News Violence Against Women Ad - Australia

[anthony]

This is an ad that runs here in Australia by the Government, educating and showing how violence begins and stopping it at the source as a child. This to me is exactly how to minimise such issues for the future... constant education blitzing, TV, online, schools.

It goes hand in hand with an online education resource: https://www.respect.gov.au

 

[Sighs]

I am still outraged that when my daughter was in primary school one of the boys pulled her small hoop earring. It tore her ear slightly, became infected and she now as an adult cannot wear earrings. And the consequences for this assault? None. He wasn't even made to apologize. She was told not to make such a big deal of it. Makes my blood boil to this day.

 

[anthony]

Yer... I think we slowly get there as a society, and hopefully such things become so few and far between in the future.

 

[Anarchy]

I can Identify with all of that vid, so much so that it's taken me over a day to face up to commenting on it
the childhood stuff it shows was pretty much daily for me.
I'm not female, I don't have a disability, I'm not a visible minority where I grew up

I guess that there needs to be a poster child, or poster children, but somehow selecting a group (in this case females) strikes me as avoiding giving the message that all aggressive* violence is always wrong.

Even into my twenties, I still believed the gaslighting that adults being violent to children was needed, that certain peoples deserved to be killed if they lived within an imaginary line...

It's a long process, tackling one distorted cognition at a time, meanwhile the ainstream keeps broadcasting that it's good to use violence on people if they poses certain plant materials, live in certain places, question cops and authoritah...

I think we'll get there in the end, but probably not in my life time.

__________________________________________________
*I'm fine with proportionate defensive violence,
and can accept proportionate retribution against an individual, even if I think all peaceful means should be exhausted first, and any more than the an eye for an eye or tooth for tooth represents a fresh aggression

 

[Sighs]

@Anarchy - I'm sorry that you identify so strongly with the bullied little girl. We have some very good campaigns directed at bullying.

However, I can't help but think you've slightly missed the point of this ad. No-one sees her as bullied. This is "normal" life for each and every little girl. Comments from adults like "Hey son, don't throw like a girl" and "He only did that ("that" being disrespect or actual assault) because he likes you" are how women internalise the message that they are unimportant, of little value,and certainly worth less than a man. Its also how many little boys - including those who were bullied as children - grow up to believe that they are entitled to deference simply because they are male. After all what is the worst insult you can throw at a man? That he is a "girl" or a "c*nt".

I don't think describing females as "poster children" or jumping on the "oh but I too suffered and I'm a male" bandwagon actually helps. Again, I'm sorry that you were bullied as a child, but I do not think you understand what it is like to grow up female and therefore worth less than a male in each and every moment of your childhood. Actually, make that life not childhood. Ever been paid less than a co-worker to do exactly the same job? Ever been passed over for promotion because you "might" have a baby sometime in the next ten years? Ever been called a "bitch" because you were angry? Ever been called "hysterical" because you were sad? Ever been too frightened to go somewhere on your own even in daylight because you may be sexually assaulted? Ever been served the chicken legs while the men got the breast meat?

Who was it that said "men are afraid that women will laugh at them - women are afraid that men will kill them"?

 

[Anarchy]

I'm not going to criticise you

but why should any human be forced to feel inferior or threatened by any other human?

you are correct, I do not know what it was like to grow up as you, just as you do not know what it was like to grow up as me - and in my experience, I was beaten up with most cruelty by older girls. violence is violence, a sense of entitlement is a sense of entitlement, regardless of gender.

Once bullshit is stripped away - the figures for rape victimisation (qua coerced sex) are roughly the same for both genders

regarding gender pay differentials - for people in the same role and comparable employment history, there is a difference, females actually earn slightly more (mean earnings) than males

the differences arise with career choice and with interruptions of career. I agree that thoughts of inferiority may contribute to those; who gives up their job to move with who to a higher paying opportunity? who gives up work to look after the kids? who does most of the house work? each of those decisions comes with an opportunity cost.

further, If one gender was indeed under paid for the same performance in the same roles as the other - then there is a massive entrepreneurial reason to recruit the cheaper rather than the more expensive. there would be greater competition for the cheaper - which would raise it's price and lower the price of the less sought gender, tending to eliminate any difference.

I know that you didn't mention "glass ceilings" but I will, and the almost never mentioned glass floors that lie below females too. Ability and intelligence wise males exhibit a larger variance than females, hence a wider flatter bell curve of various abilities. More males than females are seen in board rooms and at the other end of the bell curve far more males than females are also seen in doss houses, shop doorways and prisons.

It's a while since I was read up on the academic studies rather than social justice warrior guilt and division mongering, but I can certainly look the refs out if you are interested.

 

[Anarchy]

Who was it that said "men are afraid that women will laugh at them - women are afraid that men will kill them"?

but who has more chance of being the victim in violence?
Link Removed

your comment is conducive to divide and rule - and minimisation of experience on grounds of gender. violence is violence - being the victim of acts of violence is not negated by the gender of the victim.

 

[Sighs]

I never said that male victims of violence did not matter. In fact, twice I specifically said that I was sorry that you had suffered as a child. I just do not see the logic in your argument, which appears to run as follows:

I was the victim of violence as a child.
I am not a female.
Therefore females are not subjected to systematic ingrained socially acceptable violence.

I realise that there are lies, damned lies and statistics but

Once bullshit is stripped away - the figures for rape victimisation (qua coerced sex) are roughly the same for both genders

regarding gender pay differentials - for people in the same role and comparable employment history, there is a difference, females actually earn slightly more (mean earnings) than males

c'mon! You can't be serious on the latter. As for the former, and

who has more chance of being the victim in violence?

I see you stay well clear of data relating to the gender of the perpetrator.

This would have to be the first time in my life I have been accused of

social justice warrior guilt and division mongering

.

Name me one country on the planet where a MAN is considered to be the chattel of a WOMAN. Name me one country on the planet where MEN are killed if their behavior is considered to have shamed their FEMALE family members.

 

[mary1979]

I wonder how these kinds of campaigns have changed the face of violence in the home statistically.

Be an interesting study.
What is the aim?

To make perpetrators of it feel guilty?
To make victims feel less alone?
To guilt bystanders into stepping in?

I'm a little lost.
The money could be better spent on creating safe houses..


The way we handle child sexual abuse has changed a lot just in my 30 years dealing with the systems in place to assist, I dont recall seeing any Tv ads about it

 

[joeylittle]

but why should any human be forced to feel inferior or threatened by any other human?

There is no reason - they shouldn't. End of discussion.

Your argument, though, rings the same bells for me as hashtag-BlackLivesMatter vs. hashtag-AllLivesMatter. It's a false equivalency. There's absolutely nothing wrong with pointing the spotlight on specific kinds of abuse/persecution/trauma that occurs to certain groups. Doing so does not do so at the exclusion of others - but does allow that distinct group to create awareness around their problem. So, their problem is not your problem. Nothing stops you from starting a campaign of your own.

It's not either or.

 

[Anarchy]

I was the victim of violence as a child.
I am not a female.
Therefore females are not subjected to systematic ingrained socially acceptable violence.

I realise that there are lies, damned lies and statistics but

And there is the false attribution of a statement followed by criticism of the person who did not make it. Straw man.

c'mon! You can't be serious on the latter.

I am entirely serious on both
The pay differential appears largely due to three reasons, none of them anything to do with a patriarchy

• choice of career - If a woman plans to have children and take time out of her career, then choosing a career path that allows her to come back, is a valid way of her maximising her lifetime earnings. Unfortunately, some of the highest paid fields require people to stay current on rapidly changing information, for example tech or the higher earning parts of commercial law. The career choices away from that bleeding edge, although more open to taking a break and coming back again, tend to be lower paying.
• Asymmetry in relationships. Who does the majority of the house work, cooking and child care? even if a couple have identical abilities, identical qualifications and identical jobs, that extra work at home is going to tell on the work performance of the one who takes it on
• 
  
• and, if one gets a fantastic job offer in another city - which partner gives up their job to move with the other?
• 
  
• Time out - even in the most mother and child friendly of roles, only one gender can physically bear the children, and that is going to result in those who do have children taking time out, and that is going to lower their lifetime earnings, and hence the aggregated mean earnings for that gender

Since probably the 1960s, most jobs no longer require large physical size and the physical strength that goes with it - we're no longer digging ditches with shovels, felling trees with axes and cross cut saws or hauling 220 pound sacks of grain around on our backs - so, in most jobs either gender is (ceteris paribus) equally productive.

If females were let's say 15% lower paid across the board than males for the same productivity, then a business that employed only females would have 15% lower labour costs than an identical business owned by a misogynist who only employs males.

That 15% lower labour costs could then be used to undersell and price the misogynist out of the market, and to bid more than the misogynist for scarce inputs

or to invest in expanding the business, and making even greater profits.

whichever way, the market is not going to ignore that kind of advantage, and businesses taking advantage of that competitive cost advantage will soon result in bidding up the price of underpriced female labour and bidding down the price of overpriced male labour.

in short - if the pay differential were real in the same roles and for the same productivity, it wouldn't last long on the market.

I see you stay well clear of data relating to the gender of the perpetrator.

I'm perfectly ok fleshing out what was implicit in my observation that far more males than females are found in prisons, yes the vast majority of concrete individual perps of violence are male
for a range of attributes, there is a larger standard deviation for males than for females, propensity to use violence appears to be one of those, and is exacerbated by the (on average) greater size and physical strength of males.

but that in no way lessens the reality that different concrete individual males also represent the majority of the victims of violent crimes

and the gender of the perp in no way diminishes the seriousness of those individual victims experiences.

Confusion only arises if "males" are considered as an amorphous aggregated whole, rather than as concrete individuals. Males perpetrating violence on males does not imply that a concrete individual male is somehow the perpetrator violence on himself.

I realise that you didn't further question my assertion that the figures for rape are probably broadly equal between the genders. There are major problems with deffinitions and statistics , even staying with the relatively un controversial definition of rape as non consensual penetration by a body part (the Social Justice Warriors come up with some really bizarre twists - such as rape requiring privilege, therefore it's only cis white males who can commit rape eg this ludicrous troll:

Rape implies power, therefore victims of oppressions cannot be rapists. Consequently, only White cis men can rape. #YesAllWomen #feminism

— Sarah All Inclusive (@InclusiveSarah) June 6, 2014

)

To give some examples of the problem I'll quote this from Wendy McElroy's book "Rape Culture Hysteria; Fixing the Damage done to Men and Women"

Spoiler

Why then do I omit male victims of sexual assault? First and foremost, such an exposition demands a book of its own. It would be fitting companion to Rape Culture Hysteria but the topic needs separate treatment. For example, exploring the reality of male rape would require an entirely different direction of research and analysis. Instead of exploring existing studies and statistics, it might require original research since very little data are now available on prison rape, for example. Finding solid statistics on male victims would be difficult. The NISVS is one of the most cited studies on sexual violence. Its approach illustrates just one problem with sorting out male rape victims. It states that forcing a male to penetrate another person – that is, compelling sexual coitus – is not considered to be rape. The NISVS explains [11],

“As an example of prevalence differences between the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey and other surveys, the lifetime prevalence estimate of rape for men in this report is lower than what has been reported in other surveys (e.g., for forced sex more broadly) (Basile, Chen, Black, & Saltzman, 2007). This could be due in part to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey making a distinction between rape and being made to penetrate someone else. Being made to penetrate is a form of sexual victimization distinct from rape that is particularly unique to males and, to our knowledge, has not been explicitly measured in previous national studies. It is possible that rape questions in prior studies captured the experience of being made to penetrate someone else, resulting in higher prevalence estimates for male rape in those studies.”

The tables offered [12] by the NISVS reveal that, if forced penetration is counted as rape, then the rate of rape for both sexes may be roughly equal: rapes for women are 13% (weighted); forced penetrations for men are 11% (weighted).

The NISVS is far from alone in refusing to classify sexual acts that may be forced upon men as sexual violence even though the identical acts are classified as such for women. Researcher Mary P. Koss, for example, commented [13] on methodologies for measuring rape in her 1993 paper, which is still used as a touchstone,

“Detecting the Scope of Rape: A Review of Prevalence Research Methods.“ Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman.”

I vehemently disagree. But this book is not the proper venue in which to do so. This book’s purpose is to confront and to refute the rape culture on its own terms. And, because the rape culture does not recognize males as sexual victims, they are not included in the narrative, except in the preface, except to point out what this cruel omission says about PC feminism.

Several links to discussions of male rape are included in the Notes below [14] to encourage readers to pursue the issue of sexual violence against men. To the extent males are viewed as victims in this book, however, the focus is upon the treatment of male students accused of sexual assault who are stripped of due process by campus sexual assault hearings.

[11] “The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report,” Centers for Disease Control, p. 84. http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.

[12] “E-lert: Hidden Victims: Men Who are Forced to Penetrate,” Stop Abusive and Violent Environments, March 11, 2014. Link Removed From NIPSV, pp. 18-19 Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.

[13] Mary Koss, “Detecting the Scope of Rape: A Review of Prevalence Research Methods,“ Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Vol 8 #2, June, 1993, pp. 206-107. Link Removed Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.

[14] The following links provide a range of information on male rape:

• Nathaniel Penn, “Son, Men Don’t Get Raped,” GQ. On male rape in the military. “Son, Men Don’t Get Raped” Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.
• Anonymous, “Rethinking Gender and Assault: a male perspective,” The Stanford Daily, Jan. 11, 2015. A male rape on campus. Rethinking gender and sexual assault policy: My story | The Stanford Daily Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.
• Staff Reporter, “More men are raped in the US than women, figures on prison assaults reveal.” The Daily Mail, Oct. 8, 2013. On male rape in prison. More men are raped in the US than women Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.
• “Let’s look at male rape, shall we?” From the website Don’t Need Feminism. A general overview of male rape in the United States. Dontneedfeminism.com Retrieved Sept. 20, 2015.

full preface can be found here Link Removed
and the book here Dead Link Removed

This would have to be the first time in my life I have been accused of

social justice warrior guilt and division mongering

.

The accusation is only of using some of the bile and distortions spewed by, not of being one yourself

Name me one country on the planet where a MAN is considered to be the chattel of a WOMAN. Name me one country on the planet where MEN are killed if their behavior is considered to have shamed their FEMALE family members.

I don't agree with any person being the chattel of any individual or institution (and I can make a strong argument that we are all considered chattel possesions / cattle, by states)
but in the wider context of my arguing against any aggressive violence by one individual against another, the question is a red herring.

 

[Anarchy]

Your argument, though, rings the same bells for me as hashtag-BlackLivesMatter vs. hashtag-AllLivesMatter. ... It's not either or.

I agree with your base argument

however the advert does strike me as being particularly and unreasonably narrow (and sexist) in its focus

would it have detracted from the message or contradicted it to say "let's stop all aggressive violence" as opposed to what it did state which was the narrower sense of violence against females

admittedly - as a tax victim funded exercise, arguing against all initiation of aggression would have been a performative contradiction, but still.