New Zealand Homicides of Male Intimate Partners Committed by Women 2009-2010
This is a new presentation of data I recently discussed in another thread. I have prepared it as a stand-alone research report because I think the work important enough to be found easily and quoted widely.
New Zealand Homicides of Male Intimate Partners Committed by Women 2009-2010
Hans Laven
Introduction
In New Zealand over the last few years we have often heard police or other spokespeople refer to domestic partner homicide with reference only to female deaths. The most common statement goes something like this: “On average a woman is killed by her partner or former partner every five weeks” sometimes followed by “and ten children die in domestic violence incidents every year” (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Usually no source is mentioned, but the HMA website quiz (5) on family violence attributed the “every five weeks” statistic to The Taskforce for Action on Violence Within Families July 2007 (in fact, the relevant report was dated 2006). That Taskforce listed 23 members including the Chief Executives of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Ministry of Maori Development and the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges, plus other representatives of Maori, Pacific and disability groups but not one representative specifically for men, men’s or fathers organizations (6). The Taskforce appears to have led to the “It’s Not OK” campaign and also an education programme for police and other organizations (7) that may have resulted in uniformity, especially from police spokespeople, in public statements when describing partner homicide including the habit of referring only to female deaths.
Although failure to mention violence against men has been almost universal, interesting variation existed in the actual statistics cited. Felicity Perry in organising the 2008 women’s “Take Back the Night” rally stated that a woman was killed every six weeks by an (ex)partner, and ten children per year were killed by family members (8). Women’s Refuge head Heather Henare, in launching the 2008 Refuge appeal, claimed that a woman was killed by a partner or former partner every 26 days (9). The IOSIS Family Solutions website page “Education and Awareness” informs us that “Every 2.5 weeks a woman is killed by her partner” (10), and the same “two and a half weeks” statistic was also announced by Human Rights Commission commissioner Joy Liddicoat (11) in launching the 2007 White Ribbon Campaign (that only encourages the population to be against violence towards women). In 2006 activist lawyer Catriona MacLennan took the statistic to new levels when she stated: “A woman is killed every 12.5 days in New Zealand by her partner or former partner. That’s not changing.” (12)
Of course, such statistics will change greatly from period to period given the low rates involved in absolute terms. MacLennan’s estimate may have been based on aberrant statistics announced at the time by Principal Family Court judge Peter Boshier that received a lot of publicity: “six women were killed by their partners or former partners between November 20 and January 3″(12).
There can be a fine line between “using statistics honestly for effect” and “using honest statistics to mislead”. Describing partner homicide rates in terms of “one every X weeks”, assuming the value for X is well founded, is honest and effective. However, presenting that statistic only for homicides of women will be misleading to the extent that it is used as evidence for any comparative statements about gender violence, and to the extent that it implies homicides of men are nonexistent, trivial, morally more acceptable or undeserving of consideration and funding in violence-related interventions. Further, immediately adding another statistic in a different format about child deaths without specifying who killed those children, appears designed to give a misleading impression that men were also responsible for all or most of those children’s killings. This ploy surely falls squarely in the “using honest statistics to mislead” camp. Reporting a statistic generated from a very short, post-hoc tailored period to take advantage of an unusual spike in events and claiming it’s a stable statistic that’s “not changing” crosses a new boundary into the realm of dishonest propaganda.
Some may be of the opinion that for such an important social cause the end justifies almost any means. However, it is more likely that by abandoning reasonable standards of balance, accuracy and honesty, spokespeople will eventually bring a cause into disrepute and increase public mistrust or rejection of that cause.
Few studies appear to exist measuring New Zealand homicides of men by female intimate (ex)partners. The most recent study dated 2010 and described as a “working paper” was authored by Jennifer Martin and Rhonda Pritchard (13) and reported that in the five-year period between 2002 and 2006 (inclusive) there were only two homicides of men by female partners. However, there were four additional “couple related” homicides committed by multiple “female and male” or “two female” perpetrators and it was unclear if these were uncounted homicides of male partners. Regardless, the figures seemed low compared with earlier studies, especially as the “homicide” definition was not limited to convicted murders. The authors reported that where no offender had been convicted or charged, the offender was assumed to be the person recorded on the police database as the suspected perpetrator. A tendency to disbelieve that women are capable of the worst violence may have meant that some female killers were not properly considered in investigations. At least one case involved police charging a man who was twice not convicted on trial because evidence suggested the male victim’s female partner may well have been the killer (14); one assumes the study simply counted this as a male offender. Also, Martin and Pritchard provided no information about the number of unsolved cases or how those cases were categorized if both male and female suspects had been identified.
The First Report (July 2006) (15) of the Taskforce for Action on Violence Within Families referred to 121 “family-violence related murders” in the five year period from 2000 to 2004 (inclusive), of which 3 were men murdered by women. This report does seem to be the source of the “one woman is killed every five weeks” mantra and probably the idea that male deaths are so insignificant as to be ignored, but actually it refers to murders not killings and no information was provided in the report about the methodology the Taskforce used in arriving at its figures. The chance that a female killer of her partner will be convicted of murder is quite small given the compassionate verdicts juries frequently provide for women, whereas men could expect such mercy only when they were truly under immediate threat of death or the evidence suggested strongly that they had no intention to kill. This may have inflated the apparent gender difference and contributed to the low listed rate of murders by women.
Felicity Goodyear-Smith (16) quoted two earlier research studies. The first of these (Fanslow et al, 1995) (17) identified 82 cases where men killed their partners and 9 where women did so over the ten-year period between 1978 and 1987. These figures were based on “national mortality data”¦supplemented by reference to files of the Coroner’s Court and the High Court”, similar to Martin and Pritchard’s study for the period 2002 to 2006. The second study quoted by Goodyear-Smith was a PhD thesis (Anderson, 1997) that counted “intentional murders” between sexual intimates in New Zealand between 1988 and 1995 (18). Anderson found that 80 male and 22 female offenders intentionally murdered their heterosexual partners over that period, so the rate for women murdering their male partners was about 3 per year or about one man killed every 17 weeks.
Study…………………………………………………………….Men Killing Women……Women Killing Men
Martin & Pritchard (5 yrs: 2002-2006)………………………………11……………………..0.4
Family Violence Taskforce (5 yrs: 2000-2004)…………………10.8……………………0.6
Fanslow et al (10 yrs:1978-1987)……………………………………..8.2…………………….0.9
Anderson (7 yrs:1988-1995)…………………………………………….11.5……………………3.14
Table 1: Annual rates of male to female and female to male intimate partner homicide as reported by four New Zealand studies
Table 1 compares the rates per year of partner homicides reported by the four available studies. Rates of heterosexual partner homicides committed by men remained reasonably constant across the time periods studied, averaging just over 10 per year and varying by less than 20% from that average. However, there was much more variation in rates of such homicides committed by women. Over three times as many were recorded during the 7 years from 1988 to 1995 than for the other three periods, and even those three varied over 40% from their own average. It was unclear to what extent the differences were due to actual variation in female violence, or to gender-related changes in approach to cases by authorities, or to differences in methodology used by the studies.
No mention was made in any of the studies of cases in which a woman may have been suspected or convicted of hiring, conspiring with, manipulating or otherwise encouraging a male to kill her partner on her behalf. In all the studies done, such cases would have been counted as non-partner domestic homicides (when the assassin was a family member) or not counted at all (when the assassin was unrelated to the victim) even though the man’s homicide was deliberately caused by a violent female partner. In a study of contract killings in Australia, Mouzos and Venditto (2003) (19) found that domestic homicides comprised the largest group of such killings and “Dissolution of Relationship” was the most frequent category overall, related to such matters as custody disputes, relationship property, wish to pursue an unencumbered relationship with a new partner, and revenge. In the category “Dissolution of Relationship” 52% of the victims were men and 36% of the offenders (those who solicited the contract killings) were women acting alone, while 31% of the cases involved multiple offenders (working together to solicit contract assassins). Only a small proportion of these offences resulted in completed murders. However, the low number of NZ partner homicides attributed to women could misrepresent actual female violence by a significant percentage if even one or two additional killings had been deliberately arranged or encouraged by women but were not counted.
It may be useful to compare the New Zealand studies with Australian statistics. While it is now very difficult to find detailed official data about domestic homicides in New Zealand, the Australian Government’s Institute of Criminology maintains comprehensive data concerning homicides and monitors trends and patterns in homicide across Australian jurisdictions. From its most recent report (20) covering a 12-month period between 2007 and 2008, 40% of victims “killed by an offender with whom they shared a principle [sic] domestic relationship” were males. Table 3 in that report showed 23% of “intimate partner homicides” involved male victims, i.e. the rate of male victimization was 29% that of female victimization. The numbers of domestic homicides were said to have remained stable over time whereas there had been a significant downward trend over recent years in the number of homicides between “friends or acquaintances”. (Unfortunately, the report did not provide figures confirming the gender of the offender in “intimate partner homicides” but one would assume that most such homicides of men were committed by women except in the case of homosexual partners, this rate also being unknown.)
It is noteworthy that the Australian ratio was very similar to that found in the Anderson (1997) (18) NZ study which measured intimate partner homicides committed by women against men as being 27% as frequent as those by men against women. The three remaining NZ studies however produced figures that were wildly inconsistent with those found in the Australian study. The smaller population in NZ and therefore smaller absolute numbers of homicides may be expected to produce much greater variation from year to year than that seen in Australia. However, it seems unlikely that NZ rates for male deaths averaged over a total of 20 years could be so different from those consistently measured in Australia.
The present study was designed to estimate the recent frequency with which men were killed by intimate female partners or ex-partners in NZ. Due to resource constraints and given the stability in rates for male offenders/female victims as measured by previous studies, the present study did not measure the rate of homicides committed by men.
Method
NZ Herald news articles published on the internet were monitored for accounts of homicides in which a woman was arrested or charged for causing the death of her male intimate partner or ex-partner through deliberate violence during a one-year period from 1 June 2009 to 30 May 2010. An internet search was also conducted for news items in other newspapers in addition to the NZ Herald in order to identify homicides for which no information was provided about arrest or identity of suspected offenders and in which those offenders might have been female intimate partners.
Results
Six news articles arose describing homicides of men by female intimate (ex)partners during the period studied. The headlines of the articles and links to them are provided in table 2. One male was killed by a female intimate (ex)partner every 8.5 weeks during the 1-year period.
1. Woman charged over Napier death
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10576942
2. Partner charged after man dies of stab wounds
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=10591549
3. Woman arrested after man shot dead
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10602570
4. Woman accused of assault after man’s death
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10638293
5. Bail for Gisborne murder accused
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10648110
6. Orewa murder accused bailed
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10665336
Table 2: Cases in NZ Herald newspaper reports describing homicides by women of male intimate partners or ex-partners through intentional violence committed during 12 months between 1 June 2009 and 30 May 2010. The rate was 1 man killed every 8.5 weeks.
The period included at least one additional case in which two young women were charged for killing a young man. If one of the women had been an intimate partner of the victim, this would bring the rate up to one killing every 7.3 weeks for the one-year period from June 2009:
7. Man’s death after fight sparks homicide enquiry
Link:http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10577332
The period also included other homicides for which no further information arose in internet news sources about the likely offender, and it was possible that one or more of them had been caused by a female intimate partner. Headlines and links to those cases are shown in Table 3.
1. Head injury caused teen’s death: Police
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/gisborne/news/article.cfm?l_id=203&objectid=10578563
2. Rotorua shooting deaths referred to coroner
Link: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/65166/rotorua-shooting-deaths-referred-coroner
3. Flaxmere victim named
Link: http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/national-news/2870856/Flaxmere-victim-named
4. Police stonewalled over suspicious death
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10605613
5. Man found on footpath after Manukau stabbing
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10656591
6. Man dies after fight
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10589215
7. Man found dead had head injury
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10607640
8. Investigation into youth’s death
Link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10590982
Table 3: Cases in NZ newspaper reports describing homicides committed during 12 months between 1 June 2009 and 30 May 2010 for which no information was provided about the likely offender.
Discussion
The current study counted the number of homicides recorded in New Zealand Herald news reports (published on the internet) as being committed by women against male intimate partners or ex-partners for a one-year period between June 2009 and May 2010. There were at least six such homicides, or a rate of one man killed by a female intimate every 8.5 weeks. This frequency did not take account of any cases in which a woman may have hired, conspired with, manipulated or otherwise encouraged a male to kill her partner on her behalf.
This frequency was larger than that for previous measured periods in the literature. It was almost twice as high as the highest frequency recorded previously (between 1988 and 1995), and about six times as high as that in other studied periods. Factors that may have contributed to this difference included:
(i) the brevity of the currently-measured 1-year period compared with other studies that covered periods between 5 and 10 years’ duration;
(ii) methodological differences in identifying and categorizing relevant homicides. For example, the Anderson (1997) study (18) measured “intentional murders” which can be expected to be lower in frequency than “all killings through intentional violence”. If Anderson had counted all such killings, the rate may have been more equivalent to that found in the present study. Two of the remaining three studies used methods similar to each other in order to find and to count homicides, while the third did not describe its methodology. It was possible that similarity in methodology between those three remaining studies resulted in their similarly lower figures.
(iii) differences in the researchers’ ideology that influenced the identification, counting and reporting of cases. For example, Martin and Pritchard (2010) (13) did not make it clear whether the partner-related homicides committed by multiple offenders involved killings of male partners; if so (as was likely at least for the cases involving two female offenders) these cases should have been added to the “homicides of male partners” figure. Ideological considerations influencing the two authors (both women) may have influenced their decisions about that and other matters in their study.
(iv) variation in rates of such homicides, the period covered by the current study representing either a statistical spike or some social or other factor that recently increased female violence towards male intimates;
(v) variation in the clarity of cases; i.e. the current period may by chance have involved homicides in which the identity of some female offenders was unusually clear so as to result in quick arrests and charges. If so, this would imply that actual rates of female offending in the past were higher but not identified;
(vi) changes over time in the way authorities managed partner homicides; e.g. improved forensic and interview methods may have increased the rate and accuracy with which offenders were identified compared with previous time periods. Any such trend would have proportionally a much greater effect on the low base rate of identified homicide by females of male heterosexual intimates.
The lack of detailed official data concerning domestic homicides in NZ is regrettable, in part because it has provided an information vacuum to be filled by political interest groups in order to forward particular political causes and/or businesses.
The present study has provided a valid statistic that is hoped will be referred to by spokespeople in future to provide a more realistic picture of domestic homicides in NZ. The statistic will stand also to protect the public from future retrospective claims that, for example, only two men were killed by their female partners over any duration that includes the time period studied here between 2009 and 2010.
References
1. 2008, National Council of Women NZ president Elizabeth Bang http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0810/S00345.htm
2. 2007, Anne Todd-Lambie and Beryl Anderson, National Council of Women, in a presentation to a UN conference in New York
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/10309
3. 2010, Detective Sergeant Rod Carpinter
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/crime/news/article.cfm?c_id=30&objectid=10681671
4. 2010, Sergeant Vic Sneddon of the Te Aroho police
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/4302622/Man-allegedly-stabbed-wife-14-times
5. Undated, HMA (Hall McMaster & Associates Limited) website page “Handy Tools for Working with Survivors”
http://www.hma.co.nz/publications-and-resources/practice-tools/handy-tools-for-working-with-survivors.asp
6. http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/initiatives/action-family-violence/taskforce-info.html
7. http://www.msd.govt.nz/about-msd-and-our-work/work-programmes/initiatives/action-family-violence/reports.html
8. http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/76167/auckland-take-back-night-rally-november-#comment-204730
9. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0807/S00245.htm
10. http://www.iosis.org.nz/Education++Awareness.html
11. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0711/S00402.htm
12. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10374779
13. Martin J and Pritchard R (2010). Learning From Tragedy: Homicide Within Families in New Zealand 2002-2006. NZ Ministry of Social Development
14. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10126642
15. Taskforce for Action on Violence Within Families (2006). The First Report. NZ Ministry of Social Development, Wellington
16. Goodyear-Smith F (2005). Response to the ‘woman bites dog’ article on domestic violence. The New Zealand Medical Journal 118(1226) November 2005
17. Fanslow JL, Chalmers DJ, Langley JD. Homicide in New Zealand: an increasing public health problem. Australian Journal of Public Health. 1995;19:50-7.
18. Anderson T. Murder between sexual intimates in New Zealand 1988-1995. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington; 1997 (Quoted in Goodyear-Smith F. Response to the “Woman Bites Dog’ article on domestic violence. J NZ Medical Association, 118 (1226), November 2005)
19. Mouzos J and Venditto J (2003). Contract Killings in Australia. Australian Institute of Criminology Research and Public Policy Series No. 53, Canberra
20. Virueda M and Payne J (2010). Homicide in Australia: 2007-08 National
Homicide Monitoring Program annual report. Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra.
Now watch them femmys come out and set about discrediting all of the above!
Comment by Femmycynic — Wed 5th January 2011 @ 7:02 am
Well done Hans- Excellent work. The next challenge I suppose is how to make those people handing out the funding money to listen.
I note that in California, a court has ruled that money MAY NOT be given to any Women’s refuge or similar service, unless an equal amount is given to an equivalent Mens organization.
Hppay New Year- John
Comment by John Brett — Wed 5th January 2011 @ 8:30 am
Wow! This is a big deal John. Do you have a link or any sort of paper trail for this.
Well done Hans. There’s a folder available titled, “Community resource kit” full of excellent information to set up and run men’s refuges or other men’s groups and it includes everything from proposing for government budget spending to …. well, it’s got everything you could ever need, IMO, even the history of NZ community work and what’s going on today as well as steering committees, books and websites to gain more information from, what sort of an organisation is best suited for the work you want to do and how to find anything and everything.
Internal Affairs would be a good place to contact to get it if anyone’s interested.
Comment by julie — Wed 5th January 2011 @ 7:30 pm
They might argue with the points I made, but the rate of killings of male partners, although obtained through a simple methodology, is irrefutable. Anyone can replicate the study easily by simply refering to the data, that is, the news articles.
Comment by Hans Laven — Wed 5th January 2011 @ 10:14 pm
I cannot believe that a Government Department has provided any resource setting up for any “Mens refuge” or other Mens groups. Julie- Could you provide more specific information on who has this, and I will contact them.
Comment by John Brett — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 7:55 am
Dear Julie,
Try “Omega B fish oil” for memory retention.
Men and domestic Violence
A happy new year to you and yours.
Always kindest regards
Paul
Comment by Paul Catton — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 10:29 am
I’m assuming you want to see the government say they’ll put X amount of dollars for men’s refuges and then men will make a contract with the government to provide the wanted service.
Is this right?
It’s not a bad way of looking at things.
I really have to get my head down – bum up else I’ll miss out on government contracts for what interests me and those who have taken a chance to work with me, lol. At the moment, you could say, I’ve just made something up out of thin air. 🙂
Comment by Julie — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 4:48 pm
Happy New Year to YOU Paul (and Opal). It’s great to hear from you.
I was taken back when I heard the ‘It’s Not OK’ online contact person/people say we have a men’s refuge in East Auckland and then a refuge say we have one on the Nth Shore.
Hmmm, someone’s keeping an eye on these sites. 😉
Comment by Julie — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 4:51 pm
Dear Julie,
With what I predicted to be an onslaught of Police Safety Orders to be issued 1400 removed by domestic violence law we had to wind up our operation and withdraw from the general radar, so to speak.
Presumably a third of these Orders were issued in Auckland and following national population demographics, thus 1400/3 = 166 which then equates to perhaps 27+ referrals per month, with an average stay of two weeks could have led to 13+ men sharing a spare bedroom and a four berth campervan.
I envisioned, and still do, that should we generally advertise facility sevices again, sleeping bags would cover the whole house including our bedroom floor and Opal would arise to a scene of “The Dawn of the Dead”.
I would like to accompany you to have this chat with Mayor Brown and get proper services established and funded.
As a footnote, I have my teenage daughter Antonia residing back with Opal and I here in New Zealand.
What a cracker of a Christmas and New Year.
Kindest Regards
Paul and Opal Catton
?? Refuge for Men and Families ??
(09) 270 9678
Comment by Paul Catton — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 5:56 pm
There has been a move to set up PC refuges for VIOLENT MEN, offering PC Councelling and Anger Management. Some of these have been set up (with Funding) by Women’s refuge groups.
I would not want to take refuge in such a place if I felt that I did not fit the VIOLENT MAN profile.
Comment by John Brett — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 6:10 pm
Dear Paul and John B,
Gosh, how can one defend a good woman on this site especially when the good woman is hundreds and they’re considered feminists.
How sick is this, “I know one of the main women going against Felicity as an online group because she’s a single mother and she doesn’t even have a problem with men”.
How many others don’t have a problem with men? Well, lots and lots and lots. This war looks so stupid to me.
I’ve decided to set up presentations because I don’t think anyone is even aware of what’s going on.
Comment by Julie — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 7:48 pm
To add, I’ve had words with Skeptic, [absolutely adore the man] saying today’s feminists aren’t the same as what he as a poor soul went through and that goes for Gwallan and Amfortas.
I can’t understand why we are even caring for Neville for “what the hell is he about”.
Why aren’t we moving forward?
But seriously, what Hans has done here is absolutely awasome IMO. Gosh, as a group, we’re more than able to take things on, IMHO.
Comment by Julie — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 7:54 pm
Yes John Brett, the refuges took it on because they don’t understand it. They were sold it.
Comment by Julie — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 7:56 pm
Julie,
I think a little clarifying seems necessary.
Some of today’s feminists are the same as those of days gone by.
Careerist men-exploiter Neville Robertson would be a prime example.
You might want to check with a few thousand men in NZ as to what their views are on present day fembos compared to those of days gone by are before saying any more on the subject.
I think we ARE moving forwards too, judging by the amount of support Neville Robertson got on this website (zilch)and the amount of times he simple shut up because he was outed and made to look barmy and out of touch on so many occasions.
I know for a fact in days gone by his type would have been accompanied by lots of little brainwashed femi-trolls egging him on.
Not these days though.
To me that’s a very positive sign.
Things are looking up.
I agree with you about the group work.
There’s a steady stream of talented people coming together to push for human rights for men.
There’s a long way to go yet, but bit by bit catch the monkey.
Comment by Skeptik — Thu 6th January 2011 @ 8:36 pm
“poor soul”? “went through”?
“today’s feminists aren’t the same”?
There you go again, defining our experiences for us.
julie, I was an outré , radical feminist for the first forty years of my life. I was helping womens’ groups publicise rape stuff in the late seventies and early eighties – years before there was any overt rape activism. I did work to expand family leave in the mid nineties. I’ve got more feminist runs on the board than most avowed feminists going back to the seventies. I’ve absorbed all the “philosophy”, all the rhetoric, all the propaganda. Been responsible for some of it.
My animosity to feminism has the same source as my animosity for the political party I’ve belonged to all my life. It comes from a sense of betrayal. I’m still a member of that party however. Can’t change it from the outside. You should hear my critiques of the Australian Labor Party. I’m quite open about the recent loss in Victoria being an election we deserved to lose. I’m far more critical of them than I’ve ever been of feminism however. So what makes you think I’m not still really a feminist?
Remember this…
Something was lost from feminism. Something about self actualisation. For women AND men. I mourn it’s loss.
Did you see Neville turn his back just a while ago? He’s a part of an establishment that’s been doing this for a long time. I, and others, have demonstrated numerous times that it doesn’t matter if we are soft or hard, quiet or loud, the backs still turn. The voices are never heard. You’ve just watched it happen in microcosm.
Fundamental is that men have been denied a voice for too long. They have been denied a right to define their own experiences. It’s always somebody else defining them or their experience of life for them. To a certain extent they have lost the ability to do it. It’s why I nag you sometimes when you cross that boundary.
Make the space for them to speak for themselves. You seem to do that well. But if you try to define them there’s a good chance you’ll get it wrong.
Comment by gwallan — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 3:20 am
To be honest Skeptic and Gwallan, I think the main problem for me is that you’ve lived this while I haven’t. And it’s time for me to live it and see for myself.
And… in saying this, I fully support the work both you do online and offline and hope to see some excellent changes in people’s behaviours, in research coming out, in parliament, more in the media and some good stuff in the community.
Comment by julie — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 8:06 am
Hi Julie- you say that “I think the main problem for me is that you’ve lived this while I haven’t. And it’s time for me to live it and see for myself.”
This is not all in the past- it is still happening to good men and their families
There are plenty of good women (probably most) who are well aware of what happens to men, and who have been supporting men over the years. Women with emotional intelligence understand that men and women are part of the one race, and that the Gender War hurts both sides and hurts children.
If this is all new to you Julie- you should listen more and talk less. Regards John
Comment by John Brett — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 9:01 am
I just got off the phone with Housing NZ after requesting a community group house for a men’s refuge in the West Auckland area. They agree there needs to be something for men and so we’ll see whether their policy somewhere up the chain stops us from having a refuge – this way.
Let’s just walk a little and see what happens. 😉
Maybe some of your talk isn’t exactly true – that’s all I’m saying. But we’ll know soon enough. If I come back grovelling saying, “Please forgive me, you were right”, y’all will never get another challenge from me. haha.
Comment by julie — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 9:30 am
Well done you! at least you are doing something- I am not.
I was on the board of the Seperated Fathers Support Trust, and Warren Heap actually ran a Men’s Refuge some years back. Most of his time was spent fund-raising, and it was hard work. Also hard work was trying to get the Police on his side- they failed to recognize the issue of dumped dads, and just kept referring homeless druggies (perhaps mthat’s what they do with Womens Refuge, I’ll never know).
As for the “war on fathers”- BELIEVE! It is not paranoia if they are really out to get you! Cheers John
Comment by John Brett — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 11:03 am
Forget about perhaps, now you know why I don’t want to get involved, lol.
But they’ve worked things out well with alcohol and drug rehabs since year 2000, and so there’s allot of opportunity for these people to change their lives around.
Comment by julie — Fri 7th January 2011 @ 12:26 pm
Can we start a petition for this.
Is there a contact person we can all call to create overwhelming demand for this. Who isthe person who’s responsible for making this decision at Housing NZ?
Comment by David — Fri 14th January 2011 @ 10:14 am
I had a case reported to me. Guy hauled off for issuing a PSO. Cops tried to find housing for the guy and failed (it wasn’t my police district). He got lippy with them. They appeared to decide to make an example of him.
Dropped him at local McD’s restaurant with instructions not to go home. He had told them he wanted his care and would sleep the night in that. Car was at home he had just been PSOed from. Not surprisingly he was back inside for a breach withing 2 hours of having been dumped at McD’s.
The cops know for the new (and old) system to work accommodation and sensible support is the key to avoid breaches of orders. Their probablem is they don’t have access to such services other than in one or two areas,
Comment by Allan — Fri 14th January 2011 @ 10:51 am
Hi Allan, Jim Bagnall today dropped off a letter to the Mayor of Auckland with a number of groups added to ask the Mayor to consider men’s refuges [let us speak with him in person] and with it went copied information given on this site about Judge Boshier’s request and the UN plus information from what Daniel and Graeme shared on facebook regarding a coroner’s demand for men to have somewhere to go in Lower Hutt.
Regardless of whether the mayor will see us as a group, Daniel already has men’s refuges underway in Nth Shore, and I have something in the pipelines too for west Auckland.
There is a man who used to visit this site who is a fireman in the Sth Island. He said he would set up a man stop a year or two back and had land paid for by men and a facility built by men that had feminists protesting outside it when they did it.
We don’t know how many more are out there.
Comment by Julie — Fri 14th January 2011 @ 11:45 am
A week or two ago, it was reported that that Policy had issued some 1400 PSOs since July last year.
The whole article read as though they were if not all, then certainly almost all issued against men.
I guess men are seen as the clear perpetrator, the initiator of all domestic violence.
Logically, at best, if women ever hits a man, then she is either provoked (he hit her first, or pushed her to breaking point), or it is only ever self defence.
Anyway, 1400 x 5 = 7000 bed nights in half a year;
It would take 40 permanent fully occupied (365-days a year refuge beds to cater for that.
(if all alleged offenders were in the same area; and all incidents were evenly spread out over the fuyll calender year).
Anyway, it is clear that the police, the judicial system, the government and society in general believe that when a women has to leave home, she must have a refuge to go to (she needs protection); whereas when a man has to leave home, it is acceptable to dump him on the strreets and let him fend for himself.
I’m seriously thinking of cutting my balls off and wearing a dress.
Comment by Balls — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 7:56 am
Hi Julie,
Philip Chapman from Male Room in Nelson is doing the most in this area. We also have services available in Kapiti, Hamilton, Hawkes Bay and Tauranga.
Most of this is funded by guys putting their hands in their own pockets to help others.
Allan
http://www.familyservices.govt.nz/documents/working-with-us/news-room/te-rito-news/te-rito-issue-22-dec-2010.pdf
Comment by Allan — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 8:29 am
Thanks for this information Allan. There sure is allot being done with both men and women helping stop domestic violence but where does the advocacy for men come into it? I could see an ex gang member speaking up about his violence and wanting to make a difference in society for what he is responsible for, but what about men who are on the receiving end? Where do they speak up?
Maybe it would be good to contact him and find out.
One time I phoned the Kelston’s Girls High School after 3 young women in school uniform were at the railway station bragging how they stab young men on the weekends for fun. One had spent a week or so in a youth facility ‘Youth Horizon Trust’ for being caught for stabbing a young man and the school said they’d take it seriously and speak about it at assembly.
I had discussed this with young men and the bigger ones said they grab the women when they pull knives and take the knife from her hands while young men who weren’t big said they were at a lose because they would have to fight in self defense and other men come running to her aid and beat them up even knifing them also.
It’s pretty bad out west Auckland and even MP Paula Bennett has had to step in between some of these girls. Outside the courthouse you see them kicking men in the face when someone puts them down even holding their babies while they do it. (It’s a shocking sight and the police can’t tazer them with babies in their arms as they do the men)
I’d hate to see a whole city solely holding men accountable and more so in the schools where already a boy is suspended for hitting a girl and a girl gets nothing. When you ask intermediate school age girls if they think young men have feelings, they just shrug their shoulders because they’ve never considered they might.
I don’t think I could go along with feminists ideology of man=bad, woman=good. Even the police say there’s a problem with the women but they say they can’t talk about it because there’s no solution. (government plan)
Comment by julie — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 12:45 pm
Julie,
Thank you for the above graphic and insightful commentary about women’s violence in West Auckland.
Good question too.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 12:56 pm
Skeptic, you need to start listening to others now before you become everything you dislike in someone.
Comment by Julie — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 6:32 pm
Julie- check out “Jim Crow” in the American South. If a couple of good ole boys decide to beat up a ‘nigger’, the Police would wait until they are finished, then arrest the black man for starting a fight.
Same here, ‘cept that men are the new niggers.
Comment by John Brett — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 7:48 pm
Julie,
I’m listening to many thousands of men globally and I hear EXACTLY the same kind of sentiments as I express here at MENZ.
I listen to you on this occasion and hear matronizing uncalled for advice implying I’m deaf to folks pain.
I think you may be confusing agreeing with listening.
One can listen without necessarily agreeing.
Incidentally where do you get off on telling me I don’t listen after stalking men online who’ve told you they don’t want further emails from you.
I think you’ve lost the plot somehow.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 8:26 pm
Thanks for the reference point JB.
I agree entirely.
Men are the new niggers and gendered Jim Crow style laws and customs are everywhere these days.
Coincidentally I’ve just downloaded the movie “To kill a mocking bird”
I haven’t seen it yet but apparently it speaks of a black man falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death in the Southern States of USA. Apparently Gregory Peck was amazing acting the part of a lawyer trying to defend the shafted black guy.
I stumbled upon the idea of looking at this movie here.
Comment by Skeptik — Sat 15th January 2011 @ 8:37 pm
Skeptic,
Good for you. You don’t have to take any criticism on board if you don’t want to.
I did write a bit more but would rather encourage than discourage if you know what I mean.
And, we’ll see if I’ve lost the plot. For now I think I better get on with my own thing else I’m wasting my time.
Comment by julie — Sun 16th January 2011 @ 7:54 am
Thanks John.
I’ll check this story out.
I did write a bit more, but I feel there’s no point debating things like this. Men’s experiences are important and I’d rather encourage than put down, if you know what I mean. 🙂
Comment by julie — Sun 16th January 2011 @ 8:16 am
Thanks for reminding us of this novel Skeptik. I liked some of the comments made to the Spearhead article you linked for us. In particular, Pierce Harlan wrote:
Comment by Hans Laven — Sun 16th January 2011 @ 10:21 am
I received a phone call back from Housing NZ. It seems the 17th is when many departments are back in business from Christmas break.
Anyways, there are a number of groups putting their hands up to help men in refuges/man stops and it’s now become a project needing some work. It’s going to be good because after I do some work, they’ll sit down with me (in person) and help us get where we want to be – Anyone else who wants to be involved can come too.
Comment by Julie — Tue 18th January 2011 @ 10:54 am
Thank you for this excellent summary. Your result has been referenced today at antimisandry.com, so all the hard work you put in is still having an effect.
Comment by Douglas — Tue 17th June 2014 @ 9:18 pm