Teen dating violence is down, but boys still report more violence than girls

https://news.ubc.ca/2018/08/29/teen-dating-violence-is-down-but-boys-still-report-more-violence-than-girls/

Overall, fewer teens are reporting experiencing physical abuse from their dating partners, with five per cent of teens reporting dating violence in 2013, down from six per cent in 2003.

However, the researchers found 5.8 per cent of boys and 4.2 per cent of girls said they had experienced dating violence in the past year.

First author Catherine Shaffer, a PhD student from SFU who was involved in the study, says more research is needed to understand why boys are reporting more dating violence.

“It could be that it’s still socially acceptable for girls to hit or slap boys in dating relationships,” she said. “This has been found in studies of adolescents in other countries as well.”

“A lot of our interventions assume that the girl is always the victim, but these findings tell us that it isn’t always so,” said Saewyc. “And relationship violence, be it physical, sexual or other forms, and regardless who the perpetrator is, is never OK. Health-care providers, parents and caregivers, schools and others can protect teens from dating violence by helping them define what healthy relationships looks like, even before their first date.”

Hoping it is possible to have a civil discussion about DV here. We know from previous studies that almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.

There is a very real violence disparity between men and women in dating.

One theory is that men get taught from an early on about honor and not beating someone while they're down. Not stabbing in the back. Women get taught they're protected and nobody should hit them because they're women. Young girls don't grasp the concept of being weaker that early on and only the idea of "I'm untouchable" gets fostered.

Another theory is that in a conflict between two men, there is always an underlying threat of violence. A man can get in another man's face only for so long before it inevitably turns physically violent. However, without the underlying threat of violence, women feel more free to become violent and antagonize. Women are more violent in relationships because the threat of physical violence rarely looms in a confrontation between a man and a woman.

Of course, the broader societal issue is that we rarely hold women accountable for violence to the same degree we hold men, even when that violence results in more grievous injuries.

Q4All: What is your theory on why women are more violent in relationships?