Fortunately, the delightful Daisy Cousens has a video clip which puts it in perspective, and I have included it at the bottom of this essay. Go to [3.07] where you will see a screenshot from the report of the Australian Institute of Criminology's [AIC] report on homicides during the financial year 2022-23. Male homicides numbered 152, compared to 69 for women. Of the latter, 34 were killed by "intimate partners" i.e. current or former husbands or defactos. Remember: this is Australia, not Liechtenstein. The numbers are very low.
Now go back to by 2014 essay, where I provided the statistics for the two years 2008-10:
Male homicides: 366 [183 per year]
Total female homicides: 175 [87½ per year]
Female intimate partner homicides [FIPH]: 89 [44½ per year]
You will note that there has thus been a major reduction in all homicides over a period of 13 years, but the proportions are more or less the same. FIPH are still roughly half the total female homicides, and slightly more than twice as many men are killed as women. (Both who cares about them?)
In other words, FIPH has fallen in tandem with all other homicides, with the proportions being roughly constant. The logical conclusion is that the reduction in intimate partner killing of women is due to the same factors which have led to the overall reduction of every other form of homicide. So the obvious question is: have the vast programs initiated against domestic violence by state and federal government really made any difference - at least to the worst form of domestic violence, actual killing?
Journalist James Campbell also commented on the AIC's report in an article on p 69 in the Brisbane Sunday Mail of 5 May 2024. He points out that the rate of killing of women by their intimate partners rose from 0.25 per 100,000 in 2021-22 to 0.32 per 100,000 in 2023-23. However:
[T]he financial year 2021-22 had the lowest number of intimate partner killings since 1989, with 35 deaths- 26 women and 9 men. Indeed, in the past 34 financial years there has been only one other - 2017-18 - in which there have been so few women killed by their partners.
As you can see from the graph at left, despite random fluctuations, there has been a steady decline in FIPH since 1989-90. In that year the rate was 0.95 per 100,000, compared to 0.32 last year. Campbell also made the following observation:
Interestingly that rate - 0.32 - is lower than the 0.36 which was the rate at which men were likely to suffer homicide at the hands of their intimate partners in 1989-90. Or to put it another way - 34 years ago a man had a slightly higher chance of being killed by their [sic] partner than a woman does today.
But what about the 28 women killed in the first four months of 2024 - one every 4 days? Surely this is the sign of a bad upturn? Go back to Daisy Cousens' video at [11:37-39]. Daisy did what none of the journalists and commentators deigned to do: she looked up the Counting Dead Women facebook page which lists the circumstances of every female homicide in Australia for the first four months of 2024. The 28 included 5 killed at Bondi on 13 April when a maniac went on a stabbing spree in a shopping centre, along with killings apparently committed by other family members, strangers, and even other women. She counted only 8 which could be construed as Intimate Partner Homicides. (I counted only 7.) That is one every 15 days, not every 4. Removing the Bondi stabbing spree, if this pattern continues for the whole 12 months, then the number of women killed will be equal to those in 2022-23, but a new alltime low will have been set for Intimate Partner Homicides.
Although I have women close to me who have been victims of domestic violence, and despite the fact that I am just simply stating facts, there will be people who insist that I am "downplaying" or "trivialising" violence against women. So let me explain my position plainly. It is not possible to completely eliminate any crime, whether it be domestic violence, sexual abuse of children, or shoplifting, just as it is impossible to reduce (say) the road toll or industrial accidents to zero. The best we can hope for is to bring them down to an irreducible minimum. When the figures are large, concerted government and public action can make big dents in the problem, but eventually we will reach the point of diminishing returns. IMHO we have now reached it with domestic violence, at least with its most extreme manifestation, homicide. The vast sums of money governments are now throwing into the problem will probably improve the situation, but only to a minor extent. I shall repeat what I said in my earlier essay:
- The rate of all homicides, including female intimate partner homicides, is very low, and has been getting lower for as long as statistics have been taken. We are winning the war on violence, but nobody seems to notice.
- Domestic violence is not a male problem. It is a problem of a small group of bad men who are well aware that their actions are not socially acceptable. There is also a smaller, but not insignificant, group of violent women whom nobody cares about.
- There is no "epidemic" of male violence against women.
This is a moral panic, perpetrated mostly by male hating women's libbers.
Bettina Arndt has another take on it.
A very interesting discussion, with lots of figures and tables, can be found in the following video clip. If you can't be bothered listening to it, you can click on the transcript.
