I’ve seen that same bibliography page, and some of the problems raised already in this thread apply. Most notably how “violence” is operationalized. And “physical aggression”. There’s a world of difference between a slap across the face (unacceptable as that is) and a choking or strangling incident. Or between grabbing your partner’s arm and yanking on it because he’s “not listening” to you, and shoving her up against the wall and banging her head into it repeatedly.

I hope you realize that an argument based entirely on statistics is meaningless. Apparently you don’t. Let me explain why:

Let’s say you’ve got 11 women. 10 of them get married and live happily ever after. One of them goes from one failed marriage to the next, and has gone through 90 marriages and divorces before she dies.

The point is, if I’m an activist trying to show that marriage is in a troubled state, I can say “Look at the statistics! 90% of marriages end in divorce!”

But if I’m an activist trying to show that marriage is a healthy institution, I can look at the SAME numbers and say, “Look! 10 out of 11 women have successful marriages!”

This is why, Alley Rat, your arguments are meaningless. I haven’t even touched on the issue of statistical definition. But, oh, what the heck:

Let’s say I’m analyzing “violence used against an intimate.” Well, first I have to define what I mean by “an intimate.” Somebody I’m on a first date with? A friend? A fiancee? A spouse? Another family member? A sexual partner to whom I’m committed? A sexual partner to whom I’m NOT committed? This is not a small question.

Then I have to define what I mean by “violence.” Hair pulling? Pushing? Arm pulling? Punching? Again, where to draw the line?

To look at a website with a bunch of statistics and find a number that says “violence used by an intimate” and to assume that it means the same thing YOU mean by “violence used by an intimate” is quite obtuse of you, especially considering my above proof of how statistics can be skewed to stress different viewpoints. Do you really think the people who gathered the Bureau of Justice statistics on “Violence Agaisnt Women” were completely unbiased? And I don’t mean necessarily the insidious “I’m going to try to prove something I know isn’t true” kind of bias. I mean the simple, innocent bias that is bred of the assumptions and prejudices that we all have about every group of people on the planet.

And even if they were completely impartial, you’d still have that nasty problem of definition – NOT a black and white issue, by any means.

In any case, you’ll have a valid argument when you can quote something other than statistics and anecdotes.

Aizenman, M., & Kelley, G. (1988). The incidence of violence and acquaintance rape in dating relationships among college men and women. Journal of College Student Development, 29, 305-311. (A sample of actively dating college students responded to a survey examining courtship violence. Authors report that there were no significant differences between the sexes in self reported perpetration of physical abuse.)

Archer, J., & Ray, N. (1989). Dating violence in the United Kingdom: a preliminary study. Aggressive Behavior, 15, 337-343. (Twenty three dating couples completed the Conflict Tactics scale. Results indicate that women were significantly more likely than their male partners to express physical violence. Authors also report that, “measures of partner agreement were high” and that the correlation between past and present violence was low.)

Bernard, M. L., & Bernard, J. L. (1983). Violent intimacy: The family as a model for love relationships. Family Relations, 32, 283-286. (Surveyed 461 college students, 168 men, 293 women, with regard to dating violence. Found that 15% of the men admitted to physically abusing their partners, while 21% of women admitted to physically abusing their partners.)

Bland, R., & Orne, H. (1986). Family violence and psychiatric disorder. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 31, 129-137. (In interviews with 1,200 randomly selected Canadians found that women both engaged in and initiated violence at higher rates than their male partners.)

Bohannon, J. R., Dosser Jr., D. A., & Lindley, S. E. (1995). Using couple data to determine domestic violence rates: An attempt to replicate previous work. Violence and Victims, 10, 133-41. (Authors report that in a sample of 94 military couples 11% of wives and 7% of husbands were physically aggressive, as reported by the wives.)

Brinkerhoff, M., & Lupri, E. (1988). Interspousal violence. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 13, 407-434. (Examined Interspousal violence in a representative sample of 562 couples in Calgary, Canada. Used Conflict Tactics Scale and found twice as much wife-to-husband as husband-to-wife severe violence . The overall violence rate for husbands was 10.3% while the overall violence rate for wives was 13.2%. Violence was significantly higher in younger and childless couples. Results suggest that male violence decreased with higher educational attainment, while female violence increased.)

Claxton-Oldfield, S. & Arsenault, J. (1999). The initiation of physically aggressive behaviour by female university students toward their male partners: Prevalence and the reasons offered for such behaviors. Unpublished manuscript. (In a sample of 168 actively dating female undergraduates at a Canadian university, 26% indicated that they initiated physical aggression toward their male partners. Most common reason for such behavior was because partner was not listening to them.)

Fiebert, M. S., & Gonzalez, D. M. (1997). Women who initiate assaults: The reasons offered for such behavior. Psychological Reports, 80, 583-590. (A sample of 968 women, drawn primarily from college courses in the Southern California area, were surveyed regarding their initiation of physical assaults on their male partners. 29% of the women, n=285, revealed that they initiated assaults during the past five years. Women in their 20′s were more likely to aggress than women aged 30 and above. In terms of reasons, women appear to aggress because they did not believe that their male victims would be injured or would retaliate. Women also claimed that they assaulted their male partners because they wished to engage their attention, particularly emotionally.)

Follingstad, D. R., Wright, S., & Sebastian, J. A. (1991). Sex differences in motivations and effects in dating violence. Family Relations, 40, 51-57. (A sample of 495 college students completed the CTS and other instruments including a “justification of relationship violence measure.” The study found that women were twice as likely to report perpetrating dating violence as men. Female victims attributed male violence to a desire to gain control over them or to retaliate for being hit first, while men believed that female aggression was a based on their female partner’s wish to “show how angry they were and to retaliate for feeling emotionally hurt or mistreated.”)

Headey, B., Scott, D., & de Vaus, D. (1999). Domestic violence in Australia: Are women and men equally violent? Data from the International Social Science Survey/ Australia 1996/97 was examined. A sample of 1643 subjects (804 men, 839 women) responded to questions about their experience with domestic violence in the past 12 months. Results reveal that 5.7% of men and 3.7% of women reported being victims of domestic assaults. With regard to injuries results reveal that women inflict serious injuries at least as frequently as men. For example 1.8% of men and 1.2% of women reported that their injuries required first aid, while 1.5% of men and 1.1% of women reported that their injuries needed treatment by a doctor or nurse.

Milardo, R. M. (1998). Gender asymmetry in common couple violence. Personal Relationships, 5, 423-438. (A sample of 180 college students were asked whether they would be likely to hit their partner in a number of situations common to a dating relationship. Results reveal that 83% of the women, compared to 53% of the men, indicated that they would be somewhat likely to hit their partner.)

I will apologize for my snarkiness if you apologize for your condescending tone (“some of us actually do work”). I think that if you’re going to make suspiciously sexist sounding comments on a feminist blog, you are obligated to cite a source to support your claims. Burden’s on you. If you’re too busy working, don’t make the suspiciously sexist sounding comments on the feminist blog.

It’s great that you’re drawing attention to the issue of women’s violence against men and the way that male victims are stigmatized, but I suspect that you’re basing some of your conclusions on sloppy research. The “men’s right’s” movement is a backlash movement, a reaction to some of the successes of feminism. They often use sketchy “research” (as Zed Pobre hints, non peer reviewed research deserves a hefty dose of skepticism) to support an antifeminist agenda. Not all research is created equal; all of it deserves close scrutiny, and stuff that doesn’t go through the academic/professional screening process is suspicious.

I’m sorry for your personal experience, but the vast majority of respectable research does not support your claims. Malin provides some data in the comment above; I’ve got more.

Men’s violence and women’s violence often looks different. For example, women may bite or pull hair; men may choke, strangle, or “beat up”.

Male perpetrators are four times more likely to use lethal violence than females.

Male murder victims are substantially less likely than female murder victims to be killed by an intimate partner. In 1999, intimate partner homicides accounted for 32 percent of the murders of women and approximately four percent of the murders of men.
(Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of the Victim, 1993-1999

Men are more often victims of violence than women,but the perps are other men. In intimate relationships, men victimize women and other men more than women victimize women or men.

You can download a PDF file of this stuff here:

http://www.azcadv.org/PDFs/The%20Gender%20of%20DV.pdf

and here:

http://www.rainn.org/fullnvawsurvey.pdf

another great resource on the issue of men’s violence is Jackson Katz. He makes great connections between the social construction of masculinity and men’s drastically higher rates of violence . Good stuff; doesn’t blame “maleness” for the fact of men’s violence and offers solutions to a social problem that affects us all.

http://www.jacksonkatz.com/

“More than 90 percent of cases involve women being abused by men, with women more likely to sustain physical injury.[7,8] Domestic violence can also be a problem in same-sex relationships,[9] and there are rare cases of men being beaten by women.[8] ” From S Eisenstadt & L Bancroft, New England Journal of Medicine, 1999, vol 341(12) p 886-892.”

Enough said, I think.

Do you have a link to a copy of the full paper?

b: Indeed he (she?) did.

Alley Rat: Was too busy to look up data, some of us actually do work

Zed Pobre: considered that hence I give a link to Who started it?. Of course, women do come off with more serious injuries, but that may not be as clear-cut as the official figures suggest. see: http://www.menweb.org/throop/battery/injury-young.html

Lauren can ban me, I post here because I agree with the premise of equality, but also meritocracy. I have an ex-gf who came off very badly after fights with her husband, but fights she started, and after many instances of her beating him up w/o response. But whereas she lost a bunch of teeth he ended up with bruised eyes, a bruised ego and a reduced sperm count.
She also became aggressive towards me at times, and I had the sense to walk away when I could and do nothing more than hold her wrists/collar when I had to protect myself – Judo came in handy!
In light of this experience, I am especially keen to never judge on ‘face value’. Plus I am annoyed at her as she was career-minded and now I am behind on my dream to be a house-husband :(