Another letdown - Enough

[Ineedamanicure]

Reading Enough by Harriet Johnson - a difficult but informative read till I got to this bit. A book about male violence against women which tells us that actually males are the biggest victims. No evidence supplied of this wild claim. Lazy research most likely based on Stonewall figures - do these women not hear themselves??

When you go to reference 11, what does it say?

What is on the next page?

"The abuse......."

Probably includes misgendering and their wives saying no.

As most trans women are in heterosexual relationships (ie with women), it seems highly unlikely that they are more likely to experience domestic abuse than women in relationships with men. Does the writer have no curiosity about this implausible statistic?

I too would like to know what reference 11 says.

Is it something about the ‘literal violence’?

Other side of that page.

And yes. Evidence from Stonewall.

You’d think the author would have interrogated this surprising statistic - as you say RoyalCorgi, most of these individuals are in relationships with women so it seems highly highly unlikely. Unless of course you are expanding your definition of domestic abuse to misgendering and refusing to go along with your husbands delusions?

I have no doubt there are trans identified males in domestic abuse situations but to suggest they are suffering at twice the rate of actual women is outrageous.

Further on in the book we are told that 85% of trans women have been sexually harassed in the street by men. I think the writer needs to learn something about interrogating stats rather than just obediently copying and pasting them into her draft.

Please leave a thorough review, if you don't feel you've wasted enough time on this book.

How can the author square the tw assertion with the stats on dv suffered by disabled and homeless women?

I will. And I know -clearly not much critical thinking gone on here. Good writers know not to blindly accept the stats they’re given. Such a wasted opportunity.

I think this is the report.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/sites/default/files/lgbt_in_britain_home_and_communities.pdf

The paragraph underneath says:

• A study of homeless women in 2018 found that experience of previous domestic violence was 'near-universal' for homeless women. As a resu many women avoided seeking help from homelessness services that were mixed.....

I'm going to go with "mixed sex". Weird that the writer notes this but not the contradiction re trans women.

Interesting. The section of that report says that 16% of trans women have faced domestic abuse (and 21% of trans men).
A quick google indicates that 1 in 4 women faces domestic abuse, so 25% of all women.
Even at its most generous rounding up interpretation, 16% isn't double of 25%
Seems to be a made up stat.

Section where it says 16%.
And the figures for 1 in 4 women is from:
https://www.ncdv.org.uk/domestic-abuse-statistics-uk/

I know there will be posters who'll accuse us of nitpicking on this, but these claims are used to make it harder for women to claim female-only support.
As seen in the current Edinburgh Rape Crisus case, women are being excluded from much needed support and false statistics like this are what people use to justify it.

How infuriating.

2 women per week killed by their partner or former partner- surely if TW were suffering worse than that, we would know about it?

Or course being actually killed is the extreme end of domestic abuse, but as an overall pattern wouldn’t we expect to see huge numbers of TW being killed by their partners if they really were at greater risk than women?

OldCrone Thanks for the graph. It shows that Stonewall's definition of domestic abuse includes "Their partner repeatedly belittled them to the extent that they felt worthless" and "Their partner ridiculed their trans identity".

It's not nice being repeatedly belittled, but a) this is very subjective and b) it is hardly in the same category as repeated physical violence. As for having your trans identity ridiculed, I think calling that domestic abuse is a stretch.

How insulting to victims of domestic violence, women who are beaten and raped by their male partners, to be categorised with delusional men whose wife tells them they’re not really a woman just because they’re wearing a dress and that no, their children don’t have two mothers now. That’s not domestic abuse, it’s telling the truth.

⬆️ definitely put that in your review!

There is the footage online somewhere of the meeting held by the Scots govt on women's refuges where evidence was given that it was extremely rare for a male with a TQ+ identity to be in physical danger of death or injury at the point they entered a refuge, where it was common for the women they took in.

The knowledge that 'abuse' has been stretched thin enough to cover 'my wife saying things like the name she married me under' or 'refusing to kowtow to my pronoun choices' does serious damage to my ability to take the risks to male people with TQ+ identities seriously, they have made their own claims very questionable and this may well hide real issues. Another major turn off is the repetitive use of hackneyed and long since disproved phrases that are nothing more than virtue signals, such as yes, the writer absolutely believes that things are much much worse for men than women (and look what a good girl she is saying so.) Male ego patting helps no one.

I think it might be helpful if the OP and other commentators on this thread took the OP's own sage advice and applied some critical thinking.

If you look at the Stonewall report, the 19% for trans people clearly refers to the level of domestic abuse in the last year. The 25% figure for women quoted above from @InvisibleBuffy's 'quick google' is the level of domestic abuse of women in the general population in their lifetime. So obviously 'apples and oranges': in the last year and in their lifetime are clearly extremely different measurement periods.

The correct figure for the level of domestic abuse for women altogether is give in the following Office for National Statistics link and is a prevalence rate in the last year of 5.7%, the figure (rounded up to 0 dp), quoted in the Stonewall report and derived from Crime Survey results, rather than from police-reported crime:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/domesticabusevictimcharacteristicsenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023

The most cursory reading of the Stonewall chart also shows that the 19% figure for domestic abuse for trans people includes comparable categories to the ONS classiification, rather than 'misgendering' and so on.

Is comparing abuse of transpeople and women odd?

Shouldn't the sex and gender breakdown be used

It's just from memory domestic violence amongst male gay couples was the largest- and if many transgender couples are sexually essentially 2 biological males then the comparison should be to gay couples ?

It isn't a competition. It isn't a case that we have to pick the winner.

It's the case that both groups have their own issues and needs, which should be met.

The main issue for women is that they need the option of care, spaces and services where males of any identity are not present. Without evidence being leveraged to try and justify having stripped this from them, because the TQ+ lobby did not want them to have it.

No competition I agree

but understanding what's closest might help understand what the causes and solutions might be

And comparing only a subset of the available data on domestic violence feels like "an agenda " - not real concern

it could be misleading or used to justify actions of dubious merit

The 19% refers to all trans people in the survey, not trans women who were lower.
Unsurprisingly, trans men reported higher rates of abuse than trans women while matches most sex-differentiated stats on DV.
The 'double' claim certainly appears nowhere in the paper linked as a reference.
We can argue numbers and measurements until the cows come home, but the fact is that number isn't backed up anywhere in The documentation she gives.
if an author publishes a statistic, she does have a responsibility to make sure that she puts an accurate reference to it.
And I'll agree that we're not comparing apples with apples. A large percentage of the 'abuse' in the doc was about misgendering, whereas that isn't what most women would consider domestic abuse.
The author made a huge claim, assuming that no one would look closer.
And as mentioned, it does matter. False and inaccurate claims are being made in order to reduce or restrict services for women. That is a big deal and deserves to be challenged.