, taking control of my business, ensuring that she was always too busy after my evening classes (she would come with me and wait in the student union) for me to meet new people, controlling access to my family and friends through manipulative complaints and value judgements (“I don’t like the way your brother looks at me,” “His/your friends are obnoxious”), pushing and blocking me, etc.

Relationship violence is about people who feel powerless taking control of another to assert some kind of control over their own lives. I’m willing to bet that, in our culture, more women than men feel powerless. Vastly more women than men experience chemical changes on a regular basis that are literally associated with mental illness (fluctuations in serotonin levels associated with migraine, for example, and PMS, which a feminist professor of mine once actually denied existed), which definitely has an effect on mood and feelings of inadequacy and control.

Sorry, sistah. Men who are emotionally and physically abused don’t deserve it. Nice try, though. Your misandy, like my wife’s (“Teenage boys are obnoxious. I don’t understand them. I’m so glad we had a girl and not a boy”) knows no bounds.

The stats, at least in Australia, clearly demonstrate that there are much higher male to female rates of domestic violence than the reverse.

Could you share those stats? Because the only ones I could find point to exactly the point that’s being made in the article. Some findings:

Our first hypothesis is that men are significantly more likely to physically assault their partners than vice-versa.

Results: Men and women report approximately equal rates of being assaulted by their partner, for all three types of assault we asked about. These results are in line with American data, which also show no significant differences.

(by the way, the use of the word “approximately” there is because women were actually more violent than men, but just not in a statistically significant percentage for this study)

Our second hypothesis is that male assailants inflict more serious injuries than female assailants.

Results: Men are at least as likely as women to be victims of domestic assaults that lead to injury and pain. Consistent with victimization rates, the results here suggest that women inflict serious injuries at least as frequently as men.

1. Men were just as likely to report being physically assaulted by their partners as women. Further, women and men were about equally likely to admit being violent themselves.
2. Men and women report experiencing about the same levels of pain and need for medical attention resulting from domestic violence.
3. Violence runs in couples. In over 50% of partnerships in which violence occurred both partners struck each other.
4. People who had violent parents were significantly more likely than others to be violent to their own partners and to be victims of violence themselves. On the other hand, a huge majority of people whose parents were violent do not assault their own partners. Moreover, the vast majority of those who are violent did not have violent parents.

So I would like to know what your basis is.

People don’t seem to get this small fact: ABUSE IS NOT A MALE CRIME BUT AN ATTITUDE CRIME! It doesn’t MATTER what the statistics say how many women vs. men are abused. THIS guy who wrote this article, while he seems to be attempting to point out that men as JUST as likely to be abused as women, ignores the idea that women as WELL as men should be protected from abuse. Give me a BREAK! With stuff like THIS out, I fear for the PEOPLE who turn to anyone for help!

When I left my abusive ex husband, my own CASEWORKER told me “why don’t you just go back to your husband?” This was a FEMALE! She was ABUSIVE with her power because she felt she HAD NONE! I pointed to my twins, a boy and a girl, and said, “Because I will be godDAMNED if my son grows up and thinks it’s okay to abuse a woman and my daughter thinks it’s okay to be abused OR VICE VERSA! You learn your first relationships FROM YOUR PARENTS!”

Statistics don’t matter. STOPPING IT DOES! This guy is trying to make women look like less victims than they are and men look better than they are. And yes, I think it’s fast becoming a time when just BEING a man is a CRIME and I DON’T THINK THAT’S RIGHT!

This is scary to have someone like this spout the bs he’s spouting.

Regarding the surveys of students where male students reported that their female partners tried to control their behaviours: In a culture where young men take pride in bedding as many women as possible, maintaining emotional distance from others, and building a self-image of macho invulnerability, is this really surprising that women are actually trying to do something to remedy the situation and try to make their male partners realise that they are human beings with feelings? While their techniques may not be ideal, it is far from surprising that assertive females are at least making an effort to try to make their male partner a bit more of an aware, thinking, feeling human being. What the male students in these studies reported as ‘abuse’ was more likely just incidents where their female partner actually tried to voice her thoughts and feelings and the male partner took offence.

As for the ‘stalking’ subtypes, isn’t a male making an unwanted visit to your home a hell of a lot more intimidating than an woman leaving an unwanted phone message? Most incidents of the latter that I’ve ever heard of involve a woman calling a guy who previously pursued her single-mindly, eventually wooed her into bed, and then, with the conquest over, refused to acknowledge her again.

Yes 40% were female. And out of 1,000 men who disclosed being sexually abused by a woman (at a center in Canada, not the study) only 4 ever officially reported it. If my math is right that is less than 1/2 a percent. The same under reporting rate goes for women sexually abused by other women.

Leaving aside killings by nonparents or by mothers and fathers acting together, mothers committed almost three-quarters of the parental murders of children. If one includes murders by mothers and fathers acting together, the ratio is 2 to 1 committed by mothers.

I would post the little graph (its figure 4-2 if you get the report) but I dont think it would post here. And if you look at figure 3-5 of the same report you would see that leaving aside abuse by nonparents or by mothers and fathers acting together, mothers committed almost three-quarters of child abuse.

To quote Dr. Christine Hatchard:

In our society, mothers are automatically given special status, and certain characteristics, such as “nurturing, caring, protective” are attributed to them. The truth is, at her core, a mother is a woman and a human being, and like any other human being, is capable of the same range of violence, hate and autonomous behavior. To view women or mothers any differently, is to not realize their full potential as human beings, for better or for worse.

So maybe in Aus thing are different than here, I don’t know. What I do know is that the 90% of DV is committed by men has been and continues to be debunked. In California they just recently had a case where the Appellate Court ruled that excluding men from DV shelters that receive state funding was unconstitutional. Numerous experts testified that Domestic Violence against men is a serious but hidden problem and they explained that although men report it less than women, empirical survey data consistently shows women are at least as violent as men in relationships, and that men suffer one-third of injuries. Guess some folks here have kept up on their readings

“the abuser threw objects “out of frustration” the proponet of that position is excusing the behavior. One NEVER accepts this argument when the abuser is male and the female has a contusion on her forehead..” You’ve not understood what I was writing about. With this I meant that women display their frustration more readily than men and will throw something to control a situation. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to throw and smash something in an effort to control a woman. I did not offer any form of ‘excusability’ of that action. But the point was to show the different motivation, and the different effects it has.

“It is hard to believe that woman kill for the same reasons as men., but they do. Men and women are far more alike than different. Men and women suffer the same mental illnesses and character disorders”

In regards to the reasons – but they don’t. And women and men, generally, don’t share the same personality disorders either. I thought I’d made that clear in my post, although you say you read it all.

And for you to continue along this line of women and men being more alike than we care to admit, tells me you’re not up to date with reading research reports on women’s use of violence and men’s. The motivations and effects are glaringly dissimiliar.

And as for anyone who dispels the 90% (BS? figure of women being victims of men’s domestic violence) then I suggest you take a look at the reports to the Canadian Coroners Office, by the Domestic Homicide Review Team, Province of Ontario 2006 Report. Then come back and refute the 90% figure, because you will, because in their statistics of domestic homicide over the 3 year period women are victims 95% of the time.

This guy Hamel sounds like a male supremacist. His idea of being equal is to cast blame onto women who are the victims 90% of the time.

I hear and read this BS 90% on a regular basis, but and this is a big but, whenever these types of people are asked to produce anything the slightly resembles the 90% number they back off and call people names;
this 90% is bogus and the people that support it are a threat to children.

Advocate

All humans experience frustration, fear, grief, disappointment, anger…however…we should be raising our children, both male and females, that feelings do not justify or excuse behavior. And there should be the SAME consequence to both offenders when they are young…not sympathy and understanding afforded girls and punishment given to boys.

Even if past abuse were the case, assaultive behavior in the here and now can’t be justified because of past incidents. This arguement is used in court to defend women who kill their spouses, but there are rare cases when it has actually been proven that the woman had suffered years of severe abuse (battered woman syndrome). What is intetreseting is that these women often are not convicted whether there had been historic abuse or not. The same is not true for men. Juries have a hard time believing that a woman would pull out a shot gun and shoot her sleeping husband unless there was a justifiable reason. It is hard to believe that woman kill for the same reasons as men., but they do. Men and women are far more alike than different. Men and women suffer the same mental illnesses and character disorders.

Any “yeah but…” or “thats because” arguments offered to explain female violence tells me there is significasnt denial going on by those who make these statements “explaining” female violence. And no amount of hard evidence will dissuade those individuals. They simply don’t want to believe it. It is that very denial that lead to the genocide of 6 million jews in WWII….the world didn’t WANT to believe it

Jan Brown is correct. The majority of shelters do not allow male victims, as I also so stated earlier. Both Jan and I work in this field. Citizens tax dollars pay for those shelters. This is about protecting turf and money. The argument is often that if we divide up the domestic violence treatment resources (money) to include men, then it will take away services for women. A similar argument was put forth in poor communities in the South over extending services to blacks….”well, after we take care of all the poor white folks then we’ll take care of the poor black folks.” If it hadn’t been for civil rights movement blacks would still be waiting.
Discrimination is discrimination no matter how it is presented.

AS to RO or FAPA orders, SAFE has proposed some changes to the system that would preserve the protection aspect while reducing the number of illegitimate restraining orders. (too lengthy to include here) These could also work in Australia’s courts.

Sheila
Stop Abuse For Everyone (SAFE)