Waleed Aly’s bold claim about male violence against women that he’s been waiting to say for more than a DECADE

Waleed Aly has questioned the widespread belief held by politicians and activists that male violence against women stems from disrespect – instead suggesting the desire to hurt women actually comes from attackers feeling shamed and humiliated.

The Project host addressed the domestic violence crisis in Australia in an op-ed following shocking statistics that show a woman is being killed every four days.

Aly, who is also a lecturer in politics at Monash University, said he’d put off writing the piece for nearly a decade.

He referenced words from former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who in 2015 said: ‘Disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women. But all violence against women begins with disrespecting women.’

Aly said that he always thought Mr Turnbull’s comment was incorrect, but had never said anything publicly – until now.  

‘I couldn’t repress a simple thought when I heard Turnbull’s comment: I just don’t think that’s correct,’ Aly wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald. 

‘That’s because my academic work was studying the roots of violence, where research overwhelmingly identifies factors like humiliation, shame and guilt as motivating drivers, not a lack of respect.’

Aly said research showed perpetrators of violent crimes had often felt they had been disrespected themselves.

He referenced American prison psychiatrist James Gilligan who said he was yet to see a violent act that ‘was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed’.

Mr Gilligan claimed the most dangerous men ‘are those who are afraid they are wimps’.

The issue of domestic violence in Australia has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks after 28 women were allegedly killed this year alone.

Men are being urged to start having conversations with each other about domestic violence, and in Aly’s words ‘for the “good” men to set the “bad” men straight’.

‘This delivers a conventional wisdom that this is ultimately a men’s problem, and one that every one of us has to own and solve,’ he said.

He said it ‘makes little sense’ to treat every man as violent, when a minority is to blame.

Aly added that associating all men with violence could lead them to ‘retreat and defend an identity they feel is unfairly maligned’.

But he said there was still hope for Australia’s domestic violence problem.

He said tackling the minority responsible for violence by addressing their risk factors, as opposed to looking at all men in general, was the way forward.

‘It accepts the enormity of the task, but doesn’t drown in it. It makes the invincible intelligible. It is fierce, but restrained. In sum, it deserves the next decade of respect,’ he said.

Aly also noted that tasking ‘all men’ with solving the domestic violence epidemic was no different to ‘being told it was up to Muslims to own the problem of terrorism’ – an attitude that ‘didn’t work’ and only resulted in Muslims feeling ‘alienated’.

His comments come a day after the funeral of Molly Ticehurst, 28, who was allegedly killed by her ex-boyfriend Daniel Billings.