Domestic violence debate must break from gender fixation
The sight of Brigitte Macron giving her husband, the President of France, an open-handed whack or a push caused a bit of a flurry this week.
Naturally there would have been uproar had the roles been reversed. Emmanuel Macron would have been forced to resign and in today’s ultra-sensitive milieu he could find himself charged with domestic violence.
But, then, it wasn’t the other way around. It was just Brigitte giving it to Emmanuel.
How often is domestic violence not really a gendered problem? How often is it just people becoming enraged, even violent and fuelled with drink or drugs lashing out thoughtlessly? Isn’t that “just” a problem for women as well as men?
The problem is probably more about the social pathologies that beset us rather than simply a case of violent men and passive female victims.
Fiona Girkin, an academic from the University of Tasmania, has worked for more than a year with Tasmanian police and does not believe domestic violence should be viewed solely through the narrow prism of gender.
Lately she has been embroiled in a furore with some of Tasmania’s feminist establishment in social services following an interview with Bettina Arndt in which Girkin questioned the prevailing orthodoxy; namely, that it’s always men who initiate and act out in violence. Girkin has lost her job as a police instructor and her position at the university is under review.
According to the ABC’s news website, “Dr Fiona Girkin’s comments have drawn criticism from family violence support services, who are concerned about the messaging they say is at odds with police reporting.” Although Girkin claims she has been condemned more by association with the men’s rights campaigner than for anything she herself has said.
Girkin has been employed as an adviser working with police on how to handle domestic violence. She says viewing domestic violence through the lens of gender is simplistic.
In Tasmania there is a big debate unfolding about how the police can handle domestic violence, and how much the narrow gender prism, the toxic male/female victim narrative, has to do with it.
It’s a debate echoed across Australia, but people are getting tired of hearing grandiose promises from politicians such as the one made by the government in 2024 that it would end gender-based violence within a generation.
It doesn’t look like we are anywhere near doing that. Domestic violence is too serious a matter to be manipulated into an ideological cause. Rather, it is a practical problem. Australia is already spending $1bn a year to fight an “epidemic of male violence”, including advertising campaigns against DV. But we have little to show for it.
We can’t keep doing the same thing all the time. In Tasmania, 80 per cent of perpetrators are men but behaviour change programs work only for very low-level offenders. Men who kill are usually dangerously mad.
Before politicians spend even more on believing all statistics about women and violence, they should think again. Girkin makes the point that, yes, we should invest in victims. That is important, but there are other options too.
Girkin is neither a men’s nor women’s rights advocate. She asks: “Why are we not looking at real power dynamics, not just gender? The chances of a man hurting a woman is because of sheer difference in size.
“But I think about these situations through power dynamics. Women now hold a lot more power than they used to. Hence it easier for them to instigate violence and lie.”
Girkin’s own life has informed her views. Ironically, she was a single mother who, with her son, ran away from a bad relationship. She went from working with women at a refuge to being employed in family mediation for four years. That is when she began to see the other side of the gender imbalance.
“Naturally, I thought that all mothers would always be wanting the best for their children, but I saw a large number of women using their children to enact DVOs and sabotaging shared parenting arrangements by using the excuse of domestic violence. Yes, it is a difficult situation, but it is necessary to understand a child is both parents’ child.
“If you criticise one of their parents you are destroying part of them. So, seeing all this from the female perspective, my views on gender imbalance in domestic disputes changed.”
Later, lecturing to police recruits about DV, talking about what to look for, what to do, she was shocked to hear police tell her of female instigators of violence. She says these situations should be looked at through power dynamics. Women now hold a lot more power than they used to. Hence it easier for them report it and commit it.
When working with police, Girkin worked only with police, not victims or perpetrators. “What they see is the tip of the iceberg. The police on scene don’t have time to determine other influences. Police do not always have the capacity to assess all this … But they need to make sure that they treat both parties as respectfully as possible. I would tell them to treat them both the same. Come into the scene in a position of empathy and don’t make assumptions.”
It’s a pity that Girkin’s critics have not given her that courtesy.
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