Erin Pizzey's work with Refuges

I think it makes an equally wrong assumption to say it is gendered and not accept that DV has more than one form though. You need to make that clear from the very outset. Stereotyping is just as damaging.

if you don't acknowledge that it's a gendered issue, a) you are being dishonest and that will not help you to tackle the problem, because you will be starting from a wrong presumption and b) you will not effectively help victims in atypical situations, such as the minority of male victims, women in lesbian relationships, etc.

Tbh I think that schools can be such a hotbed of stereotypical gendered behaviour that they can be part of the problem not the solution. (I have two teenagers in state ed at the moment.)

My DD has had blatantly homophobic teachers, too.

But I do think that violence is a gendered issue.

I remember reading her soft novels in the 80's- Think one title was 'The Watershed' and another 'In The Shadow Of The Castle'. They both featured extreme tropes of 'womanhood'- the mother who would 'eat' her own young and the soft vulnerable female born to her or in-law to her.

certainly not* typo.

Its not fun. Its worse when you know that she was a teacher until recently. Head of department. Seen her drink a bottle and a half of wine in a couple of hours whilst marking GSCE exam papers to perfection. So she uses that too as she is well respected by the board. Then she'd drive to work the following morning... FiL is a big bloke. Patient as anything. But I worry about what will happen when he also retires. Not exactly sure what else anyone else can do though now though. Not until one of them is prepared to admit there is an issue. Or DH's bro intervenes.

And I'm certainly saying that women should work on a relationship that has become violent. I certainly think they should be helped to recognise the problem, but its also men being able to recognise the problem too. Be it, if they are in fact the abuser, a victim, brother, a father, a friend, a friend of the abusive partner. Its about making everyone more aware of whats ok and whats not, and how to walk away from conflict. I do think there are situation where you can stop it getting to the point of violence if you notice the pattern before it starts too. Prevention is better than cure and all that jazz. I think school is the only place you can realistically do that. But not if its taught as being a gendered issue.

Hmm That family dynamic needs some serious attention, counselling and assistance. There are lots of women on these boards who have experience of this kind of family situation which has fucked them up. The doctor son sounds like an enabler, and a credible one at that. Your MiL sounds like she needs help. Sounds grim. Sorry.

I think there probably are people out there for whom all communication is characterised with violence, but I think the one thing that has come out of research into DV is how strikingly similar abusers are in their patterns of behaviour.

I truly believe that women in abusive relationships should be helped to leave them. Not to stay and 'work' on them.

And I know that Domestic Abuse teams do work with women to help them be better prepared for their next relationship, so as to make it less likely that will be abused again.

Basil, I have a MiL who takes chucks out of my FiL. She has a drink problem she won't admit to. To the point that DH and his sister refuse to visit on Christmas Day after lunch these days, as its a given she'll be drunk. DH's brother hasn't helped the situation as he has 'golden child' status and happens to be a doctor. Everyone else knows there is a problem but because he's never been on the receiving end of her emotional abuse, or he encourages her because he thinks its funny when its aimed at his siblings. Its awful to watch. Took me a long time to take DH seriously about how his mother is. I only did, when she started on me and I feel terrible for not believing my DH about it.

My FiL will never do anything about it either. He just takes it, even after it became apparent that physical violence was part of the picture and this has been happening for a very long time. DH didn't find out about that until last year, when there was an incident which left him with numerous and pretty bad marks. DH's sister has known about it for years and has been the only one to witness it and has tried to intervene with the problem without success. She's found it very distressing and I really feel for her; she lives locally to them still.

As I said before, there are many forms of DV. I take issue with constantly confining it to one form. Its not.

I take the point about wanting to address violence in society as a whole... but, having read many threads on here by women being abused by their male partners, I'm not sure that these men do want to improve their communication strategies. They want to have power over their wives/partners and don't care how they get it.

I've tried to adhere to the strawman trope for feminists... :( I'm no good at it.

I keep trying to be humourless feminist but then I realise it's just the drink talking.

It's called humour.

Alas, us feminists appear to be lacking in it... :(

Hmmm I am a bit lost here. You seem to me to be telling women to get a grip; but say you have used male user names in the past to direct or elicit a certain response. I'm just not getting the coherence.

But it's not a big deal.

sorry my voice recognition is a bit shit. that should say don't do so because they are tense

hmm women who live with dv, are absolute experts at de-fusing tense situations - the "walking on eggshells" phenomenon is very well known, but unfortunately it doesn't work because men who beat up women, don't do you spell because they are tense, but because they believe that they have the right to control women, with violence if necessary

Why make the drunk comment then?

Unnecessary. You are just deliberately being rude.

Just ignore it and move on, if you can't be arsed. Not hard. Instead you want to just want to be nasty...

No, I tried. I just couldn't hold every single opinion you were getting in there in long enough to construct an answer.

So you ask a question. So I take the time and answer. And you don't like the way I do.

Brilliant.

Equally self important. And also rude.

If you can't be bothered to read, just don't. No one is making you. No need to be rude about it too though.

What is sad is how normalised and excused male violence is.

Absoluetly how I feel about it. Violence is normalised. We expect fights to break out on a Friday night or after a football match. But I think its extends to women too. And there has been a rise in incidences of women committing violent crime, if someone cares to look it up.

Incidently about the male drunkeness, I know at least two guys who stopped going out for the same reason. One after receiving a baseball bat to his head and ending up in hospital for several weeks. Unprovoked.

How do you stop DV? I think there is a hell of a lot of unprovoked DV on women. I don't want to take that away, but I don't think that covers it all and I don't want to apply a blanket solution to the issue of DV. That for me is the danger in saying that its men who mostly do it and women are mostly the victims. In a great many situations women ARE the victims. But not all. Thats why I don't like the genderisation of it. There are cases where it is male on female, female on female, female on male, male on male, and indeed completely mutual. There is more than one type of DV. There is more than one route to it. DV encompasses a lot of different forms and causes, and thats why I don't like discussions about DV for don't take that into account because they are too generalised and stereotyped.

I do think there are stages of escalation within a relationship which are identifiable and which eventually leads to violence. For starters, greater awareness and how to avoid conflict situations in general for both genders would be a great way to go. Teach it at school and how to recognise warning signs and how to defuse tense situations. It could help down the pub situations as much as DV. Teach basic communication skills better on the whole. Its being hugely neglected.

Tackling violence and conflict as a whole and making it more of an issue early on in life, to the same degree as teaching kids about sex. But within that, I do feel you need to be careful about applying gender stereotypes which ultimately could harm both genders in some way.

Right, re my post which you replied to; I added the "women's" part to the rights, because that's what... ohhh, I've given up keeping track... someone (either you or SF) said you supported as opposed to feminism.

the rest was too long winded and rambly for me to make sense of.

HTH

It matters in the sense, that I've often felt that men in this section are treated in a different fashion to women on this forum. And not in a good way. It has be used as a way to discredit what the person says. A man can not properly understand women's issues as he holds patriarchal privilege.

Therefore in the context of that particularly post I felt it was important to state I am a woman. And also that I am not transgender. Again, given the expression of some views I've seen stated on that particular subject too.

I find the use of the word "men" is being used too often negatively in sweeping statements, in the context of being derogitory; particularly in the form of the word "menz".

There are good men. There are bad men. Much the same way as there are good women and bad women.

Where appropriate, I would prefer the use of more specific terms such as abuser or bigot, rather than the generalised saying "men are like this" or this patriarchal crap which lumps all men together. But I'm not going to get that given the strength of feeling about it, and I don't expect it. Bit of an ask to expect people to do that... I'm not about to go round pushing that idea here.

I've also seen numerous comments and sentiments about the idea of this being a 'safe space' for women to discuss ideas on a female dominated forum and not being somewhere for "MRA Propaganda to be spread" though it hasn't happened. There, rightly or wrongly, does seem to be a siege mentality, coming from a few people and a suspicion that somehow some men are deliberately trolling by starting threads to provoke a certain response.

All in all, I think it affects thinking and responses in a way I don't like. I do want to be treated as a person first rather than a woman; I was actually considering letting it slide and not correcting it, but in the end I felt it important in the context of the post it was in and it would be somewhat disingenuous not to do under the circumstances and nature of this section.

Ironically, I'll admit to having deliberately used male user names in past before for precisely the same reason on other forums, as it does affect reactions to what you say, from some quarters, both male and female. There are people who don't react differently with the knowledge of your gender and they are the ones I ultimately respect more. I've always owned up to it in the end, and again the response has been interesting. It has changed a few opinions for the better - I've had a couple of people admit they made huge assumptions and would try and treat people as people and points of view, not just genders. Its also, made a couple of guys admit, they would have flirted with me otherwise and they wouldn't haven't considered otherwise that this might have made me feel uncomfortable, had I not done it. They just didn't know. Got a couple of good online friends out of it.

I wish I felt differently, and I didn't need to do it on that post, but it is the way I perceive the FWR boards. Not welcoming, and slightly bigoted by a generalised association fallacy regarding men.

HTH

BTW, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm a bit of a maverick at the best of times. I tend to find I don't think like other people and I find that a bit hard at times to try and express certain views in a way that doesn't make me come across as too much of a mentalist or a hypocrite. I hope that I can get at least some of whats in my head to people and why I think the way I do, even if you don't agree with what I say. I think trying to convey, why I think what I think and the logic behind it is as important as what I say, if I don't get that right or it comes across a bit badly. I genuinely, want to get people thinking and to think about why others think differently, rather than necessarily 'convert' others to my way of thinking.

God I'm on a ramble-a-thon today. I do sincerely apologise.