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TW: Extremely distressing footage of a man beating his partner while he broadcast himself live on Twitch.

I've been thinking a lot about this tonight. It's incredibly distressing but a perfect insight into family violence. FV isn't a PSA script. It's just absorbed into the daily atmosphere of the house.

The ease with which that young man not only hits his partner but verbally abuses and dehumanises her ~while his children are watching and listening and crying~ is horrendous but not actually that surprising.

There are countless houses all over Australia and up and down your own neighbourhoods where this language is thrown so easily. Where men call women dogs and cunts and bitches, and often do so in front of their kids. Maybe they don't hit them, but they do hate them.

I've already seen a number of comments from other young men who are arguing she 'provoked' him. That she was being equally abusive to him and therefore this is somehow not really his fault. No. Fuck that shit. No.

You don't provoke someone into hitting you. You don't provoke them into calling you a dog. People make a choice to do those things, and their choice reflects their attitudes and humanity.

And maybe he forgot that he was recording himself (except that she clearly didn't because she screamed out to the people watching). But the more frightening probability is that he believed he was in the right and that this behaviour is normal. That other men will be on his side.

Because other men ARE on his side. They're on his side every time they look away from things like this or scream NOT ALL MEN or WOMEN DO IT TOO or respond to DV stories with 'jokes' or just make those jokes between themselves to try to be edgy. Of course he feels normal.

You think jokes and flippancy about domestic violence don't matter? You think memes showing women's bloodied faces are hilarious but that you and all the men you know would never REALLY do that or find it funny? Because you reserve your right to 'release tension' through them?

All men who participate in that minimising behaviour are complicit in violence. They are all responsible for making it acceptable in the minds of other violent men. Not all men, but definitely them.

This is the line Hannah Gadsby was talking about. The line that men get to decide and that women are never allowed to speak to. That they get to determine when it's a big deal and when it isn't.

Fuck that.

I hope that woman is okay. I hope her children are okay. I am sick and tired of hearing men complain that feminism has gone too far and poor men poor men. This is happening in houses all over the country. It's happening on your street. Get the fucking memo already.