- May 5, 2006
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I agree it's complex (is it any surprise the Family Court gives custody to the mother more often when the mother traditionally was the primary caregiver or stay at home parent?).
Historically no, but historically the stereotypical divorce meant wife gets the kids, wife takes the house, husband pays child support and gets the kids every other weekend. Equality is a two way street. With the exception of early childhood (try as you might no man can breast feed) there should be no inherent bias towards women in an era where most households have two working parents.
But what doesn't help is taking a defensive attitude to a real problem. Men might not be inherently bad, but men are inherently the problem in domestic violence incidents. Instead of trying to distract from the issue by saying 'but I'm a good bloke', as if this fact is a personal attack on us, we should simply acknowledge the issue and try to solve it.
Defence mechanisms are usually a response to being attacked. I might need to post the Bill Burr clip again. Does anyone really think the scumbag who is laying into his wife is going to see the latest "DV is bad, men are bad" ad on TV and suddenly go 'ohhh, so I can't do this'?
When it comes to something like suicide people are quick to look towards mental health and ask why are so many young people killing themselves, or indigenous people, or trans people, or fathers, or farmers... but when any DV discussion sparks up it's always "men are bad, men are violent" and anything else is victim blaming. Isn't anyone interested in the why? I sure am. I'm not violent towards anyone let alone women or children. Why are other people? What difference in wiring or upbringing or environment triggers this behaviour? Simply saying that if everyone who is violent would be not violent there wouldn't be violence is inane. Way more men (and women) kill themselves than kill others in this country. They are both acts of people who are desperate/irrational/unstable.
Men are over-represented in physical DV cases. I doubt anyone is surprised by this given men are generally physically dominant compared to women. If everything else was 50/50 I would still expect there to be more male DV physical assault cases reported. Emotional and psychological abuse is more of a grey area. Actual NRL player Josh Reynolds was charged with assault and video came forward of him yelling at a woman. It then came out the woman was a lunatic con-artist who convinced him she was carrying then lost his twins on more than one occasion. I'm not surprised he snapped. Once again it doesn't justify violence but let's not pretend he wasn't pushed to the end of his tether. IMO we are in a better place for knowing both sides of that particular story. It disappoints me that some people's only take away from that would be 'He should learn to control his temper'.
It's the same as the 'all lives matter' movement or 'not all men'. It takes a real and present danger and asks people to stop thinking about and think about our hurt feelings instead.
As an individual you can only really influence your own sphere. I don't hit women, and I don't know of (or have suspicions of) any friends that do either. If you don't do it, don't support/justify others doing it and don't turn a blind eye to others doing it are you still part of the problem?