'Men are domestically abused more often than women'

A safeguarding course? Really? Can you contact the course provider and get him removed from their teaching schedule, because that is seriously out of order.

Some men must be confusing nagging with domestic abuse!

Where the hell do they get this data from?

That's a good point Mitchy about the highlighting of where we just don't live up to the male default.

it is because women can be as bad as or worse than men (just as abusive and violent and nasty and greedy and whatever) but rarely as good as or better (so we can have a few non-executive directors but barely any executive, for example)

and it is really important at every opportunity to point out where we are The Same As Men and where we are More Shit than them

"women unreasonably withholding contact with children "

I worry about this because how many of those women were the women who didn't report abuse – and are worried about the man abusing the children (or on a lesser scale being irresponsible, aggressive, unsafe etc with them as evidenced by his previous behaviour).

While I'm sure some women do unreasonably withhold contact, when I see some of the monsters that contact has been awarded to, I think in a percentage of cases they will actually be reasonably withholding contact. But don't have the courts on their side :(

Sounds like he was an incompetent muppet with an agenda. Will you get the chance to give feedback at all?

Fify Do you mind revealing the context? Why was your group receiving this training and what were this man's credentials?

That's good that you managed to get your point across to him, you were probably too shocked at first by his comment to responded initially in the same way.

Just out of curiosity, are the stats of women unreasonably withholding contact with children from ex partners taken into account? I understand that this will most likely be after the relationship has ended but I experienced domestic abuse in a past relationship but the most abusive behaviour was mostly after the relationship had ended.

No there is no point scoring. Artetas. Funny you should see it that way. We want the problem named so it can be stopped. So that women's oppression by men can be stopped.

Maybe a response like this would be good:

"Hmm, as I work in this field, going by the statistics I believe that to be untrue. However as you seem quite sure of it I invite you to give a 20-minute talk introducing us to a selection of the published peer-reviewed evidence. Tomorrow OK?"

From here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26758565

"HMIC said police received more than one million calls a year relating to domestic abuse and almost 58,000 victims - the vast majority of them women - were at risk of serious harm or murder."

If the BBC are actually quoting that i.e. making a specific statement that DV disproportionally affects women, it is a major breakthrough. They are notorious for minimising M on F violence. I haven't seen the report from HMIC but it must be in black & white and fuck off capital letters for that to have been stated in their article.

He is an arse. He is an arse because it is not a pissing contest. He is an arse because the gender of an abused human being is not the important factor. The important factor is that they are being abused. Anybody who wants to turn these things into a 'one gender is more awful' rant seems to forget that, in favour of point scoring.

That is great isn't it Buffy. I just want to quote that everytime we get people on saying how we can't say that male violence is the problem because men suffer from violence too. Or women do it too.

bbc today headline re dv big report has come out about police handling. includes comments re majority of victims being women and murder stat. Sorry can't link on phone. Also obviously man was arse. Bottom line is no one can know for sure but all possible indicators say women majority victims. plenty of male dv perpetrated in gay relationships, bet he forgot about that factor. Also if he is worried about male victims of violence then lots occurs elsewhere, also perpetrated by other men.

If he was genuinely concerned about stuff he would have been more balanced / thoughtful. saying yeah women are worse full stop = stay about women being victims of dv.

clearly all victims of crime need assistance support but pretending a large group of victims with shared characteristics doesn't exist is not the way to achieve that

Well done you OP for making sure that you did have your say. He sounds like an utter plonker and I hope he feels suitably mortified that he wasn't able to give you a proper reference. Doubt it though

Karen Ingala Smith, CEO of NIA does a lot of work on male violence. This whole thing about women being as bad as men or even worse (despite the fact that there isn't a single survey that suggests F on M violence is worse than M on F violence and certainly not worse than M on M violence) has come from the British Crime Survey figures. She explains these figures really well here. I have linked this before because basically it has pretty much all the information in one hit so is really useful!

SGM used to have some great figures from the FBI as well about rape (or was it false accusations - I'll go ask!).

My favourite line for these type of people is "You are entitled to your own opinion. What you are not entitled to is your own facts"

No I think one huge factor is that society inculcates the idea that women matter less than men, at every level, all the time – including things like women changing their names and men not, girls toys/activities being about looking decorative while boys' ones are about being active and constructive, and women's appearance and behaviour being blamed for rape, and the myth that men can't help themselves.

All this sinks in and tells both men and women that a man abusing a woman is somehow acceptable, that she's to blame if she hasn't cleaned up etc. or "made him cross", that she and the kids can cope on a pittance because his need for treats/hobbies is more important, that he should get a lie-in all weekend because he "works hard", that he requires sex even if she doesn't want it, and so on. I think abuse is made up of deliberate individual actions, but it also arises out of and is given a context by that general background attitude.