20 September 2001 Edition
Expanding our definitions of domestic violence
MICK DERRIG & ANNE MAGUIRE argue that the current view of domestic violence needs to be expanded to include all violent relationships, as there appears to be a growing problem of women inflicting violence on men.
No one is credibly disputing the evidence that domestic violence is predominately, overwhelmingly, about women suffering violence at the hands of men. Equally, however, we need to acknowledge that women can be, and are, violent
There is currently an advert on British and satellite TV to encourage young people to join the British police.
It uses Lennox Lewis the boxer to deliver the message.
He describes what his response might be if he went to a house where a man had hit a woman. As he says this, the ad cuts to a scene where a man is making a cup of tea. The hand that stirs the cup of tea is bruised in the knuckle area. It is clear that this hand recently struck a blow.
The middle-aged man is then seen putting down the cup of tea in front of a clearly upset woman sitting by a table.
The bruised hand is then placed, in a consoling manner, on her shoulder.
Lennox Lewis voices over this entire short scene. He says that he doesn't know how we would respond to this man. He doesn't know if he could keep his cool with this man.
The text on the screen asks: ``Could you?'' You are then invited to call the freephone number and - presumably - join the Met.
This advert wasn't about domestic violence per se, but it traded on the accepted stereotype. In domestic disputes, men hit women. That's the way it is. But is that the full story?
The harrowing scene depicted in the advert, although accurate may not reflect the full story of domestic violence. Recent research would seem to indicate that there is a growing problem of women inflicting violence on men.
Let's be clear about one thing. Of the 65 Irish females violently murdered since 1995, 41 were killed in their own homes. In all cases where there has been a conviction, a man committed the murder. Of the murders solved, half of the women were killed by a partner or former partner. The Women's Aid Murder File makes for stark reading. The unshakeable facts are a shocking indictment of deep-rooted societal attitudes towards women.
Getting away from the situation is never enough. International evidence shows that women are most at risk when they have either made the decision to leave a violent relationship or have left. This loss of control and power escalates the male violence. A harrowing example is the case of Martina Halligan, whose estranged husband was convicted of stabbing her to death in her own home. She had a barring order against him but no telephone to call for help.
Equally, Rape Crisis Centre figures show that most rape survivors were assaulted by people they knew; 79% were raped by someone known to them, 19% were raped by their husbands or boyfriends, 8% experienced date rape.
While it is clear that violence against women is part of the oppression of women and a reflection of inequality within our society, there is a growing body of research that indicates that women are becoming increasingly violent both within intimate relationships and in situations of ``street violence''.
The Interim Report to the Marriage and Relationships Counselling Service (MRCS), which researched Irish couples who seek marriage counselling, found that women are more likely than men to perpetrate domestic violence.
In a survey of 530 clients of MRCS, the researchers found domestic violence occurs in almost half (48%) of all relationships which are sufficiently troubled for one or both partners to seek counselling. Where there is violence, about one-third (33%) inflict violence on each other, ``female-perpetrated violence occurs in about four out of 10 couples (41%) and male-perpetrated violence in a quarter of couples (26%) leading us to conclude that women are more likely than men to be the perpetrators of domestic violence'', the report's authors say.
They add, however, that their findings ``do not tell us anything about the severity of the violence involved, the context, reasons or initiation of the violence or the extent of injuries resulting from it''.
This is key. No one is credibly disputing the evidence that domestic violence is predominately, overwhelmingly, about women suffering violence at the hands of men. No one is questioning that violence within intimate relationships is about power and the patriarchal structures of our society. Equally, however, we need to acknowledge that women can be, and are, violent.
Much of the research findings have been used, by the media and others, to attack the progress that women have achieved and to take side swipes at women's organisations rather than deal with the issue itself. This article is not about adding to a growing backlash against feminism or growing misogynic media coverage of domestic violence and child abductions. It is intended to raise questions about our understanding of violence within intimate relationships.
MRCS cite research from the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, which, they say, shows that the ``prevalence of domestic violence among men and women, both as victims and as perpetrators, is broadly similar for all types of violence, both psychological and physical, minor and severe. In addition, both men and women are about equally likely to initiate domestic violence and seem to give broadly similar reasons for doing so.
None of this new - it has been known for many years.
Thirty years ago, Erin Pizzey opened the first refuge for battered women and their children in Chiswick, London. The move caught the attention of the public and the media, especially when her book, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear, was published.
Erin Pizzey was telling us about the terrible things that went on behind closed doors. She appeared on television and radio, she was interviewed in the newspapers and she became a bit of a guru. Her work led to the establishment of other refuges, including one set up by the fledgling Women's Aid in Harcourt Terrace, Dublin, in the 1970s.
However, not everything Pizzey told us was heard clearly.
She said of the first 100 women that came into the refuge at Chiswick, 62 of them were ``at least as violent as the men they had left''.
She began to suggest that women could be prone to violent behaviour. Some women were shocked to find themselves in violent relationships and wanted to escape. But others were violent themselves or were drawn to relationships that were violent.
There is no doubt that men are violent towards women; the evidence of women's injuries is real enough. However, this is one side of the story only. There is another side: the extent of women's violence against men.
Just as children who are abused have a high risk of either being abusers or being drawn to an abusive relationship, men and women who witness or experience violence in childhood may well repeat the pattern in their adult intimate relationships.
There are now a number of studies, which, unlike previous research, took the approach that men could also be on the receiving end of violence by their partners. A 1994 British study by Michelle Carrado and others, for example, interviewed 1,800 men and women with heterosexual partners. Some 11% of the men but only 5% of the women said their current partner had committed acts of violence towards them, ranging from pushing, through hitting, to stabbing. Five per cent of married or cohabiting men reported two or more acts of violence against them in a current relationship, compared with only 1% of women. A further 10% of men and 11% of women said they had committed one of these violent acts.
The results themselves are troubling. If 10% of men admit to committing violent acts but only 5% of women report that their current partners have been violent, what does this tell us about under reporting and a prevalent acceptance of violence?
The findings also highlight the need to separate out the issues. Relationships where there is mutual violence are not necessarily the relationships where women flee seeking refugee. This blurring of the facts attempts to ``prove'' that women are somehow responsible for the terrible acts of violent visited upon them, that they provoked it, are as bad as the men.
Women are used to this. Family breakdown, spiraling suicide rates, the increasing number of child abduction cases - blame it on feminism. Back in the good old days, when men and women knew their place, none of this happened. As republicans, we know all about the blame game. If the children of Ardoyne would just go to school by the back door, none of the violence would have happened.
That is not to say that women are not violent. The American social scientists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles reported from two large national surveys that husbands and wives had assaulted each other at approximately equal rates, with women engaging in minor acts of violence more frequently.
However, let's remember that even in situations of mutual violence, more times than not, it is still the woman who ends up dead. Laurence Callaghan kicked his girlfriend to death over a five-pound hash deal. Both had a history of alcohol and drug abuse. But he murdered her. He had sex with her body the following morning, not thinking anything when she did not respond. Even on realising she was dead, he waited three days before telling anyone. Despite all of this, he was still convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to just four years.
So yes, there is some evidence that women can initiate severe violence more frequently than men. A survey of 1,037 young adults born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand, found that 18.6% of young women said they had perpetrated severe physical violence against their partners, compared with 5.7% of young men. Three times more women than men said they had kicked or bitten their partners, or hit them with their fists or with an object.
The idea that women are never the instigators of violence is further contradicted by research into violence within lesbian relationships. According to Claire Renzetti, violence in lesbian relationships occurs with about the same frequency as in heterosexual relationships. Lesbian batterers ``display a terrifying ingenuity in their selection of abusive tactics, frequently tailoring the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities of their partners''. Such abuse can be extremely violent.
It is true that most women who are the victims of violence suffer domestic assaults. Yet the 1996 British Crime Survey reported that nearly one third of the victims of domestic violence were men, and that nearly half of these male victims were attacked by women.
Moreover, given the greater strength of men, it is particularly noteworthy that so many women initiate violence against them. The psychologist John Archer has noted that, among female college students, 29% admitted initiating an assault on a male partner. Of those women, half said they had no fear of retaliation or, since men could easily defend themselves, they did not see their own physical aggression as a problem. In other words, far from assuming that men are violent, some women would appear to take men's non-aggression for granted.
This study would appear to suggest that women do not consider throwing objects, slapping and pushing violent acts. This has to be addressed. Violence is violence is violence.
Just as lower crime rates belie an increasing level of late night and street violence, it would seem that the full extent of women's violence is lost within the overwhelming facts of male violence.
The British Home Office recently produced its own evidence that domestic violence was not a male disease. In January 1999, it reported that 4.2% of women and 4.2% of men aged 16 to 59 said they had been physically assaulted by a current or former partner in the past year.
The outcome of all this is that it is now generally accepted that violence is intrinsically male. This is a gravely distorted picture. It is true that most recorded crime is committed by men. It does not follow, however, that women never commit violence on men.
The evidence suggests that a quite different conclusion should be drawn. This is surely that both women and men are capable of aggression and violence. The current paradigm of domestic violence needs to be expanded. In the future, we will see domestic violence, not as an issue of men attacking women, but of violent people using violence to control their partners.
No one is credibly disputing the evidence that domestic violence is predominately, overwhelmingly, about women suffering violence at the hands of men. Equally, however, we need to acknowledge that women can be, and are, violent
There is currently an advert on British and satellite TV to encourage young people to join the British police.
It uses Lennox Lewis the boxer to deliver the message.
He describes what his response might be if he went to a house where a man had hit a woman. As he says this, the ad cuts to a scene where a man is making a cup of tea. The hand that stirs the cup of tea is bruised in the knuckle area. It is clear that this hand recently struck a blow.
The middle-aged man is then seen putting down the cup of tea in front of a clearly upset woman sitting by a table.
The bruised hand is then placed, in a consoling manner, on her shoulder.
Lennox Lewis voices over this entire short scene. He says that he doesn't know how we would respond to this man. He doesn't know if he could keep his cool with this man.
The text on the screen asks: ``Could you?'' You are then invited to call the freephone number and - presumably - join the Met.
This advert wasn't about domestic violence per se, but it traded on the accepted stereotype. In domestic disputes, men hit women. That's the way it is. But is that the full story?
The harrowing scene depicted in the advert, although accurate may not reflect the full story of domestic violence. Recent research would seem to indicate that there is a growing problem of women inflicting violence on men.
Let's be clear about one thing. Of the 65 Irish females violently murdered since 1995, 41 were killed in their own homes. In all cases where there has been a conviction, a man committed the murder. Of the murders solved, half of the women were killed by a partner or former partner. The Women's Aid Murder File makes for stark reading. The unshakeable facts are a shocking indictment of deep-rooted societal attitudes towards women.
Getting away from the situation is never enough. International evidence shows that women are most at risk when they have either made the decision to leave a violent relationship or have left. This loss of control and power escalates the male violence. A harrowing example is the case of Martina Halligan, whose estranged husband was convicted of stabbing her to death in her own home. She had a barring order against him but no telephone to call for help.
Equally, Rape Crisis Centre figures show that most rape survivors were assaulted by people they knew; 79% were raped by someone known to them, 19% were raped by their husbands or boyfriends, 8% experienced date rape.
While it is clear that violence against women is part of the oppression of women and a reflection of inequality within our society, there is a growing body of research that indicates that women are becoming increasingly violent both within intimate relationships and in situations of ``street violence''.
The Interim Report to the Marriage and Relationships Counselling Service (MRCS), which researched Irish couples who seek marriage counselling, found that women are more likely than men to perpetrate domestic violence.
In a survey of 530 clients of MRCS, the researchers found domestic violence occurs in almost half (48%) of all relationships which are sufficiently troubled for one or both partners to seek counselling. Where there is violence, about one-third (33%) inflict violence on each other, ``female-perpetrated violence occurs in about four out of 10 couples (41%) and male-perpetrated violence in a quarter of couples (26%) leading us to conclude that women are more likely than men to be the perpetrators of domestic violence'', the report's authors say.
They add, however, that their findings ``do not tell us anything about the severity of the violence involved, the context, reasons or initiation of the violence or the extent of injuries resulting from it''.
This is key. No one is credibly disputing the evidence that domestic violence is predominately, overwhelmingly, about women suffering violence at the hands of men. No one is questioning that violence within intimate relationships is about power and the patriarchal structures of our society. Equally, however, we need to acknowledge that women can be, and are, violent.
Much of the research findings have been used, by the media and others, to attack the progress that women have achieved and to take side swipes at women's organisations rather than deal with the issue itself. This article is not about adding to a growing backlash against feminism or growing misogynic media coverage of domestic violence and child abductions. It is intended to raise questions about our understanding of violence within intimate relationships.
MRCS cite research from the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand, which, they say, shows that the ``prevalence of domestic violence among men and women, both as victims and as perpetrators, is broadly similar for all types of violence, both psychological and physical, minor and severe. In addition, both men and women are about equally likely to initiate domestic violence and seem to give broadly similar reasons for doing so.
None of this new - it has been known for many years.
Thirty years ago, Erin Pizzey opened the first refuge for battered women and their children in Chiswick, London. The move caught the attention of the public and the media, especially when her book, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear, was published.
Erin Pizzey was telling us about the terrible things that went on behind closed doors. She appeared on television and radio, she was interviewed in the newspapers and she became a bit of a guru. Her work led to the establishment of other refuges, including one set up by the fledgling Women's Aid in Harcourt Terrace, Dublin, in the 1970s.
However, not everything Pizzey told us was heard clearly.
She said of the first 100 women that came into the refuge at Chiswick, 62 of them were ``at least as violent as the men they had left''.
She began to suggest that women could be prone to violent behaviour. Some women were shocked to find themselves in violent relationships and wanted to escape. But others were violent themselves or were drawn to relationships that were violent.
There is no doubt that men are violent towards women; the evidence of women's injuries is real enough. However, this is one side of the story only. There is another side: the extent of women's violence against men.
Just as children who are abused have a high risk of either being abusers or being drawn to an abusive relationship, men and women who witness or experience violence in childhood may well repeat the pattern in their adult intimate relationships.
There are now a number of studies, which, unlike previous research, took the approach that men could also be on the receiving end of violence by their partners. A 1994 British study by Michelle Carrado and others, for example, interviewed 1,800 men and women with heterosexual partners. Some 11% of the men but only 5% of the women said their current partner had committed acts of violence towards them, ranging from pushing, through hitting, to stabbing. Five per cent of married or cohabiting men reported two or more acts of violence against them in a current relationship, compared with only 1% of women. A further 10% of men and 11% of women said they had committed one of these violent acts.
The results themselves are troubling. If 10% of men admit to committing violent acts but only 5% of women report that their current partners have been violent, what does this tell us about under reporting and a prevalent acceptance of violence?
The findings also highlight the need to separate out the issues. Relationships where there is mutual violence are not necessarily the relationships where women flee seeking refugee. This blurring of the facts attempts to ``prove'' that women are somehow responsible for the terrible acts of violent visited upon them, that they provoked it, are as bad as the men.
Women are used to this. Family breakdown, spiraling suicide rates, the increasing number of child abduction cases - blame it on feminism. Back in the good old days, when men and women knew their place, none of this happened. As republicans, we know all about the blame game. If the children of Ardoyne would just go to school by the back door, none of the violence would have happened.
That is not to say that women are not violent. The American social scientists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles reported from two large national surveys that husbands and wives had assaulted each other at approximately equal rates, with women engaging in minor acts of violence more frequently.
However, let's remember that even in situations of mutual violence, more times than not, it is still the woman who ends up dead. Laurence Callaghan kicked his girlfriend to death over a five-pound hash deal. Both had a history of alcohol and drug abuse. But he murdered her. He had sex with her body the following morning, not thinking anything when she did not respond. Even on realising she was dead, he waited three days before telling anyone. Despite all of this, he was still convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to just four years.
So yes, there is some evidence that women can initiate severe violence more frequently than men. A survey of 1,037 young adults born between 1972 and 1973 in Dunedin, New Zealand, found that 18.6% of young women said they had perpetrated severe physical violence against their partners, compared with 5.7% of young men. Three times more women than men said they had kicked or bitten their partners, or hit them with their fists or with an object.
The idea that women are never the instigators of violence is further contradicted by research into violence within lesbian relationships. According to Claire Renzetti, violence in lesbian relationships occurs with about the same frequency as in heterosexual relationships. Lesbian batterers ``display a terrifying ingenuity in their selection of abusive tactics, frequently tailoring the abuse to the specific vulnerabilities of their partners''. Such abuse can be extremely violent.
It is true that most women who are the victims of violence suffer domestic assaults. Yet the 1996 British Crime Survey reported that nearly one third of the victims of domestic violence were men, and that nearly half of these male victims were attacked by women.
Moreover, given the greater strength of men, it is particularly noteworthy that so many women initiate violence against them. The psychologist John Archer has noted that, among female college students, 29% admitted initiating an assault on a male partner. Of those women, half said they had no fear of retaliation or, since men could easily defend themselves, they did not see their own physical aggression as a problem. In other words, far from assuming that men are violent, some women would appear to take men's non-aggression for granted.
This study would appear to suggest that women do not consider throwing objects, slapping and pushing violent acts. This has to be addressed. Violence is violence is violence.
Just as lower crime rates belie an increasing level of late night and street violence, it would seem that the full extent of women's violence is lost within the overwhelming facts of male violence.
The British Home Office recently produced its own evidence that domestic violence was not a male disease. In January 1999, it reported that 4.2% of women and 4.2% of men aged 16 to 59 said they had been physically assaulted by a current or former partner in the past year.
The outcome of all this is that it is now generally accepted that violence is intrinsically male. This is a gravely distorted picture. It is true that most recorded crime is committed by men. It does not follow, however, that women never commit violence on men.
The evidence suggests that a quite different conclusion should be drawn. This is surely that both women and men are capable of aggression and violence. The current paradigm of domestic violence needs to be expanded. In the future, we will see domestic violence, not as an issue of men attacking women, but of violent people using violence to control their partners.