# Domestic Violence



## Lester Burnham (Jul 26, 2009)

Domestic violence.  
 
Even the mention of the words conjures up the larger than life image of some battered woman on a highway billboard; a day glow orange hot-line number beneath her bruised profile, and some catchy slogan like “love shouldn’t hurt.”

 And no, I am not insensitive to battered women. My heart goes out to any real victim. But the day I see the images of bruised men on those billboards, I’ll be less prone to being offended at seeing the images of beaten women.  Too many of them are being propped up like the starving children you see on your TV at two in the morning; the ones you can feed, clothe and send to Harvard for 12 dollars a month.

 
The myth we embrace about all this is simple and designed for the simple minded. Domestic violence is almost exclusively perpetrated by men against women.  Even better, it means brutish thugs pounding the crap out of Mary Poppins for burning the toast.  

And here and there, that is true.  But if you think it defines the problem, or even comes close, you need to take Dr. Phil off your TIVO to do list and start picking up some real books.

This nonsense didn't spring out of thin air. It was and is the _raison d'étre_ of feminists, in their claim of patriarchal domination and how that extended into the home and family. It makes sense, especially if you don't think about it.  And of course we didn't, so the idea spread like chlamydia in a cat house.

  But let's think about it now. You deserve a lot more depth than is offered in a sound bite.

I’ll start with some research that most would feel was from a reputable source. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA. This is the summary of their findings as published in the American Journal of Public Health, May 2007.

 First, almost 24% of all relationships had some level of violence. Half of those relationships involved just one of the partners being violent. The other half were reciprocally violent. 

  Now, in relationships where violence was perpetrated by just one person, over 70% of that was committed by the woman.

  Did you get that? In all relationships in that particular study, more than 7 out of 10 batterers were female. 

Let’s look even closer at the data as it relates to relationships where both partners are violent. This half is even more interesting than the first half. 

 The study concluded that reciprocally violent relationships were most likely to result in injuries, particularly to women.  They were also a solid predictor of future, repeated violence for women, but not men. In other words, women who engaged in mutual combat with men were much more likely to have a pattern of _instigating_ repeated assaults. Men’s violence was much more likely to be isolated, and, contrary to the redundant assertions of feminists, not likely to be repeated.

 Now let me sum up those conclusions in a clearer form of English. Relationships where both are violent are more likely to result in the woman getting hurt. Those relationships are also marked by women who are much more likely than men to initiate and maintain that violence in the first place. 

  We have common expression for much of the men’s violence in these situations.

  It’s called hitting back.

There is, ahem, no excuse for violence. Ever, some would say.  But there is legal, and in the belief of many, moral justification for self defense. Either way, it is a judgment call made after, and only after, an attack has been made. I'll leave it to the attacked to make their own call.

 In fairness, it has to be pointed out that this one study, for many reasons, including methodology, can't fairly be generalized to the entire population.  And one study alone is easy enough to dispute, even from a sound source. So let's look at a hundred more. 

 Professor John Archer is a psychologist at The University of Central Lancashire and the esteemed head of the Aggression Research Group at the same university. In his analysis of 100 British and American studies he concludes that women are more likely than men to initiate violence in their relationships and are more likely to be aggressive more frequently. He also addresses the myth that women are only violent as a matter of self defense by reporting that 29% of female college students admitted to physically attacking their boyfriends when no threat was perceived. 

 I know feminists won‘t be convinced by this, nor will they by several hundred more studies, but let’s look at them anyway. Professor Martin S. Fiebert of the California State University Psychology Department conducted an analysis of 249 scholarly investigations, 194 empirical studies and 55 reviews regarding domestic violence. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies numbers over 241,700 people.

 Fiebert's conclusion?  Women are as physically aggressive or more physically aggressive in relationships than men.

And if you think that the incidence of female on male violence is mitigated by women suffering more injuries at the hands of men, think again.

There are widely conflicting studies on this. Some of them place women at greater risk, but many of them place men. If we examine Fiebert's annotated bibliography which covers an exhaustive amount of studies, there are many times more studies cited that show women more likely to inflict serious harm, including with the use of weapons, than are men. 


Are there other studies that contradict this?   Absolutely.  But there is a significant enough body of evidence to make three things patently clear.

1.  Domestic violence is not a product of gender.  Attributing it to one gender over the other is not only misleading, it actually hinders efforts to address the problem.

2.  Society is wildly misinformed about the nature, origins and realities of domestic violence.

3.  Most of our legal and political handling of domestic violence is based on the myths and not the realities, leaving us to put all of our resources into half of the problem.  


As in so many other ways, we demonstrate a cultural tendency to remake reality, even embrace lies, when the truth about the fairer sex doesn't make them look all that fair. 

 Now many people of sound mind might well say, "Fine, let's just focus our attention on dealing with abusers and the abused, regardless of the sex."  

But to say things are not that simple is a monumental understatement.  

Richard Gelles is currently a dean at the University of Pennsylvania and holds The Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence in the School of Social Policy & Practice. 

He is an internationally known expert in domestic violence, and was influential in the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.

 Gelles wrote, regarding his work with Suzanne Steinmetz and Murray Strauss,  "The response to our finding that the rate of female-to-male violence was equal to the rate of male-to-female violence not only produced heated scholarly criticism, but intense and long lasting personal attacks. All three of us received death threats. Bomb threats were phoned in to conference centers and buildings where we were scheduled to present."

 Now is it me, or is making terroristic threats of bombing and murder a rather strange way to protest being called violent?

Returning to the evidence, though, it would be easy to make an argument that domestic violence is more a female than a male problem. There are, after all, numerous studies that support that conclusion. But that would be as pointless as the current paradigm, and might result in my car blowing up the next time I start it. 

So for those of you screaming for me to quit picking on women and take gender out of the equation, that is precisely what I am doing.

 And what I am asking you to do, once and for all.

 If you really believe that all violence is bad and shouldn't be tolerated, then here is what you can do to prove it. 

Write Vice President Biden and tell him to seek an end to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), the legislation he authored that allocates billions to women victims but leaves men totally out of the picture. Men are, after all, injured by domestic violence, too. 835,000 per year in America alone. 

 Start holding shelters and social services to account when they have no real programs designed for men. Their failure to do this is institutionalized sexism and needs to go.

Confront police and prosecutors for their actions. Men who call for police help when attacked by their partners are more likely than not to be the one arrested, regardless of the circumstances.

 Victims should be helped, not arrested, incarcerated and stigmatized. 

Be sure to express your objections to and boycott the media outlets and corporations like Pepsi and Fedex that use men getting abused as a sight gag in their advertising.

 When you see or hear a public service announcement that says something like "A woman is abused in her home every 15 seconds," realize that it is actually a public deception, a convoluted half-truth, based in blind bigotry and callous indifference to the victimization of men.

 Those are a few good beginnings, but you can best start by simply and publicly acknowledging what so few seem to know. Domestic violence has nothing to do with what sex you are. It never has. Disinformation is a poor way to address social ills.  In fact, it just breeds more of them. 


RESEARCH SOURCES FOR THIS ARTICLE

CDC Report- American Journal of Public HealthMartin Fiebert's Annotated Bibliography 
John Archer: Sex Differences in Aggression in Real-World Settings: A Meta-Analytic Review 
NOTE: Access to Dr. Archers research is fee based! 
Abstracts- If you want the complete studies, you have to pay. 
Prevalence and Correlates of Physical Aggression During Courtship*. *ILEANA ARIAS, University of Georgia.  MARY SAMIOS, [SIZE=-1]State University of New York at Stony Brook. [/SIZE]K. DANIEL O'LEARY, [SIZE=-1]State University of New York at Stony Brook. [/SIZE]
Basile, S. (2004).  Comparison of abuse by same and opposite-gender  litigants as cited in requests for abuse prevention orders 
Women who perpetrate intimate partner violence: A review of the literature with recommendations for treatment.  


* Michelle Carney, School of Social Work, Tucker Hall, University of Georgia.  Fred Buttell, Tulane University. and Don Dutton, University of British Columbia, Canada


Quote from abstract: Particular attention is paid to the cultural influences that shape our conceptualization of “domestic violence” and the fact that empirical research suggests that domestic violence has been falsely framed as exclusively male initiated violence.
*


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## The Backward OX (Jul 26, 2009)

Good stuff. The results don't surprise me at all. I remember my own (fortunately now ex-)wife unprovokedly going for me with a knife on more than one occasion. 

Two typos (sixth and second-last paragraphs -"lets" should be "let's" and "is" should be "it"), but they in no way detract from the message.

There is another facet to domestic violence, and that's the parents who murder both their children and their spouse when denied access to the children. Originally I typed "fathers" instead of "parents" then decided that was only a guess. I wonder what studies and conclusions, if any, have been done and made about that facet.


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 26, 2009)

My ex only went for me with a knife once, though she had a fierce temper. Men do have a bit of an advantage quite often, she was about a foot shorter and four stone lighter than me so I was able to take it away and sit on her until she calmed down.

Good point about the violence towards children Ox, my guess would be that both sexes visit violence on children in the normal course of family life but the "dispossessed" murderers are mainly men if only because courts rarely give them custody. I always thought that strange, I missed my kids when she left but I only ever thought of them as mine in the sense of being of me or from me, never as possessions as some appear to.



> Victims should be helped, not arrested, incarcerated and stigmatized



The was a law lord, Lord Birkett, who said  "Justice is the best possible outcome for all parties, the perpetrator, the victim and the society". That always struck me as an enlightened piece of thinking, perhaps stigmatizing and incarcerating are rarely good solutions to problems. 


> . Men’s violence was much more likely to be isolated, and, contrary to the repeated assertions of feminists, not likely to be repeated.


  This was interesting, totally against my anecdotal experience which is that if it's happened once it will be repeated. I guess it's down to the sort of thing people are willing to relate, I think that goes for women's violence against men also, though men are getting more willing to admit it here and there are Metropolitan police adverts saying it will not be tolerated, they are not all battered women here.
 It makes me wonder if you have made a bit too much of the feminist issue, there are other factors.


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## Mistique (Jul 26, 2009)

I have been in a very violent relationship and therefore it seems hard for me not to have an emotional response to this thread. I wasn't violent to him. I was too frightened for that. I don't know why he was violent to me, I tried to find things that would explain it but I just ended up blaiming myself again and again trying desperately to adjust my behaviour to whatever it was that he seemed to want from me. It never seemed to be the right thing though so eventually I got out.

I also work as a child protection social worker and at least half my cases involve some form of domestic violence. Often the violence is mutual and its the children that suffer the consequences.


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## Lester Burnham (Jul 26, 2009)

The Backward OX said:


> There is another facet to domestic violence, and that's the parents who murder both their children and their spouse when denied access to the children. Originally I typed "fathers" instead of "parents" then decided that was only a guess. I wonder what studies and conclusions, if any, have been done and made about that facet.



I wish I could have included that type of info, but unfortunately I could not find any research on it.  I could have speculated as much but only based on anecdote.  

And then, of course, I would have had a barrage of email saying I was blaming the wrong parties for men (and I assume it is most often men) killing their families.

Typos corrected.  Thanks.


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## Lester Burnham (Jul 26, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> My ex only went for me with a knife once, though she had a fierce temper. Men do have a bit of an advantage quite often, she was about a foot shorter and four stone lighter than me so I was able to take it away and sit on her until she calmed down.
> 
> Good point about the violence towards children Ox, my guess would be that both sexes visit violence on children in the normal course of family life but the "dispossessed" murderers are mainly men if only because courts rarely give them custody. I always thought that strange, I missed my kids when she left but I only ever thought of them as mine in the sense of being of me or from me, never as possessions as some appear to.
> 
> ...



Your anecdotal experience may be more correct than that study.  It is why I took care to point out that we can't extrapolate that fairly to the general population. 

As to other factors, I agree.  There is chivalry, which I think plays a big role in this as well.  But I don't imagine it was chivalrists making the death and bomb threats.  If you have other factors you think would be in play here, I'd like to include them.

And I do think things are changing in some places.  I just watched a clip a couple of days ago in which Katy Couric was offering some thoughts on DV and she kept the talk mostly genderless and referred to victims as "men and women" every time.

But the feminist influence in this is pretty significant, and continues, especially from many of the feminists that are players in the DV industry.

I have made a few of my essays into videos on youtube.  You might find this one interesting.  It includes some information also about terroristic threats against people who speak in dissent to the conventional paradigm.

YouTube - The Family Terrorist


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## Lester Burnham (Jul 26, 2009)

Mistique said:


> Often the violence if mutual and its the children that suffer the consequences.



Totally agreed.


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## Lester Burnham (Jul 26, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> Good point about the violence towards children Ox, my guess would be that both sexes visit violence on children in the normal course of family life but the "dispossessed" murderers are mainly men if only because courts rarely give them custody. I always thought that strange, I missed my kids when she left but I only ever thought of them as mine in the sense of being of me or from me, never as possessions as some appear to.



Well put.  There is a part II coming to this and it deals with violence in the home toward children.  The lions share of death and injury to children in the home is from women.

I am sure those numbers would change if men had a better shot at custody and thus wound up being their caretakers more often, and if there were more men in the home that had the primary responsibility for taking care of them.

That remains to be seen though.  All the evidence I have found so far indicates that single fathers are the least likely group to harm their children, even less than men who are married and living with the mother.


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## Mistique (Jul 26, 2009)

Lester Burnham said:


> Totally agreed.


 
Ofcourse those children, male or female, certainly some of them over time grow up to be the violent ones in the future often showing signs already during childhood of violent behaviour towards other children


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## Olly Buckle (Jul 29, 2009)

> All the evidence I have found so far indicates that single fathers are the least likely group to harm their children, even less than men who are married and living with the mother.



This does not surprise me, most men in this position are there because they took a decision to do this off their own bat, many single women must feel it was forced on them socially, our society has high expectations of mothers. A bit simplistic, but I think there is some truth in it. The other side of it is that they don't make the "schoolgate" relationships that the women do, so they don't have the backup network to vent their feelings to.


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## The Backward OX (Jul 30, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> This does not surprise me, most men in this position are there because they took a decision to do this off their own bat, many single women must feel it was forced on them socially, our society has high expectations of mothers. A bit simplistic, but I think there is some truth in it. The other side of it is that they don't make the "schoolgate" relationships that the women do, so they don't have the backup network to vent their feelings to.


( I can't quite see a link between a lack of male violence and backup networks.)
Maybe you shouldn’t have spent so much time with lady gardeners, but mixed with a few more hairy-arsed men. Then you may have become aware that males _do_ vent, only differently. They talk just as much as women except that it’s all bullshit.


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## Lester Burnham (Jul 30, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> This does not surprise me, most men in this position are there because they took a decision to do this off their own bat, many single women must feel it was forced on them socially, our society has high expectations of mothers. A bit simplistic, but I think there is some truth in it. The other side of it is that they don't make the "schoolgate" relationships that the women do, so they don't have the backup network to vent their feelings to.



I am not buying that women are socially forced to do anything.  Women usually fight hard for custody, and it can't be discounted that getting into the man's finances via alimony and CS is part of the equation.  Society has more pressure on women for professional life than motherhood, IMO, and men are certainly not without pressure to provide for the women, even after being forcibly removed from their homes.

I am not saying women have it all made, or anything like that, but the characterization of them as unwilling social pawns only feeds into the problem, IMO, especially if we characterize men who do the same thing as just 'taking the reigns.'

I do agree totally that men lack a network of support.  They kill themselves during divorce at about twenty times the rate women do.   Of course this may partly have to do with how bad they are getting shafted by the system as much as it does the fact they have few places to take their anger over that shafting, or, for that matter, their grief over their losses.

For anyone interested I made a video of this essay and posted it to youtube.  It has started off doing pretty well.

YouTube - Domestic Violence


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## Olly Buckle (Aug 3, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> This does not surprise me, most men in this position are there because they took a decision to do this off their own bat, many single women must feel it was forced on them socially, our society has high expectations of mothers. A bit simplistic, but I think there is some truth in it. The other side of it is that they don't make the "schoolgate" relationships that the women do, so they don't have the backup network to vent their feelings to.



What I meant was that most men don't get custody unless there is something that stops the mother being seen as suitable or they make a real effort for it. Then that there is social pressure on women to "be a mother", this may be truer in England than elsewhere and I don't suppose it's true in all parts of society here, but I think there is some truth in it. 
 Then there is the other side to it, what I mentioned in the first place helps them cope but in opposition to that they are excluded from the coping mechanisms women have because they don't develop that sort of relationship.

Lester; You are right, forced was a bad choice of word, there is social pressure, being a "good mother" implies more than a live birthand suckling unless you really are a bitch:smile:


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## Lester Burnham (Aug 5, 2009)

Olly Buckle said:


> What I meant was that most men don't get custody unless there is something that stops the mother being seen as suitable or they make a real effort for it. Then that there is social pressure on women to "be a mother", this may be truer in England than elsewhere and I don't suppose it's true in all parts of society here, but I think there is some truth in it.
> Then there is the other side to it, what I mentioned in the first place helps them cope but in opposition to that they are excluded from the coping mechanisms women have because they don't develop that sort of relationship.
> 
> Lester; You are right, forced was a bad choice of word, there is social pressure, being a "good mother" implies more than a live birthand suckling unless you really are a bitch:smile:



100% agreed.


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