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October is the seventh annual Domestic Violence Awareness Month,
when activists and the media focus the nation's attention on
violence against women. However, October's events only tell half
the story. Why? Because the research on domestic violence
overwhelmingly establishes that domestic assault is not a crime
committed by men against women, but instead one committed by
both men and women. By using weapons and the element of
surprise, women are abusing their male partners as often as vice
versa.
For example,
veteran domestic violence researchers Richard Gelles, Murray
Straus, and Susan Steinmetz, who were once hailed by the women's
movement for their pioneering work on violence against women,
have repeatedly found that women are just as likely as men to
physically attack their spouses or partners.
Studies conducted by the Family Research Laboratory at the
University of New Hampshire in 1975, 1985, and 1992, found that
abuse rates were equal between husbands and wives. In fact, the
evidence suggests that abuse of wives by husbands is decreasing,
while abuse of husbands by wives is increasing.
Cal State Long Beach professor Martin Fiebert has compiled and
summarized 117 different studies with over 72,000 respondents
that found that most domestic violence is mutual and, in the
cases where there was only one abusive partner, that partner was
as likely to be female as male.
Studies by researchers R.I. McNeeley and Coramae Richey Mann
show that women are much more likely than men to use weapons and
the element of surprise. These weapons often include guns,
knives, boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball
bats.
Neither male nor
female domestic violence can generally be dismissed as
self-defense. According to Straus, for example, roughly 10
percent of women and 15 percent of men perpetuate partner abuse
in self-defense. Dr. David Fontes, the director of Stop Abuse
for Everyone (SAFE), has also found that only a small percentage
of female abusers are acting in self-defense.
It is true, as
crime statistics indicate, that women are more likely to suffer
serious injury in domestic violence than men are. However, such
statistics overstate the disparity because an abused woman is
many times more likely to report abuse as an abused man. Many
men hesitate to call the police because they assume, often
correctly, that the police will automatically treat them as if
they are the perpetrator.
Nor do husbands murder their wives
significantly more than wives murder their husbands. A 1994
Department of Justice study analyzed 10,000 cases and found that
women make up over 40 percent of those charged in familial
murders. And because women who murder their husbands tend to use
less detectable or traceable methods--such as poisoning (which
are often ruled "heart attacks") and hiring others to do the
killing (which usually aren't counted as "murders by wives" in
official crime statistics), these murders are far less likely to
be noticed than murders by men, which are usually committed with
guns.
Mainstream feminist organizations, however, have steadfastly
maintained that women are only victims of, but rarely
perpetrators of, domestic violence. As Pearson points out, such
organizations are not doing women any favors. By denying the
existence of female batterers, abusive women are not getting the
treatment and counseling services that they need. Worse, by
allowing them to go unpunished, they are encouraged to believe
that they can get away with their abuse indefinitely. This
frequently results in escalating abuse of men (and children)
and, sometimes, abuse of women when men finally strike back.
Pearson also notes that because feminists deny woman's capacity
for violence, the serious problem of lesbian battery--which
research clearly indicates is at least as common as heterosexual
battery--has been swept under the rug. Sociology professor
Claire Renzetti, author of Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in
Lesbian Relationships, says that lesbian batterers "display a
terrifying ingenuity in their selection of abuse tactics,
frequently tailoring the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities
of their partners."
The
list of prominent feminist and female dissidents who are
demanding acknowledgment of, and accountability from, female
batterers is growing. They include: Canadian Senator Anne Cools,
a former shelter director and a pioneer of the battered women's
movement; author/activist Erin Pizzey, who set up the first
battered women's shelter ever in England in 1971; Cathy Young,
author of Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to
Achieve Equality; Donna Laframboise of the Canadian National
Post; author and columnist Wendy McElroy, founder of Independent
Feminists and herself a former DV victim; Patricia Overberg and
Carol Ensign, former and current directors of the Valley Oasis
Shelter in Lancaster, California, one of the few domestic
violence shelters in the country which accepts men; Christina
Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?, which details how
feminists obtain inflated domestic violence numbers by lumping
"shouting" and "slamming doors" with real domestic abuse; former
Women's Studies professor Daphne Patai, author of Professing
Feminism; Pearson; Steinmetz; and Renzetti. Recently both the
American Medical Association and the Center for Disease Control
have issued statements acknowledging the need for attention to
male victims of domestic violence.
Familial violence – by and against both men and women – is a
serious problem in a violence-wracked America, but it is a
problem for which both men
and women share responsibility. Over the past 30 years, feminist
activists have justly called abusive men to account for their
despicable actions. It's now time to do the same for abusive
women.
This column first appeared in the
Los Angeles Daily
Journal and the
San Francisco
Daily Journal (10/15/01).
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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