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Domestic violence sites have exceptionally high levels of false information and do not change their data when they are "told" it is inaccurate. Generally, they already know it is.
Several of the "facts" listed on this site are lies that are so common that Gelles (one of the lead researchers in this field and a feminist)published his list about domestic violence myths. Although this was several years ago the myths are just as common. In fact the first two statistics they present are at the top of Gelles list of myths.
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David wrote:
"Several of the "facts" listed on this site are lies that are so common that Gelles (one of the lead researchers in this field and a feminist)published his list about domestic violence myths."
I recognize several of the "facts" on the Break-the-Cycle site as myths that Farrell and Hoff-Sommers (and probably others) have pretty thoroughly exposed. Yet there they are.
But I am not familiar with Gelles's list. Can you direct those of us who are interested to it by posting it, a link, or a reference?
Thanks.
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I've seen Gelles' list before... thanks for providing an opportunity to see it again.
Because I like to set the cat among the pigeons, I'd like to point out his "factoid from the right of center": the claim that men and women abuse each other equally. In fact, although men and women initiate violence at approximately equal rates, women are seven to ten times more likely to suffer serious injury. As such, any group that admits that men make up 10% of DV victims should be congratulated for saying something reasonable.
I've lost count of the number of men who have posted that "men and women abuse each other at equal rates", citing Straus and Gelles, without mentioning the second part of the equation. The bitter pill for some of us to swallow (and I include myself in that) is that in even in a perfectly just society female DV victims would still receive more resources and more help because they're injured more often. The idea of completely gender-neutral DV just doesn't reflect reality, at least not reality as measured by Straus and Gelles.
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Your "7 to 10 times" figure isn't quite right. It comes from the National Family Violence Survey, but it is "7 to 10 times more likely" to say they needed to see a doctor for their injuries, not 7 to 10 times more likely to be severely injured. Men are less likely to see a Doctor to begin with, for the same injury, so that would already discount some of this. Moreover, you really need to read Dr. David Fontes analysis "Violent Touch" at http://www.safe4all.org/resources.html. On page 25, he shows that this difference is actually 3% versus .4%. That may be "7 to 10 times greater," but it's pretty tiny to begin with. And other data, as Fontes points out, shows that men are in fact harmed at high rates but are less likely to report the harm as abuse even when their bones are broken. Most importantly, comparing harm totally misses the point. When children watch their parents batter they are harmed even by small violence and they often become batterers themselves. So using a difference in severity to justify such inattention to battered men is only fueling the very violence these feminists claim to be preventing. Please, read Fontes before making these kinds of comments.
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I agree with Marc on the 7-10 times more figure, but it isn't worth making an issue of. Truthfully no one really knows because I don't think anyone has really tried to find out yet what the rates would look like with all the female bias removed from these surveys. Perhaps it would still be more women getting seriously hurt. Perhaps 60-40 (a guess). What difference does it really make?
The key issue here is that the entire gender lense is deeply inappropriate. In 50% of households the fighting is mutual. So all those figures are saying is that the women are stupid to make it mutual. If two guys get into a fight, a small one and a large one, but neither the clear instigator, do we condemn only the larger man? Both people are locked into a cycle of violence and likely both are beating up their kids. I see little in the way of innocence for either of them. On the other hand they both need help.
50% of the time its one person hitting the other. If it is a woman hitting a man is she more innocent because he could have fought back more effectively? Surely not. Again the unmentioned dynamic: children that the husband is protecting by soaking up the violence.
By seeing the violence as either mutual or one-way you get a much better understanding than who gets sent to hospital more (that's a very poor gauge of what's going on), but if women are getting the worst of the physical damage then all the more shame on feminists for preventing a real solution by an insistance on an ideological view of things. Its interesting that some observers are now saying DV shelters have helped men, not women, avoid being killed.
In terms of the gender issues angle I would say DV is clearly an issue for men because of the legal and executive discrimination. Women's 60% is being addressed by society and men's 40% is not, and sometimes its being caused by society. That makes DV a men's issue --- if it has to be one or the other.
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by Marc Angelucci on Wednesday January 17, @09:27AM EST (#7)
(User #61 Info)
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Fully agreed here, David. I'm gather that by 60/40 you're probably referring more to an assumption about severity levels rather than the initiation of violence. All the more agreed.
Donna Laframbroise put it so well in the National Post: "Looking back at these times, historians will one day shake their heads at the hypocrisy of these feminist activists who insist on the one hand that no amount of violence is acceptable when committed by a male but never miss an opportunity to minimize violence when it is committed by females."
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