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Since October is “Domestic Violence Awareness
Month,” I’ll mark the occasion by examining four of the
most prevalent feminist myths about violence in families.
Myth #1: In violent heterosexual relationships,
the aggressor is almost always the man.
Serious research on domestic violence overwhelmingly asserts
that domestic assault is committed by both men and women and that,
by using weapons and the element of surprise, women are abusing
their male partners as often as vice versa. Only about a quarter of
violent heterosexual relationships fit the feminist
“man/aggressor, woman/victim” model ““ about the
same percentage as fit the “woman/aggressor,
man/victim” model. Roughly half of all other violent
heterosexual relationships are mutually abusive, and domestic
violence rates between men and women are comparable from small
violence to serious violence, including murder.
The mutual nature of domestic violence has been attested to in
voluminous research. For example, veteran domestic violence
researchers Richard Gelles, Murray Straus and Susan Steinmetz, who
were once hailed by the women’s movement for their pioneering
work on violence against women, were initially surprised to find
equal levels of male and female violence. Since then their studies
have confirmed it repeatedly.
 Illustration by ED OYAMA/Daily Bruin Cal State Long Beach
professor Martin Fiebert compiled and summarized 122 different
studies with over 77,000 respondents which found that women
initiated domestic violence as often as or more often than men.
Studies conducted by the Family Research Laboratory at the
University of New Hampshire in 1975, 1985 and 1992 found that abuse
rates were equal between husbands and wives. They also discovered
that abuse of wives by husbands is decreasing while abuse of
husbands by wives is increasing.
Studies by researchers R.I. McNeeley and Coramae Richey Mann
show that women are much more likely than men to use weapons and
the element of surprise. These weapons often include guns, knives,
boiling water, bricks, fireplace pokers and baseball bats.
Myth # 2: When women are violent, it is usually
in self-defense.
As a general rule, neither men’s nor women’s
violence is usually committed in self-defense. According to Straus,
for example, roughly 10 percent of women and 15 percent of men
perpetuate partner abuse in self-defense. Dr. David Fontes, author
of “Violent Touch: Breaking Through the Stereotype,”
and the director of Stop Abuse for Everyone (SAFE), has also found
that only a small percentage of female abusers are acting in
self-defense.
Myth #3: Domestic violence is committed almost
entirely by men, and lesbian relationships are gentler and provide
women a refuge from male patriarchal dominance and violence.
Actually, the evidence is virtually undisputed that domestic
violence is at least as common in lesbian relationships as it is in
heterosexual ones.
For example, a 1997 survey of 1,099 lesbians found that 52
percent of the respondents had been abused by a female lover or
partner and that 30 percent admitted having abused a female lover
or partner. Of those who had been victims of abuse, more than half
(51.5 percent) reported that they also had been abusive toward
their partners (“Lie and Gentle warrior: Intimate Violence in
Lesbian Relationships,” Journal of Social Science Research,
Vol. 15).
In another survey of lesbians who had had previous relationships
with men, 45 percent reported that they had experienced physical
aggression from their most recent female partner alone, while only
32 percent had ever experienced any aggression from any male
partner.
According to St. Joseph’s University sociology professor
Claire Renzetti, lesbian batterers “display a terrifying
ingenuity in their selection of abuse tactics, frequently tailoring
the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities of their partners”
(“Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian
Relationships”).
To their credit, even the UCLA Clothesline Project ““ whose
Web site and public materials contain scores of questionable
statements about men and domestic violence ““ cites
Renzetti’s research findings that “Violence in
gay/lesbian relationships occurs at about the same frequency as
violence in heterosexual relationships.”
Over the past 30 years feminists have often played an admirable
role in pushing for societal acceptance for gays and lesbians.
However, feminists have shamefully turned their backs on battered
lesbians, and have stifled the attempts of activists to address
lesbian domestic violence.
Myth #4: Mothers are children’s
“first line of defense” against child abuse.
In reality it is mothers, not fathers, who commit the
overwhelming majority of child abuse, neglect and parental murder.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 70 percent of
confirmed cases of child abuse and 65 percent of parental murders
of children are committed by mothers, not fathers.
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
adjusting for the greater number of single mothers, a custodial
mother is five times as likely to murder her own children as a
custodial father is. A study of confirmed child abuse cases
published in the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect found that
mothers abuse their children two and a half times as often as
fathers. The Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and
Neglect (1996) found that children are 88 percent more likely to be
seriously injured from abuse or neglect by their mothers than by
their fathers.
Twenty-five years ago feminists played a heroic role in
advocating for abused women and publicizing the despicable crime of
wife-beating. Today, unfortunately, their refusal to acknowledge
violence by women stands in the way of eliminating domestic
violence for everyone ““ not only women, but men and children
as well.