A string of 78 Christmas cards was hung on the lawns of Parliament House today — one card for each Australian woman who will not spend this Christmas with loved ones as the result of domestic violence.
The symbolic gesture was part of a rally calling for greater Government action to curb domestic violence.
At the rally, attended by about 100 people, organisers called on the Federal Government to increase long-term funding for frontline crisis services, transitional housing and specialist legal services for women.
YWCA executive director Frances Crimmins said her organisation was also calling for greater assistance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, who are 45 times more likely to experience violence than non-indigenous women.
“Violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is not an Indigenous problem, but an Australian problem,” she said.
“And the response to support our Indigenous sisters has not been adequate to date.”
‘We mourn that we as a society did not do more’
Canberra mother-of-three Tara Costigan was one of the 78 Australian women killed this year as a result of domestic violence, whose names were read out at the rally.
Sabah al Mdwali, 28, of Gordon, was another.
“We mourn that we as a society did not do more to prevent this violence and to save their lives,” Ms Crimmins said.
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I have no doubt there are some violent women out there, but I really doubt it's in the epidemic proportions that men on women violence is.
Of course I may be wrong about this, but how often do you hear of women being beaten, raped, abducted, murdered by men? It's incredibly frequent. Whether it be by strangers or partners. Yet you rarely hear the other way around. This is not to suggest there aren't violent women and its not to legitimise their violence. But with men their violence appears to be at epidemic proportions.
So men are usually physically stronger than men which innately makes them more of a threat then women. For instance even if I'm the angriest person alive a man walking down the street has little to fear from me because I am unlikely to do him much physical harm no matter how hard I try. This doesn't make female violence right but it dies mean we women have much more to fear. If I'm in bed with a partner and all of a sudden he loses his temper I am completely at his mercy, he can rape me, beat me or murder me, whereas if I lose my temper at him there is little harm I can do to him maybe scratch him a bit. Also rape is an interesting exsmple because a partner can easily hold a woman down and say if you fight me I will hurt you, so she may comply meaning that the tape itself is not all that physically violent so there is no real proof that she was raped. So men don't live in the same potential fear that women do.
The only way that a women can physically get the better of a man is by using a weapon, if they can get to one while he is choking her etc. but even if the woman starts the whole thing and grabs a weapon, that is automatically a higher penalty, and things like stab wounds are easily detected, whereas a man can much more easily get away with violent acts on women such as rape, slapping her etc. to be quite frank if I had a partner that raped me in a non physically violent way, eg held me down and told me to comply otherwise he would hurt me, I would be unlikely to report it to police because how could you prove it?
So for those who are going on about women's violence towards men I think you are doing we women a disservice.
I'm not denying that we should also be looking at women who are violent, but often this debate seems to be hijacked by men who seem to have an agenda to prove that women are at similar levels of violence as men.
In fact in terms of overall violence I've seen stats that indicate that men commit the vast majority of all violent crimes, in terms of violence against women and men! I just found the stat in Wikipedia and I've forgotten what it was but it was sonething like 70-80%. Interestingly even women on women violence is significant smaller bad that in itself is surprising because surely two women have the same strength advantage so why do women choose not to fight each other, when men turn on their fellow man?
It seems there are actually more men killed by men than men killing women, but I'm not sure how many men were equally violent eg both choosing to fight each other or how many were complete victims, you could also argue that at least some of these me had a fighting chance, whereas the majority of women do not, making male on female violence, as well as the potential fear of male violence sonething that women live with constantly. Even if a woman has never been attacked she must he constantly vigilant walking late at night etc.
As far as the stats about Male DV victims goes, well I found this, though I readily admit I can't vouch for it's accuracy. However whilst it does show that a significant amount of me were victims of DV, it breaks down the stats to show that manny if these men were the perpetrators themselves killed by women trying to escape their violence etc. look below for the indepth report and it's interesting conclusion:
"The Domestic Violence Death Review Team released their third annual report earlier this year, which analysed the 877 homicides reported in NSW between 2000 and 2010. To summarise their findings:
593 men and 283 women were killed in NSW over 10 years.
101 (17%) of male and 137 (48%) of female homicides were domestic violence related.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were significantly overrepresented in both male and female victims.
108 women were killed by their intimate partners.
• 105 of those women were domestic violence victims.
• 3 were killed by a partner where there was "evidence of violence and abuse used by both parties with no clear coercion and control".
35 men were killed by their intimate partners.
•6 of those men were domestic violence victims, all 6 were killed by male partners.
•25 men were identified as being the abuser of the woman who killed them.
•3 were killed by a partner where there was "evidence of violence and abuse used by both parties with no clear coercion and control".
•1 man was the extramarital intimate partner of a woman and was killed by her and her abusive husband acting together.
Over the whole ten years, "there were no cases where a woman was a domestic violence abuser who killed a male domestic violence victim"."
I will freely admit I found this on the web so can't vouch for it's accuracy. If anyone has a reputable source please supply it so we can determine the real truth between the opposing points of view here.
Hi Anon, you've certainly put some thought into this topic, which is much appreciated.
I don't think there's any doubt that men are causing most of the violence in society, but there's a not insignificant amount of women who are abusing men who are being ignored.
A lot of men (I hesitate to use the term 'most' given the statistics) are ingrained to NEVER hit a woman. They may be bigger and stronger but they will take a beating rather than hit back because they know they will automatically be seen as the bad guy.
Your last points about the numbers you found on-line, which are the same figures I have seen and they come from a government department so you can be sure they are accurate (yes, that was sarcasm), are only about the deaths not the overall domestic violence. Most statistics put the rate of DV against men somewhere around 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 (thought I've seen studies which put it anywhere from 70% down to about 2%). We are not trying to exclude the women victims from the conversation, we are trying to include everyone!
I haven't responded to all of your points because I am at work and don't have time to double check all your figures, but I hope I have given you some food for thought.
Snorks thanks you for your reasoned reply. I don't have time now right now to respond in full, but I do understand your concern that there are violent women out there. I'm aware of it myself. I went out with a guy myself who was a gentle giant and much stronger than me but whenever we fought he would never lay a finger on me, which of course should be the expected behaviour, but I point this out because he told me he had a girlfriend prior to me who was fine sober but if she drank (though fortunately she rarely drank) she would lash out at him physically. She had actually been raped by a prior boyfriend which doesn't excuse her behaviour but I think that's why my boyfriend put up with it. This happened many times and he tried to discourage her from drinking and also he didn't retaliate, however one day she really hurt him and he screamed in pain and instinctively hit her.
I believe everything he told me because you couldn't have met a kinder gentler person.
I've also read about a woman who had a history of threatening boyfriends with guns etc, and eventually she killed one of them and was subsequently jailed but up till that point the guys had to leave town because of her stalking and because they weren't believed.
So I've no doubt you are right about the violence of women but I really doubt it's at anywhere near the same level as men, I really think that 1 in 3 number are most likely minor assaults, which of course doesn't make it right, but if say all of those women are slapping their partner as compared to a men beating their partners up you would have to say that the male violence is significantly worse.
Of course I don't have the proof myself about my supposition above and I may well be wrong, but why I make this supposition is because I would think if there were a lot of serious assaults by women then we would be getting more homicide stats and emergency service/hospital stats about the extreme violence of women. I just think that if the 1 in 3 stat is true it has perhaps been twisted to make it look like women are significantly violent. Admittedly I'm sure also that some men who are within theses stats may have lost their temper once in their life and slapped a woman (once again I'm not excusing this) but be lumped in with the stats of men who are systematically beating their wife every week.
So I do understand why some men are concerned at the lack of focus on female violence, it is just that it often feels that these men are trying to hijack the debate.
Perhaps what we need is a separate area, such as seperate services, phone counselling etc, to deal with DV on men, sexual assaults on men etc. because probably the majority of current training is female focused. I've actually also often wondered what the stats are on males being sexually assaulted, we do hear of boys being abused but rarely adult males but surely it must happen, and even the sexual abuse of boys seems to rarely discussed, in terms of services for survivors once they become adults. I've known quite a few women who have told me they have been survivors of child sexual abuse or rape as an adult, yet no male friend or boyfriend has ever told me such a thing, and it occurred to me one day that it is quite possible I could have been dating someone who had this happen to them but I think it would be a rare man that would admit to it. Yet some guys I've dated I've suspected have some form of abuse in childhood (whether it be sexual or otherwise), I could be completely wrong but I thought it was sad that they clearly were suffering from some emotional problem but would never talk to me about it yet our relationship would suffer because of this insolved mystery, and I would find myself trying to be a detective and trying to work it out with them constantly trying to block me knowing too much. It's sad because if I had found out they experienced sonething awful like sex abuse I would have just put my arms around them but perhaps they thought I would judge them. Who knows.
You talk a lot about your personal experience, which naturally I can't comment much on :)
I couldn't imagine a way to determine how many of the assaults for either (all!) sexes would be classified as minor, so that's a tricky one to work out.
I don't think there's much doubt that at the REALLY violent end of the spectrum it's pretty much all men that are the perpetrators. I'm not aware of any hospitalisation stats, though I haven't checked. But that doesn't mean that there are men who fear for their lives everyday, who take a beating to protect the kids, just as many women do.
I get that it might feel like we are hijacking, but really we aren't trying to subvert the conversation, we are trying to open it up to everyone.
You hear stories from men who ring DV helplines to say they need help and they are being abused, and the helplines give them the number for a helpline for people who are trying to stop themselves being violent. Or that any support is only available to women. Things like that don't help. (Not suggesting that's what happens all the time, but it does happen)
Unfortunately separate services cost twice the amount of money. Obviously shelters would need to be separate, no arguments there, but helplines and things like that should certainly be able to be shared.
Don't even get me started on sexual abuse, we'll be here all day. But for one thing, the CDC classes rape as, in laymans terms, a forced insertion into an orifice. Therefore a woman climbing on top of a man is not rape.
One thing I have never heard said, is if men are killing women in record numbers, why? If we are living with an extremely violent generation of men, what makes them act this way? i think we should look into the cause and not just the effect. As a man a recognise that men, overall are responsible for violent acts in the home. However, we are living in an generation where we have more single mothers than ever before, the majority of teachers, especially in primary schools, are women, they are bombarded with messages that hitting women is not on, yet here we are. As a man, I just don't understand.
Where do you get your absurd statistics? Did you make them up? More single mothers than ever before....when exactly? 1985? 1969? 2003? And if your fabricated statistic turns out to be true - wouldn't your question be where are the fathers and how are they role modelling being a good man?
By the way more men are being charged and convicted in record numbers means that *finally* the issue is being taken seriously - not that society as a whole is on the verge of collapse.