From: zen@death.corp.sun.com (d)
Newsgroups: alt.feminism
Subject: Re: feminist sound bytes
Followup-To: alt.feminism
Date: 14 Dec 92 12:33:54
Organization: savage hackers
NNTP-Posting-Host: death.corp.sun.com
In-reply-to: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com's message of 14 Dec 92 10:49:43 GMT


  More stats, discussion, etc., from a post over a year ago... just FYF
(for your fun.)

 -- d

From: bevans@carina.unm.edu (Mathemagician)
Newsgroups: alt.sex
Subject: Husband Battering Reference (LONG!!!!)
Date: 31 Oct 91 21:50:05 GMT
Organization: Society for the Preservation of E. coli
Received: by areaplg2.corp.mot.com; Wed, 30 Oct 91 12:27:39 CST    
Received: by porsche.corp.mot.com; Wed, 30 Oct 91 12:28:16 CST    
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 91 12:28:16 CST
From: bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris)
To: bevans@carina.unm.edu
Subject: Re: Request for Husband Battering Post
Newsgroups: soc.men
Organization: Motorola, CCR&D, CORP, Schaumburg, IL

In article <09fdvyj@lynx.unm.edu> you write:
)As usual, I have forgotten to save an important post.  Various people
)have taken issue with my claims that males are beaten just as often
)and just as violently by their female spouses as females are by their
)male spouses.
)
)Therefore, I am requesting of anybody the posting that lists the two
)studies that came to this conclusion.
)
)For those who may not recall, the studies broke "violence" down into
)categories such as hit, slapped, threatened, kicked, threatened to use
)weapon, used weapon, etc.
)
)Post or email.
)
)Thanks in advance....
)
)-- 
)Brian Evans          |If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would
)bevans@hydra.unm.edu |be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's Scientific Method!

I've been working on a FAQ, but don't have anything yet.  Here are some
of the bits and pieces, though.

----
Dave Gross
                               Husband Battering

      Instead of doing the regular reports on our readings this week, I have
 decided to do a brief report on husband battering.  I hope this is okay.  If
 not, please let me know, and I'll stick to the readings in the future.

      Part of the reason I had for doing this was that I realized on Friday in
 class that I was throwing out a lot of statistics and information that
 contradicted some very widely- and commonly-held beliefs about family
 violence.  I know that when I first heard some of these assertions I had a
 hard time believing them, and there is no reason for me to expect that my
 classmates will be any more willing to accept these arguments without
 documentation than I was.

      The first reaction upon hearing about the topic of battered men, for
 many people, is that of incredulity.  Battered husbands are a topic for jokes
 (such as the cartoon image of a woman chasing her husband with a
 rolling-pin).  One researcher noted that wives were the perpetrators in 73%
 of the depictions of domestic violence in newspaper comics (Saenger 1963).

      Battered husbands have historically been either ignored or subjected to
 ridicule and abuse.  In 18th-century France, a battered husband "was made to
 wear an outlandish outfit and ride backwards around the village on a donkey"
 (Steinmetz & Lucca 1988).

      Even those of us who like to consider ourselves liberated and
 open-minded often have a difficult time even imagining that husband battering
 could take place.  Although feminism has opened many of our eyes about the
 existance of domestic violence, and newspaper reports often include incidents
 of abuse of wives, the abuse of husbands is a rarely discussed phenomenon.

      One reason researchers and others had not chosen to investigate husband
 battering is because it was thought to be a fairly rare occurrence.  Police
 reports seemed to bear this out (Steinmetz 1977), with in some cases a ratio
 of 12 to 14.5 female victims to every one male victim.

      But another reason is that because women were seen as weaker and more
 helpless than men due to sex roles, and men on the other hand were seen as
 more sturdy and self-reliant, the study of abused husbands seemed relatively
 unimportant.

      In 1974, a study was done which compared male and female domestic
 violence.  In that study, it was found that 47% of husbands had used physical
 violence on their wives, and 33% of wives had used violence on their husbands
 (Gelles 1974).  Half of the respondents in this study were selected from
 either cases of domestic violence reported to the police, or those identified
 by the social service agency.

      Also in 1974, a study was released showing that the number of murders of
 women by men (17.5% of total homicides) was about the same as the number of
 murders of men by women (16.4% of total homicides).  This study (Curtis
 1974), however, showed that men were three times as likely to assault women
 as vice-versa.  These statistics came from police records.

      [The murder statistic was no big news, by the way.  In 1958, an
 investigation of spousal homicide between 1948 and 1952 found that 7.8% of
 murder victims were husbands murdered by wives, and 8% were wives murdered by
 husbands (Wolfgang 1958).  More recently, in a study of spousal homicide
 in the period from 1976 to 1985, it was found that there was an overall
 ratio of 1.3:1.0 of murdered wives to murdered husbands, and that "Black
 husbands were at greater risk of spouse homicide victimization than Black
 wives or White spouses of either sex" (Mercy & Saltzman 1989)]

      The subject of husband-battering had finally been addressed, but not to
 the great satisfaction of anyone.  Although it had finally been shown that
 there was violence being perpetrated both by wives and husbands, there was no
 information about relative frequency or severity, or who initiated the abuse
 and who was acting in self defense.  Furthermore, some researchers became
 concerned that the use of police or social services references in choosing
 subjects to study might be biasing the results.  In short, they recognized
 that battered husbands might be nearly invisible next to their female
 counterparts.

      In 1976, for instance, in a critique of the Curtis report (which found
 women less likely to assault, but as likely to murder, as men), Wilt & Bannon
 wrote that "nonfatal violence committed by women against men is less likely
 to be reported to the police than is violence by men against women; thus,
 women assaulters who come to the attention of the police are likely to be
 those who have produced a fatal result."

      In 1977, Suzanne Steinmetz released results from several studies showing
 that the percentage of wives who have used physical violence is higher than
 the percentage of husbands, and that the wives' average violence score tended
 to be higher, although men were somewhat more likely to cause greater injury.
 She also found that women were as likely as men to initiate physical
 violence, and that they had similar motives for their violent acts (Steinmetz
 1977-78).

      Steinmetz concluded that "the most unreported crime is not wife beating
 -- it's husband beating" (Langley & Levy 1977).

      In 1979, a telephone survey was conducted in which subjects were asked
 about their experiences of domestic violence (Nisonoff & Bitman 1979).  15.5%
 of the men and 11.3% of the women reported having hit their spouse; 18.6% of
 the men and 12.7% of the women reported having been hit by their spouse.

      In 1980, a team of researchers, including Steinmetz, attempted to
 address some concerns about the earlier surveys (Straus, Gelles & Steinmetz,
 1980).  They created a nationally representative study of family violence and
 found that the total violence scores seemed to be about even between husbands
 and wives, and that wives tended to be more abusive in almost all categories
 except pushing and shoving.

      Strauss & Gelles did a followup survey in 1985, comparing their data to
 a 1975 survey (Strauss & Gelles 1986).  They found that in that decade,
 domestic violence against women dropped from 12.1% of women to 11.3% while
 domestic violence against men rose from 11.6% to 12.1%.  The rate of severely
 violent incidents dropped for both groups:  From 3.8% to 3.0% of women
 victimized and from 4.6% to 4.4% for men.

      In 1986, a report appeared in Social Work, the journal of the National
 Association of Social Workers (Nov./Dec. 1986) on violence in adolescent
 dating relationships, in which it was found that girls were violent more
 frequently than boys.

      Another report on premarital violence (O'Leary, et al) found that 34% of
 the males and 40% of the females reported engaging in some form of physical
 aggression against their mates in a year.  17% of women and 7% of men
 reported engaging in severe physical aggression.  35% of the men and 30% of
 the women reported having been abused.

      Also in 1986, Marriage and Divorce Today, a 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 elderly persons in the Boston
 metropolitan area, found that 3.2% of the elderly had been abused.  52% of
 the abuse victims were men.

      The idea of women being violent is a hard thing for many people to
 believe.  It goes against the stereotype of the passive and helpless female.
 This, in spite of the fact that women are known to be more likely than men to
 commit child abuse and child murder (Daly & Wilson 1988 report 54% of
 parent-child murders where the child is under 17 were committed by the mother
 in Canada between 1974 and 1983, for instance.  The Statistical Abstract of
 the United States 1987 reports that of reported child maltreatment cases
 between 1980 and 1984 between 57.0% and 61.4% of these were perpetrated by
 the mother.  Nagi 1977 found 53.1% of perpetrators were female, 21% male and
 22.6% both.  Note that because mothers tend to have more access to children
 than do fathers that these results should not be interpreted to mean that
 were things equal, women would still commit more abuse).

      In addition, a study in a doctoral dissertation by psychologist Vallerie
 Coleman of 90 lesbian couples, showed that 46% had experienced repeated
 violent incidents (Garcia, 1991).

      Results like these are greated with great suspicion by those who see
 domestic violence as a political issue to be exploited rather than a social
 problem to be solved.

      Coramae Mann, a criminologist at Indiana University, studied the case
 records of all murders committed by women between 1979 and 1983 in six major
 U.S. cities.  Her findings contradicted commonly-held ideas about women who
 murder, and she was criticized by some people for this.

      "They would raise the question, 'Well you have these poor battered
 women.'  I said these weren't poor battered women.  Many already had violent
 criminal records.  They weren't weak or dependent.  They were angry."

      Strauss & Gelles commented in their 1986 report that "violence by wives
 has not been an object of public concern...  In fact, our 1975 study was
 criticized for presenting statistics on violence by wives."

      So domestic violence is an issue framed in the media and in the
 political arena as one of male perpetrators and female victims.  Violence in
 gay and lesbian relationships is rarely discussed, and violence against men
 in heterosexual relationships less so.

      When it is addressed, there is a response.  When I became the caretaker
 of a memorial fund for a male victim of domestic violence, I unexpectedly
 took on the role of counselor for men calling from all over the country
 to talk to me at length about their or their father's victimization.  When
 the subject of battered husbands was raised on British television
 and the London Times did an article on the subject, hundreds of calls came
 in from male victims to a special helpline set up by a Women's Aid group
 (Rooke 1991).

      The terms "wife beating" and "battered women" have become political
 expressions, rather than descriptions of reality.  And because the issue of
 domestic violence has been substantially taken out of the arena of serious
 sociological study, and thrust into the political arena, the definitions of
 spousal abuse, and the proposed remedies to spousal abuse, will be political
 ones -- not necessarily ones which reflect the reality of the existing
 problems.

      In a book on domestic violence, Roger Langley and Richard C. Levy
 conclude a chapter on battered husbands by saying, "Husband abuse should
 not be viewed as merely the opposite side of the coin to wife abuse.  Both
 are part of the same problem, which should be described as one _person_
 abusing another _person_.  The problem must be faced and dealt with not in
 terms of sex but in terms of humanity" (Langley & Levy 1977, p. 208).
 Ironically the book in which this quote appears is entitled "Wife Beating:
 The Silent Crisis."

      Legislation about domestic violence is always orientated toward the
 female victim.  For instance, in 1991, Senator Joseph Biden again introduced
 the "Violence Against Women Act" which at this writing has passed the
 senate Judiciary Committee.  It has a section called "Safe homes for Women"
 which specifically allocates funds to "women's" shelters (Biden 1991, also see
 Boxer 1990).

      Also note actions like that of Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste who
 granted clemency to 25 women who were in prison for murdering their husbands.
 The reason he gave for this was the "Battered Woman Syndrome" which,
 obviously, no man can claim as his defense (Wilkerson 1990).  There is very
 little concern shown either for the idea of making spousal abuse a capital
 crime with the victim as extra-judicial executioner, nor for the idea that
 perhaps some of the men who murder their spouses might be suffering from an
 analogous "Battered Man Syndrome."

      There is only one case I am aware of in which a man was able to use a 
 similar defense.  Warren Farrell writes about it in his book _Why Men Are the
 Way They Are_ (Farrell 1986, p. 231):

         Betty King had beaten, slashed, stabbed, thrown dry acid on,
         and shot her husband.  Eddie King had not sought prosecution
         when she slashed his face with a carpet knife, nor when she
         left him in a parking lot with a blade in his back.  Neither
         of these incidents even made the police records as
         statistics.  She was only arrested twice -- when she stabbed
         him so severely in the back and so publicly (in a bar) that
         the incidents had to be reported.

         All these stabbings, shootings, and acid-throwings happened
         during a four-year marriage.  During a subsequent shouting
         match on the porch of a friend's house, Betty King once again
         reached into her purse.  This time Eddie King shot her.  When
         an investigation led to a verdict of self-defense, there was
         an outcry of opposition from feminists and the media.

      Farrell compares this case, in which "a two-second delay could have
 meant his death," to that of the celebrated case made into the television
 movie The Burning Bed in which the protagonist murdered her husband while he
 slept.

      In conclusion, I think that the available data show that husband
 battering is a serious problem, comparable to the problem of wife battering.
 Even if the statistics collected in the last several years are completely
 wrong and only one in 14 victims of spousal abuse are men, these are men who
 are hurting and need services that are currently not available.

      There is such a strong stigma against being a battered man, carried over
 from medieval times when the battered man was considered the guilty party,
 that special attention should be paid to reaching out to these victims.
 Simply opening up "Women's Shelters" to men is not enough.



                                  References

        Biden, Joseph "Violence Against Women Act of 1990" (S. 15) 1991.

        Boxer, Barbara "A Bill to combat violence and crimes against women
    on the streets and in homes" (H.R. 5468) 101st Congress, 2nd Session,
    August 3, 1990

        Curtis, L.A. Criminal violence:  National patterns and behavior
    Lexington Books, Lexington MA, 1974

        Daly, M. & Wilson, M. "Parent-Offspring Homicides in Canada,
    1974-1983" Science v. 242, pp. 519-524, 1988

        Farrell, Warren _Why Men Are the Way They Are_ McGraw-Hill, New York,
    1986, p. 231

        Garcia, Jane "The Cost of Escaping Domestic Violence" Los Angeles
    Times May 6, 1991

        Gelles, R.J. The violent home:  A study of physical aggression
    between husbands and wives Sage, Beverly Hills CA, 1974

	Langley, Roger & Levy, Richard C. _Wife Beating:  The Silent Crisis_
    Pocket Books, New York 1977

        Marriage and Divorce Today "First Large-Scale Study Reveals Elder
    Abuse is Primarily by Wives Against Husbands" December 15, 1986

	Mercy, J.A. & Saltzman, L.E. "Fatal violence among spouses in the
    United States, 1976-85" American Journal of Public Health 79(5):
    595-9 May 1989

        Nagi, Saad Child Maltreatment in the United States Columbia
    University Press, New York, p. 47, 1977

        Nisonoff, L. & Bitman, I "Spouse Abuse:  Incidence and Relationship
    to Selected Demographic Variables" Victimology 4, 1979, pp. 131-140

        O'Leary, K. Daniel; Arias, Ilena; Rosenbaum, Alan & Barling, Julian
    "Premarital Physical Aggression" State University of New York at Stony
    Brook & Syracuse University

	Rooke, Margaret "Violence in the Home" RadioTimes 16-22 March 1991
    p. 8.

        Saenger, G. "Male and female relation in the American comic strips"
    in The funnies:  An American idiom M. White & R.H. Abel editors, The
    Free Press, Glencoe IL, 1963, p. 219-223

        Sexuality Today Newsletter "Violence in Adolescent Dating
    Relationships Common, New Survey Reveals" December 22, 1986 (reporting
    on a report in Social Work  contact Karen Brockopp) pp 2-3.

        Statistical Abstract of the United States 1987 table 277

        Steinmetz, Suzanne K. The cycle of violence:  Assertive, aggressive
    and abusive family interaction Praeger Press, New York, 1977

        Steinmetz, Suzanne K. "The Battered Husband Syndrome" Victimology
    2, 1977-1978, p. 499

        Steinmetz, Suzanne K. and Lucca, Joseph S. "Husband Battering" in
    Handbook of Family Violence Van Hasselt, Vincent B. et al. editors,
    Plenum Press, New York 1988, p. 233-246

        Strauss, M.A., Gelles, R.J., and Steinmetz, S.K. Behind closed
    doors:  Violence in American families Doubleday, New York, 1980

        Strauss, M.A. & Gelles, R.J. "Societal change and change in family
    violence from 1975 to 1985 as revealed by two national surveys" Journal
    of Marriage and the Family 48, po. 465-479, 1986

        Wilkerson, Isabel "Clemency Granted to 25 Women Convicted for
    Assault or Murder" New York Times December 21, 1990

        Wilt, G.M. & Bannon, J.D. Violence and the police:  Homicides,
    assaults and disturbances The Police Foundation, Washington DC, 1976

        Wolfgang, M. Patterns in Criminal Homicide Wiley, New York, 1958


-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- dgross@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


In article <1991Oct8.182741.25695@ecs.comm.mot.com> bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
>
>The survey data doesn't (and can't, IMO) address this point - what
>constitutes self-defense is a judgment call.  It may (and probably does)
>involve some cultural bias.

Nevertheless, it does provide limiting factors.  The best data show that 
in only about 50% of the cases does abuse go both ways.  In 25% of the 
cases the woman is the only abuser, and in 25% of the cases the man is 
the only abuser.  (I believe these data are from _Behind Closed Doors_).
Even if we assume that, in every single one of those 50% of cases, the 
man is the aggresor and the woman is just defending herself, then at minimum,
25% of the time, the woman is the primary observer.  From the data then,
at absolute minimum, there is one abusive woman for every three abusive men,
and one abused man for every three abused women.  (Standard caveat: the
data have been collected only for heterosexual couples.)

I don't really think that situations where there is one aggressor and one
defender typically last very long.  Either the couple settles into a pattern
where both abuse each other and it becomes meaningless to say who is the
aggressor and who is the victim (the Hatfields and McCoys scenario) or the
act of defense brings the situation to a head and something happens to stop
either the relationship, the abuse, or the heart of one of the participants.

-EMP

----

The reason that everything you have read goes against the conclusions of these
study is this.  There are two kinds of work being done to measure spouse abuse.
One kind uses small, nonrepresentative samples which are preselected, such as
by getting the names from police reports or the membership rolls of women's
support groups.  The other kind is done using large, random, representative
samples, taking great care to prevent preselection and the biases of the
experimenters from influencing the results.  Some people with political axes
to grind have siezed upon the former kind of results and made them almost 
ubiquitous. 


>From 'Intimate Violence' by Straus and Gelles:

To start off, I must note that these figures show only raw incidents of
violence, and do _not_ take into account motivation or 'self defense'.

To quickly summarize - rates for total violence (including the less severe
types) for husbands and wives were close, within 10% of each other, with
one survey showing husbands as more violent and the other with wives as 
more violent. Rates for the more severe forms of violence showed that wives
were slightly (20% in one survey, 40% in another) more likely to be commit 
severe violence than husbands.

(all figures are rates per 1000 couples per year and are based on two 
national surveys of a representative population sample)

Rates per yer per 1000 couples of various forms of violence.

                                     Survey #1             Survey #2
                                 husbands  wives      husbands  wives
1) Threw something                    28     52            28     43
2) Pushed, grabbed, or shoved        107     83            93     89
3) Slapped                            51     46            29     41
4) kicked, bit, or hit with fist      24     31            15     24
5) Hit or tried to hit with something 22     30            17     30
6) Beat up                            11      6             8      4
7) Threat with gun or knife            4      6             4      6
8) Used gun or knife                   3      2             2      2

Overall violence (1-8)               121    116           113     121
severe violence  (5-8)                38     46            30      44

To give a little background on how the rates of violence were determined,
I include the following question from the published survey.

Question 35:
No matter how well a couple gets along, there are times when they
disagree, get annoyed with the other person, or just have spats or fights
because they're in a bad mood or tired or for some other reason.  They
also use many different ways of trying to settle their differences.  I'm
going to read some things that you and your spouse might do when you have
an argument.  I would like you to tell me how many times in the last 12
months you:

a) Discussed an issue calmly
b) Got information to back up your/his/her side of things
c) Brought in or tried to bring in someone to settle things
d) Insulted or swore at him/her

...

m) Slapped him or her
... <rest of items covered by 1-8 go here>

Again,  these surveys do not attempt to address the issue of cause and effect
in any way, including the issue of 'self defense', and that is probably 
their weakest point.  They do report the fact that violent behavior between
husbands and wives is comparable in frequency and amount.


The well-designed studies on spouse abuse do not rely on police reports at
all.  Instead, they rely on surveys and interviews with a scientifically 
selected representative sample of the population.

The most rigorous such survey done to date was done by Straus, Gelles, and
Steinmetz and was reported in several places, including a paper by Steinmetz
in 1977-1978, _Victimology_, 2:3/4.  The study used a nationally-representative
(United States), randomly selected sample of 2,143 men and women.  For the 
survey, the Conflict Resolution Scales (I believe they are called) were used.
These are a series of questionnaires that are somewhat of a standard; they have
been reviewed by quite a lot of people.  I have read them, and they are 
exceptionally well written.  First, they start off saying something like,
"No matter how well a couple may get together, there are times when 
disagreements arise.  Different people use different strategies for resolving
conflicts."  Then the questions appear, ordered from most socially acceptable 
and even socially encouraged to most socially unacceptable.  The careful 
wording and order minimize the uneasiness of talking about such things, which
results in a high completion rate for the survey (I think they got around 78%)
as well as a high degree of honesty.  It found that about 12% of husbands and
about 12% of wives engaged in some form of violence during the 1-year time
period covered by the survey.

Of course, the next question that immediately arises is "What constitutes
violence?"  So, here's the percentage breakdown on incidents

                                        Husbands    Wives
Throwing things at one's spouse             3%        5%
Pushing or shoving                         11%        8%
Hitting or slapping                         5%        5%
Kicking                                     2%        3%
Hitting with an object                      2%        3%
Threatening with knife or gun               0.4%      0.6%
Using knife or gun                          0.3%      0.2%
Any of the above                           12%       12%

---

Of course, in most cases, there were multiple instances of violence in the
year.

>Thus, i think it's dumb to sit here and argue if men get battered less often/
>as often/more often than women.  Plain and simple: Way too many PEOPLE get
>battered.  It needs to be stopped, and sitting here arguing about which sex
>is more at fault doesn't stop the hitting.

Well, I certainly agree with your plain and simple.  The problem is, just
saying that doesn't really seem to affect people.  There seems to be, in
some people, a very strong and nearly impenetrable mental block against 
believing that wives can physically abuse husbands.  About half of the 
people that I have talked to seem to have it.  It's very strange.  Some
people have no difficulty with the concept.  With some people, it's as if
their brain siezes up.  Unfortunately, a majority of the well known social
scientists in the field seem to be the latter case.  Steinmetz is the biggest
bright shining exception.

Even when a well designed study is staring them right in the face, they will
go to the most extreme lengths to try to make people believe that it's wrong,
it doesn't really matter, or it should be suppressed because it is dangerous.
They will argue that it doesn't matter because men are generally stronger 
(thus showing a frightening lack of understanding of abuse dynamics).  They
will argue that it is easier for a man to be abused because he's a member of
an oppressive class.  They will argue that it is merely an attempt to distract
from battered wives, which with typically circular logic, they will insist is
the only important problem.  They will argue that we only have a limited amount
of resources, so we should ignore all the men until all the women have been
helped.

The _Victimology_ article provides an excellent example of this.  The issue
I mentioned was a special double issue on spouse abuse and family violence.
It had at least a dozen articles on wife abuse, and the one by Steinmetz was
the only one that suggested that husbands could be abused as well.  It's 
position in the magazine was scarcely even as a token.  Yet the editors 
could still not resist the temptation to marshall more bogus sophistry than
you normally get in a whole day of PBS political talk shows to attack the
article.

There's something going on here, and it's big, and it's strong, and people
love to clutch it dearly to their breasts.  The only way I know how to get
through that is to keep at it until it gives way.

The closest battered husband's shelter to me is, interestingly enough, also
the closest to you.  It's in Denmark.  Shelters for battered women were 
started on a groundswell of public opinion, based on sympathy.  Men don't 
have access to as much sympathy, but the enormous resistance to the idea 
goes far beyond this mere lack.  It forms a very large, very heavy roadblock,
blocking the way toward progress.

So, until people in general come to believe that a man trapped in an abusive
relationship is as deserving of help as a woman trapped in an abusive 
relationship, I am not going to shut up.

-EMP

----

A recent paper corroborates the conclusions of earlier papers cited in 
soc.men regarding spouse abuse.  Two notable conclusions that counter 
popular belief are:

1.  Spousal homicide and violence rates against men are very close to 
those against women.

2.  Spousal homicide rates against black men are higher than those 
against black women or nonblacks of either sex.

Mercy JA., Saltzman LE., Intentional Injury Section, Centers for Disease 
Control, Atlanta, GA 30333. May 1989. Fatal violence among spouses in 
the United States, 1976-85. American Journal of Public Health: 
79(5):595-9.

Abstract:

	In this paper we examine patterns and trends in homicides 
	between marriage partners in the United States for 1976 through 
	1985 using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 
	Supplemental Homicide Reports (FBI-SHR). We identified 16,595 
	spouse homicides accounting for 8.8 per cent of all homicides 
	reported to the FBI-SHR during this 10-year period. The rate of 
	spouse homicide for this 10-year period was 1.6 per 100,000 
	married persons. The risk of being killed by one's spouse was 
	1.3 times greater for wives than for husbands. Black husbands 
	were at greater risk of spouse homicide victimization than 
	Black wives or White spouses of either sex. The risk of 
	victimization was greater for spouses in interracial than in 
	intraracial marriages and increased as age differences between 
	spouses increased. From 1976 through 1985, the risk of spouse 
	homicide declined by more than 45.0 per cent for both Black 
	husbands and wives but remained relatively stable for White 
	husbands and wives. Demographic patterns in the risk of spouse 
	homicide were similar to those reported for nonfatal spouse 
	abuse suggesting that the causes of spouse homicide and 
	nonfatal spouse abuse may be similar. 
	
These results indicate once again that men, especially black men, are
greatly neglected as victims of domestic violence.

-SS

I came across another recent paper that measures domestic aggression 
against men (one of very few).  This one concludes that the incidence of 
physical aggression is very close in both directions, but that woman-
against-man aggression is significantly higher in earlier stages of the 
relationship, and nonsignificantly higher in later stages.  Women are more
likely than men to continue a pre-marriage pattern of aggression at least
2.5 years into the marriage.  Within a relationship, physical aggression
is typically unidirectional.

O'Leary KD.  Barling J.  Arias I.  Rosenbaum A.  Malone J.  Tyree A. 
April, 1989. Prevalence and stability of physical aggression between 
spouses: a longitudinal analysis. Journal of Consulting & Clinical 
Psychology. 57(2):263-8.

Abstract:

   Community couples (N = 272) were assessed in a longitudinal study of 
   early marriage. More women than men reported physically aggressing 
   against their partners at premarriage (44% vs. 31%) and 18 months 
   (36% vs. 27%). At 30 months, men and women did not report 
   significantly different rates of aggression (32% vs. 25%). However, 
   using either the self-report or the partner's report, the prevalence 
   of aggression was higher for women than men at each assessment 
   period. Modal forms of physical aggression for both men and women 
   were pushing, shoving, and slapping. Conditional probability analyses 
   indicated that the likelihood of physically aggressing at 30 months 
   given that one had engaged in such aggression before marriage and at 
   18 months after marriage was .72 for women and .59 for men. 
   Furthermore, 25-30% of the recipients of physical aggression at all 
   three assessment periods were seriously maritally discordant at 30 
   months. 

-SS

The reason that everything you have read goes against the conclusions of these
study is this.  There are two kinds of work being done to measure spouse abuse.
One kind uses small, nonrepresentative samples which are preselected, such as
by getting the names from police reports or the membership rolls of women's
support groups.  The other kind is done using large, random, representative
samples, taking great care to prevent preselection and the biases of the
experimenters from influencing the results.  Some people with political axes
to grind have siezed upon the former kind of results and made them almost 
ubiquitous. 

In addition to the references in my posting, here is another:

Steinmetz, S., and Lucca, J. S., 1988: Husband Battering.
_Handbook of Family Violence_ Vincent B,. Van Hasselt, Ed.  
New York: Plenum Press.

If these are not sufficient, I have others.  I am not going to type them
in now because, quite frankly, I am sick and tired of banging my head 
against a brick wall just for the satisfaction of seeing the pretty red
stain.  

------------------------------------------

In article <2017@borg.cs.unc.edu> davidson@hatteras.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Davidson) writes:
>In his book Why Men Are the Way They Are, Warren Farrell describes a study 
>conducted by Drs. Murray Straus, Suzanne Steinmetz, and Richard Gelles 
>(Suzanne Steinmetz, "The Battered Husband Syndrome," Victimology, vol. 2, 
>nos. 3-4, 1977-1978, pp. 499-509).

Besides the publication, the study is also described in good detail in 
(Strauss, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980).  It appears to have been an extremely 
well designed and carried out study.  Great care was taken to use a large, 
random, nationally representative sample.  All procedures were described in
detail before the study; nothing was left up to the discretion of the
interviewer.  The interviews were conducted using the Conflict Tactics Scales,
deveolped in 1971, ironically enough, at the University of New Hampshire.
These are designed to maximize the accuracy of the results in a variety of 
ways.  First, the topics are present specifically in the context of resolving
conflicts between families.  The categories are presented starting from 
less coercive and slowly growing more coercive.  Questions for family 
relationships where violence is considered most legitimate (child to child
violence, for example) are presented first.  Categories for violence are
presented in the same order for every family relationship; this gives 
respondents a chance to get over the strangeness of being asked questions
about knives or guns before the questions about spouse violence come up.

Here is the wording of the question about spouse violence:

     No matter how well a couple gets along, there are times when they
     disagree on major decisons, get annoyed about something the other
     person does, or just have spats or fights because they're in a bad
     mood or tired or for some other reason.  They also use many different
     ways of trying to settle their differences.  I'm going to read a list
     of some thing that you and your [insert relationship here] might have
     done when you had a dispute, and would first like you to tell me f
     each one how often you did it in the past year. 

Then the categories:

     a. Discussed the issue calmly
     b. Got information to back up your side of things
     c. Brought in or tried to bring in someone to help settle things
     d. Insulted or swore at the other one
     e. Sulked and/or refused to talk about it
     f. Stomed out of the room or house (or yard)
     g. Cried
     h. Did or said something to spite the other one
     i. Threatened to hit or throw something at the other one
     j. Threw or smashed or hit or kicked something
     k. Threw something at the other one
     l. Pushed, grabbed, or shoved the other one
     m. Slapped the other one
     n. Kicked, but, or hit with a fist
     o. Hit or tried to hit with something
     p. Beat up the other one
     q. Threatened with a knife or gun
     r. Used a knife or gun

Then the questions were repeated, asking how often the respondent's wife, 
husband, or partner had done each of the items.

Items k through r were compiled into a violence index, and items n through
r were compiled into a severe violence index.  The result was that the 
rate of violence of husbands and wives came out about the same.
    
References:

Strauss, M. A., Gelles, R. J., and Steinmetz, S. K., 1980, _Behind Closed 
Doors_, New York: Doubleday.

Do you ever come across an article that you want to post in it's
entirety to the net, except that it's 10 pages long and has 4 pages of
citations, and you don't have a scanner?

  Check out ``The Truth about Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed
Issue'' by R. L. McNeely and Gloria Robinson-Simpson.  It appears in
"Gender Sanity", (Nicholas Davidson, Ed, University Press of America,
1989.)  (The whole book is great.)

  This presents the best overview of the domestic violence statistics
that I've seen yet.  Vidugiris quoted stats that I'd posted previously
about injury levels from domestic assault.  McNeely and Robinson-Simpson
(using data from M McLeod, "Women Against Men: An Examination of
Domestic Violence Based on an Analysis of Official Data and National
Victimization Data", Justice Quarterly, 1, 1984) say:
   
   Whereas a weapon was used in about 25 percent of all cases in which
   women were victims, 82 percent of all victimizations of men involved
   weapons.  McLeod suggest that the data underrepresent weaponless
   assaults, because victims are less likely to report these incidents to
   the police.  Although 25 percent of all offenses against women were
   classified as aggravated assaults, about 80 percent of all offenses
   against men were classified as aggravated assaults, and the vast
   majority of the latter cases involved the use of weapons.  In fact, none
   of the men reported a serious victimization in which no weapon was
   present.  In noting that 73 percent of male victims and 77 percent of
   those reported to the National Crime Survey sustained injuries, McLeod
   estimates that corresponding figures for female victims are between 52
   percent and 57 percent.
   
McLeod also wrote:

   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...

McNeely and Robinson-Simpson do caution that 
     McLeod's survey, unlike [several others] disproportionately sampled
   black people, who, when aggregated, were decidedly below the national
   average for income.  77 percent of all male victims in McLeod's study
   were black men, which introduces further questions about the extent to
   which her findings can be applied to the general population.


David Throop


>  Husband battery DOES happen, I just do
>not believe it is nearly as often).

  We can go round and round on the figures.  Some surveys show that
men are victimized by women more often than vice-versa.  Others don't.
We can quickly get bogged down in the minutae of sociological studies.
But let's cut to the chase.

  ALL of the studies show that female-on-male violence accounts for AT
LEAST 25% of the intergender violence in the home, at all levels of
violence and at all levels of injury.  And yet the rhetoric in the
media, in our courts and legislatures uniformly neglect the phenomenon
of the battered husband, while giving huge coverage to battered wives.
The reporting is innacurate, and it demonizes men.

> I just took exception with the comment that men
>are abused by women as often as women are abused by men. 
>All of my training and reading has stated that this simply
>is not true.

YOUR TRAINING AND YOUR READING IS LYING TO YOU, TANYA.
  In some limited sense, it might not be true, insamuchas the data are
equivical.  But your training and reading has led you to believe that
we're seeing a huge wave of male-on-female domestic violence, but that
female-on-male still belongs to the `man-bites-dog' category of bizarre
things which happen only rarely.

  The material published in the newspapers is so one sided that I can
only dismiss it as propaganda against men.   I invite you to check out
the original studies that have been referenced in this thread -- the
data from the research looks nothing like what you see in the papers.  

  A year ago, I believed that wives were the victims of violence, and
that husbands the perpetrators.  I saw some postings here that said
otherwise.  I went to library and looked up the actual studies.  And I
was amazed.

You also write (about the theory that women only kill in self defense)

>  But I think that very likely
>she is right- after all, more and more women are being pardonned
>by rather conservative governers for killing their abusive spouses.

  I don't know what conservative governers you're speaking of; the two
states leading in this practice are Ohio and Texas.  Both of those
mass-pardons were by liberal Democratic Governers.

  It happens that I testified at the hearings in Texas on the resolution
which called on Gov Ann Richards to commute the sentences here.  I
posted a description of that process here some months ago, and I won't
repeat.  But I will mention that the resolution and its companion
legislation were NOT gender-neutral.  It went on and on about men
attacking women, and promised all kinds of relief for women who killed
their husbands.  But it offered no hope for any man who had killed his
wife in self defense.  

  I went to, inter alia, the Austin Men's Center.  They have counseled
many men who have been battered and injured by their wives.  I asked
them to testify, to ask for gender-neutral language that would benefit
anyone who'd killed thier spouse in self-defense.    They didn't want to
get that political.  But the women's groups were down at the capitol in
force, quick to testify about the evils of men.

  Don't just believe me.  If you are at all curious, check out the
original sources.

  They'll turn your head around.

David Throop



-- 
Brian Evans          |If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would
bevans@hydra.unm.edu |be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's Scientific Method!
Newsgroups: alt.feminism,soc.men,soc.women