Two Sides to Every Story
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 at 10:30AM 
With Special Guests:
There are two sides to every story, but when it comes to gender issues including domestic violence and shared parenting, the Australian public are only hearing one side.
Much of the Australian media have completely neglected to point out that there is a great deal of debate academic and otherwise over the massive taxpayer-funded domestic violence industry and its portrayal of men and fathers as abusers and women as victims.
The Labor Party has now been in power for a year, and the anti-father anti-male propaganda machine is in full swing. The public has been inundated with horror stories of evil men bashing women and how the extremely modest reforms by the previous government to dilute the extreme anti-father bias of our family law system are allegedly placing women and children in danger.
Fathers 4 Equality spokesman James Adams outlines some of the proof that the white-hot frenzy of violence paranoia which has been blizzarding the nation in the cloak of social justice and White Ribbon Day is based on anti-male ideology and myths and is misdirected at best. He says propaganda and misguided social policies causes the destruction of many fathers’ and children’s lives. Mr Adams says many academics around the world including Martin Fiebert from the US have compiled mountains of peer reviewed published international research showing that interpersonal violence is a two-way street. But all these studies are ignored in a desperate effort to paint men as violent patriarchs.
Next up we have Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation who has been at the centre of a storm this week when allegations emerged that he was homophobic and he was sacked as a Men’s Health Ambassador for the Federal government only a day after being appointed.
Here we let him tell his side of the story:
Open Letter to My Friends re Men’s Health Ambassador Appointment
Media Conference - 12 midday - 27 November outside Cringila Pub
It is a wonderful thing when people vilify you and tell lies about you. Certain journalists have claimed that I am homophobic. You be the judge.
Is being homophobic bringing a young man into your home with your young family who has the death sentence of aids? That same young man needed shelter from the storm. A placed filled with unconditional love. He came from a broken home. He had a father wound. He had been sexually abused by other older men. That same young man ended up working the wall in Sydney. This is not a good place for any young man to have to work. He needed someone to tell him that he was loved and appreciated not for the sex he could give to his paying customers who abused him but because of who he was on the inside a wonderful young man, with a future and a destiny.
Is being homophobic giving an award at a public function in Parliament House, Canberra in August 2005 to a wonderful Lesbian women from Melbourne who had the guts to set up an organization to help trafficked women caught in the exploitative web of male driven prostitution. Unfortunately some men still are bastards? Certainly not all but some. White Ribbon Day tells the stories.
Is being homophobic inviting a Mayor of a local council in Sydney to give awards to the men who have completed a fatherhood course? That mayor was a homosexual man but as a Lord Mayor he deserves our respect and honour. After all we are all someone’s daughter or someone’s son and as such we all deserve that same honour and respect.
If I am attacked it is because I believe that our children matter. If I am attacked it is because I believe that we should give our children the very best we can give them. If I am attacked it is because I believe every child has the right to a mother and a father. Children need a mother and a father not two mummies or two daddies. The document in question is public information and is available for free download at www.gendermatters.org.au ‘21 Reasons Why Gender Matters’ has 34 different authors and contributors. Some contributed a lot and some a little. Ten are doctors while many are practitioners and counsellors. Several had experienced the gender wound first hand so they are well able to write with both authority and compassion.
‘21 Reasons Why Gender Matters’ shows from thousands of studies the world over, that the natural way is the best way and when we break that natural order the statistics show things just start to go wrong. People get hurt. Children are abused. Father wounds are created. Families break up. Relationships break down. Maybe we should rename the ‘Father Wound’ the ‘Gender Wound’? The pain of the Gender Wound is a non-discriminatory pain. This pain is felt by heterosexuals and homosexuals. The story of this pain is well told in the ground breaking Australian movie called Men’s Group.
21 Reasons Why Gender Matter was released some time ago in terms of the news cycle. This document is old news. Every Member of Parliament received a copy in the lead up to the last election. So did the media in the press gallery. Why all the fuss now?
I don’t know where this story came from. I have not said anything about this subject for quite some time. This sort of heterophobia baffles me.
A lady from the USA in the lead up to international Mens Day www.internationalmensday.com on the 19th November called me a ‘father’s rights advocate’. I would prefer to be called a ‘love advocate’ or a ‘new way to be human advocate’. My main focus is healing the father wound in the children of Australia and trying to turn the tide of fatherlessness in our nation. Suicide is directly related to Fatherlessness. Our children need live fathers not dead fathers. Men are dying almost 5 years earlier than women. Most of this morbidity is preventable. Men’s Health has been a much neglected issue. The women of Australia were granted a National Women’s Health Policy in 1989. This National Men’s Health Policy has been a long time coming.
I applaud Nicola Roxon for her initiative in getting this policy off the ground. She is a great women and mother and she is doing a great job. I congratulate the Rudd Labor Government for their courage to tackle the shocking epidemic of male suicide and I am willing to continue as an advocate for Aussie men as an ambassador on their behalf as well as the government. We desperately need a national discourse on a National Men’s Health Policy. I am honoured to work alongside such great Aussie men as Professor John MacDonald, Barry Williams, Tim Mathieson and others. All have a story to tell. They need to be heard. It is sad that these vicious unprovoked personal attacks are obfuscating the real message of Men’s Health and the many slurs that men still have to endure because of their sex.
I have received many encouraging phone calls and emails in the light of these unprovoked attacks upon my character and I want to thank those Australian men and women for their support and encouragement.
Signed Warwick Marsh.
Next up we have Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency looking at the concerted campaign to roll back the modest reforms of the previous government and its promotion of shared parenting and cooperation between separating parents. There are strong fears that the Labor government is taking the court back to the bad old days when most fathers entering the court rarely saw their children again. That a Labor government is promoting this course of action and acceding to the many vested interests at play within the bureaucracies, actively destroying the relationship between many working fathers and their children, defies belief.
Here’s a copy of a press release put out by the Men’s Rights Agency on the present domestic violence campaigns and their demonisation of men:
There is another side to Domestic Violence:
Each year, the White Ribbon campaign asks Australians to support their claim that women and girls are only ever victims of men’s and boys’ abuse. It is certainly a noble cause to prevent violence, but why focus only on violence against women and girls? Are men and boys any less deserving of protection as victims of abuse?
The ABS Safety Survey found 5.8% of females and 10.8% of males, 15 years plus, are subjected to threat of, attempt or alleged physical and sexual abuse each year. A proportion of each is attributable to family/relationship violence. As figures stand more women claim domestic abuse than men, but that is not surprising due to the reluctance of men to admit their wife or girlfriend beats them up. If they do seek assistance - the police often laugh and send them away, or ask “what did you do to make your wife hit you?” The women’s domestic violence mantra that a victim should never be blamed obviously does not apply to a mere male in need of protection.
In supporting women/girls exclusively, the White Ribbon campaign tells only half the story and lays the blame for all family/relationship violence on men and boys.
Domestic violence groups have become notorious for protecting their turf and their funding. Those efforts include a total denial that women are ever violent, yet studies have told us for many years, family/relationship violence is attributable to both genders. One only has to read about the growing number of girls’ gangs who launch vicious attacks on both genders, even to the extent of putting the boot in or ‘glassing” their opponents; the wife who killed her husband, cooked his flesh and served him up to his children for dinner; or the women who hacked her husband to death with 75 blows from a machete; or the mother who stuffed her little boy into a suitcase, before throwing him into a lake and leaving him to drown. Mothers, or mother’s boyfriends kill more children than do biological fathers.
Denying women’s violence or excusing it does not help to reduce violence. It does send a strong message to women that they can do what they like and they will most likely get away with their bad behavior.
Meanwhile services ignore the need for emergency accommodation for men and their children and fail to provide anger management courses for women and girls.
False allegations have flourished in this atmosphere, but there are signs of rebellion.
As reported in the Courier Mail (24/11/08), Biggest Loser trainer Shannan Ponton does not intend to let his ex-girlfriend’s allegations of verbal and emotional abuse go unchallenged. Channel 10 and the program producers are seeking legal advice on a possible defamation action. Other men have already taken similar action which has resulted in severe criticism of police response and financial compensation from the women who falsely accuse.
The White Ribbon Campaign ignores violence against men and boys. The latest report co authored by Michael Flood and Lara Fergus, described as a comprehensive review of other studies, recognizes that physical aggression by both males and females exists but fails to comment further. The tone of the report is manifestly anti male and designed to exaggerate violence against girls, minimise or ignore violence against boys in order to secure funding to run programs in schools and universities to teach young men to respect young women.
Flood claims up to half of all young people have seen or heard verbal, emotional or psychological violence used against their mothers, but according to Men’s Health Australia spokesman Greg Andresen, he has ignored the level of violence against fathers witnessed by young people which occurs at similar levels to violence against mothers.
Dr David Indermaur from the Crime Research Centre WA, found that, of the 70 percent of young people identifying as being in a relationship 37 percent of boys experienced abuse compared to 36 per cent of girls.
The same study mentioned “men universally perceive domestic violence to be unacceptable”, a view not held by both male and female respondents when asked about a female hitting a male. They are more likely to say a woman is right to or has good reason to, respond to a situation by hitting, than a man in the same situation.
The vast majority of fathers raise their sons to never hit a woman and to respect women. Those missing out on these important lessons may be sons raised in single parent families without much contact with their father. How do they learn how a man behaves? In fact how do young woman learn not to abuse young men when their mothers are often full of so much hatred and disrespect for their fathers?
The White Ribbon Campaign will do little to prevent violence against women and may cause considerable harm by falsely labelling men and boys as the only perpetrators of family/personal violence. Does an impressionable young man give up trying to be a good person when the expectation is that he will become an abuser? Does an impressionable young woman never try to improve her behaviour because everyone tells her she has a right to use violence?
Violence against men, women and children is preventable, providing it is tackled in the right way, not as a one sided issue as occurs now.