DAVID LEE MUNDY writes:

Is individual suffering alone a sufficient basis for legislative action? The notion that it is lies behind many questionable reforms and shows an increasingly common error in logic. In actuality, there are always competing policy interests. The tree is pitted against the forest.  

Take domestic abuse. Laws curbing violence or protecting women must be weighed against other policy goals like protecting marriage and protecting men from false allegations of domestic violence. To a man, a false accusation of domestic abuse is comparable to domestic abuse. It is a sucker punch producing maximal mental anguish. Whereas bruises heal, the stigma and cost of such an accusation is for life. As this recent study by Save Services argues, domestic abuse is a real concern. However, the data show that men and women instigate violence at similar rates and that female initiation of violence is the leading reason for the woman becoming a victim of subsequent violence.

Folks are rightly concerned about the individual suffering of victims of domestic abuse. However, their compassion apparently doesn’t extend to men victimized by the abuse of paternalistic domestic violence laws. Their compassion doesn’t extend to the marriages and children harmed by such victimization. Feminists would have men and women equal while advocating for laws that favor women.  A note to every women’s-studies department and some conservatives: paternalistic laws are sexist. Stigmatizing men as violent, as abusers is sexist. 

Making the personal political is endemic, especially in my area of interest — immigration law. People argued that because alien spouses are domestically abused, Congress had to act. And it did by passing the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Prior to VAWA there were already laws criminalizing domestic abuse on the books in every state. In reality, VAWA created an incentive for aliens to claim spousal abuse as a means of procuring immigration benefits. If citizenship is a carrot, citizenship without having to live with the Herb you married is carrot cake. Such claims are further encouraged by the creation of a pain-free system that facilitates such claims – including paying for the divorce. 

Interracial marriages are difficult enough without creating incentives for an alien spouse to claim abuse. An immigration lawyer who fails to appraise his clients of the potential dangers under VAWA is committing actionable legal malpractice. 

Back to the original question. Certainly individual suffering is one reason to enact a law. But one cannot ignore the larger, competing policy interests or the individuals and institutions such legislation would harm. This kind of thinking is sorely missing in current political debates.

                                                                   — Comments —

Jesse Powell writes:

I want to take issue with the claim that half of all domestic violence is initiated by women. In terms of the number of domestic violence victims that seek treatment for their injuries in emergency rooms or the number of domestic violence cases that are recorded by police, the great majority of victims are women. I don’t see the point of trying to claim that domestic violence is equally perpetrated by men and women when many sources of evidence point to the fact that this is not true. 

The Bureau of Justice Statistics put together a very thorough report on family violence, titled “Family Violence Statistics”, in 2005. In it, on pages 15 and 36 (out of 76 pages) are two tables. In the first table, Table 2.3, it says that 84.3% of spousal violence victims were female and 85.9% of boyfriend/girlfriend violence victims were female. The source for these numbers was the National Crime Victimization Survey. In the second table, Table 5.3, it says that 80.0% of spousal violence victims were female and 82.0% of boyfriend/girlfriend violence victims were female, this time going by police-recorded family violence episodes.

Natassia writes:

I want to thank the reader Jesse Powell for taking David Lee Mundy to task for his claim that domestic violence is equally initiated. I also don’t buy the claim that “female initiation of violence is the leading reason for the woman becoming a victim of subsequent violence.” 

I live in West Virginia, and the way the law works here, if a female actually hit her partner and he hit her back, BOTH parties can have the other charged with domestic battery. The charges might not stick in court, though, if the woman can successfully prove that her violence was initiated due to her fear of being beaten up. I work with batterers once a week as a co-facilitator of a court-mandated program. The men get the option of attending 32 once-a-week classes or going to jail. And you have no idea how many times I hear them say, “I’m the victim” or “The courts are against me because I am a man.”

And then you read the police report.

I’m sorry, but how many women must be sacrificed on the altar of “men’s rights” before we say, “Alright there is obviously a trend of male-on-female violence and we really should stop giving men the benefit of the doubt when women are physically threatened.”

Really, men need to be more picky about the women they choose to have relationships with if there is such an epidemic of false accusations of physical violence. The ultimate story was from a new participant this past week. He was dating a woman for a month and a half and after that short amount of time she moved in with him. Within three days she decided to move out, unbeknownst to him, because she was afraid of him (her words). He walked in as she was trying to move out and he flipped his lid. The cops came and he couldn’t understand why he was handcuffed and thrown into the back of a cop car since she threw herself on the ground and had a temper tantrum. He claims that she had stuff in his trunk and he wouldn’t let her get it out until she gave him the money she owed him. And he also couldn’t understand why he had to pay her hospital bill. “I mean, her prescription only cost her three dollars!” He was charged with domestic battery.

I looked at him and asked, “Why did she have to go to the hospital if you didn’t hurt her?”

Oh, I’m sure this is just another case of a lying, money-grubbing female wanting to screw over her man when he didn’t do things her way.

Now, please don’t take any of this the wrong way. I’m pretty conservative for my age, a stay-at-home mother and wife, and a staunch anti-feminist. But I personally know victims of domestic abuse. I’ve seen the bruises and heard the fear. I’ve listened to the men who have physically laid their hands on their girlfriends or wives to threaten them and sometimes to hurt them and always to control them. And I just don’t buy the excuses anymore.

But I still work with them because I think personal transformation is possible and I love men–they are wonderful creatures with whom I get along very well. :) But I don’t buy the juvenile excuses: most of these men exaggerate their partner’s flaws and downplay their role in the disintegration of the relationship. All too often they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and can’t seem to understand that they cannot control the actions of others by using threats of violence unless they want to go to jail.

Besides, a man who uses the threat of violence or actual violence to control his wife is not a loving husband. He is a tyrant. And my husband argues that such a man is also stupid–stupid men rely on violence to control their women when there are much easier and more diplomatic ways of getting a wife to see things his way.

Slwerner writes:

Jesse writes, “I want to take issue with the claim that half of all domestic violence is initiated by women. In terms of the number of domestic violence victims that seek treatment for their injuries in emergency rooms or the number of domestic violence cases that are recorded by police, the great majority of victims are women.”

Sorry, but both rate of injury and rate of reporting to police are very, very poor proxies for rate of victimhood.

Two things should be plainly obvious. First, even when women become physically violent, they are less capable of inflicting injury on a man (who is not only typically bigger and stronger, but also much quicker and agile). A man can usually block and dodge a woman’s (frontal) attack, or even quickly get out of reach of her.

And, secondly, unless seriously injured, men who’ve been attacked by women are highly unlikely to be willing to report it. To report that a woman attacked and injured you, as a man, would be very humiliating and emasculating. Plus, many men who do try to call police in to help them with a woman who has become violent find themselves being arrested and/or removed from the premises instead of the woman.

The surveys that have been used to establish that women initiate physical violence at nearly the same rate as men have been more scholarly efforts at interviewing the people involved in domestic violence, well after the fact, and free from any legal implications, wherein they are asked to reflect honestly about the incidents and what lead up to them. With that approach, it is often discovered that woman who ended up being injured in domestic violence (DV) incidents admit that they started the violence themselves. Often, a man retaliates only after a woman has already landed several blows (and seems unlikely to stop in her attack) – and a single blow from a man is much more likely to inflict observable injury on a woman.

To add some anecdotal evidence of what I’m proffering, I’ve learned much of this from my wife (a long time prosecutor) and her colleagues.  Prosecutors who’ve dealt with DV will typically report three things: 1) women frequently ask for charges to be dropped, admitting that they started the violence; 2) the frequency of false DV reports (to gain the upper-hand in divorce/child custody, etc.) is quite high; and, 3) the worst violence and resulting injury is seen in lesbian relationships – wherein two roughly equal combatants deliver multiple injuries before one or the other can deliver a “knock-out” blow to end the fight.

Laura writes:

I do not know enough about VAWA to form an opinion about whether it enourages false allegations.

David writes, “female initiation of violence is the leading reason for the woman becoming a victim of subsequent violence.” I don’t doubt that women sometimes provoke men to violence, but given that men are overwhelmingly more physically aggressive than women, I find this hard to believe. The wording is also very ambiguous.

Save Services, the organization David links to, writes:

Over 250 scholarly studies “demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.”

I do not doubt that women are sometimes physically aggressive toward men and that men are, as Slwerner mentions, hesitant to report it. But that women are as physically aggressive as men, or more physically aggressive than men, this flies in the face of evidence. Women are more often guilty of manipulation, not physical aggression.

Also, Slwerner writes,”women frequently ask for charges to be dropped, admitting that they started the violence.” Women would do this for various motives. Sometimes, to be sure, it would be because they felt they were genuinely responsible, but other times it would be because they would want to continue a relationship with the man and the charges make that difficult. If a woman tries to drop the charges, a prosecutor would say to her, “You can’t just drop charges. A crime has been commited.” That would lead her to say that the man was acting in self-defense.

David replies:

This argument about who hit whom, while important, misses the point. The larger issue is how individual stories, however sad, are used to circumvent competing policies and the rights of other individuals.

For example, since Arizona passed its immigration law a slew of news articles claim death rates are on the rise for illegal immigrants.

We can argue about whether that fact is true (like y’all are arguing about who hit whom). But should the death of those people, while undeniably tragic, cause Arizona to repeal its law? While one might weep alongside the families who have lost loved ones, one still might find that protecting the safety and property of citizens of Arizona is more important. The same analysis should apply to every law including those protecting women from domestic violence.

Laura writes:

But you started the discussion of who hit whom to prove your point that new domestic violence laws are causing more harm than good. So I don’t know that it does miss the point.

Obviously there are not going to be perfect domestic violence statutes. You are right, we do have to balance competing interests.

Slwerner writes:

Natassia writes, “The men get the option of attending 32 once-a-week classes or going to jail. And you have no idea how many times I hear
them say, “I’m the victim” or “The courts are against me because I am a man.”

The issue that David Lee Mundy brings up is not whether men are injured as often as women in DV situations, but rather about which partner initiates the DV incident. You might re-read his statement:

“…the data show that men and women instigate violence at similar rates and that female initiation of violence is the leading reason for the woman becoming a victim of subsequent violence.”

Yes, it’s difficult to see men who’ve suffered no injuries as being victims Yet, if you were to be honest, I suspect that you know that some of these men were, in fact, struck by the women
whom they were charged with violence against, yet, because they remain uninjured, you mock the idea that they are victims.

Admittedly, I tend not to see men who’ve been attacked by women, yet uninjured as victims myself. And, yet, by the definitions of DV, they are, in fact, victims.

Natassia writes, “All too often they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions and can’t seem to understand that they cannot control the actions of others by using threats of violence unless they want to go to jail.”

This serves to indicate that you are well aware that men are charged with DV based on threats alone . Thus, you know that their “victims” also suffered no physical harm. Yet, I suspect that you have no problem with the idea that those women who’ve been threatened with violent acts are victims.

I have no argument with the position that the use of threats of violence should be seen as a crime. But, what I do take issue with is that men who are attacked are mocked if they claim victimhood. Some call such situations “double standards,” but I prefer the more direct “hypocrisy” to describe such things. Feminist (and their unwitting white-knighting chivalrist and female-centric allies on the right) are greatly concerned with women even being yelled at in domestic situations. Yet, most of you laugh right along with men suffering even deadly violence at the hands of women. You beleive that men who try to intimidate women ought to be punished – jail or counseling, yet many of you would argue that woman like Mary Winkler, Clara Harris, and even Lorena Bobbit were in the “right”. Interesting – and revealing.

Laura writes:

You’re not serious. In what way has anyone here “laughed at men suffering deadly violence at the hands of women?” The charge is ridiculous.

Slwerner writes:

Laura writes, “But that women are as physically aggressive as men, or more physically aggressive than men, this flies in the face of evidence. Women are more often guilty of manipulation, not physical aggression.”

This is why looking at violence in lesbian relationships is so interesting.

Demographically speaking, relative to their numbers, lesbian relationships have an extremely high incidence of violence. This, along with the noticeable trend in physical altercations between young women, has caused many to wonder why, given the “sugar and spice” image of women. Some suggest that women tend not to resort to violent action in the face of a physically superior opponent, but are more given to violence if their target is seem as equal or weaker. Even the fact that women who do attack men will often employ the element of surprise and/or weapons seems to indicate that they are merely being more tactical rather than simply less violent in nature.

Another interesting side-light to this (that I’m going to have to go back and try to find some of the references I’ve seen regarding) is the use by women of third parties to carry out violence on their behalf. It seems that third parties are employed (“hit men” or thug muscle) not only in cases where women have legitimate fears, but alos in otherwise peaceful marriages.

I don’t believe that women (collectively) tend to be as prone to violence as men, but I think that their capacity for violent inclinations are often well underestimated.

Laura writes:

As I said, some women are violent, but they are obviously less aggressive on the whole than men. Then how can an organization such as Save Services make the preposterous claim that women are as physically aggressive, or even more physically aggressive, than men?

Slwerner writes:

Not that it’s happened on your forum, Laura, but I have, in fact heard staunch defenses of the three criminal-violent women I referenced from women (and men) who proclaim that they are “anti-feminist”. And, yes, at least some of them have had a good laugh at the fates of Matthew Winkler, David Harris, and John Bobbit (and, yes, I am quite serious in saying that).

Those same people will often be entirely dismissive of men who have been attacked by wives or girlfriends as simply needing to “man up” and “take it like a man”. The fact is, most men do “take it like a man” and thus we never hear about what happens to them. And, even those who do suffer injuries are unlikely to want to talk about it or have it become public knowledge.

Yet, being married to a prosecutor, I get a glimpse into the reality that men are sometimes seriously injured by women in DV instances. I’d have not thought that it was possible for a woman to tear a man’s scrotum through blue jeans, except that my wife has handled three cases in which it did happen (the number of injuries to men’s genitals, as well as blows by weapons to the backs of their heads, is quite indicative that when women do seek to do harm, they know exactly how to go about doing so).

A. writes:

This is a subject with which I have dealt for years. Make no mistake about it, men are more controlling and physically abusive than women, In addition, their behaviors have a greater emotional and physical effect on women than the other way around. Women tend to shove or throw things, while men tend to slap or punch or kick or choke. 

The best book I have ever read on the subject and one that demonstrates my experience with multitudes of abused women and abusive men is this. This book does more to empower women with a sense of the reality of abuse and of their God given dignity than any course I have taken or book I have ever read. I have seen it work magic with women and even some couples where the man is a person of good will.

Natassia writes:

Well, as I also mentioned, we (I’m speaking collectively here) tend not to see uninjured men as victims, but what we ought to see is that women are also perpetrators. I get the impression that she prefers not to have to think of women ever being the perpetrator/instigator – just the victim. Am I wrong?

The scholarly work – those efforts which include strong experimental design, not to mention peer review – clearly establish that a significant portion of DV includes reciprocal violence. Your anecdotal evidence carries little weight, especially given that you seem to believe that the men you see are never also victims, and thus dismiss that if they were also attacked that it constitutes violence on the part of the woman. Of course you wouldn’t believe women suffer reciprocal domestic violence if you believe that their acts never constitute violence. 

My issue was with her seeming dismissal of men being victims (unless seriously injured, if even then). If women are victims when threatened, how can she possibly suggest that men are not also victims when they are physically attacked/assaulted (even if they are uninjured).

Natassia writes:

In response to Slwerner, who wrote:

My issue was with her seeming dismissal of men being victims (unless seriously injured, if even then). If women are victims when threatened, how can she possibly suggest that men are not also victims when they are physically attacked/assaulted (even if they are uninjured).

I dismiss men who are larger than their partners unless the woman has actually threatened to do something and has caused the man to be AFRAID.　

That’s the big factor here–fear. Is a man actually threatened by violence from his partner? Most of the time women do not act on their threats of violence, and even when they do it usually doesn’t intimidate the man. It would be like my child trying to intimidate me. It wouldn’t work unless he tried to do something really psycho like set me on fire. Even my child hitting me is not intimidating because I am much stronger than he is, and I can simply toss him out of the way if need be.　

Legally, if the man was hit by his wife, she can be found guilty of domestic battery, and he would be considered a “victim” of domestic violence. But most of the men in my classes are the sole perpetrators, and the women are not charged with anything. The few women that are end up in a similar class (I don’t facilitate one of those.) What I was describing was my own experience with perpetrators trying to claim the “victim” status. I’m sorry, the minute a strong man lays his hands on a woman to intimidate, hurt, and control her, I’m not interested in hearing any whining.

Laura writes:

A woman can make a man afraid without threatening physical violence. There are things to fear other than physical injury.

“Most of the time women do not act on their threats of violence…” That may be true but they often act on their threats to leave or to take their children away.  Both men and women are aggressive in their own way. Women are much more likely to be physically injured by men. I don’t think a woman is comparable to a child in this regard. She is much more powerful than that. Natassia suggests that men only hit women to intimidate and control them, as if they hated women. This is sometimes true and physical assault is always wrong. But I think men sometimes act out of frustration and hurt at the things women say to them, not simply out of a desire for control.

Jesse Powell writes:

I am not an expert on VAWA and I do not have a position on whether VAWA is good or not. However, I do have a well developed bias, and I would say well founded bias, that the effort to downplay harms done to women while exaggerating the harms done to men is not a good thing and should be combatted, and that such prejudice is not helpful in the cause of fighting against feminism and seeking to rebuild the family. My purpose in responding to David was not to express support for VAWA but was to fight against anti-women bias and any weakening of protections for women. 

Now true, assault is already criminalized, it can be argued there is no “need” for a law like VAWA, but at the same time, I don’t think there is any principle that all forms of assault need to be treated in the same way. 

It can be argued that assault within a romantic context is different from and more harmful than other kinds of assault. Two men who get into an argument inside of a bar and then “take it outside” and assault each other can legitimately be treated differently than a man who punches his girlfriend in the face because she was “flirting” with “some guy”. 

Not only is the context of the two different violent acts different, but the violent acts threaten two different spheres of life. In the first sphere, the violent episode threatens men who like acting tough in the macho environment of a bar. In the second sphere, the violent episode threatens the feeling of safety and love the woman has for the man within a romantic relationship. It can be argued that protecting women’s sense of safety when in a romantic relationship with a man is more important than protecting a man’s sense of safety when he acts macho in a macho environment. A legislature, in order to prioritize the protection of women in romantic relationships, may even impose a penalty enhancement against the man who injures his girlfriend as compared to the man who injures another man in a fight outside the bar, even though the severity of both injuries may be the same. 

So, not only are there different contexts within which violence takes place that affect different spheres of life and therefore impact society differently, there is also a difference between a man hitting a man and a man hitting a woman. The second is considered more offensive, and there is a reason for that. A man hitting a woman is considered to be “unfair”, the strong beating up on the weak, and the man hitting the woman is also a violation of the principle that it is men’s duty to protect women. Both the societal values that the strong should not beat up on the weak and that men should protect women are legitimate. A man hitting another man does not violate these values, but a man hitting a woman does, and this is why the man hitting the woman is viewed as being more offensive. 

Even within a romantic relationship, the husband hitting his wife has a different meaning than the wife hitting her husband. First of all, there is a principle that men should protect women, there is no comparable principle that women should protect men, therefore, the husband hitting his wife violates this principle of gender based protection while the wife hitting her husband doesn’t. The wife hitting the husband is bad in the sense that one human being shouldn’t attack another, but it is not bad in the sense that the wife is violating her duty to protect her husband, because no such duty on the part of women towards men exists, certainly not in the same sense that the duty exists within men towards women. 

Another difference between female violence towards men in romantic relationships and male violence towards women is that there is a presumption of legitimate male authority, that male authority should be upheld and promoted, and male domestic violence against women undermines this legitimacy. This is another special harm that male domestic violence creates that female domestic violence does not. Female domestic violence does not undermine female authority, because there is no legitimacy for female authority in the first place. The societal principle that men should have authority in their relationships is undermined by male domestic violence because male authority is real. 

So, while it may seem reasonable to treat all violence the same, regardless of who commits violence against whom and regardless of the context in which the violence takes places, there are arguments against such a principle of non-discrimination between different forms of violence. It seems legitimate to treat male domestic violence against women as a different kind of offense deserving of a different treatment within the law and an enhanced level of condemnation within the culture.

Laura writes:

This is another special harm that male domestic violence creates that female domestic violence does not. Female domestic violence does not undermine female authority, because there is no legitimacy for female authority in the first place. The societal principle that men should have authority in their relationships is undermined by male domestic violence because male authority is real.

That is a good point.

I also do not have a position on VAWA. I do not know enough about it. I do know that domestic violence laws have to be viewed in the context of divorce law and the breakdown of paternal authority. Domestic violence charges become much more serious when they can be used in family court to deprive a man of his home and children. A man who hits his wife in anger may then be stripped of all paternal rights and his property. The weight of a false allegation and conviction is much more serious in light of divorce and maternal custody. The problem with domestic violence laws seems to be that they are not counterbalanced by social and legal recognition of fatherhood.   

Please follow and like us: