The myth about lesbians and rates of domestic abuse

[PimmsnLemonade]

This has just come up in another thread and is a favourite of the TRAs/MRAs to deflect from male violence and to argue that female-only safe spaces don't matter because "you still let those awful abusive lesbians in".

This is the research from which they get their 'evidence' - www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181867.pdf It's on page 30 and there are two paragraphs to it, the second of which they never seem to have got round to reading:

The survey found that same-sex cohabitants reported significantly more intimate partner violence than did opposite-sex cohabitants. Among women, 39.2 percent of the same-sex cohabitants and 21.7 percent of the opposite sex cohabitants reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked by a marital/cohabiting partner at some time in their lifetime. Among men, the comparable figures are 23.1 percent and 7.4 percent (exhibit 8).

At first glance, these findings suggest that both male and female same-sex couples experience more intimate partner violence than do opposite sex couples. However, a comparison of intimate partner victimization rates among same-sex and opposite-sex cohabitants by perpetrator gender produced some interesting findings: 30.4 percent of same-sex cohabiting women reported being victimized by a male partner, whereas 11.4 percent reported being victimized by a female partner. Thus, same-sex cohabiting women were nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than by a female partner. Moreover, opposite-sex cohabiting women were nearly twice as likely to report being victimized by a male partner than were same-sex cohabiting women by a female partner(20.3 percent and 11.4 percent).

Of course, as more and more heterosexual males 'become' lesbians it will become increasingly difficult to disprove these statements as it will be reported and recorded as abuse committed by women against women.

Yeah that claim is absolutely ridiculous. And yes, the rates of violence among 'lesbians' will rise now that male people are apparently lesbians.

MRAs love to try and make out women are just as violent (or more violent. Another thing thats regularly posted by them is that ridiculous study where 'nagging' apparently was domestic violence, which they use to claim men suffer more.

And just for the sake of context,AllDayBreakfastis a male poster who has referred to women as "jealous cat ladies" on another thread.

FFS, it was a tongue in cheek comment on a thread where posters were telling the OP to dump her partner who was suffering from depression. Had it been the other way around I feel there would have been much more compassion shown and I was basically telling her to he wary of taking the advice of people who have no personal investment in the situation and may be less than positive about men in general.

Talking of 'nagging', I've watched my mother belittle and bully my father for most of my life. He is the gentlest man you could imagine and despite always trying to avoid confrontation she will find something to make his life a misery over every single time. I honestly fear for his health in the long run and my sister won't even sprek to my mum now because of it - which is apparently his fault too now.

So yeah, I don't think 'nagging' should be dismissed any more than persistent abusive/critical remarks from a male partner.

All the lesbophobia on these boards depresses me. I’ve never really seen anything that could be called transphobia, but I’ve seen plenty of lesbophobia. Considering all the links HQ are going to to insure transpeople feel safe reading on here, I don’t see the same consideration being extended to people like me, and this is one of the nicer corners of the Internet.

^This

I also find it lesbophobic when people imply bi women only date other women because men are have been abusive to them in the past. The reasoning behind that is that there must be a good reason why a woman would choose another woman over a man, it is very regressive lesbophobic reasoning in my opinion. I notice there is rarely the reasoning that many bi women may end up with men due to not wanting to be subjected to the lesbophobia that comes with being in a relationship with a woman. Instead it always starts from the premise that there must be a good reason for a woman to reject males.

I also think it is worth pointing out that for sometime TA’s have been trying to smear mumsnet as homophobic. I wouldn’t be surprised if TA’s make lesbophobic comments here to try and prove their argument that mumsnet is lesbophobic.

I absolutely didn’t mean to imply that lesbians are only lesbians because they have been “put off men”: I knew that was a risk in my post and I tried hard to word it to avoid it. Clearly you don’t need an explanation for women being in relationships with women. They just fancy them! But when you’ve got data suggesting that women in relationships with women are more likely than exclusively heterosexual women to have experienced abuse from a man then that does need an explanation and bisexual abuse victims avoiding future relationships with men seems like one plausible hypothesis.

Another explanation would be that women who are now in relationships with women are more likely to recognise past abuse, which would be very depressing because it would imply a lot of unrecognised heterosexual abuse.

Now that lesbians can have penises (and associated male pattern abuse) who will be able to collate meaningful statistics?
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Perhaps we could get the authors of the study to have a look at how their results are being used in political arguments and, if they are as surprised and alarmed as I suspect they will be, issue some kind of clarification statement?

(Solidarity, always, Hotrocker)

I'm not going to try and sort out what I believe or don't believe about this, but I did just try a Google search on violence in same sex relationships and got lots of results. So whether it's true or not, people evidently have a lot to say about it.

I'd be willing to believe that once a man gets to the point of hitting a woman, he's going to do some serious harm, whereas a woman who's angry with her same-sex partner might end up with violence as a result of frustration, but without an intent to cause a bad injury. But that's all speculation.

Another explanation would be that women who are now in relationships with women are more likely to recognise past abuse, which would be very depressing because it would imply a lot of unrecognised heterosexual abuse.

That is a much more likely explanation in my opinion. Most lesbians have had previous relationships with males, due to social pressure etc. Lesbian/bi women who have had previous relationships with men will be able to compare two different types of relationship, which will contain very different power dynamics, and so it is likely they will be able to recognise the abuse more easily in their previous relationships with males. Where as women who have only had relationships with males will not be able to compare the two, and if certain abusive behaviours are considered a ‘normal’ part of het relationships; with the popularity of 50 shades of Grey etc, and males watching extreme p0rn, it does seem to suggest abusive behaviours are becoming accepted as normal parts of het relationships. Then understandably, they will not be able to identify abuse by their male partners as readily, as those who can compare the difference between their relationships with men and women.

Of course academia is male dominated if there is a way they can set up studies etc, in order to get the results they want, so they can claim women (and particularly lesbians) are as abusive or violent as men they will.