Michael Flood,

You have written a lot about men and males, so this becomes a very important question:- Who do you actually define as being male?

Also could you please point out just one example where the several authors of this article have carried out the following: -

Attempted to not marginalise and demonise the male gender.
Attempted to write a balanced and non-gender prejudiced article.
Attempted to not mislead the public.

Hey Flood. I've gone and got the relevant information to help you out.

The CTS was revised in 1996 to include a sexual assault scale and an injury scale. That was the only major change. See the appendix in:

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS15.pdf

I don't see this making a significant difference to the findings of the studies prior to 1996. There is a body of CTS2 studies which are not only confirming that there is symmetry but that women are *more* violent, showing the original CTS was valid.

False claims:

- It does not measure frequency of the acts.

False.

CTS15 states, in the Comparison of original and revised CTS - simplified format subheading:

"The CTS 1 was originally developed for use as an interview schedule
rather than as a self-administered questionnaire. It had two columns of response categories, one for the number of times the respondent carried out each act in the CTS and the other for the partner's acts"

You can also clearly see CTS2 having a 0-20 scale for frequency in the appendix.

- Equates violent acts of differing seriousness.

False.

There is a set of acts, some deemed serious, some deemed minor. The items were chosen by painstaking process where, for example "slapping my partner" was deemed minor and "kicking my partner", or "beating my partner up" was deemed serious. If the only way this can be rebutted is by saying "it could have been beating them up jokingly", I'd say the methodology of using categorised items stands as making a distinction of seriousness.

- It does not ask about non-physical controlling behaviours.

False.

Look at the appendix in CTS15 again. The scale was present in CTS1.

- Does not include a sexual assault scale (false if referring to CTS2, but not CTS1)

- Does not include an injury scale (false if referring to CTS2, but not CTS1)

"I’ve been hitting and abusing you all year, and occasionally you use hit back in self-defence, then our violence isn’t equivalent."

False. The CTS will definitely pick up the difference in frequency.

I'll have to reply to your recent posts later.

ronnie, I dn't know if you are reading or not.

In my view namecalling is on a very different level to your claims that I use an alias on the site to tell lies. Again the fact that I was the target of your allegation might alter my perception and that on some other issues I've found you to be a thoughtfull poster.

Supporting females through a process of dealing with their abusive partners (and being threatened yourself) is not the same thing as facing a family law system obsessed with the male as perpetrator myth. Of walking into RA centers for medaition mast shelves of pamphlets about male DV, posters on the walls etc when you are trying to keep a viable presence in your sons life.

The system does not adequately support genuine female victims either. My impression is that the deliberate abuse of the issue is doing great harm to all victims, adult males and females and children.

Time to move on from unnecessary genderisation.

R0bert

More for Flood.

"the evidence is that men underreport their own use of violence to a greater extent than women do, and women overreport their partner’s use of violence to a greater extent.."

I searched for the articles you cited to support this and they are in Fiebert's bibliography:

Szinovacz, M. E. (1983). (Used Conflict Tactics Scale with 103 couples and found that the wives' rates of physical aggression was somewhat higher than husbands'.)

Jouriles, E. N., & O'leary, K. D. (1985). (Used the Conflict Tactics Scale with a sample of 65 couples in marriage therapy and 37 couples from the community. Found moderate levels of agreement of abuse between partners and similar rates of reported violence between partners.)

So.. it turns out they are examples of CTS studies that do include partners, that say the female is more violent.

Mind quoting what they exactly say to prove your point about differences in reporting? Looks like merely opinion inferences based on CTS scoring women's violence higher when couples are interviewed.

You then state:

"Among males who were physically hurt by a partner’s physical aggression, the most common reaction was to be ‘not bothered’."
"male students were significantly more likely to report that they felt okay or were not bothered"

This is add odds with the idea that men overreport. More importantly note that whenever it is found that women are "not bothered" it is not only seen as a travesty, but even a justification for murder (battered woman's syndrome) for example in Kimmel's paper "Male Victims of Domestic Violence" on page 11.

In men's case you seem to be saying that because they are socialised to accept female violence, they can Be A Man and suck it down. A pattern of "silent suffering" for men emerges here.

Now *that* is selective.

There are studies that say things in both directions about injuries as well in Fiebert's bibliography. Of course there will be differences in things other than the rate of violence. The common denominator is that the rate of violence is the same or higher in women. That's the point.

A good summary of this issue by Murray Straus http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID41E2.pdf

DOMINANCE AND SYMMETRY IN PARTNER VIOLENCE BY MALE AND FEMALE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN 32 NATIONS1

"In addition to services for male victims, many important changes can follow from the predominance of mutual violence and the predominance of parallel etiology of violence by male and female partners. We believe that ignoring these facts hampers prevention and treatment efforts, and that the needed changes in prevention and offender treatment programs include the following: Replace the assumption that almost all partner violence is male-only, with the assumption that it could be mutual violence or female-only, and that this needs to be determined at the very onset of remedial efforts. Replace the single causal factor “patriarchical system” model with a multi-causal model. Replace male-dominance as the major risk factor in need of change with dominance by either party, but only as one of many risk factors that need attention. Give equal attention to developing prevention programs targeted to violence by women and girls. Secondary prevention efforts need to be open to a variety of new approaches, of which one of the most promising is restorative justice (Mills, 2003, 2006; Strang & Braithwaite, 2002) These changes in policy and practice, rather than weakening efforts to protect women, will enhance the protection of women because violence by women is a major factor contributing to the victimization of women. When women are violent, they are the partners most likely to be injured (Straus, 2005a, 2005b). Therefore, efforts to end partner violence by women will contribute to protect women. It is time to make the prevention and treatment effort one that is aimed at ending all family violence, starting with spanking children, not just violence against women. Only then will women, as well as all other human beings, be safe in their own homes. The research reported in this paper, which shows that symmetry in mutuality and etiology is the predominant pattern world-wide, might help to achieve that end."

R0bert

"Fiebert’s bibliography is a favourite citation of anti-feminist men’s advocates." MF

"It happens all the time. People only tell one half of the story," says Eugen Lupri, a University of Calgary sociologist whose research shows similar patterns of violence against men.

"Feminists themselves use our studies, but they only publish what they like.

"As some feminists say, it's counter-intuitive. We would not expect that to be true; and if things are not expected to be true, for some people they are not true."
http://www.franks.org/fr01060.htm

Lets really and honestly look at research methodology.

If we only question and monitor violence agianst women such as the WSS, it only researchs female victims of domestic violence and thing is that the definition has been expanded from physical acts to things like emotional, psychological, financial, sexual abuse. However when there is debate about DV it degenerates down to who does the most damage physically, perhaps physical violence is at times the end result of years or decades of being on the recieving end of emotional abuse.

By definition DV is a cycle of violence, not a one off act.

We wind up with definitions that have more twistes and turns than a politican.

Gelles, Straus, Steinmetz and Pizzey have all been subjected to threats from DV advocates.