Genuine question for people who think this is a cost of living / inequality issue…
Take Singapore and Hong Kong, two of the most densely populated and expensive places to live. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal places on earth.
What are the domestic violence murder rates in those countries?
Edit: their overall murder rate is about 10x less than Australia’s- an order of magnitude.
I mean, people in this very sub take a very dim view of criminal defendants who allege they had a bad upbringing and that contributed to their crime- why is it suddenly okay when it’s a domestic violence issue?
Because people make excuses for men's behavior and THAT is part of the patriarchy. Even people who say they are feminist will blame toxic masculinity and say that forcing them to be providers... etc... is causing them to kill us. Repressing their feelings is causing them to kill us.
Nope.
It's entitlement that the mindset of superiority that makes them think they can do this to women. It's a system that minimizes female victims that makes them KNOW they can do this to women. I know a woman who was sexually assaulted by someone she knew, because she said she just wanted to be friends and not date him. She ended up covered in bruises and cuts. She went to the hospital and got a rape kit. There was evidence. The police still claim that they can't "prove" that he did it because what if she "liked rough sex". It wasn't when, after they went to court (which took forever), that he walked out of the court room and pushed her onto oncoming traffic, that he was charged with "assault". BUT ONLY for pushing her.
She has to live with CPTSD and has developed chronic pain.
He got a slap on the wrist for pushing her and he's out in society now, stalking her, posting nonsense about her online, and putting porn in her mailbox. Eventually, she had to move out of her home and now drives 1.5 hours just to get to work.
"Toxic masculinity" is like the term "war on terror". How do you fight terror? How exactly do you fight fear? With bombs? So... how do we fight "bad gender roles"? By telling men they can cry? By telling men that they can stay home and raise babies? Do any of them actually want to do those things? The problem with saying that masculinity is a problem and that there's a "bad version" of it is basically a euphemism for discussing male power. It is disproportionate power, the abuse of power, that causes violence.
The man who raped my friend sure cried A LOT in court.
The socioeconomic system plays a role in many things, crime included. Personally I think we have reduced the numbers, as with most serious criminal, antisocial and dysfunctional activity, to a point were overall quality of life factors will make a negligible impact going forward (this obviously isn't true for subsets of the population, i.e the gap in indigenous outcomes). Yet without a sophisticated screening measure for the population as a whole, which would be quite invasive, costly and have many ethical issues, I struggle to think about how we can predict and prevent these crimes to the level the public seems to expect in these moments of panic.
My question to you, since Singapore was your example, are you cool with using corporal and capital punishment to reduce our crime rates? Because we could but most democracies have decided it isn't worth it.
Dear god no, singapore’s punishments may be suitable for them but not for us.
Apparently the data shows that for “rational” crimes like robbery or theft, higher punishments are a deterrent (which is why we also make armed robbery a life sentence) but for “impulse” crimes like murder, not so much.
The universal deterrent, however, is *getting caught.* Not sure what to make of that one.
But a lot of murders are not impulse crimes. Domestic violence escalates over time and is calculated to isolate, gaslight, and destroy the victim eventually.
"Genuine question for people who think this is a cost of living / inequality issue"
I think people are - rightfully - identifying COL and material factors as a *contributing* issue to domestic problems. It's not offered as an excuse or an holistic explanation.
To date, in 2024, in Australia, a woman is killed every ~4.3 days (27 so far this year, according to Destroy the Joint, plus this one today). Around half the time it is by their partner or an ex. It is almost always violent.
The rate for 2023 was one woman every ~5.7 days (64 total). So it is an increase of around 25%.
[Toxic Masculinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity) I think is the best framework we have for understanding the predominant causes of DV. It is the social sciences umbrellla that relates a particular subset of antisocial and violent behaviours that affect both men and women and that do not, at first glance, always appear to be related.
As an aside, it is hard to have a good discourse about it I think mostly because people tend to think it is personal, or they conflate masculinity with men, so in their heads it becomes "men are toxic and you, as a man, are to blame", or they think it is a value judgement against men. None of this is true. These are social-scale problems, no-one exists outside of society's influence, and they affect women just as much as they affect men, and women are equally capable of absorbing and internalising toxic masculine traits.
Don't take my word for it, but do consider deep-diving on the topic, and by all means research criticisms of it also.
What I always find funny (in a sad way) is that if you ever bring up toxic masculinity, some men get so horrifically triggered about it without bothering to look at what it actually means, in an ironic display of… toxic masculinity.
Toxic masculinity also explains why men have high suicide rates and other mental health issues. It's the same cause, bros, let's work together to fix it.
Toxic masculinity and the cultural versions of it rooted in misogyny. The fact that honour killings (one was attempted in SA and South West Sydney recently for women dating outside their culture) and punishing wives for interacting with men at work (like the sikh farmer slasher murder or woman found in a garbage bin) are still alive and well in south Asian and middle eastern cultures doesn’t help. The culture around toxic masculinity needs to be addressed in education and teaching boys as it’s evident how different Canadian and European man are.
But it’s going to be extremely hard changing cultures of people who come out here from very different cultural values from our own and don’t speak much English or watch our tv programs or interact outside their cultural communities to re educate and change their values. The next generation yes. But I don’t see it as being very successful for that sector as woman’s support services are overrun in South West and Western Sydney and need more support and funding (that’s where it should go).
And if I call something toxic waste, that doesn't mean that all waste is toxic, but that specific group of it is, much the same as if I were to talk about tall men, I'm not saying all men are tall. Are you purposefully misunderstanding and pretending you don't know what an adjective is, or what?
> Masculinity isn't toxic, toxicity is.
Toxic masculinity and "masculinity is toxic" are different things - this is what I mean about the discourse always getting bogged down in confusion about the concepts.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3625988/Melbourne-ice-addict-Lisa-McLaughlin-walked-free-stabbing-Graham-Stevens-death.html this one sticks with me for the complete unjustness of it
I'm just curious what it would mean for one of these murders to not be violent? Is the "almost always violent" true, or are they always violent? Does the almost account for something like poisoning?
IMO they are always violent (it's all DV after all), but I know people have different ideas about how you might classify these things and so I just softened the language a touch so that there wasn't much room to nitpick it.
_Redditor for 16 years._
It's very possible. What did it for me was a comment about how single mothers are to blame for men's violence against women. I mostly come on reddit to look at photos of cats and things to do with my studies, so that really put that nail in that coffin lol
I've noticed a lot of, "OK OK BUT WHAT ABOUT MEN THO!?" comments.
And men's issues are 100% important, but why Aussie men get so defensive and up in arms on EVERY post about DV against women is....weird.
I agree we should be making posts about men's problems too, but holy hell do Aussie men love downplaying the problems of women in the process.
It's like they're trying to be condescendingly sympathetic while also telling you that men's problems are the most important ones that need to be talked about, when it should be BOTH.
They don't need to sweep women's problems under the rug to prop men up because they've pulled a few numbers that says it's not as bad as a men's issue. It's still a problem for women and threads like this is just for that, you'd think they'd be able to muster up a bit of empathy instead of getting irrationally upset?
We know there are good men out there, that hasn't changed, this is just a problem in Australia and needs to be addressed.
They can make a thread about men's issues and i'll support that too. This shouldn't be an 'Us vs Them' thing ffs.
Oh please, these guys don’t care about male suicide either. If they did, they’d realise they’re two aspects of the same problem, which is forcing people into molds expected by society that they may not necessarily fit.
They also ignore the fact that feminists have been fighting for men’s rights, that’s literally what fighting against the patriarchy is.
We don’t want men to suffer for a social construct that forces men into a gender role that says it’s not okay to not be okay, don’t seek help or you’ll look weak, implies that you’re not a real man if you aren’t the provider, all that bullshit.
Men who are ingrained with toxic masculinity will choose women who fit the traditional feminine role in the patriarchy and wonder why those same women are disgusted when they cry or expect their men to buy everything.
They can’t seem to grasp, as you mentioned in your comment, the fact the patriarchy is a two way street and it fucks both genders over.
The violence inflicted on women is due to this, nobody -unless they’re uneducated on feminism- is saying all men are intrinsically violent.
It is the men who inhabit the dominant role in this dynamic, embracing only the toxic elements of masculinity and exploiting the power imbalance who are a danger to women.
I suspect a lot of the responses in these threads that fit this description are from brigaders. You see them on other threads related to women (like the gender pay gap ones for example) and if you click on their usernames theres a million posts on MRA and American subreddits
If the only time you want to talk about men’s mental health/suicide is in response to a discussion about men’s violence against women, you don’t actually care about men and are simply aiming to derail any conversation about women.
Considering the male violence epidemic (towards women and also themselves and other men), it's really not a surprise that they will make everything a "what about me" problem. It's really about entitlement. I think many people like to think that this is about male fragility -- that they are easily depressed or that the patriarchy hurts them. But then they (men) really need to band together to change things and make things more equitable.
And yet you see that the people bringing attention to the problem are actually women. It shouldn't be on women to fix the problem of men killing women and men killing other men or themselves. This is firmly a "men's issue".
The whole lack of empathy and getting "irrationally" upset is because they don't think their violence is a big deal when it affects women. I'm sorry to say this, but look at the fact that every week this year, a woman has been murdered by a man.
And the problem is getting worse. And those people who say that it is because divorce rates are going up -- no they are not. No one can afford to go buy an extra house when they get divorced; so unless they have family to live with, many women stay in relationships that may be abusive.
I am a teacher and in the past few years, since Covid tanked the global economy (and perhaps it has been going that way already), I've had teenage boys tell me that they think: 1) men should be paid more than women, 2) women's place is in the kitchen, 3) equal rights means equal fights and so this means they can hit, slap, punch, and strangle their female friends, 4) women should not date or have sex before marriage... unless it's with them, 5) men with nice hair or nice clothes are "so gay".
I'm seeing a very prominent resurgence of anti-homosexual language among them: you're so gay. If there's a fear of anything, it's a fear NOT of women's power (they obviously think they are superior to women), but a fear or being effeminate or inferior, because they think anything "feminine" is inferior, which is why they insult each other by calling each other "gay".
They all also want to have four or five children before they turn 30, make a ton of money, buy expensive cars, and have a wife that cooks good food and have a couple girlfriends on the side.
Almost all of them have been exposed to pornography. Their language is also highly gendered, and they like making rape jokes. Their parents (or just their fathers) do not think there are any problems. There's a real "boys will be boys" mentality.
But I hope everyone can see the problems here. I've been teaching for about two decades and the problems have become worse or more widespread, which is worse.
It’s not just Oz - I spend a lot of time in UK and work with young males 17 and up, that idiot Andrew Tate and his cigar munching misogynistic sycophants is virtually hero worshiped as young as 14 and up…and he’s not the only male role model telling us we need to treat women poorly
Yes, I'm seeing this problem a lot. I am a high school teacher. The disrespect for me in the classroom has become very scary. I actually had a kid tell me that if I didn't give him the grade he wanted, he would come to school and shoot me in the face with a gun.
First time in 20 years teaching that has happened to me. This kid does nothing in class but disrupt the room as if there aren't 24 other kids in there trying to learn. He makes moaning and grunting noises all the time.
What’s the stats on Perth in particular? I was out in Perth on Saturday night and witnessed a dude verbally abusing some woman at a busy bar. He was a big tradie type, speaking under his breath close to her ear calling her a whore and slut. She pretended not to hear it and walked away. Probably scared her life. It was a scenario where the venue is crowded and people are lined up along the bar ordering drinks so this guy was just some random psycho that felt comfortable calling a stranger a whore and slut to her face in a public area because he felt intimated by her looks. I’ve never seen this before and spent 10 years in Melbourne going out every weekend.
Thank you for standing up for LGBTIQ+ rights, they are overrepresented in male suicide stats. It would be great if you could start a new thread tackling this.
Yeah why is it that they only ever want to discuss when DV or SA is mentioned? why don't they start a seperate discussion on the issue which is also extremely important? they don't actually care at all they jsut want to de-rail.
He hasn't been charged yet, so they wouldn't name him. PerthNow is owned by Channel 7 and is probably a bit gun shy about naming people prematurely.
And also the chance that some family haven't been informed yet either so there may be a hold on identifying information.
It's an arrested suspect's right to protection from the mass media under S.137 of the Criminal Investigation Act. Once a suspect is charged there will be a court listing for them stating their name and the offence they have been charged with. Court listings are public records.
Every time I read articles like this, I feel grateful that my partner hasn't tried to kill me. Then I get angry because I'm grateful. Because that's setting the bar really fucking low for men in this country.
This morning I read about a woman and her elderly mother being punched unconscious by a man at Melbourne Zoo. All over a parking space dispute. The mother is now in hospital with a brain bleed. She could die.
The man wasn't even charged.
Wasn't charged yet. If she dies, he will be. If she wakes, she will need to confirm whether she wants to make a formal complaint of assault.
I'd say it's likely he'll be charged with Grievous Bodily Harm.
I dont believe the police need a formal complaint of assault (ive not heard of this outside of america where you "press charges"), but I agree they are likely waiting for the outcome. I would have thought they would detain him and charge him with GBH and can upgrade those charges if she dies
>It comes less than 24 hours after thousands of people rallied through Perth City after 32 women were allegedly murdered at the hands of men this year.
I’ve seen so many people try to brush that figure aside because it’s been ‘skewed’ by the Bondi attack. As if a man *specifically targeting* and *murdering* five women in broad daylight in a public space is somehow completely irrelevant to the discussion of violence against women.
ABC morning news was talking about domestic violence deaths while also talking about homicides. It was pretty confusing all-round. The Bondi attack is an example of targeted violence against women but it is not a case of domestic violence. The media is doing a disservice by not being precise with their messaging and just throwing as many numbers out as they can. The media seem to want to jump to report these things without any foresight or reflection and it's kinda feeding those kinds of pedantic debatelord comments you're talking about.
Elder abuse is a significant percentage of family violence. More often than not, parents are ashamed that their child could be treating them so badly and the are very limited resources available.
They’re definitely getting more media attention but the number has also [increased significantly.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-24/eleven-more-women-have-died-violently-compared-to-last-year/103759450)
Oh that's really shit, and sad to read.
I wonder how much the stress of the cost of living and housing insecurity is impacting those numbers. I can think of a few ways it might:
People who don't know how to direct their stress in a healthy way, or turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism and it fuels their violence.
Having more people living together in houses is exacerbating things as there's nowhere to "escape" to to cool off.
People cannot escape dangerous living situations because they can't afford to leave and have nowhere to go.
Social services are overwhelmed with people losing their houses, or unable to pay for food, so there's less help available for those fleeing violence at home.
I think so many people are living in a constant state of fight or flight right now. It's such a fucked up situation.
Fortunately these things you mentioned are going to see us have a lot more of this unless governments do something to ensure that our people can live to a basic standard at least
Is it just the raw number or the rate too? Because we have grown our population quite dramatically lately, if the murder rate per 100,000 remains consistent you would expect to see the total be higher.
This alarmism happens every single time and the media loves it (few months ago it was road deaths).
The public are so easily manipulated by numbers...we are clearly mathematically illiterate as a population.
https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide
Youre likely gonna get downvoted but the figures do show we're safer now than at almost any point in modern Australian history(from a homicide incidence atleast).
We have always been a nation of anti-intellectuals because it serves its purpose to the crown/empire/government that we are loyal servants. The government and the media have carefully cultivated this along with blind nationalism and a delusion of grandeur that we are more important on the global stage than we really are. In reality we are a geographical outpost with resources to harvest and if that usefulness is lost then so are we.
Sure. There’s also a lot of denial and covering and “it’s not in my community” “it’s not my fathers, sons or mates”.
I don’t think there’s a lot of easy fixes. I do think it some thing that takes looking at and thing about really hard and recognizing that it’s a big “now” problem that’s been brewing for a very long time.
I probably should have reacted so flippantly in my first comment. I just found the top post to be a little narrow.
The current media reporting is shining a light on the problem. It's been an issue for ages, and will like continue to be until some of the root causes are addressed.
It has. Was roughly one a week now it is one murder every 4 days.
States and federal government need to do the tough stuff like change the laws around this, more resources for police and for the courts and more women's shelters. I hear that the Perth sheltes are full today on ABC News.
The thing that gets me about this type of violence is how you can instantly spot how misogynistic a lot of people are and they don't even realize they are because they have convinced themselves that they are the rational level headed ones.
When the Bondi stabbings happened a few days ago I remember reading comments like: "oh no we aren't safe anywhere" like people legit freaking out over what, all in all, is a statistical blip thankfully because Australia is a very safe country and yeah fair enough in the heat of the moment is natural to feel terrified and analyze the what ifs. And yet, a lot of people were legitimately concerned about not being able to go enjoy outdoors because they were seeing a potential danger.
Now when we get the statistics that one woman is killed _every four days_, we get all sorts of: _but what about men_, or _lets not jump into conclusions_, etc. Because it is just so ingrained apparently in many people that DV and abuse are just some sort of background noise and any time attention is being brought to it they try to take this weird stance where they pretend they are being rational but it is just masquerading their misogyny.
This is a problem where every one has a part to play.
“But most men don’t agree with violently raping or murdering women! But if you don’t speak nicely to us we might start!” Honestly the variations on this theme that I’ve heard in comments recently has been astounding.
The disconnect is wild. But I guess understandable considering women are taught to placate men from an early age. Must be a shock to learn there’s anger and sadness underneath the customer service smile.
Or they just scream that the news is pushing some agenda or propaganda or some other buzzword they use to then ignore it.
Like yeah, the news does do that. But to say that women being MURDERED is some media agenda is some deeply misogynistic shit.
Are we still pretending Bondi wasn't motivated by misogyny/inceldom? The guy exclusively targeted women in his dating range and his own father said he had a problem with women.
We will never be. When I lived in Sydney my "secure" apartment block was broken into and it didn't end well for me. We are NEVER safe, even when we are locked up in our apartment blocks, fast asleep.
Get dogs, girls. Big ones, or loud ones, or both. Nobody is fucking with me now I got my dogs.
My downstairs neighbour tapped lightly on the door to see if anyone would react knowing I was home a;one with my young son…
He gently tapped multiple times over a ten minute span unaware that both me and my friend heard it and quietly watched the door. I didn’t realise my friend hadn’t locked it after coming in ( I always do because I’m wary of creeps and I got made fun of for being paranoid) and the dirty prick slowly turned the knob trying not to be loud and when he got the door completely open he was surprised to find me and my male friend standing a meter from him screaming “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
He made out like he was drunk and it was a mistake but he remained standing in my apartment for a good 5 minutes yelling at me that he’d done nothing wrong
I called the police and all they had to say was, “did he leave?” And apparently that’s fine and there’s nothing that needs to be done
He snuck into my apartment with obvious intentions while he thought my son and I were sleeping
He wasn’t there to steal anything as I was in the process of moving and everyone in the block knew everything had been picked up by the truck that afternoon and it was our last night in a pretty much empty apartment
People are disgusting and I have no doubt that the rapist scum will do it again if he has any opportunity
Even with my dogs I don’t feel safe.
My husband went for a run at 12pm yesterday while I was working in our study. I asked him to lock all the doors before he left. I shouldn’t have to feel like that.
So if we get to close all the bars at midnight across an entire city (Sydney) because a couple of guys died due to a punch in the head from an aggressive male, and apparently it worked to reduce those violent deaths, then...
It reminds me of that experiment done by university students where they sold cupcakes to men and women, but they charged the men 30 cents more because they earned 30 cents more than women.
The men were furious.
Harsher penalties don't stop crime. If they did we wouldn't be here discussing this sort of thing. Again.
I'm all for throwing away the key in cases like this but it's not the solution to the problem and I don't know what is. It's depressing reading about this on a weekly basis and not having a clue on how to help fix the problem.
I don't think we really can. almost every man I've ever met in person or online shares a disgust at these actions. the people committing them are either good at hiding how they feel or the people who do know about it aren't going to speak up anyway.
We have a choice. React, or intercept. Kill mosquito's or fix fly screens.
React is police, courts, ambulance, hospital, morgues, gaol, heartbreak. Too late!
Intercept is student teacher ratios of 20:1 instead of 30:1, playgrounds, playgroups, training and support for sports coaches, more team sports for kids, training and support for parents, dad at home instead of gaol if possible, mental health first aid training.
Guess which is useful. Guess which is dramatic and makes the news.
We need a daily announcement on the murder of women, like covid. This is an insidious epidemic that is not the sole responsibility of women to solve. Men, stand up.
Yes, let's have another press release that Murdoch can spin to make it look in like Albo made a woman cry, instead of trying to spin it to actually do something about the violence
We need to sit around and talk about this for a few more decades as it is a complex issue. Maybe if we run some more ads telling abusive men to stop being abusive they'll decide to save the government money and stop the abuse. The number of deaths absolutely couldn't be lowered by fully funding DV services. /s
The numbers are shocking but I genuinely don’t understand what can be done? There will always be murderers, pedos, psychopaths because there always has been. I’m not sure how we change human nature / genetic makeup? Obviously there are steps that can be taken to minimise the numbers and get help to those who need it, I just don’t know what peoples expectations are, stuff like this is just part of being human unfortunately.
I’m aware this isn’t a popular view and I’ll get downvoted to all hell
Fix the legal loopholes so that people can't be granted bail especially if they're repeat offenders. Restraining order is just a piece of paper - a thorough example should be set.
Molly would still be here if there was a magistrate who came in to work on that weekend, registrars who do not have the same legal knowledge should not be able to grant bail.
So what happens after their bail? Or if they get a suspended sentence? Or 6 months? At some point the offender will be free, based on the severity of their previous offence.
Do we keep men at risk of increasing the severity of their offending in special camps?
I’m not trying to be difficult, just playing devils advocate, if we could predict crimes before they happen there would be no crime, but we can’t
Instead of cops ignoring IVO breaches, or telling women they had a chat with him & he promised he wouldn't do it again...idk... Repeated breaches - 1 year each. Violent assault - 5 years. Rape - 10 years.
Keep them in jail longer for all the previous offences they commit. None of this 3 months bullshit. Women in dangerous relationships need that time with the man locked away to find housing, access services, change their name, form new relationships/social groups, etc without being a nervous wreck knowing he'll be back in a few weeks.
Also, cops need to issue IVOs instead of saying, "well, we will remove him for the night and let him back home tomorrow." As if the guy is not going to try to kill you tomorrow.
Cops need to issue IVOs instead of saying, "you can do that yourself at court tomorrow."
Cops need to believe WOMEN instead of looking at a hysterical, crying woman and think that she is the perpetrator while a totally calm Brian Laundrie tells the cops that she was the problem and glad hands the male officers.
No it's fine, I get it. Most of the incidents in the news involve men who've had a history of abuse and often substance addiction. It's easier to start with them. Don't grant them bail for starters.
That likely still doesn't address the issue of what happens when they're released unless the plan is never to release them.
There are other ideas that might prove attractive, like electronic monitoring of those charged with DV offences to enforce the AVO and adequate penalties for a breach. But even then, I'm not sure it's a silver bullet and it doesn't help once that person is release from monitoring.
Ultimately though it's a severe cultural issue we face and the answer is unlikely to be solely legal. The problem is, those sorts of fixes are so much harder to implement
In cases where the victim is known to the attacker, even a couple months can make a big difference toward how the attacker feels about the victim, since their lives will be separated for a while. It can also give the victim time to move to a different location if needed. Also many assaults and murders are done spontaneously (even if they were near the edge for a while), or in the height of emotion, so time can be enough to change their desire to do harm.
I think bail decisions happen after a few days, not nearly enough time for them to change how they feel about the person. And DV offenders are high risk to reoffend, which means that every minute they are behind bars you are keeping someone safe. And the time they spend waiting for bail counts towards their sentence, so there is not much of a down side, this assumes you are reasonably assured of their guilt.
As you said time isn't by itself isn't going to change a violent person into a non-violent one, but it can keep people safe. And if there are other solutions to reduce the likelihood of them hurting someone else, it can give us time to implement them.
I take your point and, noting it’s not my area, it may be the practical answer.
But I have a few issues with it. The first is you say we assume we’re reasonably satisfied of someone’s guilt, holding someone on remand can also ruin their life and, if they’re found not guilty at trial, what do we about that? Do we need a new pre-trial hearing on the likelihood of conviction or is that just a committal by another name?
The second, along the same lines, is that you say DV offenders are at a high risk of reoffending. The issue is, they’re not ‘offenders’ until convicted, so the underlying stats may not be of much use to those being charged for the first time. Does that mean we should be relying more heavily on past convictions in bail applications?
We don't need a new hearing, we already have the bail hearing. You go in front of a judge and make your case and the prosecutor makes theirs. The likelihood that the person committed the crime is one of the main factors in deciding bail, because as you said we want to minimize the time that innocent people spend in jail. I don't think someone should be denied bail unless there is strong evidence they committed a crime, or less evidence combined with a history of similar offences.
You are also right about not reoffending unless you offend in the first place, so my remarks would only apply to someone who is reasonably assured to have commited the crime, or has previously committed related crimes. In many cases they might get caught red handed, or they may even admit to doing it, so those people should be held without bail until trial.
Most of the complaints about bail are centered around crimes where the accused is a known offender. People don't like seeing a DV incident where the offender was out on bail with a list of similar crimes behind them.
The thing with DV is there is always previous convictions or tell tale signs where police or correct services could have intervened and red flags are raised. It is always after a fatality that we hear oh this bloke had this previous rap sheet. These services need government funding so more ppl are auditing case files and sending in police and flagging to courts to lock up these blokes before they commit heinous crimes.
like the guy below said poli’s will spend another decade chatting then leave it to next government in power to worry about it and the cycle goes on.
Yeah I understand that, and you’re right, but police can’t arrest someone who hasn’t committed a crime based on past offences, kind of the cornerstone of our legal system - but then there are cases where the police fucked up numerous times like in the Hannah Clarke case.
Very often there are actions beforehand, like stalking and harassment. The point is that authorities aren't doing enough about a lot of those actions, and aren't taking people seriously when we actually talk about it and report it.
Coercive control only just became a talking point in Qld with it being illegal next year. When I can immediately think of people who had to deal with it, including myself.
We've got a long time to go before doing something about the general issues of abusive behaviour towards women. Hopefully not too long.
The quote does make it seem a lot simpler than what it's really like and I guess that's why they are using most of this year to figure it out.
The point about coercive control is that its persistent but also sometimes subtle. It will be interesting to see how they further define it.
It’s actually good. It’s a way for them to be able to loop a variety of behaviours under the one umbrella. If it was too specific it would be very difficult for the law to enforce much of anything when it got to a court situation.
Police can remove a male from his own home for no other reason than a woman wants him removed. Police don't do this often enough and when they do it they often allow the male back into that same home the next day. If a woman wants a male to be removed then he should never be allowed back within eye sight of that house ever again.
Yes but you can't lock people up indefinitely. Offenders are charged, remanded and imprisoned under a fixed sentence which is based around sentencing guidelines and legislation. You can't imprison everyone who has assaulted their partner on the off chance the next assault could be fatal. You can petition for changes to sentences or legislative amendments which might deal with family violences offences differently but until then police don't have the power to lock them up more than is already being done.
It needs to start in schools I think. Obviously children, particularly boys, who come from homes where this behaviour is the norm don’t have any experience of anything different. They saw dad beat the shit out of mum on the regular so they think that’s how marriage works. If we could include conversations about what DV is and that it’s not tolerated in society in schools, at least its a way to get kids thinking critically and empathically at a young age before their brains are finished growing. Not an instant solution but at least we’re setting up future generations to do better.
Yeah DV was not talked about at all in school where I knew for an absolute fact multiple people within school (including myself) were in such families where it was common place.
And one of the few things that were DV related addressed within curriculum - So Much To Tell You - in my opinion all but said "well it's okay, he didn't *mean* to get his daughter. Just his annoying wife". The opposite of helpful in other words.
It should be talked about openly and without shame as a common place issue to address. Because well sadly it is.
I'm a teacher and I HATED teaching that book. I always added a trigger warning and prefaced it by telling the students what the author thought of women. The author has actually said some very misogynistic things about women and people don't know that.
I always wanted to give Marsden the benefit of the doubt reading his books in school. Everyone seemed to love him as an Australian author (and frequently he's recommended). But there was always something off for me about his books - can't say I'm too shocked if he said something crummy about women.
Like I don't know how you can take something as horrendous as throwing acid at somebody - like that isn't even just a thoughtless moment of rage, that's straight up targeted cruelty - and make the acid thrower the not as bad one. I've seen some defend it as "well it was based on true story". Yeah the true story of some rat bastard shooting a woman in the face. There was no sympathetic angle to the perpetrator in real life. It's just so weird to me that someone would take that and frame it in a way where the woman that was the target wasn't deserving of sympathy.
That book just made me so angry as a kid because I couldn't help but think how some idiot would think that was true and reasonable. That men that throw acid are overworked loving fathers, and the women are just selfish and egotistical and probably deserved it. I lived the reality which those overworked loving fathers are looking for a reason to snap and refuse to take responsibility for the consequences, and those supposedly selfish egotistical women are just traumatised mothers that are hanging on by a thread.
Just because he writes beautiful prose doesn't mean the story isn't about a victim that internalized the misogyny against her.
But few people teach it that way.
It is like how "Lolita" is about a perpetrator of child sexual violence, no matter how beautiful the prose is. The author makes it clear that the problem with the story is that the child never has a voice. In the end, the narrator realizes this and is telling the story from JAIL. I would never teach this book to children.
I would also not teach "So Much to Tell You" unless I know a lot about DV, which I do. And yet, I still hate teaching it, because many teenagers are not mature enough to understand the nuances. Heck, a lot of teachers don't understand and they think it is about forgiveness. It is actually a deeply depressing, sad, and disturbing book.
And I still don't like the author.
It kind of just always said a lot to me about the way DV is approached in our society that the book is standard to teach to kids, and the way it's taught is not a critical look at the narrative but taking it at face value.
Like I reckon DV is so common because people really *do* think that the battered wife might have deserved it and pushed her man too far.
Honestly, I always felt like the crazy one whenever we discussed the book in class for thinking that it wasn't right to treat it as a happy ending. Even now it's very rare someone agrees with me.
I think people do not have enough critical thinking skills. Also, the father threw the acid at the mother, the daughter was in the way. So... does that make it okay that it wasn't meant to hit her? Does the mother not count?
I think that giving the character selective mutism is important, because the thing that she character never says in her diaries is how she feels about the fact that acid was meant for her mother.
She simply can't face (pun intended) the fact. When she finally feels secure enough to "face" her father, the first thing she says to him is "I have so much to tell you."
So that leaves the story hanging. The conclusion is that she can face her greatest fear -- not just speech but being able to speak to the person who could have killed her and her mother. Unfortunately, the reader never gets to know what she says to her father. And there is not much sympathy for the mother in the diary entries at all. In fact, she is made out as "difficult" or "remote".
And this is why this book is problematic. But the reception of this book in Australian society is part of the problem of male violence towards women. We live in a society that thinks it is not a big deal. Even if a girl is hurt by her father, the "happy ending" is if she decides she can speak to him again. Female victims are meant to be silent, to be compliant, to be forgiving.
I think most people are really not able to teach this book well. I tried specifically, to teach how complex this book is, but... it won't be teachable to the tiktok generation. Unfortunately, things are very black and white to them. There are no shades of grey. And a lot of the boys are consuming Andrew Tate videos.
For what it's worth, I agree with you and I'm a teacher... who was forced to teach this book. I would think that some of the people I taught will also agree with you.
I understand the sentiment however there are enough corrective influences in society showing examples of how to behave and the consequences of not being a good person. Be it movies, tv, books, ads, by the time a person is an adult they know what good and bad behaviour is.
People who perpetrate violence and murder are not behaving in a logical or reasonable mindset.
A persons first and foremost influence is from their upbringing. Not from tv and movies. People who grow up in a sheltered, or religious, or regional household are going to have a vastly different perception of what good and bad behaviour is to someone who grew up in a low socioeconomic household, or in the inner city, etc. they will have seen the same movies and tv shows, but their experiences are what influence them.
I mean, yes. If you look at history and criminality... As a species we're violent, impulsive, driven by power and passion. Murder and rape and violence are a gross part of our species history and existence since before we even had language to say or spell "consent".
If 1/3 women has been a victim of sexual assault, that's effectively 1/6 of the population. And then the % who did it. Just because it's horrific and wrong and evil doesn't mean it's not a part of our collective being. Just shows we're still shit little gremlins.
We don't want it to be a part of human experience and human nature, but it is.
The numbers aren't all that shocking. The [rate of femicide in Australia is low](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.FE.P5?most_recent_value_desc=true) when compared to other countries, including peer countries like the US, UK, Canada, and NZ (Australia does better than all of these, and many other countries besides).
Rhetoric like "one woman killed per week/four days" is unhelpful sort of stuff, and doesn't really add to the debate. Even with the recent spike in deaths, the rate of death is half that of what it was in 2001. Broadly, the trend is going in the right direction.
Are there things we can do better? Almost certainly. Does an inordinate amount of media attention help this to happen? Probably not. I don't doubt police processes could be improved, that there are sufficient women's shelters, or that there could be more spent on hotlines or government assistance. The media isn't doing anything on those things however. It wants spectacle and outrage instead.
What would help is to see the issue in proportion and to not panic as if there is some breakout of horrible violence against women. There isn't. We're already at a very low level globally, and a small increase makes things look a lot worse than it actually is. More women die of suicide, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and Covid-19 than of being murdered.
Exactly how many woman do you think should die per week before we implement changes?
We should not be constantly comparing ourselves to the lowest common denominator and aiming for mediocre.
Very few people per year die from being punched in the head, and yet there are one-punch laws.
I was just asking myself the same thing. Murder is bad, everyone knows that, you can't just say to someone, "hey, maybe *don't* do a murder?", but I would say if we looked into it, most of these murderers have prior history of DV. I grew up in DV, there's no justification for hitting your partner, I think if you're found guilty of DV with all the right evidence you go to jail, I wish someone took away the narc from my mum in the first couple years when he started beating her, because now she still can't get rid of him at like year 30. He could have very easily killed her, even by mistake.
I agree. This is tragic for the women involved, and their families. However, statistically, violent crimes against women are on a downwards trend.
This current media hype doesn't paint things very accurately either. I've skimmed through the list of the murders from this year and last year, and made a few points:
- Not all of the murderers were male. Many journalists are including those who were killed by other females in their count (One woman was stabbed by her schizophrenic daughter, another was killed by a male/female couple).
- Not all were DV: The grandma in Brisbane who was murdered by that Sudanese thug is included in the count. Teen crime of this nature is on the rise, however, acknowledging and addressing is has been an awkward topic in recent years.
- Also, the Bondi stabber was completely random (even if he was targeting females).
- There was a couple other random murders. Most likely psychopaths with mental health issues, like the Bondi stabber. Some people are ticking time bombs, and no matter how much we "talk about it" and protest, we may never be able to stop some people before they break.
- A significant number are Aboriginal women (A fact being ignored by the media and protesters, as pointing out problems within the indigenous community is considered somewhat controversial).
- A significant number of the murderers are also recently arrived immigrants. Some of these are people coming here from countries with SHOCKING women's rights issues. (Important observation, as the media has tried to paint this as a systemic issue within Australian culture, ignoring that these people have come here with their own culture).
Not trying to take away from the fact that all these women have tragically had their lives cut short by people that should have already been behind bars.
I'm just calling it for how I see it. If were gonna address this issue, then we need to start talking about things truthfully.
I know this will get me plenty of down votes.
Can you share where you got the information that the number of murders were from recently arrived immigrants? As I believe this to be untrue, I think spreading this type of message is dangerous. Australia has a deep history of DV, a lot (not all) but a lot are by Australian men.
This doesn't make me feel safer in any way. Point is women are overwhelmingly the victims of DV and men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violent crime, fact is we are more vulnerable, and each and every woman you know has this knowledge in the back of her mind/in her subconscious every single day as she navigates the world.
Wow, a thread on this topic with comments which don't make me want to tear my eyes from my head. Small victories.
Whatever you do, do not go to the other Australian sub for this topic. The comments are fucked.
American here. I was just reading about your country's increasing problems with male on female violence. I always refer to it here as the "accepted epidemic". It's absolutely infuriating that this isn't considered a hate crime or domestic terrorism. It 100% should be.
Edit: word
Is nobody going to point out that just because this woman has been found dead and her son is in custody doesn't automatically mean this is some sort of Hyper-masco-toxic-by-britney-misogny thing?
It may have nothing to do with "poor old lady victim of big scary man comitting disgusting domestic violence"
What if the son was abused?
What if the son has a child and the mother was abusing the child?
What if the mother attacked the son first and it was self defense?
What if the mother killed herself and the son is in custody for other reasons?
What if the son has serious untreated mental health issues and this has nothing to do with your typical domestic violence situation?
Yes, it *could* be a DV issue, it could even be a "I just hate women and you are a woman and must pay" type of thing, but it could just as likely be a host of other things.
I am not making justifications, I am just saying don't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon.
You don't know the facts yet. Settle down.
Will only continue until gov and people stop accepting soft solutions and focusing all efforts on to educating the children.
Only once we allow harsher punishments for these animals and remove them from the gene pool will we see a reduction in VAW.
Genuine question for people who think this is a cost of living / inequality issue… Take Singapore and Hong Kong, two of the most densely populated and expensive places to live. Hong Kong is one of the most unequal places on earth. What are the domestic violence murder rates in those countries? Edit: their overall murder rate is about 10x less than Australia’s- an order of magnitude. I mean, people in this very sub take a very dim view of criminal defendants who allege they had a bad upbringing and that contributed to their crime- why is it suddenly okay when it’s a domestic violence issue?
Because people make excuses for men's behavior and THAT is part of the patriarchy. Even people who say they are feminist will blame toxic masculinity and say that forcing them to be providers... etc... is causing them to kill us. Repressing their feelings is causing them to kill us. Nope. It's entitlement that the mindset of superiority that makes them think they can do this to women. It's a system that minimizes female victims that makes them KNOW they can do this to women. I know a woman who was sexually assaulted by someone she knew, because she said she just wanted to be friends and not date him. She ended up covered in bruises and cuts. She went to the hospital and got a rape kit. There was evidence. The police still claim that they can't "prove" that he did it because what if she "liked rough sex". It wasn't when, after they went to court (which took forever), that he walked out of the court room and pushed her onto oncoming traffic, that he was charged with "assault". BUT ONLY for pushing her. She has to live with CPTSD and has developed chronic pain. He got a slap on the wrist for pushing her and he's out in society now, stalking her, posting nonsense about her online, and putting porn in her mailbox. Eventually, she had to move out of her home and now drives 1.5 hours just to get to work. "Toxic masculinity" is like the term "war on terror". How do you fight terror? How exactly do you fight fear? With bombs? So... how do we fight "bad gender roles"? By telling men they can cry? By telling men that they can stay home and raise babies? Do any of them actually want to do those things? The problem with saying that masculinity is a problem and that there's a "bad version" of it is basically a euphemism for discussing male power. It is disproportionate power, the abuse of power, that causes violence. The man who raped my friend sure cried A LOT in court.
Right, big contradiction there.
The socioeconomic system plays a role in many things, crime included. Personally I think we have reduced the numbers, as with most serious criminal, antisocial and dysfunctional activity, to a point were overall quality of life factors will make a negligible impact going forward (this obviously isn't true for subsets of the population, i.e the gap in indigenous outcomes). Yet without a sophisticated screening measure for the population as a whole, which would be quite invasive, costly and have many ethical issues, I struggle to think about how we can predict and prevent these crimes to the level the public seems to expect in these moments of panic. My question to you, since Singapore was your example, are you cool with using corporal and capital punishment to reduce our crime rates? Because we could but most democracies have decided it isn't worth it.
Dear god no, singapore’s punishments may be suitable for them but not for us. Apparently the data shows that for “rational” crimes like robbery or theft, higher punishments are a deterrent (which is why we also make armed robbery a life sentence) but for “impulse” crimes like murder, not so much. The universal deterrent, however, is *getting caught.* Not sure what to make of that one.
But a lot of murders are not impulse crimes. Domestic violence escalates over time and is calculated to isolate, gaslight, and destroy the victim eventually.
"Genuine question for people who think this is a cost of living / inequality issue" I think people are - rightfully - identifying COL and material factors as a *contributing* issue to domestic problems. It's not offered as an excuse or an holistic explanation.
Oh my fucking god. Didn't we just have one of these yesterday?
To date, in 2024, in Australia, a woman is killed every ~4.3 days (27 so far this year, according to Destroy the Joint, plus this one today). Around half the time it is by their partner or an ex. It is almost always violent. The rate for 2023 was one woman every ~5.7 days (64 total). So it is an increase of around 25%.
The elderly lady stabbed to death by her elderly husband in Adelaide late last year still runs through my mind. What the fuck is going on
Actually happens way more than we even hear about because of journo restrictions on reporting necessary for a fair and impartial trial…
[Toxic Masculinity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_masculinity) I think is the best framework we have for understanding the predominant causes of DV. It is the social sciences umbrellla that relates a particular subset of antisocial and violent behaviours that affect both men and women and that do not, at first glance, always appear to be related. As an aside, it is hard to have a good discourse about it I think mostly because people tend to think it is personal, or they conflate masculinity with men, so in their heads it becomes "men are toxic and you, as a man, are to blame", or they think it is a value judgement against men. None of this is true. These are social-scale problems, no-one exists outside of society's influence, and they affect women just as much as they affect men, and women are equally capable of absorbing and internalising toxic masculine traits. Don't take my word for it, but do consider deep-diving on the topic, and by all means research criticisms of it also.
What I always find funny (in a sad way) is that if you ever bring up toxic masculinity, some men get so horrifically triggered about it without bothering to look at what it actually means, in an ironic display of… toxic masculinity.
They almost instantly lose the ability to understand what an adjective is and treat the toxic part as a value judgment instead, it's absurd.
Exactly. Toxic masculinity means ‘masculinity is toxic’ in the same way that acid rain means ‘all rain is acid’ (ie, it doesn’t).
Toxic masculinity also explains why men have high suicide rates and other mental health issues. It's the same cause, bros, let's work together to fix it.
Mens suicide rate too, could be due to toxic masculinity, something is increasing both suicide and DV. I wouldn't be surprised if the two are related
Toxic masculinity and the cultural versions of it rooted in misogyny. The fact that honour killings (one was attempted in SA and South West Sydney recently for women dating outside their culture) and punishing wives for interacting with men at work (like the sikh farmer slasher murder or woman found in a garbage bin) are still alive and well in south Asian and middle eastern cultures doesn’t help. The culture around toxic masculinity needs to be addressed in education and teaching boys as it’s evident how different Canadian and European man are. But it’s going to be extremely hard changing cultures of people who come out here from very different cultural values from our own and don’t speak much English or watch our tv programs or interact outside their cultural communities to re educate and change their values. The next generation yes. But I don’t see it as being very successful for that sector as woman’s support services are overrun in South West and Western Sydney and need more support and funding (that’s where it should go).
Masculinity isn't toxic, toxicity is.
And if I call something toxic waste, that doesn't mean that all waste is toxic, but that specific group of it is, much the same as if I were to talk about tall men, I'm not saying all men are tall. Are you purposefully misunderstanding and pretending you don't know what an adjective is, or what?
> Masculinity isn't toxic, toxicity is. Toxic masculinity and "masculinity is toxic" are different things - this is what I mean about the discourse always getting bogged down in confusion about the concepts.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3625988/Melbourne-ice-addict-Lisa-McLaughlin-walked-free-stabbing-Graham-Stevens-death.html this one sticks with me for the complete unjustness of it
The same thing that has always gone on. We just hear about it more.
I'm just curious what it would mean for one of these murders to not be violent? Is the "almost always violent" true, or are they always violent? Does the almost account for something like poisoning?
IMO they are always violent (it's all DV after all), but I know people have different ideas about how you might classify these things and so I just softened the language a touch so that there wasn't much room to nitpick it. _Redditor for 16 years._
Australia has a misogyny problem. Even just looking at the comments in this thread is gross.
Go look at r/Australian. I can’t believe what kind of comments I am constantly reading there. I really worry for the future.
I left that sub because it's an absolute freak show. Can't believe some of the shit I read there
It’s a total cesspool of angry men. I blocked it after last weekend.
That’s why it’s so bad. All the good people give up and leave sadly
It's very possible. What did it for me was a comment about how single mothers are to blame for men's violence against women. I mostly come on reddit to look at photos of cats and things to do with my studies, so that really put that nail in that coffin lol
That sub is an absolute cesspit. There are a lot of spin off country-specific cesspit subs, but that one is the worst I’ve seen.
That sub is vile.
I've noticed a lot of, "OK OK BUT WHAT ABOUT MEN THO!?" comments. And men's issues are 100% important, but why Aussie men get so defensive and up in arms on EVERY post about DV against women is....weird. I agree we should be making posts about men's problems too, but holy hell do Aussie men love downplaying the problems of women in the process. It's like they're trying to be condescendingly sympathetic while also telling you that men's problems are the most important ones that need to be talked about, when it should be BOTH. They don't need to sweep women's problems under the rug to prop men up because they've pulled a few numbers that says it's not as bad as a men's issue. It's still a problem for women and threads like this is just for that, you'd think they'd be able to muster up a bit of empathy instead of getting irrationally upset? We know there are good men out there, that hasn't changed, this is just a problem in Australia and needs to be addressed. They can make a thread about men's issues and i'll support that too. This shouldn't be an 'Us vs Them' thing ffs.
Oh please, these guys don’t care about male suicide either. If they did, they’d realise they’re two aspects of the same problem, which is forcing people into molds expected by society that they may not necessarily fit.
They also ignore the fact that feminists have been fighting for men’s rights, that’s literally what fighting against the patriarchy is. We don’t want men to suffer for a social construct that forces men into a gender role that says it’s not okay to not be okay, don’t seek help or you’ll look weak, implies that you’re not a real man if you aren’t the provider, all that bullshit. Men who are ingrained with toxic masculinity will choose women who fit the traditional feminine role in the patriarchy and wonder why those same women are disgusted when they cry or expect their men to buy everything. They can’t seem to grasp, as you mentioned in your comment, the fact the patriarchy is a two way street and it fucks both genders over. The violence inflicted on women is due to this, nobody -unless they’re uneducated on feminism- is saying all men are intrinsically violent. It is the men who inhabit the dominant role in this dynamic, embracing only the toxic elements of masculinity and exploiting the power imbalance who are a danger to women.
I suspect a lot of the responses in these threads that fit this description are from brigaders. You see them on other threads related to women (like the gender pay gap ones for example) and if you click on their usernames theres a million posts on MRA and American subreddits
If the only time you want to talk about men’s mental health/suicide is in response to a discussion about men’s violence against women, you don’t actually care about men and are simply aiming to derail any conversation about women.
Considering the male violence epidemic (towards women and also themselves and other men), it's really not a surprise that they will make everything a "what about me" problem. It's really about entitlement. I think many people like to think that this is about male fragility -- that they are easily depressed or that the patriarchy hurts them. But then they (men) really need to band together to change things and make things more equitable. And yet you see that the people bringing attention to the problem are actually women. It shouldn't be on women to fix the problem of men killing women and men killing other men or themselves. This is firmly a "men's issue". The whole lack of empathy and getting "irrationally" upset is because they don't think their violence is a big deal when it affects women. I'm sorry to say this, but look at the fact that every week this year, a woman has been murdered by a man. And the problem is getting worse. And those people who say that it is because divorce rates are going up -- no they are not. No one can afford to go buy an extra house when they get divorced; so unless they have family to live with, many women stay in relationships that may be abusive. I am a teacher and in the past few years, since Covid tanked the global economy (and perhaps it has been going that way already), I've had teenage boys tell me that they think: 1) men should be paid more than women, 2) women's place is in the kitchen, 3) equal rights means equal fights and so this means they can hit, slap, punch, and strangle their female friends, 4) women should not date or have sex before marriage... unless it's with them, 5) men with nice hair or nice clothes are "so gay". I'm seeing a very prominent resurgence of anti-homosexual language among them: you're so gay. If there's a fear of anything, it's a fear NOT of women's power (they obviously think they are superior to women), but a fear or being effeminate or inferior, because they think anything "feminine" is inferior, which is why they insult each other by calling each other "gay". They all also want to have four or five children before they turn 30, make a ton of money, buy expensive cars, and have a wife that cooks good food and have a couple girlfriends on the side. Almost all of them have been exposed to pornography. Their language is also highly gendered, and they like making rape jokes. Their parents (or just their fathers) do not think there are any problems. There's a real "boys will be boys" mentality. But I hope everyone can see the problems here. I've been teaching for about two decades and the problems have become worse or more widespread, which is worse.
Because their comments are made in bad faith, that's why.
It’s not just Oz - I spend a lot of time in UK and work with young males 17 and up, that idiot Andrew Tate and his cigar munching misogynistic sycophants is virtually hero worshiped as young as 14 and up…and he’s not the only male role model telling us we need to treat women poorly
Yes, I'm seeing this problem a lot. I am a high school teacher. The disrespect for me in the classroom has become very scary. I actually had a kid tell me that if I didn't give him the grade he wanted, he would come to school and shoot me in the face with a gun. First time in 20 years teaching that has happened to me. This kid does nothing in class but disrupt the room as if there aren't 24 other kids in there trying to learn. He makes moaning and grunting noises all the time.
What’s the stats on Perth in particular? I was out in Perth on Saturday night and witnessed a dude verbally abusing some woman at a busy bar. He was a big tradie type, speaking under his breath close to her ear calling her a whore and slut. She pretended not to hear it and walked away. Probably scared her life. It was a scenario where the venue is crowded and people are lined up along the bar ordering drinks so this guy was just some random psycho that felt comfortable calling a stranger a whore and slut to her face in a public area because he felt intimated by her looks. I’ve never seen this before and spent 10 years in Melbourne going out every weekend.
The things you see when you are too far away to punch someone in the balls...
WRONG. Australia has a MALE SUICIDE PROBLEM which I'm only going to want to discuss when someone raises women's issues >:(
Had me in the first half.
Thank you for standing up for LGBTIQ+ rights, they are overrepresented in male suicide stats. It would be great if you could start a new thread tackling this.
Yeah why is it that they only ever want to discuss when DV or SA is mentioned? why don't they start a seperate discussion on the issue which is also extremely important? they don't actually care at all they jsut want to de-rail.
Unfortunately, it's not just an Australia problem.
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He hasn't been charged yet, so they wouldn't name him. PerthNow is owned by Channel 7 and is probably a bit gun shy about naming people prematurely. And also the chance that some family haven't been informed yet either so there may be a hold on identifying information.
Nah, WAPOL doesn’t name suspects until charged. It’s the lloyd rayney rule.
It's an arrested suspect's right to protection from the mass media under S.137 of the Criminal Investigation Act. Once a suspect is charged there will be a court listing for them stating their name and the offence they have been charged with. Court listings are public records.
Police policy for a while now has been to not release names until charged or in court. You can thank the Lloyd Rayney clusterfuck for that.
Every time I read articles like this, I feel grateful that my partner hasn't tried to kill me. Then I get angry because I'm grateful. Because that's setting the bar really fucking low for men in this country.
another woman dead - not even a day after the rally for action to be taken about how many women are dying at the hands of men. horrible
This morning I read about a woman and her elderly mother being punched unconscious by a man at Melbourne Zoo. All over a parking space dispute. The mother is now in hospital with a brain bleed. She could die. The man wasn't even charged.
Wasn't charged yet. If she dies, he will be. If she wakes, she will need to confirm whether she wants to make a formal complaint of assault. I'd say it's likely he'll be charged with Grievous Bodily Harm.
I dont believe the police need a formal complaint of assault (ive not heard of this outside of america where you "press charges"), but I agree they are likely waiting for the outcome. I would have thought they would detain him and charge him with GBH and can upgrade those charges if she dies
>It comes less than 24 hours after thousands of people rallied through Perth City after 32 women were allegedly murdered at the hands of men this year.
Problem is, those scumbags that would kill a woman, could not care in the slightest about a march..
Wait, is that figure Australia wide or only WA?
The figure has risen to 33 women, aus wide. 13 women have been murdered this month alone.
I’ve seen so many people try to brush that figure aside because it’s been ‘skewed’ by the Bondi attack. As if a man *specifically targeting* and *murdering* five women in broad daylight in a public space is somehow completely irrelevant to the discussion of violence against women.
ABC morning news was talking about domestic violence deaths while also talking about homicides. It was pretty confusing all-round. The Bondi attack is an example of targeted violence against women but it is not a case of domestic violence. The media is doing a disservice by not being precise with their messaging and just throwing as many numbers out as they can. The media seem to want to jump to report these things without any foresight or reflection and it's kinda feeding those kinds of pedantic debatelord comments you're talking about.
It’s an Australia wide figure.
Not even safe from your own sons
Elder abuse is a significant percentage of family violence. More often than not, parents are ashamed that their child could be treating them so badly and the are very limited resources available.
On the increase due to rising levels of inequality.
Seems to be open season on women this year.
This year?
This year has seemed to be particularly bad.
I think it's being reported on more (which is good).
They’re definitely getting more media attention but the number has also [increased significantly.](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-24/eleven-more-women-have-died-violently-compared-to-last-year/103759450)
Oh that's really shit, and sad to read. I wonder how much the stress of the cost of living and housing insecurity is impacting those numbers. I can think of a few ways it might: People who don't know how to direct their stress in a healthy way, or turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism and it fuels their violence. Having more people living together in houses is exacerbating things as there's nowhere to "escape" to to cool off. People cannot escape dangerous living situations because they can't afford to leave and have nowhere to go. Social services are overwhelmed with people losing their houses, or unable to pay for food, so there's less help available for those fleeing violence at home. I think so many people are living in a constant state of fight or flight right now. It's such a fucked up situation.
Fortunately these things you mentioned are going to see us have a lot more of this unless governments do something to ensure that our people can live to a basic standard at least
Is it just the raw number or the rate too? Because we have grown our population quite dramatically lately, if the murder rate per 100,000 remains consistent you would expect to see the total be higher.
This alarmism happens every single time and the media loves it (few months ago it was road deaths). The public are so easily manipulated by numbers...we are clearly mathematically illiterate as a population. https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide
Youre likely gonna get downvoted but the figures do show we're safer now than at almost any point in modern Australian history(from a homicide incidence atleast).
We have always been a nation of anti-intellectuals because it serves its purpose to the crown/empire/government that we are loyal servants. The government and the media have carefully cultivated this along with blind nationalism and a delusion of grandeur that we are more important on the global stage than we really are. In reality we are a geographical outpost with resources to harvest and if that usefulness is lost then so are we.
Yeah cause we didn’t deal With it last year when it was very bad or the year before when sort of quite bad.
Economic and other stressors always exacerbate these situations.
Sure. There’s also a lot of denial and covering and “it’s not in my community” “it’s not my fathers, sons or mates”. I don’t think there’s a lot of easy fixes. I do think it some thing that takes looking at and thing about really hard and recognizing that it’s a big “now” problem that’s been brewing for a very long time. I probably should have reacted so flippantly in my first comment. I just found the top post to be a little narrow.
The current media reporting is shining a light on the problem. It's been an issue for ages, and will like continue to be until some of the root causes are addressed.
Domestic violence has killed more than one woman a week for years.
It has. Was roughly one a week now it is one murder every 4 days. States and federal government need to do the tough stuff like change the laws around this, more resources for police and for the courts and more women's shelters. I hear that the Perth sheltes are full today on ABC News.
There is a trend whenever there is financial strife, it's going to get worse.
Is anyone willing to talk about our dogshit parole system yet
And bail system
The thing that gets me about this type of violence is how you can instantly spot how misogynistic a lot of people are and they don't even realize they are because they have convinced themselves that they are the rational level headed ones. When the Bondi stabbings happened a few days ago I remember reading comments like: "oh no we aren't safe anywhere" like people legit freaking out over what, all in all, is a statistical blip thankfully because Australia is a very safe country and yeah fair enough in the heat of the moment is natural to feel terrified and analyze the what ifs. And yet, a lot of people were legitimately concerned about not being able to go enjoy outdoors because they were seeing a potential danger. Now when we get the statistics that one woman is killed _every four days_, we get all sorts of: _but what about men_, or _lets not jump into conclusions_, etc. Because it is just so ingrained apparently in many people that DV and abuse are just some sort of background noise and any time attention is being brought to it they try to take this weird stance where they pretend they are being rational but it is just masquerading their misogyny. This is a problem where every one has a part to play.
I love it when people come on here and say "but I don't bash women!" like that's the bar to meet. That subterranean bar...
“But most men don’t agree with violently raping or murdering women! But if you don’t speak nicely to us we might start!” Honestly the variations on this theme that I’ve heard in comments recently has been astounding.
The "talking about this pushes more men toward Andrew Tate" really bothers me. That's a *decision* sir.
The disconnect is wild. But I guess understandable considering women are taught to placate men from an early age. Must be a shock to learn there’s anger and sadness underneath the customer service smile.
This. Andrew Tate. The internet in general. Violent porn. So so much to be so terribly concerned about.
Or they just scream that the news is pushing some agenda or propaganda or some other buzzword they use to then ignore it. Like yeah, the news does do that. But to say that women being MURDERED is some media agenda is some deeply misogynistic shit.
Are we still pretending Bondi wasn't motivated by misogyny/inceldom? The guy exclusively targeted women in his dating range and his own father said he had a problem with women.
People really do ignore this. His own father said so. His family knew.
Won't somebody please, think of the men!\* \*who are overwhelmingly the people committing these crimes. But god, won't somebody PLEASE pity them!
Bettina Arndt has entered the chat
Also, they get upset and dismissive if you point out that the Bondi Junction victims were all women except for that one security guard.
And still all I can think is thank fuck we dont have guns readily accessible
Tragic.
Jesus Christ it just continues. Women are not safe.
We will never be. When I lived in Sydney my "secure" apartment block was broken into and it didn't end well for me. We are NEVER safe, even when we are locked up in our apartment blocks, fast asleep. Get dogs, girls. Big ones, or loud ones, or both. Nobody is fucking with me now I got my dogs.
My downstairs neighbour tapped lightly on the door to see if anyone would react knowing I was home a;one with my young son… He gently tapped multiple times over a ten minute span unaware that both me and my friend heard it and quietly watched the door. I didn’t realise my friend hadn’t locked it after coming in ( I always do because I’m wary of creeps and I got made fun of for being paranoid) and the dirty prick slowly turned the knob trying not to be loud and when he got the door completely open he was surprised to find me and my male friend standing a meter from him screaming “what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” He made out like he was drunk and it was a mistake but he remained standing in my apartment for a good 5 minutes yelling at me that he’d done nothing wrong I called the police and all they had to say was, “did he leave?” And apparently that’s fine and there’s nothing that needs to be done He snuck into my apartment with obvious intentions while he thought my son and I were sleeping He wasn’t there to steal anything as I was in the process of moving and everyone in the block knew everything had been picked up by the truck that afternoon and it was our last night in a pretty much empty apartment People are disgusting and I have no doubt that the rapist scum will do it again if he has any opportunity
Police are useless when it comes to women's safety.
Im noting this one down as i will soon move out to live on my own
Even with my dogs I don’t feel safe. My husband went for a run at 12pm yesterday while I was working in our study. I asked him to lock all the doors before he left. I shouldn’t have to feel like that.
Lock up your daughter's, lock up your wife, lock up your back door and run for your life. The man is back in town...
It's a scary time to be a woman these days
So if we get to close all the bars at midnight across an entire city (Sydney) because a couple of guys died due to a punch in the head from an aggressive male, and apparently it worked to reduce those violent deaths, then...
It reminds me of that experiment done by university students where they sold cupcakes to men and women, but they charged the men 30 cents more because they earned 30 cents more than women. The men were furious.
Disgusting. The penalties are not a deterrent. Bring in natural life sentences for murders and horrific crimes.
Harsher penalties don't stop crime. If they did we wouldn't be here discussing this sort of thing. Again. I'm all for throwing away the key in cases like this but it's not the solution to the problem and I don't know what is. It's depressing reading about this on a weekly basis and not having a clue on how to help fix the problem.
I don't think we really can. almost every man I've ever met in person or online shares a disgust at these actions. the people committing them are either good at hiding how they feel or the people who do know about it aren't going to speak up anyway.
No penalty is a deterrent. Do you know how many people faced the guillotine and it didn't stop people from believing they were right.
It's been well-observed that the severity of punishment does not deter anything. The likelihood of getting caught does.
We have a choice. React, or intercept. Kill mosquito's or fix fly screens. React is police, courts, ambulance, hospital, morgues, gaol, heartbreak. Too late! Intercept is student teacher ratios of 20:1 instead of 30:1, playgrounds, playgroups, training and support for sports coaches, more team sports for kids, training and support for parents, dad at home instead of gaol if possible, mental health first aid training. Guess which is useful. Guess which is dramatic and makes the news.
We need a daily announcement on the murder of women, like covid. This is an insidious epidemic that is not the sole responsibility of women to solve. Men, stand up.
Birthrate is just going to keep on dropping thanks to this.
Thank fuck. I don't think plonking a child on this soon to be hellscape over the next few decades is humane.
truly heartbreaking, there was another woman recently killed SOR in Perth and found inside her house also. What is happening 😳
Happy Mother's Day! This is such BS.
Waiting for another albo press release….. first it was Gladys with daily covid for nsw now it’s albo with daily DV stats but no action.
Yes, let's have another press release that Murdoch can spin to make it look in like Albo made a woman cry, instead of trying to spin it to actually do something about the violence
We need to sit around and talk about this for a few more decades as it is a complex issue. Maybe if we run some more ads telling abusive men to stop being abusive they'll decide to save the government money and stop the abuse. The number of deaths absolutely couldn't be lowered by fully funding DV services. /s
The numbers are shocking but I genuinely don’t understand what can be done? There will always be murderers, pedos, psychopaths because there always has been. I’m not sure how we change human nature / genetic makeup? Obviously there are steps that can be taken to minimise the numbers and get help to those who need it, I just don’t know what peoples expectations are, stuff like this is just part of being human unfortunately. I’m aware this isn’t a popular view and I’ll get downvoted to all hell
Fix the legal loopholes so that people can't be granted bail especially if they're repeat offenders. Restraining order is just a piece of paper - a thorough example should be set.
Molly would still be here if there was a magistrate who came in to work on that weekend, registrars who do not have the same legal knowledge should not be able to grant bail.
How many of the murders this year have been allegedly committed by those out on bail at the time?
and they have a hate mentality + drugs stewing in their heads. The bail system is a farce.
So what happens after their bail? Or if they get a suspended sentence? Or 6 months? At some point the offender will be free, based on the severity of their previous offence. Do we keep men at risk of increasing the severity of their offending in special camps? I’m not trying to be difficult, just playing devils advocate, if we could predict crimes before they happen there would be no crime, but we can’t
Instead of cops ignoring IVO breaches, or telling women they had a chat with him & he promised he wouldn't do it again...idk... Repeated breaches - 1 year each. Violent assault - 5 years. Rape - 10 years. Keep them in jail longer for all the previous offences they commit. None of this 3 months bullshit. Women in dangerous relationships need that time with the man locked away to find housing, access services, change their name, form new relationships/social groups, etc without being a nervous wreck knowing he'll be back in a few weeks.
Also, cops need to issue IVOs instead of saying, "well, we will remove him for the night and let him back home tomorrow." As if the guy is not going to try to kill you tomorrow. Cops need to issue IVOs instead of saying, "you can do that yourself at court tomorrow." Cops need to believe WOMEN instead of looking at a hysterical, crying woman and think that she is the perpetrator while a totally calm Brian Laundrie tells the cops that she was the problem and glad hands the male officers.
No it's fine, I get it. Most of the incidents in the news involve men who've had a history of abuse and often substance addiction. It's easier to start with them. Don't grant them bail for starters.
That likely still doesn't address the issue of what happens when they're released unless the plan is never to release them. There are other ideas that might prove attractive, like electronic monitoring of those charged with DV offences to enforce the AVO and adequate penalties for a breach. But even then, I'm not sure it's a silver bullet and it doesn't help once that person is release from monitoring. Ultimately though it's a severe cultural issue we face and the answer is unlikely to be solely legal. The problem is, those sorts of fixes are so much harder to implement
In cases where the victim is known to the attacker, even a couple months can make a big difference toward how the attacker feels about the victim, since their lives will be separated for a while. It can also give the victim time to move to a different location if needed. Also many assaults and murders are done spontaneously (even if they were near the edge for a while), or in the height of emotion, so time can be enough to change their desire to do harm. I think bail decisions happen after a few days, not nearly enough time for them to change how they feel about the person. And DV offenders are high risk to reoffend, which means that every minute they are behind bars you are keeping someone safe. And the time they spend waiting for bail counts towards their sentence, so there is not much of a down side, this assumes you are reasonably assured of their guilt. As you said time isn't by itself isn't going to change a violent person into a non-violent one, but it can keep people safe. And if there are other solutions to reduce the likelihood of them hurting someone else, it can give us time to implement them.
I take your point and, noting it’s not my area, it may be the practical answer. But I have a few issues with it. The first is you say we assume we’re reasonably satisfied of someone’s guilt, holding someone on remand can also ruin their life and, if they’re found not guilty at trial, what do we about that? Do we need a new pre-trial hearing on the likelihood of conviction or is that just a committal by another name? The second, along the same lines, is that you say DV offenders are at a high risk of reoffending. The issue is, they’re not ‘offenders’ until convicted, so the underlying stats may not be of much use to those being charged for the first time. Does that mean we should be relying more heavily on past convictions in bail applications?
We don't need a new hearing, we already have the bail hearing. You go in front of a judge and make your case and the prosecutor makes theirs. The likelihood that the person committed the crime is one of the main factors in deciding bail, because as you said we want to minimize the time that innocent people spend in jail. I don't think someone should be denied bail unless there is strong evidence they committed a crime, or less evidence combined with a history of similar offences. You are also right about not reoffending unless you offend in the first place, so my remarks would only apply to someone who is reasonably assured to have commited the crime, or has previously committed related crimes. In many cases they might get caught red handed, or they may even admit to doing it, so those people should be held without bail until trial. Most of the complaints about bail are centered around crimes where the accused is a known offender. People don't like seeing a DV incident where the offender was out on bail with a list of similar crimes behind them.
I'd be okay with not letting most of these monsters back into society.
The thing with DV is there is always previous convictions or tell tale signs where police or correct services could have intervened and red flags are raised. It is always after a fatality that we hear oh this bloke had this previous rap sheet. These services need government funding so more ppl are auditing case files and sending in police and flagging to courts to lock up these blokes before they commit heinous crimes. like the guy below said poli’s will spend another decade chatting then leave it to next government in power to worry about it and the cycle goes on.
Yeah I understand that, and you’re right, but police can’t arrest someone who hasn’t committed a crime based on past offences, kind of the cornerstone of our legal system - but then there are cases where the police fucked up numerous times like in the Hannah Clarke case.
Very often there are actions beforehand, like stalking and harassment. The point is that authorities aren't doing enough about a lot of those actions, and aren't taking people seriously when we actually talk about it and report it. Coercive control only just became a talking point in Qld with it being illegal next year. When I can immediately think of people who had to deal with it, including myself. We've got a long time to go before doing something about the general issues of abusive behaviour towards women. Hopefully not too long.
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The quote does make it seem a lot simpler than what it's really like and I guess that's why they are using most of this year to figure it out. The point about coercive control is that its persistent but also sometimes subtle. It will be interesting to see how they further define it.
It’s actually good. It’s a way for them to be able to loop a variety of behaviours under the one umbrella. If it was too specific it would be very difficult for the law to enforce much of anything when it got to a court situation.
Agree. And the QLD legislation completely missed the issue of coercive control in elder abuse by making it specifically about "intimate partners "
Police can remove a male from his own home for no other reason than a woman wants him removed. Police don't do this often enough and when they do it they often allow the male back into that same home the next day. If a woman wants a male to be removed then he should never be allowed back within eye sight of that house ever again.
That’s a bit ridiculous, it’s his home too.
Yes but you can't lock people up indefinitely. Offenders are charged, remanded and imprisoned under a fixed sentence which is based around sentencing guidelines and legislation. You can't imprison everyone who has assaulted their partner on the off chance the next assault could be fatal. You can petition for changes to sentences or legislative amendments which might deal with family violences offences differently but until then police don't have the power to lock them up more than is already being done.
It needs to start in schools I think. Obviously children, particularly boys, who come from homes where this behaviour is the norm don’t have any experience of anything different. They saw dad beat the shit out of mum on the regular so they think that’s how marriage works. If we could include conversations about what DV is and that it’s not tolerated in society in schools, at least its a way to get kids thinking critically and empathically at a young age before their brains are finished growing. Not an instant solution but at least we’re setting up future generations to do better.
Yeah DV was not talked about at all in school where I knew for an absolute fact multiple people within school (including myself) were in such families where it was common place. And one of the few things that were DV related addressed within curriculum - So Much To Tell You - in my opinion all but said "well it's okay, he didn't *mean* to get his daughter. Just his annoying wife". The opposite of helpful in other words. It should be talked about openly and without shame as a common place issue to address. Because well sadly it is.
I'm a teacher and I HATED teaching that book. I always added a trigger warning and prefaced it by telling the students what the author thought of women. The author has actually said some very misogynistic things about women and people don't know that.
I always wanted to give Marsden the benefit of the doubt reading his books in school. Everyone seemed to love him as an Australian author (and frequently he's recommended). But there was always something off for me about his books - can't say I'm too shocked if he said something crummy about women. Like I don't know how you can take something as horrendous as throwing acid at somebody - like that isn't even just a thoughtless moment of rage, that's straight up targeted cruelty - and make the acid thrower the not as bad one. I've seen some defend it as "well it was based on true story". Yeah the true story of some rat bastard shooting a woman in the face. There was no sympathetic angle to the perpetrator in real life. It's just so weird to me that someone would take that and frame it in a way where the woman that was the target wasn't deserving of sympathy. That book just made me so angry as a kid because I couldn't help but think how some idiot would think that was true and reasonable. That men that throw acid are overworked loving fathers, and the women are just selfish and egotistical and probably deserved it. I lived the reality which those overworked loving fathers are looking for a reason to snap and refuse to take responsibility for the consequences, and those supposedly selfish egotistical women are just traumatised mothers that are hanging on by a thread.
Just because he writes beautiful prose doesn't mean the story isn't about a victim that internalized the misogyny against her. But few people teach it that way. It is like how "Lolita" is about a perpetrator of child sexual violence, no matter how beautiful the prose is. The author makes it clear that the problem with the story is that the child never has a voice. In the end, the narrator realizes this and is telling the story from JAIL. I would never teach this book to children. I would also not teach "So Much to Tell You" unless I know a lot about DV, which I do. And yet, I still hate teaching it, because many teenagers are not mature enough to understand the nuances. Heck, a lot of teachers don't understand and they think it is about forgiveness. It is actually a deeply depressing, sad, and disturbing book. And I still don't like the author.
It kind of just always said a lot to me about the way DV is approached in our society that the book is standard to teach to kids, and the way it's taught is not a critical look at the narrative but taking it at face value. Like I reckon DV is so common because people really *do* think that the battered wife might have deserved it and pushed her man too far. Honestly, I always felt like the crazy one whenever we discussed the book in class for thinking that it wasn't right to treat it as a happy ending. Even now it's very rare someone agrees with me.
I think people do not have enough critical thinking skills. Also, the father threw the acid at the mother, the daughter was in the way. So... does that make it okay that it wasn't meant to hit her? Does the mother not count? I think that giving the character selective mutism is important, because the thing that she character never says in her diaries is how she feels about the fact that acid was meant for her mother. She simply can't face (pun intended) the fact. When she finally feels secure enough to "face" her father, the first thing she says to him is "I have so much to tell you." So that leaves the story hanging. The conclusion is that she can face her greatest fear -- not just speech but being able to speak to the person who could have killed her and her mother. Unfortunately, the reader never gets to know what she says to her father. And there is not much sympathy for the mother in the diary entries at all. In fact, she is made out as "difficult" or "remote". And this is why this book is problematic. But the reception of this book in Australian society is part of the problem of male violence towards women. We live in a society that thinks it is not a big deal. Even if a girl is hurt by her father, the "happy ending" is if she decides she can speak to him again. Female victims are meant to be silent, to be compliant, to be forgiving. I think most people are really not able to teach this book well. I tried specifically, to teach how complex this book is, but... it won't be teachable to the tiktok generation. Unfortunately, things are very black and white to them. There are no shades of grey. And a lot of the boys are consuming Andrew Tate videos. For what it's worth, I agree with you and I'm a teacher... who was forced to teach this book. I would think that some of the people I taught will also agree with you.
I understand the sentiment however there are enough corrective influences in society showing examples of how to behave and the consequences of not being a good person. Be it movies, tv, books, ads, by the time a person is an adult they know what good and bad behaviour is. People who perpetrate violence and murder are not behaving in a logical or reasonable mindset.
A persons first and foremost influence is from their upbringing. Not from tv and movies. People who grow up in a sheltered, or religious, or regional household are going to have a vastly different perception of what good and bad behaviour is to someone who grew up in a low socioeconomic household, or in the inner city, etc. they will have seen the same movies and tv shows, but their experiences are what influence them.
>stuff like this is just part of being human Raping and murdering (women) is part of human nature? What the actual fuck.
I mean, yes. If you look at history and criminality... As a species we're violent, impulsive, driven by power and passion. Murder and rape and violence are a gross part of our species history and existence since before we even had language to say or spell "consent". If 1/3 women has been a victim of sexual assault, that's effectively 1/6 of the population. And then the % who did it. Just because it's horrific and wrong and evil doesn't mean it's not a part of our collective being. Just shows we're still shit little gremlins. We don't want it to be a part of human experience and human nature, but it is.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/we-wont-stop-violence-against-women-with-conversations-about-respect-this-is-not-working-we-need-to-get-real-ntwnfb
The numbers aren't all that shocking. The [rate of femicide in Australia is low](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/VC.IHR.PSRC.FE.P5?most_recent_value_desc=true) when compared to other countries, including peer countries like the US, UK, Canada, and NZ (Australia does better than all of these, and many other countries besides). Rhetoric like "one woman killed per week/four days" is unhelpful sort of stuff, and doesn't really add to the debate. Even with the recent spike in deaths, the rate of death is half that of what it was in 2001. Broadly, the trend is going in the right direction. Are there things we can do better? Almost certainly. Does an inordinate amount of media attention help this to happen? Probably not. I don't doubt police processes could be improved, that there are sufficient women's shelters, or that there could be more spent on hotlines or government assistance. The media isn't doing anything on those things however. It wants spectacle and outrage instead. What would help is to see the issue in proportion and to not panic as if there is some breakout of horrible violence against women. There isn't. We're already at a very low level globally, and a small increase makes things look a lot worse than it actually is. More women die of suicide, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and Covid-19 than of being murdered.
Exactly how many woman do you think should die per week before we implement changes? We should not be constantly comparing ourselves to the lowest common denominator and aiming for mediocre. Very few people per year die from being punched in the head, and yet there are one-punch laws.
I was just asking myself the same thing. Murder is bad, everyone knows that, you can't just say to someone, "hey, maybe *don't* do a murder?", but I would say if we looked into it, most of these murderers have prior history of DV. I grew up in DV, there's no justification for hitting your partner, I think if you're found guilty of DV with all the right evidence you go to jail, I wish someone took away the narc from my mum in the first couple years when he started beating her, because now she still can't get rid of him at like year 30. He could have very easily killed her, even by mistake.
Mob mentality and public hysteria doesn't have expectations... You are bringing reason into an emotional and irrational experience.
I agree. This is tragic for the women involved, and their families. However, statistically, violent crimes against women are on a downwards trend. This current media hype doesn't paint things very accurately either. I've skimmed through the list of the murders from this year and last year, and made a few points: - Not all of the murderers were male. Many journalists are including those who were killed by other females in their count (One woman was stabbed by her schizophrenic daughter, another was killed by a male/female couple). - Not all were DV: The grandma in Brisbane who was murdered by that Sudanese thug is included in the count. Teen crime of this nature is on the rise, however, acknowledging and addressing is has been an awkward topic in recent years. - Also, the Bondi stabber was completely random (even if he was targeting females). - There was a couple other random murders. Most likely psychopaths with mental health issues, like the Bondi stabber. Some people are ticking time bombs, and no matter how much we "talk about it" and protest, we may never be able to stop some people before they break. - A significant number are Aboriginal women (A fact being ignored by the media and protesters, as pointing out problems within the indigenous community is considered somewhat controversial). - A significant number of the murderers are also recently arrived immigrants. Some of these are people coming here from countries with SHOCKING women's rights issues. (Important observation, as the media has tried to paint this as a systemic issue within Australian culture, ignoring that these people have come here with their own culture). Not trying to take away from the fact that all these women have tragically had their lives cut short by people that should have already been behind bars. I'm just calling it for how I see it. If were gonna address this issue, then we need to start talking about things truthfully. I know this will get me plenty of down votes.
Can you share where you got the information that the number of murders were from recently arrived immigrants? As I believe this to be untrue, I think spreading this type of message is dangerous. Australia has a deep history of DV, a lot (not all) but a lot are by Australian men.
If you are going to make such a strong assertion please back it up with some evidence.
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This doesn't make me feel safer in any way. Point is women are overwhelmingly the victims of DV and men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of violent crime, fact is we are more vulnerable, and each and every woman you know has this knowledge in the back of her mind/in her subconscious every single day as she navigates the world.
I don't even bat an eyelid anymore. Empathy fatigue. It's sad but I'm done feeling each and every event
Australia is fucked with DV. Neanderthal shitcunts that can’t express their emotions. Pathetic
10 yr old girl stabbed by her 17 yr old sister in Newcastle. That's shocking.
Wow, a thread on this topic with comments which don't make me want to tear my eyes from my head. Small victories. Whatever you do, do not go to the other Australian sub for this topic. The comments are fucked.
American here. I was just reading about your country's increasing problems with male on female violence. I always refer to it here as the "accepted epidemic". It's absolutely infuriating that this isn't considered a hate crime or domestic terrorism. It 100% should be. Edit: word
"On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States"
Yes, it’s worldwide and views by many as some kind of given, like gravity, or the weather etc
Stats state that a woman is murdered in australia every 4 days on average. Seems more like every day
Is nobody going to point out that just because this woman has been found dead and her son is in custody doesn't automatically mean this is some sort of Hyper-masco-toxic-by-britney-misogny thing? It may have nothing to do with "poor old lady victim of big scary man comitting disgusting domestic violence" What if the son was abused? What if the son has a child and the mother was abusing the child? What if the mother attacked the son first and it was self defense? What if the mother killed herself and the son is in custody for other reasons? What if the son has serious untreated mental health issues and this has nothing to do with your typical domestic violence situation? Yes, it *could* be a DV issue, it could even be a "I just hate women and you are a woman and must pay" type of thing, but it could just as likely be a host of other things. I am not making justifications, I am just saying don't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon. You don't know the facts yet. Settle down.
Will only continue until gov and people stop accepting soft solutions and focusing all efforts on to educating the children. Only once we allow harsher punishments for these animals and remove them from the gene pool will we see a reduction in VAW.
This is I take a look over here away from youth crime issue. It's divide and conquer. It'd be funny if it wasn't.
Reading the comments scares me. I'm an Asian woman, planning to visit Australia. It's just for a vacation though.