Study questions whether judgements of partner abuse are ‘rose-tinted’ towards women

"The results showed that bidirectional violence is the most common pattern of violence, with psychological violence being the most reported type of bidirectional violence"

In other words, the most common form of two-way “violence” they could find was a couple shouting at each other?

“Men were more likely (d = .15) to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women.”

And the most common form of one-way violence was the man beating up the woman. Whilst the second most common form of one-way violence was the man beating up his boyfriend/husband.

Apologies, I haven’t read the articles and might not understand them properly if I did, but isn’t it important to distinguish male physical violence against females from other types of abuse because it’s just (on average) surely much more dangerous? Do these researchers take that into account?

Makes me think of those defences (are they still a thing?) to murder that “I just lost my mind, I was so angry, I wasn’t responsible for my actions” etc - those are in reality mostly open to male perpetrators of violence against women because it’s (again, on average etc ) so much more difficult for a female perpetrator to do the same damage with her bare hands, however angry she is.

It also often fails to consider acts of sexual violence/coercion in relationships.

Most research and official figures in the last couple of decades collapses all "domestic abuse" into one category which includes nagging, coercive control and strangling your wife because you saw her with another man.

Some of the references https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.126.5.651

Anyone care to translate the last sentence into English "Men were more likely (d = .15) to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women. The findings partially support previous claims that different methods of measurement produce conflicting results, but there was also evidence that the sample was an important moderator of effect size. Continuous models showed that younger aged dating samples and a lower proportion of physically aggressive males predicted effect sizes in the female direction"

So if this is to be believed you can get the results you want by changing what you measure

and in this one https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1037/1089-2680.8.4.291
"Direct, especially physical, aggression was more common in males and females at all ages sampled, was consistent across cultures, and occurred from early childhood on, showing a peak between 20 and 30 years. Anger showed no sex differences. Higher female indirect aggression was limited to later childhood and adolescence and varied with method of measurement. The overall pattern indicated males’ greater use of costly methods of aggression rather than a threshold difference in anger."

My emphasis - but yes words are literal violence now.

Without looking closely about what they did it's hard to comment.

I would say - I know of a fair number of domestic relationships among people who have emotional, behavioural, mental health, and drug issues where it certainly seems like both partners are wholly inappropriate in all kinds of different ways. They are like partners in dysfunction, and violence is part of that.

I'm not sure if these are relationships that people usually think of as being "abusive" but they are in many ways. The partners are also often quite interdependent, especially in terms of accessing their addictions.

'However, contemporary reviews show that both partners engaging in violence is the most common form of IPV/A.'

Really? That doesn't sound right, so let's be having all the 'contemporary reviews' that show this mutual combat version of DV.
Like journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/15248380231193440 which says in the abstract?[full disclosure:I haven't read the whole article yet]
' Over the years, the literature has shown that most violence is not unidirectional and perpetrated by men against women but rather bidirectional'
Again, really?
'42 empirical studies were included. The results showed that bidirectional violence is the most common pattern of violence, with psychological violence being the most reported type of bidirectional violence' [my emphasis]
So they included 'psychological violence' in studies of violence, 'because we all know that women's words are literal violence™️' as Hoardasurass points out - nice one, H.

Psychological abuse, bullying, controlling behaviour etc. is abusive, whether carried out by men or women, and is wrong.
But if you google 'violence', the first definition that comes up is the most common understanding of the word:
behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something [my emphasis].

Both articles are using the word 'violence' to cover two related but different behaviours. That's not very academically rigorous, is it? It's the kind of thing you'd get pulled up on in an undergrad essay.

It suggests an agenda, and warping words, and the facts they describe, to fit the agenda. Sounds familiar...

From what I've seen that's quite common in this field, there has been a concerted effort to "de-gender" it for years.

The full study is quite interesting but I wonder just how impartial they were in presenting the scenarios.

They rely a lot on this review study that suggested abuse is biderectional journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/15248380231193440

It states "The results showed that bidirectional violence is the most common pattern of violence, with psychological violence being the most reported type of bidirectional violence"

I dont have time today to look at this in detail but at first glance it looks like they took a study based on psychological abuse and then based their research on physical abuse.

I'd like to see the raw data on this and exactly what they claim as mutual violence.
I'm going to guess that them men use their fists and women their words, because we all know that women's words are literal violence™️

I find is very odd that a research study with an explicit social agenda has received funding. I'd like to know which funding body was behind it.

It's one thing to engage debate or question received wisdoms: quite another to speak of wishing to 'shift' attitudes.