Pauline, we’ve both been DV victims, so why do you describe it so differently?

July 22, 2026 — 6:41pm

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Pauline, if we have both been victims of domestic violence, why aren’t we on the same page?

There is no “two-way street” when it comes to domestic violence but hidden within the controversy of Pauline Hanson’s words are two ideas that deserve to be judged. Sadly, in some landscapes of thriving populist chauvinism, these ideas can be adopted unchallenged.

The first is that women can perpetrate domestic violence. They can. Men can be victims. Same-sex relationships can be violent. Abuse is not the exclusive preserve of one sex.

The “two-way street” playbook has haunted domestic violence discourse for decades. It’s a line that sounds reasonable on the surface and that’s precisely what makes it so corrosive. It launders victim-blaming through the language of balance. At times, the public conversation has become trapped between slogans such as “believe women” on one side and “it takes two to tango” on the other.

The conversation we actually need requires us to hold two ideas at once: that domestic violence can affect anyone, but that intimate-partner violence remains overwhelmingly gendered. Hanson’s........

© Brisbane Times