91 Comments

I'm very pleased to see comments from sane, well reasoned women about the recognition of violence against men. I'm manifestly lucky to live in a time I have someone of Bettina's calibre to articulate and call this out so well. Thank you for shunning the Duluth Model of men.

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DV is not universlly considered a male versus female issue, well for those that are thinking folk.

It is "documented" that a % of women are also perpetuators of such actions.

It is accepted, by women (even their advocats), that about 30% are in fact contributers to violence against males.

Recenly, a prominent advocat for women suggested that in 2 years we can elimminate violence altogether aginst women. A commendable target no doubt and who would disagree, but assuming such elimination, what happens to the 30% males who remain? Of course, they then comprise 100% of DV and will be supported accordinly. And funded?

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Without that video he would have been toast.

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I was a second-wave feminist, and even worked in a battered women's shelter in my twenties. But the world is grey, not black and white. I personally knew enough monstrous women to know that feminist ideology was just that: ideas (which is not to denigrate ideas, but to underline the complexity of any idea). Today, while I'm deliberately 99% off mainstream media, I followed the trial just enough to know what was going on. I was very happy to see Depp vindicated.

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> She slaps, he retaliates, and she’s the one more likely to be injured.

And for a brief moment, I hoped that someone wouldn't argue from the premise that only women matter. But, here we are again. Female on male violence is bad mostly because it hurts women.

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Love you work. Its so reassuring to finally begin to hear pragmatism in a sea of ‘emotion’

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Teach girls at a young age to respect both boys and girls. Girls are only taught to protect themselves from boys now. It leads to girls and women not respecting men throughout life.

Single moms talk poorly of the dad and men in general.

Sons grow up to not marry.

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When Amber Heard 'wrote' that magazine article claiming to be a DV victim, it was a very cynical and arrogant move. Well, it has blown up in her face, and yes, the feminist stranglehold on the DV narrative is starting to weaken.

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To me this is strange.I was raised by my grandmother,I was close to my aunts and we had a lot to do with other families.Violence in a marriage was never an issue.Alcohol was frowned upon.Drugs were never heard of.My second wife had a family and the husband attacked his children and hit his wife.Nothing was ever done.He is 94 now.

My first marriage, there was never an indication of violence.

I used to get caned at school. That was more of a thing to boast about.

To me it seems strange that there is so much domestic violence around.

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As a Man previously facing physical assault from my ex wife, I was dismissed by my own Mother whom stated that Men cannot be assaulted by Women because they are the stronger sex. This attitude is ingrained in our society. The attitude that physical abuse toward husbands, boyfriends and males in general is perfectly acceptible and even a source of humour. And its one good reason to abhore the Feminism ideology....if you need a reason, which I do not!

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'Hitting home' again Betting. As an example of my own recent experience, a contravention application against me made by the woman is 'excused' even though putting my daughter up in lieu of her living on the street is the only option for the courts because there is no facility to deal with children rejecting parental behaviour and moving to the safety of the 'co-parent' in the Family Courts. So the contravention is against me rather than being a problem between mother and daughter based on the mother's inability to act in a civil manner when dealing with her subjects. Further, the court child experts are a coven who desperately tries to find 'he said/ she said' balance that basically compounds the lack of child focus while escalating the case by case requirement of normal legal evidence gathering in favour of personalised political choices in report writing to the court. This behaviour continues in referrals to a hearing by a judge where almost 100% of perjured statements supporting a contravention application that I have an excuse in the face of is then said to have some 'minor contraventions' attached to the application which are how the mother's endless sequence of successes in using the legal process to continue the campaign of control and what was essentially benign slave service from me until I called a halt. At this time the mother started an affair everyone collaborated in hiding from me, even as I was on the money in asking about it, and demanded the separation, instructed me to end the years of care I had engaged in with my kids because someone had pointed out the woman was missing her kids childhood while she enjoyed career building and its social aspect, and in full collaboration with every adult involved denied my conscientious support (non financial) for my family with much greater effort over longer hours than the woman's contribution, I was removed from my home, my kids, and forced to go to work in basic roles without any transition period essentially so the woman might then be able to ask for child support and continue her life with minimal interruption. No matter of the police regarding her calls as nonsense after the first two, how many people knew of the job I had been doing with everyone from schools to allied medical services, and all of the times I talked about my struggles with escalating inflamed competitive arguments for no reason, all was forgotten in preference for the ego driven Sir Galahad syndrome at every utterance of a complaint against me from the credible fictions the mother continues to spin. Yet my daughter lives with me without any manipulation from me AND despite the determined paranoia from the woman to anyone who will listen that I am undermining the one who does all the denigrating with evidence that would otherwise be reckless if I had left similar evidence.

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Brilliant work as ever Tina.

You mentioned in the article of the impact of Hollywood's messaging for millions of females worldwide that slapping a man was an appropriate response to some kind of subjectively taken offence so I have a couple of questions, Which group in Hollywood holds the most sway and power to enact such a long term narrative? Are they the same group that are responsible for the feminist view taken in family & domestic abuse law making?

Are you ready for the rabbit hole Tina? (ok, that was 3...)

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That is close to our story. However it was the children who copped it from mum - potentially fatal. But nobody believed me or sided, or took note of the children's interests. The State, the Court, the police, the churches and their supposed family outreach, work colleagues all treated me as a poisonous criminal. An who recognised that the real victims were female and very young children. Seems if the story does not fit with feminist political narratives, even child females are disregarded and not protected by the hypocrites. Sure, I can tell how it was for me, and maybe you might weep, but what about the kids. People around me noted my bioloogy and shamed me for criticising mum - 'come on Man-up' they would say. I also got ' Nobody will believe you!" - and that is true, so prejudiced and bigoted and full of hatred for Mother's sons - which all males are.

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For years I've been trying to communicate just this point using the analogy of what goes on 'behind the play' on football fields (or behind closed doors domestically) - to little avail I might add. The initiator of violence often acts surprised when retaliation occurs, and it's usually the retaliator who gets 'pinged' by the umpire (or police). Many people - particularly women - don't seem to understand this basic 'law' of biological nature - you can only push a cornered animal so far before it pushes back. Many naively seem to think that verbal abuse somehow doesn't count, and then cry foul when the inevitable retaliation occurs. I'm not for a second advocating such retaliation, just observing human behaviour.

One has to ask though, why the 'verbal' aspect has been incorporated into the sexual abuse definition, yet remains conspicuously absent from the domestic violence situation. Maybe this favours one side more than the other?

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Thank you Bettina, for all you do.

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My son spent 11 years locking himself in rooms to get away from his ex partner. I asked him why didn’t he get out of the house when she went into her rages, his response was he tried to go for a walk and she would follow him everywhere. On occasions she would smell his clothes to see if he had been seeing someone else. I cry when I think how he was trapped and he had no one to turn to. She had him isolated from all his friends and family. he never once raised a hand to her. She works for Child Safety and Vulnerable Women Dept and knows every trick in the book to set him up with false allegations. His upcoming trial now has her suffering fake PTSD as she now can testify in another room away from the jury. She has done this before to another man but police and magistrates still believe her.

Bettina your story is now on Twitter globally, we’ll done.

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