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NOTE: between the date of this article’s publication, and September of 2012, the Australian government either moved or deleted the PDF document of “The Plan”, formerly hosted at the address: http://www.facs.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/violence/np_time_for_action/national_plan/Documents/The_Plan.pdf
Fortunately, a copy of this document was saved by this article’s author, JtO, and the PDF version of The Plan is now hosted by AVfM at http://www.avoiceformen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/09/The_Plan.pdf
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In 2009, the Australian Civil Service, comprised of hundreds of careered bureaucrats and public academics, assembled a publicly funded organization called The National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. This organization was formed along ideological lines, as is evident in the name. The phrase “women and their children” indicating a strong suggestion of a concept of family which excludes fathers as a part.
This council included a dozen members who authored a 204 page rationale and set of recommendations for sweeping changes to Australian domestic policy and law. These recommended changes, if passed into law, will transform Australian society from a Western, egalitarian society into a tiered, totalitarian state organized along lines of sexual legal segregation. The planned abrogation of male human and civil rights in Australian society represents a profound humanitarian crisis. That this is planned, and principally impacts men, means that humanitarian organizations worldwide are now ignoring, and will likely continue to totally ignore, the organized campaign of apartheid and its resulting human damage.
This campaign is being pursued and justified in a document called The Plan using a repetitive and internally inconsistent narrative built almost entirely on falsehood.
This plan’s justification includes repetitive use of the formal logical fallacies, Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Popularity, purposeful exclusion of a known victim demographic, open self-referential contradiction within the document’s content, disregard of peer-reviewed statistics negating the implied assumptions, and a host of other deliberate falsehoods.
This discussion on AVfM examines the pervasive factual and rhetorical dishonesty used by ideologues within Australian government to promote and rationalize a program of human rights violations, child abuse and intentional social damage in Australian society. Further deception throughout the published plan is accomplished by selective citation, using only studies which show male perpetration and omitting others, fabricating conclusions in cited research which that research does not support.
The goal of The Plan, taken as a whole, is malevolent. It is sold through rhetorical construct fabricated in a grand deception built on falsehood, misdirection, logical fallacy and emotional appeal by the collective effort of its dozen authors on The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children.
Australia is gearing up to change the country’s system of laws; de-classifying men as human beings and re-classifying them as the owned possessions of women, or perhaps, as livestock.
That’s the short version. If it sounds absurd, or monstrous, or insane, that’s because it actually is absurd, monstrous and insane. But it’s also true.
The Australian government has a plan, which when taken in sum, amounts to a collection of brutal and broad reaching violations, no, revocation of the human rights of more than half the population of the country. And they’ll probably succeed, because they’re pursuing this agenda under the false and pious wrapper of protecting women and children. It is possible to inflict just about anything on anybody if pursued behind the claimed goal of protecting women and children.
Asserting that the Australian government is doing this is not an indictment of the elected government. Although that would be problematic, it would be less dangerous and destructive to human rights than the reality. It is the civil service and careered bureaucrats who, regardless of elected administration, actually run the apparatus of Australian public life. The Australian public sector is populated by ideologues with an agenda. This agenda has been published for private citizens to find. The document, produced by a public funded organization called The National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children is simply named “The Plan” [1].
Starting from false assertions
Before delving into that ugly, antihuman statement of intent, it’s worth commenting on the name of the authoring organization.
The phrase “to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children” is a clear statement of intent to ignore violence against men. Implied in this statement is the suggestion that women, the demographic named to be protected, suffer a rate of violent victimization higher than men or higher than the sexually heterogeneous population of the country. This suggestion embedded in the authoring organization’s name is false. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, men are overwhelmingly the majority of the victims of violent crime. In addition, in domestic violence, women are as violent or more violent than their male spouses or partners [3][4][5][6][7]. This is universally known within DV reporting and service agencies, as it clearly demonstrated in peer reviewed research on the topic. In fact, within the domain of academic and public specializations addressing the phenomenon of domestic violence, there is a culture of ideological bias, manifesting as systematic dishonesty. This was studied and documented by Dr. Murray Straus, Ph.D. Co-Director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire in his 2007 paper “Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence.”[2]
Strauss identified seven categories of deceptive practice utilized by writers and practitioners in the field of domestic violence, almost all of which are demonstrated in the body of the Australian government’s published plan. These include suppression of evidence, avoidance of nonconforming data, selective citation, and fabrication of conclusion – claiming that cited research makes conclusions it does not. The last method is identified by Strauss as Evidence by Citation.
The name of the organization authoring The Plan contains further implied falsehood. The phrase “Women and their Children” reveals a belief that apart from men as fathers, a “family” is a woman and her children, and that fathers are a mere disposable utility. Setting aside the hatred towards men innate in this idea, an overwhelming body of peer reviewed research demonstrates the developmental importance to children of the presence of their fathers [8][9][10][11]. This reveals the accepted falsehood used by family courts to sever fathers from their children. The phrase “in the best interest of the children” is revealed for the ideological dogma that it really is.
Fundamental Lies
These two fundamental lies are apparent in the name of the organization which authored the document hosted on the Australian government’s server, called The Plan. The document itself includes 204 pages of recommendations for ways to violate and discard the human rights of men in Australia, self through a pervasive campaign of lying and purposefully false advocacy research. To be fair to the document’s publishers, they’ve made this clear in the first page and distanced themselves from the lies and anti-humanist recommendations they’re publishing with the following disclaimer:
“The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) accepts no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any material contained in this publication.”
The prospect of reading and reporting on 204 pages of government-speak appears at first a daunting task. However, after reading the first dozen pages, it becomes clear that due to the repetitive nature of the content, it is likely that such documents are deliberately bloated to unwieldy length to discourage reading and public exposure. It is also obvious that the Australian National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children’s plan is built from a sloppy rhetorical framework of lies.
The entire 204 pages of emotionally persuasive rhetoric is an edifice built from falsehood. It is a catalogue of factual falsehood, misdirection and of formal and informal logical fallacy.
A Framework of Deception
In the following paragraphs, we will be discussing a number of formal logical fallacies. Due of the flagrant and comprehensive dishonesty permeating the document produced by the Australian federal bureaucracy and state employees – these falsehoods are identified as we progress.
Mentioned informally in this article’s introduction, the Title page of The Plan contains the first falsehoods, embedded in the title itself.
Fallacy: Begging the Question
The logical fallacy, not already discussed is formally known as begging the question, also called a circular argument. An argument is circular if its conclusion is among its premises, if it assumes (either explicitly or not) what it is trying to prove. Such arguments are said to beg the question. A circular argument fails as a proof because it will only be judged to be sound by those who already accept its conclusion.
In the case of The Plan this lie is committed several times within the title. The first offence being the implied conclusion that violence against women is the highest incidence of demographic-specific victimization. Reference to the Australian Institute of Criminology statistics or peer reviewed literature on DV show this to be a false assertion [2][3][4][5][6][7]. i.e.: A Lie.
The second occurrence of Begging the Question, also found in the title is the implied assertion that children are the engendered family of only women, exclusive of fathers; and that men, as fathers, are not a fundamental element of families, that basic unit of all human culture. By repetition throughout the document, it’s obvious that men are excluded from consideration as part of the families by practice of the propagandist’s maxim.
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Fallacy: Mention of one thing excludes all others.
While not a formal logical fallacy, another category of deceit is also found in the document’s title. The Latin dictum: Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius; meaning “the express mention of one thing excludes all others” is employed to dismiss consideration of the real violent victimization of men and boys, despite the documented fact that this victimization comprises a statistical majority of violence impacting the Australian public.
Alternatives to the interpretation presented here might render these complaints moot. One such not explicitly stated is that women and children comprise the only two significant subsets of humanity, and the men and boys victimized should be excluded on the basis of exclusion from consideration as “real” human beings. Obviously, this is a speculative understanding of “The Plan” which is not stated explicitly, but is presented only as illustration that alternative readings outside the scope of this discussion are not intentionally excluded.
Moving past the title, the next item of content is a copyright notice, and a legal disclaimer.
Found on page 2:
“The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) accepts no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any material contained in this publication. Information in this publication is made available on the understanding that FaHCSIA is not providing professional advice. Views expressed in this publication are those of third parties, and do not necessarily reflect the views of FaHCSIA or the Ministers responsible for the portfolios of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.”
On its face, this is a plain admission of the falsehood of the rest of this document’s 204 pages of lies.
This distancing from responsibility is also nullified by the frequent inclusion in The Plan of letters of explicit support for the plan by members of Australian parliament.
FaHCSIA accepts no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of any material contained in this publication.
Looked at from an understanding of the established doctrines of ideological feminism – this can also be interpreted as an extension of the absurdist dogma that under “patriarchy”, personal volition and agency are illusions covering the omnipotent power of evil masculine oppression and control exerted through unknown means; the concept that all “choice” is merely cooperation with exploitive and vile masculine domination.
The second paragraph of this disclaimer, containing the statement: “…that FaHCSIA is not providing professional advice…” is a simple factual lie. This document is a formal recommendation to elected officials and legislators on matters of legal change and domestic policy. The document’s forward, found on page 6 makes the second major lie within the disclaimer apparent, by obviously contradicting the claim that FaHCSIA is not providing professional advice.
From page 6:
“The Plan of Action discusses the current situation in Australia and recommends sweeping changes between now and 2021. The Plan of Action identifies six core areas for improvement and identifies strategies and actions to achieve this.”
Fallacy: Appeal to Authority
Following the document’s disclaimer, on page 4 is an Acknowledgements section, and it’s here that the first instance of Appeal to Authority crops up. Formally, this is known as an Irrelevant Appeal.
Irrelevant appeals attempt to sway the reader with information that, though persuasive, is irrelevant to the matter at hand. The veracity of an argument is independent from who utters or endorses it.
“It is important that we first acknowledge that the authority for this Plan of Action was derived from the Australian Government’s 2007 election platform to establish a national council of experts – the National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (the Council) – to develop a plan that would reduce the incidence and the impact of violence against women and their children. “
This passage also contains a repetition of the falsehood that violence against women is the highest incidence of demographic-specific victimization.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent”
~ Joseph Goebbels
Fallacy: Appeal to Popularity
The Acknowledgements section of “The Plan” also establishes a framework for Appeal to Popularity, a logical fallacy suggesting that an idea must be true simply because it is widely held. This, like Appeal to Authority, is another specialized subset of the general category of Irrelevant Appeal.
“There are many people we must thank for their overwhelming generosity of spirit, for their willingness to share their life experiences and for their well-considered thoughts and ideas.”
Further distortion of the balance of who is actually in receipt of the majority of violence in Australian society is pursued in the Acknowledgements section. Piled on here are two overlapping formal fallacies, that of appeal to pity – or emotional appeal, and a reiteration of the previously stated Begging the Question. Women’s implied unique and imminent peril from abuse in a relationship is reinforced, despite the peer reviewed statistic’s failure to support this dogma, and a healthy heaping of phony heroism in the statement brave women standing up for themselves against this unsupportable unique female victimhood.
We recognize the courageous women in the history of the women’s movement who started this journey to set free and protect women from abusive relationships. They led the way and awoke our nation to the plight of women who have experienced sexual assault and to these women and children for whom domestic and family violence is a daily reality.
The peer reviewed literature on DV shows a sexually reciprocal violence as the norm, and not, as continuously implied in emotive rhetoric that domestic violence is sexually one-sided. The peer reviewed literature [2] hasn’t changed since we last looked, and continues to indicate males as the majority of victims of violent crime, and sexually symmetrical abuse in domestic violence [3][4][5][6][7].
This is bundle of lies, piled so thickly by unelected career bureaucrats in Australian public service. A continued list of brave, noble and credentialed individuals is effusively acknowledged, building an emotional appeal to Appeal to Popularity by the length of listing of contributing organizations and individuals, and Appeal to Authority by the portentous credentials and titles of that list’s members. All this emotional persuasion is pursued before the serious deception begins in The Plan.
The next section of the document is a forward written by an elected official, Tanya Plibersek, Member of Australian Parliament, Minister for Housing and Minister for the Status of Women.
The minister’s forward is continues the focus on establishment of The Plan’s authority and populist appeal to emotion. However, in this piling-on, the parliamentarian stumbles, indirectly revealing repeated use of the formal fallacy of Appeal to Popularity. This is exemplified by a passage in the document and immediately admitted to in following descriptive narrative:
“The Council’s members have worked tirelessly to achieve this objective. We travelled extensively and consulted many different stakeholders. We listened to, and heard from, more than 2,000 people across the country. We received hundreds of submissions from all parts of Australia, and we held six expert round-table forums.”
Worked tirelessly and traveled extensively are characterizations, not measurable claims of fact. We have a suggestion of sample size with the vague mention of “more than 2,000 people” but this is an imprecise re-iteration of appeal to popularity.
In the next paragraph of the minister’s forward, on page 6 of 204 is a direct admission of magical thinking.
“During our investigations, we found a widespread belief that this issue was pressing and serious.”
If it’s widely believed, then surely it must be true. This document is written to convince an intellectually defective readership. We know the intended audience is a nation’s elected representatives, so this shouldn’t be surprising.
Later in this forward, on page 7 – a prediction of female victimization is tossed out for its shock value.
Without appropriate action to address violence against women and their children, an estimated 750,000 Australian women will experience and report violence in 2021-22, costing the Australian economy an estimated $15.6 billion
The mention of large number of victimized women with no citation of source is emotionally compelling, but fundamentally and factually uninformative. Whether this number is realistic or not, readers are provided no context and no comparison. How many men are predicted to “experience and report violence in 2021-22”?
Noting that men are presently the majority of the victims of violent crime, it’s logical to predict more male victims than female – more than 750,000. We aren’t told this number or any number for male victims, because the intent of the document is to manipulate, and not to inform. The consistent pattern of logical fallacy and emotional manipulation through The Plan should be apparent to readers of this discussion by now.
The provided Executive Summary continues to bludgeon readers with what after ten previous pages is now a monotonous repetition of the mythology that women and their children are endlessly threatened, victimized, and subject to violence. No repetition of this narrative in the previous pages yet cites research to establish veracity. However, a new claim of Sexual Violence affecting 1 in 5 women in their lifetimes is made in the Executive Summary refers to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but fails to identify a specific report or study.
The term Sexual Violence, which in the Executive summary, it is claimed 1 in 5 women are victimized by in their lifetimes is purposefully ambiguous. Fortunately “The Plan” includes a glossary of terms which a reader can use to determine if this represents violent physical assault, or a broader range of activities designed to pathologize nonviolent behavior for purpose of statistical inflation.
The glossary provides a definition for Sexual Assault, but not for Sexual Violence. If we assume the authors of The Plan are incompetent, this variation in terminology can substitute Sexual Assault’s glossary definition for Sexual Violence referred to in the Executive Summary.
On the other hand, if we assume the authors of The Plan are competent, the absence of a definition for “Sexual Violence” in the document’s provided glossary takes a different character. Familiarity with an ongoing pressure from ideologues to expand the definitions of offences indicates that use of undefined terminology is purposeful male vilification and inflated statistics.
Another visit to the Australian Institute of Criminology website shows that despite the insistent narrative of “The Plan” the collected statistics of the A.I. of C stubbornly refuse to show anything except men as the primary victims of violent crime. Similarly, reference to methodologically valid peer reviewed literature on domestic violence continues to fail to support a sexually one sided view of domestic violence. The repetition of an unsupportable narrative by the authors of The Plan may convince readers who fail to compare the doctrinal view of domestic violence with research on the topic. To informed readers, the repetition appears increasingly desperate.
The executive summary also continues to promote the fantasy that any organized effort to reduce violence must obviously focus exclusively on female victims, since, in the fantasy world being sold by this document, male victims don’t exist, and female perpetrators don’t exist. This theme is continually re-enforced through the document, with an insistence bordering on panic. The authors know the enormity of the deception they are crafting. A lie which, if not continually buttressed through the narrative, will collapse due to its stark contradiction of reality. Researchers and service providers in the area of domestic violence have the same, or greater access to publicly available, peer reviewed statistics that the public do.
Strauss stated in the conclusion of his 2007 paper:
Processes Explaining the Concealment and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence
Seven methods identified in Straus’s research created an intellectual climate which:
“…inhibited research and publication on gender symmetry in PV and largely explain why an ideology and treatment modality has persisted for 30 years, despite hundreds of studies which provide evidence on the multiplicity of risk factors for PV, of which patriarchy is only one..” [2]
Despite a doctrinal adherence the male-as-oppressor model for domestic violence, the greater body of peer reviewed research on DV continues to indicate:
that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.[3]
That intimate partner violence is a reciprocal issue, without sexual direction in it’s practice, means that any plan to address purposefully ignoring half the problem by sex is a plan deliberately designed to fail. Counter violence programs with this designed impotence will effectively escalate violence by diverting attention and resources from legitimately useful strategies.
The purpose of The Plan is not to reduce violence. Rather, it appears to be the establishment of a legally tiered society, and expansion of the state’s power to a level of totalitarian reach, recognizing no limit in the interference and abrogation of individual’s human and civil rights.
The document’s executive summary includes the paragraph, indicating a bold and sweeping deception:
Domestic and family violence and sexual assault cannot be excused or justified under any circumstances. It is wrong, and all victims need compassionate and highly responsive support, and all perpetrators must be held accountable for their violence.
Rewriting the Dictionary to Excuse Violence
In the included glossary, Domestic Violence is defined to:
refer predominantly to abuse of a person, usually a woman, by their intimate partner.
Taken in this document’s larger scope, the possibility here of men as victims is a major concession. However, this is potentially discounted by the declaration that:
Domestic Violence refers predominantly to abuse of a person, usually a woman.
When this narrative’s contradiction of well known sexual symmetry in DV is considered, it’s apparent that to the plan’s authors, males do not merit consideration as “people”. The remainder of the glossary’s provided definition for Domestic Violence provides a detailed attribution of motive.
“the central element of ‘domestic violence’ is an ongoing pattern of behaviour aimed at controlling one’s partner through fear”
Rather than DV being violence which occurs within a domestic context, according to the supplied glossary, DV is distinguished by the intention of the alleged perpetrator, and is not even limited to actual violence. However, the implied exclusion of male victims from consideration is solidified by characterization of an assumed motive, rather than the behavior of participating individuals.
the violent behaviour is part of a range of tactics to exercise power and control over women and children.
Persistent omission of mention of male victims of DV demonstrates a selective avoidance of the peer reviewed literature indicating DV as sexually symmetrical.
The glossary definition of domestic violence continues to include an inventory of types of qualifying abuse.
Economic Abuse, Psychological Abuse, Spiritual Abuse, Sexual Abuse and physical abuse are the listed categories, each with accompanying descriptions which when taken in sum, allow for almost any non-abusive behavior’s categorization as abuse. In addition, the first three inventoried abuse types are commonly female behaviors towards men. This fact, along with repeated implied male exclusion from consideration as victims of DV clarifies the persistent falsehood that stopping DV is this plan’s purpose.
An unstated purpose becoming increasingly obvious is the stripping of human rights from males, the abrogation of personal autonomy and volition of women, and justification of unlimited reach of the state to interfere in the lives of Australians.
The glossary definition of perpetrator is also explicit in its exclusion of women as possible violent offenders.
A ‘perpetrator’ is the individual who inflicts violence against a woman or child.
What word do we use to describe an individual who inflicts violence against a man in any situation, domestic or otherwise? Is this omitted from the definition because men are never victimized? No, because despite the narrative of the Australian government’s plan, the criminal victimization statistics clearly show men as the majority sexual demographic in receipt of violence. The peer reviewed literature similarly provides no support for definitional exclusion of women as perpetrators:
282 scholarly investigations: 218 empirical studies and 64 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.
The glossary’s definition of perpetrator as an individual inflicting violence on women or children, and excluding consideration of male victims shapes the entirety of the rest of this document, decoding the concepts of “safety”, “justice”, “victimization”, “rape” to mean only for women and excluding men.
In fact, this government authored and produced plan is increasingly obvious as a procedural road map for legalized sexual discrimination and a practical legalized abrogation of personhood for males in Australian society.
The glossary also defines Family Violence, excluding men from consideration as recipients of abuse in the definition.
Family violence refers to violence against women perpetrated by a family member which may include, but is not limited to, their intimate partner.
Whether this exclusion is because violence against men is not violence, or whether men are not parts of families is academic, the executive summary’s conclusion – that “Family violence […] cannot be excused” is an obvious lie in the context of this document’s recommendations.
It obviously can be and is excused when violence is committed against men or boys.
There are three implied assumptions in this selective definition.
- Domestic violence is sexually directional against women but not men. False
- Male victimization is acceptable because men are “not really people”. False
- That reciprocal DV can be reduced or stopped by a plan ignoring half the participants. False
The glossary’s definition of Sexual Assault is also predictably incomplete, using the word “explicit” to characterize omission of male victims from consideration in cases of sexual assault.
While ‘sexual assault’ is explicit in the definition of violence against women and their children in the Plan of Action.
By now, this pattern of exclusion has exceeded characterization by the words repetitive or pervasive in the government’s plan, and can only be described as excessively overstated to the point of boring monotony.
However, the provided definition not only excludes the real-world male victims of violence perpetrated by men and women, in its exclusive identification as females as victims, expands the scope of sexual assault to a potentially unlimited range of non abusive, non sexual, and non assaultive behaviors which healthy people engage in regularly.
According to the continued glossary definition of sexual assault:
there is no single nationally or internationally agreed definition of what constitutes ‘sexual assault’ and definitions used in Australia vary between jurisdictions, agencies and surveys.
According to this definition, subjective perception of behavior, social awkwardness, miscommunication, or badly timed flirting could all plausibly be classified as sexual assault.
The experience-based term defines sexual assault as unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature directed towards a person:
which makes that person feel uncomfortable, distressed, frightened or threatened….
The numbingly monotonous repetition of the doctrine of exclusively masculine violence and exclusively feminine victimhood is reiterated following the Executive Summary in a letter signed by the collaborating Prime Minister of Australia, The Hon. Kevin Rudd.
From that letter:
how it could still be the case that in 2008 so many Australian women could have experienced violence from their partner…
It is my gender – it is our gender – Australian men – that are responsible.
This statement by Rudd is false.
In fact, Rudd is either misinformed, or unconcerned about the content of what his name is attached to, because domestic violence is not a sexually directional issue at all.
Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first women’s shelter in England stated in 2001:
If you come from a dysfunctional, violent and sexually abusive family, how do you learn? Therefore, domestic violence can’t be a gender issue, it can’t be just men, because we girls – and I was from one of those families – are just as badly affected. [8]
Pizzey’s extensive and direct experience is confirmed by Martin Fiebert’s research at California State University in Long Beach.
“…women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”
Culpability for a Mountain of Lies
Page 13 of The Plan opens with a roster of the document’s authors, the membership of the National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children.
- Libby Lloyd AM (Chair)
- Associate Professor Moira Carmody
- Maria Dimopoulos
- Rachel Kayrooz
- Vanessa Swan
- Pauline Woodbridge
- Heather Nancarrow (Deputy Chair)
- Dorinda Cox
- Dr Melanie Heenan
- Andrew O’Keefe
- Lisa Wilkinson
The introduction of this collection of experts makes it clear to readers that the greater body of peer reviewed research and expert literature demonstrating domestic violence as sexually reciprocal, and not sexually directional cannot be unknown to the document’s authors.
Established for a term of one year, the Council consists of 11 members from across Australia selected for their extensive knowledge, expertise and networks in the fields of sexual assault and domestic and family violence.
These individuals have no excuse, and as professionals, and the authors of this Brobdingnagian edifice of falsehood, are plainly a clan of professional liars, intent on doing harm escalating violence against men and women, and collapsing the human rights of anyone but themselves.
In 2011 Christina Hoff Sommers, speaking to a live audience said on the topic of domestic violence:
We’re not talking about a few errors, we’re not talking about occasional lapses, we’re talking about a body of egregiously false information at the heart of the domestic violence movement. False claims are pervasive. False claims are not the exception, they are the rule.
The Plan provides a further narrative of justification in its development.
The Council developed this Plan of Action by validating emerging trends, repeatedly testing ideas and solutions against the best available evidence, and building on the experience and wisdom grown from practice.
The claim: repeatedly testing ideas and solutions against the best available evidence is patently false, as through this document, the male victimization, and the sexually reciprocal nature of domestic violence is ignored. Perpetrator is defined in the plan’s glossary exclusively as an “individual who inflicts violence against a woman or child”.
Also ignored is the fact that most child victimization is perpetrated by mothers.
Advocacy Research
Advocacy Research is a term used to distinguish unbiased research from that which is conducted with a particular conclusion as the researcher’s goal. This kind of study seeks to measure, or to illustrate social problems with a view to heightening public awareness of them and providing a catalyst to policy proposals and other action to ameliorate the problem in question. Advocacy research studies are susceptible to bending of research methods in order to inflate the magnitude of the social problem described, and thereby enhance the case for public action to address the issue.
This is why scrupulous care and rigorous adherence to valid methodology is so importance in advocacy research. It is easy to craft a study supporting a pre-selected conclusion, ignoring evidence or data which doesn’t conform to the selected conclusion.
The Duluth Model is the name for a conceptual model for understanding and addressing domestic violence, and it is a template example of an ideologically selected conclusion.
Critics of this model have stated that “programs based on the Duluth Model may ignore research linking domestic violence to substance abuse and psychological problems, such as attachment disorders, traced to childhood abuse or neglect, or the absence of a history of adequate socialization and training. [10][11] Some criticize the Duluth model as being overly confrontational rather than therapeutic, focusing solely on changing the abuser’s actions and attitudes rather than dealing with underlying emotional and psychological issues.[11]
Donald Dutton, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia who has studied abusive personalities, states: “The Duluth Model was developed by people who didn’t understand anything about therapy.” He also insists that gender doesn’t play a role in domestic violence. [10]
The exclusive focus on males as perpetrators and the rejection of system dynamics models has been criticized from perspectives influenced by psychology and family therapy. The fields of psychology, psychiatry, and social work all provide for application of skill learning, improved social understanding and practiced behavioural mastery to provide for corrected and alternative behaviours.
In comparison, the Duluth Model presents only a simplistic and ideological “once an abuser, always an abuser” response to the complex problem of partner violence. It also starts from the false doctrine that domestic abuse is a sexually directional form of abuse.
The Plan‘s frequent reference to the Duluth model (pages 137, 139, 148, and 155), when considered beside the panel of expert authors of this document does nothing to lend it credibility.
What’s obvious to the point of extreme tedium is that this plan is built, promoted, justified and supported by lies. What’s also obvious is that the plan’s framers have no intention to reduce violence, create safety, or pursue anything describable as justice.
What the council intends appears to be the elimination of the human rights of men in Australia, and the radical expansion of the power of the state to interfere in the private lives of Australians.
These goals, among others are explored and exposed later this week by AVfM Researcher and Contributing Editor Kyle Lovett.
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Following the publication of this article in January 2012, The Australian government has either moved or deleted the PDF document, formerly hosted at the address: http://www.facs.gov.au/sa/women/pubs/violence/np_time_for_action/national_plan/Documents/The_Plan.pdf
Fortunately, a copy of this document was saved by this article’s author, JtO, and the PDF version of The Plan is now hosted by AVfM at http://www.avoiceformen.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2012/09/The_Plan.pdf
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[2] http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2006/3%20crime%20victimisation.aspx
[3] http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf
[4] http://csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
[5] Headey, B., Scott, D., & de Vaus, D. (1999). Domestic violence in Australia: Are Women and Men Equally Violent? Australian Social Monitor 2:57-62
[6] Dutton D. G. (2007). Female Intimate Partner Violence and Developmental Trajectories of Abusive Families. International Journal of Men’s Health, 6, 54-71
[7] Archer J (2000). Sex Differences in Physically Aggressive Acts between Heterosexual Partners: A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 651-680
[8] http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/
[9] http://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/usermanuals/fatherhood/chaptertwo.cfm
[10] http://www.babyzone.com/mom_dad/fatherhood/article/fathers-are-important
[11] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080212095450.htm
[12] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/nov/26/gender.uk1
[13] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-abusers-02-jan02,0,1147422.story?page=2
[14] http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/mon/23001/288919.pdf
