The statement appearing below features in a document within the web site of the Australian federal Department of Social Services.
Note the phrase, “the overwhelming majority of [domestic] violence in Australia is perpetrated by men against women“. You will see it again and again in literature produced by other pro-feminist organisations involved with the issue of domestic violence.
This is how the issue is presented to the Australian community, a single-minded focus on malevolent males justified by misrepresenting the extent to which men are responsible for perpetrating domestic violence. Presumably as a concession to professional integrity, authors sometimes reward tenacious readers with some passing acknowledgment of female perpetrators and male victims.
This occurs not just in Australia but also in other countries strongly influenced by feminism. Here is a recent example from the United Kingdom (see para 2 after ‘Lies, damn lies, and statistics).
The definition of overwhelming is “so great as to render resistance or opposition useless, and the definition of majority is “the greater part or number; the number larger than half the total“.
Whilst there is no precise definition of the term “overwhelming majority“, suffice to say most people would interpret the phrase as meaning in excess of a 75% majority.
Although some research findings are conflicting, one might assert that heterosexual men were responsible for perpetrating the ‘majority’ of domestic violence. But let there be no doubt that any statement that men are responsible for the “overwhelming majority” of acts of domestic violence is patently untrue, and that anyone advancing this position is either willfully ignorant and/or a misandrist.
I could ‘beat around the bush’, but it really is that simple. And it’s well past the time that this blatant falsehood was put to rest.
Links to numerous studies that found that men were NOT responsible for the “overwhelming majority” of acts of domestic violence can be found in this blog post. These studies were not undertaken by, nor funded by, men’s rights activists, or by organisations that had a demonstrably pro-mens rights focus. These studies are, by and large, objective academic endeavours. A highly significant point of difference.
The above statement was copied from a media release marking the launch of the Australian version of the ‘Painted Man’ campaign. In fact the overwhelming majority of child abuse is perpetrated by women. The same statement also originally appeared in the YGap web site but was later amended to read that men perpetrated approximately 90% of child sexual violence against children – a statistic yet to be substantiated by Australian statistics.
The ‘Misinformation‘ page within the web site of the ‘One in Three’ organisation is full of examples of feminists and feminist organisations bending the truth.
The false and inappropriate use of such statements is by no means restricted to Australia, for example within the UK Government’s ‘Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls’ document (cited here) we find:
“The vast majority of the incidents of domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking are perpetrated by men on women.”
The issue of feminist misrepresentation of statistics/research is addressed in this further blog post.
A further irritation is the realisation that even if the majority of victims were men, then they would still be ignored by the feminist lobby. See this example in relation to homeless people.
Update as of 28 August 2020: The UK Office of Statistics Regulation was asked to review the use of the word ‘vast’ to describe the number of male perpetrators compared to female perpetrators of abuse in the draft statutory guidance framework for the Domestic Abuse Act (Source). Related Twitter thread
As recently as March 2022, the ‘Refuge’ organisation (UK) is still making this claim.
See also:
And yet when the ‘overwhelming majority’ of those afflicted with some form of disadvantage are male, as in the case of homelessness, the authorities simply ignore them to focus on the minority (see this discussion thread).
The Myth Women Are The Only Victims Of Domestic Violence (3 February 2015)
Update 11 November 2019: Stats watchdog upholds MBC complaint over government’s misleading description of proportion of domestic abuse victims who are female
Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence (May 2007) One of the many papers that show just how wrong the feminist lobby can be.
