If our government spent millions of dollars over decades with posters, flyers, tv commercials, programs and more ONLY portraying the statistics of nefarious behaviour of women in our society how do you think it might affect us?

Do you think that the mental health of women would be improved or would it degrade?

Do you think the violence, and other nefarious acts committed by women would increase or decrease?

How would it change how men view women? Would they be more suspicious, fearful, cautious? Would it improve or degrade relationships between partners?

The image below is a fake poster I made up with accurate information. The AIHW says that about 12 men per year are killed by their female intimate partner. On average over the last 20 years 1 man per year is killed by a shark.

The comparison is meant to be provoking, comical but also to make serious a point. The statistics are true. It is also true that a woman is murdered through male IPV on average about once per week. Men murder slightly more women than men per year in Australia. For both men and women the chance of being murdered by your partner is extremely small. We don’t need to be fearful about it. Statistically and logically there are many more things we should be worried about dying from.

Accidental poisoning by exposure to noxious substances kills more than twice as many men (686) as females (301) (stats from ABS 2017). If the number and percentage of deaths was really the concern then wouldn’t we be putting millions of dollars into educating all the stupid blokes that are sticking their noses into toxic substances?

Some fun facts about the shark comparison. It turns out that sharks are gender biased too! 95% of deaths from a shark attack world wide are men! Digging into this the experts say it’s actually nothing to do with the sharks. It seems to be that more men engage in water sports and more dangerous activities. Such as spearfishing or surfing at dawn and dusk. But! Australia spends more on shark mitigation then it does on helping male victims of domestic violence. It’s hard to find out exactly what Australian governments spend each year. In QLD it’s $1.7M per annum. In 2014 WA spent a whopping $24M doing a major cull after a spate of fatal attacks. And… the CSIRO says the stats show all that culling is probably all for nothing.

So the government spends tens of millions of dollars on ‘shark mitigation’. But doesn’t recognise female to male violence, nor murders, which is results in about 12x the amount of deaths as sharks. This should concern every tax paying adult with a conscience in Australia.

This is what we have done for the last few decades. This information is everywhere. We’ve demonised men and disempowered women with this deliberately incomplete lopsided. It’s tearing apart our relationships, families & communities. It turns us against ourselves for no good reason.

Violence is a behaviour that is prevented when we value non-violence. It is normal to feel anger and use violence to get what we want. We are still mammals. Each individual needs to choose when they are feeling disempowered to deal with that internally and act, filtered with the principle of non-violence, to address the situation. It’s not just “physical violence”. It’s more than that. It’s about not causing any unnecessary harm. This includes all forms of control, coercion, demeaning language. This is all considered “violence” in Australia. It’s not okay. It doesn’t matter what your gender is. It’s not okay.

Let’s stop making domestic violence about gender and start making it about what it really is which is values, principles, choices, power sharing, working together and good communication.