# More men killed by someone close than women? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 26, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133 "2018-11-26T22:45:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2018, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/1 "2018-11-26T22:45:42Z")
Is [this BBC article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46292919) grossly misrepresenting the truth? OR (more likely) am I failing at basic maths? It says > [@](#): > > Women are much more likely to be killed by someone close to them But if (all figures from the article) 80% of killings are of men and 36% of those are by someone close then 28.8% (0.8 \* 0.36) of deaths are due to someone close. And if 20% of killings are of women and 64% of those are by someone close then 12.8% (0.2 \* 0.64) of deaths are due to someone close. Which means that it is men who are actually more likely to be killed by someone close. Or is my maths wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2018, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/2 "2018-11-26T22:51:12Z")
Women _who are killed_ are more likely to be be killed by someone close to them then men _that are killed_. You don’t need the 80%/20% part. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2018, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/3 "2018-11-26T22:59:46Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Women _who are killed_ are more likely to be be killed by someone close to them then men _that are killed_. You don’t need the 80%/20% part. But that’s the thing: is it actually correct? If my maths is correct then because vastly more men are killed then more men than women in absolute numbers are killed by someone close. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2018, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/4 "2018-11-26T23:23:08Z")
The point is that statistically women are in more danger from people close to them than they are from strangers; men are in more danger from strangers than they are from people close to them. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/5 "2018-11-27T00:04:29Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > The point is that statistically women are in more danger from people close to them than they are from strangers; men are in more danger from strangers than they are from people close to them. The point is that the headline represents the truth in a way that is subtly but effectively misleading. Among women I know, it is common for them to believe that women are more likely to be killed, that it is more dangerous being a women, that members of their family are more likely to kill them than to kill other male members of their family. And conversely, that it is safer to be a man, that men are in less danger, and that when death or violence happens to men, they have provoked it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimera757](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kimera757/32/3765_2.png) [@Kimera757](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimera757)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/6 "2018-11-27T00:16:53Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Women _who are killed_ are more likely to be be killed by someone close to them then men _that are killed_. Exactly. Women are at a far higher risk of being killed in a domestic violence incident, or an honor abuse incident, than a man would be. The victims are generally girlfriends, wives, in-laws, or relatives of the perpetrators, who generally fall into the “close” category. Every once in a while, there’s a gang war, which are generally perpetrated by male gangsters, against male gangsters (female gangsters being very rare), and if any women are killed, it’s frequently a “civilian” who happened to be in the area where a drive-by took place, or they were a witness, or they happened to be home when someone came to kill their boyfriend. (Of course, male “civilians” are at equal risk.) The male gangsters might be “acquaintances” of the male gangster victim but they might only know the victim by face and street name. I figure if they were “close” it was probably an intra-gang killing. ---
**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:** [November 27, 2018, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/7 "2018-11-27T04:05:19Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Among women I know, it is common for them to believe that women are more likely to be killed …really? Even when war is taken into account? I’m curious if you ask that question how many folks, male or female, have that belief. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/8 "2018-11-27T05:32:05Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > But that’s the thing: is it actually correct? If my maths is correct then because vastly more men are killed then more men than women in absolute numbers are killed by someone close. What’s wrong is the assumption that the two axis are independent and therefore their combination is obtained by multiplying both probabilities: the axis are not independent. “Most pears are green” and “most fruits are below 4cm in size at the largest axis” does not lead to “since pears are fruits, most pears are green and less than 4cm in size at the largest axis”. ---
**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:** [November 27, 2018, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/9 "2018-11-27T05:32:52Z")
To answer OP, yes, the BBC are grossly misrepresenting the truth. The conflation of “women” and “female murder victims” is no more outrageous than the very existence of an article focusing on murders of women, the small minority of victims. What’s next, “The White people killed on one day around the world”? With the possible exception of intimate partner violence, where British figures have men as about 40% of murder victims, men and boys are more likely to be killed in every situation, from murder by the police to murder in the workplace to murder of children under five. ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/10 "2018-11-27T08:21:46Z")
The data is poorly presented but the numbers are that **50,000** of 87,000 women are murdered by relatives or partners. Similarly,\*\* 28,125\*\* of 348,000 men murder victims are murdered by relatives or partners. Thus the 64/36% split in “Killings by partner or family member” in the second chart. So to answer the OP, no and yes, but you aren’t on your own there. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/11 "2018-11-27T08:27:54Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > To answer OP, yes, the BBC are grossly misrepresenting the truth. The article is _about_ the fact that women are disproportionately higher percentage of victims in just one category of killing. How is that misrepresenting anything? That disparity _is_ the story. > [@](#): > > With the possible exception of intimate partner violence Why “possible” exception? You acknowledge the numbers yourself. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/12 "2018-11-27T08:39:58Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > To answer OP, yes, the BBC are grossly misrepresenting the truth. I don’t see that as a gross misrepresentation, it is more that it is clumsy and imprecise. It is looking at the issue from a particular point of view. The article is part of a series that relates specifically to women’s issues and particularly in this case their disproportionate murder by partners. Right there in the article there is a big % chart that shows gender breakdown for overall homicides and it states. > [@](#): > > Male homicide rates still higher > The data collected by UNODC highlights that “men are around four times more likely than women to lose their lives as a result of intentional homicide”. > > The UN indicates that men accounted for eight out of 10 homicide victims worldwide. > > However, the same report suggests that more than eight out of 10 victims of homicides committed by intimate partners are female. > > “Intimate partner violence continues to take a disproportionately heavy toll on women,” the report states. So yes, in the modern world in general it is still a far more dangerous to be man than a woman but there are some limited circumstances where the reverse is true. The focus of this article is to look at such circumstances. Personally I’m not sure why homicides by partners or people you know are worthy of more interest than those carried out by strangers but there you are, that’s the area of investigation that the article has chosen. One criticism I would have is that it gives three different figures for slightly different definitions. in one case it is 58% of all women killed are by family members or partners. In another it is 8 out of 10 of all murders committed by intimate partners are female. In another it is 64% of killings by a family member are female victims. Some consistency and clarity is needed. As for absolute numbers I can’t locate the raw data. I’m thinking that what they trying to get across is something like the following. imagine 100 homicides, in total 80% male 20% female so 80/20 in actual numbers. Of those 100 homicides, 10 were by intimate partner and the gender proportions are reversed: 20% male and 80% female so 2/8 Now their charts don’t make this clear and by using percentages as their scale in many cases you lose a grasp of absolute numbers involved. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/13 "2018-11-27T08:46:08Z")
I see no error in the way the BBC presents the story. You could present the data either way, but I think they make it clear that they are discussing the relative probability of who killed someone _given that they have been murdered_. > [@Nava](#): > > What’s wrong is the assumption that the two axis are independent and therefore their combination is obtained by multiplying both probabilities: the axis are not independent. It’s not a question of independence, it’s conditional probability, i.e. the probability of who killed you _conditioned on_ the fact that you were murdered. The classic fallacy of failure to condition probabilities for known data was illustrated in the OJ Simpson murder trial, as it happens relating to an almost identical issue. I forget the exact numbers involved but it went like this: Defence attorney: “The probability that a husband will kill his wife is only 1 in 10,000, so it is 99.99% probable that my client is innocent!” But he ignored the known data. The relevant probability for O.J.Simpson was the likelihood that a husband has killed his wife _given that we know she was murdered by someone_. Which is more like 50%. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/14 "2018-11-27T09:14:10Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > …But if (all figures from the article) 80% of killings are of men and 36% of those are by someone close then 28.8% (0.8 \* 0.36) of deaths are due to someone close. And if 20% of killings are of women and 64% of those are by someone close then 12.8% (0.2 \* 0.64) of deaths are due to someone close. Which means that it is men who are actually more likely to be killed by someone close. > > Or is my maths wrong? Yes, your maths is wrong. The article (and the raw data in the pdf) does not say that 36% of all murdered men were killed by someone close, that figure (not stated explicitly) would be lower. It says that: of all murders, 20% of victims were women; of all people murdered by someone close, 64% of victims were women (and 36% men). from the UN pdf: > [@](#): > > Only one out of every five homicides at global level is perpetrated by an intimate partner or family member, yet women and girls make up the vast majority of those deaths. Victim/perpetrator disaggregations reveal a large disparity in the shares attributable to male and female victims of homicides committed by intimate > partners or family members: 36 per cent male versus 64 per cent female victims. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/15 "2018-11-27T09:33:27Z")
The inferred proportions of all murders would be: 73% stranger kills man 7% stranger kills woman 7% partner or family member kills man 13% partner or family member kills woman ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/16 "2018-11-27T09:42:08Z")
Just how are they describing “homocides”? I find the 1/5 killed by person known number quoted to be low. Are they adding in deaths due to war as homocides or deaths due to political violence? The former is not homocide and the latter may or may not be. The articles reasoning is already doubtful, they have called a judicial execution (for the killing of her husband!) a homocide. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 10:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/17 "2018-11-27T10:06:17Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > The articles reasoning is already doubtful, they have called a judicial execution (for the killing of her husband!) a homocide. No, they didn’t. If you’re going to be critical of the accuracy of an article, then you’d better do a better job of being accurate yourself. First of all, this reported incident has nothing to do with the cited statistics from the U.N. study. And the BBC said: > [@](#): > > We monitored press coverage of women killed by another person on 1 October 2018 around the world. The article did not claim that this judicial execution (in Iran) was a homicide. It did say: > [@](#): > > Amnesty International says her husband was abusive and had refused to grant her a divorce, and that her complaints were ignored by police. > > She was arrested for the killing of her husband at the age of 17. > > Her supporters, including Amnesty, say she was tortured to confess to the killing of her husband, beaten by police and did not receive a fair trial. It seems to me quite appropriate to report this incident in the context of an article about the appalling treatment of women around the world. And although it would not be reported by Iran in homicide statistics, if Amnesty’s claims are true, arguably it _is_ a homicide by any civilized ethical standard. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/18 "2018-11-27T10:40:01Z")
Ok. Do these civilised statistics also record imprisonments as kidnappings and fines as thefts? ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/19 "2018-11-27T11:10:56Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Ok. Do these civilised statistics also record imprisonments as kidnappings and fines as thefts? To supplement the UN report, the BBC picked a recent day at random and reported on 47 “women killed… for probable gender-related reasons” around the world that day. These incidents were not inputs to the UN statistics, or _any_ statistics, nor did the BBC claim they were all homicides, although most of them obviously were; the date is much too recent for trials and convictions to have taken place. One of these was a woman who was executed in Iran after possible torture for killing an abusive husband at age 17 after police failed to act to stop him abusing her. Would you care to explain why you think these anecdotal BBC reports undermine the _entirely separate_ U.N. statistics? Since the U.N. report relies on consolidating statistics provided by each nation, and this incident would _not_ have been reported as a homicide by Iran, it seems to me that it’s evidence that there may be a _greater_ problem with homicidal violence toward women than the U.N. statistics imply. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133/20 "2018-11-27T16:06:20Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > I see no error in the way the BBC presents the story. You could present the data either way, but I think they make it clear that they are discussing the relative probability of who killed someone _given that they have been murdered_. Yes, but if you work the numbers as I did, it appears that more men in absolute numbers are murdered by someone close than women. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/more-men-killed-by-someone-close-than-women/825133.md?page=2)