Liberated females the cause of domestic violence?

[MotherBear]

Is he suggesting we female crawl back in our boxes then?

Rising violence blamed on sex revolution
Monday October 9, 2006
By Simon Collins

Rising rates of domestic violence should be blamed on the "sexual revolution", says a visiting British expert.

Psychiatrist Anthony Daniels, who writes under the name Theodore Dalrymple, says his hospital in Birmingham saw a "huge" increase in injuries to women in the past 20 years, paralleling a doubling of arrests for family violence in New Zealand in the past decade.

His ward saw more than 1200 patients a year for attempted suicide by drug overdose, initially mostly young women but now slightly over half men.

Seventy per cent of the women were victims of domestic violence, and 70 per cent of the men had attacked their partners and then overdosed to try to prove to themselves, their partners and the courts that they had mental problems. One in five of the women aged 16 to 50 living in the hospital's catchment area went to its emergency department each year with injuries inflicted by their partners.

"Most of that was caused by sexual jealousy," Dr Daniels said. "There has been a tremendous increase in both the quantity and quality of jealousy, and the reason for this is because there is no structure in the relations between men and women."

Dr Daniels arrived in New Zealand at the weekend for a two-week tour sponsored by the Sensible Sentencing Trust, Family First and Christine Rankin's For the Sake of our Children Trust.

He quoted textbooks stating that psychiatrists should expect to see cases of "obsessive jealousy" once or twice a year. "I was meeting it once or twice a day. Unless the previous observers were missing something at the time, this is a change," he said.

He put it down to stable, lifelong marriages being replaced, particularly in poorer communities, by the freedom to form serial short-term relationships. "In the area in which I worked, regular [stable] relationships were almost unknown except among people of Indian subcontinent origin. The illegitimacy rate was almost 100 per cent," he said.

"The men who took overdoses had been violent to their women, and they were using violence actually as a means of controlling and enforcing their exclusive sexual possession, and they were assuming that other men were as predatory as they were. Although of course there has always been violence within marriage, and I don't think you are ever going to get rid of that, we know that violence is much more common amongst people who are not married than it is among people who are married."

He advocates marriage incentives such as a tax-free allowance of "say $20,000 a year" for married couples living together, but only $5000 a year for people living singly. He thinks divorce should be allowed only for violence, infidelity or "failure to keep one's responsibilities".

He would also scrap the domestic purposes benefit except in cases where men could not be forced to support their former partners and children. He said people would still be free to form relationships outside marriage - they would just be discouraged.

"It depends what your expectations are in life," he said. "If your expectation is that life should be a continual Romeo and Juliet experience, then quite obviously it's not practical to suggest that people are going to stay together. But if you actually feel that your own inclinations are not the only thing that ought to be considered in any given situation, but the overall effect on other people, the effect on society, ought to be considered, then that will change how you behave."

Dr Daniels will address a National Party youth conference in Wellington today, speak in a debate with Green MP Sue Bradford on Wednesday and hold public meetings in Napier, Tauranga and Auckland.

[selchie]

Arrgh, give me a flippin' break. This guy is yet another yahoo wanting to blame the victim for the agressor's bad behavior. It sounds like he's twisting data to support his opinion, rather than noticing the trends and trying to figure out what the cause is.

I suspect that in "The Good Old Days", men would beat on their wives and the whole thing went unreported. Now, I believe women are more aware that this behavior is unacceptable, and are calling the police. Thus, statistics show a rise in reported incidences of domestic violence. Maybe if we just prohibited women from whining about their husbands slapping them around, the statistics would simmer down, and all those poor beleaguered men would stop needing excuses for putting women "in their place".

Well said, Selchie. It's taken the last 20 years of encouragement and support to get women to come forward and realise that they dont need to put up with domestic violence. I expect the actual incidents of violence is reducing as more people fear the consequences (except in CHAV land of course) as the rate of reported incidences increase. As the saying goes - 'Theres lies, damn lies, and statistics'.

Funny how theres no real mention of violence against men though, what's causing the upswing in that?!

[MotherBear]

Funny how theres no real mention of violence against men though, what's causing the upswing in that?!

Possibly a few liberated women giving back a little of what they received in the past?

[selchie]

Once again, I believe the upswing in reported cases of violence against men is because men are reporting it more. That, or more men just plain deserve it... to use Dr. Daniels/Dalrymple's logic.

[MotherBear]

This won't help matters. ?Male pride and all that. ? ::)

Women beat men in licence tests
14 October 2006
By PATRICK CREWDSON

Women can claim greater mastery of their cars than men can, according to fresh figures showing pass rates for driver licence tests. Figures issued by Land Transport NZ under the Official Information Act show that more than 32,000 men and about 25,500 women failed licence tests in the past year.

Twenty people took more than 10 attempts to pass their tests, including two who had to sit their restricted tests 15 times. Failed tests netted the Government nearly $3 million in fees.

Women had an average pass rate of 81 per cent across all age groups and car licence levels ? learner, restricted and full ? compared with 79 per cent for men.

The gender gap was widest among teenagers sitting their full licence test, with 88 per cent of girls passing and 81 per cent of boys. The overall pass rate for teenagers across all licence types was 81 per cent.

LTNZ spokesman Andy Knackstedt said the higher pass rate for girls made sense, because girls generally had a better driving record than their male peers and were less likely to be involved in crashes or to kill or injure someone else on the road. Sixty-five teenage boys and 18 teenage girls died on New Zealand roads in 2005.

Driving instructor Julian Wright, of Triple A Driver Training, said though males were slightly more likely than females "to go wild behind the wheel", age was a more important factor than gender in vehicle-handling proficiency. "Younger drivers tend to be somewhat more overconfident. Occasionally they have the abilities to back up that confidence but usually not."

With teenagers excluded, men were better off, with 78 per cent of males aged 20-plus passing their full test, compared with 76 per cent of females in the same age bracket. The figures included 1382 people aged 65 or older ? mostly sitting the theory exam ? with an overall pass rate about 72 per cent.

About 20,000 more men than women sat licence tests. The statistics exclude people who failed because they did not appear or because their vehicle flunked the pre-test.

Mr Knackstedt said LTNZ did not aim to pass or fail a set proportion of drivers. Its main concern was that tests were conducted "fairly and consistently". It did not profit from driver licensing, as fees were set by law to cover the costs of administering the system.

- The Dominion Post

Thats the same waffle as the UK stats I used to get. Of course more men fail than women, more men take the tests! It's just like the accident statistics, where they also claim women are better drivers because they are involved in less accidents - LESS WOMEN DRIVERS THAN MEN!!

If they worked out their figures correctly, they'd find there is pretty much a balance between the 2 sexes. Certainly in my stint as an instructor, it never seemed to matter what sex a person was, they could either drive, or they couldn't. Both parties had weaknesses, with women it's distraction and sense of direction, and with men it's mostly ego that gets in the way, believing they know better.

[MotherBear]

You'd think they'd have the sense to ratio it out, rather than set one clump of figures against the other. :-/