I recently came across THIS article entitled "Domestic violence reality check for the 'manosphere'". As experienced MRAs know, domestic violence is one of the golden geese for feminists to use in shaming men and seeking additional power and money. Feminists are developing ever more oppressive and complex ways to deny the reality that gender violence is symmetrical and not a gendered issue. You can read more about that HERE.

In the article, Sarah McKenzie attempts to downplay male domestic violence victimhood and discredit men´s rights groups. One of the key pieces of evidence of evidence she uses is a report called "Measuring Family Violence in Victoria Victorian Family Violence Database (henceforth to be referred to here as VFVD). The VFVD is available for download HERE. It is a report based off 11 years of data collected in a database in the state of Victoria, Australia.

I took a look at the VFVD and you will see what I wrote about it below. Before that, however, I want to mention two things. First, in writing here my real hope is that someone smarter and more scholarly than I will investigate the VFVD and write his or her own critique. The second thing I want to mention is that it is important for MRAs to always be skeptical when feminists make any claims about domestic violence statistics. When I first read the article by Ms. McKenzie, I immediately thought about a few of the more common reasons why domestic violence statistics are often misleading. These include:

  • Women Are Given Preferential Treatment Across The Board By Law Enforcement and the Courts Regarding Any Crime EXAMPLE STUDY

  • Men are less likely to report domestic violence.

  • Men are often not taken seriously by social workers, law enforcement, or society in general related to domestic violence EXAMPLE

  • False domestic violence allegations are frequently used by women (not saying most women do it, just that it is not unusual) to gain a tactical advantage in divorce and custody decisions. One article about that phenomena HERE.

  • Law enforcement and judges are frequently trained by gynocentric and ideologically-minded people. This training often leads to jurisdictions having policies which are deliberately skewed against males (though the law itself might sound neutral). For example, some jurisdictions have primary aggressor policies which say whoever is the primary aggressor should be the handcuffed and removed from the home. And just how is the primary aggressor determined? Among the criteria are "relative size", "apparent strength", how much "fear" the parties claim to have to one another, and "likelihood of future injury". These criteria, because of males´ typical size relative to a female partner, typical male reluctance to admitting fear or weakness, and typical responses by both males and females (including police officers) to a male who does admit weakness or fear make primary aggressor policies heavily skewed against males. More about primary aggressor policies HERE

  • Taking a man into custody and getting a restraining order is usually a civil action That means no significant evidence or witnesses are required, just an accusation. Officers take men into custody and judge´s rubber stamp restraining orders partly because they received biased training, but mostly because they are scared to death of the political fallout from women´s groups if they EVER should not arrest even ONE man who subsequently seriously hurts his spouse or girlfriend. So, safer to arrest a bunch of innocent men and not risk the wrath of women´s groups and and the feminist or white knight politicians who support them.

Now, returning to the the VFVD report about domestic violence in Victoria, Australia. The first problem I noticed concerned who is in charge of maintaining the database itself. The report says, "A Data Review Committee, which includes members from each of the current data source agencies, as well as representatives from the Office of Women’s Policy, academia and peak family violence organisations, in an advisory capacity, formally oversees the work of the Database and authorise finalisation of reports for government endorsement" (VFVD, p.25). Not good. The very same people with ideological and financial interests are involved in overseeing the database. Serious conflict of interest.

Later in the VFVD, I read, "In August 2004, Victoria Police released its Code of Practice (Victoria Police 2004, revised 2010). The Code of Practice outlines step-by-step processes for police responses to reports of family violence......Since the introduction of the Code of Practice, Victoria Police responses to victims, and actions taken to hold perpetrators accountable, have improved. Examples of this include a significant increase of 212 per cent in intervention order applications made by police, and referrals to family violence services being made at 80 per cent of attendances by police (VFVD, p. 27)." Those massive statistical jumps suggest to me a very deliberate pressure put on officers were to "get tough" and start producing higher arrest numbers. Given where the political pressure is coming from, who is doing the domestic violence training, and how the "primary aggresor" policies are written, guess whose hands those cuffs are going on?

Curious about the Victoria Police´s Code of Practice, I went and found it. The Victoria Police Code of Practice (hereafter called the PCOP) is downloadable HERE.

Looking through the PCOP, I noticed that in a section called the Aims of Code of Practice it states one of the aims as, "Increase the level of safety for all victims of family violence, particularly women and children" (PCOP, section 1.2). Why "particularly women"? Are female victims more worthy than male victims? Apparently, according to the Victoria Police. This not-so-subtle message seems to encourage police officers to adopt a pro-female/anti-male bias when confronting suspected domestic violence.

Later, in a section of the PCOP entitled Cumpulsory Police Action it says police will, "Identify who is the predominant aggressor" (PCOP, section 2.3). As discussed above, the "primary aggressor" in biased domestic violence codespeak actually means "the male" (or at the very least tilts the tables against the male).

The PCOP also describes handling of what we often call restraining orders in the United States. In Australia, they call their restraining orders Family Violence Intervention Orders (FVIO). These orders, as in the United States, are civil orders. Again, that means no real evidence or witnesses are needed for such orders, only an accusation. In fact, the accused doesn´t even have the right to appear before the judge and make his case before the order is issued. He only gets to see the judge after he is removed from his home, his children, and his belongings and, even when he does see the judge, it is still a civil action wherein, for reasons stated above, his wife´s accusation is all the judge cares about in most cases. That completed my review of the PCOP.

Returning to to the VFVD, I came across a section called Relationship With Adult Male Victims. In this section, it immediately states, "While it is important to examine the rates by which men report their experience of family violence, it is also essential to understand the difference between male victims and female victims. Much of the early research comparing male and female violence has utilised the Conflict Tactics Scale (Strauss et al. 1980) and counts the number and intensity of physically violent acts. However, this method of measuring violence does not assess the contextual factors or other forms of violence including rape, psychological, emotional and verbal abuse, financial deprivation, threats and intimidation." (VFVD, p. 87) So, in the small area of the report dedicated male victims, the VFVD authors thought it appropriate to make it a point not only to downplay those same male victims but to imply that the neutral, non feminist-biased domestic violence research is inadequate and untrustworthy. Feminism is about equality indeed.

Finally, I did find one surprising pro-male admission in the VFVD. It said, "Adult male victims were notably less likely than women to seek an intervention order against a current partner. Additionally, male affected family members with finalised intervention order applications against an intimate partner were more than twice as likely to be refused the order as compared with female victim" (VFVD, p. 89). Nothing surprising there, males are less likely to make a formal complaint and judges are less likely to protect men.

That´s about all I have to say about this article and report today. As I stated above, I do hope someone will take the ball and run with it regarding the bogus Down Under domestic violence stats. They shouldn´t go uncontested. Take care.