To think the high volume of male abusers means some people find it hard to see when a female is an abuser?

[BraykeDance]

Having experienced first hand fairly extreme abuse from a female, I feel a bit like even in 2023 some people struggle to believe women are capable of extreme psychological, emotional and even physical abuse.

I find often people want to victim blame by implying the man must have deserved it or driven her to it. Amber Heard being a great example of an abuser where I think if she were a man people would see much more clearly that she is an abuser.

I understand men (for reasons I don't understand) have a greater tendency to be abusers in the sense of power and control; but women do this too sometimes.

I found, as someone recovering from such am abuser, that many people minimised it and almost normalised behaviour that would certainly mean prison for a man.

Which made healing as a victim a lot harder. And also made it far easier for the abuser to continue.

AIBU to think we hold women to a different standard and sometimes reframe abusive behaviour or coercive control to fit with the idea of the female victim?

No , the OP is the one telling people what they can and can’t post, calling pp’s trolls, saying she will report them, accusing them of “derailing” her thread, when all they have done is respond to a topic she raised in her OP , and continues to draw attention to/ discuss throughout the thread. I was simply pointing out that if discussing AH is derailing the thread- which she claims is actually about her personal experience as a victim- then perhaps she might herself want to stop posting about AH?
Of course she is free to discuss whatever she wants, but then others are equally free to respond/ disagree to her claims without.being called “trolls”.

The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly similar rates as men has been termed "gender symmetry". The earliest empirical evidence of gender symmetry was presented in the 1975 U.S. National Family Violence Survey carried out by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles on a nationally representative sample of 2,146 "intact families". The survey found 11.6% of women and 12% of men had experienced some kind of intimate partner violence in the last twelve months, also 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" intimate partner violence.

Since 1975, numerous other empirical studies have found evidence of gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. For example, in the United States, the National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 found 18.4% of men and 17.4% of women had experienced minor intimate partner violence, and 5.5% of men and 6.5% of women had experienced severe intimate partner violence.[48][49]

In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" found that in the twelve months prior to the survey, 4.2% of both men and woman between the ages of 16 and 59 had been assaulted by an intimate.[50]

The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 found that from 1994 to 1999, 4% of men and 4% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 22% of men and 28% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 7% of men and 8% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[35]

The 2005 Canadian General Social Survey, looking at the years 1999–2004 found similar data; 4% of men and 3% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 16% of men and 21% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 6% of men and 7% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[36]

The 1975 National Family Violence Survey found that 27.7% of intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by men alone, 22.7% by women alone and 49.5% were bidirectional. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, resulting in almost identical data.[52]

The 1985 National Family Violence Survey found 25.9% of IPV cases perpetrated by men alone, 25.5% by women alone, and 48.6% were bidirectional.[53]

A study conducted in 2007 by Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesse Haileyesus, Monica Swahn, and Linda S. Saltzman, of 11,370 heterosexual U.S. adults aged 18 to 28 found that 24% of all relationships had some violence. Of those relationships, 49.7% of them had reciprocal violence. In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

In 1997, Philip W. Cook conducted a study of 55,000 members of the United States Armed Forces, finding bidirectionality in 60-64% of intimate partner violence cases, as reported by both men and women.[55]

The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 49.7% of intimate partner violence cases were reciprocal and 50.3% were non-reciprocal. When data provided by men only was analyzed, 46.9% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 53.1% as non-reciprocal. When data provided by women only was analyzed, 51.3% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 49.7% as non-reciprocal. The overall data showed 70.7% of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by women only (74.9% when reported by men; 67.7% when reported by women) and 29.3% were perpetrated by men only (25.1% when reported by men; 32.3% when reported by women).[56]

The 2006 thirty-two nation International Dating Violence Study "revealed an overwhelming body of evidence that bidirectional violence is the predominant pattern of perpetration; and this ... indicates that the etiology of ipv is mostly parallel for men and women". The survey found for "any physical violence", a rate of 31.2%, of which 68.6% was bidirectional, 9.9% was perpetrated by men only, and 21.4% by women only. For severe assault, a rate of 10.8% was found, of which 54.8% was bidirectional, 15.7% perpetrated by men only, and 29.4% by women only.[57]

In 2000, John Archer conducted a meta-analysis of eighty-two IPV studies. He found that "women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women."[58] By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice finds that women make up 84% of spouse abuse victims and 86% of victims of abuse by a boyfriend or girlfriend.[59]

From 2010 to 2012, scholars of domestic violence from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. assembled The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge, a research database covering 1700 peer-reviewed studies, the largest of its kind. Among its findings:[63]"

• ^More women (23%) than men (19.3%) have been assaulted at least once in their lifetime.
• Rates of female-perpetrated violence are higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%).
• Male and female IPV are perpetrated from similar motives.
• Studies comparing men and women in the power/control motive have mixed results overall.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#:~:text=The%20theory%20that%20women%20perpetrate,Straus%20and%20Richard%20J.

But nobody is laughing at anyone? Any and all violence should be condemned.

@Sigmama

The op is the one telling people not to post unless they agree with her agenda

This is a thread about victims of female abuse. My "agenda" is to discuss how hard it is for people to be believed when they are victims. As the title says.

I am asking people not to post if they intend to post things such as accusations this is a false thread, I am a man posing as a woman, telling me to go to Reddit, accusing me of bizarre things like fabricating this thread because I'm obsessed with a celebrity, or any other such completely mad inappropriate behavior.

It should be completely obvious that's not appropriate 🙄

My "agenda" is to discuss how hard it is for people to be believed when they are victims

You do realise that your view of AH (female) as a monstrous abuser who victimised poor Jonny (male) is the overwhelmingly dominant, popular, mainstream opinion. She’s been publicly flogged and JD heralded as a hero.

Hardly fits your theory does it? 🙄

You can bet when it all gets to court, she'll pull her 'little bird' act and not get the same punishment a bloke would if my friend had been a woman

Women often receive harsher punishments than men for similar crimes. Women are not supposed to commit crime, what with all the hearts and little bunnies, so when they do, it is deemed that much worse. There are a number of high profile cases where abused Women have snapped or acted in self defence and killed a partner with harsher sentences than men who kill their partners . I believe 'being nagged at' is a common male defence

@Tandora

Let's do you, as you've been thoroughly impressive throughout this thread. The title of the thread is about men's issues being dismissed and never believed. It's a thread full of people sharing their personal experience of that.

What you have contributed in entirety to that are the following posts, and this is literally all you have posted on this thread - absolutely zero from you to discuss the actual issue raised:

Post 1 from you:

YABU . Johnny Depp is an abuser, not a victim. And your example demonstrates how the bias in fact goes the other way. As for female stalking , why do you think the term “bunny boiler” is so popular and the film fatal attraction considered such a classic?

Post 2 from you:

I feel physically ill that you are painting Jonny Depp a victim and participating in the gross theatre of misogyny that was the civil trial and the (social) media frenzy / discussion surrounding it

Post 3 from you:

Of course you should absolutely have support for your experience of abuse- regardless of the gender of your abuser. But thats not what the thread is about is it really? Certainly not how you have presented it. You wanted to provoke a broader (dog whistle) conversation about gender, and I don’t agree with your narrative on that at all (and find it misogynistic and harmful)

Post 4 from you:

So why do you keep bringing up Amber Herd? If you want to post for support about your experience, then how about you focus on your experience, and stop slinging mud

Insert my applause here for the brass nuts on you to accuse ME of keeping bringing up AH when it's literally all you've just done for your entire presence here!

Post 5 from you:

No it’s not. You keep bringing up amber herd, and then when people disagree with you you say it’s a thread about your experience as a victim and therefore no one is allowed to disagree/ challenge/ share their own opinion about the AH/ JD trial. SO manipulative

I think dear, you will find that showing up on a thread, making every post you make about Amber Heard and then saying "who do YOU keep bringing up Amber Heard" when people respond to you is gaslighting. And is itself, very manipulative.

Post 6 from you:

No , the OP is the one telling people what they can and can’t post, calling pp’s trolls, saying she will report them, accusing them of “derailing” her thread, when all they have done is respond to a topic she raised in her OP , and continues to draw attention to/ discuss throughout the thread. I was simply pointing out that if discussing AH is derailing the thread- which she claims is actually about her personal experience as a victim- then perhaps she might herself want to stop posting about AH? Of course she is free to discuss whatever she wants, but then others are equally free to respond/ disagree to her claims without.being called “trolls”

More gaslighting.

You have showed up to this thread with utter disrespect for victims of female abuse, attempted to hijack entirely the entire thing to try and defend a celebrity and accuse me of doing exactly what you yourself are doing, and have then played the victim and acted like it's unreasonable that you have been asked to stop.

The following posters have also done almost nothing on this thread but come to deny the guilt of Amber Heard and be offensive:

@AdamRyan - quotes here include:

I'm pretty sure this poster is a regular anti AH poster who has name changed. If she is, I wouldn't bother because she's just going to go on about how you can "just tell" AH is abusive. Bit disingenuous to start a thread about female abusers to bring this up (again) though

You bought up Amber Heard in the op, brayke. And posted in AIBU. And stated (and continue to state) a loads of unrepresentative twaddle about Depp/Heard as fact. So you hijacked your own thread, which is impressive

You posted because you are obsessed with her, I don't know why. It's a bit weird

@allyjay

If Johnny Depp was the victim and AH the abuser why was an open letter signed by hundreds of DV organisations, academics in the field of abuse/DV, charities and even the woman who coined the term DARVO, in support of Heard and not Depp?

God all these MRAs rallying round poor Johnny

And certainly a few more. If you all want to start an Amber Heard is innocent thread - please go and do that. You are on a thread where VICTIMS of FEMALE ABUSE are discussing how hard it was to cope with people dismissing, minimising or denying it.

It is not the time or the place for you to argue the innocence of Amber Heard. That is not the debate here. I suggest it might be YOU who is obsessed if you've been unable to discern how completely inappropriately you are behaving.

The thing is @Natalya123 , I wasn't really suggesting the "quantity" mattered. I genuinely have no idea how many female abusers there are versus males and I doubt stats are correct anyway as they're reliant on reporting etc.

I have no doubt men are more likely to be abusers (I might be wrong but that's my assumption) as I said in the opening post.

The questions was really more about when people are victims of female abuse (even if it's quite rare) that they really struggle to be heard, believed, treated like it's serious or offered meaningful support.

It seems a lot of the victims here feel that was also their experience.

You are funny. You brought Amber Heard up in your opening post. You've posted 29 posts that don't mention her and 21 that do. And then you call people "trolls" for not agreeing.

You seem extremely defensive that people "don't believe" men which makes me wonder if your partner is often disbelieved about his crazy ex?

That's not actually the case anymore. He was overwhelmingly supported at the time, (during the trial and just after) but since then the narrative has changed to focus on the media circus around it and how she was victimised and merged into the whole #metoo rhetoric.
People have short memories. Amber Heard did a lot of harm to the feminist movement and they needed to reframe it.

The link that was posted upthread where she said 'i didn't punch you I hit you, I was hitting you, I can't remember the exact positioning of my hand but I was hitting you, you weren't punched, stop being such a baby, you always run away when a fight starts, yes I started a physical fight' is damning evidence of what she was like (and videos recorded by HER!)
This wasn't even the worst of the audios, there were many others. The cackling one where she belittles him is worse in terms of emotional abuse. Imagine if a man was recorded saying that? There would be no going back from it, but deep down people think this is kind of ok because shes just a little woman, what harm could she really do? That's what it comes down to. This is part of OP's point, noone takes it seriously.
But people usually don't stay in abusive marriages because they are held hostage by a larger partner, they stay because they are controlled, manipulated, scared, sometimes just beaten down and hopeless. There are a myriad reasons why people stay, and that works both ways.

I can see why OP used this famous example to demonstrate her point.

Generally, women get off much easier. It's a well known fact and has been discussed for decades!

United States

• A 2001 University of Georgia study found substantial disparity in the criminal sentencing that men and women received "after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables". The study found that in US federal courts, "blacks and males are... less likely to get no prison term when that option is available; less likely to receive downward departures [from the guidelines]; and more likely to receive upward adjustments and, conditioned on having a downward departure, receive smaller reductions than whites and females".[9]
• In 2005 Max Schanzenbach found that "increasing the proportion of female judges in a district decreases the sex disparity" in sentencing which he interprets as "evidence of a paternalistic bias among male judges that favors female offenders".[10]
• In 2006 Ann Martin Stacey and Cassia Spohn found that women receive more lenient sentences than men after controlling for presumptive sentence, family responsibilities, offender characteristics, and other legally relevant variables, based on examination of three US district courts.[11]
• In 2012 Sonja B. Starr from University of Michigan Law School found that, controlling for the crime, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted", also based on data from US federal court cases.[12

United Kingdom

• A paper examining gender sentencing disparities in a large samples of assault, burglary and drugs offences found that male offenders are subjected to significantly harsher sentences, even when controlling for mitigating factors and case characteristics. Men were 2.84 times more likely than women to receive custodial sentence for the offence of assault, 1.89 more likely for the offence of burglary, and 2.72 more likely for offence related to drugs. For offences of assault, the gender factor was stronger than any other ‘harm and culpability’ factor with the exception of the ‘with intent to commit serious harm’ factor.[14]

France

• A 2020 study shows that women receive 33% (15 days) shorter prison sentences than men, even when controlling for all observable characteristics – including a very precise description of the crime. When pairs of mixed-gender offender are convicted together the gender gap is even higher - men receive 38.7 additional prison days and 10.7 fewer suspended prison days.

From a procedural point of view, when controlling for the type of crime, men are on average judged after shorter investigations, and are more likely to be sentenced after an accelerated procedure. When taken to court, men are 20% less likely to be discharged (6% vs. 4%). In 2017, 19.9% of convicted men were sentenced to prison, compared to 8.5% of convicted women.

Female judges have less bias that male judges. With decreasing number of female judges in the court the gender gaps in prison and probation sentences widens - prison and probation sentences are lighter for women, while suspended prison sentences are longer. The gender of the prosecutor seem to play no role. [15]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity

What exactly do you need to know about 'female abuse'? Do you perceive it to be different from male abuse? Abuse is abuse. It can come from women or men. But it's much more likely to come from men.

Interestingly, female judges are much harsher on women than men are. It's similar to how women persistently vote against having female bosses and much prefer a man in charge. The sisterhood is pretty much a myth in reality.

Abuse is abuse. It can come from women or men. But it's much more likely to come from men.

The stats say it's actually pretty close but men cause more injury and women are significantly more likely to be the sole abuser.

This plays out all through society, women are often mean to other women, look at AIBU 😂

Apparently it's an evolutionary biology thing (not my area of expertise), but a friend who is very close to this stuff said that our ancestors tended to have a small ingroup of other women (often just family members) who formed part of their identity and were to be protected, and every other woman was seen as outgroup, a potential threat and someone to compete with.

Yet you have missed the MRA comments and don't talk about heard.

But you do you.

@AdamRyan

You are funny. You brought Amber Heard up in your opening post. You've posted 29 posts that don't mention her and 21 that do. And then you call people "trolls" for not agreeing

Do a recount. Almost all my posts about her have been responding to twits like you who have brought her up and come here for the sole purpose of bringing her up.

A victim of female abuse is entitled to bring up Amber Heard. Any time they want. In fact anyone is. It is not a licence for you to make posts like this:

I'm pretty sure this poster is a regular anti AH poster who has name changed. If she is, I wouldn't bother because she's just going to go on about how you can "just tell" AH is abusive. Bit disingenuous to start a thread about female abusers to bring this up (again) though

You bought up Amber Heard in the op, brayke. And posted in AIBU. And stated (and continue to state) a loads of unrepresentative twaddle about Depp/Heard as fact. So you hijacked your own thread, which is impressive

You posted because you are obsessed with her, I don't know why. It's a bit weird

Those posts above ARE what trolling is. You are a troll.

And as for this:

You seem extremely defensive that people "don't believe" men which makes me wonder if your partner is often disbelieved about his crazy ex?

What you're saying here is that the female who abused me and my partner didn't actually do it, and I am lying and she is in fact the victim?

Are you a grown adult?

I thought Amber Heard had admitted to being an abuser and shitting on Depp's bed. 🤢 There's a recording of her attacking him.

@Chickenkeev

What exactly do you need to know about 'female abuse'? Do you perceive it to be different from male abuse? Abuse is abuse. It can come from women or men. But it's much more likely to come from men

That is not the topic of the thread.

Why do you keep posting over and over again that it's more likely to come from men?

Red rag bull springs to mind 😂

🤭

@Natalya123

I thought Amber Heard had admitted to being an abuser and shitting on Depp's bed. 🤢 There's a recording of her attacking him

There is. For some reason her 5 superfans / cranks have showed up on this thread to be abusive to anyone who won't deny the evidence of their eyes on that front!

Amber Turd. 😂 I know it's puerile but I did laugh when I first read that.

Yeah real funny