An Ignored Truth About Domestic Violence

The stereotype often invoked by the mainstream media about domestic violence is of a bullying and domineering man. No doubt there are men around who abuse their women and children. This needs to be stated clearly: there are, indeed, dangerous men who abuse their partners. But this should not make people oversimplify the problem. The constant pressure is to present domestic violence entirely as a ‘gendered issue’.^[1] Those who promote this gender determinism often claim that men resort to violence to subjugate women; that, in order to maintain women dominated men strategically resort to violence, including rape, emotional abuse and financial control.^[2] According to Linda Mills, the Lisa Ellen Goldberg Professor of Social Work, Public Policy, and Law and Founder of the NYU Center on Violence and Recovery,

It has served mainstream feminism both socially and politically to simplify and reduce the violence continuum to include only physical abuse perpetrated by men. Mainstream feminists made domestic violence unilateral. A violence that was a facet of a family or domestic scene was portrayed as an inevitable, if unfortunate, expression of patriarchy.^[3]

One solution presented by radical feminists to eliminate “patriarchy” is the abolition of traditional marriage. In The Female Eunuch (1970), Germaine Greer informs us that ‘the end of marriage’ is the primary goal of feminism. By arguing that a woman’s overriding responsibility is only to herself as an autonomous being, Greer advised women to file for unilateral divorce and to suppress ‘the guilt of marriage failure in an impossible set-up’.^[4] She also advised these women applying for unilateral divorce to ‘resist discussing her situation with her husband’.^[5] Kristen Birkett writes on the implications of such an advice given to all married women:

Not even reasonable discussion was allowed. Ideology was overriding reality with a vengeance. It didn’t matter, in Greer’s advice, if a woman’s husband was generous, innocent of wrong, willing to compromise and wanting to be reasonable. No matter how good he was, he had to be left. He was not to be told about it – Greer did not want any change of women being “ridiculed and baffled” (a rather condescending view of women). The poor husband, not aware of having done anything wrong, would just have to watch his wife become more and more angry and then leave, refusing to tell him what was wrong. There didn’t have to be anything wrong. Marriage itself, Greer taught, was wrong.^[6]

Feminist perceptions of marriage have resulted in increasingly loose definitions of ‘domestic violence’.

Ironically, however, it is marriage itself that provides women the best protection against such violence.^[7] Marriage reportedly leads to a diminished likelihood of mothers and children facing violence, poverty and deprivation.^[8] Since 1993 the U.S. Department of Justice has been conducting an analysis of the findings of National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). These findings reveal that heterosexual marriage dramatically reduces the prospects of a women to suffer domestic abuse or violent crime at the hands of intimate partners.[9]

Gender Symmetry in Domestic Violence

Although violence by women against men is a phenomenon that has received little attention in the media and in government, for nearly five decades the best research reveals that men are also frequently the targets of violence by abusive partners. Since the 1980s more than 200 academic studies have demonstrated that, despite the common assertion, most partner violence is mutual, and that a woman’s perpetration of violence is the strongest predictor of her being a victim of partner violence.^[10]

There is a constant pressure to present domestic violence entirely as a ‘male problem’, thus placing all the blame on men as a collective group. From the nation’s media reports, public inquiries and official campaigns, one should be forgiven to think that men are the sole perpetrators of domestic violence. However, data keeps mounting (50 years of research!) which indicates that domestic violence may be perpetrated by both men and women against their partners.

A decade ago, an official letter by the Harvard Medical School declared that ‘the problem is often more complicated, and may involve both women and men as perpetrators’. Based on the findings of a comprehensive analysis of more than 11,000 American men and women aged eighteen to twenty-eight, the statement concluded:

When the violence is one-sided … women were the perpetrators about 70% of the time. Men were more likely to be injured in reciprocally violent relationships (25%) than were women when the violence was one-sided (20%). That means both men and women agreed that men were not more responsible than women for intimate partner violence. The findings cannot be explained by men’s being ashamed to admit hitting women, because women agreed with men on this point.^[11]

The Harvard statement was based on a seminal work published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2007. Written by four experts in the field (Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesses Laileyesus, Monica Swahn and Linda S. Saltman), it seeks to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (that is, two-way) and non-reciprocal domestic violence, and to determine whether reciprocity is related to violence and injury.^[12] After analysing the data, which contained information about domestic violence reported by 11,370 respondents on 18,761 heterosexual relationships, the following conclusions were reached:

♦ A woman’s perpetration of domestic violence is the strongest predictor of her being a victim of partner violence;^[13]

♦ Among relationships with non-reciprocal violence, women were reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases;^[14]

♦ Women reported greater perpetration of violence than men did (34.8 per cent against 11.4 per cent, respectively).^[15]

One possible explanation for these findings is that men are less willing than women to report hitting their partner. ‘This explanation cannot account for the data, however, as both men and women reported a larger proportion on nonreciprocal violence perpetrated by women than by men.’^[16] In fact, the authors explain that women’s greater perpetration of violence was reported by both women (female perpetrators = 24.8 per cent, male perpetrators = 19.2 per cent) and by men (female perpetrators = 16.4 per cent, male perpetrators = 11.2 per cent).^[17] Based on the information available, the authors concluded:

Our findings that half of relationships with violence could be characterised as reciprocally violent are consistent with prior studies. We are surprised to find, however, that among relationships with nonreciprocal violence, women were the perpetrators in a majority of cases, regardless of participant gender. One possible explanation for this, assuming that men and women are equally likely to initiate physical violence, is that men, who are typically larger and stronger, are less likely to retaliate if struck first by their partner. Thus, some men may be following the norm that “men shouldn’t hit women” when struck first by their partner.^[18]

The Partner Abuse of State of Knowledge Project is broadly regarded as the most significant international summary of the data available.^[19] This is undoubtedly the world’s largest and most comprehensive research on domestic violence, summarising 1,700 peer-reviewed studies and published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Partner Abuse (November 2012). The results, which are summarised in a comprehensive 2,300-page review of the relevant research literature, notably identified higher rates of female-perpetrated domestic violence than male-perpetrated (28.3 per cent vs. 21.6 per cent). Across studies, it was found that 43 per cent of men and 41 per cent of women reported coercive abuse. As for “motivation”, the authors of this literature review concluded that men and women often perpetrate domestic abuse from similar motives – ‘primarily to get back at a partner for emotionally hurting them, because of stress of jealousy, to express anger and other feelings that they could not put into words or communicate, and to get their partner’s attention.’^[20]

That women can be as abusive as men is something that Erin Pizzey, a British ex-feminist and advocate against domestic violence who set up the first refuge for battered women, in 1971, knew from the very beginning. Pizzey was raised by a violent mother who often called her ‘lazy, useless, and ugly’. Her mother took some pleasure in also abusing her father by often calling him ‘an oaf and an idiot’.^[21] She often beat Pizzey with an ironing cord until the blood ran down her legs. Pizzey strove for love but nothing would appease her mother. She was left badly damaged.

When Pizzey opened in England the first ever refuge for battered women, 62 of the first 100 women to come through the door were as abusive as the men they had left.^[22] Hence, when the feminists started to aggressively demonise fathers, in the early 1970s, the stark images of those violent women were a sober reminder that ‘women and men are both capable of extraordinary cruelty’. Therefore, as Pizzey points out,

We must stop demonising men and start healing the rift that feminism has created between men and women.

This insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.^[23]

Pizzey is now part of a growing number of experts and academics trying to set the record straight.^[24] As early as the 1980s, researchers in the field have produced studies fully demonstrating that, despite the common assertion, most of domestic violence is mutual and self-defence explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. Besides, these researchers have discovered that women are just as likely as men to report physical and emotional abuse.^[25]

One would like to think governments are keen to combat all forms of domestic violence, regardless of gender, age and ethnicity. Unfortunately, however, men assaulted by their wives and girlfriends are often treated as “second-class victims”. Their plight is largely overlooked in official reports and in government policy.^[26] Male victims of domestic violence are ‘almost invisible to the authorities such as the police, who rarely can be prevailed upon to take the man’s side,’ says John Mays, a counsellor who works for Parity, an UK-based organisation which advocates for the equal treatment of domestic violence victims, both male and female, and their children.

The official figures notoriously underestimate the number of male victims of domestic violence. One reason for this is that men are quite reluctant to disclose that they have been abused. Culturally it is still difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of authorities. ‘Men feel under immense pressure to keep up the pretence that everything is OK,’ says Alex Neil, a Scottish politician and Secretary for Health and Wellbeing at the Scottish Parliament between 2012 and 2014.^[27]

Take, for instance, “Matthew”, who says that if he did not do as his ex-wife demanded she would disconnect his computer and hide the cables. She eventually forced him to leave his own job despite this being their only source of income.^[28] Despite being married for seven years and having three children, Matthew was rarely allowed to spend free time with them. Admitting that sometimes he wondered why he still remained in the relationship, Matthew said: ‘The children were the most important part in my life and risking my time with them was going to be so hard’.^[29]

Consider then the predicament of “John”, whose wife often attacked him in the middle of the night when he was sleeping – punching him in the head and face. ‘I couldn’t do anything other than try and hold her off. It was very difficult, you are judged by people like the police as if you were the one who was causing everything’, he says.

Or think about “Jordan”, whose wife forced him for many years to sleep on the floor. She assaulted him with hammers, knives, laptop chargers and scalding water. He says police officers assumed it was all his fault and felt that his wife was above the law. Jordan is devastated that the Family Court has awarded full custody of their two children to their violent mother. ‘It’s been horrific and the hardest thing I have ever been through. She was convicted of assault, yet the courts listen to her’, he says.

Consider also the case of “Jim”, who has just turned 81. He was forced to endure 60 years of controlling behaviour and physical abuse by his wife. ‘It was progressive over the years. I couldn’t meet friends, I couldn’t meet family. The year before I left, it had deteriorated. I was getting black eyes, I was getting bruising, I got my tooth knocked out, I had my knee hammered and incidents like that’, he says.

These are just a few examples and they are not unusual, argues Dr Elizabeth Bates, a senior lecturer in applied psychology at the University of Cumbria. She has heard many such stories from male victims who have been laughed at or dismissed by police.^[30] ‘The reality is that men don’t seek help as much. That’s partly because society strongly condemns violence against women but has few sanctions for women’s aggression towards men’, Dr Bates says.^[31]

The reasons so many men do not leave these abusive relationships are varied.

For many this is mainly because of worries about their children. Abused men often do not leave the abusive relationship because ‘this would mean putting their children at risk by leaving them with a frightening mother’, says Bettina Arndt.^[32] The fear of never seeing their children again keeps many men with their abusive partners. According to Amanda Major, a counsellor at Relate, a relationships advice service, ‘refusing access to children is sometimes used as a way to control and ‘punish’ the other person’. ^[33] Fathers4Justice founder Matt O’Connor comments:

It is a tragic reality that many mothers weaponise their children by controlling a father’s access to their children … We call this ‘revenge parenting’ because mothers know fathers have no legal rights to see their children, and they can act with impunity. This coercive behaviour extends to parental alienation, where mums manipulate children and turn them against their dads’.^[34]

Lesbian Domestic Violence Proves It’s Not a Male Problem

Another inconvenient truth is the higher levels of domestic violence found in lesbian relationships. Of course, no man can be found in such relationships. The belief that violence comes from so-called male control, or “patriarchal domination”, as feminists like to describe it, was called into question in the early 1990s, when a US survey of 1,099 lesbians reveals that they were more physically abused by their female domestic partners than their female counterparts in heterosexual relationships.^[35] In that year another survey of 350 American lesbians discovered that no less than 56.8 per cent of them had been sexually victimized, 45.0 per cent had experienced any form of physical aggression, and 64.5 per cent had experienced either physical or emotional aggression from their female partners.^[36]

A more recent review of the literature has been published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. There it is reported that domestic violence is more likely to occur among lesbian couples as compared to heterosexual couples.^[37] The authors of this review, Dr Colleen Stiles-Shields and Dr Richard A. Carroll, both academics from the School of Medicine at Northwestern University, concluded that when analysed together these studies reveal that domestic violence affects around 75 per cent of all lesbian relationships.^[38]

The Australian Institute of Family Studies reports that at least 30 per cent of all Australian lesbians have experienced abuse or violence from an intimate partner.^[39] And yet, even the Australian government openly acknowledges that, within the LGBTIQ+ community, domestic violence among lesbians is grossly under-reported. Arguably, such confession indicates that the traditional feminist framework for domestic violence is deeply flawed and sexist; for these findings debunk their prevailing narrative.^[40] Let’s face it, if a woman is a lesbian then there is obviously no man around to blame!^[41]

Concluding Comments

Violence by women against their domestic partners receives little attention, yet nearly five decades of research reveals that men are also targets of physical abuse. At least one-third of the reported cases of domestic violence in Australia officially involve male victims, and countless more men victims of domestic violence are silently suffering at the hands of their violent female partners.

However, government campaigns that create the belief domestic violence happens only to women have prevented a vast number of battered men from ever coming forward. Arguably, the ultimate goal is to tar all men, not just the relatively few perpetrators, as a collective and universally guilt group. It is to the Australian government’s shame that it frequently signs on to biased campaigns depicting men as the sole agents of domestic violence.

Across several countries the best research available shows that the percentage of men who are physically assaulted by their female partners tends to be remarkably similar to the percentage of women physically assaulted by their male partners.^[42] And yet, one of the tactics used by domestic violence campaigners to hide the inconvenient truth that women can be as abusive as men, is to highlight only men’s violence and leave out all the statistics relating to abusive women. Another frequent method of hiding this truth is conceal the evidence.

Those who deny the empirical evidence often resort to all sorts of unacceptable tactics, which includes ‘concealing those results, selective citation of research, stating conclusions that are the opposite of the data in the results section and intimidating researchers who produced results showing gender symmetry’.^[43] One of the leading researchers in the field, Dr Murray A. Straus, has received numerous death threats over the years, as have his co-researchers, Dr Richard Gelles and Dr Suzanne Steinmetz, with the latter the subject of a vicious campaign to deny her academic tenure and rescind her grant funding.^[44]

Naturally, domestic violence is a grave issue and initiating this kind of conversation by no means implies going soft on the serious problem.

And yet, while domestic violence against women is constantly highlighted by politicians and the mass media, domestic violence against men is rarely reported. The obscured truth is that women are also violent, but feminist ideologues and their panderers in the mass media and government do not want you to know that. It is about time to abandon the sexist paradigm that has hijacked the domestic violence debate, and to correct all the injustices causes by the politicisation of a tragic reality that affects countless adults and children, female and male alike.

Prof. Augusto Zimmermann is head of law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education, in Perth, Western Australia. He is also a former member of the Law Reform Commission in Western Australia and a former associate dean (research) at Murdoch University, School of Law. He will be one of the speakers at “Restoring the Presumption of Innocence”, a conference to be held in Sydney on August 31, 2024.

Endnotes

[1] Stephen Baskerville, ‘Family Violence in America: The Truth about Domestic Violence and Child Abuse’, American Coalition for Fathers & Children – ACFC, Washington/DC, May 2006, p 19.

[2] R.E. Dobash and R.P. Dobash, Violence Against Wives: A Case Against the Patriarchy (New York: Free Press, 1979); See also: R. Hammer, ‘Militarism and Family Terrorism: A Critical Feminist Perspective’ (2003) 25 The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 231-256.

[3] Linda Mills, Insult to Injury: Rethinking our Responses to Intimate Abuse (Princeton University Press, 2003) 10.

[4] Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (London: Paladin, 1971) 319-322.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Kirsten Birkett, The Essence of Feminism (Sydney: Matthias Media, 2000) 51.

[7] Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, ‘The Case for Marriage: Why Marriage People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially’ (New York/NY: Doubleday, 2000)

[8] Linda Waite, ‘Does Marriage Matter?’ (1995) 32 Demographics 483. See also: David J Eggebeen and Daniel T. Lichter, ‘Race, Family Structure, and Changing Poverty Among American Children’, 56 American Social Review 801, 806.

[9] Ibid.

[10] “Perhaps the most frequent method of dealing with the unacceptable evidence that women assault partners at the same or higher rate as men is to conceal the evidence. The pattern was established early in research on PV by a survey conducted for the Kentucky Commission on Women (Schulman, 1979). This excellent survey found about equal rates of assault by men and women partners, but only assaults by men were presented in the commission report”. – Murray A. Straus, ‘Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment’ (2010) 1 Partner Abuse 332, 339.

[11] ‘In Brief: Domestic Violence: Not Always One Sided’, Harvard Medical School, September 2007, at https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/In_Brief_Domestic_violence_Not_always_one_sided

[12] Daniel J. Whitaker PhD, Tadesse Haileysus MS, Monica Swahn PhD, and Linda S. Saltzman PhD, ‘Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury between Relationships with Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence’ (2007) 97 (5) American Journal of Public Health 941–47. At the time of this study, Dr Daniel J. Whitaker and Dr Linda S. Saltzman were with the Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta/GA. Tadesse Haileyesus was with the Office of Statistics and Programming, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Manica Swahn was with the Office on Smoking and Health, Center for Disease, Control and Prevention.

[13] Ibid, 941. See also: S.M. Smith, D.B. Smith, C.E. Penn, D.B. Ward, D. Tritt, ‘Intimate Partner Physical Abuse Perpetration and Victimization Risk Factors: A Meta-Analytic Review’ (2004) 10 Aggress Violent Behaviour 65-98.

[14] Whitaker et al (n 12), 943.

[15] Ibid, 943-44.

[16] Ibid, 944.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid.

[19] ‘Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project Findings At-a-Glance, Sponsored by the Journal Partner Abuse, John Hamel, LCSW, Editor-in-Chief’, Domestic Violence Research, springerpub.com/pa, November 2023, at https://www.domesticviolenceresearch.org/pdf/FindingsAt-a-Glance.Nov.23.pdf

[20] Ibid.

[21] Erin Pizzey, ‘Why I loathe feminism… and believe it will ultimately destroy the family’, Daily Mail, 24 September 2009, at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1215464/Why-I-loathe-feminism—believe-

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] See: Alicia Spidel, Caroline Greaves, Tonia L. Nicholls, Julie Goldenson, Donald G Dutton, ‘Personality Disorders, Types of Violence, and Stress Responses in Female Who Perpetrate Intimate Partner Violence’ (2013) 4 Psychology 5-11; See also: Denise A. Hines and Emily M. Douglas, ‘Women’s Use of Intimate Partner Violence against Men: Prevalence, Implications and Consequences (2009) 18 Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma 572-586. See also: Denise A. Hines and Kathleen Malley-Morrison, ‘Psychological Effects of Partner Abuse Against Men: A Neglected Research Area’ (2001) 2 (2) Psychology of Men & Masculinity 75-85.

[25] Straus (n 10), 332.

[26] Denis Campbell, ‘More Than 40% of Domestic Violence Victims Are Male, Report Reveals’. The Guardian, September 5^th, 2010, at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence

[27] Ibid.

[28] Lauren Libbert, ‘Kids Used as Weapons’, The Sun, April 15, 2019, at https://www.thesun.co.uk/sun-men/8782632/abusive-relationship-wife-threatened-not-let-me-see-kids-coercive/

[29] Ibid.

[30] Tanith Carey, ‘Hidden Shame of the Men Abused by the Women They Love’, Daily Mail, 30 January 2020, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7943987/Hidden-shame-men-abused-women-love.html

[31] Ibid.

[32] Bettina Arndt, ‘Women are great at coercive control’, 10 July 2024, at https://bettinaarndt.substack.com/women-are-great-at-coercive-control

[33] Libbert (n 28).

[34] Ibid.

[35] Gwat-Yong Lie and Sabrina Gentlewarrier, ‘Intimate Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Discussion of Survey Findings and Practice Implications’ (1991) 15 Journal of Social Service Research at 41-59.

[36] Donald G. Dutton, ‘Patriarchy and Wife Assault’ (1994) 9 (2) Violence and Victims, at 167-178. In the United States, higher incidences of domestic violence are found among homosexual couples, especially among lesbian couples, than heterosexual ones. – John Dececco, Patrick Letellier & David Island, Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence (New York/NY: Haworth Press, 1991), at 14. See also: Susan C Turrell, ‘A Descriptive Analysis of Same-Sex Relationships: Violence for a Diverse Sample’ (2000) 13 Journal of Family Violence 281-293.

[37] Colleen Stiles-Shields & Richard A Carroll, ‘Same-Sex Domestic Violence: Prevalence, Unique Aspects, and Clinical Implications’ (2015) Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 636-648.

[38] Nora Dunne, ‘Domestic Violence Likely More Frequent for Same-Sex Couples’, Northwestern University, September 18, 2014, at http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2014/09/domestic-violence-likely-more-frequent-for-same-sex-couples.html#sthash.Zsz5HIAc.dpuf

[39] Australian Government, ‘Intimate Partner Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex and Queer Communities’, Australian Institute of Family Studies, December 2015, at https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/publications/intimate-partner-violence-lgbtiq-communities

[40] Patrick Letelllier, ‘Gay and Bisexual Male Domestic Violence Victimization: Challenges to Feminist Theory and Responses to Violence, (1994) 9 (2) Violence and Victims 95-106.

[41] Mark Powell, ‘Their ABC’s Anti-Religious Hypocrisy’, The Spectator Australia, 2 April 2018, at https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/04/their-abcs-anti-religious-hypocrisy/

[42] Straus (n 10) 333

[43] “Perhaps the most frequent method of dealing with the unacceptable evidence that women assault partners at the same or higher rate as men is to conceal the evidence. The pattern was established early in research on PV by a survey conducted for the Kentucky Commission on Women (Schulman, 1979). This excellent survey found about equal rates of assault by men and women partners, but only assaults by men were presented in the commission report”. – Straus (10) 339.

[44] Bettina Arndt, ‘Flirting with Confected Outrage Fails to Impress Women’, The Australian, 7 January, 2016, at https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/flirting-with-confected-outrage-fails-to-impress-women/news-story/13b5e0c486c037fce7f0a3fd625f801b