“Generations of men are frustrated, angry and ashamed that, despite following the rules - and despite sacrificing the tender, emotionally connected boys inside of them - they're not getting what was promised to them.”

Ezra up a tree. Binalong Bay, Bay of Fires, Tasmania. July 2021.

See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Violence by Jess Hill 

A bleak insight into the history, culture and laws around familial violence in Australia. The book offers a broad sweep of the movement Hill identifies as a "historic shift in power and accountability" in which "the Western world [has] finally started taking men’s violence against women seriously". The full truth of the latter half of this statement remains still to be seen.

Unlike the dry government reports and inquiries cited throughout the work, Hill gets behind the simple facts and figures (although there are plenty of these too) to give the reader a real visceral sense of the terror, abuse and personal and institutional failures behind the dreadful data.

It's not perfect, and I scratched my head at times in which she defers to various authorities and takes assertions at face value (telling rather than showing), but it largely doesn't detract from the whole. There is a tendency to simplify the very complex forces at work (it seems to posit a unified feminist position on psychoanalytic and psychological approaches to shame in relation to violence), but perhaps this is unavoidable if you're trying to appeal to a broad audience.

All up, a worthy addition to the literature and a great primer on the issues.

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