Are you constantly shuddering over the latest madness from gender warriors to control our society? Here’s your chance for you to actually do something to try to rein them in.
The feminists are up in arms at the move by the federal government to provide some counselling for couples dealing with domestic violence; a tiny $10 million out of a budget of $328 million, which is the latest raft of funding adding to the huge cash cow which supports the domestic violence industry. This includes ongoing funding for the male-bashing Stop It At The Start television campaign, which has already cost $30 million.
See this Guardian article showing all the lobby groups lining up to try to put a stop to the couple counselling? They all promote the usual feminist propaganda, claiming domestic violence invariably involves dangerous men controlling their partners and suggesting couples counselling puts women at risk.
I’ve long argued that we are enabling the feminist capture of government policy by failing to challenge the persistent lobbying of this tiny minority group. This is a classic example. The government is finally making the right move in giving some funding to start to properly address this issue – after having wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on domestic violence money spent mainly on advertising campaigns to demonise men and boys, blaming misogynist attitudes for the entire problem. But unless we get moving the wicked witches will win again. The Guardian article makes clear they intent a ferocious scare campaign to try to get the government to back down.
So come on, people. Get active and write to relevant Ministers, your MP and to the Prime Minister and support this move to properly address one of the real issues at the heart of this problem. Here’s some of the basic information you will need to make the argument that this is a sensible move:
There is strong evidence that most violence begins early, with couples at the start of their relationships reacting to conflict with two-way violence. Years ago, Professor Kim Halford and colleagues from the University of Queensland conducted a series of studies that focussed on couples at the start of their relationships, newlywed couples and couples expecting a child together. Even with these early relationships about a quarter of the women admit they have been violent towards their partners – just as many as the men.
Professor Halford, who is one of Australia’s leading family relationship experts, points out this evidence means it is really important to help couples learn to deal with conflict without resorting to violence. He makes the point that one of the strongest risk factors for a woman being hit by a male partner is her hitting that male partner. “It’s absolutely critical that we tackle couple violence if we really want to stop this escalation into levels of violence which cause women serious injury.”
It’s nonsense to suggest that couples counselling will put women at risk, as this article by Maccollum and Stith makes clear, provided there are exclusion policies making sure no member of the couple is coerced, that there’s not an ongoing mental illness, nor a history of severe violence or weapon use. Avoiding couple counselling means we are not addressing the patterns that lead to violence, leaving men and women trapped in conflicted relationships without the tools to find other ways of dealing with marital stress, and putting women and children particularly at risk. Here’s another review and meta-analysis of this subject, which suggests couple therapy, can significantly reduce domestic violence.
In fact, there are some good relationship counsellors across the country already doing this work. You may remember Perth counsellor Rob Tiller who was forced out of his job with Relationships Australia last year, after he posted my article on domestic violence on his personal Facebook page. I made a video with Rob at the time when he talked about working successfully with violent couples helping them learn to deal with conflict. Unfortunately, Relationships Australia, one of our peak counselling bodies, proudly promotes feminist policies on domestic violence which means couples are often refused help in these circumstances.
This is only one aspect of a proper comprehensive approach to tackling family violence, which would include support services for male victims of violence and their children and targeting at-risk groups like people with drug and alcohol problems and mental illness. Such targeted approaches are being trialled overseas, with significant success.
Let’s hope this small move by the government is a sign that they are willing to deal more effectively with this major social problem rather than simply supporting the male-bashing feminist domestic violence industry. But this won’t happen if we sit back and let the feminists bully the government into backing down.
Here’s some addresses you can use to lobby on this issue, as well as your local MP: Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Hon Anne Ruston; Minister for Women, Senator Hon Marise Payne; as well as the Prime Minister’s office.
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