# Guys and creepiness **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 1, 2013, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716 "2013-03-01T12:42:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 33
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/641 "2013-03-23T19:42:48Z")
So no-one’s going to bring up [dongle-gate](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/03/21/2218254/sendgrid-fires-employee-after-firestorm-over-inappropriate-jokes?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed)? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/642 "2013-03-25T03:01:43Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Quite the opposite, women [are more likely to](http://www.biomedsearch.com/article/Female-intimate-partner-violence-developmental/165430147.html) solely and unprovokedly use severe violence: I promised I would look into these stats more, but honestly I’ve been exhausted and haven’t followed up on what I said. Fortunately, the stats came looking for me. I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s **The Better Angels of Our Nature** , and lo and behold, this particular set of data is discussed on page 409-410. After describing Straus’s surveys, Pinker writes: > [@Steven Pinker](#): > > To make sense of the survey finds, one has to be careful about what one means by domestic violence. It turns out that there really is a distinction between common marital spats that escalate into violence (“the conversations with flying plates,” as Rodgers and Hart put it) and the systematic intimidation and coercion of one partner by another. The sociologist Michael Johnson analyzed data on the interactions between partners in violent relationships and discovered a cluster of controlling tactics that tended to go together. In some couples, one partner threatens the other with force, controls the family finances, restricts the other’s movements, redirects anger and violence against the children or pets, and strategically withholds praise and affection. Among couples with a controller, the controllers who used violence were almost exclusively men; the spouses who used violence were almost entirely women, presumably defending themselves or their children. When neither partner was a controller, violence erupted only when an argument got out of hand, and in those couples the men were just a shade more prone to using force than the women. The distinction between controllers and squabblers, then resolves the mystery of the gender neutral violence statistics. The numbers in violence surveys are dominated by spats between noncontrolling partners, in which the women give as good as they get. But the numbers from shelter admissions, court records, emergency rooms, and police statistics are dominated by couples with a controller, usually the man intimidating the woman, and occasionally a woman defending herself. The asymmetry is even greater with estranged partners, in which it is the men who do most of the stalking, threatening, and harming. Other studies have confirmed that chronic intimidation, serious violence, and maleness tend to go together. I don’t think you’re actively lying, unlike someone else in this thread; rather I think this particular statistic has been distorted by a lot of misogynists, and gullible followers of the Mens Right Movement swallow it uncritically. When you hear a surprising statistic, you ought to be more skeptical than you’ve been. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2013, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/643 "2013-03-25T07:19:45Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I promised I would look into these stats more, but honestly I’ve been exhausted and haven’t followed up on what I said. > > Fortunately, the stats came looking for me. > > I’m currently reading Steven Pinker’s **The Better Angels of Our Nature** , and lo and behold, this particular set of data is discussed on page 409-410. After describing Straus’s surveys, Pinker writes: > > I don’t think you’re actively lying, unlike someone else in this thread; rather I think this particular statistic has been distorted by a lot of misogynists, and gullible followers of the Mens Right Movement swallow it uncritically. > > When you hear a surprising statistic, you ought to be more skeptical than you’ve been. Except surprising is entirely sujective, and your idea of surprising is the idea than women aren’t all pacifist saints, which might surprise you but doesn’t surprise people who’ve studied the field. As for Pinkner, his argument rests entirely on the fact that women are “presumably” violent in defence of themselves and others, an argument I’ve already disproven in this very thread. It’s just an excuse to say male violence is bad and tyrannical, female violence is good and heroic. I don’t know if you really think he’s convincing or if you just wish he was convincing so you don’t have to face the truth. He says: > [@](#): > > But the numbers from shelter admissions, court records, emergency rooms, and police statistics are dominated by couples with a controller, usually the man intimidating the woman, and occasionally a woman defending herself. Well, shelters frequently [refuse access to men](http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/state&id=6454094); emergency rooms are required to ask women with suspicious injuries whether they were victims of DV, but not men; and men are more likely to be arrested than the women attacking them when they are the ones who call the police, as primary aggressor laws were specifically designed to allow [more men](http://current.com/community/92184416_predominant-aggressor-policies-are-blatant-gender-profiling.htm) to be arrested, because when they just had mandatory arrest laws “too many” women were arrested for their crimes. And citing anonymous “other studies” doesn’t help when I’m the only one in this thread that had actually produced any. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2013, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/644 "2013-03-27T00:15:35Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Except surprising is entirely sujective, and your idea of surprising is the idea than women aren’t all pacifist saints, which might surprise you but doesn’t surprise people who’ve studied the field. Not at all. I don’t believe that women are pacifist saints, and nothing I’ve said suggests otherwise: that’s sheerest projection on your part. Instead, what I believe is that, -Of folks who commit atrocities, they’re overwhelmingly male. -Mass murderers are overwhelmingly male. -Lynchings are overwhelmingly committed by men. -Dictators are overwhelmingly male. -Rapists are overwhelmingly male. -Legitimate soldiers are overwhelmingly male. -Legitimate police officers are overwhelmingly male. -Participants in violent sports are overwhelmingly male. In virtually every aspect of life, acts of physical violence are overwhelmingly committed by men. Certainly there are women who commit acts of violence; and certainly there are categories of violence overwhelmingly committed by women (for example, serial killers who work in hospitals and kill patients are overwhelmingly female). But because in most areas of life, acts of violence are disproportionately committed by men, when a statistic appears in which violence is committed equally by men and women, it’s surprising, and requires explanation. > [@](#): > > As for Pinkner, his argument rests entirely on the fact that women are “presumably” violent in defence of themselves and others, an argument I’ve already disproven in this very thread. That’s not at all what his argument says; rather, that’s a deliberate misreading of his argument at best. Here’s his argument, put very simply: -Many relationships involve two violent people being violent toward one another. People in these relationships hurt each other, and the women hurt as much as the men. -Some relationships involve unequal violence: one person controlling the relationship through fear and intimidation. In these relationships, it’s overwhelmingly the man who commits the violence; when the woman commits violence, it’s self-defense (“burning beds”) violence, but the woman’s violence in such relationships is much rarer. > [@](#): > > Well, shelters frequently [refuse access to men](http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/state&id=6454094); emergency rooms are required to ask women with suspicious injuries whether they were victims of DV, but not men; and men are more likely to be arrested than the women attacking them when they are the ones who call the police, as primary aggressor laws were specifically designed to allow [more men](http://current.com/community/92184416_predominant-aggressor-policies-are-blatant-gender-profiling.htm) to be arrested, because when they just had mandatory arrest laws “too many” women were arrested for their crimes. So it’s seriously your theory that, if we found societies in which shelters didn’t refuse access to men, in which emergency rooms didn’t ask DV-style questions of women, etc., that there wouldn’t be a disparity in the stats? Because that’s the prediction your hypothesis makes. > [@](#): > > And citing anonymous “other studies” doesn’t help when I’m the only one in this thread that had actually produced any. Jesus. There are plenty of studies cited just in the passage I typed, but I didn’t bother to type up the footnotes. I gave you page and quote. You can look up the footnotes yourself. Edit: Did you even read that link to [current.com](http://current.com)? That article vies for the most incoherent thing I’ve ever encountered on the Web, and I’m including TimeCube in that competition. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2013, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/645 "2013-03-27T07:34:01Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not at all. I don’t believe that women are pacifist saints, and nothing I’ve said suggests otherwise: that’s sheerest projection on your part. Instead, what I believe is that, > -Of folks who commit atrocities, they’re overwhelmingly male. > -Mass murderers are overwhelmingly male. > -Lynchings are overwhelmingly committed by men. > -Dictators are overwhelmingly male. > -Rapists are overwhelmingly male. > -Legitimate soldiers are overwhelmingly male. > -Legitimate police officers are overwhelmingly male. > -Participants in violent sports are overwhelmingly male. > > In virtually every aspect of life, acts of physical violence are overwhelmingly committed by men. Certainly there are women who commit acts of violence; and certainly there are categories of violence overwhelmingly committed by women (for example, serial killers who work in hospitals and kill patients are overwhelmingly female). But because in most areas of life, acts of violence are disproportionately committed by men, when a statistic appears in which violence is committed equally by men and women, it’s surprising, and requires explanation. You have specifically chosen to leave out those areas where women are known to be more violent than men. Women commit a large majority of child abuse, of abuse of the elderly, of abuse of the mentally or physically disabled, and as I’ve shown of intimate partners. If you look at violence as a whole, men commit more, but that’s because of men being more likely to commit violence against other adult men they aren’t related to or in a romantic relationship with. And there are institutional settings, as you say patient-targetting serial killers seem to be mostly women, abusive prison guards are also disproportionately likely to be women. There’s a pattern there: women are at least as likely to be violent when they can be violent against those who can’t or won’t fight back, but much less likely to indulge in random street violence against (probably larger) adult men. In most other settings women more than hold their own. There’s also the issue of proxy violence. You mention lynchings above, which were mostly carried out by men. But the largest number of them were carried out on the basis of sexual allegations by white women, which mostly ranged from made-up to “he failed to avert his eyes”. Men did it, but women still need to take some responsibility. The same goes for soldiers, most western countries have rather more female voters than male but the soldiers they send off to be violent are male, especially in places like Norway and Austria that still have conscription. > [@](#): > > That’s not at all what his argument says; rather, that’s a deliberate misreading of his argument at best. > > Here’s his argument, put very simply: > -Many relationships involve two violent people being violent toward one another. People in these relationships hurt each other, and the women hurt as much as the men. > -Some relationships involve unequal violence: one person controlling the relationship through fear and intimidation. In these relationships, it’s overwhelmingly the man who commits the violence; when the woman commits violence, it’s self-defense (“burning beds”) violence, but the woman’s violence in such relationships is much rarer. > > So it’s seriously your theory that, if we found societies in which shelters didn’t refuse access to men, in which emergency rooms didn’t ask DV-style questions of women, etc., that there wouldn’t be a disparity in the stats? Because that’s the prediction your hypothesis makes. We have academic stats, and they overwhelmingly don’t show a large disparity between men and women. BEcause they ask both sexes the same questions, whether they have been victims of specific violent acts, and whether they have committed specific violent acts. The disparity comes from shelters that advertise to women and refuse to accept men, and from people who only ask women if they were victims, and suchlike. Incidentally, setting someone’s bed on fire is not self-defence. If they are attacking you, you can act in self-defence, if they are asleep you can’t. But excusing that sort of premeditated murder as self-defence is the only way to get to the pre-determined conclusion that men dominate relationship violence. > [@](#): > > Jesus. There are plenty of studies cited just in the passage I typed, but I didn’t bother to type up the footnotes. I gave you page and quote. You can look up the footnotes yourself. Look these up: Graham-Kevan N. Power and control in relationship aggression. In Hamel J and Nicholls TL (eds.): Family Interventions in Domestic Violence. New York: Springer Publishing Co., 2007. Straus MA. Dominance and symmetry in partner violence by male and female university students in 32 nations. Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 30, 2008, pp. 252–275. Specifically look at “controlling” behaviours, and show them to be gender neutral. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/646 "2013-03-28T04:35:58Z")
> [@phouka](#): > > Bullshit right back at you. > > The dynamics of abusive relationships are well understood at this point, and victims simply do not leave the nanosecond violence begins, and yes, children are born into violent relationships. > > You seem to believe that if we abandon victims of abuse because they don’t leave the very instant you think they ought to, they will be shamed into doing so, and that if they don’t leave, they deserve what happens to them. > > You are disconnected from reality, because you prefer your self-righteous satisfaction over the safety and health of other human beings. Where did I say any of that? Must have been on the other forum! As a victim of abuse myself, I consider your last paragraph insulting. ---
**Author:** ![Doggo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/87869e/32.png) [@Doggo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doggo)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/647 "2013-03-28T04:40:48Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Not at all. I don’t believe that women are pacifist saints, and nothing I’ve said suggests otherwise: that’s sheerest projection on your part. Instead, what I believe is that, > > -Lynchings are overwhelmingly committed by men. > -Dictators are overwhelmingly male. > -Participants in violent sports are overwhelmingly male. And all of them had women in support. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/648 "2013-03-28T11:51:49Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > And all of them had women in support. Of course. I am not on some sort of Men are evil, Women are angels kick. That has nothing to do with the point I am making. However, I am on vacation and typing on an iPad, so a more thorough response will have to wait. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2013, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/649 "2013-03-28T13:36:04Z")
> [@Doggo](#): > > And all of them had women in support. [It’s that whole Thantos/Eros thing](http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/teaching/2011_06/img/day2ex1_marion_lynching.jpg) Men will lynch to display their kills to prove their strength and protective powers. Women behold death and are triggered to mate so as to replenish life. Or maybe they’re all just a bunch of sick fucks (links to that infamous Marion Indiana “skinny girlfriend at the lynching” photo) ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/650 "2013-03-29T00:58:12Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > You have specifically chosen to leave out those areas where women are known to be more violent than men. Women commit a large majority of child abuse, of abuse of the elderly, of abuse of the mentally or physically disabled, and as I’ve shown of intimate partners. That last one is bullshit, of course, as you admit later in your post: according to your own stats: > [@](#): > > We have academic stats, and they overwhelmingly don’t show a large disparity between men and women But for the rest, yeah, stipulating you’re correct about the rest, there’s a clear pattern here. Caregivers tend, traditionally, to be women; and the people in their care tend to be unable to fight back. UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, it’s more common for women to initiate violence. When you have circumstances in which partners are equally capable, women don’t tend to initiate violence as often as men: thus you see wars fought almost entirely men against men, very rarely women against women, and bar fights are much more often men against men, and so on. When there’s domestic violence, sometimes–often, it appears, and this is where you’ve shown me something I didn’t realize–it’s true that women fight back, and even initiate the violence. But when there’s domestic **abuse** , equivalent to children’s bullying in the power differential, when it’s one partner hurting and controlling the other and the other only rarely responding to the violence in-kind, it’s overwhelmingly men who are the abusers. > [@](#): > > We have academic stats, and they overwhelmingly don’t show a large disparity between men and women. BEcause they ask both sexes the same questions, whether they have been victims of specific violent acts, and whether they have committed specific violent acts. The disparity comes from shelters that advertise to women and refuse to accept men, and from people who only ask women if they were victims, and suchlike. This is bullshit, and I’ve already explained why; repeating the bullshit claim is silly. > [@](#): > > Look these up: > Graham-Kevan N. Power and control in relationship aggression. In Hamel J and Nicholls TL (eds.): Family Interventions in Domestic Violence. New York: Springer Publishing Co., 2007. > Straus MA. Dominance and symmetry in partner violence by male and female university students in 32 nations. Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 30, 2008, pp. 252–275. > > Specifically look at “controlling” behaviours, and show them to be gender neutral. I don’t need to, because there’s nothing specific in these studies that contradicts anything I’ve said. If you disagree, you can look them up yourself; unfortunately for you, you’re not my teacher who can assign me homework. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/651 "2013-03-29T09:46:07Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That last one is bullshit, of course, as you admit later in your post: according to your own stats: > > But for the rest, yeah, stipulating you’re correct about the rest, there’s a clear pattern here. > > Caregivers tend, traditionally, to be women; and the people in their care tend to be unable to fight back. UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, it’s more common for women to initiate violence. > > When you have circumstances in which partners are equally capable, women don’t tend to initiate violence as often as men: thus you see wars fought almost entirely men against men, very rarely women against women, and bar fights are much more often men against men, and so on. > > When there’s domestic violence, sometimes–often, it appears, and this is where you’ve shown me something I didn’t realize–it’s true that women fight back, and even initiate the violence. > > But when there’s domestic **abuse** , equivalent to children’s bullying in the power differential, when it’s one partner hurting and controlling the other and the other only rarely responding to the violence in-kind, it’s overwhelmingly men who are the abusers. Except you’ve een shown evidence that this isn’t true. In most violent relationships, the violence is reciprocal and women are more likely than men to commit the first violent act. In relationships where only one partner is guilty of “severe” violence, and the other of minimal or no violence, women are twice as likely as men to be the violent partner. When it comes to “controlling” behaviours, women are just as likely as men to use them, and abusive women just as likely as abusive men. The only way to reach your conclusion is to define violence by women as fundamentally not abusive, even when they exhibit controlling patterns or psychological abuse, use severe physical violence and are the only violent party. I know this is a position that radical feminists sometimes take, that men are somehow more powerful in society and therefore incapable of being victims of abuse, but if you ignore sex and just look at individuals being abused, controlled and beaten, the fact is that most of the perpetrators are women and most of the victims are men, and that both majorities are relatively small. > [@](#): > > This is bullshit, and I’ve already explained why; repeating the bullshit claim is silly. > I don’t need to, because there’s nothing specific in these studies that contradicts anything I’ve said. If you disagree, you can look them up yourself; unfortunately for you, you’re not my teacher who can assign me homework. You see, I already know this information. I was pointing you to it so you could look at it and hopefully come round to see the truth. All you’ve done in this thread is dig your heels in over every little concession on the violence of women, and insist on ignoring the facts when they upset you. Also quoting a book by someone who isn’t an expert in the field and doesn’t provide evidence for his claims. I, on the other hand, have provided evidence. Ignore it if you prefer to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2013, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/652 "2013-03-29T12:10:26Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Also quoting a book by someone who isn’t an expert in the field and doesn’t provide evidence for his claims. I, on the other hand, have provided evidence. Ignore it if you prefer to do so. This is hilarious–I shouldn’t pay attention to Pinker because he’s not an expert (and because I only quoted two paragraphs of his 800-page book, you assume he didn’t provide evidence for the claims in those two paragraphs–nice!), but I should pay attention to you? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’re an expert in the field. [Here’s a dueling cite for you:](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663360/) > [@](#): > > Intimate partner violence (IPV), defined as physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional abuse, or threat of abuse, by a current or former spouse or partner is a critical public health concern (Saltzman, Fanslow, McMahon, & Shelly, 2002). Nearly one-quarter of U.S. women and 7.6% of men report having been raped and/or physically assaulted at some point in their lifetime by a current or past spouse, cohabitating partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, or date (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). > > To date, most studies on IPV have focused on the victimization of women and girls rather than their male counterparts. This is due to the fact that a greater proportion of women report experiencing IPV; women are victimized at about five times the rate of men (Rennison & Welchans, 2000). Similarly, females accounted for 84.3% of spouse abuse victims and 85.9% of victims of violence between boy/girlfriends between 1998 and 2002 (Durose et al., 2005). Male-perpetrated IPV has also been shown to be more injurious for women and result in more severe short and long term sequalae (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). Consequently, women are also more likely to be killed as a result of IPV. In 2004, 32.7% of female homicide victims were killed by an intimate partner, whereas, only 3.1% of male homicides were committed by female intimate partners (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006). How do you explain this disparity? ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2013, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/653 "2013-03-30T10:31:58Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > This is hilarious–I shouldn’t pay attention to Pinker because he’s not an expert (and because I only quoted two paragraphs of his 800-page book, you assume he didn’t provide evidence for the claims in those two paragraphs–nice!), but I should pay attention to you? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you’re an expert in the field. I’m not, but you were perpetrating the logical fallacy known as an appeal to authority, in which case it is traditional to choose an actual authority. And I’m not buying a book to look for evidence of your position in it, so I can only assess it by what’s put in front of me. > [@](#): > > [Here’s a dueling cite for you:](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2663360/) > > How do you explain this disparity? Well, most of that is literally correct. Domestic homicides are a much larger proportion of women murdered, but the implication in that quote is that women are ten times as likely to be murdered by their spouses, when the real number is about 1.5 times as likely to be murdered by their spouses (or other domestic partners). The difference is accounted for by the far larger number of men murdered by people other than intimate partners. I can only presume it was presented in that way specifically to be misleading. So the numbers are technically accurate, but still a lie. Which makes me think the whole thing monumentally suspect, and specifically motivated by trying to paint women as victims. I also looked up the 2005 study by Durose, and it seems to have looked at reports to the authorities. No-one argues that woman are less likely to report abuse to the authorities, but that’s not because they’re more likely to be abused, but bbecause they’re more likely to report their abuse. The Tjaden and Thoennes study actually found men to be nearly 40% of DV victims (835,000 vs 1.3m per year), but it’s not exactly meant to look into that. The first paragraph (the whole thing is freely available on the internet) mentions violence against women, the exact phrase, four times. Doesn’t mention men at all, even as perpetrators. It is specifically designed to look at violence against women. Also, it gets it’s actual figures from the NVAW Survey, which introduces more subjectivity into responses than the more scholarly uses of the Conflict Tactics Scale. In addition, those running the NVAW Survey originally intended not to even include men, and only after heavy criticism did they change their minds. In fact, to quote the developer of the Conflict Tactics Scale, and one of the first people to conduct sociological research on IPV: > [@](#): > > ``` > "Well, I'm the developer of the Conflict Tactics Scales. This instrument lists things that might happen when there's a conflict or when people are just plain feeling out of sorts, or lousy, or angry for whatever reason. The instrument asks, 'Did these things happen?' > > "It includes various acts that the partner can do, and that the respondent – the person being interviewed – might do. They refused to ask the questions about what the respondent did. When they were interviewing women respondents, they insisted on asking only questions about what the partner did. > > "That same procedure was carried over into the National Institute of Justice National Violence Against Women study. They asked what they call a 'feminist version' of the Conflict Tactics Scale, that asks only about victimization and leaves out the questions about perpetration. And of course if you do that, you will have to find that only men are violent. > > "It was only after much pressure from people like myself that they then added a second sample, of men, to find this out. As a result of this, even though this study is biased in a number of ways, some of them unintentional, some of them intentional, they found that 40% of the past year assaults were perpetrated by women. This is a national sample of 16,000, so it's huge and very dependable." > > ``` So they were specifically asking a warped version of the survey, with the intention of providing a “feminist” outcome, and even then found nearly 40% of victims to be male. The Rennison & Welchanes study, incidentally, also uses the NVAW data, so is not a seperate study from the Tjaden & Thoennes study. It’s just a different article written about exactly the same intentionally biassed data, and I’ll say again that despite being intentionally biassed in a feminist direction it still found men to be nearly 40% of victims. So in short, the studies cited are one looking at reports to the authorities (and as men as disproportionately to be arrested themselves when calling the police and are shamed from youth aout the prospect of being beaten by a girl, that’s obviously biased in favour of higher female rates of victimisation) and some which all use a survey intentionally skewed in favour of low rates of male victimisation. Then the murder figures are given in a way that implies women are ten times as likely to be murdered by their partners, but actually mean that men are much more likely to be murdered by people other than their partners, and women only about 1.5 times as likely to be murdered by their partners. Based on all that I explain the discrepancy by whatever individual put together that website intentionally presenting biased information and presenting information in an intentionally misleading way as part of a feminist agenda for which you have fallen hook, line, sinker and copy of the Angling Times. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2013, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716/654 "2013-03-30T10:52:32Z")
Also, [here’s a link](http://wordpress.clarku.edu/dhines/files/2012/01/Douglas-Hines-2011-helpseeking-experiences-of-male-victims.pdf)(pdf) to some stories from men seeking assistance as victims. > [@](#): > > ``` > Of the 132 men who sought help from a DVagency, 44.1% (n=86) said that this resource was not at all helpful; further, 95.3% of those men (n=81) said that they were given the impression that the agency was biased against men. > > Some of the men were accused of being the batterer in the relationship: This happened to men seeking help from DVagencies (40.2%), DV hotlines (32.2%) and online resources (18.9%). Over 25% of those using an online resource reported that they were given a phone number for help which turned out to be the number for a batterer’s program. > > ``` > > The results from the open-ended questions showed that 16.4% of the men who contacted a hotline reported that the staff made fun them, as did 15.2% of the men who contacted local DV agencies. > > Table 4 Follow-up questions about experiences with police (n=129 > who called the police) > Item Partner Helpseeker > Police arrested 26.5 33.3 > Of those arrested: n=35 n=43 > Placed in jail 81.8 88.4 > Charges dropped 50.0 41.5 Pretty awful. Men seeking help, more likely to be arrested than their abusers, and less likely to have charges dropped thereafter. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/guys-and-creepiness/651716.md?page=32)