According to a national survey by the Centers for Disease
Control and Department of Justice, in the last 12 months more men than
women were victims of intimate partner physical violence and over 40% of
severe physical violence was directed at men. Men were also more often
the victim of psychological aggression and control over sexual or
reproductive health. Despite this, few services are available to male
victims of intimate partner violence.
Physical violence
More men than women were victims of intimate partner physical
violence within the past year, according to a national study funded by
the Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Justice.
According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey
(hereinafter NISVS) released in December, 2011, within the last 12
months an estimated 5,365,000 men and 4,741,000 women were victims of
intimate partner physical violence. (Black, M.C. et al., 2011, Tables
4.1 and 4.2) 1 This finding contrasts to the earlier National Violence
Against Women Survey (Tjaden, P. G., & Thoennes, N.,
2000)(hereinafter NVAWS), which estimated that 1.2 million women and
835,000 men were victims of intimate partner physical violence in the
preceding 12 months. (One-year prevalence “are considered to be more
accurate [than lifetime rates] because they do not depend on recall of
events long past” (Straus, 2005, p. 60))
If one adds in rape (606,000 victims) the total is 5,427,000
women-but there is an issue of double-counting of an incident as both
rape and intimate partner physical violence. 2 Of the lifetime rape
victims, 82.8% were also victims of physical violence. This suggests
that a sizeable portion of the 606,000 rape victims are included in the
5,427,000 physical violence victims. But even if one ignores the
double-counting of rape and physical violence, the number of female
victims of rape and/or physical violence is 5,427,000 for women,
contrasted with 5,365,000 male victims of physical violence, so it is
safe to say that about half of the victims of physical violence are men.
There is a significant difference between the NVAWS and NISVS
surveys, in the number of victims of physical violence (4,741,000 vs.
1,300,000 women and 5,365,000 vs. 835,000 men), for which I have no
explanation. In the 2001 NVAWS survey, some 38% of the victims of
intimate physical violence were men, but in the 2011 NISVS survey 53%
were men. This is consistent with earlier studies showing that between
1975 and 1992 (Straus and Gelles, 1988, Straus, 1995), between 1998 and
2005 (Catalano , 2005) and between 2009 and 2010 (Truman, 2011, Table 6)
violence against women dropped but violence against males stayed
steady. (As a point of reference, Statistics Canada (2006, 2011) reports
that 45.5% of the victims of present or former spousal violence were
men. The 2010 National Crime Victimization Survey (Truman, 2011, Table
5) shows only 407,700 female and 101,530 male victims of intimate
partner violence: for women that’s less than a tenth of the victims
reported in NISVS.)
This drop in intimate partner violence against females and steady
rate of violence against males raises an interesting policy question.
Given that there are many thousands of support programs, Web sites and
public-interest media items for female victims of domestic violence, and
no programs and only a handful of Web sites for male victims, perhaps
males, but not females, have got the message that domestic violence is
wrong. There are many programs for men to stand up against domestic
violence by men, and no programs urging women to stand up against
domestic violence by women.
This ratio of men to woman victims of intimate partner physical
violence is not reported in the Executive Summary or other fact sheets
of the NISVS survey. Instead, the NISVS focuses on severe physical
violence-but omits a major contributor to severe physical violence
against men reported in the earlier NVAWS survey. Some 21.6% of the male
victims in that 2001 survey were threatened with a knife, contrasted to
12.7% of the women (Hoff, 2001, Table 1). The NISVS omission of threats
by knife or gun is not only curious, but it flies in the face of the
Centers for Disease Control’s own recommendations on data for intimate
partner violence (Salzman, T. et al, 1999) The section of that document
that covers the victim’s experience of intimate partner violence
includes sections on sexual violence, physical violence, threats of
physical or sexual violence and “psychological / emotional abuse.”
(Salzman, T., 1999, §3.3) 3 But NISVS survey respondents were not asked
about being threatened with a knife or gun.
Notwithstanding that omission, the NISVS 2011 survey reports that in
the last 12 months, 41.7% of the victims of severe physical violence
were men. (Tables 4.7 and 4.8) 4 Of the 4,741,000 female victims of
violence, two-thirds (3,163,000 or 66.7%) were subjected to severe
physical violence. (Table 4.7) For men, over 4 out of 10 (2,266,000 or
42.3%) were subjected to severe physical violence. The number of men is
smaller, but that is still 2.26 million men. Well over $1 billion is
spent to help female victims, but there are virtually no services
available in the country for over 2 million men who are victims of
severe physical violence by an intimate partner.
Psychological aggression, control of reproductive or sexual health
What is more violent, brandishing a knife at your spouse in the heat
of an argument, refusing to wear a condom, or calling your spouse fat or
stupid? NISVS did not ask about knife-wielding, but did ask about
condoms and name-calling. Men were more often the victims of both
psychological aggression (“expressive aggression” and “coercive
control”) and control of reproductive or sexual health.
Name-calling is one of the forms of “expressive aggression,” which
includes acting angry in a way that seemed dangerous, name-calling and
insulting remarks. 5 The other category of “psychological aggression” is
“coercive control,” such as restricting access to friends or relatives
and having to account for all your time. 6 In the last 12 months,
20,548,000 men (18.1%) and 16,578,000 (13.9%) women were subjected to
psychological aggression. For women, this was split fairly evenly
between expressive aggression and coercive control, while for men, 15.2%
were subjected to coercive control and 9.3% to expressive aggression.
The main forms of expressive aggression against women were insults
(64.3%) and name-calling (58.0%). For men the top items were being
called names (51.6%) and being told they were losers (42.4%)
NISVS did not present detailed data on control of reproductive or
sexual health. It summarized that “Approximately 10.4% (or an estimated
11.7 million) of men in the United States reported ever having an
intimate partner who tried to get pregnant when they did not want to or
tried to stop them from using birth control.” (p. 48). “Approximately
8.6% (or an estimated 10.3 million) of women in the United States
reported ever having an intimate partner who tried to get them pregnant
when they did not want to.” P. 48)
What services are available for men?
Studies show that men are less likely than women to seek help, and
those that do have to overcome internal and external hurdles. (Galdas et
al., 2005)(Cook 2009)
There has been little research on responses to male victims of
intimate partner violence, in part because agencies refuse to fund such
research. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice solicitation of
proposals for Justice Responses to Intimate Partner Violence and
Stalking (p. 8) stated “What will not be funded: 4. Proposals for
research on intimate partner violence against, or stalking of, males of
any age or females under the age of 12.” In the few studies done, many
men report that hotline workers say they only help women, imply or state
the men must be the instigators, ridicule them or refer them to
batterers’ programs. Police often will fail to respond, ridicule the man
or arrest him. (Cook 2009)(Douglas and Hines, 2011)
In 2008 Douglas and Hines conducted the first-ever large-scale
national survey of men who sought help for heterosexual physical
intimate partner violence. (Douglas and Hines, 2011) Some 302 men were
surveyed. This study found that between half and two-thirds of the men
who contacted the police, a DV agency, or a DV hotline reported that
these resources were “not at all helpful.” The study elaborates:
A large proportion of those who sought help from DV agencies (49.9%),
DV hotlines (63.9%), or online resources (42.9%) were told, “We only
help women.” Of the 132 men who sought help from a DV agency, 44.1%
(n=86) said that this resource was not at all helpful; further, 95.3% of
those men (n=81) said that they were given the impression that the
agency was biased against men. Some of the men were accused of being the
batterer in the relationship: This happened to men seeking help from DV
agencies (40.2%), DV hotlines (32.2%) and online resources (18.9%).
Over 25% of those using an online resource reported that they were given
a phone number for help which turned out to be the number for a
batterer’s program. The results from the open-ended questions showed
that 16.4% of the men who contacted a hotline reported that the staff
made fun them, as did 15.2% of the men who contacted local DV agencies.
(p. 7)
Police arrested the man as often as the violent partner (33.3% vs.
26.5%) 7 . (p. 8) The partner was deemed the “primary aggressor” in
54.9% of the cases. In 41.5% of the cases where men called the police,
the police asked if he wanted his partner arrested; in 21% the police
refused to arrest the partner, and in 38.7% the police said there was
nothing they could do and left.
Some 68% of the men turning to mental health professionals said the
professional took his concern seriously, but only 30.1% offered
information on how to get help from a DV program. Although 106 men
suffered severe physical injury, only 54 sought help from a medical
provider. Some 90.1% were asked how they got their injuries, and 60.4%
answered truthfully. Only 14% got information on getting help from a
program for intimate partner violence.
The best source for help was friends, neighbors, relatives, lawyers,
ministers and the like. 84.9% turned to one or more of these sources,
and 90% found them helpful. Two-thirds of the men sought online help and
support, with half the men surveyed using Web sites and a quarter using
an online support group. Some 69.1% found online support helpful; 44.9%
used a resource for male victims and 42.6% for anyone experiencing
partner aggression.
The study concludes that informal help, mental health and medical
services were the most helpful. The services least helpful were those that are the core of the DV service system: DV agencies, DV
hotlines, and the police. On the one hand, about 25% of men who sought
help from DV hotlines were connected with resources that were helpful.
On the other hand, nearly 67% of men reported that these DV agencies and
hotline were not at all helpful. Many reported being turned away. The
qualitative accounts in our research tell a story of male helpseekers
who are often doubted, ridiculed, and given false information. This failure of service impacts men’s physical and mental health.
Specifically, for each additional negative experience with
helpseeking, men’s odds of meeting the cut-off for PTSD increased 1.37
times. For each additional positive experience, these helpseekers were
about 40% less likely to have abused alcohol in the previous year. These
findings hold even after controlling for other traumatic experiences,
such as childhood victimization and being injured by a partner. (p. 10)
The NISVS survey makes a half-hearted effort to remedy this situation.
Buried in its recommendations is the sentence “It is also important that
services are specifically designed to meet the needs of a wide range of
different populations such as teens, older adults, men, gay, lesbian,
bisexual, and transgendered people.” We can do better than this.
What should we do?
We need to recognize intimate partner violence by women, understand it, and recognize it as a serious social problem.
Public service announcements need to be de-gendered. Right now, they
focus almost exclusively on intimate partner violence against women.
There needs to be more public education about violence to men. There are
many Web sites on intimate partner violence against women. These are
all woman-centered, or use gender-neutral language. They tend to
minimize violence against men. There is only a handful of sites
addressing domestic violence against men. None of these (except for the
Clark County IN prosecutor’s site) receive any government, foundation or
corporate support.
Feminist theory states that intimate partner violence is an accepted
form of “power and control” by men in a patriarchal society. But
according to Straus (2011) the predominant immediate motives for
violence, by women as well men, are frustration and anger at some
misbehavior by the partner. “They are efforts to coerce the partner into
stopping some socially undesirable behavior or to practice some
socially desirable behavior. … Studies have found that women engage in
coercive control as much as men.”
Further, intimate partner violence is more likely to be mutual or
female-initiated than male-initiated. In an analysis of 36
general-population studies on IPV and dating violence, Straus (2011)
found that women were half again as likely to perpetrate serious
physical violence. The 14 studies which also examined whether the
violence resulted in physical injury showed that men inflicted injuries
more often than women, but the difference was not that great. The rate
for women injuring a partner was 88% of the male rate. Studies with a
high percentage of men inflicting injury are, without exception, also
studies with a high percentage of women injuring a partner.
Straus found that the typical pattern is that when there are severe
assaults, in almost half couples, both severely assault. The two studies
with extremely high rates of mutual assault (68% and 78%) are studies
of very young couples and those results are consistent with a large
number of studies that have found extremely high rates for very young
couples. Studies which asked specifically about self-defense found that
only a small percentage of female assaults were in self-defense, such 5,
10, or 15. For one study that found high rates of self-defense, the
percentage was slightly greater for men (56%) than for women (42%)
(Harned, 2001).
There is other evidence which casts doubt on the idea that intimate
partner violence by women is primarily in self-defense. Eight studies
providing data on who hit first have found that women initiate from 30
to 73% (median=45%) of violent incidents. One found high rates of
violence by women, even when male violence was statistically controlled.
Is there “gender symmetry” in intimate partner violence? As Straus
(2011) points out, studies often confound symmetry in perpetration with
symmetry in effect. Women do experience more physical injury and
psychological impact, but men experience these as well (Douglas &
Hines, 2010). As IPV expert Strauss puts it, saying that violence by
women is not a serious social problem “is like arguing that cancer is
not an important medical problem because many more die of heart
disease.” (2011, p. 284)
In the last 12 months 5.4 million men were victims of intimate
partner violence, 2.3 million victims of serious physical violence, yet
there are virtually no programs to serve them.
Intimate partner violence by women increases the chances that they will themselves be victims of intimate partner violence.
Intimate partner violence is morally wrong and criminal, but there are
few programs for women batterers to show them better ways to resolve
conflicts in a relationship.
