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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The fact that women were more likely to use severe violence does not necessarily mean the men were injured more. I will explain later why we do not yet have valid information about which sex is injured more.

Here are the most basic findings of the most responsible representative nationwide domestic violence study concerning how often wives vs. husbands were victims of severe violence.

Severe “ Wife-Beating ” vs. Severe “Husband-Beating”*

Wife Victim 1.9% Husband Victim 4.5%

Explanation. During the year prior to being surveyed, less than 2% of wives and more than 4% of husbands were victims of severe domestic violence. “Severe violence” was measured via Murray Straus’ Conflict Tactics Scale16 as: kicking or biting; being hit with an object or a fist; being beaten up; being threatened with a knife or gun; or being stabbed or wounded. * Source: 1992 National Alcohol and Family Violence Survey, a nationwide representative population sample of 1970 persons, conducted by the Institute for Survey Research (Temple University).See Murray Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor, in “Change in Spousal 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.

If we saw a headline saying, “Severe ‘Husband-Beating’ Twice as Common as Severe ‘Wife-Beating,’” we would think there was a misprint.

Because this chapter’s very foundation rests on the counter-intuitive findings that women and men batter about equally – or that women batter more – I am including all of the studies, and a summary of their findings, in the Appendix. I do this because it is important for the reader to know that I am not just reporting selected studies “in order to prove a point.”