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12/05/05
Female & Lesbian
Domestic Violence
Joint Parenting
Association
The summary below is taken from the
Joint Parenting Association monograph entitled "The Silence Of The
Screams: Female Violence In Intimate Relations.
An unquestioned belief about human
behaviour is that men are more aggressive than women. Yet when Frodi,
Ropert-Thorne & Macauly (1977) surveyed the empirical literature on
aggression, they found that 61% of all studies reviewed did not show men
to be more aggressive than women and that women did not show
consistently lower tendencies than men to be physically aggressive.
Murray A Straus, Richard J Gelles and
others, in 1975 and again in 1985, conducted the National Family
Violence Survey, one of the largest and most respected studies in family
violence ever done in the United States. The study, one of the few which
have surveyed both men and women, confounded conventional views on the
subject - not only are men just as likely to be the victims of family
violence, the study also showed that between 1975 and 1985 the overall
rate of family violence by men against women decreased, whereas women's
violence against men increased. Discussing the decrease in violence
against women and the increase in violence against men, Straus &
associates commented:
"Violence by wives has not been
an object of public concern. There has been no publicity, and no funds
have been invested in ameliorating this problem because it has not been
defined as a problem. In fact, our 1975 study was criticised for
presenting statistics on violence by wives. Our 1985 finding of little
change in the rate of assaults by women on their male partners is
consistent with the absence of ameliorative programs."
In 1993, to avoid accusations of
gender bias, Straus (1993) recomputed the assault rates based solely on
the responses of the 2,947 women in the 1985 study. He confirmed that
even according to women, men are the ones more likely to be assaulted by
their partner.
As part of the Winnipeg Health and
Drinking Survey, Sommer, Barnes and Murray (1992), examined the problem
of female perpetrated spouse abuse, and its relationship to alcohol
consumption and personality. Self-report results indicated that four in
ten women who are married or cohabiting engaged in some form of spouse
abuse with their male partners. Comparing these data with other family
violence research on the occurrence of male and female perpetrated
abuse, Dr Reena Sommer and her associates concluded that the rates of
wife to husband violence underscore the need to address the issue of
husband battering as a real problem.
These findings, while running contrary
to the current popular view, which holds males guilty of most family
violence, are consistent with other research which suggests that women
may be more violent (Malone, Tyree, & O’Leary 1989, Stets &
Straus 1989). For example, in the Stets & Straus (1989) study of
family violence against adults, the most frequent pattern of aggression
was mutual assault, in which both the male and female engaged in
violence against each other. In situations which were not mutually
violent, females were more violent towards males than males were towards
females. Sugarman & Hotaling (1989) summarised the results of 21
studies that reported gender differences in assault. They found that the
average rate of assault was 329 per 1000 for men and 393 per 1000 for
women. The investigators commented that a surprising finding was the
higher proportion of females than males who self-reported having
expressed violence in a dating relationship.
Moreover, other research confirms the
high rate of assault by women in courting relationships (eg Pirog-Good
& Stets 1989, Stets & Straus 1990). A recent book by N Z
academic Fletcher (2002) sums up the evidence from more than 70 studies
involving 60,000 people in the U S, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Korea
and Israel:
"The rate of violent acts (both
minor and major) reported by men and women in intimate relationships,
are roughly equivalent, however there is a slight tendency for both men
and women to report that women are more likely to be the initiators of
violence."
IS THE HIGH RATE OF ASSAULT BY WIVES
ATTRIBUTABLE TO SELF DEFENCE?
According to many women’s rights
advocates, female violence against men - if it exists at all - is purely
a self defence response to male violence. Although in some instances,
wives' initiation of violence may be described as a kind of
presumptive self-defence, the data does not support the hypothesis that
assaults by wives are primarily acts of self-defence or retaliation
(Straus 1993). Professor Murray Straus in his 1993 article Physical
Assaults by Wives: A Major Social Problem tells us that:
"research...shows that women
initiate and carry out physical violence assaults on their partners as
often as men do ...in the 1985 National Family Violence Survey for whom
one or more assaultive incidents were reported by a women respondent,
the husband was the only violent partner in 25.9% of the cases, the wife
was the one to be violent in 25.5% of the cases and both were violent in
48.6% of the cases ...women respondents indicated that they had struck
the first blow in 40% of the cases ... every study among the more than
30 describing some type of sample... has found a rate of assaults by
women on male partners that is about the same as the rate of assault by
men on female partners... Perhaps even more serious is the implied
excusing of assaults by women because they result from frustration and
anger at being dominated."
There is no question that since men
are usually bigger and stronger than women, they can do more damage
using their fists. However the average man's size and strength are
neutralised by guns and knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers
and baseball bats (McNeely & Mann 1990). This finding is supported
by McLeod’s (1984) investigation of 6200 cases of domestic assault
reported to law enforcement agencies in the United States.
The longitudinal study commenced by
the U S Department of Justice in 1973 found that 82% of
female-against-male violence involved weapons, while only 25% of
male-against-female violence did. McLeod suggested that male
victimisation is much higher in the general population than previously
thought by law enforcement authorities, as men only report serious
victimisation to the police and that most men are not willing to admit
that they have been assaulted by wives or cohabiting females. Although
25% of all offences against women were classified as aggravated
assaults, about 80% of all offences against men were classified as
aggravated assaults. In fact, none of the men reported a serious
victimisation in which no weapon was present. In noting that 73% of all
male victims sustained injuries, McLeod estimated that corresponding
figures for female victims are between 52% and 57%. She concluded that:
"...clearly, violence against men
is much more destructive than violence against women... Male victims are
injured more often and more seriously than are female victims...The data
do provide rather strong support for the view that violence against men
and violence against women are independent events. Overall differences
in weapon use, weapon choice, offensive severity, and injury are
evident."
In 1986, Marriage And Divorce Today,
an American newsletter for family therapy practitioners, reported on a
study done by Pillemer and Finkelhor of the Family Violence Research
Laboratory of the University Of New Hampshire. The study based on
interviews of over 2000 mature age persons in the Boston metropolitan
area, found that 32% of the elderly had been abused. The majority of the
abuse victims were men (52%) who had been attacked by their wives in
unprovoked occurrences of domestic violence.
Perhaps more surprising are reports
suggesting that young husbands are not spared victimisation. Male
soldiers in their military prime are not uncommonly stabbed or shot by
their wives in unprovoked episodes of violence (Ansberry 1988).
Professor Coramae Mann (1988). in her study of women convicted of
conjugal murder found that, although 58.9% of women who kill in
household encounters claim self-defence as a reason for slaying
intimates, individual case appraisal indicate the contrary possibility
that these women were the victors in a fight. She suggested that
indicators that belie the self defence motive were premeditation (56.3%)
and the offenders prior violent arrest histories (30%).
Jurik (1989), and Jurik & Gregware
(1989), in their investigation of female homicides reported that 60% of
women they studied had previous arrests. Mann (1990), in her analysis of
the circumstances surrounding partner homicide by wives, found that many
women who murder their spouses are impulsive, violent, and have a
criminal history.
This profile of violent women who
murder, provides further evidence suggesting that it is not helpful to
think of conflict among intimates in terms of patriarchy and gender
bias.
ADOLESCENT VIOLENCE
Violence among adolescent intimates is
emerging as one of the hidden social issues of the 1990's. The closed
door that has protected the secrets of this violence has begun to open.
In recent years the occurrence of violence among intimates outside the
family has been explored, particularly the idea that intra-couple
violence is not limited to adult intimates as previously assumed.
O’Keefe, Brockopp & Chew's
(1986) survey of 256 high school children found that 35.5% of the
students had experienced some form of abuse from an intimate in their
courting relationships. The study noted that the majority of the
perpetrators were girls. The study further substantiated the findings of
previous research that teenage couples engage in violence and dispelled
the myth that only adult relationships are violent. The investigators
suggested that:
"In Clinical settings, many adult
victims of violent relationships indicate that their first experience
occurred while they were still in their teens. More research is needed
to clarify this issue as well as to determine whether adults experience
a greater degree of violence as a function either of motivation or of
earlier violent relationships."
Straus & Gelles (1990) found that
two-thirds of teenagers physically attack a brother or sister at least
once in the course of a year, and in more than one-third of these cases
the attack involves severe forms of violence such as kicking, punching,
biting, choking, and attacking with knives and guns. They disturbingly
concluded that:
"These incredible rates of
intra-family violence by teenagers make the high rates of violence by
their parents seem modest by comparison."
LESBIAN PARTNER ABUSE
The existence of female-against-male
attacks is not the only aspect of women ’s capacity for violence that
has been suppressed. Another aspect of female violence that
professionals usually overlook is lesbian partner assault. Victims of
female-against-female violence - a widespread yet completely
unacknowledged issue in the lesbian community - are frequently viewed as
masochistic or crazy. Susan Morrow, one of the authors of a 1989 article
in the Journal Of Counselling And Development, witnessed a therapist
refer to a lesbian who had been assaulted by her partner as borderline
and paranoid.
The fact that the patient was a victim
was completely ignored. Morrow and her co-author Donna Hawxhurst found
that several myths - that women are less aggressive than men and
therefore don’t batter, and that women are incapable of inflicting
serious harm - have contributed to the secrecy surrounding the issue of
lesbian partner assault. They suggested that women’s rights advocates
refuse to acknowledge battered lesbians because it would endanger a
feminist gender-specific analysis that viewed battering as a consequence
of male privilege and power in society.
Barbara Hart (1986) in her
introduction to a book on lesbian battering sums up the issues for
lesbian victims of intimate violence when she writes:
"It is painful. It challenges our
dreams of a lesbian utopia. It contradicts our belief in the inherent
non-violence of women... and the disclosure of violence by lesbians...
may enhance the arsenal of homophobes... yet, if we are to free
ourselves, we must free our sisters. "
As noted above, according to every one
of the thirty studies in the United States that have examined both male
and female behaviours, women commit about half of family violence. This
finding is supported by studies of lesbian relationships, which
according to Professor Claire M Renzetti in her 1992 book "Violent
Betrayal," are almost as violent as heterosexual relationships.
Other research cited in Renzetti’s book suggests that lesbian
relationships are probably more violent. The author writes:
"Bologna, Waterman, and Dawson
(1987) discovered a high incidence of abuse in their survey of a
self-selected sample of 174 lesbians. About 26% of their respondents
reported having been subjected to at least one act of sexual violence,
59.% had been victims of physical violence, and 81% had experienced
verbal or emotional abuse. At the same time 68% of the respondents
reported that they had used violence against their current or most
recent partner and had been victimised by a partner. Similarly, in a
survey of a non-random sample of 1,099 lesbians, Lie and Gentlewainer
(1991) found that 52% of the respondents had been abused by a female
lover or partner and that 30% admitted having abused a female lover or
partner. Of those who had been victims of abuse, more than half [51.5%]
reported that they had also been abusive towards their partners... The
abuse may [range] from verbal threats and insults to stabbings and
shootings. Indeed batterers display a terrifying ingenuity in their
selection of abusive tactics, frequently tailoring the abuse to the
specific vulnerabilities of their partners."
Because of political problems,
accurate data have not been easy to collect, but Martin Hiraga of the
(US) National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce has stated that all the
available evidence indicates that (lesbian domestic violence) occurs no
less and no more than in heterosexual relationships. 'Anita,' a
spokeswoman for the Domestic Violence And Incest Resource Centre in
Melbourne, which now runs programs for victims of lesbian domestic
violence, stated that their work is greatly complicated by myth that
violence against women is committed exclusively by men . She also
expressed concern about the minimising of non-physical assault as
'ordinary relationship problems': a relationship can be extraordinarily
abusive without the violent partner laying a finger on her partner. This
type of abuse can be the hardest to put a stop to because it is so hard
to explain.
Realistic, rather than heavily-politicised,
attitudes to female violence should help to improve these problems, but
accurate data are required; reliable yet politically acceptable
methodologies to gather them have yet to be developed.
Methodological Problems
In more recent years studies have
begun to examine critically the acceptance of the assumption that only
males exercise aggression in intimate relationships. McNeely &
Robinson-Simpson (1987), and others (eg. Straus 1993), describe the
methodological short comings in previous research which permitted the
perpetuation of a gender specific analysis of familial discord. To avoid
the risk of distortion I will use their own words:
"Surveys that show higher rates
of men as aggressors invariably are based on National Crime Survey data
or official law-enforcement records, but the researchers point out these
studies are flawed methodologically because the samples are not
representative and because men are less likely to lodge official
victimisation reports... Another problem with much of the domestic
violence literature is that it is based on clinical populations,
specifically battered women receiving shelter services or therapy. Data
collected and conclusions drawn from those who seek shelter or therapy
cannot be generalised to the broader population. Victims who seek
services may differ significantly from the broader population, so the
value of these studies lies primarily in spawning clinical prescriptions
for treatment, not in describing or explaining domestic violence in
general... Studies of residents in shelters for battered women are
sometimes cited to show that it is only their male partners who are
violent. However, these studies rarely obtain or report information on
assaults by women, and, when they do, they ask only about
self-defence... precluding information on female initiated
assaults."
Conclusion
In spite of mounting evidence, the
issue of women’s violence in intimate relationships has been
discounted or ignored by the media, law enforcement agencies, the social
services and most researchers. There is reason to be alarmed when our
understanding of family violence and our policy making and allocation of
scarce resources has been significantly shaped without regard to an
abundance of research evidence showing that family violence as a social
phenomena is not gender-specific. This clearly has important
implications for research, education funding and social policy.
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