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Hi, everybody. This is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio. I hope you're doing well.
This is the largely unguessed and, in general, actively hidden truth about domestic violence.
If you're a man, I really strongly suggest that you watch this.
So let's start with definitions. What is domestic violence? Well, in most of the studies that
are going to be cited and, as always, the references are below in the description bar.
Minor violence is when you throw something at someone, you push, you grab, you shove
or you slap an intimate partner. Severe violence is kicked, bit, punched, hit or tried to hit
with object, beat up or choked, threatened with a knife or a gun, or when you're using
a knife or a gun.
So this is the rate per 1,000 couples. This is a graph of marital violence and the first
on the left is husband to wife and the second on the right is wife to husband. So rates
of overall violence, husband to wife per 1,000 couples, 121 in 1975; 113 in 1985; severe
violence is 38 versus 30. So this is husband to wife, husband attacking wife.
Wife attacking husband, let's see what we get. Overall violence in 1975, 116; in 1985;
achieved parity with male and female violence from 1975 at 121 per 1,000 couples; severe
violence 61 and 58 for '75 and '85, respectively. As you can see, overall violence is similar
but severe violence is more common, significantly more common, almost twice as common from wife
to husband, male victims of severe violence on the part of the spouse.
Trends in minor and severe assaults by husbands and wives. So this is the rate per 1,000 couples
and this is 1975, 1985, and 1992. As you can see, minor assaults by husbands declined and
then rise, by wives are lower and then rise to be actually higher than husbands. Severe
assaults always remain higher for wives than for husbands. In other words, husbands are
the victims far more often. They remain close to 50 to 40 and stay high whereas severe assaults
from husbands declined by almost half from just below 40 to 20 from 1975 to 1992. These
are very, very important statistics to really understand.
So in 1978, Suzanne Steinmetz identified Battered Husband Syndrome. I'm sure you've heard in
the general women in peril movie of the week Battered Wife Syndrome. What about Battered
Husband Syndrome, have you ever heard of that? Well, it's over 30 years ago that it was first
defined and she suggested that husband beating was a similar incidence to wife beating but,
of course, have you ever heard of that? Of course not.
A firestorm of protest comes up from the left and from feminist groups and so on, death
threats, bomb threats, violent intimidation and, of course, a lot of researchers shy away.
Death threats and bomb threats and reporting people to the police and having bomb-sniffing
dogs in your office, not everybody's idea of a tasty way to while away your brain rot
of academia. So unfortunately, this remains somewhat underreported, I guess, we could
say.
So changes in severe spousal beatings, again, from 1975 to 1992, where the wife is the victim,
it declines significantly from 3% to under 1%. And this is the result, I would argue,
of a significant exposure and visibility of spousal abuse on the part of the husband,
the husband beating the wife.
What happens to the husband who is the victim of severe spousal beatings? Well, because
this stuff remains underreported, it remains tragically high, remaining above 4%. It started
off higher than the men's and as the men's declined as a result of social pressure and
enlightenment, the wife spousal abuse on the husband remains high and does not decline
because this stuff remains vastly underreported and for reasons we'll get into in a few minutes.
So this is a meta-analysis, which is an analysis of a wide variety of published studies and
reports. These are all peer-reviewed and very professional and so on, sex differences in
aggression, which is who is initiating. So female violence -- and this is not a zero-based
scale. I just zoomed in a little here to show the difference -- female violence, 34,053
incidents; male violence, 30,434, right? So that, of course, is less. It's more than 10%
less male-initiated violence versus female-initiated violence in a meta-analysis of a wide variety
of studies.
Injuries, who gets injured more, this I think it's probably close to what you know but it's
certainly not the entire story, as we'll talk about in a minute or two. So in this meta-analysis,
there were over 7,000 male injuries of domestic violence and female injuries were about 7%
or 8% higher at 7,531.
Men, I think, are just sort of trying to say, "Yes, we recognize and respect the tragedy
on the right. Can we, to some degree, recognize and respect the tragedy on the left?" Well,
hopefully we can.
Medical treatment received as a result of partner abuse: males, almost 5,000; females,
63,000 and changed. So quite a bit higher on the female side but let's look into some
of the reasons why.
So why do we have such an overwhelming impression that it is husbands beating wife? Well, police
reports say that women are reported victims of domestic violence 75% to 90% of the time.
In the emergency room of the patients seen, women receive treatment for the effects of
domestic violence for 75% to 90% of the time. In a recent study in 1999, found similar rates
of victimization for men and women.
So social science survey findings, gender parity in perpetration and victimization of
partner assaults, men and women are attacking each other about equally. "Yay! Egalitarianism!"
So what could be going on here? Well, the reality is that men are reluctant to report
victimization if you're beaten up by your wife. Most men would never think of calling
the cops for a variety of reasons: social stigma, shame, a feeling that you're not going
to be believed and, of course, the most important aspect is if that you and your wife are involved
in a kick and bite slugfest and you call the cops, as the man, the woman will say, most
likely, that you started it and then you will be immediately hauled off to jail. So men
do not usually feel that they have access to police protection in these kinds of situations.
Police and courts have tended to disbelieve male victims and men, in general, "Suck it
up. We're taught to endure pain and not complain," which is probably one reason why men are reluctant
to report physical discomfort or pain or injury, the old stereotype of nagging your husband
to go to the doctor.
Even violent men, statistically, are less likely to assault their partners because there's
this age-old don't-hit-a-girl chivalry norm and this was established with a fair degree
of certainty in 2006.
So we're going to now go to an even bigger meta-analysis representative sample surveys
and these include the US '75, '85, '93, 2000, '02, '07, '08, 2010, and 2011, so we're getting
more recent data. Canada '86 through '99, Great Britain '96 to '04, New Zealand '01,
Australia '96. There was a study in '98 of domestic violence in the military and evaluated
over 3,000 subjects and found that more men than women were victims of physical abuse
and that is in the military. Of course, where you would imagine not the most peaceful men
are but more men than women are the victims of physical abuse.
Also in dating, now, dating sounds kind of innocuous but basically it means relationships
prior to engagement. One hundred twenty-three dating studies have all been published and
the results of those studies reveal equal or greater victimization of men in these pre-engagement
relationships.
Dr. Murray Straus, I think quite a hero of this kind of information, a man who's been
on this show, he reports data from worldwide study of dating violence. Data was collected
from students in 68 universities in 32 countries consisted of over 13,600 subjects. Overall,
31.2% of subjects assaulted their dating partner in the past year. This is universities. This
is not ghettos and so on. This is mostly privileged kids.
Just in the past year, almost a third of them had assaulted their dating partner. Violence
is crushingly endemic in human society although, in general, violence is, in truth, declining
in many ways in recent history.
So mutual violence, almost 70% of those people who were violent, the male-only violence,
in other words, it's only the man who is attacking is under 10% and female-only is over 21%.
That, I think, is again something very important to really sit and ponder and process. I mean,
I myself, have never been really subject to violence from a man, only from a woman, which
would be my mother.
The overall rate of severe assaults in this worldwide dating violence study was 10.8%,
mutual violence 54.8%, male-only severe assaults of those who were engaged in these severe
assaults, male-only 15.7%, female-only 29.4%. That again is something really important to
understand to the degree to which we do not see women's role in the cycle of violence
is the degree to which we really cannot cure this horrible groundhogs day of facial bludgeoning.
So what is the myth? Well, the myth is that females, well, people say, well, they may
aggress against their male partners but it's always or almost always self-defense. This
is not held up by the data. Objective studies reveal that in half of the cases, it is impossible
to tell who initiated the violence and male and female initiation of aggression in the
other half is about equal.
So it's about equal for men and women to initiate violence in relationships where it can be
determined. Where it can't be determined, I think it's reasonable to assume, though
it can't be proven, that the same patterns would continue.
In general, studies of marital couples indicate that the women initiate pattern of violence
25% of the time. Men initiate pattern of violence 25% of the time and mutual violence occurs
50% of the time, a grimly efficient egalitarianism of aggression. The dating studies though generally
show that women initiate violence at a significantly higher rates than men.
A 2006 study on physical and psychological aggression examined partner aggression in
a sample of 453 cohabiting couples with kids between three to seven years of age: minor
aggression, males 23.8%, women 33.8%; severe aggression, men 8.4%, women 11.5%.
One of the key findings that came out of this was that a female physical aggression generally
occurs when a man is verbally aggressive and he says mean things, then the woman will assault
him but the key reason for male aggression was female physical aggression. In other words,
the men fought because the women started hitting them. The women fought because the men were
speaking in a negative way or destructive way towards them, which again I think is certainly
in a rational philosophy. Verbal abuse does not justify physical violence.
So the authors of this study in '06 conclude that women may be the first to escalate a
conflict and use physical aggression.
So let's just have a look at this graphically. Male minor aggression 23.8%, female 33.8%,
male major aggression 8.4% versus 11.5% and this is a great tragedy. It is a great tragedy
not focusing on women's capacity to violence, as I'll argue at the end, is one of the key
reasons why female violence continues and, in some ways, even escalates.
So another myth we say, well, because of the strength differential, men have 40% or more
greater upper body strength than women. Women are significantly more likely to be injured
than men are but recent data suggests a parity in serious injuries.
In '07, a bunch of guys found in a national study of over 11,000 young adults that there
was violence in 24% of the relationships. Half of couple violence was reciprocal and
the non-reciprocal violence, in other words, where one person was beating on the other,
women were perpetrators in 70% of the cases.
Overall, women were, in fact, more likely to be injured. However, in reciprocal violence,
men reported more injuries than women in relationships with non-reciprocal violence. So where both
people are beating up on each other, men get injured more than just the men who -- in relationships
where the men are beating up with women.
So rather than self-reporting, you can go to ER data, this is from the late '90s. A
13-week period in the ER was studied and found that of the 866 male patients who were admitted,
12.6% of them were victims of domestic violence. This compares to 14.4% of women treated for
partner violence in emergency departments. So, again, this is less than 2% disparity
and that's again important to understand.
Forty-eight percent of the male victims reported being kicked, bitten, choked or punched. Thirty-seven
percent of men reported having a weapon used against them by a female partner. One of the
ways that you can make up for a strength disparity is to use a weapon, of course.
So in 2000, a meta-analysis was published in the Psychological Bulletin, one of the
most respected and peer-reviewed journals, 56% of serious injuries was sustained by women,
44% by men. Of course, this is in no way to discount the horror of the women being beaten.
I would just kind of want to point out that then their marriage of evil known as domestic
abuse, there is not just one person standing on top of the bloody wedding cake. There are,
in fact, two people and the idea of this 19th century fainting-hearted female victimization
is something we should delegate to the dustbin of history and recognize that the capacity
for evil and violence is a bit strong in the female heart as in the male.
So Murray Straus in '05 reports that women are seriously injured twice as often as men.
Laroche in '05 reports a similar percentage of men and women who were terrorized by their
partners that received medical attention. But again, the 84% is not indicative of the
amount of violence occurring in the relationship or whether men and women or both are starting
it. It is indicative of one's willingness to go and get help and the perception of whether
one can be believed.
Vasquez and Falcone in '97 report equal cross-gender violence in trauma center with male injuries
more severe than female. Men were stabbed, women were assaulted. So this is important
to understand. There's a lot of mixed messages in all of these stuff and that, of course,
in understandable.
So 447 young men and 391 young women were assessed in New Zealand in '05. Men were found
to be more exposed to severe domestic violence than women. There were similar rates of injury,
3.9% for men versus 3.3% for women. Women report initiating assaults three times more
than men, 34% versus 12%. Again, looking at that, we have almost 300% more assaults initiated
by women than by men.
Of course, if there are children involved, one of the questions is why do men stay? One
of the reasons that men stay is if there are children involved than almost for certain,
if the woman is violent, the woman is going to be assaulting the children. The man stays
as a human shield knowing that he's very unlikely to get custody if he leaves and also knowing
his wife's capacity for brutality. The idea of linking her up with lawyers in family court
system, particularly in the United States is so terrifying that most men would rather
stay and endure.
In '84, researchers found that when weapons were employed in domestic violence in encounters,
men used weapons 25% of the time, women used weapons 86% of the time. Of course, in some,
both men and women use weapons.
So equality is equal. Women are equal in their capacities for evil relative to men. Here,
we're merely talking about spousal or intimate partner or dating violence. When we look at
violence against children, women are vastly overrepresented in attacks and assaults and
murders of children. The women do have the capacity for violence. They have the capacity
for brutality, for control, the isolation of the victim, which is common to almost all
abusive situations. Women have this capacity. It's extremely dangerous and very widespread.
If we don't hold women accountable, then the violence is not going to diminish. We saw
that from the graphs earlier where as the result of an increased awareness of male and
female violence, male violence diminished. We would like to see, of course, all good
people would like to see women assaulting men less, which is occurring in male on female
violence but not on female on male violence to a large degree because it's invisible and
the police don't believe you and men don't want to go for help and they are hostaged
by family court systems often.
We know that accountability works. When violence is identified and violence is condemned, then
it tends to diminish. Negative reactions or negative repercussions work. People respond
to incentives and disincentives. I mean, as recently as the 1950s, nobody really believed
the child abuse existed. There's a doctor who first began to imagine that the concussions
and contusions and broken bones, and so on that the parents will bring in their children
in for may not be the result of falling out of trees but instead falling on a parent's
fist.
So it really is only 50 or 60 years since child abuse really began to be examined and,
in many ways, excluding SSRIs, it has diminished enormously and the same thing needs to be
true for female violence. We need to understand its courses. We need to understand that if
children are exposed to this level of violence among their parents or their caregivers, there
is going to be a huge amount of gender hostility that arises as a result.
As Senator Anne Cools, who I recently spoke with at a conference, said, "Behind every
wife *** is an abusive mother." Why would a man grow up with such hatred of women? Because
maybe he saw his father being beaten up by a woman, maybe he was beaten up by a woman
and his father was helpless in the web that he had been caught in.
So we have to focus on ending the cycle of violence no matter what. Facts cannot be sexist.
Reality cannot be hostile to all but false agenda. So let us work together to recognize
and expose women's capacity for violence and work to heal and diminish our capacity for
repetition.
This is Stefan Molyneux for Freedomain Radio. Thank you so much for watching.