Domestic Violence ‘ not a gender thing’

[JessicaWakefieldSV]

Amongst other things, Steve Hansen the All Blacks coach, widely respected in NZ, has said domestic violence ‘isn’t a gender thing’ in NZ as he is trying to minimise the impact of including a player who committed it.

He’s not the only one who says this. I hear it a lot. I’ve only ever seen one poorly designed Dunedin study as ‘evidence’ both men and women abuse their partners.

I’d like to hear the thoughts of women here and if you know whether this is true or not.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/all-blacks/114049254/steve-hansen-backs-sevu-reece-says-domestic-violence-is-not-a-gender-thing

It’s weird. It’s like he’s deflecting the focus entirely... if women do it too, then how can we not include domestic abusers in our teams? Everyone is at it, we can’t possibly exclude them. He’s literally said that, as has the players association rep Rob Nichols, who said they cannot have a zero tolerance approach because too many players are doing it.

Think about that. It’s total acceptance.

No, I'm not helping you derail yet another thread where you work on refocusing everything to include and prioritise people with penises. That's your problem, not what the thread is about.

He didn’t say woman do it equally.

He said, it’s not a gender thing. If 80+ percent are males, then it’s a sex based thing. Let’s say only 1 woman a year committed an act of violence, technically it would be true then to say not only men do it. It’s not very relevant though is it?

Michelleoftheresistance thank you. I’m going to ignore them now. I’m sick of early and decomposers derailing...

Figures are going to change because transwomen domestic violence abusers are now going down in the stats as women

It’s not a derail, I’m commenting on the title of the thread, the article you linked and your comment

sakura184

Yeah that’s true too. So here is another example of how data is affected.

JessicaWakefieldSV

This is why women only spaces are really the only way to work on statistics, where you can discuss them in peace. Thankfully there are plenty of women behind the scenes collating the evidence. Karen Ingala Smith does a very good job with her "Counting Dead Women". Another good one to follow is Women Count USA who tot up the femicide stats.
Putting domestic violence aside, spousal murder is hugely gendered and happens on a massive scale.

kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims/

This is a great exploration of the "men are victims too" thing

Putting domestic violence aside, spousal murder is hugely gendered and happens on a massive scale.

Yes, particularly so in NZ. Stuff just did a big homicide report and domestic violence is in that because partner homicide usually follows a history of violence.

My step mother committed suicide after a lot of abuse by my father, who had done it to my mum and myself too. I didn’t say a word to her, nobody did, because my father ‘deserved a second chance’ and seemed better. I’ll never forgive myself for legitimising such a dangerous man, who I knew was dangerous, and the people in NZ who conditioned me into thinking that way. Not one of the many many acts of horrific violence perpetrated by my father is in any of the statistics. And he didn’t even play rugby.

JessicaWakefieldSV

Yes I think a lot of female suicides are women caught up in domestic violence situations. I've been there, feeling suicide is the only way out, mainly because you know you can't set up a life alone because you can't afford it

sakura184

For you

Domestic violence affects many of us, it’s a horrible horrible thing. My mums family, Māori, told her: you’ve made your bed, now lie in it. Literally.

pdfs.semanticscholar.org/32c8/6f957e196434edb1c80cba5f27429c930978.pdf

I hope that one works. As he says, women suffer more from DV than men. Perhaps when the male rate of death from DV equals the female rate, and is perpetrated by women on men, not men on men, we can accept that they are equal but until then let us accept that women suffer more.

Annasgirl thank you

Thankfully, Alison Mau has written about the terrible comments, although I dong quite agree with her on everything- the victim’s wishes should be taken into account but in the context of them often being scared and emotionally manipulated.

i.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/114051664/opinion-why-steve-hansen-should-have-quit-while-he-was-ahead-on-reece

I was speaking to a friend who helped establish a DV support centre and he told me that one thing they had not expected was the level of male victims of DV.

It was 11%

So yes, women are statistically more at risk of DV, but males are victims too and also some women are perpetrators, as I know from 1st hand experience of relationships with violent female partners.

It's not a competition though is it? The priority should be to protect victims and to bring perpetrators to justice regardless of their sex

The coach wasn’t speaking about victims though, he was trying to deflect criticism of a male assaults female case, by saying both women and men abuse. Nobody says they don’t. But, overwhelmingly it is males who make up the violent stats, homicide stats etc obviously many Male victims are the victims of male violence too. In our Polynesian culture there is a real problem with violence against women, nobody wants to talk about it but both Māori and other Polynesians ( the players Fijian ) are more likely to commit DV. My entire extended whanau did absolutely nothing despite knowing 4 little kids and a woman were being horribly abused.

It’s not a competition no, but who assaults is an important part of preventing and tackling violence in our communities. Being accurate and identifying the problem of male violence is too important for a sports coach to interfere with just to relieve the pressure on them.

The coach seemed to be saying it wasn’t limited to men, which I agree wasn’t entirely relevant in the context of what had happened but perhaps as an ex- police officer his motives were more to raise awareness in general rather than the specific incident.

I don’t think people talk about all forms of DV enough. It is mostly limited to Male on female discussions, which makes sense since woman are the biggest victims but it does affect our perception as a society on what an abuse victim should ‘look like’ which is also dangerous.

This is interesting for anyone curious on the subject of how we see male and female abuse victims differently (may be triggering perhaps? - shows ‘Domestic abuse’) :

m.youtube.com/watch?v=GccCWo_eZdw

@JessicaWakefieldSV

I have no disagreement with what you say. I simply always feel compelled to point out that minorities matter, whoever they are and whatever sex they are. :)

Re Polynesian culture; I am very sorry to hear that this is the case, however I think that DV does happen more in oppressed and disempowered communities where people suffer from more emotional stress and trauma, racism and other isms.

My entire extended whanau did absolutely nothing despite knowing 4 little kids and a woman were being horribly abused.

I am so very sorry to hear this.

I am white and my family suffered sexual and violent abuse that was covered up then and continues to be covered up to this day.

I think that for ethnic minorities, especially those that suffer the multi-generation effects of colonialism, racism and other isms these abuses are more likely to be covered up because they feed into the racist stereotypes of ethnic minorities being somehow "savage" and even inhuman.

It is just another way in which racism and colonialism makes the lives of minorities even harder.

I think that for ethnic minorities, especially those that suffer the multi-generation effects of colonialism, racism and other isms these abuses are more likely to be covered up because they feed into the racist stereotypes of ethnic minorities being somehow "savage" and even inhuman.

Agreed, I really feel this. We, Māori, also had an issue with child abuse that sometimes was covered up by the entire community. For all the reasons you say above. It’s changed a lot in that area, thankfully. But I remember when Alan Duff wrote ‘Once Were Warriors’ and started talking about gang violence and family violence and really holding his people to account, to take responsibility. A lot of people didn’t like him or what he was saying. But then the movie was a huge success.

perhaps as an ex- police officer his motives were more to raise awareness in general rather than the specific incident.

That’s not his motivation at all. He was a police officer during horrible times, when they'd walk in and do nothing. Decades ago now.

No, his motivation is simple: to win. He wants no distractions and he wants to stand behind all his men, that’s what rugby coaches do no matter what. It was deflection. It’s what NZR have been doing since the incident and Hansen isn’t the first one to talk about women doing it too, the players rep did earlier this year. They have had really bad headlines around their treatment of women, around 2016 was particularly bad and they had a huge amount of negative press. So bad they spent a fortune they don’t have to gather a panel of people to investigate and come up with a ‘respect and responsibility code’.One player, probably one of the best if not the most essential to the team, was massively affected by the publicity around what he did and his rugby still isn’t considered as good as it was then. This is what the best coach in the world cares about, you’re naive to think otherwise. If this is framed as a women’s issue in any way, their banging on about ‘the code’ will look pretty stupid. That’s why they’re so so keen to not have it framed as violence against women, even though that’s exactly what it is in this incident and even though NZ stats absolutely show males commit most of the violence and women suffer the more serious assaults- including homicide. Government websites use stats from police reports and refuge centres for both women and men.

Another article criticising what he said but behind a paywall

www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=12247368

This was a good radio talk about it which still acknowledges there are male victims but made a good point of talking about how much more women are affected, and also addressed the comments which implied that all they needed to do was give this young man money and fame in the All Blacks to make him better. Rich people are abusers too. This isn’t just something that affects working class people at all.

www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/the-sunday-session/audio/sunday-panel-should-sevu-reece-have-been-selected-for-the-all-blacks/#ath

The coach seemed to be saying it wasn’t limited to men, which I agree wasn’t entirely relevant in the context of what had happened but perhaps as an ex- police officer his motives were more to raise awareness in general rather than the specific incident.

😂😂😂

Yes, that will be it. Nothing at all to do with trying to deflect attention away from the fact that he is perfectly happy to have a horrible abusive violent man on his team, simply because that man is good at rugby.

Give me fucking strength.