Females initiate some abuse
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 11/09/2007
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Men are not always necessarily the initiators of domestic violence.
A recent study has shown that men and women commit acts of domestic violence at similar rates.
"Domestic violence is a human problem, not a gender problem," said Marc Angelucci, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Coalition of Free Men. "But unfortunately it has been misframed as a gender problem for decades by the media and by gender-driven political ideologies."
Martin Fiebert, a psychology professor at California State University, has analyzed more than 200 of these studies.
"I put together an annotated bibliography dealing with male victimization," Fiebert said. "We looked at about 968 women and asked them if they initiated any of these acts. A certain percent, something like 29 percent, admitted to initiating partner aggression over a five-year period."
These results are not so hard to believe by some.
"I think people who have been abused in the past might have a tendency to commit it themselves," said Lindsay Robertson, a senior in the College of Liberal Arts and president of the National Organization for Women at Purdue. "It's a learned behavior."
"I'm not surprised at all by the study," Angelucci said. "Research has confirmed the same thing since 1975, and today about 200 studies, virtually all sociological research, confirms the same thing."
These rates can be misinterpreted through the media. This could be a result of men being ashamed to be open about it.
"If these things are occurring against men, constructions of masculinity might restrict them from reporting violence from a woman," Robertson said.
"Men are less likely than women to report it; they tend to keep it private. They face social stigmas and feel ashamed. They're afraid of being falsely arrested or losing custody of their children," Angelucci said. "And they just haven't had the 40 years of outreach and services women have had. That is changing, and the number of men reporting it is increasing, but not fast enough."
The fact that these rates are constantly shown from only one side is frustrating in itself, and Angelucci hopes that changes.
"It's time for the media and academia to address this crime honestly and in its entirety, looking at sociological research instead of just crime data.
"Male victims and their children have been neglected and left with no outreach and few services for too long," he said. "People are being hurt by this."