Five years ago a young man on a night out with his girlfriend in Kings Cross was killed when king-hit from behind by a man under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
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The state government responded swiftly: tough new legislation was almost immediately brought into force and a new term, the ‘coward punch’, entered the lexicon.
According to the latest National Homicide Monitoring Program Report, on average in Australia, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner. No tough legislation, barely a murmur from anyone in government: This is ‘domestic’ violence, which seems to make it less of a public issue than young men being hit in the streets.
Violence is violence. Murder is murder. Whether it occurs in the privacy of the home or in the public domain. The problem is the labelling: domestic. Domestic issues are hidden. They belong in the private sphere, where the public has no right to pry.
The late philosopher, Val Plumwood, identified gendered ‘dualisms’, where pairs of words or concepts take on gendered significance, and in each case, the masculine is accorded higher public precedence than the feminine. For example: public/private; outdoor/indoor. In traditional Western society, men dwelt in the outdoor, or public space, while women resided in the indoor, private space. They were, essentially, hidden from public view. Therefore, domestic violence, which most commonly (but not always) occurs against women, remains in that private, unseen space and is given a lower priority than violence against men, which typically occurs in the public sphere.
Annabel Crabb wrote in 2015: “If a man got killed by a shark every week we'd probably arrange to have the ocean drained”. She was right: Since 1788, there have been 278 fatal shark attacks in Australian waters, with 263 of the victims male. This is a lot less than one per week – barely more than one per year - yet state governments regularly propose massive shark culls whenever a swimmer or surfer is killed.
It’s time to change the rhetoric around domestic violence and call it what it is: violence. Regardless of where it occurs it is criminal behaviour.
Over last weekend, the Braidwood Says No to Domestic Violence group made our community’s sentiments known. The rock that usually carries birthday salutations is, for the time being at least, a statement of community intent. But let’s drop the ‘domestic’ and call it what it is.
