Prof. Donald Dutton has long been a leading authority on intimate
partner violence (IPV). His 1995 book
The Batterer: A Psychological Profile was the defining text for
many years and the first, that I'm aware of, to link borderline
personality disorder (BPD) to IPV.
However, that book had one major shortcoming. Only male violence
against female partners was considered. It was well known by then,
if not accepted, that women were as violent as men in intimate
relationships. Also, BPD is more commonly diagnosed in women than
males.
The
following article by Prof. Dutton from the Toronto National Post
summarizes current IPV research findings.
Domestic violence isn't one-sided
Reproduced with permission of the author
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
A few years ago, a woman arrived home from work in Saskatoon to find
her husband, who had obviously spent the day drinking, complaining
of irritation with their fractious child. She insisted she needed to
rest before making dinner. She awoke to find him in a rage
straddling her and brandishing a kitchen knife, which he used to cut
her abdomen. Bleeding, terrified, she managed to call 911. The
police arrived within minutes. They observed her plight, spoke to
her husband and then, responding to the unspoken but powerful
institutional guidelines routinely applied in such cases, arrested
... her. In spite of her wound, she spent the night in a jail cell,
and was released the next morning.
As it stands, this story makes no sense -- and indeed would have
aroused national indignation if it were completely true. But I
deliberately misled the reader on one particular. In the real story,
by no means a unique one in police archives, the genders were
reversed: The man arrived home after a 12-hour shift; the child's
mother was drunk; the man lay down; the woman stabbed him in a rage;
the police didn't take his injuries seriously; they accepted the
woman's explanation -- probably self-defence -- and arrested the
man.
Unfortunately, such gender bias in the law-enforcement system and
beyond is typical, not exceptional. A double standard for men and
women, applied in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) -- as
well as in family law, including spousal support and child custody
cases -- has become commonplace in most Western societies over the
last 25 years. And in spite of a widening stream of incontrovertible
statistical evidence to the contrary, the myth persists that it is
women, and only women, who are the victims of IPV.
The stereotype that unprovoked men purposefully assault women, and
never the reverse, is so ingrained in our public discourse that
participants in research on IPV -- not just lay people but health
professionals as well -- presented with a scenario in which one
partner abuses another, perceive it as abuse only if the assaulter
is identified as male.
The reality, borne out by independent peer-reviewed studies as well
as StatsCan, is that women commit more severe IPV, and more IPV in
general, than men. For all kinds of relationship types, females are
unilaterally more violent than males to non-violent partners. More
females strike first in IPV (men are conditioned not to strike first
in our society) and, contradicting received wisdom, fear of their
male partner is rarely a factor amongst violent women. Actually,
both male and female victims of IPV report equal fear levels of
"intimate terrorism".
Of course, some battering males abuse passive women -- about 3%
annually, far fewer than implied in skewed studies by women's
groups. But in spite of sensationalized cases, spousal homicide
perpetrated by either sex is extremely rare. As many mothers as
fathers practice child abuse alone or in tandem, and far more women
than men murder their children.
Interestingly, IPV occurs more frequently in lesbian than in
heterosexual relationships, supporting the view that relationship
dynamics, not gender, fuel domestic violence. Honest research points
to a norm of "assortative mating": The violence-prone tend to seek
each other out for anti-social behavior.
And yet our government, our social services and our judiciary
prescribe remedies based on a false and simplistic view that denies
not just the unprovoked violence committed by women in
relationships, but the number and severity of the assaults engaged
in by both partners in mutually violent couples.
Indeed, it is fair to say that no other area of established social
welfare, criminal justice or public health depends on such weak and
biased evidence in support of mandated practice as does IPV. The
model of "treatment" for IPV that flows from this false
understanding is not the kind of therapy that could benefit both
male and female perpetrators. Instead, our system prefers
"intervention" -- against men, never women --and a "psychoeducational"
model of behavior modification that essentially amounts to
inculcating the radical feminist political viewpoint.
Where does the gender bias come from? Ideology. Radical feminism
insists that men -- all men -- by their nature pursue power and
control for its own sake. As a result, we become complicit in the
myths of gender politics. So when a crazed individual male with a
bizarre personal back story shoots women, we hold candlelight
vigils. But when a vengeful woman cuts off a man's penis, he becomes
fodder for standup comedians, while she is hailed as a symbol of
female empowerment.
IPV is a serious issue in our society. Responding to it through the
default demonization of one sex and victimization of the other is an
insult to scientific integrity, a stumbling block to rehabilitation,
a strong contributing factor in many arbitrarily ruined lives, and a
shameful blot on our human rights record.
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