I was in a bar recently and the bartender (who was apparently working on some post-graduate degree) was talking to one of her customers about some paper she had written on domestic violence. Her research (her, mind you) showed that most cases of are actually perpetrated by women upon men–but that men don’t often report them.
OK. It sounded interesting, and even plausible–but in that situation, what’s a guy to do? If you hit back you can go to jail. If you call 911, you could still go to jail. (At least I’ve heard of specific cases where that happened.) Leave the scene? Well, according to her, most times, the (gal) assailant doesn’t want you to, and there is often a scuffle to try to keep the guy close by, in order to keep things going. Someone spotting this can call 911, and, guess what, the guy can go to jail.
Any thoughts??? Although I didn’t do the research, it still looks like “lose, lose, lose” to me.
I am always sketchy about things like “Most hings happen to {so-and-so} but they fail to report it.” So how do we know? I’m serious, if it isn’t reported, then what’s the deal?
Anyway, I’ve known quite a few violent women (luckily, not involved with them) and their men just put up with it. The abuse was mainly verbal with a few good slaps or punches thrown in here or there, but overall there was never a fear of outright damage. I don’t know why the guys stayed, but I can see why they wouldn’t call it in to the police. None of their business.
Men are also, as a populus, somewhat larger than women, and so male to female beatings might be a bit more noticeable than the other way around. This is where the “lose lose lose” situation comes in…the laws were designed for women, not men.
Define ‘domestic violence’. Sounds silly but it is key. When does yelling at one another cross from being nothing more than an argument to being verbal abuse? While a slap (delivered by a man or a woman) is technically a violent act I doubt neither a man nor a woman would call the police for only a slap.
I can easily believe women can be just as abusive as men verbally but in general they don’t do as much physical damage if they decide to move past yelling to hitting. This is largely reflected by the general size advantage men have over women. I have heard of cases where the woman really does beat the snot out of the man that the man may not report it as he is embarrassed to get his ass kicked by a woman. While this may be real enough I don’t know that it counts for a significant number of unreported beatings perpetrated by females.
As to the guy always getting arrested it sucks but that’s the way of things (at least in Chicago). I was unfortunate enough to be witness to a guy and girl going at each other. She was trying to wail on him (verbally and physically) and while he was yelling back he took no physical action against her beyond blocking her blows as best he could. The police showed-up and took HIM away and threw him in the lockup for the night. I asked the police officer who remained to take statements how they could do that and he said it was policy. It’s too hard for the police to determine who is at fault and when tempers are heated they drag the man away to allow both parties to cool off. In the past the cops have left what they thought was a resolved situation only to find the woman (usually) dead the next morning. Now they just cut through the crap and drag the guy away…period. (FYI: The guy was not arrested as his girlfriend didn’t want to press charges and witnesses told the police taking reports that the guy hadn’t done anything overtly violent so he was released the next day.)
I would agree that the likelihood of a female seriously hurting a man is less likely than vice versa. I don’t want to go into details of my personal experiences, but I was once involved with a girl who would become physically violent at times. The usual result would be that she would get hurt more than I did, even though all I would do was block her punches or, at most, push her away, and afterward she had the nerve to complain that I hurt her. That alone was a pretty good incentive not to report anything. Without a witness, how do you prove who hit whom? I think that if a man lodged such a complaint without hard evidence, he’d have a hard time being taken seriously. On the other hand, due to the publicity the problem gets, a woman probably wouldn’t have as much difficulty.
But is it valid to say that because men are less likely to be hurt that its not abuse? Women may not be as physically strong as men, on average, but I would bet the psychological affects are the same (or worse) when a woman abuses a man. And a man is at just as much disadvantage as a woman would be against an armed opponent.