Gender and domestic violence

[K]

I can't work out which thread to post this in...

Poison in the press as Arizona couple's divorce goes very public

https://www.theage.com.au/business/small-business/poison-in-the-press-as-arizona-couple-s-divorce-goes-very-public-20181214-p50m81.html

Is it possible defamation? Possible domestic violence (i.e. attempted murder)? Something else? (Do we have a journalism ethics thread?)

[stui magpie]

I'd count this as a death from domestic violence

https://www.news.com.au/national/a-broken-mothers-inescapable-grief-olga-edwards-reached-a-tragic-point-of-despair/news-story/82999f325c4fc520cca16170c931e264

Woman in Sydney who's ex husband murdered their teenage kids a few months back then killed himself, has apparently committed suicide in the lead up to Christmas.

[think positive]

I agree, that poor woman, those poor kids, what a $�$%^%%$ selfish bastard he was

[stui magpie]

I'm putting this here without assuming guilt, innocence or facts not recorded..

[think positive]

Surely there is one sane member of the family can have the kids?

[stui magpie]

Little Johnny Howard is being praised, and deservedly so, for intervening in a domestic dispute.

[stui magpie]

Interesting conversation with the son tonight.

Apparently (allegedly) his exe's new bloke has been a bit free and handy with the physical stuff, both towards her and her son.

Now, the kid can be a handful and his ex is someone who would definitely provoke people to the point of whacking her (without excusing that action in any way, my son never hit her despite provocation), so now he is apparently in remand and she is in a hotel room paid for by the government.

My son has had his week messed up, having to leave work to go to the house and get stuff for her and try to settle down a really out of sorts 3 year old. When they arrived tonight, he explained things to me and said if the kid doesn't want dinner, just give him whatever he wants. If it's Ice cream, so be it. So it was. Took the kid in the park while the rest ate dinner, he was on about 60% rat power, but still had fun.

The bloke is a solid boy, but most of it's fat. My son picked up quickly that the guy was shit frightened of him, despite him doing nothing to earn that. Giving him a dose of his own medicine would be like smacking a blacmange.

[think positive]

Good on her for getting him locked up and getting herself and child safe. Hopefully She doesn�t backtrack

[David]

[Wokko]

You have to wonder in a similar but reversed reciprocal violence situation where a woman has endured constant low level assaults then snaps back if any judge would be threatening jail, any employer sacking or suspending or any online commentator vilifying her.

The fact is that men in these situations are held to a far, far higher standard of behaviour. They're expected to have the patience of a saint while facing assaults and emotional/psychological attacks. They're expected to accept the "walk away", "why don't you leave" crap that women victims face as well as "you're bigger and stronger, how could you let this happen" derision on top.

[David]

That concerns me too, Wokko. More people need to speak up about this double standard.

[watt price tully]

[Wokko]

Yet you don't question the low level assaults comment which diminishes her violence even though she's facing an assault charge and her violence was totally unprovoked. I don't believe I diminished what he did in the slightest, he slapped her and threw her to the ground, a slap of any magnitude would be audible and even if a man acts in self defence there's always a white knight ready to use violence, either personal or of the state, against him.

I've been in this situation, I've had to disarm a knife wielding partner when she came at me and when the police arrived it was ME who had to take my daughter and leave the house after initially the police were going to leave her with a drunk, violent abuser. Had I been just a bit less capable of verbal argument I'd have been led away in cuffs. It took an hour of questioning and HER father talking to the cops in my defence to convince them that she was the instigator and abuser. Even then it was still me who had to leave.

She has subsequently repartnered and just lost custody of her new kids but not before her new partner got kicked out of the house and had to face court due to false allegations and constant violence and emotional abuse (I haven't even scratched the surface here).

As for murders there are plenty of examples of women murdering both their partners and far more often their own children. Lets not pretend that women are wholly virtuous creatures, there are as many evil c*** women as there are men, it's only due to men's physical advatanges that more aren't killed/assaulted physically.

[David]

WPT, I'm pretty sure Wokko was referring to the actions she had committed against him as "low level assaults" (which seems to be a fair description, from the coverage above) in his analogy.

Otherwise, I'm astonished how often I read throwaway lines in opinion pieces that murders or serious physical assaults committed by women against their partners need to be "contextualised" as often having occurred in mutually violent relationships. I mean, no shit; but am I crazy to see that as a deliberate attempt to minimise and/or justify the phenomenon? Because the same undoubtedly happens often in the reverse scenario, and yet nobody on the progressive side of this issue seems to be using that as a justification for male violence (more to the point, it's just simply never brought up). There are lots of partners who beat each other up; it seems strange that we're only disposed to treating one kind of person as a victim.

[stui magpie]

C'mon David, you know there's an approved narrative around these things. In summary it goes "Men are at fault, women are the victims". The fact that it's true in most cases doesn't disguise the fact that when it isn't true, when something happens that doesn't fit the narrative, it's either twisted to force fit, downplayed or ignored.

The situation Wokko described with his ex is not very common in the attempted assault but very common in the rest. That is one reason (to partly answer WPT's question) why Men at least don't leave abusive partners if there's a mortgage or kids involved. They know the wife will get the house and kids and he'll be paying for it.

Growing up in a country town everyone knows everyone elses business. I'm aware of fathers of kids I went to school with who's regular routine seemed to be go to the pub after work, go home pissed, eat dinner, smack the wife around (those two sometimes in the other order) then go to bed.

On the other hand, there were more women who engaged in psychological violence. The "husband" was a sperm donar and life support system for a wallet, which she controlled, and who was systematically emasculated and belittled. basically gaslighting before that term came to be. If any of them ever snapped and physically retaliated, no cops were involved, rather it was just used to add a guilt trip to the arsenal.

1 woman a week is killed in domestic violence in Australia, which is a tragic stat and gets a lot of airplay

That 6 men a day take their own lives in Australia only gets raised when there's a mens mental health campaign