If Your Man Knew What to Say, Here’s What He Might Say If He Knew You Feared His Potential For Violence...

Excerpted from Warren Farrell's Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say.

(Permission to reprint granted by Warren Farrell.)
See www.warrenfarrell.com and www.warrenfarrell.info.

 

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Is This Female Violence Against Men A Recent Phenomenon?

Is this gap between male and female violence in the home just recent (since laws against wife-battering have just recently become tougher)? It is unlikely, but we can’t be positive of the answer, since the first large nationwide random sample study was not done until 1975. Here is how the 1975 results compare to 1992.

Changes in Severe “Wife-Beating” vs. Severe “Husband-Beating”: 1975 to 1992*
	1975	1985	1992
Wife Victim	3.8%	3.0%	1.9%
Husband Victim	4.6%	4.4%	4.5%
*Source: 1975 and 1985 National Family Violence Surveys, based on nationwide probability population samples of 2143 cases in 1975 and 3520 cases in 1985, conducted by the Family Research Lab (University of New Hampshire); and the 1992 National Alcohol and Family Violence Survey, based on a national probability sample of 1970 cases in 1992, conducted by the Institute for Survey Research (Temple University). As cited in Murray Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor, “Change in Spouse Assault Rates From 1975 to 1992: A Comparison of Three National Surveys in the United States,” paper presented at the 13th World Congress of Sociology, Bielefeld, Germany, July 19, 1994.

Fortunately, severe violence against wives decreased 48%; against husbands, it decreased 2%. However, what the table does not mention is another result of the comparison: Although overall violence (including minor violence, like shoving or slapping) against women decreased, overall violence against men increased.39