**The following contains details of family violence and may be triggering for some readers**

Where to begin? I have reflected long about how I, a feminist, a former family violence case manager, address the prevalent issue of violence against women in Australia. What I refer to as gendered violence. I will begin at the beginning. I was little when I realised our family wasn’t like others. I didn’t have a name for it, there was nobody to talk to, and my mum did what she needed to do to survive and keep us safe. Mum and I were experts at walking on eggshells, living in fear of dad’s next explosion.

Violence against women and children wasn’t discussed. Complex mental health, PTSD wasn’t discussed, and alcoholism was a national sport. We lived in a heteronormative society, the driver of patriarchy, where sexism and misogyny overlaid all levels of society, where systems, institutions, and laws protected men who perpetrated coercive control, physical and sexual violence.

Since my childhood of the 1970s and 1980s, I grant much has changed – awareness campaigns and legislation have forced structural transformation. There has been an explosion of research assisting governments and agencies in their response – yet the violence continues at an alarming rate. Australia has been collecting data, collating the stats for over twenty years. The stats are discussed in mainstream media. Yet, there is sickening predictability to these numbers in parliaments across the nation: fifty-five women murdered in 2017, seventy-one in 2018, sixty-three in 2019, and fifty-six in 2020. These are the tip of an epidemic of violence against women in Australia. These are the visible form of violence in society.  The acts that are reported and discussed and spur people to ask what causes violence against women?

I want to point at patriarchy and say it is the enemy. This is gendered violence.  But patriarchy is a dirty word, and once said aloud, the author is soon tarnished with being a ‘man-hater.’ But that is a response that comes from fear and ignorance. Patriarchy is no friend of men. It is a system that entraps both men and women through fear, control, and violence intersected by class and race. Men may say I’m not privileged, I’m not powerful, particularly working-class or those marginalised by society. As a group, men are powerful but individually may feel powerless. Patriarchy is not about a man feeling powerful. It is more nuanced. It is when a man feels entitled to power. And this is what drives some men that feel powerless to exert power over others – a sense of entitlement.

I think back to my dad, granddad, and uncle, working-class men with complex needs who felt abandoned by society and were angry and took it out on the people closest to them.

I come from a heritage of digging holes,

cleaners,

alcoholics

and gamblers.

No war heroes here.

The men in my family

were blown up,

screwed up

and hung out to dry.

It is extraordinary to understand and confront why men think they have the right to hurt women. My dad vehemently protected me. I know that he loved both Mum and me. But he wasn’t going to be told what to do, told to stop, and he used violence to exert control. I think this is a crucial distinction to make in dealing with family violence on both an individual and systemic level. And as a society, we need to ask, as Eva Cox has, ‘how do we stop men feeling like they’re entitled to?’ Will the advocacy for sexual equality be enough to put a stop to the sense of entitlement? There is a narrative that sexual equality is at the heart of family violence. But I do wonder, is it more complex than equality? In Australia, gender equality has improved considerably, yet there has not been a significant reduction in violence against women as a country.

I have been part of many conversations regarding male entitlement to use violence against women, normalisation of male privilege, and the socio-cultural reinforcement of this sense of privilege and entitlement by our institutions and systems. I have been loud in my support to not include men in these conversations and have been very sceptical of men change programs. I don’t think all men are violent, and all women are victims, but I agreed with legitimate fears of ‘patriarchal manipulators’ taking over the conversation. I think feminists need to challenge one’s normalisation in the patriarchal system. I am cautious of the call for social, political, and economic gender equality under the same laws, systems, and institutions that capitulate to patriarchy. 

I feel like screaming when I read how systems fail to protect women from preventative deaths when I see trauma laid bare and the deafening sound of women’s silence. I want to scream why the justice system is so slow to respond? Why do medical teams miss the signs? Why do governments underfund services? Against that wall of power, we have silence. This is the invisible violence that weaves in and out of people’s lives, the violence systems practice, and is what Jess Hill describes as ‘the underground.’

I worked with many women surviving in the ‘underground’ where their experiences of violence were invisible and silenced. Unfortunately, our justice systems, child protection, and family law institutions can only respond to the obvious signs but miss the subtle and nuanced signs of family violence. I suspect this is a combination of resourcing and complicity to patriarchal norms that support sexism, male privilege, and entitlement.

Although the stories and the statistics point to a pandemic of violence against women, there is a persistent ideological denial that gives breath to a process where things just happen. I wonder whether this silence breathes more violence. Consider the following:

In April 2021, Kelly Wilkinson was drenched in petrol, set alight in her backyard by her former husband, witnessed, police believe by her three children aged nine and under. In the days following her death, a disturbing but familiar narrative emerged as her murder was framed as ‘unexpected,’ ‘incomprehensible,’ and ‘without warning.’ Although a domestic violence order was issued, police advised Kelly that her husband just needed some space. Predictably questions arose about how does a seemingly rational bloke explode out of nowhere?

The answer is he doesn’t. I ponder the mainstream media’s resistance to report family violence as gendered and its invisibilising as a pandemic, focusing instead on individual acts. Is there an agenda to normalise the idea that it is not as dire as some say? Violence against women doesn’t just happen. It occurs within a patriarchal system supported by social, political, and economic structures. Family violence advocates and experts assert that family violence is a symptom of sexist norms and that ‘deep societal transformation’ will need to take place to reduce its impact.

But the fact family violence is being discussed in mainstream media is gigantic. I have faith that family violence will continue to be a priority for the women’s movement. Governments (although painfully slow) will eventually relent and provide the national leadership and response required. I want to acknowledge the many women across Australia who have fought to put family violence on the public agenda. We owe it to these women that have gone before us and future generations not to accept the status quo nor give breathe to a façade of action.

Photo by Jo Curtain