I’ve looked closely at reports relating to young men being hit, especially the well publicised king hit cases, and never once has a police officer been quoted as saying, “I suggest to people, particularly males, they shouldn't be alone in public.” 

Instead we have politicians saying, “the government will be working with police to make our streets safer,” direct quote from the NSW Attorney General. 

With violence against men, we put the onus for change squarely on government and police (where it belongs), rather than on the victims. 

We need to do the same thing when women are attacked.

I heard Inspector Hughes ask us to look after each other. 

But looking after each other can’t begin and end on the street. 

It needs to start in homes, schools, prisons, hospitals, media and government policy.

When Jane Gilmore said in her piece in The Hoopla, “And men, as you were. Just carry on. 

This is not your problem.” She’s being ironic. 

People will react and say she's being to harsh to men, and that we should instead ask men to join the team, Implying that asking nicely works. 

It doesn’t, it hasn’t and it won’t. 

Women didn’t get the right to vote by asking nicely. 

They fought hard. Same story for civil rights and almost every social justice, environmental and human rights issue you can think of. 

Every single time anyone points out that violence against women is a men’s problem, other people say, “but, not all men” and, “don’t alienate the good men”. 

I have sons and love for a bunch of men. 

But I wouldn't hesitate to say to the men I love that the biggest threat to the safety of women is men. Because it’s true. 

Tip toeing around the facts won’t change that. 

Clementine Ford wrote today that “Until we substantially address the toxicity of patriarchy, women will always be subjected to the aggression and hostility of men who are left to their own devices by a society unwilling to look at those patterns of male behaviour which lead to gendered violence.”

We have to risk hurting some men’s feelings in the name of turning the culture around. 

Good men can cope with that.

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