Friday 11 July 2014

We Should All Be Sorry

His Finest Hour: Under pressure from TV3's Patrick Gower, David Cunliffe not only refused to step back from his "I'm sorry I'm a man" speech to the Women's Refuge Symposium, he actually pressed forward with a passionate defence of Labour's plan for reducing domestic and sexual violence. True leadership has nothing to do with following the line of least resistance.

“PLEASE TELL ME I’M DREAMING”, texted a friend of mine. “Please tell me that David Cunliffe didn’t just apologise for being a man.” I stared at my cell-phone in disbelief. Was he joking? Why would the leader of a political party languishing in the opinion polls alienate at least half of the voting public? Why would he hand his opponents such an enormous cudgel? As if his party wasn’t already battered enough?
 
Later that day, at the pub, the guffaws and the jokes continued. I have to confess, I contributed my fair share of them. I would also point out that although all of my drinking companions were lefties, by no means all of them were men. This was equal opportunity ridicule.
 
So what was going on here? Why were a tableful of seasoned leftists – male and female – and all of them well-versed in the facts and figures of domestic violence in New Zealand so unanimous in condemning the opening sentences of David Cunliffe’s speech to last Friday’s Women’s Refuge Symposium?
 
It might be useful, here, to remind ourselves of his actual words:
 
‘‘Can I begin by saying I’m sorry – I don’t often say it – I’m sorry for being a man, right now. Because family and sexual violence is perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women and children. So the first message to the men out there is: ‘wake up, stand up, man up and stop this bullshit’.’’
 
You see? Written down in full and contextualised, Cunliffe’s words don’t look all that silly – do they? Indeed, you might even say they look rather brave.
 
None of us seated around that table at the pub, and no intelligent person reading Cunliffe’s sentences anywhere else in New Zealand, would dispute them. The perpetration of psychological, physical and sexual violence is overwhelmingly a masculine phenomenon. And while not every male is guilty of assaulting and/or raping women and girls, the violence inflicted upon females by a minority of males does contribute to the maintenance of a patriarchal culture from which all men derive benefit.
 
Patriarchy and Imperialism are closely related, so perhaps it would help to elucidate the role that violence plays in shoring up our patriarchal culture by elucidating the role it played in shoring up the British Empire.
 
It is said that the entire Indian sub-continent was kept in the thrall of Great Britain by an imperial administration of fewer than 100,000 men. By no means all of these men were engaged in the brutal business of repression. The majority were well educated, thoroughly decent civil servants who would never have dreamed of flogging a man to death, or presiding over the slow starvation of an entire province. Such dreadful acts were carried out by others: by soldiers and policemen. Deplorable, of course, but necessary – if the British Raj was to survive.
 
Is that why even we lefties buried our heads in our hands upon hearing Cunliffe’s words? Because we knew, instinctively, just how outraged “ordinary” men would be when they heard them?
 
Not because these other men were in favour of hurting women and children, but because, however ham-fistedly, Cunliffe had acknowledged all men’s complicity in the myriad acts of violence and intimidation that mandate the equally numerous acts of female-to-male deference and acceptance by which the patriarchal individual defines himself.
 
The exercise of power and control constitutes the common coinage of both patriarchy and imperialism. And, no matter how thoroughly we attempt to conceal them beneath the draperies of romantic love and the “White Man’s Burden”, the true character of their brutal transactions cannot be hidden.
 
All men (and, I suspect, an alarmingly large number of women also) learn to both see and not-see the effects of domestic and sexual violence. We recoil in horror from the murdered wives and children but find it next to impossible to recognise the manifest evil in the perpetrators – the men invariably described as “just an ordinary bloke, a good family man”.
 
But, in portraying these “enforcers” of patriarchy in such chillingly normative terms we confirm (albeit unconsciously) our own participation in the dark secret that Cunliffe shouted to the world.
 
That these horrors are of our making – men’s making – and will persist until, acknowledging the role violence plays in preserving our patriarchal privilege, we can all say: “I’m sorry for being a man.”
 
This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 11 July 2014.

42 comments:

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Jesus Christ, who is advising the man? Didn't someone read his speech and say for Christ's sake, this is bound to be taken the wrong way, and made into some sort of right-wing slogan/attack. I mean, when is anything ever taken in context by politicians?

Kat said...

Apology and sorry. Two words with different meanings in the context they are used. The way David Cunliffe used the word sorry in the context of his speech, his immediate audience and the calculated wider ripples of political commentary just goes to show his fierce intelligence.

Brendan McNeill said...

Chris

There is plenty of evidence to demonstrate that women are just as guity as men when it comes to perpetrating violence against their spouses.

I suggest you view this study that took place in the USA and is reproduced on the US National library of Medicine and health website.

In this study of over 11,000 respondants, one key finding was: "In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/

This doesn't excuse men's violence, but it helps to give some context to the wider discussion around domestic violence, and the role of women as well as men as perpetrators.

To apologise for being a man, even taking into account the context is unhelpful at best. None of us has any control over our gender. It's like apolgizing for being white, or Maori.

It's doubly unhelpful when violence is not restricted to any one gender. It was an amaturish political statement that has backfired on him, and rightly so.

Anonymous said...

Strangely I was not feeling affected at all by David Cunliffe's "apology" or comment on being sorry to be a man. For me it was HIS comment and expression of outrage at the domestic and sexual violence scandal that exists in New Zealand.

As I am not a perpetrator or otherwise ill minded, I did not feel affected. But it appears so many New Zealand males, and even females, felt "offended" or "alienated" by what David Cunliffe said.

I must realise now, I am a migrant from Europe, Continental Europe, and where I come from, what David said, is nothing that extraordinary, or bizarre, certainly not these days.

Re what went on in part of the media here, and in many people's minds, that told me, hey, this country and people are "different", they talk a lot about equality, freedom, Jack being like his master, and this country being the first that gave women the vote, but in reality, there are many unresolved issues under the surface.

I know for a fact, that there is a lot of violence going on here, these days not so much physical, but in words, and in emotions and in a mental way, and it is SICK.

What horrifies me is, how under this government, that has brought in conditions that divide more, that create more social and economic pressures on so many, we have the stress level rise, and people are looking for scape goats and they are more divisive and less conciliatory.

Indeed, the social fabric has been destroyed, and like rats in a lab, people turn against each other, which is wanted by the powerful elite, that run the show.

If only people would realise, take time out, reflect and think for a moment, also about what Cunliffe really said, then they may realise how foolish or mean they really are.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I don't understand, he was fiercely intelligent enough to do this, yet not intelligent enough to see it would be taken the wrong way? Or – was it done deliberately in order to provoke the "wider ripples"? Seems to me, wider ripples do more damage than good. Maybe I'm just not intelligent enough :-).

Anonymous said...

@Kat - "...just goes to show his fierce intelligence."

Intelligent Cunliffe may be.
Street-smart he certainly isn't.

Jigsaw said...

What it shows firstly is that the man has almost non-existent political nous. Matt McCarten is an adviser? The second thing it demonstrates is Labour's absurd take on identity politics in that everyone can be put is some sort of box. Being male therefor is about being violent just as Labour seems to think that Indians in the population can only be represented by another Indian, Maori by Maori, male by a male and so on. We had a female member of parliament who was absolutely useless-not because she was a female but because she really was useless. Anyone can get my vote as long as they at least in the important areas,they share my vision-race, gender or anything else is irrelevant.

heather said...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke
i feel a new and encouraging respect for David Cunliffe

JanM said...

On the basis of this speech I plan, after a long absence, to vote Labour again. David Cunliffe has shown himself to be a man of integrity, passion and intelligence.
Ridicule has become the combat mode of choice in this country, heaven help us all, popularized first by Muldoon, and refined by John Key. Have your 'seasoned leftists' decided to follow suit? Ridicule is really just a bigger word for bullying, and bullying is the main ingredient in patriarchal privilege of all stripes. It is not a surprise that there were women involved but that's a whole other very big subject!

bob said...

Complete bullshit

greywarbler said...

That was written from the heart Chris about what Cunliffe said from the heart also. There is acceptance of violence in NZ by all, but women receive it often just because of their gender and they are more easily victimised because of being smaller and weaker. Then in addition there is their use as sexual victims which causes additional damage to the person, this time to the whole being and personal integrity.

Women will welcome Labour action to make change. And gradually public acceptance or excuses will no longer remain.

But the need and willingness to apply self-discipline and hold oneself to one's own goal of self management must be talked about and taught at home, on the rugby field, at school, at work.

(I say rugby field because lately there have been egregious examples of sideline abuse from parents that they are not ashamed to display in public.)
What happens then when parents lose 'it' at home. With no attempt at self control in everyday matters, they role model this behaviour to their children.

If hedonism is the rule, drink, drugs and thoughts of sex are considered as an extra enjoyable event to be obtained at will, and rape is a likely possibility that would not carry any guilt to the perpetrator. It would be just an extension of the evening's entertainment. There is a blindness to it as invasion of the woman's right to make a reasoned choice. This blindness results in a dead patch in the minds of such men which may never be eliminated. A new paradigm needs to be built in younger men. Good on Labour for championing it, and all good men would come to the aid of this Party.

greywarbler said...

A trivial comment. I liked the rainbow effect shining on David Cunliffe's hair. A quite appropriate image for the topic.

Anonymous said...

The issue of course is that low status males at the bottom of the social heap, ie Waitakere men, don't take kindly to being told they are beneficiaries of patriarchy, especially when the ones doing the telling in academia, media, government and the intelligentsia earn five times what they do.

Labour's looking more like a 25 percent party, tops.

Victor said...

GS

I totally agree with you.

On a personal level, I can only admire and agree with Cunliffe's statement.

But it was obviously yet another destructive hostage to fortune as far as the media were concerned.

Surely Cunliffe had someone in his entourage capable of pointing this elementary political truth out to him.

Can they all have forgotten how Auntie Helen walked the plank over (inter alia) the "anti-smacking bill" and peculiarly shaped lightbulbs? And those weren't even her ideas in the first place!

I've long been of the view that Cunliffe's performance is being deliberately sabotaged by some in his party.

My only area of doubt is over whether all the saboteurs are on the Right or whether there are also some on the Left.

There again, he shouldn't have needed advice over this issue. He should have just known NOT to do it.

May I add, though, that my wife disagrees with me. She doesn't normally use the "half the population are women" line of attack but has done so on this occasion.

So I could be wrong about how it will all fall out in the end.

Anonymous said...

I am just sorry he is the leader of Labour. So many stuff ups, what a joke. Shane Jones, the ideal contender, would never have said something so achingly daft. Never, ever, ever. Cunliffe seems to have lost all his political smarts, he is not meant to be PM.

peterpeasant said...

A bold move. Badly reported

Opposition parties have been strangely silent.

Sure as hell got the issue out there as the chattering classes like to say.

Simon Cohen said...

Or lack of common sense Kat.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Brendan, if you want context you should read the critiques of this study. Including "Male versus Female Intimate Partner Violence: putting controversial findings into context." Which maintains that at the least, there is not enough study into serious violence, which is probably more a male preserve than minor violence.

JanM said...

Shane Jones, Anonymous, Shane Jones? Pardon me, but isn't he the MP who got it in the neck for watching porn on the state purse? Shane Jones - do you think there's the remotest chance that the Women's Refuge Symposium would have even had him through their door?
We need someone with a bit more nous than that for prime minister, otherwise we might as well stick with the wally we've got now

Loz said...

Being sorry “for being a man” isn't out of context, by simple assertion of grammar.

Yes it’s true that the majority of domestic abuse offenders are male. It’s also true that a predominance of offending occurs with Maori and Pacific Islanders. The majority of offenders are certainly heterosexual and the vast majority of offenders are adults. With all of these labels, how we choose to categorise others says more about our own choice of identity and prejudice than it does any categorical truth in the label.

What’s more significant than identity politics labels is that violence in all contexts is an assertion of power of the emboldened against the weak.

New Zealand does have a problem with a permeation of sexual, physical, and mental violence in the workplace, in the home and on the streets. Horrifically, between 10 - 18% of employees in this country can be expected to experience the violence of workplace bullying on a weekly basis (Nielsen, Matthiesen and Einarsen (2010)) and this is not due to, or limited by, the sex or race of perpetrators or victims. Restricting an analysis of violent abuse to a sexual context, then concluding the responsibility for the existence of violence is men is myopic to the endemic nature of the problem itself.

Ministry of Justice statistics into the victims of physical abuse show that 42% of violent abuse cases were inflicted on males. This simply doesn’t support the concept that violence is primarily a sexual or gender based issue.

All forms of violence suppress basic human rights to the dominance of those who opt to use the power at their disposal as a weapon. If violence in the home is an extension of the same thuggish dominance behaviour that exists on the streets and in the workplace then the gender, ethnicity and age divisions crumble to suggest there is a much broader culture of violence that doesn't conform to the “patriarchy” assertions.

JanM said...

Loz, the majority of REPORTED offending is committed by Maori and Pacific Islanders - it's a class thing as much as anything. My violent partner was a lawyer (Maori, as it happens) and the violence was unreported because of the damage it could do to his career and the reduced likelihood of a conviction because of his professional status. I had a number of friends who left violence unreported for similar reasons, including one who was left in no doubt by her 'pillar of the community' husband that he would see to it that her children were removed.

Anonymous said...

In the political climate Cunliffe could utter a statement of one word, with one letter and would be condemned. "I" would turn him into the most ego-centric, self-absorbed, egotistical political leader in our history "with no thought for other people."

Seven words would turn into seven million words of explanation, interpretation and translation. No words would turn him into a non-communicative, unavailable, fence-sitting, indecisive.

Most of the responses to his "sorry" utterances have missed the axiomatic preface: "David Cunliffe, I am sorry I am too lazy to read in full what you said, too thick to understand it or too limited in wit and experience to put it into anything but the narrowest context. But that will not stop my raving."

manfred said...

He may have some good motivations for wanting to apologise for the beastly behaviour of his fellow men (the absurdity of having to take responsibility for something he has no control over aside).

Labour will only win by some truly innovative economic plans (of which they have a couple - Kiwibuild and Kiwipower come to mind).

The presence of the ABC's in caucus make bold policies harder to create and promote.

I am by nature a labour supporter (and I'll still give my electorate vote to them depending on the electorate I live in) but I really feel like they don't deserve to win this time.

What's the use for the long term feasibility of New Zealand as a social democratic country if Labour get into power in September then get kicked out in the next election because they are riven with divisions and are unfit to govern.

I think the democratic voting system that has recently been adopted by the Labour party is absolutely fantastic, I just think it may take a while for it's effects to be felt.

In other words, it may take a while to clean out the dross - those foolish self-satisfied right wing MP's who still believe in Third Way politics. What this country needs is some muscular Socialism.

greywarbler said...

I note an interesting fact quoted by Loz that 42% of violent events happen to males, but can we have that rounded off with the other important fact. The 42% male recipients of violence - what was the breakdown by gender of the attackers? And the 58% of women attacked, likewise? Then we would see where the violence in the system lies. I think both men and women need to look where the lies are.

Jam M I have just read Minette Walters book Acid Row that deals with women on lower incomes coping with their lot and the violence of alienated young men. It has a happy ending written in by the way, which is sometimes possible.

And Anon as 20.08 good points. The cloak of anonymity deepens when there is more than one!

Robert said...

While I think the Auckland rail loop and system a hopeless and dangerous waste of money running into all the wrong wasteland white and black areas and hopelessly expensive to provide security at Night, I say vote Genter in Remuera/Epsom/Mt Eden because Cunliffe is proving a Milliband wimp and the Greens are right nuclear power is shit and pure contamination and dairy is shit. The problem isnt hetro porno its the family farm and the failure to close down the gays in NZ after 1982. Stalin and Cooleridge both smashed the family farm about 1929 except in the cretin farm states Iowa, North and South Dakota etc for the same reason, the country is unsuitable for intelligent life and the family farm results in incest and abuse. Nothing united Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky more and the Kennedy's hated even visiting those states. They regarded them and agriculture as cretin, which is why Carter beat Ted Kennedy easily in Iowa and Carter knew he could easily get the nomination, because the Kennedy machine didnt have a clue in those states and when Ted came on like Huey Long in South Boston, the Bronx or Philly. It was all over the family.

Anonymous said...

Pleasant Point where Cunliffe comes from is not Timaru, and it certainly wasn't in the early 80's. Timaru was basically urban then with a sophisticated radio nad print media, equal to all but the 3 largest cities in NZ. The Point is deep country. Washdyke were Mark Oldfield and the Gloags come from is borderline urban and actually housed the largest USAF airbase in NZ in 70-71 and old Timaru school hall really shook when the sang the Battle Hymm of the Republic. Oldfield always told me farming today is 'heavy industry'. However I always disagreed with his decison to conduct a coup to end the CRC although similar action would be the answer to get rid of Aucklands idiot council.

Robert said...

Cunliffe's gutless failure to give Little a decent , top 3 list place and sack A.King is pretty much the end of my support although, Collins is a nightmare. So vote Genter.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

Robert, I've said it before but it bears repeating because you never take the slightest bit of notice. You have an obligation to be fucking clear. You don't take it seriously enough. How can anyone agree or disagree with what you say when we haven't got a fucking clue what you're saying.

Jigsaw said...

Manfred- Where is this 'muscular socialism' practised? North Korea? Venezuela? Or perhaps we would be the first to find this earthly paradise..........

greywarbler said...

@ Robert your prose splashes colourful phrases like Jackson Pollock does on his giant canvasses. Do your words mean anything or is it just BS and old rope?

@ Anonymous 14.13 I didn't know that Timaru had been favoured before with USA airbase. Why were they there? Connection with Antarctic was it?

greywarbler said...

@Jigsaw
My feeling when I read muscular
socialism
was that it sounded very male, and the old socialist style was to exclude
women from a place of respect and comradeship to the tea makers and note takers. Considering that David Cunliffe was apologising for men not affording women the respect and worth of equals, it is hardly the right expression for future direction for Labour.

The word 'muscular' though triggers consciousness of an important conundrum for many of today's middle class Labour who are inclined to view physical work and semi-skilled labour as primitive. They have been drawn to the exciting modern technology and
increasingly, robotic use in manufactures, as being the modern path to advancement. But whose mainly? This approach ignores the reality of our needs both for physical goods and work for the majority of people. And those people in our country need respect for their worth, and work with livable wages, especially by women, in the economic paradigm. Which they don't have now. They actually want to labour and once were Labour warriors and fervent Labour supporters.

Sorry to get away from the subject Chris but the thought came and I wanted to get it down as it is central today.

Guerilla Surgeon said...

I think that the muscular socialism expression harks back to 'muscular Christianity' of Charles Kingsley and Tom Brown's school days. Or in my case, Tom Merry and co. of St Jim's. Combining evangelism with exercise :-). I assume though that it's being used in a slightly different sense here :-).

Loz said...

Maori are the victims of almost half the hospitalisations of violent assault.

Eighty percent of assaults requiring hospitalisation of males occur outside of the house while for females, 56% of injuries will occur at home.

What tells us is that the demographics of those most likely to experience physical violence (a high predominance of Maori and Pacific Islander males from low socio-economic groups) will be physically victimised outside of the home. These same demographics fit the reported crime statistics as the group most likely to be the perpetrators of violence against women and children in the home.

Studying domestic violence in isolation to a broader analysis of violence in throughout NZ society is a mistake as it's clearly not as simple as a being due to the concept of patriarchy.

Males aged between 15-25 had a five and a half times greater hospitalisation rate for being victims of violent abuse than women in the same age group.

Greywarbler: Police statistics from 2001 suggest that 91% of domestic violence was directed from males toward women - I'm sure the statistics aren't far off but we also know that the percentage of violence offences perpetrated by young women has been growing significantly since then. Statistics New Zealand figures in 2013 show charges of "acts intended to cause injury" committed by young women were up 60 per cent over the last 18 years.

greywarbler said...

Perhaps a footnote, don't know if its too late and/or too long. But interesting.

Some stats were quoted by Loz 13/7 13.33 and Brendan McNeill 11/7 22.00 as to women's violence. I have checked for fact to prevent false ideas..

First what is regarded as 'violence'. This quoted by Brendan McNeill http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/
. ...respondents answered 2 questions
“How often in the past year have you threatened your partner with violence, pushed or shoved him/her, or thrown something at him/her that could hurt,” and
“How often in the past year have you slapped, hit, or kicked your partner”
(on the following scale: 0 = never, 1 = once, 2 = twice, 3 = 3–5 times, 4 = 6–10 times, 5 = 11–20
times.)

It's a broad sweep, threatening once, to shoved 20 times. Kicked once, (harder than in rugby or soccer?), hit on the chest so it stung once, or 20 times on the face.
So it's a very hit and miss measure don't you think? A relatively light physical action is counted but in reality is it violence, abuse or assault if not repetitive?

Then this was quoted: In this study of over 11,000 respondants, one key finding was: "In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases."
But further down this should be noted – I put in the figures for those who understand them.
Regarding injury, men were more likely to inflict injury than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1, 1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater injury than was non-reciprocal intimate partner violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4; 95% CI=3.6, 5.5)...

So it looks as if people in a mutually abusive relationship are the worse, and in non-reciprocal women may get physical, but both men or women do so to a lesser level than the reciprocal ones.

And these stats are quite definite about women receiving the most violence. The fact is that women do commit violence, that should not be a revelation, but this should not be used to remove the need for control over men's greater violence with greater injury, their mental derangement, anger and vengefulness, and impulses for injury and death of the partner and/or her children whether fathered by the man or not.

From headings under 'Google - nz violence and assaults adults by gender.
see www.waves.org.nz.
For most violent crimes (violence in streets, pubs and sports-fields) the perpetrators are more likely to be men – family violence is no different (a US study confirmed that 93% of all kinds of violence experienced by adult women and 86% of all violence experienced by adult men was perpetrated by men).

1 in 4 women and 1 in 8 men report they have been a victim of an offence by their partner during their lifetime (includes behaviours from serious assault to petty threats). 85% of the serious partner offences were against female
victims (2009 NZ Crime and Safety Survey).

Loz said...

Sorry Chris - I don't know how the last response of mine came to be clipped ... it would have made a bit more sense in entirety...

JanM - You make good points I don't disagree with you. The fact that the reported violence statistics we do have are not a complete picture of the extent of violence within our community only reinforces how broad the problem actually is. This is why the hospital admissions data in relation to violent assault is so important.

We know from hospital admissions from 2000 - 2009, 76% of serious, non-fatal assaults were on men.
The factors of economic class related to experiencing violence is extremely revealing. Low decile socio-economics bracket males were between 17-26 times more likely to be hospitalised victims of violent crime than the decile at the top of the spectrum and low decile women had even worse incidence with between 32-39 times the likelihood of being hospitalised due to violent assault than the most affluent males!

Maori are the victims of almost half the hospitalisations of violent assault.

Eighty percent of assaults requiring hospitalisation of males occur outside of the house while for females, 56% of injuries will occur at home.

What tells us is that the demographics of those most likely to experience physical violence (a high predominance of Maori and Pacific Islander males from low socio-economic groups) will be physically victimised outside of the home. These same demographics fit the reported crime statistics as the group most likely to be the perpetrators of violence against women and children in the home.

Studying domestic violence in isolation to a broader analysis of violence in throughout NZ society is a mistake as it's clearly not as simple as a being due to the concept of patriarchy.

Males aged between 15-25 had a five and a half times greater hospitalisation rate for being victims of violent abuse than women in the same age group.

Greywarbler: Police statistics from 2001 suggest that 91% of domestic violence was directed from males toward women - I'm sure the statistics aren't far off but we also know that the percentage of violence offences perpetrated by young women has been growing significantly since then. Statistics New Zealand figures in 2013 show charges of "acts intended to cause injury" committed by young women were up 60 per cent over the last 18 years.

pat said...

Agree that on the face of it Cunliffes apology may have not been terribly wise...then I consider the subliminal effect on 51% of the enrolled potential voters and maybe its a little more cunning than it first appears.

greywarbler said...

Loz at 15/7 16.59
That was an important point about viewing the hospital admission data to get a fuller picture of the extent of violence, not just relying on police report figures (now seen as possibly flakey. One area tempted to fudge, so could others.)

Another point on violence and who suffers it most showed up in a study I read, can't remember source but I think it was NZ work.
That showed that the victims of crime, are more likely to be in poor areas, from people who lived nearby. As I remember poor people were victims 12 times more than wealthier.
So crimes of violence would occur at a higher rate in poor areas, both in relationships and between citizens of that area. If there was a macho culture, which another study noted was the norm in working class,lower income UK communities (can't produce source) and also in many ethnic communities including some Pacific Island ones, then this would show up in stats of violence and intimidation as well.

The accepted use of violence can be integral to a culture. For a picture of violence-embedded cultures try Burned Alive by Souad (see Wikipedia) about an Islamic woman's escape from death, and Thomas Belmonte's great study The Broken Fountain on a poor enclave in Naples.

Anonymous said...

Hi Chris

Any comment by any government figure that is silent on male and children victims of female violence, is at best, incomplete. In my job, I have been to crime scenes with dead men and children with female offenders.

As commented above, men perpetrate most violence that results in harm. Alongside this, to ignore harm caused by violent woman is to further abuse their victims.

Ongoing, the focus should be on the violence. Let’s not get distracted from this. FV will not be effectively modified until a holistic approach honoring all victims and condemning all violence is forthcoming. To ignore any category of victims is gross neglect and unethical.

manfred said...

'Muscular Socialism' means the state, invested with democratic legitimacy by universal suffrage, stands up to corporate interests in the interests of the people.

Anonymous said...

Judging by the polls most of NZ disagrees.

jh said...

I wouldn't have apologised for being a man because I have studied biology and life is a messy issue (it's a bit like a lion apologising for eating meat).
Another reason I wouldn't have apologised is that Women's Refuge has more than it's share of radical feminists who are full of venom.
Some men pee on the toilet seat. I don't think I should apologise on their account either.

CarbonGuilty said...

Can I please draw attention to the enormous amount of sense being written by Loz, who clearly knows her(?)stuff.

And Chris, why on earth do you believe DC was sincere? Surely he was just saying what he thought his crowd of the moment wanted to hear. That is why so many either dislike or despise him, especially Labour supporters. Don't you get it? He is a fake!!