Professor Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire has published a very interesting large multinational study that shows that contrary to popular belief, women can and do commit significant amounts of violence in relationships against men. The study found that “mutual domestic violence” with men and women both committing violence against each other is most common, that “female only” violence with women attacking men is the next most common, and that “male only” violence is half as common as “female only” violence.
This pattern applies across national boundaries. Additionally, the study shows that partner dominance in a relationship is highly indicative of likelihood for there to be domestic violence. Female dominance in relationships leads to higher rates of domestic violence than male dominance, but in both cases it shows that one partner trying to unfairly control the other is likely to involve or provoke violence.
DOMINANCE AND SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE
Harvard Medical School just announced a national survey by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control that examined 11,000 men and women ages 18-28 and found 24% of heterosexual relationships have had violence in them, half of it reciprocal and half non-reciprocal, and women committed more than 70% of the non-reciprocal violence and were more likely to hit first in the reciprocal violence. Both sexes suffered significant injuries.
Domestic violence: Not Always One Sided
The study was also publicized at:
Men Shouldn’t Be Overlooked as Victims of Partner Violence
Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence
Background: The historic, one-of-a-kind conference “From Ideology to Inclusion: Evidence-Based Policy and Intervention in Domestic Violence” was held in Sacramento, California February 15-16 and was a major success. The conference was sponsored by the California Alliance for Families and Children and featured leading domestic violence authorities from around the world.
One of the issues Dr. Dutton discussed at the conference is domestic violence between lesbians. This is an important and relevant issue, of course, in part because it provides a look at Intimate Partner Violence without the pervasive assumption that the violence in families is almost always caused by men. It also allows us to examine Intimate Partner Violence outside of the feminist Duluth model, which says that it is men who commit IPV, and they do so as part of their role in the patriarchy.
Dutton cited one study of 1,100 lesbian or bisexual women who are in abusive lesbian relationships. The study, which was conducted in Phoenix, found that the women were more likely to have experienced violence in their previous relationships with women than in their previous relationships with men.
Dutton explained that in general research shows that domestic violence is more common in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships.
Further reading:
DV Conference Report #8: Violence is more common in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual ones
This web site (linked here and below) has a chapter from a book written by an author (Erin Pizzey) who founded DV shelters for women in the 1970s. She talks about what many people run into during a divorce, especially with a spouse who suffers from a personality disorder such as BPD. Despite the author’s background in dealing with violence against women, she clearly states that it is not only men who are abusive. She discusses how women can be “emotional terrorists” and do immense damage to families, even leading to the deaths of family members. She notes that many of these emotional terrorists cause the breaking up of families and further become highly active during divorces, using false allegations, financial ruination, litigation, threats, defamation, child abduction, refusal to cooperate with visitation and custody orders, and other means to control and dominate their families and ex-spouses.
The Emotional Terrorist and the Violence-Prone
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