Reverends Sam and Bunny
Sewell
FAMILY VIOLENCE
A report from: Family Resources & Research
FAMILY VIOLENCE
A report from: Family Resources & Research
"What gets us into trouble is
not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't
so."
(Yogi Berra)
"Inquire into them, that's
how to know what things are really true."
"Quaeras de dubiis, legem bene discere si vis." (St. Augustine
"Quaeras de dubiis, legem bene discere si vis." (
Table of Contents
1. Introduction: Why we publish this report
2. Rev. Bunny tells how it all began
3. How can this be?
4. Why we don’t know the truth
5. Police statistics you don’t hear about
6. The hidden victims
7. Feminism Vs Science and the Law
8. Spousal Violence in Other Countries
9. The Propaganda Problem
10. Acknowledging that women are abusers leads to better
solutions
11. Contact Family Resources and Research
12. News Clips: Scientific studies rarely get media
coverage
13. Some Technical Aspects of Studies on Family Violence
14. Spousal Violence Scientific Research Citations
15. Sample letters to the editor you can customize and
send to your local newspaper
Appendix:
Special report on the
dangers of present family violence policy.
"It's Always His Fault" by Sally L. Satel, M.D.
Psychiatrist and lecturer at theYale School
dangers of present family violence policy.
"It's Always His Fault" by Sally L. Satel, M.D.
Psychiatrist and lecturer at the
Why We Publish This Report
We are sending this report to the media, law enforcement, family law
attorneys, and those persons and organizations who deal with family violence,
in the hope that we can correct a serious misunderstanding about this very
important issue. We want to make it clear that we have been working to end family violence for decades. One of us is an original incorporator of our local women's shelter. We were members of the "Century Club", those who contribute over $100 annually. We have sponsored benefit events for our shelter that attracted national media attention. Since we began publishing scientific studies on family violence the women’s shelter has returned our contributions and is conducting a smear campaign against us.
Blessings,
Bonita
pastor receives international award for work in family counseling
“n” the magazine
of Naples
a woman for peace
The
Reverend Bunny Sewell of Bonita Springs
The
Amigas award comes from the Women’s Peacepower Foundation, an organization that
began in 1998 and works to help strengthen programs and projects finding
solutions to violence
For more information call (941)
591-4565 or visit the Marriage and Family clinic http://www.bestselfusa.com/
Women Who Have Helped the
Men's and Fathers' Movement and Who Deserve Recognition http://www.glennsacks.com/women_who_have.htm
My husband and I
are pastoral counselors. A pastoral counselor is a peculiar hybrid critter. The
"pastoral" part means we are clergy. The "counselor" part
means we have the same training, and techniques as other psychotherapists.
For the most
part we do marriage and family counseling. I noticed that when clients reported
incidents of violence the wife was often the perpetrator. I mentioned this to
my husband. Sam is a good scientist and a clear thinker. His response
was, "Do you remember when you got your blue Oldsmobile how many blue
Oldsmobiles seemed to be on the road?"
Sometimes I go
with my instincts rather than my reason, and besides, I was real curious. So, I
dug through client files of the past five years. I was astounded by what I
found! Again I went to Sam and explained that in a large majority of the
violent incidents the wife was the abuser and the man was the victim. Sam said,
"We can't draw any valid conclusion from such a small sample." He
also pointed out that couples in counseling would not be representative of the
general public. Now, Sam was getting curious.
At that time we
had recently sold Sam's fishing boat and spent the money to purchase our first
PC. That was back when a complete 486/66 setup was around $4,000.
We were real
newbies to the internet. Sam is the Gifted Child Coordinator for our local
MENSA chapter in Southwest Florida . So, our
first experience of the cyberworld was the MENSA forum on CompuServe. We posted
our first e-mail message asking for feedback on our observations about family
violence. All the harpies from Hades descended from cyberspace into our
inbox. We were called unkind names and accused of having motives similar to the
profile of serial killers. We were shocked at how adamantly we were attacked.
Somewhat puzzled
by such an irrational response to our first electronic message, we decided to
go where we were more comfortable. The Internet provides access to a behavioral
science database called Psych Info. All of the scientific abstracts of the last
30 years are stored and available for download. Psych Info is expensive, but I
believe information will get you through times with no money better than money
will get you through times with no information.
Again we were
amazed by what we found! There were dozens of solid scientific studies
documenting female violence against men. How could this be? We had been working
on the domestic violence issue for years. We were embarrassed that we were
unaware of this research. No one at the women's shelter acknowledged any
awareness of these studies. Why was this information more secret than the private
lives of our politicians?
The family violence issue has been distorted and politicized by the gender wars. Believing what gender activists say about family violence is like believing what the tobacco companies say about cancer. Unfortunately, almost all information available to the public comes in the form of political propaganda from "Men's Rights" groups or "Women's Rights" groups.
This misunderstanding of the family violence issue is so pervasive that city and county governments, the courts, law enforcement, prosecutor’s offices, mental health clinics, and other tax supported agencies are now funding programs based on gender politics rather than responsible scientific studies.
There are more than 100 solid scientific studies that reveal a startlingly different picture of family violence than what we usually see in the media. For instance:
Comparative spousal violence data from three national studies*
Definitions of Spousal Violence
MINOR VIOLENT
ACTS:
SEVERE VIOLENT ACTS:
|
|
1. Threw something
|
1. Kicked/bit/hit with fist
|
2.
Pushed/Grabbed/Shoved
|
2. Hit, tried to hit with
something
|
3. Slapped or spanked
|
3. Beat up
|
4. Threatened with gun or
knife
|
|
5. Used gun or knife
|
|
Spousal assaults expressed as rate per 1000 couples
Minor Assaults:
|
Year
|
Assault by husband
|
Assault by wife
|
|
1975
|
98
|
98
|
||
1985
|
82
|
75
|
||
1992
|
92
|
94
|
||
Severe Assaults
|
||||
1975
|
38
|
47
|
||
1985
|
30
|
43
|
||
1992
|
19
|
44
|
||
Wives report they have been
severely assaulted by husband
|
22 per 1000
|
|||
Wives report they have
severely assaulted husband
|
59 per 1000
|
|||
Husbands report they have
been severely assaulted by wives
|
32 per 1000
|
|||
Husbands report they have
severely assaulted wives
|
18 per 1000
|
|||
Husbands & wives both
report wife has been assaulted
|
20 per 1000
|
|||
Husbands & wives both
report husband has been assaulted
|
44 per 1000
|
|||
of Three National Surveys In The
Violence against children by women is another issue where the public attitude is very different than the facts revealed by formal studies. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-3) from the
Women commit most child abuse
in intact biological families. When the man is removed from the family the
children are at greater risk. Mother-only households are more dangerous
to children than father-only households.
Children are 3 times more
likely to be fatally abused in Mother-only Households than in Father-only
Households, and many times more likely in households where the mother cohabits
with a man other than the biological father.
Children raised in
Single-mother Households are 8 times more likely to become killers than
children raised with their biological father.
Other studies reveal more
about female violence against children:
Women hit their male children
more frequently and more severely than they hit their female children.
Women commit 55% of
child murders and 64% of their victims are male children.
Eighty two percent of the
general population had their first experience of violence at the hands of
women, usually their mother.
Our culture learns to be
violent from our mothers, not our fathers.
Yet, 3.1 million reports of
child abuse are filed against men each year, most of which are false
accusations used as leverage in a divorce or custody case.
Complete scientific citations
are included in this report. Leading researchers have validated the statistics
we have used, "Murray Straus, a sociologist and co-director for the
Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, verified the statistics from the (Sewells')
report and Richard Gelles of the University of Rhode Island and author of
Intimate Violence and other studies, also validated the statistics used by
matching it to previous research." Alice Lovejoy,
Use of misleading statistics for political and
financial gain
- Men do not usually report their
violent wives to police.
- Children do not usually report their
violent mothers to the police.
- Women are far more likely to report
violent men to the police.
- Police statistics describe the
activities of the police departments and are grossly misleading as to the
nature of family violence.
Some women call the police because there is a real need for intervention. However, there are other reasons for a woman to report a man, whether he be violent or not.
- Women are encouraged to report spousal
violence by countless media reminders. Propaganda always includes the
female victim and the male perpetrator. Men are discouraged from claiming
to be victims of violent women.
- Some women call police because they
are frightened by a minor incident. Perhaps she thought calling the
police was a "trump card" in an argument. These women do not
realize that with one phone call they have invited the government and
gender politics into their homes.
- Some women make false reports* because
there are legal, financial, and child custody rewards for making a false
report. Some divorce attorneys and gender activists specialize in
encouraging false accusations, and actively coaching women how to falsely
accuse.
*Several researchers have documented that one of the common adaptive tools of human females, used to compensate for smaller size and social power, is to mimic victim behavior, including false accusations against a power figure (boss, parent, counselor, teacher, husband, lover, police, etc.). Adolescent girls are the demographic group most prone to this adaptive tool.
However, misleading statistics are a deliberate fund raising tactic for women's shelters. The shelter movement almost never mentions scientific studies. This misuse of distorted police statistics to push a "female victims" agenda is widespread and very misleading. Gender activists have high jacked the legitimate issue of family violence and turned it into "
The promotion of family violence myths and misleading statistics detracts from the importance and scope of the family violence problem. If we are misled about the nature of family violence we will be misled about solutions.
A falsely framed issue skews understanding and jeopardizes justice. For example, former Massachusetts Bar Association President Elaine Epstein stated, "It has become essentially impossible to effectively represent a man against whom any allegation of domestic violence has been made."
The Other Police Statistics You Don't
Hear About
Men and children may not report
when they are injured by a woman, however, the dead bodies of the men and
children who are the victims of violent women are usually reported. Murder
statistics are far more reliable than reported abuse statistics. The Bureau of
Justice Statistics released a report of family homicides in 33 urban
counties. Some gender activists claim that violent women are acting in
self-defense. These quoted statistics represent convictions for murder. - "In spouse murders, women represented 41 percent of
killers."
- "In murders of their offspring, women predominated,
accounting for 55 percent of killers."
- "Among black marital partners, wives were just about as
likely to murder their husbands as husbands were to murder their wives: 47
percent of the victims of a spouse were husbands and 53 percent were
wives."
The Hidden Victims
The scientific data shows that
both men and women are violent to a far greater extent than police statistics
reveal. This scientific data shows that spousal violence is mostly
unreported. In fact, some degree of violence occurs at a rate of 113 incidents
per 1000 couples per year (husband on wife) and 121 incidents per 1000 couples
per year (wife on husband). Many local women's shelters emphasize female victims reported to the police, and ignore much larger numbers of women, children, and men who are also victims of family violence. We quote from a brochure from a battered women’s shelter: "What Is Domestic Violence? Domestic violence is an increasingly visible social and legal problem wherein women are abused by their partners." Notice that it doesn’t say that this is one aspect of domestic violence, or that this is the aspect that they deal with, but rather that this is domestic violence. Surely domestic violence is violence which takes place at home, the word ‘domestic’ referring to the definition "of or relating to the household or the family. Female violence against children is another taboo topic among gender activists.
From our experience with shelter personnel, this is a typical attitude. And after using ‘physical abuse’ as the topic to begin the discussion of abuse, (more accurately, "the physical abuse of women by men"), many shelter workers go on to mention all the other types of abuse men do to women, like emotional and psychological. The conversation seldom turns to look at any type of abuse by women to men even though dozens of scientific studies indicate women are at least as violent as men in "domestic" settings.
Most leaders in the women's shelter movement are fully aware of the broader scope of family violence but hold fast to the villain/victim dogma. The directors of women's shelters almost always know that they are deliberately misleading the public. Why? They must maintain their power and fund raising base. If they lose their special "victim status" they will rapidly go out of business. They do not want to be replaced with a gender neutral, family friendly, community service agency that implements policy on the basis of scientific studies rather than gender propaganda.
Feminism Vs Science and the Law
There is much confusion about
whom to believe in the debate about spousal violence. On one side we have
gender activists who rely on law enforcement statistics. On the other side we
have social scientists who rely on scientifically structured studies. Unfortunately, the results of scientific studies do not receive media attention.
Many abuse shelter personnel below the executive level are unaware of the scientific studies, even though they claim to be "domestic violence experts" and often conduct "training" sessions for government agencies. There are towns and cities in our country where the entire legal establishment, including law enforcement, family law attorneys, and judges, are making decisions about family violence based on political propaganda rather than well established research.
Here is a comment on the subject from a judge who asked for our report. We have rescued him from any consequences resulting from his candor by disguising his identity.
Dear Revs. Sewell
Thanks for the interesting information. I am
a judge in xxxxx who regularly hears requests for domestic violence orders of
protection. The DV issue has been politicized big time in our area. We judges are
ordered to attend "consciousness raising" seminars where we are
harangued by feminist "experts". Supervising judges have been courted
and won over, and now we have annual breakfasts honoring judges who cooperate
with the feminist "agenda".
As a former prosecutor and divorce lawyer I
know that the best deterrent to violence by human beings is arrest, prosecution
and appropriate consequences. With well-prepared cases, vigorous prosecution,
and no nonsense consequences the cycle of abuse can be broken, no matter who
the abuser is. Humans become habitual abusers because they get away with it. It
is impossible to make progress in reducing domestic violence until we recognize
that women are violent.
As a member of an advisory committee for the
local shelter I was shocked at the attitudes of the ladies who ran the center:
The ONLY solution championed by the shelter was to get free from that big bad
male. The committee expressed concern about the underlying anti-male bias which
even showed up in the name of the shelter and recommended that the name be
changed to The Center for Victims of Abuse - rather than Women’s Strength.
Anyway, I forwarded your piece on to a couple
of other judges - some of whom will undoubtedly immediately reject it’s
premise.
The typical response of the
abuse shelter workers upon first hearing the results of the scientific studies
is to "shoot the messenger". You can almost hear their minds snap
closed. There is an almost cult like "party line" among victim
advocates. Much of the belief system of their "cult" has no more
scientific or rational basis than that of fanatical religious cults. On the other hand, some abuse agency personnel have not accepted the "party line"; particularly religiously sponsored family services organizations. They are eager to have accurate information upon which to plan and implement rational programs for prevention, intervention, and treatment for abusers and victims of both genders.
Are the family violence "experts" in your community aware of the scientific studies? What is happening at the abuse shelter in your community?
One of the leading researchers in this field is Susan Steinmetz, Ph.D. She did a cross-cultural comparison of marital abuse published in Journal of Sociology, and Social Welfare, entitled "Married Couples from 9 Different Cultures". These cross-cultural studies yielded results very similar to family violence studies done in the
The study below is typical of the results of scientific studies on family violence done in many nations. This Canadian study was done by Reena Sommer, Ph.D. a research associate with the
Female vs. male perpetrated violence as a percentage of all respondents:
Minor Violence
|
% of females
|
% of males
|
threw an object (not at partner)
|
23.6
|
15.8
|
threaten to throw
object
|
14.9
|
7.3
|
threw object at partner
|
16.2
|
4.6
|
pushed, or grabbed
|
19.8
|
17.2
|
Severe Violence
|
||
slapped, punched,
kicked
|
15.8
|
7.3
|
used weapon
|
3.1
|
0.9
|
Violence as self defense
|
9.9
|
14.8
|
Alcohol factor
|
8.0
|
16.0
|
My partner needed medical
help
|
14.3
|
21.4
|
Overall Violence
|
39.1
|
26.3
|
Domestic violence isn't one-sided
Prof. Don Dutton, Univ. of British Columbia
© 2006 National
Post
Reproduced with permission of the author
A few years ago, a woman
arrived home from work in Saskatoon
As it stands, this story
makes no sense -- and indeed would have aroused national indignation if it were
completely true. But I deliberately misled the reader on one particular. In the
real story, by no means a unique one
in police archives, the genders were reversed: The man arrived home after a
12-hour shift; the child's mother was drunk; the man lay down; the woman
stabbed him in a rage; the police didn't take his injuries seriously; they
accepted the woman's explanation -- probably self-defence -- and arrested the
man.
Unfortunately, such gender
bias in the law-enforcement system and beyond is typical, not exceptional. A
double standard for men and women, applied in cases of intimate partner
violence (IPV) -- as well as in family law, including spousal support and child
custody cases -- has become commonplace in most Western societies over the last
25 years. And in spite of a widening stream of incontrovertible statistical
evidence to the contrary, the myth persists that it is women, and only women,
who are the victims of IPV.
The stereotype that
unprovoked men purposefully assault women, and never the reverse, is so
ingrained in our public discourse that participants in research on IPV -- not
just lay people but health professionals as well -- presented with a scenario
in which one partner abuses another, perceive it as abuse only if the assaulter
is identified as male.
The reality, borne out by
independent peer-reviewed studies as well as StatsCan, is that women commit
more severe IPV, and more IPV in general, than men. For all kinds of
relationship types, females are unilaterally more violent than males to
non-violent partners. More females strike first in IPV (men are conditioned not
to strike first in our society) and, contradicting received wisdom, fear of their
male partner is rarely a factor amongst violent women. Actually, both male and
female victims of IPV report equal fear levels of "intimate
terrorism".
Of course, some battering
males abuse passive women -- about 3% annually, far fewer than implied in skewed
studies by women's groups. But in spite of sensationalized cases, spousal
homicide perpetrated by either sex is extremely rare. As many mothers as
fathers practice child abuse alone or in tandem, and far more women than men
murder their children.
Interestingly, IPV occurs
more frequently in lesbian than in heterosexual relationships, supporting the
view that relationship dynamics, not gender, fuel domestic violence. Honest
research points to a norm of "assortative mating": The violence-prone
tend to seek each other out for anti-social behavior.
And yet our government, our
social services and our judiciary prescribe remedies based on a false and
simplistic view that denies not just the unprovoked violence committed by women
in relationships, but the number and severity of the assaults engaged in by
both partners in mutually violent couples.
Indeed, it is fair to say
that no other area of established social welfare, criminal justice or public
health depends on such weak and biased evidence in support of mandated practice
as does IPV. The model of "treatment" for IPV that flows from this
false understanding is not the kind of therapy that could benefit both male and
female perpetrators. Instead, our system prefers "intervention" -- against
men, never women --and a "psychoeducational" model of behavior
modification that essentially amounts to inculcating the radical feminist
political viewpoint.
Where does the gender bias
come from? Ideology. Radical feminism insists that men -- all men -- by their
nature pursue power and control for its own sake. As a result, we become
complicit in the myths of gender politics. So when a crazed individual male
with a bizarre personal back story shoots women, we hold candlelight vigils.
But when a vengeful woman cuts off a man's penis, he becomes fodder for standup
comedians, while she is hailed as a symbol of female empowerment.
IPV is a serious issue in our
society. Responding to it through the default demonization of one sex and
victimization of the other is an insult to scientific integrity, a stumbling
block to rehabilitation, a strong contributing factor in many arbitrarily
ruined lives, and a shameful blot on our human rights record.
Don Dutton is Professor of
Psychology at the University
of British Columbia
This is typical of the wide spread deception practiced by abuse shelter advocates.
Acknowledging
That Women are Abusers Leads to Better Solutions.
"Knowing what we know, what then must we do?" Leo Tolstoy
Women usually initiate spousal
violence episodes (they hit first), and women hit more frequently, as well as
using weapons three times more often then men. This combination of violent acts
means that efforts to find solutions to the family violence problem need to
include appropriate focus on female perpetrators. We need to recognize that
women are violent, and we need nationwide educational programs that portray
women as perpetrators. Other studies show that men are becoming less violent at
the same time that women are becoming more violent. Educating men seems to be working.
Educating women to be less violent should now be the main thrust of public
education programs. "Knowing what we know, what then must we do?" Leo Tolstoy
Any family violence program which accepts the "male abuser - female victim" paradigm is based on a false premise. These kind of family violence programs actually perpetuate the problem of abuse and do not deserve to be supported by private citizens or government agencies. Many government agencies, and legitimate charities, have been funding a feminist political cause, rather than funding rational, solution focused, family violence prevention programs.
What kind of family violence program do you have in your community? Does your local program encourage the healing of families, or do they take the "divorce" approach? Does the family violence prevention program in your community devote as much attention to violent females, as it does to violent males? If not, why not?
We need a family-friendly agency in our community that delivers services to all family members and works to preserve families, not tear them apart. We don’t need gender activists with an anti-marriage, anti-family political ax to grind.
We need to separate gender politics from the issue of family violence. We need to look at the full spectrum of family violence, not just female victims. We need to consult scientific studies when we make policy decisions. We cannot hope to implement rational, solution-focused programs and policies until we face the fact that "behind closed doors" women are at least as violent as men.
What can I do personally?
- Be informed. Educate yourself about the scientific studies on
family violence.
- Copy and distribute reports from Family Resources and Research. We
will provide you with solid research and show you how to conduct an
effective family violence education program in your community (See the
contact information below)
Family Resources and Research
10202 Vanderbilt Drive
Naples , FL 34108
Revs. Sam andBunny Sewell , Directors
mailto:revbunny@comcast.net
Revs. Sam and
mailto:revbunny@comcast.net
Dr. Charles Corry is a dedicated and trustworthy investigator of the family violence issue. His web site is at http://www.dvmen.org/
News Clips
Below are some exceptions to the usual media
silence on science based stories on family violence.
A Fistful of Hostility Is Found in
Women
New York Times July 28, 1988
By ABIGAIL ZUGER
In the old Punch and Judy shows
of the last century, Punch would batter Judy under the stage while the audience
roared. But now it seems likely that in their private moments together Judy
gave Punch back a bit of his own. Researchers studying human aggression are discovering that, in contrast to the usual stereotypes, patterns of aggression among girls and women under some circumstances may mirror or even exaggerate those seen in boys and men. And while women's weapons are often words, fists may be used, too. In a large-scale review of dozens of studies of physical hostility in heterosexual relationships, Dr. John Archer, a psychologist at the University of Central Lancashire in Great Britain, has found that although women sustain more serious and visible injuries than men during domestic disputes, overall they are just as likely as men to resort to physical aggression during an argument with a sexual partner.
Archer compiled interviews with tens of thousands of men andwomen in Canada, Great Britain, the United States and New Zealand, and discovered that women who argued with their dates or mates were actually even slightly more likely than men to use some form of physical violence, ranging from slapping, kicking and biting, to choking or using a weapon. The pattern was particularly pronounced among younger women and women who were dating a partner rather than married to or living with him, he said.
"Whatever the base rate of physical aggression in the population, women tended to have a slightly higher rate than men," Archer said. In contrast, though, most instances of serious violence in his study were caused by men, as were most injuries that required medical care: Women accounted for 65 to 70 percent of those requiring medical help as a result of violence between partners.
Still, "the large minority of men who got injured is fascinating," Dr. Archer said. "It counters a certain entrenched view of partner violence as being exclusively male to female."
Archer's study was reported at a meeting of the International Society for Research on Aggression held at Ramapo College in Mahwah, N.J., earlier this month. It is an extraordinary study, said Dr. Anne Campbell, a psychologist at the University of Durham in Great Britain, because it lends support to an emerging theory that women may respond to certain environmental stresses with physically aggressive behaviors that are analogous to men's, although often on a different scale of intensity.
For instance, she said, criminologists know that although men are more likely to commit crimes than women, crime rates in the genders are also strongly correlated. In other words, in impoverished, "high crime" areas, rates of both violent and nonviolent crimes increase proportionally among men and women.
"Unlike men, though, women tend to view crime as work rather than adventure,"
Patterns of domestic homicide also indicate that women are capable of significant violence, although often only as a last resort. Although the vast majority of all murders are committed by men, "intimate partner" homicides were split about equally between the sexes until about 20 years ago, said Dr. Daniel Nagin, a public policy expert at
In the last two decades, intimate-partner homicides have declined by about 30 percent. Dr. Nagin noted, however, that the decline has been primarily in rates of women killing men, and correlates strongly with several environmental changes.
"The decline appears to be related to an improved relative economic status of females, and a decline in exposure to violent relationships," Dr. Nagin said.
This drop also correlates with the availability of alternatives to violence for women: In an ongoing study of domestic homicides in 29 cities in the United States, the availability of resources like shelters for battered women and legal advocacy for them has correlated strongly with lower rates of domestic homicide committed by women.
"The resources for women seem to be saving the men's lives," Dr. Nagin said.
The experts in human aggression are now aware that even in childhood similarities between male and female aggression are more substantial than is usually recognized.
Until about five years ago scientists studying aggression tended to include only direct physical or verbal efforts to injure another person. Then they discovered that great damage can be done to another person so subtly that even the victim is unaware. The badmouthing, gossip and smear campaigns that can demolish an opponent as well as direct verbal or physical assaults are now formally known in psychological circles as "indirect aggression," and their patterns are tracked as carefully as punches and kicks.
With indirect aggression factored in, aggression in childhood is no longer primarily a male affair.
In a large observational study of "trajectories of aggression" in children, Dr. Richard E. Tremblay of the Université de Montreal has found that physical aggression in both sexes seems to peak around age 2, then decline steadily, although it remains consistently more common in boys. Indirect aggression, however, becomes more prevalent as children grow older and is consistently more common in girls.
The effect of external stimuli on these trajectories is still under intensive speculation, but one long-term study suggests that the omnipresent influence of television violence may correlate with overall aggressive behavior in boys and girls in both the short and the long term.
In a 20-year study of more than 300 Chicago-area children, led by Dr. L. Rowell Huesmann at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the more violent television a child watched at ages 6 through 8, the more aggressive behavior that child displayed, no matter what the child's sex.
And in interviews 15 years later with the grown-up study participants, the correlation between the television viewing habits of childhood and adult behavior patterns persisted, Dr. Huesmann said at the
The more television violence the child watched, the more aggressive the man or woman became.
The correlation was especially marked among those children who told researchers that they identified with the characters on the television screen, and thought the events depicted were real.
For instance, 16.7 percent of the young women who had been "high violence" television viewers as girls reported having punched, beat or choked another adult, in contrast to 3.6 percent of others.
Thirty-seven percent of the "high violence" vieiwing women had thrown something at a spouse during an argument, in contrast to 16 percent of the others.
Spouse Abuse a Two-Way Street By Warren Farrell, Ph.D.
Just as bad cases make bad laws, so can celebrity cases reinforce old myths. The biggest myth the O.J. Simpson case is likely to reinforce is the myth that domestic violence is a one way street (male-to-female), and its corollary, that male violence against women is an outgrowth of masculinity.
When I began seven years of research into these issues in preparation for "The Myth of Male Power", I began with these two assumptions since I had been the only man in the United States to have been elected three times to the Board of Directors of the National Organization of Women in New York City, and these assumptions went unquestioned in feminist circles.
My first finding - that in the U.S. and Canada more than 90% of the domestic violence reports to the police were by women, not men - seemed to confirm these assumptions. But, then the picture became more complex. About a dozen studies in the U.S. and Canada asked BOTH sexes how often they hit each other, all of them found that women hit men either more frequently or about as often as the reverse.
Two of the main studies - by Suzanne Steinmetz, Murray Straus and Richard Gelles - assumed men hit women more severely, so they divided domestic violence into seven different levels of severity. They were surprised to discover that, overall, the more severe levels of violence were conducted more by women against men.
A caveat, though. Men hitting women did more damage than the reverse. However, this caveat carried its own caveat: it was exactly because men’s hits hurt more that women resorted to more severe methods (i.e. tossing boiling water over her husband or swinging a frying pan into his face). These findings were supported by the Census Bureau’s own survey: As early as 1977, the
The key issue, though, is who initiates this cycle of violence. Steinmetz, Strauss and Gelles found to their initial surprise that women are more likely to be the first initiators. Why? In part, the belief that men can take it - - they can therefore be a punching bag and not be expected to hit back.
I was still a bit incredulous. I asked thousands of men and women in my workshops to count all the relationships in which they had hit their partner before their partner had ever it them. and vice versa. About 60% of the women acknowledged they had more often been the first to strike a blow: among the men, about 90% felt their female partner had been the first to strike a blow.
I still felt violence was an out growth of masculinity. I was half right. Men are responsible for most of the violence which occurs outside the home. However, when 54% of women in lesbian relationships acknowledge violence in their current relationship, vs. only 11% of heterosexual couples reporting violence, I realized that domestic violence is not an outgrowth of male biology.
Why do we vigorously denounce domestic violence against women and not even know about domestic violence against men?
Women Abuse Men: It’s More Widespread Than People Think
Excerpt from Special supplement to The
"Despite all the evidence about female-on-male violence, many groups actively try to suppress coverage of the issue. Steinmetz received verbal threats and anonymous phone calls from radical women’s groups threatening to harm her children after she published "The Battered Husband Syndrome" in 1978. She says she finds it ironic that the same people who claim that women- initiated violence is purely self defense are so quick to threaten violence against people who do nothing more than publish a scientific study.
Steinmetz’s story is not unique. Ten years after that study, R.L. McNeely, a professor at the School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin, and Gloria Robinson-Simpson published "The Truth About Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue." The article examined various studies on domestic violence and concluded that society must recognize that men are victims "or we will be addressing only part of the phenomenon."
Shortly thereafter, McNeely received letters from a
Researcher Claims Abuse Shelter Advocates Make the Problem Worse
Mr. Straus said that at least 30 studies of domestic violence - including some he’s conducted - have shown both sexes to be equally culpable. But he said some of the research, such as a recent Canadian national survey, "left out data on women abusing men ... because it’s politically embarrassing." Women and men "are almost identical" in terms of the frequency of attacks such as slapping, shoving, and kicking, Mr. Straus said.
Using information on married couples obtained from 2,994 women in the 1985 National Family Violence Survey, Mr. Straus said he found a rate for assaults by wives of 124 per 1,000 couples, compared with 122 per 1,000 for assaults by husbands.
The rate of minor assaults by wives was 78 per 1,000 couples, and the rate of minor assaults by husbands was 72 per 1,000, he said. For the category of severe assaults, he said, the rate was 46 per 1,000 couples for assaults by wives and 50 per 1,000 for assaults by husbands. "Neither difference is statistically different,"* Mr. Straus wrote in the journal Issues in Definition and Measurement. "As these rates are based exclusively on information provided by women respondents, the near equality in assault rates cannot be attributed to a gender bias in reporting." (end quote)
*Dr. Straus’s statistics do not reflect the latest study done by the Family Research Laboratory.
Claims of husband-beating gain prominence
by Alice Lovejoy -
October 1 marks the beginning of Domestic Abuse Awareness Month. Though most people believe this issue to be one-sided, there are forces at work attempting to modify common perceptions of domestic abuse. Armed with scientific data and polls, a select group of private individuals, as well as publicly funded researchers, purport that men are the victims of physical domestic abuse at rates equal to or even greater than women. For every Wilfredo Cordero, the
Sam and
Two main proponents of this uncharted attitude towards domestic abuse are Sam and
Sam and Bunny, in a mass e-mailing to various news organizations, quote Change in Spouse Abuse Rates from 1975 to 1992: A Comparison of Three National Surveys, a study by Murray A. Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor of the University of New Hampshire’s Family Research Laboratory. The study found that, per 1,000 couples, 92 reported minor assaults such as pushing, grabbing and slapping, by the husband. Surprisingly, though, the study reported a rate of 94 minor assaults by the wife. 19 couples reported severe assaults such as kicking, biting, punching, or using a gun or knife, by the husband. Yet 44 couples reported severe assault by the wife, meaning that women are perpetrators of the crime at more than twice the rate of their male counterparts.
"The Men’s Issues Page" quotes a 1989 study in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, "Prevalence and Stability of Physical Aggression Between Spouses" that found that women were, overall, more often the aggressor in relationships than men. In unmarried couples, 31.2% of men and 44.4% of women had engaged in aggressive behavior. After eighteen months of marriage, these statistics changed to 26.8% of men and 35.9% of women. After twenty months of marriage, the numbers decreased to 24.6% and 32.2%, but maintained the notable discrepancy. Further, this study found that "the lower rates of overall aggression for men were not offset by higher rates of more severe type of aggression." The same page uses a third study, The Marriage License as Hitting License: A Comparison of Assaults in Dating, Cohabiting and Married Couples which states similar findings showing that women are more often the aggressor in a marriage.
Lash or backlash
In contrast to the vocal advocacy for battered women, claims that men are often the victims of domestic abuse are likely to be dismissed as a mere backlash against today’s "politically-correct" sensibilities. Yet the data about husband-beating is, to a large degree, valid. Murray Straus, a sociologist and co-director for the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire, verified the statistics from the Sewells' report and Richard Gelles of the University of Rhode Island and author of Intimate Violence and other studies, also validated the statistics used by matching it to previous research."
In fact, Gelles’ most recent research supported his earlier data in finding that, in a quarter of domestic relationships, violence is exclusively male against female. In a second quarter of these relationships, violence is exclusively female against male. In the remaining half, violence is bi-directional, with an equal likelihood of initiation from either men or women. Yet anecdotal evidence on the part of women’s groups and police blotters suggests that the numerous studies detailing female violence are wrong or exaggerated. Domestic violence advocacy groups claim that most violence by women against men can be explained by examining the context of the violence; that it is, to a large degree, in reaction to violence or threats that women use violence against their spouse or partner. Deb de Bare, of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence, stated "from our perspective, research is often misleading. This is an example of exactly that. Research might interpret the number of times someone was hit, but may not get the context. Women might react and slap, and the research would document that as abuse. The reality that we see is that well over ninety percent of cases of domestic violence involve women as victims. We see domestic abuse as the whole pattern of behavior in an abusive relationship."
Gelles would argue, however, that women’s violence cannot be attributed to only self-defense in such a large percentage of cases. Domestic violence, like any form of abuse, is often a learned behavior. Victims of child abuse are more likely to abuse both their own children and their spouse or partner. Violence, to victims of abuse, is a way of expressing anger, which becomes a normalized means to interact with one’s partner. This is not to undermine the number of cases in which violence is a direct reaction to threats or aggression; these cases address an issue critical in the problem of violent relationships in general.
Looking in the mirror
The difficulty in assigning blame for domestic violence is evident in Gelles’ study of unmarried college-age heterosexual couples. In these relationships, violence is perfectly symmetrical between men and women. Gelles termed these "modern aggressive relationships": anger is translated as verbal or physical abuse. Though these relationships are just as violent as "traditional" cases of domestic violence, they receive little attention; abuse has become an accepted part of relationships between men and women of this age group. The violence of this particular portion of abuse came to the fore recently when last month a woman at the
Proponents of the husband-beating statistics see identity politics as an impediment to the eradication of violence in the home. Sam Sewell asserted that "a solution to [the domestic violence] problem requires that gender politics be excluded." Gelles agreed, arguing that the only remedy to domestic abuse will come when advocates use "informed scientific judgment" to determine treatment standards, and when the focus of the domestic violence debate shifts from a search for the "real" victims to a search for a solution.
Domestic abuse: It’s not always his fault
Scripps Howard News Service
Not long ago members of
Still, this attempt highlights the prevailing notion in domestic violence circles that "it’s always his fault." That, in fact, is the title of the cover article in the summer issue of "The Women’s Quarterly, " published by the Independent Women’s Forum, an increasingly high-profile group that’s kind of an antidote to the National Organization for Women.
Author Sally L. Satel, psychiatrist and Yale medical school lecturer, shows how accepted Gloria Steinem’s assertion that "the patriarchy requires violence in order to maintain itself" has become. I.e., abusive men aren’t criminals, or drunks, or particularly troubled people some of whom may be redeemed. They are just men.
The
Today a dozen states basically preclude treatment other than feminist therapy of domestic batterers, Satel notes, and more are following. Forget joint counseling when appropriate and desired. Involving the batterer’s mate in treatment amounts to "blaming the victim .
That, despite the fact that many abuse experts unhindered by feminist blinders recognize abuse is often part of a "dance of mutual destructiveness" as psychologist Judith Shervin writes. And that women initiate violence in cohabiting relationships as often as men (often using weapons to make up for physical differences) according to leading abuse researchers-widely respected across philosophical lines - Richard Gelles and Murray Straus.
No matter. "Don," a college administrator arrested for once slapping his wife (they are still together) was required to attend a typical "abuse" program. Every week "the message was clear," Don told Satel. "Whatever she does to you is your fault, whatever you do to her is your fault. It would have been a lot more helpful if they taught us to recognize when we felt ourselves being driven into a position where we lash out. The message should have been "recognize it, deal with it, and quit hitting." All Don got was guilt about his maleness.
Hand in hand with this agenda are feminist backed "must arrest" and similar legal policies which exist in hundreds of jurisdictions. These require police to arrest one partner-almost always the man-when called to a domestic dispute. Even when things have completely cooled down, there was no hitting, and the woman doesn’t want the man arrested.
Common "no-drop" polices do not allow a woman to drop abuse charges once they’re filed, even if her motive was anger, not fear. In
Such practices treat women like children, and ensure that if couples stay together-and most in fact do-nothing really changes, Satel writes, though the woman might mistakenly and dangerously be led to believe it has. While there is virtually no convincing data that this feminist approach to male violence is effective, Satel notes, several respected studies suggest that these typical legal practices can escalate spousal violence in some men by further enraging them.
The goal of these feminist treatments and legal responses, Satel says, is to separate women from their abusive partner -no matter what the circumstances, and no matter how fervently the women wish otherwise.
These "one size fits all" policies might make a bit more sense if "abuse" always meant serious, systematic violence. But the feminist politicization of the term "abuse" renders it virtually meaningless. A typical check-list, this from the
Sometimes, of course, no redemption is possible, and leaving, or ensuring the violent spouse is locked up (preferably for good), is the only answer. And Satel rightly notes that the feminist agenda in this area has forced law enforcement to take domestic abuse seriously.
But once again, the radical feminist agenda of "man bad woman good" has permeated the culture on an a fundamentally important issue, and once again it has done a terrible disservice to the constituency feminists are supposed to help-women.
Betsy Hart, a former White House spokesman, is a weekly commentator on MS-NBC television news.
Technical aspects of family violence studies
Important Research Not
Included In This Report
The most recent meta analysis of
family violence studies is not available on the Internet. However,
"Sex Differences in Aggression Between Heterosexual Partners: A
Meta-Analytic Review" by John Archer is published in Psychological
Bulletin September 2000, Volume 126, Number 5. http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/900tc.html
Spousal Abuse Rates - Stats from UCR and Straus, Gelles
The data from the
For comparison, the rate for "Accidental injury, all circumstances" is given as 220 per 1000 adults per year - a figure 40 times higher.
If one accepts data such as that from the NCS, one must (at least if one is consistent and intellectually honest) admit that such violence is rare. The picture changes, though, when different techniques of investigation (methodologies) are used, such as those by Straus, and Gelles. This data shows that domestic violence is MUCH more common. In fact, some degree of violence (NOT injury, however) occurs at a rate of 113 incidents per 1000 couples per year (husband. on wife) and 121 incidents per 1000 couples per year (wife on husband)! This is 20x the rate that the NCS reports.
Family Homicides - rates by gender - DoJ, 94
In July 1994 the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the
"A third of family murders involved a female as the killer. In sibling murders, females were 15 percent of killers, and in murders of parents, 18 percent. But in spouse murders, women represented 41 percent of killers. In murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55 percent of killers."
"Among
black marital partners, wives were just about as likely to kill their husbands
as husbands were to kill their wives: 47 percent of the victims of a spouse
were husbands and 53 percent were wives."
Conflict Tactics Scales
To give a little background on how the rates of violence were determined, by Straus, and Gelles, We include the following question from the published survey for the CTS methodology:
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 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.
Stormed 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
To summarize, Straus &
Gelles, using the CTS methodology described above found that rates for total
(including less severe violence, such as pushing and shoving) between husbands
and wives are quite close) for husbands and wives, with one survey showing
husbands as more violent and the other with wives as more violent . Other data, however indicates that the gender of the striker of the first blow is fairly uniform. Jan. E States and Murray A Straus, "Gender Differences in Reporting Marital Violence and It’s Medical and Psychological Consequences", ch 9 in Straus & Gelles Physical Violence in American Families quote the following: Men claimed they struck the first blow in 44% of the cases, their female partners in 44% of the cases, and "couldn’t remember" in 12% of the cases. The women claimed men hit them first in 43% of the cases, that they struck the first blow in 53% of the cases, and "couldn’t remember" in 5% of the cases. However, data for injury rates based on these studies shows women seeking treatment for a doctor much more often than men did. In a study of 8145 families 7.3% of 137 women severely assaulted (i.e. 10 out of 137) and 1% of 95 men severely assaulted (i.e 1 out of 95) men asked to see a doctor.
Academy of Emergency Medicine 1999 Aug;6(8):786-91
History of domestic violence among male patients presenting to an urban
emergency department.
Mechem CC, Shofer FS, Reinhard SS, Hornig S, Datner E.
Department of Emergency
Medicine, Hospital of the Mechem CC, Shofer FS, Reinhard SS, Hornig S, Datner E.
OBJECTIVE: To establish the prevalence of domestic violence committed by women against male patients presenting to an urban ED for any reason.
METHODS: This was a prospective survey in which male patients of legal age presenting to the ED over a 13-week period were interviewed. Patients answered a series of six questions adapted from the
RESULTS: Of 866 male patients interviewed, 109 (12.6%) had been the victims of domestic violence committed by a female intimate partner within the preceding year. Victims were more likely to be younger, single, African American, and uninsured. The most common forms of assault were slapping, grabbing, and shoving (60.6% of victims). These were followed by choking, kicking, biting, and punching (48.6%), or throwing an object at the victim (46.8%). Thirty-seven percent of cases involved a weapon. Seven percent of victims described being forced to have sex. Nineteen percent of victims contacted the police; 14% required medical attention; 11% pressed charges or sought a restraining order; and 6% pursued follow-up counseling.
CONCLUSIONS: Almost 13% of men in this sample population had been victims of domestic violence committed by a female intimate partner within the previous year. Further attention to the recognition and management of domestic violence committed by women against men may be warranted.
http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
REFERENCES EXAMINING
ASSAULTS BY WOMEN ON THEIR SPOUSES OR MALE PARTNERS:
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Martin S. Fiebert
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach
Department of Psychology
California State University, Long Beach
SUMMARY: This
bibliography examines 286 scholarly investigations: 221 empirical
studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as
physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships
with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the
reviewed studies exceeds 371,600.
|
© 1997 by Sally L. Satel, M.D.
Psychiatrist and lecturer at the Yale School of
Medicine
Reprinted from The Women's Quarterly
(ISSN:1079-6622)
published by the Independent Women's Forum.
Summer 1997 - Number 12
Let’s call him "Joe Six Pack."
Every Saturday night, he drinks way too much, cranks up the rock ‘n roll way
too loud, and smacks his girlfriend for acting just a bit too lippy. Or let’s
call him "Mr. Pillar of the Community." He’s got the perfect wife,
the perfect kids. But he’s also got one little problem: every time he argues
with his wife, he loses control. In the past year, she’s been sent to the emergency
ward twice. Or let’s say they’re the Tenants from Hell. They’re always yelling
at each other. Finally a neighbor calls the police. Here is the question. Are the men in these scenarios:
a) in need of help;
b) in need of being locked up; or
c) upholders of the patriarchy?
Most people would likely say a) or b) or perhaps both. In fact, however, c) is the answer that more and more of the agencies that deal with domestic violence—including the courts, social workers, and therapists—now give. Increasingly, public officials are buying into Gloria Steinem’s assertion that "the patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself." They are deciding that the perpetrators of domestic violence don’t so much need to be punished, or even really counseled, but instead indoctrinated in what are called "profeminist" treatment programs. And they are spending tax dollars to pay for these programs.
A portion of the money for the re-education of batterers comes from
Still, the problem of domestic violence, even if grossly exaggerated, is horrific enough. So Congress generously authorized $1.6 billion to fund VAWA. Few taxpayers would begrudge this outlay if it actually resulted in the protection of women. But instead there is increasing evidence that the money is being used to further an ideological war against men—one that puts many women at even greater risk. The feminist theory of domestic abuse, like the feminist theory of rape, holds that all men have the same innate propensity to violence against women: your brother and my boyfriend are deep down every bit as bad as Joel Steinberg. Men who abuse their mates, the theory goes, act violently not because they as individuals can’t control their impulses, and not because they are thugs or drunks or particularly troubled people. Domestic abuse, in feminist eyes, is an essential element of the vast male conspiracy to suppress and subordinate women. In other words, the real culprit in a case of domestic violence is not a violent individual man, it is the patriarchy. To stop a man from abusing women, he must be taught to see the errors of the patriarchy and to renounce them.
Thus, a position paper by the
As well, feminists have stretched the definition of abuse to include acts of lying, humiliation, withholding information, and refusing help with child care or housework, under the term "psychological battery." A checklist from a brochure of the Westchester Coalition of Family Violence agencies tells women if their partner behaves in one or more of the following ways, including "an overprotective manner," "turns minor incidents into major arguments," or "insults you," then "you might be abused."
With money provided by VAWA, this view has come to pervade the bureaucracies created to combat domestic violence. In at least a dozen states, including
The dogma that women never provoke, incite, or aggravate domestic conflict, further, has led to some startling departures in domestic law. Hundreds of jurisdictions have adopted what are called "must-arrest" policies: that is, when local police are called to a scene of reported domestic abuse, they must arrest one partner (almost always the man) even if, by the time the authorities arrive, the incident has cooled off and there is no sign of violence, and even if (as is often the case) the woman doesn’t want the man arrested. Many of these same jurisdictions have also enacted "no-drop" policies—meaning that if a woman does press charges, she will not be permitted to change her mind and drop them later. Under VAWA, $33 million will be spent this year on the "Grants to Encourage Arrest" program, which uses federal money to induce localities to adopt must-arrest policies. Next year, the budget of the "Grants to Encourage Arrest" program will jump to $59 million.
Of course, it’s hard to feel sorry for men charged with abuse. And there is a satisfying, frontier-justice aspect to the feminist treatment programs: what better punishment for a loutish man than to make him endure hours of feminist lecturing? The trouble is, domestic violence—as these same feminists constantly remind us—is no joke. And there are virtually no convincing data that this feminist approach to male violence is effective.
Indeed, the paternalistic intrusiveness that characterizes so much of feminist domestic violence policy frequently has the unintended consequence of harming the very women it was meant to protect. Judge William S. Cannon, who has handled thousands of domestic violence cases through
Persuading victims of domestic violence that they need no psychological help or are never to blame can also backfire, because it pushes many women away from seeking counseling that they plainly need. A prosecutor from
It is likewise far from clear that must-arrest policies help victims of domestic abuse. Several studies—including one by Lawrence W. Sherman of the University of Maryland, whose early study on mandatory arrest in a single midwestern city actually gave rise to the program’s popularity—suggest that mandatory arrest can escalate spousal violence in some men by further enraging them, and causing them to seek revenge on their lovers once they are released from jail.
But the implicit goal of feminist treatment and legal responses is to separate women from their abusive partners—no matter what the circumstances, and no matter how fervently the women wish otherwise. Many shelter counselors interviewed by Kimberle Crenshaw of the
For example, contrary to the prevailing view of battered women as weak, helpless, and confused, professor Jacquelyn Campbell reported in 1994 in the Journal of Family Violence, that the majority of battered women do take steps to end the abuse in their relationships. In truth, the average abused woman is not Hedda Nussbaum (the obsessed lover of psychopath Joel Steinberg). The sad facts, as discussed by Christine Littleton in the 1993 book Family Matters: Readings on Family Lives and the Law, are that many "women who stay in battering relationships accurately perceive the risks of remaining, accurately perceive the risks of leaving, and choose to stay either because the risks of leaving outweigh those of staying or because they are trying to rescue something beyond themselves"—such as their family.
And here is the cruelest failure of profeminist therapy. Since many victims of domestic abuse do want to hold their families together, and since they are trying to weigh the risks of staying with an abusive mate, it does them an enormous disservice to put a dangerous man through a program that cannot fulfill its promise to cure him. "The woman thinks to herself, ‘Well, now he’s changed,’ so she goes back to him and drops her guard. Sometimes with devastating effects," says Dr. Richard J. Gelles, of the
Furthermore, the woman herself can be swept into the vortex of misguided efforts prescribed by feminists. While her partner is being reprogrammed to challenge his sexist assumptions, the wives are often sent to feminist support groups. Valerie T., a patient of Dr. Virginia Goldner, a couples therapist at New York’s Ackerman Institute for the Family, attended such a group. "Valerie came back and told me she’d felt worse about herself ever since joining the group because ‘everyone was supposed to hate the men and want to leave them,’" said Goldner. Cathy Young, author of the forthcoming book, Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, says, "Oftentimes the sole qualification to work with battered women is to be one yourself and, of course, to have an abiding hatred of men." In the course of her research, she said, "I remember Renee Ward, director of a
Many advocates are also apparently so blinded by ideology that they are unable to draw distinctions between types of abusers. Some men, for example, are first-time offenders, others are brutal recidivists, others attack rarely but harshly, others frequently but less severely, and many are alcoholics. Such a heterogeneous population cannot be treated with a one-size-fits-all approach. Amy Holtzworth-Munroe, an associate professor of psychology at Indiana University, says, "states are basing rigid treatment policy on rhetoric and ideology, not data."
Take the case of "Don," a senior administrator at a southern university. Arrested once for slapping his wife (they are still together), Don was required to attend a Duluth-model program. About fifteen men sat for three hours on ten consecutive Wednesday nights in a classroom headed by two counselors. "The message was clear," Don told me, "whatever she does to you is your fault, whatever you do to her is your fault. It would have been a lot more helpful if they taught us to recognize when we felt ourselves being driven into positions where we lash out. The message should have been ‘recognize it, deal with it, and quit hitting.’ But all they gave us to work with was guilt." According to Don, "bathroom and cigarette breaks were filled with comments about the whole thing being stupid. In the sessions, group discussions among participants were not allowed to develop—maybe the leaders were afraid we’d unite and challenge their propaganda." Rather than improve their relationships, Don felt the therapy only helped to increase polarization between men and women. "Wives went to support groups and we went to our groups."
Complementing these biases was an equally great omission: the role of alcohol in domestic violence. Though studies show a persistent correlation between intoxication and aggression in families, Don’s group leaders were adamant that alcohol was never a cause of violence. Don claimed, however, that "every man in the room had been drinking when he was arrested." Booze, of course, is never an acceptable excuse for bad behavior, but there’s no question that alcohol pushes some people into violence. Feminist theory downplays the relevance of alcohol abuse, and as a particularly foolish result in Don’s program, failed to make sobriety a condition of the treatment for domestic batterers.
Glenna Auxiera, a divorce resolution counselor in Gainesville, Florida, attended a training course on male batterers sponsored by the
But this, of course, is precisely what state guidelines in nearly half the country now or will soon prohibit as the first course of treatment. They would outlaw, for instance, the kind of help that saved the decade-long marriage of a midwestern couple we’ll call "Steve and Lois M." Mr. and Mrs. M. were regarded by their community as a model couple. Mr. M. was in fact a high-profile businessman. But two or three times a year, he turned violent. After their last fight, in which he gave Mrs. M. a fractured arm, she gave him an ultimatum: unless he went with her to marriage therapy, she would take their nine-year-old son and leave. He agreed, and the couple saw Eve Lipchik, a
Mrs. M. did not feel "blamed" when she and her husband saw Lipchik together for four months with follow-up sessions at six and eighteen months. She got what she most wanted: her marriage saved and the violence ended. Of course, the happy ending of the story of Mr. and Mrs. M. does not necessarily await every combative couple: spousal assault is a difficult behavior to change. But with a good therapist, difficult change is not impossible. Richard Heyman, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, found that group conjoint therapy (several couples treated together) produced a significant reduction in both psychological and physical aggression immediately following treatment and one year later. This applied when the couple was intact, the degree of violence not severe, and the couple acknowledged that aggression was a problem, and often a mutual one.
Of course, joint-therapy is not for everyone. It may even be outright dangerous when the man causes frequent injury or when the woman is afraid of him. Not only will the woman be hesitant to tell the truth in counseling sessions, but her husband might well retaliate for disclosures she makes to the counselor. A woman in such a situation is at real risk and must protect herself though she may find it hard—psychologically and physically—to pull away. For her, writes Dr. Virginia Goldner, "the ideological purity and righteous indignation of the battered woman’s movement is all that protects her from being pulled back into the swamp of abuse." Maybe so, but more often the violence is less intense and, as psychologist Judith Shervin writes, "men and women are bound in their dance of mutual destructiveness.... Women must share responsibility for their behavior and contributions to domestic violence."
These contributions are far bigger than feminists are willing to admit. According to the landmark 1980 book, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family by
At first glance, these data don’t seem consistent with those of the Department of Justice’s statistics. Its 1994 National Crime Victimization Survey stated that "women were about six times more likely than men to experience violence by an intimate." But this merely reflects the fact that women, unlike men, are rarely violent outside the home. Sometimes their aggression is in self-defense. A 1995 DOJ report showed that wives committed forty-one percent of all spousal murders in 1988 (the year covered in the report). However, eighty-one percent of the accused wives, compared to ninety-four percent of the accused husbands, were convicted of homicide. The lower conviction rate for wives, the report said, reflected the fact that they were more likely to have killed in self-defense. Even so, the sentences varied dramatically: wives received average prison sentences of six years, husbands sixteen and a half years.
But self-defense doesn’t explain all female-on-male aggression. The National Family Violence Survey, developed by Straus and Gelles and funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, is a widely respected assessment that taps a representative sample of married and cohabiting couples. The researchers interviewed thousands of couples in 1975, 1985, and 1992. Extrapolating from their 1985 survey of more than six thousand couples, the authors estimate that 1.8 million females are the victims of severe domestic violence each year (with injuries suffered by one in ten), but so were about 2.1 million men. The rates of male-on-female aggression declined between 1975 and 1992 while female-on-male stayed constant. The surveys also revealed that women suffered actual injury at about seven times the rate of men but that they used weapons such as baseball bats, boiling water, and knives (among other things) to make up for their physical disadvantage. Many of these women freely admitted on the survey that their use of weapons was not in self-defense.
Actually, when it comes to the murder of intimates, as criminologist Coramae Richey Mann documented in her 1996 study of female killers, When Women Kill, murderesses are seldom helpless angels: seventy-eight percent of the women in Mann’s study had prior arrest records and fifty-five percent a history of violence. Lately, Straus has been revising his views. "I [once] explained the high rate of attacks by wives largely as a response to or as a defense against assault by the partner. However, new evidence raises questions about that interpretation," he wrote in his contribution to the 1996 book, Domestic Violence.
After reviewing the available research, Straus concludes that twenty-five to thirty percent of violent married and cohabiting couples are violent solely because of attacks by the wife. About twenty-five percent of violence between couples is initiated by men. The remaining half is classified as mutual. This is true whether the analysis is based on all assaults or only potentially injurious and life-threatening ones. (These findings are corroborated by other studies, including the 1991 Los Angeles Epidemiology Catchment Area study, and the 1990 National Survey of Households and Families.)
In fact, among
Anyone still inclined to blame domestic violence on the patriarchy and male aggression ought to take a look at the statistics on violence against children. A just-released report from the Department of Health and Human Services, "Child Maltreatment in the
Finally, consider domestic aggression within lesbian couples. If feminists are right, shouldn’t these matches be exempt from the sex-driven power struggles that plague heterosexual couples? Instead, according to Jeanie Morrow, director of the Lesbian Domestic Violence Program at W.O.M.A.N., Inc. in
Some survey studies have actually suggested a higher incidence of violence among lesbian partners, but it’s impossible to know for certain since there’s no reliable baseline count of lesbian couples in the population at large. According to Morrow, the lesbian community has been reluctant to acknowledge intimate violence within its ranks—after all, this would endanger the all-purpose, battering-as-a-consequence-of-male-privilege explanation. Morrow’s program treats about three hundred women a year but she wonders how many more need help. Because they are "doubly closeted," as Morrow puts it, women who are both gay and abused may be especially reluctant to use services or report assaults to the police.
Like so many projects of the feminist agenda, the battered women’s movement has outlived its useful beginnings, which was to help women leave violent relationships and persuade the legal system to take domestic abuse more seriously. Now they have brought us to a point at which a single complaint touches off an irreversible cascade of useless and often destructive legal and therapeutic events. This could well have a chilling effect upon victims of real violence, who may be reluctant to file police reports or to seek help if it subjects them to further battery from the authorities. And it certainly won’t help violent men if they emerge from so-called treatment programs no more enlightened but certainly more angry, more resentful, and as dangerous as ever.
Aggression is a deeply personal and complex behavior, not a social defect expressed through the actions of men. Yet to feminists, it can only be the sound of one hand slapping: the man’s. So long as this view prevails, we won’t be helping the real victims; indeed, we will only be exposing them to more danger.
Dear Editor
The Women's
Shelter Movement is a front for feminist politics. The Violence Against Women Act provides the
financial life-blood of the feminist movement.
We read that the Attorney General intends to make more money available for
Federally Funded Feminism. .
If the DOJ were to
take responsible action relevant to the VAWA they would indict the lobbyists
for this bill for fraudulent fund raising.
Suggesting such an
indictment is not mere rhetoric. Dr.
Sally Satel, a Yale Psychiatrist wrote the following. "To obtain passage of VAWA, feminist
organizations like the National Organization for Women and even secretary of
Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, pelted legislators with facts and
figures: 'The leading cause of birth defects is battery during pregnancy.' 'In
emergency rooms, twenty to thirty percent of women arrive because of physical
abuse by their partner.' 'Family violence has killed more women in the last
five years than Americans killed in the Viet Nam
NOW, and others,
knowingly lied to congress and aided a conspiracy to defraud the
government. Leaders in the Women's Shelter
Movement routinely mislead the public as a fund raising tactic.
Our Family
Violence summary of scientific research:
Also, see
"Sex Differences in Aggression Between Heterosexual Partners: A
Meta-Analytic Review" by John Archer, Psychological Bulletin,
September 2000, Volume 126, Number 5.
Sincerely yours,
Reverends Sam and Bunny Sewell
Dear Editor, Recently, the sexist phrase "dead-beat dads" has been in your newspaper. Our best advice is to remain gender neutral when discussing marriage and family issues. If one must be gender specific, get the facts straight.
- Custodial mothers who receive a support award: 79.6%
- Custodial fathers who receive a support award: 29.9%
- Non-custodial mothers who totally default on support: 46.9%
- Non-custodial fathers who totally default on support: 26.9%
Information from multiple sources shows that only 10% of all non-custodial fathers fit the "deadbeat dad" category: 90% of the fathers with joint custody paid the support due. Fathers with visitation rights pay 79.1%; and 44.5% of those with NO visitation rights still financially support their children.
Census Bureau report. Series P-23, No. 173
Additionally, of those not paying support, 66% are not doing so because they lack the financial resources to pay.
GAO report:GAO/HRD-92-39 FS.
One of the problems is defaulting on child support payments. Another problem is gender bigotry. Face it, both men and women are sexist, "dead-beat", and abuse their spouses. Please quit the gender specific finger pointing!
One good way to stop the gender wars is by using responsible research as the basis for our opinions. If you would like to read research on gender issues, here is a web site where you can get facts, rather than uninformed opinions.
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda!
Revs. Sam &
Co-Directors
Family Resources and Research
Dear Editor,
Recently there have been several letters about family law issues: divorce, child custody, child support, visitation, and family violence. These letters correctly point out the obvious anti-male bias at the
However, anti-male bias is not the only problem. Family court decisions are made in a perfunctory manner. Judges frequently make decisions without adequate information. Arbitrary and capricious decisions are routine, and they are seldom challenged. Many cases are handled in such an incompetent manner that even the well-informed professionals can't predict a rational outcome. If the courthouse was a rocket, it would blow up on the launching pad!
One letter writer advised that men should give up, because they are sure to lose, even if the facts support their cause. We disagree with this advice. Keep working for justice, before, during and even after you lose. Your kids are worth it!
Meanwhile, realize that as things stand now, any man in family court is not likely to find justice. The combined elements of anti-male bias, ill-informed judges, arbitrary decisions, and plain old-fashioned incompetence continue to triumph over justice. Work for justice anyway!
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda!
Sam and
Best Self
P.S. We applaud the new policy to enforce child support payments. Now let us develop a policy that enforces visitation with equal vigor.
Dear Editor
Sometimes the Facts Lie
Men do not usually report
violent women. Children do not usually report violent mothers. A woman is far
more likely to report a violent man. Sometimes the Facts Lie
Studies of male emergency room patients showed that less than 1% of men had reported an incident to police, even though they needed medical attention for injuries inflicted by a woman. Statistics on "reported" spousal violence are very misleading.
Some women call the police because there is a real need!
Other reasons women report men:
1. Women are encouraged to report spousal violence by countless media reminders. Feminist propaganda always portrays a female victim and a male perpetrator. Men are reluctant to claim they are victims of violent women.
2. Some women call police because they are frightened by a minor incident. Other women call the police as a "trump card" in an argument. They are often regretful! One 911 call for "help" surrenders her destiny to the "legal system", and places her family's future in the hands of strangers.
3. Some women make false reports because there are legal, financial, and child custody rewards for making a false report. Some divorce attorneys specialize in encouraging false accusations.
Police statistics are distorted beyond usefulness to anyone who is looking for the truth about family violence. Yet, those who intend to mislead the public make liberal use of police statistics. Have you ever heard the false claim: "95% of victims are female"? (see: http://www.naplesshelter.org)
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda!
Sam and
Family Resources and Research
Dear Editor,
One wonder after another
The rest of the story about the crime of rape is the crime of false rape charges. Formal studies show a rate of false accusations that varies from 27% to 60%. These formal studies required three conditions:
1. No corroborating witnesses, (her word against his).
2. No physical evidence of a rape.
3. Here's the tough one - before trial, the woman had to recant her testimony and admit she made it up.
Incidences of false rape charges are actually much higher.
Makes one wonder how many men are behind bars because the accuser didn't feel guilty enough about sending an innocent man to jail.
One of the "informal" studies on false rape accusations was done by the
Death threats were made against the reporter who wrote the article. Bomb threats were made against the newspaper.
Makes one wonder what makes victims, and/or their advocates, get so aggressive about defending their status as victims. Are they really that attached to victimhood, or does it have something to do with fund raising?
Makes one wonder if they care about the men facing false rape charges? Is there a False Rape Hotline? Do they have "What To Do If You Are falsely Accused of Rape." pamphlets, counselors? Or is their compassion, as well as their help, gender specific?
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda!
Sam and
Family Resources and Research
Feminist Fund Raising Fraud
Dear Editor,
Recently there have been misleading articles regarding family violence. We would like to remind you that this issue has been distorted and politicized by the gender wars. Believing what feminists say about family violence is like believing what the tobacco companies say about cancer.
The feminists derive their financial life blood from funding of women's shelters. Billions, yes we said billions, of federal dollars are flowing into feminist front organizations. These programs are based on the claim that family violence is something that only happens to women and children. By quoting misleading police statistics on reported violence the feminists have accomplished "
The scientific studies reveal a startlingly different picture of family violence. The scientists say that minor spousal violence is divided about fifty-fifty between the genders. Women initiate most incidents of spousal violence. Women use weapons three times more frequently than men. Spousal murders have been about fifty-fifty for the last 40 years. Women commit most child murders and most child abuse. Women also commit most elder murders and abuse. "The female of the species is more deadly than the male."
We publish a report on the Internet which contains a bibliography that examines 95 scholarly investigations, 79 empirical studies and 16 reviews and/or analyses, which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 60,000.
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda!
Sam and
Family Resources and Research
Dear Editor,
Domestic Violence awareness month is October. Scientific studies of domestic violence are finally being reported in the media.
About two months ago Ann Landers quoted scientific studies which revealed that men and women were about equal in spousal assaults.
Betsy Hart, former white house spokesman and news commentator, wrote a column which recently appeared in the NDN. In her column she says, "many abuse experts unhindered by feminist blinders recognize abuse is often part of a dance of mutual destructiveness . . . and that women initiate violence in cohabiting relationships as often as men.
Friday evening (Sept. 19) The ABC news program 20/20 ran a story entitled, "Beaten By Their Wives". In this story leading researchers were interviewed and again the message was; women are every bit as violent as men.
Below are results of national studies done on domestic violence:
Husband on wife severe assault occurred at a rate of 2.0%. Wife on husband severe assault occurred at a rate of 4.6%. Husband on wife minor assault occurred at a rate of 9.9%. Wife on husband minor assault occurred at a rate of 9.5%
Until recently, the scientific studies of domestic violence have been ignored or actively suppressed to such an extent that most of us have a very distorted view of the issue. It is reasonable to expect scientific studies to be included in all aspects of domestic violence policy.
Get scientific studies not feminist propaganda
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