Maybe like Charley Sheen and Tiger Woods
Yesterday, Australian NCFM Liaison Greg Andresen, had the following letter published in the Hobart Mercury newspaper (Tasmania, Australia). Congratulations Greg, nice work!
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Mercury [Hobart Town, Tas] 25 Mar 2011: pp. 50.
Men suffer too
THE story “Helping hand for abused” (Mercury, March 23) contained the quote “57 per cent of Australian women experience at least one incident of abuse in their lifetime, with around 350,000 experiencing physical violence and 125,000 victims of sexual violence each year”.
The correct figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) are that 39.9 per cent of females and 50.1 per cent of males experience at least one incident of abuse in their lifetime, with around 350,000 females and 750,000 males experiencing physical violence; and 125,000 females and 50,000 males victims of sexual violence each year.
The story also reported that “although men are occasionally the victims, more than 95 per cent of domestic violence is attributed to men abusing women and children”.
This is also incorrect: the ABS reports that 29.8 per cent (almost one in three) victims of current partner violence since the age of 15 are male. You can find a wealth of similar statistics on our website.
Greg Andresen
Senior researcher, One in Three Campaign
My Letter was in response to the following incorrect and misleading article that appeared two days previous:
Helping hand for abused
BRIAN WARD
23 March 2011
Hobart Mercury
THE Hobart Women’s Shelter yesterday opened its doors in a bid to draw awareness to the domestic violence and abuse suffered by many homeless women and children in Tasmania every year.
The most recent Census statistics show there were more than 2500 homeless people in Tasmania, 770 of whom were aged between 12 and 18, and 438 women.
Most of them had left their homes because of domestic or family violence.
“Fifty-seven per cent of Australian women experience at least one incident of abuse in their lifetime, with around 350,000 experiencing physical violence and 125,000 victims of sexual violence each year,” the Hobart shelter’s executive officer Sabine Wagner said.
Although men are occasionally the victims, more than 95 per cent of domestic violence is attributed to men abusing women and children.
“It can happen in any relationship of a personal nature, including partners, ex-partners and within family and is most often perpetrated by men against women and children,” Ms Wagner said.
The Hobart shelter houses more than 20 women at a time and provides many others with counselling and other support services.
Client Teagan Croucher said that with the help of the shelter she had turned her life, and the life of her four-year-old daughter, around.
“We are staying in our own safe house, which has enabled me to look for long-term accommodation as well as continue with my full-time studies at the Tasmanian Polytechnic,” she said.
“I’ve also been able to enrol my daughter back into an early learning centre, which has provided some stability and normality in her life.”
Human Services Minister Cassy O’Connor yesterday praised the shelter for developing the new ways to help women and children in need which were launched yesterday.
YOUNG MEN MUST REGISTER FOR THE SELECTIVE SERVICE (SSS) BUT NOT YOUNG WOMEN, ALTHOUGH BOTH MAY VOLUNTEER FOR MILITARY SERVICE AND CAREERS.
Good work Greg. Women's domestic violence against men is grossly under reported, while male victims are still routinely being ignored by the taxpayer funded domestic violence industry. Credible research overwhelmingly shows that the ratio of domestic violence is at least 50/50 between women & men. Go to Fiebert Bibliography. According to one study by researchers who work at the CDC, in 70 percent of domestic violence incidents, where the d.v. is not mutual, it's women who initiate the d. v. Go to Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting. Click on the link under the red & blue pie chart. D.v. law follows a gender feminist agenda over facts & does great harm to many innocent men & also many violent women. Go to Youtube, “Los Misandry.”
I am so happy to have found this organization and it's comforting to know I'm not the only guy out there who thinks like this. Common stereotypes would have made me thought men can't be abused or raped or assaulted by women. I learned my lesson this past week, and I hope it's not too late to cause irreparable damage to my life.
My fiance of two years, who I had been living with for almost a year and a half up until last weekend, suddenly became very belligerent and hostile toward me and my entire family after my sister got engaged and said she might wed before we were going to. I tried to calm my fiance during the entire weekend when I just wanted to be happy for my sister and future brother-in-law.
However on Monday my fiance began to harass my mother and sister by text message and even went so far as to bring the argument public in Facebook, embarrassing and humiliating my sister. My mother called to let me know what was going on and I did what I could to try to get my fiance, who was still at work, to back off my sister.
She returned from work enraged at me for "siding with my sister" when in actuality I'd been firm but fair with both of them and tried to make them realize a wedding isn't a race and that I wasn't going to rush mine just to go before my sister.
My fiance spent the night drinking a bottle of champagne, stumbling, falling, screaming in my face whenever I was on the phone with a relative, breaking my things, threatening suicide, and then becoming angry if I followed her through the apartment to make sure she wasn't going to harm herself or me. At one point she stormed up to me looking like she was about to attack me physically, which is something she had done before when drunk, so I took her by the wrists and "handcuffed" her wrists with my hands and told her to go sit on the couch and calm down. She accused me of hurting her even though I only held her wrists tight enough to prevent her from being able to punch me. I let go when she told me to.
Later she came toward me ready to hit me again and I simply put my forearm in front of my torso so that she wouldn't be able to touch me. Being plastered, she just kind of bounced right off my arm and stumbled back into the edge of a wall. She then accused me of pushing her into the wall and hitting her head and said she was calling the cops. For me, that was the final straw because I wasn't sure how alleged assault would be handled and assumed they'd always side with the girl over the guy. I took her at her word and dialed 911 basically to protect my own butt from being labeled a wife beater.
It turns out she was lying about calling 911 but by time I realized that it was too late and my call was already connected. The dispatcher had sent officers. I was hoping if she was taken anywhere it would be to a hospital or rehab center to get help for herself. I let the cops know she was not a real physical danger to me but I couldn't spend the whole night trying to protect us both from her rage and threats. She tried to spin the story that I had abused her even though she was too drunk to stand up by this point and she was the one who had broken all the items. They charged her with domestic violence and I legally couldn't stop them from taking her to jail.
She spent about two hours in jail at which point she was released on bail to a hotel. She called me crying and saying she just wanted to say goodbye to me because her life was over. I rushed to her hotel keeping her on the line and thankfully was able to talk some sense into her. The suicide message ended up being just another one of her many empty threats.
Now she and I are college friends from the East Coast who were forced to move across the country for better job opportunities. We were really all each other had nearby. So on Tuesday her mother somehow also twisted what happened into me being a danger to her and demanded my fiance to move back east on Wed and never speak to me again.
Tuesday night after we both agreed to split up, for whatever reason my finance decided to take a pregnancy test. She hadn't missed a period but she often took tests before she was due because she's obsessed with becoming a mother. The first one (digital) came back positive and the second one which is said to be more reliable was, thankfully, negative. She responded to the positive test with elation that she was gonna be a mom. This freaked me out because we had just broken our engagement that afternoon and would obviously not be marrying within the next year as planned. Why was she happy about this?
I told her that we had to live up to our previous agreements with each other that we'd either put everyone and everything else on hold and work out our differences for the sake of a possible child, or we'd have to abort it. I asked her to stay on the west coast with me for another week or so to talk things over together and offered to do everything in my power to make the relationship work and live for my child if she'd do the same and get herself to therapy. Or I'd take her to get an abortion. She agreed to this.
But then she started texting her friends and called her father back east, and everything suddenly changed. They told her to just get on the plane and leave me, her father even going so far as to ask her why she'd even tell me about the test results. She said she'd have to leave me because if she stayed she'd lose most of her friends who hated me because she had told them I was abusive to her. To me, this showed her commitment was never to me or the family she wanted us to build together if she would put the opinions of Facebook "friends" and her own deadbeat dad above mine. I was outraged by this, I feel like I had been raped in every way by her for the past two years- emotionally, physically, financially, sexually- and if she really is pregnant I feel that I have no legal recourse.
She has since told me her period came on and she does not believe she's pregnant but she's always vague and refusing to answer direct questions. For some reason she's rushing to get a new job with complete health benefits to go to the doctor. She says it's to control her PMDD problem but I'm not so sure. I'm sickened by the idea that I may have a child growing in her body that I won't be able to bond with as it grows in the womb and that she is just trying to hold me off until it's too late for me to utilize my right to choose not to bring my child into the world via a psychotic mother who would do such a thing to the person she said she'd spend the rest of her life with no matter what. I feel like I was merely her sperm donor and I have actively prayed for a miscarriage if she is in fact lying to me.
I understand child support payments can be hefty over 18 years but to me that is not even my biggest concern. It's not knowing I have a child. Not knowing if it was given up for adoption. Or if it's being raised by her and her hateful friends and family who would be so quick to judge me based on her lies.
I feel lost. I feel like my right to choose NOT be a father to her baby is meaningless, and that's because it seems like most of the laws in this country say it is. I don't believe the Constitution allows for a woman to choose when to become a mom but not a man to choose when to become a father. In researching this disgusting bias, I've come across one sick example after another where the man has no say.
Hopefully sanity prevails sooner rather than later. I'm willing to fight this if I have to. What gives some judge or anyone else in the country the right to say my sperm can be used like this? Women better not even try to say something about thinking about that before I had sex because the same logic applies to my perverted ex who knew what my conditions for having a child were and who ended up having a mental breakdown and fleeing long after we stopped having sex.
In my opinion, a man's "right to choose" simply being a right not to know his child is crap. A man should be able to force an abortion, especially in cases like mine where I truly believe I was deceived and manipulated by a con artist. Essentially I was raped by someone I was led to believe would be my wife for at least the foreseeable future and who agreed to get marriage counseling if our differences ever became too extreme. If the situation were reversed, the woman could get an abortion on demand. Where is the justice? Why do I have to worry about having an unknown child being abused somewhere or being brainwashed to hate me? Why am I not entitled at least to a straight answer about if she's even pregnant at all?
Liberty and Justice for All??? Not if you're a man.