Domestic Violence Against Men Essay -- Violence Against Women Essays

The first reaction upon hearing about the topic of battered men, for many people, is that of incredulity. Battered husbands are a topic for jokes (such as the cartoon image of a woman chasing her husband with a rolling-pin). One researcher noted that wives were the perpetrators in 73% of the depictions of domestic violence in newspaper comics (Saenger 1963). Battered husbands have historically been either ignored or subjected to ridicule and abuse. In 18th-century France, a battered husband "was made to wear an outlandish outfit and ride backwards around the village on a donkey" (Steinmetz & Lucca 1988). Even those of us who like to consider ourselves liberated and open-minded often have a difficult time even imagining that husband battering could take place. Although feminism has opened many of our eyes about the existance of domestic violence, and newspaper reports often include incidents of abuse of wives, the abuse of husbands is a rarely discussed phenomenon. One reason researchers and others had not chosen to investigate husband battering is because it was thought to be a fairly rare occurrence. Police reports seemed to bear this out (Steinmetz 1977), with in some cases a ratio of 12 to 14.5 female victims to every one male victim. But another reason is that because women were seen as weaker and more helpless than men due to sex roles, and men on the other hand were seen as more sturdy and self-reliant, the study of abused husbands seemed relatively unimportant. Research begins to show the reality In 1974, a study was done which compared male and female domestic violence. In that study, it was found that 47% of husbands had used physical violence on their wives, and 33% of wives had used violence on their husbands (Gelles 1974). Half of the respondents in this study were selected from either cases of domestic violence reported to the police, or those identified by the social service agency. Also in 1974, a study was released showing that the number of murders of women by men (17.5% of total homicides) was about the same as the number of murders of men by women (16.4% of total homicides). This study (Curtis 1974), however, showed that men were three times as likely to assault women as vice-versa. These statistics came from police records. [The murder statistic was no big news, by the way. In 1958, an investigation of spousal hom... ...and Divorce Today "First Large-Scale Study Reveals Elder Abuse is Primarily by Wives Against Husbands" December 15, 1986 Mercy, J.A. & Saltzman, L.E. "Fatal violence among spouses in the United States, 1976-85" American Journal of Public Health 79(5): 595-9 May 1989 Nagi, Saad Child Maltreatment in the United States Columbia University Press, New York, p. 47, 1977 Nisonoff, L. & Bitman, I "Spouse Abuse: Incidence and Relationship to Selected Demographic Variables" Victimology 4, 1979, pp. 131-140 O'Leary, K. Daniel; Arias, Ilena; Rosenbaum, Alan & Barling, Julian "Premarital Physical Aggression" State University of New York at Stony Brook & Syracuse University Rooke, Margaret "Violence in the Home" RadioTimes 16-22 March 1991 p. 8. Saenger, G. "Male and female relation in the American comic strips" in The funnies: An American idiom M. White & R.H. Abel editors, The Free Press, Glencoe IL, 1963, p. 219-223 Sexuality Today Newsletter "Violence in Adolescent Dating Relationships Common, New Survey Reveals" December 22, 1986 (reporting on a report in Social Work contact Karen Brockopp) pp 2-3. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1987 table 277