Tag Archives: intimate violence

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Yesterday, tiro said,

the new rumors that women are just as abusive (specifically physically) as men and maybe even more so is just a bad rumor…. which I explained further in post #6.

I would say be careful what you label as "rumor"...

While it is possible that more violent women is new...it is not rumor.   I've worked in a public high school fairly recently and in that school, the majority of physical fighting was done by the young women.

I can offer a lot of possibilities that could contribute to a "new" phonomena.  Removing dads from the picture, or relegating them to a minor role could be preventing the teens and young adults from knowing how to interact with males in a positive way.  The scarcity of male teachers adds to that absence of positive role models.

The research shows that women instigate violence as much as men and that the greatest number of violent incidents include both partners.  To dismiss the research means denying men and women the help they need (either as violent partners or victims) AND serves to continue the "women good-men bad" attitude that political feminists seek to serve up.

(My computer got rebooted - by my son - and the tabs where I had the research got closed.  I am in the process of locating them again. )

At any rate, we're packing for a long weekend in Chicago so I'm setting the comments to "all comments need to be approved"...feel free to comment, but everything is held in moderation and I'll get to it several times.

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Since his message is that women can be violent also, I'll be assuming that Sue will find him "not credible" as well).

(here is the questionaire)

Several studies, including large and nationally representative samples, have found that female-only violence is as prevalent as or more prevalent than male-only violence, and that the most prevalent pattern is mutual violence. The 1975 and the 1985 National Family Violence Surveys both found that about half of the violence was mutual, one quarter was male-only, and ne quarter was female-only (Gelles & Straus, 1988; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980). The National Comorbidity Study (Kessler, Molnar, Feurer et al., 2001) found similar percentages. Other studies showing similar results include (Anderson, 2002; Capaldi & Owen, 2001; McCarroll, Ursano, Fan et al., 2004; Moffitt, Caspi, Rutter et al., 2001; Williams & Frieze, 2005). In all of these studies, the predominant pattern was mutual violence.

Not a Dutton to be found.

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Stets and Straus - 825 respondents:
49% reported reciprocal violence

28% reported that only the wife was violent

23% reported that only the husband was violent.

The men reported:

men struck the first blow 43.7% of the time...they reported women hitting first 44.1% of the time

The women reported:

women striking first 52.7% of the time...men hitting first 42.6% of the time.

Women are more likely to hit back (24.4% vs. 15%)

Stets and Straus (1992) combined the 1985 US National Family Violence Resurvey (N = 5,005) with a sample of 526 dating couples to generate a large and representative sample of male-female relationships, in which they reported incidence of intimate violence by gender. Using a subset of 825 respondents who reported experiencing at least one or more assaults the authors found that in ½ (49%) of the incidents the couples reported reciprocal violence, in 1/4 (23%) of the cases the couples reported that the husband alone was violent and 1/4 (28%) reported the wife alone was violent. Men (n = 297) reported striking the first blow in 43.7% of cases and that their partner struck the first blow in 44.1% of the cases. The women (n = 428) reported striking the first blow in 52.7% of the cases and that their partner struck first in 42.6% of the cases. Stets and Straus (1992) concluded that not only do women engage in a comparable amount of violence, they are “at least as likely” to instigate violence. The results also indicated that women were more likely to hit back (24.4%) than men (15%) in response to violent provocation by a partner (Straus & Gelles, 1992). This latter result is difficult to explain from the patriarchal view that women are more afraid of male violence than the reverse. Stets and Straus also analyzed for level of violence x gender. They concluded that equal levels of violence by both men and women were the most common form of violence (40% of married couples). The second most frequent form was women using severe violence against men who were either completely non-violent or who used only minor violence (about 16 % of married couples). The stereotypical pattern (male severe, female none or minor) was found for only 8% of married couples. (emphasis mine) (Donald G. Dutton)