1/4 of teenage girls suffer physical violence, 1/3 sexual violence in relationships (I found this when I was searcing Google for statistics on violence against BOYS, that's how much it is ignored)

Haptick · 2012-07-16T00:39:32+00:00

FTA:

One in four girls had suffered physical violence
Almost one in five boys reported suffering physical violence

The entire report can be found if you click the link to article on the site, actually read the notice at the bottom, and follow the instructions. But for the lazy, here you go.

Rather than go "rarrrr! i disagree with this article" (because I didn't read past the headline and feel the urge to make an ad hominem attack on the University tied to the survey), read what the report actually says, specifically concerning the gender divide:

Three-quarters of girls who experienced physical or sexual violence stated a negative impact, while nearly a third reported a negative impact due to emotional violence. In contrast, around one in 10 boys reported a damaging impact due to physical or sexual violence and only 6 per cent due to emotional violence.

...a bit later...

We have previously acknowledged the possible influence that forms of young masculinities may have on a boy’s ability to recognise and report a negative impact resulting from their victimisation. As Seidler (2006) states, reflecting many other commentators, “within a dominate culture that defines masculinities in heterosexual terms it can still be difficult to discover spaces in which young men can safely explore their emotions” (page 84). Boys may therefore minimise the impact of partner violence, perhaps especially emotional hurt. Nevertheless, interview data showed little evidence of this process. Some boys did recognise the pressure they were under to portray a certain non-emotional form of masculinity and the impact of this on the acceptability of showing emotional hurt in front of male peers. However, this was reported primarily in relation to their personal feelings following the end of a relationship. Boys did not report experiencing emotional harm as recipients of partner violence, except for being annoyed.

The authors then go on to assume that boys in heterosexual relations do not express the same-level of emotional impact to violence within their heterosexual relationship, because there was generally a lack of fear of this violence. This fear was however present in homosexual relationships between two men where violence occurred. I also wonder about homosexual relationships between two women: is the fear still present? Does society instruct women to fear men, or does violence in female homosexual relations create a similar negative experience?

Much later on in their conclusions, they state that girls who dated "much older" (2+ years age difference) guys were more likely to experience violence, and more likely to be emotionally traumatized by the violence. Although its not mentioned, I wondered if the prevalence of girls dating older guys was more common than the reverse situation, and whether physically abused guys who were dating older women at the time had an increased rate of reported negative impact (the terminology they used).

The controversial part of the article is when they begin discussing theories of "gender symmetry" within domestic violence versus alternative feminist theories of "gender inequality". In this context, the authors imply that the reported trauma--not the physical act itself, shows a gender divide, and go on to suggest that:

If boys view the impact of their victimisation as negligible, they may also apply this understanding to their own actions. Thus, they may believe that their partners are also unaffected by their use of violence. These observations were upheld in discussions within the young people’s advisory group. Many male members of this group were shocked that so many female survey respondents reported a negative impact for behaviour that, based on their own experiences, they presumed was uneventful. Thus, there appears to be a fundamental need for boys to be made aware of the negative consequences of their behaviour within relationships. This is not to imply that boys’ experiences of victimisation should be ignored. It is important to recognise that, at least for a minority of boys, their experiences resulted in a negative impact. For these boys, the impact of the violence may be especially difficult to deal with due to the attitudes of their peers. Recent developments in the domestic violence field have recognised the position of men as survivors of partner violence and a number of refuges for men have now been established (see Nadeem 2009). Nevertheless, we need to be cautious that attention on this small minority of male teenage victims does not detract from the much wider experiences of girls.

My initial criticism of this analysis is how one-sided it is: it never stops to reflect upon how the girls reacted to guys who felt victimized, to see if there was a difference in the gender reactions to violence. In addition to playing into the stereotype that men are always the abusers and women always the victims, which this study itself refutes, this analysis presents a couple problems: (1) their later recommendation for recognizing the fundamental gender differences in intervention is partially unsupported, because they only addressed the gender-differences for the case of the women being the victim and the man the abuser and no other case is discussed; and (2) classifying "victim" solely on terms of the reported negative impact, which they had just claimed to be under-reported, and using that to somewhat dismiss the need of teenage male victims of domestic abuse.

However, this survey does raise many questions regarding the perception of fear across genders and has some important suggestions concerning counseling. For example, it does introduce talking about coercive, controlling behavior as a form of abuse (without numbers), and while they again relate it back to the lack of fear for males, they then state controlling behavior has more of an effect when "accompanied with wider power dynamics".

The study does overwhelming favor girls, statistically (n = 62 vs n = 29 for males), and this may bias many of their "interview anecdotes" that they attempt to pass off as data in their conclusions; however, it also doesn't cling to ideas of absolute gender inequality, though it does often shift towards them at times. Nor does it propose that men are "brutes" like other "feminist" studies, instead suggesting that gender differences in how domestic violence breeds fear may attribute to a lack of empathy. However, the study does fall relatively flat in actually addressing this issue outside of the heterosexual, woman-victim case, which in turn leaves their recommendations for counseling very much incomplete.

FYI: my reason for doing this was to show how criticism, fairly and rationally levied, may end up in better understanding later on, should anyone see this and decided to address some of the flaws in the aforementioned study. This is the fundamental basis for the "academia" some have bashed.

MartialWay · 2012-07-16T00:08:50+00:00

LOL at these stats, how can the rate of female teens experiencing violence in relationships be higher than the rate of female teen violence overall? Did a bunch of the abusive teen boyfriends go around "un-beating" the other victims of violence?

The numbers are blatantly cooked.

ZimbaZumba · 2012-07-15T22:17:51+00:00

Anything form Bristol University should instantly be categorised as biased. I have read the source report for these numbers; it is not peer reviewed, also its experiemental design is shocking and clearly designed to obtain these results.

Frankly Academia in general has lost it reputation as an objective authority on social issues, too many academics have compromised their academic integrity for political purposes. The Bristol Gender Group is one of the worst.

yourfaceyourass · 2012-07-15T21:52:44+00:00

I am always skeptical of statistics, especially when they don't even god damn mention the methods for polling.

I googled the same thing and found this though so lets not succumb to feminazis and feel victimized because there isn't any research done on this.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/01/30/a-hidden-crime-domestic-violence-against-men-is-a-growing-probl/

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