I hit—well, I thought it was “playfully” slap. I certainly never meant to hurt him, but I did it pretty indiscriminately. Again, never suspecting that I was hurting him. I mean, he’s got like 100 lbs and a 1 foot on me. And I was just playing around right?
Well, he never retaliated. Instead he took the totally bizarre and unorthadox approach of actually talking to me. He told me it hurt him and he didn’t like it…so I stopped.
Maybe women who react that way, whether provoked or not, in a fight or horsing around, don’t realize they are actually causing damage. After all, it’s commonly accepted that women can’t hurt men, right? Maybe instead of pounding on them in response, their SOs should try talking to them or getting counseling…
I’d like to see the original study. (It wasn’t linked in the OP, and I didn’t see a link in the article either.)
The one thing that I’m seeing in the article is a conflation between sustained physical abuse (which often exists in conjunction with sustained mental and emotional abuse) and a one time punch, kick, or slap. Which (IMHO) are two separate situations. I am not saying that either one of them is “ok” or acceptable or ever appropriate. Neither is. Both situations are bad. But I do think that lumping both together lends to the possibility of skewed results and interpretations.
FTR, when I did work with SADV organizations, it was a given that abusers come in both genders and abuse survivors come in both genders as well.
is completely contrary to the experience I had in the organizations that I belonged to and knew about.
It’s just a matter of grainsize, isn’t it?
Break domestic violence down into two kinds:
Kind 1: a seriously disturbed person flies into rages at the slightest provocation and is unable or unwilling to control the degree of violence with which the rage manifests. Death and serious injury may result. It’s pretty much an established fact that men do this more often than women.
Kind 2: two emotionally susceptible people get into an argument and start swinging hits at each other. One or the other eventually gets a bruise or a cut, and the neighbors call the police (though it would probably be better for everyone to let the two of them fight it out, neighbors can’t always tell if the fight is a Kind 1 or a Kind 2, and are obliged to report it). I feel absolutely secure in saying that the first punch is equally likely to be thrown by either gender… quite possibly more often by women, because the minute a woman gets a mark on her pure innocent creamy little hide, she knows she can pin the blame on the man.
While it would be obvious which Kind of domestic violence was going on to anyone who was constantly watching the household, it’s just too hard for outsiders to guess which is going on. So, the soundbit for PR is about Kind 1, the dangerous one.
Is this really an established fact?
It’s a suspicion, and reporting tends to support it. But there’s a competing suspicion that battered men underreport even more than battered women.
And due to physical size and strength differences between men and women - a someone battered by an abusive woman may end up with less physical damage than someone battered by an abusive man…
I’m not willing to say at all that men do that more often than women.
I have to agree with Pepperlandgirl on this one… why does anybody start tolerating this sort of behavior in the first place?
Had a friend once whose husband beat her for several years. She said she had reached a point where she believed she deserved it.
I asked her why she allowed the second incident to happen at all… she didn’t know.
Knew several guys at school whose girlfriends would haul off and whack them whenever they were irritated. Asked them if the sex could possibly be so good as to justify all the pounding. They didn’t seem to understand the question… acted as if it was something completely beyond their control.
I can’t imagine letting anyone beat on me. If a girlfriend hit me, she’d get a lengthy and very angry lecture the first time, and she’d be looking for a new boyfriend the second time.
So… what the heck is wrong with all these people who allow themselves to be used as punching bags?
Note I said “kickboxing class”, as in a place to study kickboxing where students are paired with different individuals to give both the opportunity to learn how to fight against different sized opponents. Women need to spar against men because, well, they are there to learn how to defend themselves in case of possible attack/rape from men. She learned that if she fakes a right punch to the stomach while slipping and hooking left can make an opponent drop their right guard, thus opening them up to a knockout punch to the chin. I learned to keep my damn guard up! :smack:
And I disagree with Pepperlandgirl on this. I don’t believe that women do violence because they don’t think they can hurt the other person. Why would you do it in the first place if you knew it wouldn’t do anything? No, you lashed out because you wanted to cause pain. You wanted him to feel your slap; you wanted to punish him with pain - possibly the same way your parents punished you as a child. And then after you have tried to hurt your partner, you expect them to tell you calmly, “Ow, that hurt.” You mean if you had known beforehand that your slap was going to hurt you wouldn’t have done it? :rolleyes: OK, altogether now, slaps don’t feel good, m’kay? Nobody likes to be slapped.
Again, this puts all of the blame on men. Men should be the ones to handle and control the violence, men should be the ones to get counseling, men should always be more rational than women? Boy, that’s a giant leap back for women’s rights.
My daughter will be taught that if she is violent, she should expect violence in return, possibly more than she bargained for.
-Tcat
Just wanted to point out, as someone who has BTDT, its not even the actual physical stuff that is the worst, it’s the fear.
Somehow I don’t see too many 6 foot males suffering from PTSD as a result of a slap from their partner, but there are plenty of women who live with it day in, day out, even after the relationship has ended.
That is not to say any form of violence towards another person is justified, but domestic violence is very much a matter of control through fear and intimidation, physical or otherwise.
It ain’t black and white. I was really serious about karate for 5 years - and it’s been 20 years since I last actively pursued the art. Was in a bar (admittedly somewhat alcohol impaired) not long ago and a buddy did a physical move. I realized that I had a choke hold on his wind pipe right before it would have done serious serious damage. It was a pure reaction. Intellect caught up right before doing the pinch and pull that would have caused bleeded and choking. Okay, maybe the lesson is don’t drink.
However, I’ve had girlfriends and my wife slap me. I feel fortunate that I was able to control my reaction before actually physically touching them. But there were a couple of occaisions without alcohol or drugs involved that required some very serious control on my part.
My point being that maybe I am a fucked up individual. But christ on a pogo stick, don’t ever instigate violence unless you mean to put someone down. I don’t care who you are or what your gender is. There is a group of people in the world that will react in ways that saying sorry won’t help. And I mean react. Intellect is outside of it.
Please note: this in no way condones violence against women. The vast majority of women who suffer domestic violence probably were never ever physically threatening to their aggressors. (Not waffling, I don’t know the stats but more than willing to assume this is the case) But please don’t deliberately physically escalate a situation that doesn’t have to be escalated. That’s all I want to say.
My mother was a violent woman, who often struck out at her husband (my father) and her children (including me) when she was angry at “something”. She was also a demonstrably loving woman who craved physical contact, hugs, kisses etc, especially when she was apologetic. My father, who wasn’t home so much, was kind but distant, and never used physical violence no matter how angry he might be. His worst rebuke was always verbal.
That’s my experience of domestic violence. I can read reports of what happened to others, but in the end my own experiences shape what I believe.
But the thing is…I didn’t know I was hurting him! I’m not a strong person, I don’t have much muscle, I’ve never been trained…when I did it, it was just a “GRR ARGH!” moment that I didn’t even think about and then afterwards I figured it just made me feel better to lash out, and it’s not like he was sporting bruises, right?
People do hurtful things to each other all the time without realizing it. My mother is the Queen of this. She also reacts with physical contact when provoked in one way or the other. When I tell her that it bothers me when she says or does something, she stops…sometimes.
Logically everybody knows actions causes certain reactions, including pain. But for some reason, people don’t always make the connection without being told.
If that made any sense at all…
First, I apologize, my post dripped a bit too heavy with sarcasm. Friends? 
Second, it makes sense, but you are backing what Neurotik and I are saying…You had a “GRRR AARGH” moment and smacked him. What if he did the EXACT SAME THING? If you are saying he is 100lbs bigger than you, then his lashing out without realizing it would probably have done a lot more damage. Expecting men to take this into consideration in the heat of the moment is not a bet I’d like to take.
As astro points out, it can lay the groundwork for validation. If A, then B. Not a hard concept.
The arguments using “men are bigger than women” (which is a gross generalization, my sister outweighs her husband by a good 50lbs) don’t hold up to scrutiny. Would it be better if men were only allowed to backhand so the damage between the two sexes was equalized? Sorta sounds like “Of Mice and Men” and the wearing of the one glove to keep his beatin’ hand soft…
-Tcat
Well Tomcat it seems as though there are a couple different issues going on in this thread.
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My stance is that some women may not realize that they have the strength to actually hurt men. Furthermore, they know that it’s “never ok” for a man to hit back, so they feel safe. I think in some of these instances, if couple actually talk about it or go to counseling, the problem can be worked out without the man losing his temper and lashing out.
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Some men do lash out after provocation and are labeled as abusers…which is not fair, and I think reflects a double standard, mentioned in point 1. We’re all taught to believe that men are stronger than women, so nobody ever takes the woman’s role in the altercation into consideration.
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However, the study is (to what I’m reading here) trying to say that this is the case most of the time. Women drive men to hitting back—as some pointed out however, a lot more men kill women then the other way around.
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Some men and some women are sick, insane monsters who hurt their spouses and their children because they’re stronger and they can.
Now, if my husband were to ever hit me, I’d be more shocked than anything He is not a violent person at all. Ok, I’d be hurt too…he could deal me some real damage. Certainly more than I could ever do to him. But he knows he’ bigger than me, he knows he’s stronger than me, and he should always be aware of this. Even iin the heat of anger.
I agree with this. I don’t think it’s ok for a man to hit back, and I think he should just leave the scene if possible, or find a different way of handling it than hitting back. A man can generally do more damage. That said, the woman shouldn’t be slapping in the first place - not necessarily because it’s going to cause serious damage, but it’s just plain rude. But that doesn’t make it ok to beat the woman.
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Maybe so, but every man should be aware of this double standard. And they shouldn’t be hitting back unless they are at risk for serious injury or their life is being threatened. Of course, that goes for everyone. It often just makes the situation worse.
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True, men do kill women more often. Men tend to be more aggressive and stronger. And that’s not good. No one is saying the man is justified in killing or beating the woman as retaliation. What I’m saying is that it makes sense. If I went and slapped a large man and he beat me everyone would just tell me that I shouldn’t have started it. That doesn’t mean the larger man is not culpable and wrong for his response. But the whole situation wouldn’t have occurred if I hadn’t started it. That’s not to say that every time someone gets beat up by a large man it was the smaller man who started it. It just lowers the odds of getting beaten severely by not initiating the violence.
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Very true. He should be. But that’s not always the case, and you should do your part by not physically assaulting him in the first place. Not that you do, just hypothetically. Just because someone is bigger than you doesn’t give you carte blanche to go around hitting them and expecting not to get hit back. Indeed, I was taught from an early age that if I went around hitting people sooner or later I was going to get the crap beat out of me. For some reason, some women forget this around puberty. Again, it’s not ok for the man to beat the woman in retaliation.
Pepper: Basically what you are saying is that we(men) are stronger and should know better then, huh? What if I told the woman that I hit that I didn’t realize I was so strong? I just got mad and lost it. Would that be enough justification for me as you claim it is for some women? No, I don’t think it would. I would shunned as a wifebeater.
Bottom line: If a woman ever hit me I probably wouldn’t hit her back. I would just call the police and file assault charges against her. If I am attacked then I will retaliate.
The point is that violence in the home is destructive, and if we want to remove violence from our homes, we need to address the fact the women can be violent, that women can be responsible for bringing violence into the home or merely that some women think violence is an acceptable way to deal with things.
So men are able to do more damage to women. So what? Women are more likely, far more likely, to murder their children than men. That is no reason to ignore men who are violent with their children.
Not all domestic violence leads to serious injury and death. A lot of it just leads to misery and messed up kids. This is why it has to be stopped where it starts.
Well, a lot of times emotional and verbal abuse come before physical abuse. Once you’ve been beaten down mentally, your judgement isn’t exactly rooted in the real world.