Wednesday, May 11, 2016

NZ Herald's domestic violence campaign is not sound

The bias against males proliferating the NZ Herald's campaign against domestic violence was stated blankly by one contributor this morning:

"Domestic violence is a male problem, and women are the victims."
I disagree. Yes, men are more likely to resort to physical abuse but women either provoke or react with their own methods.

Here is data from the NZ Crime Survey . It doesn't understate the incidence of interpersonal crime in the way that reported crime statistics can. The graph shows the % of adults who were a victim of interpersonal violent offences in 2013:


(Right click to enlarge)

The commentary reads:

Overall, we find that women (6%) were more likely than the men (4%) to be the victim of a violent interpersonal offence by an intimate partner in 2013.

- The percentage of women experiencing 1 or more physical offences committed by an intimate partner was 3% in 2013 down from 5% in 2008.
- The percentage of men experiencing 1 or more threat and damage offences committed by an intimate partner was 3% in 2013 down from 4% in 2008.

There is a growing body of belief and advocacy that demands we accept women are beyond reproach.

I don't know what world these people live in.

4 comments:

JC said...

"I don't know what world these people live in."

Its a world that doesn't want a solution. We've known from years of surveys that violence can be equally resorted to by either party but the greater size and strength of the male means more damage to the female.

Likewise we know that some of the questions asked are either biassed or unhelpful. Getting a person to admit he/she has been assaulted twice in 60 years and 40 years of marriage is meaningless to the immediate problem of domestic violence if it happened many years ago.. such questions have to be phrased to show a recent and/or ongoing pattern.

We lived alongside flats for 30 years and reckon we know what its all about.. there's nothing magic about it, violence occurs with low socio-economic groups who party regularly. The males mostly have an attitude to women and alcohol brings out the worst in both parties and then its all on.

I've been reading a few of the articles the Herald has been running and most tend to offer a sort of mass guilt till you read on and find that the police are going back to the same households time and again.. the violence isn't to 1 in 2 or 4 women but to a few women many times and until that point becomes clear then the violence won't stop.

Its pointless developing solutions for the vast majority of families that don't do violence.. the solutions have to go to the ones responsible for most of the problem.

Like poverty and unemployment we already know the indicators from birth who is most likely to be affected and pretty much the same indicators apply to domestic violence.

There is, I think, one indicator relating to social problems that isn't stressed enough.. the inability to think about tomorrow and the future. Social misfits live in the here and now and have little thought for tomorrow and its consequences.. at best tomorrow is only thought about in a magical way in which they are rich and have all the luck. To them rich pricks are just lucky or they cheated to get rich.. there's no concept of the hard work and future planning that went on to get there.. thats why its fine to take them down or to steal wealth.

JC

Unknown said...

What a fantastic article

Unfortunately the Aunty Hellenist, feminist agenda is well on the roll here and the head of NZ Herald should be sacked for false propaganda or better still 20 lashes with the Rattan whip.

Lindsay Mitchell you WALK amongst GIANTS! Your contributions are nothing short of BRILLIANT. I wish you were in charge of education because that is were it starts then followed by responsible parenting, if some of those parents ever gave a damn.

Brent

david said...

I commented on the sexist title of the NZH editorial "never an excuse for a man to hit a woman". Pleased to see I was one of many making the same point.

Lindsay Mitchell said...

Thanks David, I went and had a look at the comments. Quite stunning. By and large the readers aren't falling into line in the way the Herald would have wanted or expected.

Unless...blog post coming on.