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Notes -
"Size and strength differences significantly change the context for violence. More women end up in the hospital or the morgue."
While I understand the idea that physical violence would result in greater injury to women, even if abuse rates were equal, wouldn't that consideration be irrelevant to the discussion of unfair institutional bias in family courts?
My understanding of the original contention point was that family courts were biased against men, and a key point of evidence of this fact was that feminist groups were against reform, whereas men's groups were for reform.
Your reasoning for why feminist groups may be against reform, even if the current family court system was in fact unbiased, was because of the perception that abusive men are attempting to reform the courts in a way that would allow them to use the family court as a continuation of their abuse.
The response was that within domestic contexts, there seems to be an equal rate of abuse between men and women, and in fact women are more likely to abuse children than men, demonstrating that women are just as capable of abuse, where they have the opportunity.
Your response was that men are stronger than women, and therefore the result of any reciprocal physical abuse is that men's abuse would have greater context.
If we were considering creating policy for domestic violence, I can understand taking into consideration the fact that women are weaker into account. But here, such lack of physical strength should be irrelevant when deciding the contorts of family law, which is litigated out not by physical strength, but by lawyers and courts. In that case, if you've already conceded that men and women are equally abusive in rate, then here, in a context without a physical advantage, it should naturally follow that in fact, "feminists being scared that men will abuse through family court" is no more justified than the male activist's perspective that women currently do abuse through family court.
Beyond this, I think there's some weird inconsistency between how you treat male on women domestic violence, and women on children domestic violence. I presume that just like for men to women, women similarly enjoy a physical superiority to children, especially babies. Yet when speaking about men abusing women, your perspective is:
"I'm aware that women are equally or more likely than men to haul off and slap a partner, and I'm aware of the (so far still fairly limited) statistics on domestic violence rates in same-sex couples. I am nevertheless not terribly swayed by the "reciprocally violent" characterization of most abusive heterosexual relationships. Size and strength differences significantly change the context for violence. More women end up in the hospital or the morgue."
You would presume then that there would be very little sympathy for women abusing children, yet instead, when provided evidence that women are in fact, when given the opportunity to do so, seem to abuse children at a higher rate then men, instead of similarly emphasizing the consequences of the situation, you instead run cover for women:
"Women are more likely to abuse children, but most of this is explained by the fact that they are much more likely to be primary caregivers spending far more time with the child. The opportunities for frustration that escalates to criminality are multiplied."
I'm not sure it's to the point of saying that you're excusing the consequences of female violence, but it was enough that I had to make a note of it.
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