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The Debate Over Men’s Versus Women’s Family Violence
Michael Flood[Citation: Flood, Michael (2006) The Debate Over Men’s Versus Women’s Family Violence.
 AIJA(Australian Institute of Judicial Administration) Family Violence Conference
, Adelaide, 23-24February.]
Introduction
The debate over men’s versus women’s family violence is increasingly prominent, both in academicscholarship and in popular culture. We have always known that both men and women are capable of using violence, and that both men and women are the victims of violence. At the same time, familyviolence has long been understood to be a problem largely of violence
by men
, against women andchildren. Most men are not violent, and in their intimate and sexual relations with women, most men practise non-violence, consent, and respect. But when women are subjected to violence in familiesand interpersonal relations, their assailant is most likely to be male.However, a very different understanding of family violence is now increasingly visible. Here,domestic or family violence is seen to be gender-equal or gender-neutral. In this paper, I assess thisclaim. I will demonstrate that there is no ‘gender symmetry’ in domestic violence, there are importantdifferences between men’s and women’s typical patterns of victimisation, and while men often are thevictims of violence, they are most at risk from other men. I identify the political agendas associatedwith the claim that family violence is gender-equal, and I offer strategies of response.
A note on terminology
Family violence was first placed on the public agenda through the efforts and activism of thewomen’s movements and feminism. The term ‘family violence’ refers to interpersonal violenceenacted in family settings, and is often used interchangeably with the term ‘domestic violence’.‘Domestic violence’ refers to interpersonal violence enacted in domestic settings, familyrelationships, and intimate relationships, and is most readily applied to violence by a man to his wife,female sexual partner or ex-partner. However, ‘domestic violence’ also can be used to denote violence between same-sex sexual partners, among family members (including siblings and parent-childviolence either way), and by women against male partners. Definitions of ‘domestic violence’ oftencenter on violence between sexual partners or ex-partners, while the phrase ‘family violence’ moreclearly includes violence against children and between family members. However, the usefulness of this phrase is affected by how one understands the term ‘family’ (Macdonald 1998, 10-13).Both terms have further limitations. ‘Domestic’ violence often takes place in non-domestic settings,such as when young women experience dating violence in a boyfriend’s car or other semi-public place. Definitions of ‘domestic violence’, ‘family violence’, or ‘partner violence’ may excludeviolence in relationships where the sexual partners have neither married nor cohabited (Jasinski &Williams 1998, x). Both ‘domestic violence’ and ‘family violence’ are often understood as distinctfrom sexual violence, but sexual coercion is a common element in violence against women by male partners or ex-partners. Some feminists criticize both terms ‘domestic violence’ and ‘family violence’for deflecting attention from the sex of the likely perpetrator (male), likely victim (female), and thegendered character of the violence (Maynard & Winn 1997, 180). Yet the alternative phrase ‘men’sviolence against women’ excludes violence against children or men and by women.Two other terms commonly applied to some or all of these forms of violence are men’s violenceagainst women and intimate violence, while newer terms include relationship violence, partner violence, and gender-based violence. Each term excludes some forms of violence, is accompanied bycertain theoretical and political claims, and is subject to shifting meanings in the context of both1
 
academic and popular understandings. The names chosen to describe and explain forms of interpersonal violence will never perfectly contain the phenomenon (Macdonald 1998, 36), and anyact of naming involves methodological, theoretical, and political choices.In one sense, any physical aggression between family members rightly can be named “familyviolence”, as this communicates the message that such violence is unacceptable. This approach isadopted by one school within violence research, “family conflict” studies, in which family violence ismeasured using a tool titled the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS). However, as I argue in more detail later in this paper, this definition obscures important variations in the meaning, consequences, and contextof violent behaviors in families and relationships.
Assessing the claim of gender symmetry in family violence
Debates regarding the ‘gender symmetry’ of family violence are an important focus of recentscholarship. Rates of domestic violence have been measured using two bodies of data: crimevictimisation studies (based on large-scale aggregate data for example from household and crimesurveys and police statistics), and family conflict studies measuring aggressive behaviour in marriedand cohabiting couples. Crime victimisation studies find marked gender asymmetries in domesticviolence: men assault their partners and ex-partners at rates several times the rate at which womenassault theirs, and female victims greatly outnumber male victims.
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On the hand, family conflictstudies find gender symmetries at least in the use of violence (Archer 1999). The contrast betweenthese findings is the product of differing samples and particularly of different definitions andmeasurements of domestic violence.In popular and policy debates, it is anti-feminist men’s and fathers’ rights groups (Flood 2004) whoare the most enthusiastic proponents of the claim that family violence is gender-equal. These groupsclaim that men and women assault each other at equal rates and with equal effects, and that anepidemic of husband-battering is being ignored if not silenced. However, claims about women’sviolence to men also are made by other men in the community, responding defensively to publiccommunication campaigns on men’s violence against women (Hubert 2003, pp. 50-51).To support the claim that domestic violence is gender-symmetrical, advocates draw almostexclusively on studies using a measurement tool called the Conflict Tactics Scale. The CTS situatesdomestic violence within the context of “family conflict”. It asks one partner in a relationshipwhether, in the last year, they or their spouse have ever committed any of a range of violent acts. CTSstudies generally find gender symmetries in the use of violence in relationships. There are three problems with the use made of such studies by fathers’ rights activists.First, men’s rights and fathers’ rights groups make only selective use of this data, as CTS authorsthemselves reject efforts to argue that women’s violence against men is as common or as harmful asmen’s violence against women (Kimmel 2001, 22).Second, there are serious methodological problems with the Conflict Tactics Scale. The CTS iswidely criticized for not gathering information about the intensity, context, consequences or meaningof the action. The CTS focuses on counting a series of violent ‘acts’, defining as ‘violent’ a personwho commits one or several of these acts and treating very different acts as similar (Dobash &Dobash 2004, 330). The CTS does not tell us whether violent acts were a single incident or part of a pattern of violence, ignores who initiates the violence (when women are more likely to use violence inself-defense), assumes that violence is used expressively (e.g. in anger) and not instrumentally (to‘do’ power or control), omits violent acts such as sexual abuse, stalking and intimate homicide
2
,ignores the history of violence in the relationship, and neglects the question of who is injured (Flood
1
For example, the National Violence Against Women Survey, a nationally-representative sample of 16,000 men andwomen in the United States over 1995-96, found that 22.1 percent of women and 7.4 percent of men were physicallyassaulted by a current or former intimate partner in their lifetime (Tjaden & Thoennes 2000, 25-26).
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1999; Dobash & Dobash 2004, 329-332). In addition, the CTS depends only on reports
either 
by thehusband
or 
the wife despite poor interspousal reliability. The evidence is that wives and husbandsdisagree considerably both about what violence was used and how often it was used, and that wivesare more likely than husbands to admit to their own violence (Dobash & Dobash 2004, 333; Flood1999). Finally, CTS studies exclude incidents of violence that occur after separation and divorce. YetAustralian and international data show that it is the time around and after separation which is mostdangerous for women (Australian Bureau of Statistics 1996: 8; Dobash & Dobash 2004, 329-332).Studies using the Conflict Tactics Scale often find apparent ‘symmetry’ or ‘equivalence’ ininterpersonal violence precisely
because
the CTS treats violence in a highly decontextualised andabstracted way. In other words, this acts-based method actually
 produces
findings of gender equalityin domestic violence, while obscuring the actual patterns, meaning, and impact of violence by men or women (Dobash & Dobash 2004, 332).Third, a wide range of other data find marked gender asymmetries in domestic violence. As I havementioned, household and crime surveys, police statistics, and hospital data all show that perpetratorsof adult family violence are most likely to be male and victims are most likely to be female.Feminist and other scholars have worked to reconcile the conflicting findings of these bodies of data.One important insight is the recognition of different patterns of violent behaviour in couples andrelationships. Some heterosexual relationships suffer from occasional outbursts of violence by either husbands or wives during conflicts, what some (Johnson 1995, 284-285) call “common coupleviolence”. Here, the violence is relatively minor, both partners practise it, it is expressive in meaning,it tends not to escalate over time, and injuries are rare. In situations of “patriarchal terrorism” on theother hand, one partner (usually the man) uses violence and other controlling tactics to assert or restore power and authority. The violence is more severe, it is asymmetrical, it is instrumental inmeaning, it tends to escalate, and injuries are more likely.CTS studies are only a weak measure of levels of minor ‘expressive’ violence in conflicts amongheterosexual couples. They are poorer again as a measure of ‘instrumental’ violence, in which one partner uses violence and other tactics to assert power and authority or to restore them when they are perceived to be breaking down (Johnson 1995, 284–285).In the typical situation of male-to-female domestic violence, the man’s physical aggression isaccompanied by a wide range of other abusive, controlling, and harmful behaviors. He threatens his partner with the use of violence against her or their children, sexually assaults her, and intimidates her with frightening gestures, destruction of property, and showing weapons. He isolates her and monitorsher behavior, which increases his control, increases her emotional dependence on him, and makes iteasier to perpetrate and hide physical abuse. He practises insults, mind-games, and emotionalmanipulation such that the victim’s self-esteem is undermined and she feels she has no other optionsoutside the relationship. Finally, he minimizes and denies the extent of his violent behavior, disavowsresponsibility for his actions, and blames the victim for the abuse (Gamache 1990, 74-79). Suchefforts, while certainly not always successful, make it more likely that the woman will follow his rulesand even act against her own best interests.Recognition of such patterns informs some feminist authors’ argument that domestic violence or intimate partner abuse can be best understood as chronic behavior that is characterized not by theepisodes of physical violence which punctuate the relationship but by the emotional and psychologicalabuse that the perpetrator uses to maintain control over their partner. In fact, many female victims reportthat the physical violence they suffer is less damaging than the relentless psychological abuse thatcripples and isolates them.
2
The Revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2) now includes measures of sexual coercion (Straus
et al.
1996).
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