You said, and I quote, “if it’s not written down, it didn’t happen,” which is fundamentally different than what you’ve just said.
yeah. there were people defending Joe Mixon as though a slap in the face justified decking a woman with a right hook.
There’s a whole lot of justifying going on in this thread.
Justifying what?
Violence perpetrated by women against men.
Please be clear. Are you saying that you need evidence that the degree of violence can range from a slap to murder? Or is it that you just don’t care what this report says as long as it can be misinterpreted to mean that women are more violent than men?
Violence is bad.
This study doesn’t change my opinion that violence by men against women is serious problem. I am not convinced by this study that violence by women against men is a serious societal problem, although, as I stated, violence against anyone is bad.
There’s nothing to justify. The OP says, “I never would have thought that,” revealing some kind of presumption–which is one thing–but we can’t say we know yet exactly why boys report more than girls. It could just be because girls act violently more often when dating–this wouldn’t be surprising, especially because it starts at 7th grade, when physical differences between the sexes are not as great. Or it could be because girls and boys don’t perceive the actions of the other in the same way, and report differently. That’s why–as the study’s authors say–it requires more investigation, which probably should include qualitative data.
who is justifying it?
saying “it’s worse coming from the party which tends to be stronger and more damaging” is not “justifying anything.”
The only instance of justification I see in this thread is where a woman who has just been grabbed in a sexual manner by a man turns around and slaps him, which indeed has been justified as self-defense. If you do not think that the slap in that case is justified violence I invite you to argue that position.
I do think the reaction in this thread is a bit odd. I think people are assuming that some MRA douchebag is going to take this study and say “ha, this proves that violence against women isn’t really a problem at all, and really it’s men who are the real victims, and let’s de-fund all the domestic violence shelters!!!”, and they’re preemptively responding to that person. When as far as I can tell neither the authors of the study nor anyone posting in this thread have said anything of the sort.
Violence by women against men (or by girls against boys) isn’t perceived as a problem by lots of people. This may—may—be a mistake. As the study says (and guizot reiterated), it requires more investigation.
Most males are taught specifically not to ever hit or hurt a woman or fight back if she hits you. I have been slapped multiple times by women that weren’t my girlfriend just because they knew that they could get away with it. My ex-wife physically abused me (never the reverse) and even broke my ribs with a strong kick once while I was sleeping. I called the police over it twice and you can probably guess the reaction that got - none.
One of the problems is the disparity in how male on female violence is treated versus female on male. It is a fallacy to think that females aren’t aggressive by nature and I have two daughters with the scars to prove it. Some of the highest incidences of physical violence occurs in lesbian relationships.
Not to doubt your personal experience, but I’m having a hard time seeing how you could possibly have a reliable source of information for the quoted statement.
The wiki article confirms that domestic violence among lesbians exists, but it certainly doesn’t make any statement that it’s confirmed as being more common than among heterosexual couples.
The second link points to “a study” that alleges what you claim, while mentioning that oppressed minorities in general are under more stress than the average person and thus more prone to violence generally, which wouldn’t really support your apparent claim that females in general are more violent.
But in any case, I commend you on actually attempting to find cites.
People get defensive when their accepted understanding of the world is challenged. The reaction of some people in this thread seems roughly akin to #notallmen
I think it has to do with the history of the OP.
Context. (basically, the OP thinks women get seen through rose colored glasses, and finds it vitally important to make sure we know women aren’t as innocent as he thinks we think they are).
All the kibitzing based on a popular news summary of a scientific paper got me curious enough to go and actually look at the paper. The thing is, any flaw that an amateur can think of in the first few seconds after reading something is certainly something that the researchers, who spend careers thinking about these things, have thought of and handled in some way. Sometime the handling is unsatisfactory (this is the data we had and we know it isn’t perfect etc.)
So, here are some things about this article that I notice as reading through it:
[ul]
[li]Physical dating violence victimization (PDV) is defined as having been the recipient of intentional physical harm from a current or former dating partner[/li][li]This study is specifically intended to examine trends over time in PDV victimization in **Canadian **adolescents[/li][li]Data on PDV victimization is collected in Canada, but adult and adolescent data is combined, so is not useful for this study[/li][li]The data used is part of an existing longitudinal and anonymous study of grades 7-12 in British Columbia, but PDV data was not collected until 2003[/li][li]The total sample in the study is about 89,000 which is good for a study like this[/li][li]The key question is “During the past 12 months, did your boyfriend or girlfriend ever hit, slap or physically hurt you on purpose?” Yes, no, or not in a relationship[/li][li]For the statisticians: they used a weighted approach to adjust from their sample to the population of BC[/li][li]For the statisticians 2: they mostly used logistic regression models[/li][li]This graph covers most of what the paper is saying. The caption is left of that image, so the Y-axis is the percentage of subjects of the given type who reported being a victim of PDV. The X-axis is the year the data was collected.[/li][li]There was slight increase in PDV in 2008 over 2003 and 2013, but it was not significant. There was a significant decrease in PDV in 2013 compared to 2003 and 2008. This is what we want to see—violence (or at least reports of violence) are trending down[/li][li]In the graph boys appear to have a steeper decrease, but the difference in the rate of decrease between boys and girls is not significant[/li][li]Data from police reports show a higher rate of PDV victimization among girls than boys, but self report studies are mixed[/li][li]In the literature (not this set of data) girls report a higher rate of PDV victimization when looking at serious injury, use of weapons, etc. This set of data specifically included minor forms (slapping, pushing, etc.)[/li][li]Authors’ conjecture: girls may be less willing to report PDV, even on an anonymous survey[/li][li]Authors’ conjecture: girls may perpetrate PDV in self defense more often than boys[/li][li]Authors’ conjecture: girls might just be more violent than boys[/li][li]Study limitation: survey did not distinguish among reasons for PDV (aggression, self defense, etc.)[/li][li]Study limitation: only asked about PDV in relationships, not casual “hookups” (their quotes)[/li][li]Study limitation: only includes adolescents in public schools, so private, home schooled, and homeless adolescents are excluded[/li][li]Study limitation: cannot identify PDV interventions by school district to measure if they are related to the decline[/li][/ul]
So, in summary, this study appears to be large and well powered, and uses common and (probably) appropriate statistical methods.
The authors themselves point out several of the limitations that have been mentioned in this thread, as they are really quite obvious (obviousness does not preclude mentioning them, they are still important).