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??

There's no good reason to publish a stat that you can't evidence.
The whole point of them is to demonstrate the facts around a particular issue.
If the author couldn't find a reliable reference for her assertion, she should have either left the stat out or made it clear that it was 'commonly thought' or some other wording to indicate it wasn't proved.

@InvisibleBuffy I should be interested to hear why you consider the claim that transgender women are more than twice as likely than cis women to experience domestic abuse is unreliable or not evidenced.

The referenced Stonewall report, in the section headed 'Intimate partner violence' on page 10, contains this sentence: "One in five trans people and non-binary people (both 19 per cent) have faced domestic abuse from a partner in the last year. This includes 21 per cent of trans men and 16 per cent
of trans women."

In the preceding paragraph of the same Stonewall report is written: "According to the Office for National Statistics six per cent of women and three per cent of men in the general population have experienced domestic abuse from a partner in the last year." This agrees to the ONS report link that I posted above. Given the proportion of cis women in the population of all women, I think we can take it that six per cent is therefore, to the nearest percentage point, the figure for cis women in the population. And we are comparing 'apples and apples' - same time period etc.

Although the Stonewall report does not include this calculation itself, primary school arithmetic tells us that 16 per cent divided by 6 per cent is 2.7 times, which can be described in words as 'more than twice as likely'. That isn't, for me, a great leap to get to that multiple from those percentages, and I would hardly describe it as 'a made up stat'.

It is demonstrably clear that the chart in the Stonewall report posted above by @OldCroneshows a wider set of categories of abuse than the one described as 'domestic abuse from a partner' in the figures above. If that weren't the case, the figure cited in the text of 11% of LGBT people experiencing domestic abuse would instead be at a level of, say, 59% (highest percentage in the chart). The link between the percantages in the text and table could certainly be better explained, but it is obvious to anyone who spends more than a few seconds analysing it that the 16% for trans women will not include 'using the wrong pronouns' or 'ridiculing their gender identity'.

I have also done what I would always do if I wanted to check a figure, and looked for other research in the same area. There isn't much, but US data also has results for trans women experiencing what they term Intimate Partner Violence at rates very roughly double those of cis women.

The debate is not edified by either misreading data or by using personal experience or views on gender to override an objective view of the facts. Which do very much point to LGBT individuals in general, and homosexual male and trans people in particular, experiencing significantly more domestic abuse and violence than in the wider population. In a civilised society, this is not something we should stand by and see, without trying to address it.

ToBeFair you can play around with these Stonewall ie highly unreliable stats as much as you like.

The fact remains that the claim that ‘trans women’ - who are men - suffer domestic violence, and by this I think we all understand this to mean actual violence, not the ‘literal hurt feelings’ kind where nasty women speak the truth , at higher rates than women (I do not recognise the term ‘cis’) - remains outrageous and highly offensive to real victims of domestic violence. Leave out the LGB people and the trans men, who are women. There is absolutely no way that men who believe themselves to be women suffer violence at the hands of their mostly female partners at a greater rate than women at the hands of men, and shame on you and the author for trying to claim otherwise.

Most likely she wrote the whole book about domestic abuse of women and then got told by her editor she had to include something about trans women and hastily added it in.

I just want to point out that domestic abuse was changed to that term from domestic violence for a reason. I worked in a refuge and some of the abusive behaviour(usually accompanied by violence) was extreme. Women are often surveilled, timed, lied about, gas lit into thinking they are mentally ill, told they are disgusting and don’t deserve to live, professionals are used against them and worst of all their children are used as weapons against them, or their children harmed in front of them whilst they are powerless to stop it. All these and more often cause psychological injury that takes longer to heal from than the often accompanying broken bones. All the while Mr Charming is the “nicest man you could ever meet” and the centre of your social circle.

This is not the same as a woman saying to her transwoman partner that she believes in biological sex.

I just think we need to be clear that domestic abuse is not just violence.

Given the proportion of cis women in the population of all women

They are the population of women. Gender identity isn't sex, women who identify as men aren't actually men. And men who identify as women are men.

I just want to point out that domestic abuse was changed to that term from domestic violence for a reason. I worked in a refuge and some of the abusive behaviour(usually accompanied by violence) was extreme. Women are often surveilled, timed, lied about, gas lit into thinking they are mentally ill, told they are disgusting and don’t deserve to live, professionals are used against them and worst of all their children are used as weapons against them, or their children harmed in front of them whilst they are powerless to stop it. All these and more often cause psychological injury that takes longer to heal from than the often accompanying broken bones. All the while Mr Charming is the “nicest man you could ever meet” and the centre of your social circle.

I'm a survivor of both physical violence and coercive control and I personally don't agree they should be the same category.

I've always felt it was a misstep. "Domestic abuse" is too vague and can be taken to mean nagging and similar. Coercive control is a criminal offence, as is domestic and sexual violence. But physical violence or fear or violence is relevant. I'm sorry but it is, and it's not helpful to put it in a catch all category.

And yes here it can be "misgendering" or ridiculing your gender identity.

Sorry I meant to quote you @Dancerprancer19

The referenced Stonewall report, in the section headed 'Intimate partner violence' on page 10, contains this sentence: "One in five trans people and non-binary people (both 19 per cent) have faced domestic abuse from a partner in the last year. This includes 21 per cent of trans men and 16 per cent of trans women."

Please cite this exact figure where it appears in the ONS report. I'd like to read the definitions. I think it's interesting that the reader isn't directed to the source, but very typical of TRA statistics that we are expected just to accept without question.

‘very typical of TRA statistics that we are expected just to accept without question.’

Which the author has unfortunately done.

No one can possibly believe that men are bigger victims of domestic violence than women, surely.

@Ereshkigalangcleg I think you are addressing this question to me, though you didn't tag me. I am rather confused - where did you get the impression that the figures you quote appear in an ONS report?

If they didn't come from ONS ultimately, where did they come from? Please cite the original source, or stop relying on them for your argument. I take most TRA "statistics" with a huge pinch of salt, from my personal experience.

And I quoted you. Not everyone tags everyone all the time here.

"The referenced Stonewall report, in the section headed 'Intimate partner violence' on page 10, contains this sentence: "One in five trans people and non-binary people (both 19 per cent) have faced domestic abuse from a partner in the last year. This includes 21 per cent of trans men and 16 percent of trans women." And the Stonewall report, to which there is a link upthread, is a write-up of research done by YouGov, all of which is very clearly explained in the Stonewall report, including the research methodollogy. Could you let me know how I could have been clearer in my reference to the original source?

@ToBeFair

Could you link to the precise number of "trans women" in the study as I can't find that? It seems that 16% of an unknown number of male "trans" people of the 14% of survey participants who identify as "trans", self identify as having been victims of "domestic abuse" in the past year, which as noted by pp is generally a catch all term for any kind of physical or emotional abuse. What definition are they using for "domestic abuse", I can't see that anywhere?

Having read their methodology. For some reason they don't give the numbers. They say that 51% of trans people (so presumably including the 16% of males identifying as women who reported being the victim of "domestic abuse") reported having their gender identity ridiculed. But no number for how many MTF transgender people this was. It could have been 600 or it could have been 1.

Also the breakdown is for all LGBT people. It is impossible to tell how many "trans" people were the victims of more serious abuse as it's all lumped under the catch all category of "domestic abuse" and with the exception of the "ridiculing gender identity" category, the domestic abuse data isn't broken down into L, G, B and T, even less into "trans women" and "trans men".

This is interesting. See page 57. It's a breakdown of the type of domestic abuse people who identified as transgender had experienced in the last year. It's from the 2018 LGBT survey of 108,100 responses, so a bigger sample.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b3b2d1eed915d33e245fbe3/LGBT-survey-research-report.pdf

We can see that the "trans woman" cohort reported 6.1% threatened with violence in the past year, 4.2% physical harassment or violence, and 2.1% sexual harassment or violence. This is out of 3,630 people with that identity.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b3b2d1eed915d33e245fbe3/LGBT-survey-research-report.pdf

Early on in this report the authors point out that the respondents are self selecting and that this will have a significant impact on the resulting data

The dataset obtained from the survey represents a self-selected sample and is not representative of all LGBT people in the UK.

and

Due to the lack of data on the LGBT population, it was not possible to gross the survey findings to be representative of all LGBT people, nor was it possible to weight the data, for example for non-response, as it was not based on a sample. Similarly, confidence intervals and statistical testing were not appropriate because the data was not based on a representative sample.

Non-response here refers to the (possibly large) cohort of LGBT people who may not be affected by the issues being investigated and so are not motivated to take part. It is impossible to know how large this group is from the dataset but adding them back into the group will only reduce the headline prevalence of e.g. physical harassment.

It would probably be sensible to treat the results of this survey as upper limits with the actual values likely being lower.

.... making it one of the largest collections of empirical evidence from this group to date

The authors make it clear - the survey is empirical, it does not reflect the experience of the community as a whole

Conversely, this study

Domestic abuse victim characteristics, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

appears to be based on crime that has been reported to police.

The percentages seem to be generated by comparing reported crime to the estimated total number of men or women in the 16-59 age range for the entire UK population.

The bar of domestic violence being reported to police is high. The figures from this report are likely to significantly underestimate rates of domestic violence and so should be considered as a lower limit.

This document describes the limitations of both ONS datasets, the CSEW and the police reports.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/methodologies/domesticabuseqmi

Chief was that the CSEW has not been conducted robustly since the pandemic.