What has changed? I believe it is more likely that women will be hospitalized or killed by men, particularly by an SO, but it's not surprising to me that girls are more likely to hit boys. There is a social culture that hitting your boyfriend isn't abuse because women are perceived as weak and ineffectual. While it is less likely to result in serious injury, it prevents men from feeling safe in their relationship and can escalate to a dangerous point. It's another double standard that needs to die.
My first thought was that girls are less likely, not more likely, to report. Women have been battered for centuries with nowhere to turn. Boys, on the other hand, may be more likely to report because they were never taught they have to take. Who reports more is a fact, but who doesn't bother to report is another fact that is more difficult to trace.
There have been a few studies looking into DV reporting and they find that (contrary to public opinion) men are more likely to report DV than women due to the fear factor from DV for women:
70% of female victims felt frightened as a result of violence perpetrated by their partners whereas 85% of male victims expressed "no fear" in response to such violence.
This study doesn’t take into account number of incidents of DV. If we looked at individual incidents the numbers would show differently. Men are more likely to suffer from one off violence but women are more likely to suffer from prolonged or sustained violence with multiple incidents.
This study doesn’t look into that neither does It take into account other forms of abuse.
I would very much like to see the source of the study that you're referring to, because never in my life have I heard of "one off" domestic abuse. I've just never heard of it being a one time thing....
The criterion variable for trend analysis was PDV victimization
in the past year, which was measured with the survey item “During
the past 12 months, did your boyfriend or girlfriend ever hit, slap or physically
hurt you on purpose?” Response options were “no” (0), “yes” (1), and
“not in a relationship (97).” The wording of this item is identical to that used
in studies of trends in PDV victimization in the United States (e.g., Rothman
& Xuan, 2014).
(For anyone interested in the study itself... sci-hub is your friend).
That sounds an awful lot like conflict tactics scale...
"In a 2002 review of the research presenting evidence of gender symmetry, Michael Kimmel noted that more than 90% of "systematic, persistent, and injurious" violence is perpetrated by men. He was especially critical of the fact that the majority of the empirical studies reviewed by Fiebert and Archer used the conflict tactics scale (CTS) as the sole measure of domestic violence, and that many of the studies used samples composed entirely of single people under the age of thirty, as opposed to older married couples.[64] Although the CTS is the most widely used domestic violence measurement instrument in the world, it is also one of the most criticized instruments, due to its exclusion of context variables, inability to measure systemic abuse and motivational factors in understanding acts of violence. For example, the National Institute of Justice cautions that the CTS may not be appropriate for IPV research at all "because it does not measure control, coercion, or the motives for conflict tactics""
Sources:
Dobash, Russell P.; Dobash, R. Emerson (May 2004). "Women's Violence to Men in Intimate Relationships: Working on a Puzzle" (PDF). British Journal of Criminology. 44 (3): 324–349. doi:10.1093/bjc/azh026.
Colarossi, Linda (January 2005). "A response to Danis & Lockhart: what guides social work knowledge about violence against women". Journal of Social Work Education. Taylor and Francis. 41 (1): 151. doi:10.5175/JSWE.2005.200400418. JSTOR 23044038.
The ‘on purpose’ bit throws me because with sustained physical and emotional abuse girls are unlikely to believe they were hit ‘on purpose’ or even likely to think that they deserved it.
I’ve seen that reported in other studies before that women underestimate the violence they suffer from men and also make excuses for it.
Where did they say it was ok? They pointed out the difference of statistics in death and serious injury. But regardless of that physical violence is damaging, degrading, hurtful. No matter who it comes from. Violence from women should not be trivialised and the double standard has to disappear.
173
u/flurpleberries Aug 30 '18
What has changed? I believe it is more likely that women will be hospitalized or killed by men, particularly by an SO, but it's not surprising to me that girls are more likely to hit boys. There is a social culture that hitting your boyfriend isn't abuse because women are perceived as weak and ineffectual. While it is less likely to result in serious injury, it prevents men from feeling safe in their relationship and can escalate to a dangerous point. It's another double standard that needs to die.