What is the truth when it comes to domestic violence statistics and gender?

StalkerFishy · 2014-08-12T20:44:58+00:00

It's hard to say really, because many cases go unreported.

Here's an article talking about a study that found roughly 40% of domestic violence is against men. I believe the study's statistics ranged from the high 30's to the high 40's.

Link!

With that being said, there are some differences that should be noted. I don't have a link for this one, but there was a study that showed the rate was actually closer to a 50/50 split, however the level of severity of the domestic violence was higher for women.

Another study that just popped up here a within the last month showed that men who are the victims of domestic violence have a higher chance of being arrested if they call the police, as opposed to their abuser being arrested. Likely because in today's society, women are almost exclusively seen as the victims.

AnarchCassius · 2014-08-12T22:07:13+00:00

I made a very similair post to your similair post in another thread but I think it's more on topic and less likely to be drowned out here.

When studies disagree you can usually find the truth by comparing methodology and definition. I try very hard to be objective and analyze the original studies. Women do experience more violence but the degree has been systematically exaggerated using cherry picking and double standards. A few have claimed men experience more violence and while they are wrong I don't think they have had the same level of ability to manipulate the public eye on the data. You can find the CDC study here: http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf And an explanation and comparision with another study here: http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/

You also have to understand what is actually being said and how domestic violence or rape is actually defined in that context. When you talk about Federal Reporting rates for rape you get much lower rates than when you look at surveys of self-reported sexual assaults. The reasons being men are less likely to report such crimes and being made to penetrate is not defined as rape by Federal statutes. There have also been provisions to deny government funding to domestic violence studies that include male victims.

Likewise the recent studies showing 40% or over 50% victims include a broad amount of data. A common response has been to filter the data for several repeated incidents of severe violence rather than single incidents, stalking, emotional abuse and so on. When you do that you get a lot more female victims. However those making this point will gloss over a related one if they mention it at all. Using that sort of filter to remove female abusers (and the majority of those who abuse men are female) also removes a large portion of the female victims of male abuse that are quoted in studies. So it can't both ways. While this sort of repeated severe violence is obviously a major concern, it doesn't represent the majority of what it described as abuse in studies. So if we filter the results this way it changes the picture of a lot of studies commonly referenced. You can find a good in depth look at some of the data at this blog: http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2014/06/11/can-we-finally-nail-down-those-male-victim-statistics/

Given what we know about intimate partner violence we can assume there is under reporting. The studies that show closer to even or more male victims are surveys rather than based on police reports and tend to find greater numbers of female victims as well than those based on police reports. Under reporting is greater among male victims and combined with police bias masks the true numbers when police reports are used.

Now more violence does still occur against women based on the majority of evidence, but the margin was never wide as we believed and seems to be closing fast. It's also worth noting women do tend to suffer greater injuries from domestic violence. I think the major problem is this idea that domestic violence is a controlling pattern of repeated abuse. This is what is described by the Duluth model and what Murray Strauss calls an intimate terrorist. To be sure that exists, but we have developed an effective strategy to combat it. Since that particular flavor of abuse is more commonly committed by men we see a faster drop in domestic violence against women than against men bringing the numbers closer and closer to even.

The trouble is that it doesn't account for most of the abuse found by studies despite what decades of political rhetoric have taught. Our society has been falsely taught that abusers are never simply co-violent couples or someone who lost there temper once. This leaves us without reasonable strategies for handling such situations even as they become the most common forms of DV.

I agree domestic violence programs should put a proportionately higher focus on women but for most of the other side it seems that any programs for men are too many. http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2014/08/05/throwing-domestic-violence-victims-to-the-wolves/

Finally I recommend this analysis by Murray Straus, one of the founders of domestic violence research whose data did not match up with the political desires of certain people: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V78%20Clincal%20level%20symmetry-Published-11.pdf (It will likely take forever to load but is worth it and references other studies you can look up for more information)

Bonus: another paper by Straus that loads quickly and directly addresses the pattern of denying evidence of male victims http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf

BlackMRA-edtastic · 2014-08-12T22:15:47+00:00

Here's a section of the CDC NISVS 2010 i came across showing stats on LGBT:

For women: - Lesbian – 43.8% - Bisexual – 61.1% - Heterosexual – 35.0% For men: - Gay – 26.0% - Bisexual – 37.3% - Heterosexual – 29.0% •The lifetime prevalence of severe physical violence by an intimate partner (e.g., hit with fist or something hard, slammed against something, or beaten) was: For women: - Lesbian – 29.4% - Bisexual – 49.3% - Heterosexual – 23.6% For men: - Gay – 16.4% - Bisexual – numbers too small to report - Heterosexual – 13.9%

I think that's pretty clear in showing lesbian's having more violence than straight and lord knows what's going on with bi-sexual.

This site has all hundreds of studies reviewed and aggregated: www.domesticviolenceresearch.org

This is also required reading to explain why people this stuff has been kept under wraps 30 years of denying the Evidence

Juan_Golt · 2014-08-12T22:24:34+00:00

The important part is that statistics shouldn't guide policy. Regardless if male victims are 10% or 40%. There is no justification to inferring innocence or guilt based on gender. Same with support programs. In no other situation would this even be considered.

To answer your question. Domestic Violence stats are contradictory because people use different criteria. Feminists generally focus on Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) only. Which is strictly about people who are sexual partners. MRAs focus on DV as a whole which includes child abuse and neglect. Both sides use self-reported rates with low sampling sizes entirely too often.

There are also sociological factors. Feminists will tell you that women under report because they are afraid. MRAs will say men under report because they are judged. I think both are accurate. To what degree I'm not sure. But it's easy to see women hitting/slapping/striking men casually in many walks of life without challenge.

Where is the truth? Well lets go with something that's harder to hide behind sociology. Homicide rates. Men make up 1/4th of total IPV homicide victims women make up 3/4ths. Perhaps homicide isn't representative of DV in general, but it shows pretty clearly that men can be victims.

As an MRA I don't have a problem acknowledging that that number may be less than 40% but I find that most numbers between 20-50% are defensible depending on your criteria. I'm not looking to say that women aren't victims, or even that they aren't victims more often. I'm simply trying to establish that DV and IPV aren't strictly male perps and female victims. It's a damaging stereotype.

Source: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ipvav9311.pdf

valenin · 2014-08-13T02:10:19+00:00

The truth is that in a way, it doesn't matter.

When the argument happens, both sides end up treating it like a pissing contest, and both sides tend to do the same thing. (Admitted bias: The MRA side is less guilty of it in my opinion, but it does happen, enough that it matters.)

Side 1 will make some statement about the gender-breakdown statistics of DV.
Side 2 will then demand source citation.
Side 1 will then either disappear or provide some source. Let's assume they provide their source, because there's nothing productive to be said about the disappearing case.
Side 2 will then levy accusations against the source. It doesn't account for this, or this part of the conclusion is invalid because it's Tuesday, or the sample size is too small, or it's from a website side 2 considers too biased to be reliable, and so on.

And here's the thing. It doesn't matter. The topic is so emotionally charged at this point that there are people on both sides who WILL NOT change their mind that their side is getting the short end of the stick and the other side is just a bunch of abusers. Even if you could find a study performed perfectly scrupulously by an impeccably unbiased source, whatever conclusion it reached would be discarded by the side whose viewpoints weren't supported.

And it doesn't matter. Women are abused. Men are abused. And we spend all this time and energy arguing and splitting hairs about "well if you count 'threatened with a firearm' as abuse, our group is 30% more likely than yours to be abused" and "you can't draw that conclusion from 1000 people, you need 1250!" as if one day everyone's going to agree that one side "wins" and should have all the resources dedicated to helping them.

How about we skip all that bullshit and go right to "help abuse victims, whether they have an innie or an outie"?

MRSPArchiver · 2014-08-12T20:02:12+00:00

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sillymod · 2014-08-13T00:46:14+00:00

It all depends on how you define domestic violence.

The studies that define domestic violence very broadly show a very high incidence of domestic violence among all people. Using that criteria, you generally find high incidences of male victims of domestic violence, also.

However, when the gender symmetry is studied specifically, studies motivated to find a gender asymmetry do things like this, where they subdivide domestic violence and then disregard the data that doesn't fit their intention. Note that the study was specifically examining women's motivation for domestic violence, as if motivation is an issue that only concerns women.

So what you end up having is a two pronged argument from motivated (read: biased) individuals that says X women are victims of domestic violence, and then uses the biased symmetry studies to justify ignoring male victims.

anonlymouse · 2014-08-13T10:35:58+00:00

Here are the condensed findings of the most comprehensive review of available research on domestic violence, including 1,700 peer reviewed studies.

Title	What is the truth when it comes to domestic violence statistics and gender?
Author	rogersmith25
Upvotes	4
Comments	11
Date	August 12, 2014 8:01 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2dd7fi/what_is_the_truth_when_it_comes_to_domestic/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/what-is-the-truth-when-it-comes-to-domestic.997023 https://theredarchive.com/post/997023

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