"I would be wary of using the term "Intimate Partner Violence" though, because that would cut out mentioning our youngest victims (and perpetrators?) of domestic violence.....the children."

Interesting point which I'd not considered when writing the post. Terms can become a real pain in these sorts of discussions, DV, IPV, family violence etc. In the context of the response to Carz I was being fairly specific with the use of the IPV term as that seemed to be the best fit for the context of Carz comments.

Overall Imwas more bothered by the apparent use of the findings to ty and paint lesbian relationships as toxic. I don't know a lot of "out" lesbians but those I've known have been to the best of my knowledge very ordinary in other respects.

R0bert

Robert,

You may be correct.

“The most comprehensive review of the scholarly domestic violence research literature ever conducted concludes, among other things, that women perpetrate physical and emotional abuse, and engage in control behaviors, at comparable rates to men.”

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/5/prweb10741752.htm

I think most men would recognise that.

But if it is also true for homosexual couples, then domestic violence in gay and lesbian couples should be at the same rates as for heterosexual couples.

Gender has little to do with it.

Incomuicardo, this will be the simplified version because of word limits etc. Note the research I'm referring to is acts based research mostly based on asking both genders about their experience of violence. Other forms of research come to different conclusions but I'm of the view that those have very strong outcome biases.

My understanding is that recent research shows women initiate violence against partners at higher rates than men whereas when they started doing that kind of research many years ago the numbers were pretty close. During the intervening period there has been a strong focus on male violence in the home and almost none on female violence in the home. The rates of male initiated violence have dropped, female initiated violence has not.

I don't know how much research has actually examined non-violent forms of abuse, I've yet to see any serious work on that topic.

Given the drop in rates of male initiated violence against partners I'd expect lesbian relationships to have higher rates of violence. I'd also expect those numbers to drop if all violence was addressed in public advertising and other anti-violence campaigns rather than just male violence. I doubt violence will disappear entirely in the forseeable future but rates of violence can certainly be reduced further.

R0bert

I would offer an explanation for skewed results.

Controlling behaviour is everywhere, and indeed we have numerous laws and rules that control our behaviour.

If I am at a meeting, and someone becomes too rowdy, I can ask them to quieten down. I am now carrying out controlling behaviour towards the other person.

Now the other person may actually object to my controlling behaviour, and they may feel that they have a right to be rowdy at the meeting, (just like a politician in parliament).

In fact, they may feel that I am being abusive towards them by asking them to quieten down.

It depends.

Now a woman may carry out controlling behaviour towards a man, (and lets face it, they ALL do), but the man goes along with it, and does not regard it as being abuse from the woman.

But if a man carries out controlling behaviour towards a woman, then the woman may very well think that it is “patriarchal”, and think that a man can’t be telling them what to do etc.

Even if controlling behaviour is being carried out equally by both women and men, so many women now think that the controlling behaviour from men is “abuse” or “patriarchal”, and they don’t even notice their own controlling behaviour.

So, if a survey asks “How often are you abused”, women might report “often”, but men report “not often”, even though the controlling behaviour by men and women is actually equal in frequency.

The above post was for Robert

Posted by Incomuicardo, Tuesday, 22 July 2014 9:12:56 PM

So true.

Erin Pizzey wrote about this in her discussion paper on working with violent women. Particularly about the behaviour not being recognised

<To Mr. Roberts, all of this behavior seemed perfectly usual. After all, he had witnessed this
<sort of commotion for thirteen years of their marriage. When I suggested to him, ‘What you
<endured is emotional terrorism, he suddenly and for the first time was able to see his
<situation clearly.

A generalisation is the males tend not to be as 'aware' as females in a social/relationship context.