In 2000, 1,247 women and 440 men were killed by an intimate partner. In recent years, an intimate partner killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims.Etc. And the thing about the actual death statistics is that they aren't really subject to that great bugaboo, under reporting, in the same way that battering might be. So while I'm sure women are abusing men, the vast majority of people being killed by their spouses and partners are women (by men). This suggests that there might be something else going on with male reports of abuse.
Callie Marie Rennison, U.S. Dep't of Just., NCJ 197838, Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief: Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, at 1 (2003), available at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/ipv01.pdf
# 84% of spouse abuse victims were females, and 86% of victims of dating partner abuse at were female.
# Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers
# 50% of offenders in state prison for spousal abuse had killed their victims. Wives were more likely than husbands to be killed by their spouses: wives were about half of all spouses in the population in 2002, but 81% of all persons killed by their spouse.
I consider myself a feminist. I also consider myself to have once been a woman who abused her partner.posted by jessamyn at 7:23 AM on June 22, 2009 [27 favorites]
I was fairly young -- my early 20's - and the guy I was with managed to push my buttons in a way no one ever has before or since. But that still wasn't why it happened. The real problem was that I had never known that I had had that much of a capacity for violence and anger within me, and this was the first time it had been triggered by anyone -- and I was totally unprepared for it and had no way to cope or no way to handle it. So I would react to it by slapping him in the face. A lot. Mostly he just took it, but a couple times towards the end of our relationship he hit me back. It was him hitting me back which finally woke me up and made me realize that the fact that anyone was hitting anybody was truly fucked up, so I broke up with him.
And then I tried getting help. I tried talking to friends, telling them that "holy shit, I was hitting the guy. I need some serious help here, with anger management or something like that." And that is where I started running into some unexpected gender bias, in the way people reacted to my news. When I told people that I had hit him, people either soothed me by saying "oh, he must have really done something to push you to it" or wrote it off by saying "you probably didn't really hurt him, don't worry about it." My best friend listened to my news that I had hit my boyfriend, and then recounted a story about some near-violence in her own relationship -- in which she was the victim, though. I just felt like she was so completely disconnected from what I was saying that she had somehow heard that he had hit me instead of the other way around.
People who are abusers in relationships need help. They need help realizing that they need help, and they need help coping with their anger. Men who admit they are abusers and go to seek help have a lot of resources available to them. But when I, a woman, tried to ask for help, people were in denial that I even needed it - and I had to do all that work entirely on my own. Somehow I managed to do that; it took a long time and a lot of false starts and backtracking, but I'm comfortable with my control over my anger now, and I haven't hit a single person in anger ever since.
I can't say for sure whether or not the groups advocating for men as victims of domestic violence are or are not a feminist backlash as such. But I can definitely say that there is a double standard when it comes to women as perpetrators -- and I definitely think this needs to be corrected.
"Such a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man's ivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to kick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And then, presto! Ahab seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept kicking at it. But what was still more curious, Flask -- you know how curious all dreams are -- through all this rage that I was in, I somehow seemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an insult, that kick from Ahab. "Why," thinks I,"what's the row? It's not a real leg, only a false leg." And there's a mighty difference between a living thump and a dead thump. That's what makes a blow from the hand, Flask, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane. The living member -- that makes the living insult, my little man." …— Moby-Dick
"In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and made garter-knights of; but, be your boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; be kicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back; for you can't help yourself, wise Stubb."
DOMINANCE AND SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE
In the 35 years since I began research on partner violence, bit by bit, I have seen these assumptions about prevalence and etiology contradicted by a mass of empirical evidence from my own research and from research by many others. Consequently, I have gradually come to a much more multi-faceted view of partner violence. This view recognizes the overwhelming evidence that women assault their partners at about the same rate as men, and that the motives for violence by both males and females are diverse.
Women commit more than 70% of single-partner DVposted by June at 4:51 PM on June 22, 2009 [1 favorite]
Harvard Medical School just announced a national survey by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control that examined 11,000 men and women ages 18-28 and found 24% of heterosexual relationships have had violence in them, half of it reciprocal and half non-reciprocal, and women committed more than 70% of the non-reciprocal violence and were more likely to hit first in the reciprocal violence. Both sexes suffered significant injuries.
Family Law NewsIt takes nothing but the mere accusation of domestic violence to put in place a "temporary restraining order" that severely curtails the rights of a person who in many (most?) cases has never been charged with any violent crime. That's right, no evidence is required to obtain a TRO. The court will usually require some evidence to obtain a permanent restraining order, but often these TROs are left in place for months or more without any proof to substantiate the reason why they were issued.
Protective orders are increasingly being used in family law cases to help one side jockey for an advantage in child custody…[they are] almost routinely issued by the court in family law proceedings even when there is relatively meager evidence and usually without notice to the restrained person….it is troubling that they appear to be sought more and more frequently for retaliation and litigation purposes.
Restraining Order 911If you were banned from seeing your children, kicked out of your home, your income taken, and forced to defend yourself against false accusations made without any proof which you know to be lies, wouldn't you be upset?
The way restraining orders work in the United States is for all purposes a violation of the US Constitution. You are presumed guilty until proven innocent, are punished without a trial, have no right to face your accuser in court prior to your punishment, and often do not get a speedy trial, either. You can end up listed in state and federal databases as a spousal abuser or child abuser, all without any trial or proof.
If you make the mistake of not showing up to defend yourself, thinking that you don’t want to see that nasty party who lied to get the restraining order anyway, you may find out that you will no longer be allowed to see your children, can’t get your property back, and can end up paying to maintain a home in which you cannot live or even approach without the nasty ex calling the police to have you arrested. In short, a restraining order can destroy your life and the lives of your children in short order.
Under the California Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 1994, even if you have never been charged or prosecuted for domestic violence, you can end up permanently losing the custody of your children and either have no contact or be forced to use expensive “supervised visitation centers” that often cost more per hour than the “client” (that’s what they call the person forced to use them) makes.
All it takes for this to happen is for a family law court with its weak “preponderance of evidence” standards to find that you the accused committed an act of domestic violence. People who have jobs related to children or law enforcement may lose their jobs. Immigrants may be kicked out of the country. These are all very serious consequences being decided by family law courts in which perjury is commonplace and judges routinely fail to read court filings and violate due process and court rules while applying appallingly weak judicial standards.
Violence was more frequent when both partners were involved, and so was injury — to either partner. In these relationships, men were more likely than women to inflict injury (29% versus 19%).and
The authors say they have no intention of minimizing the very real problem of serious domestic violence — the classic male batterer. The survey did not cover the use of knives, guns, choking, or burning, and it was not concerned with the kind of situation that can drive a woman to seek shelter outside the home. The view of the authors is that most intimate partner violence should not be equated with severe battering. Domestic disputes that turn physical because of retaliation and escalation do not have the same causes or the same consequences as male battering. Couples counseling is generally regarded as ineffective for batterers, but if the violence is moderate and the injuries are minor, both partners are involved, and they want to stay together, it makes sense for a therapist to work with both of them.Angiemedia's gloss of that article makes me feel that they are not, in good faith, trying to present the findings but rather to promote their own agenda. It's a really interesting study that deserves more than their facile pullquoting. Here's a link to the entire article. The major conclusion: "The context of the violence (reciprocal vs nonreciprocal) is a strong predictor of reported injury. Prevention approaches that address the escalation of partner violence may be needed to address reciprocal violence." The study also addresses its own limitations and notes
The use of a nationally representative sample greatly increases the generalizability of the findings, but this particular sample is of limited range in age (18–28 years) and likely does not include the most severely abused victims who are subjected to extreme control by their partners and may be unable or unwilling to participate in research."posted by jessamyn at 5:22 PM on June 22, 2009 [4 favorites]
ENHANCING OMBUDSMAN’S RESPONSIBILITIES WITHIN CHILD WELFARE SERVICESThis is just one county in the US having such severe problems that don't get fixed. Later I provide links to other high-profile child abuse cases that obtained convictions by prosecution misconduct and government witnesses lying.
The Grand Jury undertook this investigation after Jurors noted that CWS is the current recipient of complaints of a similar nature to those covered in previous Grand Jury reports. The current Grand Jury investigation indicates that decisions made by CWS personnel are not subjected to significant oversight although they are subject to limited internal review of the case file. Additionally, employees of CWS testified that they “have the ability to consciously manipulate the Risk Assessment tool for the purpose of supporting any decision [they] …. make.”
...
Based on recent newspaper articles and citizen complaints, there is a public perception that CWS’s internal investigations are biased in favor of the agency. Interviews with CWS managers revealed that internal investigations are limited to a review of the case file and no additional field investigation occurs. When specifically asked if they sought out the truth, managers indicated that once a child was no longer in the home, active investigation of the initial circumstances of a case ceases.
Results: Consistent with other national studies of reported child maltreatment, CIS-98 data indicate that more than one-third of maltreatment investigations are unsubstantiated, but only 4% of all cases are considered to be intentionally fabricated.Within the subsample of cases wherein a custody or access dispute has occurred, the rate of intentionally false allegations is higher: 12%. Results of this analysis show that neglect is the most common form of intentionally fabricated maltreatment, while anonymous reporters and noncustodial parents (usually fathers) most frequently make intentionally false reports. Of the intentionally false allegations of maltreatment tracked by the CIS-98, custodial parents (usually mothers) and children were least likely to fabricate reports of abuse or neglect.There is no way to make a conclusion about fathers vs. mothers given the data presented. Since they didn't present the gender data at all, not even in a simple table showing a breakout of custodial and noncustodial parents by gender, there is no basis for their generalizations. It is irresponsible, academically negligent, and smacks of bias for them to generalize the results as they have done.
It is important to note that in this study the finding of a false allegation is a clinical judgment made by the investigating child welfare worker. Despite their best intentions, an error in clinical judgment may occur both with respect to the worker’s perception of the reporter’s intentionality, and also in terms of verifying that the allegation is indeed false.So let's pretend we're the typical victim feminist trained female social worker working a case in which the mother has accused the father of sexual abuse because the kids, ages 2 and 5, are wetting their beds sometimes. Is there any physical evidence? No. Is there any medical doctor stating this is evidence? No. What do the kids say? They get upset talking with me, but don't accuse their father of anything. What did the father say about it? Don't know, didn't bother to speak with him -- he's a man, who cares what he thinks. How would I know if it was intentionally false? Kids wet beds, don't they? Well, I'm going to mark down this case as unsubstantiated.
The judgment of veracity and intentionality of the allegationswas not independently verified. Similarly,
information about custody disputes was provided by the investigating worker and was not verified through court records.
Results of this analysis show that neglect is the most common form of intentionally fabricated maltreatment, while anonymous reporters and noncustodial parents (usually fathers) most frequently make intentionally false reports. Of the intentionally false allegations of maltreatment tracked by the CIS-98, custodial parents (usually mothers) and children were least likely to fabricate reports of abuse or neglect.Many false accusations are filed by "anonymous complaints" which are professional reporters being manipulated by a person with malicious intent. They are required to file the reports. Many of these mandatory reporters lack the understanding of what they are hearing to judge if it is true or not. But they must report it.
More than half (65%) of all reports of child abuse and neglect in the study sample were from professionals or staff involved in providing services to children and families, with schools (23%) and the police (12%) providing the largest proportion of reports (Table 2). Over a quarter (31%) of reports were from family members, including postseparation custodial parents (7%), noncustodial parents (4%), relatives (17%), and the children themselves (3%).One of ways in which false allegations are made is by manipulating mandatory reporters. The lying parent goes in to a therapist and starts to complain about something to make the other parent sound bad. Next there's a child abuse report filed against the parent. So long as some of the details are verified or sound plausible (the kids wet the bed, there was a scratch on a leg, etc.) the CPS social working may decide to mark the case as "unsubstantiated" and not mark it "intentionally false" even though there have been 20 such reports like this from people manipulated by the lying parent.
This article challenges some of the misperceptions about the frequency and characteristics of intentionally false allegations in child welfare investigations and their relationship to custody and access disputes, based on a study of 7,600 child welfare investigations conducted across Canada.7600 cases sounds like a lot and on the surface seems like it should be statistically valid. But this assumes the underlying dataset is good in the first place. Consider the source of the data. It is CPS agencies. To make this argument crystal clear by being extreme, if some KKK fan were to come in here and start saying that blacks make 72 times the false allegations of whites and this is proven by a study of 9,384 allegations researched by 29 different KKK branches, would you give it any credibility? I wouldn't. If you understand how CPS agencies work, you wouldn't give their datasets much credibility, either, especially for difficult cases involving child custody conflicts.
While the CIS-98 is the most comprehensive national child maltreatment dataset available in Canada, it is important to note that the study did not track: (1) incidents that were not reported to child protection authorities; (2) reported cases that were screened out by child protection workers before being fully investigated; (3) new reports on cases already open by child protection authorities; (4) cases that were only investigated by the police; (5) cases involving separated parents who proceeded through the family courts without having full child welfare investigation.Here are some hypothetical interpretations that blow huge holes in the study because of these comments.
Again, I don't see why I or anyone should trust June's interpretations of the Straus study, especially given the boldfaced assertion of something that is demonstrably false. There is an interesting discussion to be made about dating violence, which is one of the newest areas of focus for DV and IPV researchers and one that has a lot of unexplored complexities.I didn't make a "boldface assertion of something that is demonstrably false." Your beloved study is fatally flawed for the reasons I have described.
Furthermore, the Straus study used self-reporting (with prompts, if I remember that one correctly) and was done tested by college students, which is a remarkably different method of data gathering than police records. What individuals consider to be abuse can be deeply gendered, even when presented with prompts. If there is a background normalcy of male sexual violence, a tolerated residuum, as Duncan Kennedy put it in Sexy Dressing, then we would expect that men would only identify extraordinary behavior as abusive. This is especially true when it comes to self-reporting; nobody thinks of themselves as an abuser just as nobody likes to think of themselves as a rapist, no matter how many IAT tests they take. Women, on the other hand, would be more likely to report their own abuse against this background, because there is not the same cultural backdrop that excuses and accepts these actions.If I am understanding you correctly, you're trying to say that people blow off men being violent because of some social norms. I don't think that's true, but regardless of what I think, I can demonstrate an example of people blowing off women being violent because of social norms.
Author David Thomas expands upons Farrell’s work in his book Not Guilty: The Case in Defense of Men. He adds statistics, cases, and quotes from real people to further build the case that Western society has an unfair double standard against men. For instance, one of those quotes is a female DV worker justifying why it’s OK for her to abuse her fiance:The Straus study seemed to be showing fairly consistent reporting between female and male viewpoints. That's apparently how he was trying to control for gender bias.
I argue with my fiance, I’ve slapped him round the face…
But I’m five foot five and he’s six foot three.
When female workers in domestic violence justify their own violence against men, it’s clear there is a serious problem.
Finally, the Straus study fails to consider intensity of abuse in its "both" category, a concern I listed above. If I abuse my partner every day and then finally he fights back, it's totally unclear that this ought to be categorized as mutual abuse. There are a number of interesting approaches to that question, but you're just looking to justify your own opinion, as far as I can tell.Your comment about the pattern of violence is a very good one. For instance, if a partner A berates, threatens, and follows partner B for an hour and partner B keeps trying to disengage and escape to no success but finally "loses it" and strikes partner A, how do you count that? It's vastly different than if partner A opens the door to say hello and partner B slugs partner A in the face.
NPD is commonly present in people who also suffer from BPD. The chance of having NPD in people who have BPD is 7 times higher than those who do not.I've read a lot of psychology books in the last year or so. I'm reasonably suspicious that my ex had NPD. He was an abused child himself. He played a lot of mind games and liked to claim I was paranoid or crazy and rave about how wonderful he was. My ex and my boyfriend's ex are two of a kind. They are both promiscuous, had affairs, lie compulsively, alienate their children from the other parent, and break the law without any sense of guilt. If you didn't know what they looked like and their names, but only their behaviors and attitudes, you might confuse them for the same person, or maybe related people. I joked that the two of them should meet and marry and make each other miserable, but my boyfriend was really alarmed by that as he's terrified their kids are going to be screwed up by their mother and is hoping that some decent guy will come along and marry his ex to keep an eye on the kids. But then he says it wouldn't be fair to that guy, however.
Valerie Solanas (from Wikipedia)If a man were to write about killing all women and creating an all-male society today, what do you think the reaction would be? He'd be regarded an utter and total nutcase and thoroughly discredited and maybe tossed into a psych ward on 5150 basis. Yet the radical feminists of the era tried to defend and support her!
Feminist Robin Morgan (later editor of Ms. magazine) demonstrated for Solanas' release from prison. Ti-Grace Atkinson, the New York chapter president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), described Solanas as "the first outstanding champion of women's rights."[6] Another member, Florynce Kennedy, represented Solanas at her trial, calling her "one of the most important spokeswomen of the feminist movement."[6]
After her release from prison in 1971, she was regarded by some as a martyr. When she persisted in stalking Warhol and others over the telephone, however, she was arrested again. An interview with her was published in the Village Voice in 1977. She denied that the SCUM Manifesto was ever meant to be taken literally.[7] Solanas drifted into obscurity and was in and out of mental hospitals.
In an interview with What Is Enlightenment? magazine, Daly said, "If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males."[14]If you were to refer to her as a lunatic hag witch, she'd apparently approve:
Daly says it is the role of women to unveil the liberatory nature of labels such as “Hag”, “Witch”, and “Lunatic”.Sheila Jeffreys apparently expects that all feminists should be lesbians:
In 1979, Jeffreys helped write Love Your Enemy? The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism, a pamphlet that offered a definition of a political lesbian: "We do think... that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women."If a woman wants to be a lesbian that's fine by me, but to state that feminists can and should be lesbians is to basically deep-six feminism.
From Grief to Advocacy: A Mother's OdysseyBorderlines often develop their mental illness in part because of childhood exposure to domestic violence or child abuse outside of their families. So it's not surprising that they would learn to be abusive themselves as children tend to imitate adults. This applies to men and women, and to other similar personality disorders such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, and Histrionic Personality Disorder.
Males with borderline personality disorder are prone to domestic violence and rage attacks. They make up a large percentage of the prison population and seem to be resistant to treatment as usual.
In my experience, men also are capable of behaving as family terrorists but male violence tends to be more physical and explosive. We have had thousands of international studies about male violence but there is very little about why or how women are violent. There seems to be a blanket of silence over the huge figures of violence expressed by women. Because family terrorism is a tactic largely used by women and my work in the domestic violence field is largely with women, I address this problem discussing only my work with women.She's making the point that you cannot just consider physical violence in families if you are to solve the problems of violence and abuse. Emotional and verbal violence is just as important. You take a person and subject them to day after day of extended verbal abuse and at some point, that person is likely to crack and even if the person has no history of physical violence, they reach the end of the rope regarding the threats, insults, control tactics, and misery and feel like cornered animals and strike back.
Making all of this worse are the MRAs who often encourage men to lie in court, conceivably to level what they see as an uneven playing field. If you think I'm crazy, read Alec Baldwin's book, A Promise to Ourselves. He literally encourages men to make false claims about their wives in a custody hearing, feeling that there's no way for men to get a fair shake otherwise. Plenty of "men's rights" groups repeat this mantra in public and in private. I cannot stress this enough: this is not the behavior of reasonable participants in a debate, this is fringe lunacy similar to tax protesters and far-right militia types. I'm not saying Alec Baldwin is a domestic terrorist (30 Rock is pretty great, don't get me wrong) but for fuck's sake, people need to knock this shit out.One of my friends recently read the book, and I asked her about that claim that Baldwin encourages men to lie in court. She says it doesn't say this anywhere in the book that she can remember.
WITHOUT RESTRAINT:THE USE AND ABUSE OF DOMESTIC RESTRAINING ORDERS (from page 2)So you don't like somebody else, and if you say so, then your first amendment rights can be abridged. If you say an insult about them again, then you can be sentenced to probation and community service. How is this reasonable?
In New Jersey, a judge may issue a restraining order “when necessary to protect the life, health, or well-being of a victim.”6 Obviously, any lover’s quarrel or marital tiff could be interpreted as causing “emotional distress” or somehow affecting a person’s “well-being.” That broad definition led to the following unfortunate case:
A New Jersey woman repeatedly voiced her disapproval of her estranged husband’s new-found romantic interest, which resulted in the imposition of a restraining order on her. When she later called the new girlfriend a “slut,” that was ruled to be a violation of the restraining order. She was sentenced to 6 months probation and community service.7
stay or go? is this salvageable ? <> 06/26 13:01:08She knows she's not right and points that out. But she did initiate the physical violence. From her description, he's not physically violent with her, but is very emotionally abusive. To me they both sounds like they are mentally ill.
I love my him..with all my heart. i do. And i know he loves me. But he's SO vindictive tho. If i do something wrong or make him mad or hurt his feelings...he HAS to get even or hurt me back. I made him mad so we had a huge fight. Because he was mad at me he called his ex because he KNEW thats something that would really hurt me (he did NOT sleep w/her she's n another state this isnt an infidelity issue) He seemed to be really proud when he told about calling her...he actually SAID it made him feel good to talk to her.
I had a flash of anger-I slapped him. It was wrong. in every way its wrong. I know that. I have huge amounts of regret over that action. I am in counseling for my anger issues. Ive NEVER laid a hand on him before and will do everything i can to never do that again. I just lost it when he did said what he said...before i realized what i did..it was already done. I hate that I cant undo that.
So we've talked. He said he wants to stay n the relationship n work things out and see how it goes. But meanwhile he feels justified to behave however he wants because he feels everything is on me. Its not JUST my fault...I think its both of our faults. but thats irrelevant...I just wonder how can someone love you yet be SO ready to get even with you and hurt you ON purpose? I love him and I want this to work. But he basically told me he lost all respect for me he will never look at me the same. How can we recover from that?
Im distraught over this. Can u please help me make some sense of this.
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posted by dunkadunc at 4:20 AM on June 22, 2009 [2 favorites]