Domestic violence

Domestic violence, by barest definition, is violence within a home. Beyond this, the term has a range of definitions, some more and some less formal, which are frequently used with little awareness that a range of definitions exists.

Gender

It is impossible to have a discussion of domestic violence that does not include a discussion of the role gender does or doesn't have to play in the problem. Sometimes, the discussion of gender can overwhelm any other topic, due to the degree of emotion with which the discussion of gender can attain. The topic is also itself emotive because of the revulsion that is evoked by the idea of vulnerable people powerless and hurt at the hands of a partner, spouse or other relative.

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Attention to domestic violence began in the women's movement as concern about wives being beaten by their husbands, and has remained a major focus in the modern feminist movement, particularly under the label "violence against women". Erin Pizzey, the founder of an early women's shelter in Chiswick, London, has since expressed her dismay at how the issue has become a gender-political football, and expressed an unpopular view in her book Prone to Violence that some women in the refuge system had a predisposition to seek abusive relationships. She also expressed the view that domestic violence can occur against any vulnerable intimates, regardless of their sex. Given the violence that she herself experienced in the UK for voicing her views, one might be suspicious of some of those who opposed her views, which remain very relevant. Political balance in light of pressure from the feminist movement has been helped by noting that there are women who were violent with their husbands and partners, and with the realisation that where the prevailing culture ceases to be predominantly patriarchal there is no corresponding lessening in the incidence of domestic violence.

Related Topics:
Feminist - Erin Pizzey - Chiswick

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There continues to be discussion about whether men are more abusive than women, whether men's abuse of women is worse than women's abuse of men, how and whether resources for abused women should be made available to abused men, etc. The British Crime Survey for the year 2001-2 http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs04/hors276.pdf reported, "There were an estimated 12.9 million incidents of domestic violence acts (nonsexual threats or force) against women and 2.5 million against men in England and Wales in the year prior to interview." The same report states, "Four per cent of women and two per cent of men were subject to domestic violence (non-sexual domestic threats or force) during the last year." Ahimsa http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/032001/03/abuse.shtml, a UK based DV project, says: "Research findings consistently report that over 90% of domestic violence is perpetrated by men within heterosexual relationships.". Women's Aid (the UKs leading domestic violence charity) say "Crime statistics and research both show that domestic violence is gender specific - usually the perpetrator of a pattern of repeated assaults is a man. Women experience the most serious physical and repeated assaults." The Council of Europe found in a 1992 study that 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their lifetimes and between 6-10% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year. Every minute in the UK, the Police receive a call from the public for assistance for domestic violence. However, they estimate that only around 35% of domestic violence is actually reported. A 2002 Women's Aid study found that 74% of separated women suffered from post-separation violence. 42% of all female homicide victims compared with 4% of male homicide victims, were killed by current or former partners in England and Wales in the year 2000-2001. This equates to 102 women, an average of 2 women each week (Home Office, 2001). When it comes to domestic violence towards children, research in the UK by the NSPCC indicated that "most violence occurred at home (78 per cent) with mothers being primarily responsible in 49 per cent of cases and fathers in 40 per cent of cases."http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/nl2001/winter2.html

Related Topics:
1992 - 2002 - 2000 - 2001 - NSPCC

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Studies have been carried out to explore these issues, and results have seemed somewhat contradictory. A problem in conducting such studies is the amount of silence, fear and shame that results from abuse within families and relationships. Another is that abusive patterns can tend to seem normal to those who have lived in them for a length of time. Similarly, subtle forms of abuse can be quite transparent even as they set the stage for further abuse seeming normal. Finally, inconsistent definition of what domestic violence is makes strong conclusions hard to reach when compiling the available studies. Both men and women have been arrested and convicted of assaulting their partners in both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The bulk of these arrests has been men being arrested for assaulting women, but that has been shifting somewhat over time and clearly arrest records are not the whole story. Actual studies of behaviour show that whilst half of male/female intimate violence is best described as mutual brawling, a quarter is the male attacking the female and the remaining quarter being females attacking their male partner. Determining how many instances of domestic violence actually involve male victims is difficult. Male domestic violence victims may be reluctant to get help for a number of reasons (see this article) (Article checked August 8, 2004.) A man who calls for help may even risk being arrested as the "perpetrator" even though he was the victim. Of course these points remain entirely speculative, and unsubstantiated by research evidence.

Related Topics:
August 8 - 2004

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The general consensus seems to be that male on female domestic violence is more likely to result in serious injury or death, whereas female on male, which, under the definition used by the UK Government, includes preventing the father seeing the children, is more likely to result male suicide. Men on average have more upper body strength and socialization that predisposes them to resort to violence more than women do, and that can give them a higher average lethality than women. However, women can and do use weapons to equalize whatever deficit in physical power which may be present, and can also use social constraints against men hitting women, even in self-defense, to provide them with sufficient lethality to be dangerous in conflict situations. The US National Family Violence Survey has consistently indicated, in repeated surveys over more than 30 years, that women are more than twice as likely as men to initiate domestic assault, and more than twice as likely to use weapons. The oft-repeated claim that all violence by women is self-defence has similarly been proven to be based on circular reasoning. Women also are at least as well equipped to use psychological violence that forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour (to use the Women's Aid definition given above). Women are also equally capable of using a proxy, which could possibly further skew the results (since a proxy murder would not be seen as a form of domestic violence.)

Related Topics:
Proxy - Proxy murder

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In the United States, the bulk of the decrease in rates of intimate partner homicides is accounted for the dramatic decrease in women's murders of their male intimate partners. Murders of female intimate partners by men have dropped, but not nearly as dramatically. (see, for example, the report Violence by Intimates from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vbi.pdf) Men kill their female intimate partners at about four times the rate that women kill their male intimate partners. Research by Jacquelyn Campbell, PhD RN FAAN has found that at least two thirds of women killed by their intimate partners were battered by those men prior to the murder. She also found that when males are killed by female intimates, the women in those relationships had been abused by their male partner about 75% of the time.

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Some researchers have found a relationship between the availability of domestic violence services, improved laws and enforcement regarding domestic violence and increased access to divorce, and higher earnings for women with declines in intimate partner homicide. (Laura Dugan, Daniel S. Nagin, Richard Rosenfeld,

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Explaining the Decline in Intimate Partner Homicide: The Effects of Changing Domesticity, Women's Status, and Domestic Violence Resources in Homicide Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3, 187-214, 1999)

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This suggests that, ironically, male abusers have benefitted from domestic violence reforms, and are less likely to be killed by their partners since women are no longer faced with murder as their only option to escape the violence. At the same time, men continue to kill their female partners at almost the same rate. This suggests that reforms in the civil and criminal system and social services to battered women have not impacted the fundamental causes of domestic violence. Although some presume that this indicates a gendered nature of the problem, the lack of success may itself be a result of overly simplistic gender-assumptions on the nature of violence (see notes on the Duluth model in the 'Response to domestic violence' section).

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Gender roles and expectations can and do play a role in abusive situations, and exploring these roles and expectations can be helpful in addressing abusive situations, as do factors like race, class, religion, sexuality and philosophy. None of these factors cause one to abuse or another to be abused.

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Typecasting

Despite it being accepted that domestic violence goes both ways, literature on the subject from books to informational pamphlets, as well as public service announcements, still tend to be typecasted by gender. The victims are usually referred to as "she" and the perpetrator as "he". Men's groups consider that this sexist language undermines the male victims of domestic violence as well as inferring that men alone are inclined towards violence.

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A recent Australian government funded campaign entitled 'To violence against women, Australia says NO' was criticised for implying that women were the only victims of domestic violence (or the only ones that count) and that innocent men who knew about or suspected violence in other's relationships and did nothing were somehow complicit in the crime.

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Child Abuse by mothers

62.3% of child abuse perpetrators are female, and 62.8% of child fatality perpetrators are female. The mother/father ratio is even higher, because many of the male abusers counted are not the biological fathers but stepfathers or boyfriends. However, men were mostly responsible for sexual abuse, women for medical neglect and other neglect, and both sexes roughly equally for physical and psychological abuse.http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cb/publications/ncands97/s7.htm

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Domestic violence in same-sex relationships

Historically domestic violence has been seen as a family issue and little interest has been directed at violence in same-sex relationships. It has not been until recently, as the gay rights movement has brought the issues of gay and lesbian people into public attention, when research has been started to conduct on homosexual relationships. Several studies have indicated that partner abuse among same-sex couples (both female and male) is relatively similar in both prevalence and dynamics to that among heterosexual couples. Gays and lesbians, however, face special obstacles in dealing with the issues that some researchers have labelled "the double closet": not only do gay and lesbian people often feel that they are discriminated against and dismissed by police and social services, they are also often met with lack of support from their peers who would rather keep quiet about the problem in order not to attract negative attention toward the gay community. Also, the supportive services are mostly designed for the needs of heterosexual women and do not always meet the needs of other groups.

Related Topics:
Gay rights movement - Gay - Lesbian - Gay community

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