Male Victimization of Domestic Violence: A Compilation of Sources

There’s no doubt that anyone would agree, that women who are terrorized by an abusive partner deserve a way out of that situation and assistance from the surrounding community. As such, there has been a huge network both state-funded and private to address this problem. If this were to continue and expand, it could only be a good thing (though my own political leanings prefer privatized expansion).

However, there is a huge lack of attention to male victims. Many who fight for assistance for women pay lip service to male victims and might genuinely care about them. However, there is still, even among the sympathetic, an underlying assumption that the problem just isn’t as widespread or damaging for men as it is for women. What follows is not an attempt to create a victim contest or downplay the very real trauma many women experience. It is an attempt to tell the side of men and examine why that side isn’t told nearly as often as it should be.

This has been a post I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. There is a lot of information below, so you may want to put the kettle on and settle down. This will involve quite a bit of reading.

Victimization Rates

First we start with the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2010). While I would take their rape prevalence rates with a grain of salt, the domestic violence rates seem to be more rigidly defined and reliable. What’s also important is not so much the prevalence, but the fact that there is parity between the rates of men and women victimized by the issue. There is also a 2011 report, that you can find here, but I chose 2010 because the charts are far more legible. The numbers do not differ drastically between the two years.

Here is the data for men:

The “slapped, pushed, or shoved” category is often summarized simply as “Physical violence” in reports and men had a rate of 4.5% or roughly 5 million victims. Regarding severe physical violence, men had a rate of 2% or 2.3 million victims.



Here is the information for women:

The physical violence category is 3.6% or 4.3 million victims for women. Severe physical violence had a rate of 2.7% or 3.2 million victims.

We can see the rates are fairly comparable in both categories for both men and women.

However, physical abuse isn’t the only kind there is. The CDC also has numbers on psychological aggression:

As you can see, the rates between the sexes is near equal.

The American Journal of Public Health published findings on Intimate Partner Violence between adolescents ages 18 to 28 and found:

23.9% of relationships are violent



50.3% of IPV is non-reciprocal and 49.7% is reciprocal



70.7% of non-reciprocal IPV is initiated by women



These studies are hardly the first of their kind, either. A psychology researcher named Dr. Martin Friebert has compiled an exhaustive list of studies detailing female aggression against male partners. It not only includes statistical comparisons of larger populations, but more specialized reports and case studies on various aspects of domestic violence such as men going through divorce or young men in college.

The list now now sits at 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews) and can be downloaded from here.

Dr. Friebert also worked on two meta-analyses on domestic violence rates of men and women. The first one examined victimization rates, while the second examined perpetration rates.

Prevalence of Physical Violence in Relationships, Part 1: Rates of male and Female Victimization, examined 249 studies reporting 543 rates of victimization and found:

In Prevalence of Physical Violence in Relationships, Part 2: Rates of Male and Female Perpetration, they examined 111 studies that cited 272 rates of perpetration and found:

Dr. Friebert and his co-authors were not the only ones studying this. They derived much of their data from the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (PASK).

The information there has also helped other researchers publish findings such as Rates of Bi-directional versus Uni-directional Intimate Partner Violence Across Samples, Sexual Orientations, and Race/Ethnicities: A Comprehensive Review.

It’s findings basically wind down to this:

84% of relationships are non-violent

58% of relationships that are violent, both partners abuse the other.

28% of violent relationships only the woman is violent

14% of violent relationships only the man is violent.

However, PASK’s body of data is far larger than that. Currently, they’ve compiled over 1,700 studies into a comprehensive report. You can read the summarized findings here or take a gander at the full 61-page review. This is a compilation of the research of Erin Pizzey, Murray Strauss, Don Dutton, and many others who are challenging the feminist model of patriarchal dominance. They also have some videos that are very informative as well. The great thing is that they also have a section devoted to looking at rates in racial minorities as well as with homosexual and bisexual relationships.

Not only is this an extensively researched topic, but it has been for some time. Murray Strauss compiled Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment. A report detailing the existence of over 200 studies showing gender symmetry in victimization rates. Studies that show symmetry going as far back as 1975.

Access to Help

So now that we’ve established how common male victimization really is, the next question to ask is “What are we doing about it?”

If we look at the number of men helped by domestic violence shelters, we find that we don’t seem to be doing very much at all:

Bert H. Hoff of batteredmen.com writes:

The Administration for Children and Families, HHS, which funds domestic violence programs, stated in its 2010 Report to Congress that 976 men were sheltered in FY 2005, and 1,049 in FY 2008. The comparable figures for women were 154,430 and 150,098. Ascione (2000, p. 6) in Safe Havens for Pets: Guidelines for Programs Sheltering Pets for Women who are Battered has identified 118 programs for pets in domestic violence situations. He surveyed 41 of these. Twelve of these reported sheltering a total of 161,304 animals each year (mean=13,442 each), with five each sheltering more than 10,000 animals. There are few shelters for men, and in FY 2008 only 1,095 men received shelter services (U.S. Administration for Children and Families, 2010, p. 10)



And when we looked at what men experience when they call for help from domestic violence resources:

One abused man said: They laughed at me and told me I must have done something to deserve it if it happened at all. Another said: They asked how much I weighed and how much she weighed and then hung up on me…I was told by this agency that I was full of BS. Twelve percent of the hotlines accused the man of being the batterer or responsible for the abuse. One abused man said: They told me women don’t commit domestic violence – it must have been my fault. Another said: They accused me of trying to hide my “abuse” of her by claiming to be a victim, and they said that I was nothing more than a wimp. Of the men who sought help by contacting local domestic violence programs, only 10% found them to be “very helpful,” whereas 65% found them to be “not at all helpful.” One abused man said: They just laughed and hung up the phone. Another said: They didn’t really listen to what I said. They assumed that all abusers are men and said that I must accept that I was the abuser. They ridiculed me for not leaving my wife, ignoring the issues about what I would need to do to protect my six children and care for them.

These are organizations whose sole purpose for existing is to help people abused by their partner. How could they possibly get this so wrong?

Why Do These Obstacles Exist for Men?

I mentioned before a paper by Dr. Murray Strauss called Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment. Not only does Dr. Strauss gather the data for three decades, but he also detailed exactly why these studies aren’t being talked about by the general public.

He lists 8 ways the evidence of male victimization and female perpetration is downplayed:

Conceal the evidence - When citing figures on domestic violence. A lot of researchers concerned only with women or media outlets reporting on female domestic violence take studies where data is available for both sexes and only reports on the rates of women who are victimized.

Avoid Obtaining Evidence on Female Perpetration - Many feminist researches simply don’t ask women about the violence they commit. Conversely they won’t ask men about their victimization. This obviously leads to a lack of data on male victimization and female perpetration.

Selective Citation of Research - If a single study shows much higher rates of female victimization, you can bet that that study will be cited on domestic violence help websites and “fact sheets”, despite the existence of hundreds of other studies showing equality between the victimization rates.

State Conclusions That Contradict the Data - This one is why you have to be especially careful with feminist studies. Often times the bias is hidden in how they defined the terms and they will group results together and summarize it in ways that is extremely misleading and often flat out wrong.

Block Publication of Articles That Report Gender Symmetry - Time and time again, authors or coauthors will withdraw from a study when symmetry between gender rates is being found. This can be due to personal bias, but more often it’s due to fear of retaliation for publishing controversial results. More on this in #7.

Prevent Funding of Research to Investigate Female Partner Violence - This happens quite easily because often times these funds are controlled by a government office dedicated to tackling violence against women. If the study includes men, then that office deems it to be unworthy of funding. This sort of sexism is standard practice in many modern western countries. In the United States, the extent of the discrimination was documented in this report done by an organization called Stop Abusive and Violent Environments. An excellent overview by @imminent-death-syndrome can be found on his blog here.

Harass, Threaten, or Penalize Researchers Who Publish Evidence on Gender Symmetry - This one should be quite obvious to anyone familiar with Erin Pizzey’s story. Dr. Strauss also talks about his experiences as well as those of Susan Steinmetz, a researcher at the University of Delaware.



He has far more information and data to back it up in his paper. I highly encourage everyone to read it if they want to get an understanding of the difficulties men face in getting their problems heard by academia and the public at large.

This alone would go very far in explaining why police and domestic violence help resources aren’t seeing how bad the problem for men really is. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem lies with the training they received. Law enforcement uses the Duluth Model as a domestic violence assessment program and it specifically applies only to male abusers and female victims.

They literally refer to male privilege as one of the ways abusers control their spouses. It comes as no surprise that such a model would be inadequate in addressing male victims, but that is that standard across the US for police and domestic violence help resources.

Abused men also get arrested when they call for help.

The men in the survey who called the police found them to be “very helpful” in only 19% of cases, and “not at all helpful” in 50% of cases. More importantly, when an abused man called the police, the police were more likely to arrest him than to arrest his abusive female partner. The men who called the police were arrested in 26% of cases, whereas their abusive partners were arrested in only 17%. Half the time the police arrested nobody, despite the abuse, and in 8% of the cases they arrested both the abuser and the victim. In those cases where the police did identify the abused man’s female partner as the aggressor, in 29% of cases, they refused to arrest the abusive woman. In 39% of these cases they said that there was nothing they could do and left.



It’s due to the Duluth Model and predominant aggressor procedures that police are trained to comply with, with the help of feminist standards for determining the predominant aggressor in a situation. This site promoting predominant aggressor standards is a site dedicated to “violence against women”. Let’s see what they have to say about the Predominant Aggressor standard:

Ok, so police need to understand the “dynamics of domestic violence.” Well let’s see what they have to say on the dynamics of domestic violence:



So the “General Information” that predominant aggressor laws are based around starts off with the assumption that women are the victims. I won’t say they deny the existence of male victims but we damn sure aren’t represented, not that I expect it from a “violence against women” site.

So back to the predominant aggressor standards and what they state:

I’ve underlined all the ones that are biased against men in most situations.

Seriousness of injuries

Since women bruise more easily and are generally smaller framed, situations where violence is reciprocal, even if the woman is the aggressor, would likely result in her injuries appearing more serious. Also there’s an argument to be made that a police officer is also probably likely to downplay the seriousness of a man’s injuries and be more sensitive to a woman’s injuries, even if they aren’t on par with the man’s.

Height and Weight of Parties

This should immediately be obvious how men are more likely to be interpreted as aggressors with this standard.

Potential to Seriously Injure

This again, ties in with size and our impressions of who is more threatening. The man will generally lose this comparison.

Prior Convictions

Since a man is more likely than a woman to be arrested and convicted when committing the same crime, this also is slanted against men.

Fearful or Controlling Demeanor

This is just a personal sentiment but I feel men are more likely to be interpreted as controlling and women as fearful. In cases where a man is being berated and hit it would be easy for her to put on a fearful and hysterical demeanor for the police. A man calmly explaining that his partner is hitting him might just be interpreted as a controlling man trying to thrown his spouse under the bus.

Another interesting point about the first photo. It says that coupled with mandatory arrest laws, the predominant aggressor standards reduce dual arrests down to 2%. This is extremely troubling considering that around half of domestic violence situations involve reciprocal abuse. That means that this website is proudly declaring that a guilty party is going free in 96% of reciprocal violence situations by only arresting one person using these standards.

Conclusion

When you take all these disadvantages into consideration, it’s no wonder abused men are having difficulty being taken seriously. I want to say thank you to every person who has read this far and seriously considered what all this information actually means. I wanted to provide not only data to prove the problem exists, but also inform us why the problem got this bad without anyone paying attention to it. Hopefully, with this knowledge, we can use it to dismantle the systems that block men from getting the help they need.