HmmThnking there's a lot there in your post I'd like to address so I'll have to break it down.
we should be taking entire families into care
I don't altogether disagree with that. It's been my feeling that when it comes to DV often far too simplistic an approach is taken. For example, SS removing children when the mother is seen to 'fail to protect' the child by allowing the abuser back into the family home. However, I think this is because society fails to deal adequately with abusers and abuse is still minimalised and tolerated. If society really condemned abuse and cared for victims it would not give the mother any responsibility to keep the abuser away - he would be forcibly removed and kept away from her and she would be given protection and education/counselling to undo the cycle of dependence she finds herself in as a result of years of abuse.
as expectations and values of women have changed at the same time as allowing for easy divorces, the solution to problems in relationships (and I mean relationships in general rather than DV cases) is to walk away rather than to encourage resolving the problems between couples.
Marriage derives from the concept of women as property. The changing expectations and values of women that you refer to are simply women asking to be treated as humans, not property. It IS treating your wife as property and sub-human to, for example, expect sex on demand, to abdicate 70% of the mundane domestic tasks to your wife, her life to be changed irrevocably by having children while you still have a unhampered working life and continue to enjoy an active social life with the occasional 'babysitting' of your own children considered a good enough nod in the direction of equality. TBH if the family really is destroyed as a result of women expecting not to be raped and to expect equal help with children and domestic tasks, then the family is a shit institution. But it won't be feminists destroying it. It will be men who fail to accept that women are not sex toys and/or domestic slaves. Funnily enough, men who treat their wives with respect and pull their weight around the house are much less likely to get divorced and no one advocates 'leaving the bastard'.
Feminism perhaps fails in that respect at times as its aims are purely about women... in the process, intensionally or unintentionally, disengaging with half of society even in more 'soft' forms of feminist thinking.
THe female half of society have been ignored from time immemorial. Even now everything tends to deal with men with the effect on women occasionally discussed in a equality measures way. The budget and it's disproportional effect on society for example. All feminism is doing is redressing the balance. Even with all the feminist groups out there and all the lobbying going on, society remains male-dominated. Women are not seeking to ignore men or put them down, they are simply asking to be treated as of equal importance. That still isn't happening. Men can be easily involved in the equation if they ask how they can help and start doing it. But many don't.
Things like pointing out that a major trigger for suicide (amongst a number of other issues) in men is family breakdown need to be talked about more.
Again, men who are capable of looking after themselves and forming happy, functional and meaningful relationships with others rarely commit suicide when divorcing. If a man wants to commit suicide on divorce, he has mental health issues, in which case he has my sympathy and compassion but I fail to see how it is the woman's responsibility to fix that. Should she stay so he doesn't kill himself? What often happens however is that men are overwhelmed by the burden of practicalities that they hitherto left to their partners and cannot cope with it in addition to the emotional fallout of the marriage. Yet again another reason why we should be encouraging men to partake far more equally in family life, doing their fair share of housework and childcare. Which would also reduce the divorce rate and null and void the problem in the first place.
As does DV against men, if children are in the equation, as even if it isn't serious as if as Pizzey observed, it is creating a 'non-normal childhood environment'. If DV is a cycle then what happens to those children as adults?
Again another reason for removing the abuser - of whatever gender - and providing the victim - of whatever gender - with help to unlearn the cycle of abuse.
I do know far too many men who are victims but never would say or do anything about it as its a taboo subject.
The figure for male victims has been extrapolated and the figures inflated to accommodate. As it should be since yes DV is massively under-reported and there is more social stigma attached for male victims. Even so, it is still dwarfed by the number of female victims. And it fails to take into account that a man can leave an abusive relationship and re-enter a world where the odds are in his favour simply by virtue of being a man, whereas a woman finds the opposite.
Which is why I do think it is important to talk about the victim, and why she keeps going back to him, and why that might be 'her fault' rather than her partners - because of the life experiences she might have had previously that have fuck all to do with the person currently beating the shit out of her. The 'her fault' bit, is deeply complex and not really her fault, but it definitely should be being explored and discussed better than simply putting it in terms of black and white.
The point is that if abusers stopped abusing, the victim would not have to do anything. She would not have to stay away from an abuser because there wouldn't be an abuser to stay away from. That's why we need more emphasis on what we do with abusers rather than what we expect victims to do. Until we start making it clear that abuse is unacceptable, victims will always be in a situation where the focus is on their behaviour and nothing will change. Ironically, in the few cases where an abuser is sentenced, the CJD often targets the money at the abuser instead of the victim - sending them on perpetrator programmes (that have little success BTW) instead of punishment or restorative justice, while the victim usually has to leave the family home, gets no counselling unless she can pay for it, and now can't even apply to the social fund to help her start over.
Men's and women's rights are tied to each other and can not be separated.
I agree, but thus far many male rights have been achieved at the expense of women's and feminism is trying to redress the balance. Until that happens, there isn't a level playing field for co-operation. Men can join in the resetting of the balance by supporting feminism though. But it seems few actually want to do that.
DV is very often a result of people being unable to communicate by any other means.
No it isn't. In some cases DV is borne of anger and frustration. These sorts of perpetrators are the types that end up in trouble with the system in other ways as well - e.g. the thugs that start fights in town centres after a few beers and then go home and beat up their GFs. But most perpetrators don't have any trouble communicating or controlling their frustrations with other people. They simply feel entitled to use violence as a means of controlling their partners. Abuse is not about anger, it is about entitlement and control.
I think we are increasingly losing the ability as a society to communicate with each other without it becoming a conflict situation as we live apart in various ways. It is the very core of what we should be doing and encouraging. We are all connected.
I agree 100%. Which is why I want women to be reconnected to society at a level where they can affect what happens politically, economically and socially. But the number of women in these positions are very small indeed. Women are not alienating men; they are trying to get heard and facing a great deal of opposition in the process.