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By Richard J. Gelles, Ph.D.
Dean of the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania,
Joanne and Raymond Welsh Chair of Child Welfare and Family Violence
Richard J. Gelles, along with,
Murray A. Straus, and
Suzanne K. Steinmetz
formed the team at the Univ. of
New Hampshire that first researched family
violence in the early 1970s. He is today one of
the nation's foremost researchers into family
violence.
Click here to view Gelles' Curriculum Vitae.
Click here to download a printer-friendly copy of this article.
I met Alan and Faith nearly 25 years ago. I was in the
process of interviewing men and women on what were then
both a taboo topic and an issue that had been treated as
an unmentionable personal trouble - violence in the
family. I was one of the first researchers in the United
States to attempt to study the extent, patterns, and
causes of what I then called "conjugal violence,"
and what today advocates label "domestic
violence." There was precious little research or
information to guide my study - the entire scientific
literature was two journal articles. With the exception
of the tabloids, the media and daytime talk shows had
not yet discovered the dark side of family
relations. Both Alan and Faith discussed their
experiences with violence in their intimate relations
and marriages. The violence was sometimes severe,
including a stabbing and broken bones. And yet, Alan and
Faith ended up as mere footnotes in my initial book, The
Violent Home (Sage Publications, 1974). I admit now and
knew then that I had overlooked the stories of Alan and
Faith. The reason why their stories were relegated to
mere notes was they did not fit the perceptual framework
of my research. Although I titled my study an
examination of family or conjugal violence, my main
focus, the issue I hoped to raise consciousness about,
was violence toward women. Alan, as it turned out, had
never hit his wife. The broken bones and abrasions that
occurred in his home were inflicted by his wife. Faith
was a victim of violence; her husband, ex-husband, and
boyfriends had struck her and abused her numerous
times. These events were dutifully counted and reported
in my book and subsequent articles. Faith's situation
was the focus of my article "Abused Wives: Why Do
They Stay?" However, Faith's violence, which
included stabbing her husband while he read the morning
paper, was reported as a small quote in my book, with
little analysis or discussion. In my first study of
family violence, I had overlooked violence toward men. I
would not, and could not, ever do that again.
My recognition of the issue of violence toward men came
about in a strange way. Two years after my initial
study of family violence, the American Sociological
Association included a session on "Family
Violence" as part of the association's annual
meeting program. This was the first time this scholarly
association had devoted precious meeting time and space
to this topic. However, unlike most sessions, which are
open to anyone registered for the meeting, this session
required a reservation. I wrote the day I received my
preliminary program to request admission to the session,
and was subsequently informed that the session was
"filled." I do not believe I stopped to consider
how or why a session could be completely filled as soon
as it was announced. I was desperate, however, to link
up with others in my field who were interested in the
rarely studied topic of family violence. So, uninvited,
I went to the session anyway and sat in the back of the
room, hoping to hear what was going on, but avoiding
being labeled a "gate crasher."
The session was held in a small ballroom, and there were
about 20 persons in attendance, all sitting in a
circle. The room was far from overflowing. The session
was chaired by two sociologists from Scotland who were
about to publish their own book on family violence,
titled Violence against Wives: A Case against
Patriarchy. Much of the session focused on the
application of feminist theory, or patriarchy theory, to
explaining the extent and patterns of violence towards
wives, both in contemporary society and over time and
across cultures. Much of the discussion was informative
and useful. However, eventually someone raised the
question of whether men were victims of domestic
violence. The session leaders and many others in the
group stated, categorically, there were no male victims
of domestic violence. At this point, I raised may hand,
risking being discovered as a gate crasher, and
explained that I had indeed interviewed men and women
who reported significant and sometimes severe violence
toward husbands. I was not quite shouted down, but it
was explained to me that I must certainly be wrong, and
even if women did hit men, it was always in self-defense
and that women never used violence to coerce and control
their partners, as did men.
Alan and Faith were suddenly no longer footnotes, but I
did not fully appreciate the significance of this until
two years later.
The research I conducted for The Violent Home was a
small study, based on 80 interviews conducted in New
Hampshire. That research pointed to the possibility that
family violence was indeed widespread and the
probability that social factors, such as income and
family power, were causal factors. But the study was too
small and too exploratory to be more than suggestive. In
order to build a more solid knowledge base and
understanding of family violence, my colleagues Murray
Straus and Suzanne Steinmetz and I conducted the First
National Family Violence Survey in 1976. The survey
interviewed a nationally representative sample of 2,143
individual family members. The results were reported in
a number of scholarly articles and, finally, in the book
Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family
(1980, Anchor Books). What surprised my colleagues and
me the most was the high rates of violence towards
children, between siblings, toward parents and between
partners that were reported by those we interviewed. Up
until this point, estimates of child abuse and wife
abuse were placed in the hundreds of thousands and no
higher than one million. But our study, based on
self-reports, placed the rates in the one to two million
range.
The most controversial finding, as it would turn out,
was that the rate of adult female-to-adult male intimate
violence was the same as the rate of male-to-female
violence. Not only that, but the rate of abusive
female-to-male violence was the same as the rate of
abusive male-to-female violence. When my colleague
Murray Straus presented these findings in 1977 at a
conference on the subject of battered women, he was
nearly hooted and booed from the stage. When my
colleague Suzanne Steinmetz published a scholarly
article, "The battered husband syndrome," in 1978,
the editor of the professional journal published, in the
same issue, a critique of Suzanne's article.
The response to our finding that the rate of
female-to-male family violence was equal to the rate of
male-to-female violence not only produced heated
scholarly criticism, but intense and long-lasting
personal attacks. All three of us received death
threats. Bomb threats were phoned in to conference
centers and buildings where we were scheduled to
present. Suzanne received the brunt of the
attacks - individuals wrote and called her university
urging that she be denied tenure; calls were made and
letters were written to government agencies urging that
her grant funding be rescinded. All three of us became
"non persons" among domestic violence
advocates. Invitations to conferences dwindled and dried
up. Advocacy literature and feminist writing would cite
our research, but not attribute it to us. Librarians
publicly stated they would not order or shelve our
books.
The more sophisticated critiques were not personal, but
methodological. Those critiques focused on how we
measured violence. We had developed an instrument,
"The Conflict Tactic Scales." The measure met all
the scientific standards for reliability and validity,
so the criticisms focused on content. First, the measure
assessed acts of violence and not outcomes - so it did
not capture the consequence or injuries caused by
violence. Second, the measure focused on acts and not
context or process, so it did not assess who struck whom
and whether the violence was in self-defense. These two
criticisms, that the measure did not assess context or
consequence, became a mantra-like critique that
continued for the next two decades.
While the drumbeat of criticism continued, Murray Straus
and I conducted the Second National Family Violence
Survey in 1986. We attempted to address the two
methodological criticisms of the Conflict Tactics
Scales. In 1986 we interviewed a nationally
representative sample of 6,002 individual family members
over the telephone. This time we asked about the
outcomes of violence and the process and context - who
started the conflict and how.
The findings again included surprises. First, contrary
to advocacy claims that there was an epidemic of child
abuse and wife abuse, we found that the reported rates
of violence toward children and violence toward women
had declined. This made sense to us, as much effort and
money had been expended between 1976 and 1986 to prevent
and treat both child abuse and wife
abuse. Female-to-male violence showed no decline and
still was about as frequent and severe as male-to-female
violence.
The examination of context and consequences also
produced surprises. First, as advocates expected and as
data from crime surveys bore out, women were much more
likely to be injured by acts of domestic violence then
were men. Second, contrary to the claim that women only
hit in self-defense, we found that women were as likely
to initiate the violence as were men. In order to
correct for a possible bias in reporting, we re-examined
our data looking only at the self-reports of women. The
women reported similar rates of female-to-male violence
compared to male-to-female, and women also reported they
were as likely to initiate the violence as were men.
When we reported the results of the Second National
Family Violence Survey the personal attacks continued
and the professional critiques simply ignored
methodological revisions to the measurement instrument.
This round of personal attacks was much more
insidious - in particular, it was alleged that Murray
had abused his wife. This is a rather typical critique
in the field of family violence - men whose research
results are contrary to political correctness are
labeled "perps."
Up until now I have focused only on our own
research. However, it is important to point out that our
findings have been corroborated numerous times, by
many
different researchers, using many different
methodological approaches. My colleague Murray Straus
has found that every study among
more than 30 describing some type of sample that is not
self-selective (an example of self-selected
samples are samples of women in battered woman shelters
or women responding to advertisements recruiting
research subjects; non-self-selected samples are
community samples, samples of college students, or
representative samples) has found a
rate of assault by women on male partners that is about
the same as the rate by men on female partners.
The only exception to this is the U.S. Justice
Department's Uniform Crime Statistics, the National
Survey of Crime Victims, and the U.S. Department of
Justice National Survey of Violence against Women. The
Uniform Crime Statistics report the rate of fatal
partner violence. While the rate and number for male and
female victims was about the same 25 years ago, today
female victims of partner homicide outnumber (and the
rate is higher) than male victims. The National Crime
Victims Survey and National Survey of Violence against
Women both assess partner violence in the context of a
crime survey. It is reasonable to suppose both men and
women underreport female-to-male partner violence in a
crime survey, as they do not conceptualize such behavior
as a crime.
It is worth repeating, however, that almost all studies
of domestic or partner violence, agree that women are
the most likely to be injured as a result of partner
violence.
Two new studies add to our understanding of partner
violence and the extent of violence toward men. First,
David Fontes conducted a
study of domestic violence
perpetrated against heterosexual men in relationships
compared to domestic violence against heterosexual
women. The "Partner Conflict Survey" sample
consisted of employees from the California Department of
Social Services. Altogether, 136 surveys were returned
out of 200 surveys distributed to employees in four
locations (Sacramento, Roseville, Oakland, and Los
Angeles). Not only did men experience the same rate of
domestic violence as did women, but men reported the
same rate of injury as did women.
More recently,
a survey conducted by University of
Wisconsin-Madison Psychologist
Terrie
Moffit in New
Zealand also found roughly the same rate of violence
toward men as toward women in intimate relationships.
Most journalistic accounts of domestic violence toward
women and many scholarly examinations include
descriptions of the horrors of intimate violence.
Reports of remarkable cruelty and sadism accompany
reports on domestic violence. Fatal injuries, disabling
injuries, and systematic physical and emotional
brutality are noted in detail. I have heard many of
these accounts myself and reported them in my own books,
articles, and interviews.
The "horror" of intimate violence toward men is somewhat
different. There are, of course, hundreds of men killed
each year by their partners. At a minimum, one-fourth
of the men killed have not used violence towards their
homicidal partners. Men have been shot, stabbed, beaten
with objects, and been subjected to verbal assaults and
humiliations. Nonetheless, I do not believe these are
the "horrors" of violence toward men. The real horror is
the continued status of battered men as the "missing
persons" of the domestic violence problem. Male victims
do not count and are not counted. The Federal Violence
against Women Act identified domestic violence as a
gender crime. None of the nearly
billion dollars of funding from this act is directed
towards male victims. Some "Requests for Proposals" from
the U.S. Justice Department specifically state that
research on male victims or programs for male victims
will not even be reviewed, let alone funded.
Federal funds typically pass to a state coalition
against domestic violence or to a branch of a state
agency designated to deal with violence against women.
Battered men face a tragic apathy. Their one option is
to call the police and hope that a jurisdiction will
abide by a mandatory or presumptive arrest
statute. However, when the police do carry out an arrest
when a male has been beaten, they tend to engage in the
practice of "dual arrest" and arrest both parties.
Battered men who flee their
attackers find that the act of fleeing results in the
men losing physical and even legal custody of their
children. Those men who stay are thought to be "wimps,"
at best and "perps" at worst, since if they stay, it is
believed they are the true abusers in the home.
Thirty years ago battered women had no place to go and
no place to turn for help and assistance. Today, there
are places to go - more than 1,800 shelters, and many
agencies to which to turn. For men, there still is no
place to go and no one to whom to turn. On occasion a
shelter for battered men is created, but it rarely lasts
- first because it lacks on-going funding, and second
because the shelter probably does not meet the needs of
male victims. Men, for
example, who retain their children
in order to try to protect them from abusive mothers,
often find themselves arrested for "child
kidnapping."
The frustration men experience often bursts forth in
rather remarkable obstreperous behavior at conferences,
meetings, and forums on domestic violence. Such
outbursts are almost immediately turned against the men
by explaining that this behavior proves the men are not
victims but are "perps."
Given the body of research on domestic violence that
finds continued unexpectedly high rates of violence
toward men in intimate relations, it is necessary to
reframe domestic violence as something other than a
"gender crime" or example of "patriarchal
coercive control." Protecting only the female victim
and punishing only the male offender will not resolve
the tragedy and costs of domestic violence. While this
is certainly not a politically correct position, and is
a position that will almost certainly ignite more
personal attacks against me and my colleagues, it
remains clear to me that the problem is violence between
intimates not violence against women. Policy and
practice must address the needs of male victims if we
are to reduce the extent and toll of violence in the
home.
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