What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: a response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia

The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.

Some of the dangerous myths about violence circulated in the document include claims that men are less likely than women to experience violence within family and other relationships; that we don’t yet know the impact of violence on men’s overall health; and that there is no evidence that male victims are less likely to report domestic violence than are female victims.

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ABS Releases Gender Indicators and Ignores Male Disadvantage

Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia's so-called impartial statistical body released its Gender Indicators report: "a summary of gender specific data in six domains representing Economic security, Education, Health, Work and family balance, Safety and justice, and Democracy, governance and citizenship".

The ABS produced a media release about the publication. This release could have noted that:

• Across the board males fare much worse than females in the education system - most notably being 24% less likely to be enrolled in a bachelor degree or above
• Across the board males fare much worse than females in the health arena - most notably suffering death rates from cancer, heart disease, suicide, motor vehicle accidents and drug abuse between 1.6 and 3.4 times higher
• Males are 12% more likely than females to feel their work and family responsibilities are rarely/ never in balance
• Males are almost twice as likely as females to have experienced violence during the last 12 months and one third more likely to be a victim of physical or threatened physical assault.

However, these facts were conveniently ignored in favour of a media release titled "Busy mums want more paid work," citing the rate of underemployment being twice as high for women (8%) than for men (4%). Sadly it seems that the lace curtain extends all the way into our country's top statistical body.

National Geographic seeks male victim/survivor of domestic violence for prime-time documentary

Sarah Isaac is currently researching the topic of men as victims of domestic violence at National Geographic and is looking for a younger male victim/survivor who is happy to talk on camera. The reason behind this being that they want to highlight that this is a global and not domestic story.

The show that she is researching on behalf of, Taboo, is National Geographic’s most successful show. Taboo is a long-running prime-time documentary series on the National Geographic Channel. The series presents an in-depth analysis of human behaviours and customs from around the world. As the title suggests, the focus is on practices that some countries or cultures might consider strange. But often things that are considered taboo are not well understood. In each episode, personal stories are presented alongside analysis from leading academics and experts in the relevant field.

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Male teacher numbers falling over abuse and pay concerns

FEAR of being accused of child sex crimes and higher pay in non-government schools are being blamed for a 4 per cent fall in the number of men teaching in NSW public schools.

While the number of male teachers in private schools has risen 20 per cent, government schools are suffering a lack of men.The "alarming" figures contained in a Social Trends report released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics were damned by the NSW Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations.

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A father’s day gift from Labor and the Greens: increased fatherlessness

Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherlessness: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, teen pregnancy, suicide – all correlate more strongly to fatherlessness than to any other single factor. The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers and rapists all come from fatherless homes. The connection is so strong that controlling for fatherlessness erases the relationships between race and crime and between low income and crime. Many commentators, including the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, have laid the blame for the recent UK riots at least partially on the fact that many of the rioters were raised in homes without their fathers present.

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