Woman As Aggressor: The Unspoken Truth Of Domestic Violence

Woman As Aggressor: The Unspoken Truth Of Domestic Violence

There’s something very important that we’re not talking about when we talk about domestic violence.









This writer approaches this topic with some trepidation, because it will run counter, in some areas, to the current debate regarding domestic violence. When wading in these highly-volatile and controversial waters, one finds that disclaimers – like life jackets – must be affixed to the body of the argument.

Violence Against Women vs. Domestic Violence

Women and girls make up 98% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation globally – although a 2008 report revealed that boys make up half of those who are sexually exploited, commercially, in the US.; in 2011, an estimated 19,000 rapes and sexual assaults – overwhelmingly against women – took place in the military; girls younger than 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than women in their 20s. Pregnancy is consistently among the leading causes of death for girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide and domestic violence against women, in the US, occurs every 15 seconds.
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_norm/---declaration/documents/publication/wcms_081913.pdf

http://www.courtinnovation.org/sites/default/files/CSEC_NYC_Executive_Summary.pdf

http://www.mintpressnews.com/the-unfriendliest-of-fire-the-consequences-of-delegitimizing-sexual-assault-in-the-military/35830/

http://www.icrw.org/child-marriage-facts-and-figures

Add to those figures college/university campus date rape statistics; the high instances of sexual assault in South Africa; the Save Our Girls campaign in Nigeria and the list could go on and on. All these are glaring examples of epidemic-like violence against women. Nevertheless, although violence against women and girls includes domestic violence, not all domestic violence features women and girls as the victims. Sometimes, the woman is the abuser.

Let me be clear, the hesitance in speaking about female-initiated domestic violence is rooted in a very real concern about what the discussion can give way to: a dismissal and abnegation of the actual dangers women face. That still, however, fails to be a compelling reason not to discuss women’s role in domestic violence. For example, an honest discussion about the occupation of Palestine by Israel need not devolve into anti-Semitism. Neither does a hard look at real terrorism, by entities such as ISIS, have to degenerate into Islamophobia. So, conversely, a sincere critique regarding the totality of domestic violence does not have to be reduced to a capitulation to misogyny and sexist insensitivity.

Female-Initiated domestic abuse

Understand, women are still three times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by their male counter-part than vice-versa. Now, while those numbers suggest a more dire need, they do not connote that women are the only victims when it comes to domestic violence.

More than 830,000 men fall victim to domestic violence every year, which means every 37.8 seconds, a man, in America, is the victim of domestic abuse. The numbers are not inconsequential and the frequency is far from insignificant.
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/tc/domestic-violence-topic-overview

Jan Brown, executive director and founder of the Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men had this to say, “domestic violence is not about size, gender, or strength. It’s about abuse, control, and power, and getting out of dangerous situations and getting help, whether you are a woman being abused, or a man.”

In 2001, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health collected data about the health of a nationally representative sample of 14,322 individuals between the ages of 18 and 28. The study also asked subjects to answer questions about romantic or sexual relationships in which they had engaged during the previous five years and whether those relationships had involved violence.
http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=111137

From this information they found that of the 18,761 relationships, 76% were non-violent and 24 percent were. Of that twenty-four percent that were violent, half had been reciprocal and half had not – reciprocal meaning there was hitting by both partners.  Although more men than women (53 percent versus 49 percent) had experienced nonreciprocal violent relationships, more women than men (52 percent versus 47 percent) had taken part in ones involving reciprocal violence.

The statistic that was undoubtedly the most striking, was in the committing of violence in relationships, more women than men (25 percent versus 11 percent) were responsible. In fact, in the 71 percent of nonreciprocal partner violence instances, the instigator was the woman. This flies in the face of the long-held belief that female aggression in a relationship was, more than likely, predicated on self-defense.

Further, while injury was more likely when violence was perpetrated by men, in relationships with reciprocal violence it was the men who were injured more often (25 percent of the time) than were women (20 percent of the time).http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=111137

Great Britain’s Office of National Statistics also showed that while 1.2 million women experienced domestic violence, 800,000 men did as well – in the UK, men comprise forty percent of those who suffer from domestic violence. The Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, compiled a bibliography that examined 286 scholarly investigations; 221 empirical studies and 65 reviews and/or analyses that demonstrated that which we are reluctant to discuss. And that uncomfortable reality is that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_298904.pdf

http://www.buzzfeed.com/candacelowry/watch-how-people-react-when-they-see-a-woman-abuse-a-man-in#3i9uyn

http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Let’s put this in perspective, a significant amount of the findings regarding male-as-victim intimate partner violence, came about as result of studies and surveys that were aimed at understanding domestic violence against women.

These are not studies conducted by rabid anti-women men’s groups or right wing think tanks. No, they were conducted by organizations like the Center for Disease Control (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), the American Sociological Association, Psychology of Women Quarterly, the American Journal of Public Health to name a few.

And yet, when these numbers are verbalized a resounding backlash occurs. Accusations are made like “you’re saying abused women are asking for it” or “you’re blaming the victim.” No, this writer is merely broadening the definition of abuser and victim. In other words, no person, regardless of gender, is asking for it and no victim, female or male, should be blamed for what is done to them.

If we are serious about addressing domestic violence, then its realities, in all of its incarnations, must be dealt with.

Mixed messages

This writer does not pretend to have all the answers when it comes to this issue, but this can be said with a great deal of certitude, confusing the very people you are trying to affect is not a sound strategy for change. If only one person in the relationship is supposed to exercise control; if both partners are not equally responsible in keeping a relationship respectful and violence-free, we will have succeeded in changing nothing.

We have seen, in the past few months that the NFL has a confused policy in regard to domestic violence; our court system, for quite some time, has had a confused policy about domestic abuse; but the confusion of those entities is a reflection of our societal misunderstanding of domestic violence and our muddled perceptions about gender.

Men are told in one breath to shed their machismo and their sexist leanings, and in the next they are being told to man-up and just take the blows being dealt to him by their female partner. Men are being told, rightly, that phrases like “you throw or hit like a girl” has chauvinistic underpinnings while simultaneously being told “it doesn’t matter if she hits you because, essentially, she hits like a girl and you can handle it big boy.” So while we, appropriately, recognize there’s usually more of a difference in the physical impact between male and females hitting each other, we completely disregard that a woman physically hitting (whether that be with hands, feet or objects) a man does have an emotionally, psychologically and, yes even physical, impact on him.

So in the ignoring the dynamic of female-initiated IPV, we reinforce sexist stereotypes of what women are and are not capable of. This then leads to two very important questions that are rarely asked: 1. Is a woman ever responsible for a physical altercation that takes place between her and her male partner? 2. Does a man ever have the right to tell a woman to not put her hands on him and have that respected by her? The statistical and anecdotal data says that question number one is barely acknowledged and question number two, by and large, is treated as an April fool’s joke.

The same protocols that are used to address domestic violence against women are used to deal with domestic violence against men; the research tells us that the same abusive behaviors and tactics that are demonstrated by men (physical, verbal, emotional, threats, intimidation) are also demonstrated by women. And the fear and shame that is felt as a result of being abused; the excuses made to cover up the abuse are not gender-specific. Additionally and anecdotally, there are some researchers that estimate that about twenty percent of men who call law enforcement to report an abusive spouse or partner, are, in turn, arrested themselves for domestic abuse.
http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/help-for-battered-men

http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/help-for-battered-men?page=2

There are signs, at least in the healthcare field;  that these perceptions about men being the victims of IPV (intimate partner violence) are beginning to change. The world-renowned Mayo Clinic has posted on their website helpful information for men who have been victims of domestic violence. This writer has practically lived at Mayo during this year and can attest that the same questions that were once asked only of women in regard to domestic violence, is now being asked of him with great frequency.http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/adult-health/in-depth/domestic-violence-against-men/art-20045149

Courtesy of the NFL,  the topic of child abuse is also in the headlines – this too is domestic violence. According to governmental child welfare studies, mothers are almost twice as likely to be directly involved in child maltreatment as fathers. The statistics have borne out that it is mothers that are more likely to abuse or neglect their children than fathers. Interestingly, when former Minnesota Viking and NFL Hall of Famer, Cris Carter, spoke of being a victim of child abuse, he revealed that it was his mother that was the abuser. His central point about child abuse was well-received, but the fact that it was his mother was either largely ignored or was thought to have been of no consequence.

To be clear, I agree with those who say those numbers are as such because women are, usually, more involved with their children and as single-parent homes are on the rise and women are increasingly the single parent, they become over-represented in the numbers regarding child abuse.

Nonetheless, you could also say that although black males are over-represented in terms of homicide rates for various reasons (poverty, unemployment, education etc), the reasons why they are killed still don’t make them any less dead than other homicide victims. So it is with child abuse: the reasons why women are over-represented in the crime of child abuse, does not make the child any less abused.

And these abused children, half of which are male, live with that pain and become adults. And as men they are told, for the most part, don’t talk about your pain; don’t acknowledge that a woman hurt you; man-up and don’t cry.

And by so doing, we create the perfect conditions for a toxic relationship:  men who can’t verbalize their very real pain and an ethos that says women can’t really hurt or traumatize men.

Conclusion

In terms of domestic violence and/or intimate partner violence, the conversation is, overwhelmingly, about what we need to talk to our men and boys about. And this writer agrees, we need to talk to our boys and men about having respect for their partners in their relationship, but that’s only part of the problem. Our girls and young ladies need to be taught what appropriate behavior is and what non-violent conflict resolution looks like.

We are paying the price for not having this conversation with our daughters, because over the past 20 years or so we have been experiencing a disturbing trend. Meda Chesney-Lind points to this in her essay “Are Girls Closing the Gender Gap in Violence?” She writes, “Between 1989 and 1998, arrests of girls increased 50.3 percent, compared to only 16.5 percent for boys, according to the FBI’s 1999 report, Crime in the United States 1998. During that same period, arrests of girls for serious violent offenses increased by 64.3 percent and arrests of girls for “other assaults” increased an astonishing 125.4 percent. In 1999, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that the female violent crime rate for 1997 was 103 percent above the 1981 rate, compared to a 27 percent increase for males, prompting the statement that increasing juvenile female arrests and the involvement of girls in at-risk and delinquent behavior has been a pervasive trend across the United States.”http://www.americanbar.org/publications/criminal_justice_magazine_home/crimjust_cjmag_16_1_chesneylind.html

A later report stated that by 2000, that proportion had grown to 18 percent, and by 2004 it had risen to 30 percent. Even though arrest numbers remained higher for boys than girls during that period, arrest rates for girls increased while rates for boys decreased.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/228414.pdf

The voices in our world, which should include us all, that cry out for greater protections for women against sexual assault, human trafficking, spousal and/or intimate partner homicides must be heard. But we are taught by our mores, ideologies and politics, that we can only recognize one reality at a time. That if we talk about female-initiated domestic violence then it takes away from addressing violence against women.  That writings such as these only serve as distractions, smoke-screens and misdirections.

This writer doesn’t believe that. I believe that we have an equal stake and an equal responsibility in making sure our relationships are healthy. This writer believes that we all have an equal right to not have our persons assaulted or our personal space disrespected. By bringing this largely unknown and very uncomfortable truth to light, it means we are serious about addressing violence, period, in our relationships;  it means that we are sincere in examining all of its causes and effects.

We are constantly answering the question – though not nearly enough – across this country in our mayoral and gubernatorial elections; in our House and Senate Races, and 2016 tempts us with that question in a national general election, “is a woman every bit as capable as a man?” Granted, not all elections and appointments come down to gender, but we have been able to see woman as CEO; as leader and maybe, soon, we’ll even get to see woman as Commander-in-Chief.  That equality also demands that we be able to entertain the thought of woman as aggressor.

By Edward Rhymes 

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