Wednesday, July 21, 1999 - National Post

Domestic violence not a numbers game

Jonathan Kay


My experience with domestic violence is limited. It
consists of a single ugly incident that took place several
years ago during a screaming match between me and
my then-girlfriend. I had been the one to give up the
argument first. But when I turned to leave, my partner
thrust her fist into the space between my shoulder
blades -- with all the meagre force her 95-pound frame
could manage. Naturally, I didn't hit back. I knew where
that led -- to a night in a holding cell and a starring role
on Cops.

At the time, I did not think of the confrontation as an
instance of domestic abuse. The punch stung, but I had
not been injured -- or even frightened. Moreover, the
incident did not fit the image of domestic abuse I had
been conditioned to expect by women's groups and
government health agencies. According to that model, I
was supposed to be the aggressor, my mate the
innocent.

It turns out, however, that my experience as a male
"victim" is quite common. Two recently publicized
studies -- one Canadian, one American -- have
concluded women are at least as likely as men to
perpetrate acts of domestic violence.

Although this result surprises many people, it has been
widely-reported in the academic community since 1975.
That was the year Murray Straus, Suzanne Steinmetz
and Richard Gelles, three American researchers, drew
the same counter-intuitive conclusion from their
ground-breaking National Family Violence Survey.

In the past 24 years, more than 100 family conflict
studies have been performed, and every single one of
them has confirmed the original NFVS. Yet, these data
still spark controversy when they are reported in the
press.

One reason for this is that feminists have seized on
domestic abuse to advance a political agenda -- and they
bristle when researchers portray the issue as anything
other than the simple morality play of brutish men
beating innocent women. But there is another important
reason why they react the way they do that has nothing
to with politics: Statistics that equate male- and
female-perpetrated domestic violence are misleading --
because they imply, falsely, that husbands and wives
inflict an equal amount of physical damage on one
another.

Although it is true males and females commit the same
number of "serious assaults" (defined as punching,
kicking, choking and attacks involving weapons), men
inflict seven times more injuries requiring medical
attention than women. Both sides may throw the same
number of blows -- but the average husband's lands
more squarely and forcefully than his wife's. My own
experience is telling in this respect. I walked away from
the hardest punch my girlfriend could throw with only a
bruise. What injury would have resulted had the roles
been reversed?

Evidence of the damage disparity is widespread. In the
United States, females were responsible for 39% of
hospital emergency visits for violence-related injuries in
1994, but they represented 84% of the persons treated
for injuries inflicted by intimates. In Canada, the ratio is
even more lopsided. Of all the spousal assaults serious
enough to have been reported to police in 1996, 89%
were perpetrated against female victims. The data
provided in the Canadian Journal of Behavioural
Science study reported recently in the Post are
consistent with this pattern. Of the studied women who
were asked about the consequences of their altercations,
16% reported serious injury, need for medical attention
or time off from work. For men, the figure was 0%.

These numbers explain why studies that demonstrate
men and women are equally likely to assault one
another strike many as flying against common sense.
While the results reported may be nominally true, their
citation can obscure the fact that the vast majority of
deadly and injurious assaults are committed by men --
and that many more wives live in fear of assault than
husbands.

On the other hand, while these potentially misleading
statistics may anger some feminists, they must accept
some of the blame. It was the women's groups, after all,
who were responsible for dumbing down the definitions
of domestic violence and sexual abuse in an effort to
make the problem of violence against women seem
more widespread than it really is. A typical
government-funded report, Training social workers in a
feminist approach to conjugal violence, for instance,
reported in 1992 that "violence by men to women is a
form of social discrimination which manifests in sexist
jokes, pornography [and] sexual harassment."

That sort of reductionist approach has always been
unfair to men. Now, it is being applied to the
disadvantage of women. We must move beyond labels
and broad statistics in the debate over domestic abuse.
All assaults are not created equal. I know that for a fact.