Domestic violence is on the increase - and what are men doing about it?

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Things are clearly getting worse in domestic households and women are pretty desperate for answers , Its frustrating for them that men seem less interested or are quietly critical of their approach. Big subject

What is very understandable is women's feelings for the treatment of their own kind and especially those who look after children.The growing numbers of mothers who are stuck economically and emotionally .

There is a lot of momentum coming from people like ABC's @Bairdjulia. I am not surprised that the "sexually liberated" females have realised, without thinking or speaking about it openly ,that they too are not feeling very liberated. Another huge hornets nest , Many of their mothers tried to warn them about the consequences of their choices. One who speaks through this dilemma is Bettina Arndt Lack of answers and shaming ( some see the above statement as this ) leads to bad answers and blaming and projection. Take 1 Distracting trivia about % of women in high office The women who run ABC The Drum and 7:30 reports are at the top of the tree . The preoccupation with a persons "position on the tree" is, for me a sign of intellectual poverty; Who wants to be playing games at the top- only those who have never been there ?. Have they not watched and been involved in " Line of duty " ( that great series on Netflix) work

Take 2 The mere male and boy amongst us

To blame men in general is wrong ( men have a place in rearing children and many women are denying them that ) and distractionary. Both parties aren't learning about things like dispute resolution (" UR too soft , Ur too hard ") , roles and values ( is it natural for the woman to do the nurturing....... and MI ....what is nurturing ..?) and anger management ( "Be angry don't sin and talk about it before you go to sleep at night ") -- Rather than facing and being reconciled to anger as it is in both parties, many are in denial of it in themselves , hoping to avoid its consequences and the worst to come in DV if its not deal with TODAY.

To not deal with it daily ( as the teaching implies ) is a sure sign of worse things coming up .

Reminds me of politics - so much politics is reactionary not radical ( goes back to the root of the problem or what worked in our parents generation) . For eg "what's different in the modern family and how we think about conflict resolution ? "

Beyond the shallow fanaticism of feminism

In a strange paradox , most thinking men can see the problem of misprojection, but many women can't , Both GB Shaw ( A hero of many feminists) and GK Chesterton had to duck and weave to avoid the careless lobs of unhappy women who,  seeing well the fractured frustrations of their parents, blame only the other party ---half the story.

Thankfully our forebears have fought this fight before us and won through. How,  you may well ask, when all in so many families can seem hopeless.
Our fortebears won  on the wonders of the deeper  case-- being more thorough and more scientific for a start   . Not by seeing and directing , monitoring and wrecking   but by resurrecting the old subject and stories of grace and forgiveness for all.

I pray you all revisit the strong men and women of Shakespeare. Let noone say no more that the Victorian age was full of fainting and fawning maids .The Queen( Merchant of Venice ) ,who in her own right, , has supreme power , calls for only an equal share in the life of a weak man and proves herself in that role to be much more than worthy of the partnership in the defence of both right ,love and mercy. The deep paradox of the servant heart is demonstrated there .
How can I deny the wonder of this night , that I should choose to watch ,for the first time ever , dear Portia follow her father' s wishes and trust her fate to faith-to not just any man, but a man with a passion to work hard at love . Its not by chance that I watched "The Merchant of Venice "tonight . He might be dumb BUT he managed to chose lead--- not gold and all that glitters ( and distracts) .
This punchy romance ends with the weak men being twisted around the fingers of the women - these are strong wise women and their partners in men and women are made stronger by the fight and the long wait for grace to appear .

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Warren Mitchell is brilliant shining darkly bright as the justice focused Jew,.Susan Jameson ( Known to us as Polkinghorne 's long suffering wife in New Tricks ) is full of beautiful exquisite eye contact as the Queen's best friend.( Blue BBC series 1980 - a must have )

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 I TRUST  That Many of you women will know/ do know  the blessing of having a true friend of the same sex to help you through the ravages of war , loneliness and neglect
.Nerissa(Susan Jameson) is that person in the play and don't those two girls have fun, finally ending the play on a woman's only high note -of having put one huge one over the boys . Get this --even the beautiful queen doesn't get much of a choice out of all the suitors in the world - eh girls ! Between a rock and a hard place there is a mere man and.. much grace, should you go looking 4 it.

Takes one to know one - when the fight gets personal

Don't you hate it when a discussion turns personal . It happens even in the best regulated families, including my own... where I sometimes start  it . 
Confession time. 
What do you do when it happens to you? - well IMO there is not much you can do when it happens to you because there is often too much anger in the room. Adrenalin takes over and real sins get confused with real risks. ( such as physical violence ) Anger itself is not necessarily a sin and can be the adrenalin means to force resolution - if we let it.
The wonderful thing is we can and should learn to deal with it - and the dealing with it is best done later,, though not as long as in the play mentioned below . The good book says "do it "and "do it" before the day ends . Its that simple and it works ! "Do what ?"you might be sayin -- watch the play!

The really wonderful thing is that we can learn to deal with terribly scary things like anger and learn to love again; to find a way forward and not be overcome by fear in family and political life .

The positive side of focusing on what is sin is and why its serious and subtle stuff
 It used to be taught ( 8th commandment ) that attacking the person rather than the argument was wrong . Our defamation laws and many principals build on that one principle were held in clear focus until recently .
Like so many important distinctions in accusation law - its somewhat lost to the poorly educated in our community .i have to bite my tongue too cause I break the law too . so iIts easy to get confused / self defensive - esp when you are angry . You may not even admit to yourself you are angry .Esp if you think its always a sin , To see anger as always a sin is to be superficial .  To see anger as always a sin is to sit on To see anger as always a sin is to be superficial .  something you probably need to deal with openly . To see anger as always a sin is  to join the bubbling under the surface  majority in maintaining a superficial goodness when a bomb is about to explode  .  

Its acceptable then under OUR law to attack the sin but NOT the sinner . It is equally WRONG under OUR LAW to give the permanent status of sinner to anyone, as many of us still believe strongly in hoping for a change of attitude.

This positive attitude to problem solving should be a point of celebration for us as it has been for our forefathers for thousands of years. .Many lazy thinking moderns are too keen to lock people up forever -- we would all be in there if they had their way 



Even  you yourself are not real mad at this moment ( which is likely) let  suggest you get into practice for dealing with the next moment you are by watching Shakespeare's brilliant testimony  in "A Winters Tale " ( currently a big hit in London ) Just what the good Doctor ordered.

One of Shakespeare's last plays
 -A Winters Tale (a hit in London right now) makes this point extremely well.

Note that the trigger for the Kings sin is fear and not only that - unfounded fear --The real problem is his problem, not the person he accuses !
There is a lot of fear, projection and unworkable reconciliation effort around -
If we are going to target someone, we are often best to consider the old aussie accusation /question " takes one to know one": and really move on.