DV Research

DV is not 'gendered' – both men & women are guilty

The extent to which feminists deny the true facts of DV is apparent from how easy it is to find the balanced research in a quick internet search.  My first source of evidence was good-old Wikipedia, which (in 2016) revealed the following:

• A 2005 study by Hamel reports that "men and women physically and emotionally abuse each other at equal rates

• physical abuse in domestic relationships is nearly always preceded and accompanied by psychological abuse.... psychological aggression by one partner is the most reliable predictor of the other partner's likelihood of first exhibiting physical aggression (translation: most violence is a reaction to emotional aggression from the other partner)

• A 2007 study of Spanish college students aged 18–27 found that psychological aggression (as measured by the Conflict Tactics Scale) is so pervasive in dating relationships that it can be regarded as a normalized element of dating, and that women are substantially more likely to exhibit psychological aggression.  Similar findings have been reported in other studies.  Straus et al. found that female intimate partners in heterosexual relationships were more likely than males to use psychological aggression, including threats to hit or throw an object.

• In 1996, the National Clearinghouse on Family Violence, for Health Canada, reported that 39% of married women or common-law wives suffered emotional abuse by husbands/partners; and a 1995 survey of women 15 and over 36-43% reported emotional abuse during childhood or adolescence, and 39% experienced emotional abuse in marriage/dating; this report does not address boys or men suffering emotional abuse.

• In the UK, a BBC radio documentary on domestic abuse, including emotional maltreatment, reports that 20% of men and 30% of women have been abused by a spouse or other intimate partner.

Consistent with this initial research, according to the world’s largest, rigorously evidence-based database (drawing from 1,700 peer-reviewed studies) from the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge (PASK), rates of female-perpetrated violence are actually higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%), 80% of people have perpetrated some kind of emotional abuse (roughly equal by gender), 58% of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) was bi-directional (i.e. provoking each other) and – contrary to common claims – twice as many females as males were responsible for uni-directional IPV (28% vs 14%).  These studies show mixed findings on motives — not dominated by the feminist narrative of patriarchal male control.

Similarly, this article reports that in Western countries, the reality of DV heterosexual perpetration is 50% bidirectional, 35% female unidirectional (with more female perpetrators in more gender-equal countries), and 15% male unidirectional, with higher levels of DV in young unmarried couples and lesbian relationships.  Women are found to initiate and retaliate more than men with physical violence – often with weapons – and men don’t hit back because they were raised not to hit girls, yet are consistently treated as perpetrators by police and receive little or no assistance from gender-biased DV-support organisations (with minimal or no shelters for men in Australia, the UK, USA or Canada, as support for men is actively opposed by feminists groups there and in Spain).

Multiple other studies, such as the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, have found that women are just as likely or more likely to commit DV as men.

In the US, surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found men suffer the majority (53%) of intimate partner physical violence (which includes slapping, pushing, and shoving) and also experience about 40% of more-severe violence, like being beaten, burned, choked, kicked, slammed with a heavy object, or hit with a fist.  See here for a review of research showing similar patterns in the US.  This article discusses the lifetime toll on child victims of maternal abuse and notes "women comprise 56% of all abusers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  And of the various kinds of abuse, which include physical and sexual, the most common form is psychological".  In the 2015 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 34% of men & 36% of women reported lifetime IPV that encompassed any-contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking (with a similarly equal split for male/female victims over the past year), whilst 15% of men vs 21% of women reported severe physical lifetime IPV victimization (e.g. hair-pulling, hit with fists, beating, burning, choking).

Canada's 5-yearly General Social Survey done in 2014 found women were far more likely to threaten to or actually hit/thump/slap, kick or bite their partner, or throw something at him and just as likely to exhibit highly controlling behaviours, whilst another American spousal violence survey found that while women were more often called names or prevented access to family income, they were more likely to try to control their male partner's movements and limit their contact with friends, family & children (see "parental alienation").

In the UK, data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims between 2004-05 and 2008-09 (6% of all women & 4% of all men in each year), with almost half involving severe force.  At that time and still in in 2017, crime surveys estimated that about 1-in-4 women and 1-in-6 men aged under 59 had experienced some form of domestic abuse since they were 16 (i.e. men comprising more than 1-in-3 of all DV victims), whilst in 2019 research, a third of men said they'd been the victim of coercive, controlling behaviour, and half of both men & women had experienced some form of bullying or controlling behaviour by their partner, but of those abused, a third of women and almost half of men did nothing about it (this BBC video says it's estimated that only 10% of men report the abuse they're subjected to).  

The fact that men are less likely to report abuse suggests a degree of denial (which is reinforced by a culture claiming only women are victims), which may indicate actual abuse of men is even more common than this research reports.  2011-12 Crime Survey data for England & Wales shows that among married couples, men are actually more likely to suffer non-sexual abuse than women, but the risks of abuse are much higher for single & separated people, especially for women.  The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey 2019/20 states that just 5% of male victims of partner abuse had a male perpetrator and "abusive partners were overwhelmingly of the opposite gender".  This article says that Police reports of UK domestic attacks by women more than tripled in the decade to 2018, and it also reveals the lack of support for men subjected to controlling behaviour and the severe violence arising from 82% of women abusers using weapons in their assaults (versus 25% of men).  This lack of support in turn further discourages men from reporting abuse and can lead to them losing their lives.  Coercive, controlling abuse by a woman – which led to her being the first UK woman to be convicted and jailed for such behaviour – is also depicted in a BBC documentary, "Abused by my Girlfriend" (see also this brief interview), with the aim of reducing barriers to the extreme under-reporting of DV suffered by men (see more on this issue below).  You can also hear more voices from male victims of coercive control here, and watch (in full through the harrowing documentary, "My Wife, My Abuser" on Channel-5 or Netflix in the UK) or read about the British man whose wife subjected him to violence and abuse over 20 years that the judge said was, "the worst incidence of controlling and coercive behaviour I have seen”.

Similarly in Australia, the "1IN3" research & campaign group (& this article) report that 1-in-3 men experience violence by their current partner (94% of these partners being female) and 37% of men have experienced emotional abuse, whilst the Australian Women's group ANROWS' analysis of ABS 2012 survey data (see summary statistics in "DV & deaths & suicides.xls", but note I cannot reconcile the data I've used from the ANROWS report with that in the original ABS source tables) indicates women commit 23% of all physical & sexual assaults by known perpetrators (excluding threats & emotional/verbal abuse, which are perpetrated more by women) and 38% of all such assaults are against men (i.e. more than 1-in-3), of which 38% (=14.6/38) are by women.  Excluding sexual assaults (79% of which are men against women), 46% of all physical assaults are against men, of which 30% are by men & 16% by women.  Adding to this the 10% of (non-sexual) assaults that are female-female, women commit 26% of all non-sexual physical assaults, which is 2.8 times less than those by men (as emphasised in the Victorian Royal Commission report discussed here).  But despite media claims of an "epidemic" of violence against women, only 1% of Australian women are physically assaulted by their partner or ex-partner each year, with rates of physical violence for both men and women declining by almost 40% over the 17 years to 2022, and rates of sexual assaults and DV killings also declining substantially over the long term.  Moreover – contrary to feminist propaganda throughout mainstream media and government campaigns – only 1% of family violence can be characterised as a violent man severely beating up his partner in order to control her.

Supposedly "comprehensive analysis" by the Australian Government's Institute of Health & Welfare (AIHW) – drawing from multiple data sources (including the ABS) to cover physical violence, emotional abuse and sexual assault – was released for the first time on 28 February 2018 (about 2 years after I did the first draft of this web page & analysis).  The AIHW web page for the subsequent 2019 report indicates 1 woman was killed every 9 days and 1 man every 29 days by a partner between 2014–15 and 2015–16, but the report itself is not about killings and the data presented on physical & sexual violence by partners is not clearly split out, which makes it difficult to compare just physical violence by men or women because sexual violence against women is much more common.  For people's reported experience since age 15, 1 in 6 (17%, or 1.6 million) women and 1 in 16 (6.1%, or 548,000) men had experienced "physical and/or sexual violence from a current or previous cohabiting partner", whilst 1 in 5 (18%, or 1.7 million) women and 1 in 20 (4.7%, or 429,000) men have "experienced sexual violence" (by anyone, apparently), so the number of women or men experiencing just physical violence from a cohabiting partner is quite unclear.  Why would anyone concerned about these issues not want to dissect this data to shine a clearer light on the facts?!  It also reports that 1 in 4 (23%, or 2.2 million) women and 1 in 6 (16%, or 1.4 million) men have experienced emotional abuse from a current or previous partner.  ABS surveys indicate 20% of women but only 5% of men experiencing DV report it to Police.

Most of the statistics above, and in much other reporting, are unnecessarily simplified and distorted by focussing on whether someone has ever experienced domestic violence of any kind at all.  Also reporting is often exclusively focussed on male perpetrators and female victims, even when both sets of data are available.  This is done deliberately to exaggerate the impression of how pervasive violence against women supposedly is (perhaps to attract supporters & money to their cause), even when the underlying survey data (in this US study) reveals that women more often commit violence against men, and the vast majority (almost 90%) of respondents say the violence occurred "rarely" (rather than "sometimes" or "often") and/or that it was mild (e.g. pushing) — with mild incidents being 7 times more common than severe incidents (as only 3.1% of females and 2.2% of males admit to severe violence).

In 2025, a survey of 8,503 people aged 16 or over published in the Medical Journal of Australia, found 48.4% of women and 40.4% of men had experienced intimate partner violence (yet the authors insisted on concluding that "women are significantly more likely than men to experience any intimate partner violence").  Of those who had experienced IPV, 43-50% were male for the categories of physical intimate partner violence and psychological violence, and specifically being kicked, bitten or hit with a fist or object, being attacked or threatened with a knife, gun or other weapon, being harassed by phone, text, email or social media, or being told, or having your family & friends told that you're crazy, and/or being blocked from seeing or talking to them.

Finally, this large meta study (combining the analysis of multiple studies, to give an aggregate sample size of 371,600) shows near gender symmetry in IPV perpetration – "demonstrat(ing) that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners" – with the highest incidence apparently occurring in lesbian relationships and the lowest between homosexual men.  Data for the UK, Australia, Sweden & the US shows the same pattern for divorce (and also shows mothers acting alone are most likely to abuse children):

• Lesbian couples: DV rate = 44%; divorce rate = 40–50%

• Heterosexual couples: DV rate = 32-35%; divorce rate = 30–35%

• Gay male couples: DV rate = 22%; divorce rate = 10–15%

More research references with similar findings to above can be found here and in this open letter to the CEO of WA Relationships Australia.

Furthermore, the evidence on the motives & initiation of aggression, and especially of women being twice as likely as men to be a sole aggressor (in "uni-directional violence"), clearly doesn't support the argument sometimes made by feminists that women are generally only violent in self-defence.  Moreover, the attached chart from research on Men's Experience with Partner Aggression shows that in violence initiated by women, men generally avoid retaliation, yet like many abused women, some men will endure abuse for a long time without leaving, for reasons this therapist explains, with number one being that because of their prior experience (or lack of), they don’t realise the way they're being treated is abusive.  This tendency would also be reinforced by a feminist-driven culture that denies the existence of male victims.

Now, if there were no "like for like" self-selection of partners, the probability of any man being with a woman prone to emotionally abusing him would still be quite high, at around 30-40% (according to the statistics above), but given people absolutely are attracted to others like themselves (& their parents) – because of the "schemas" they develop in childhood & then continue to reinforce through life (see more here or in this book about such "life traps") – it is more likely than not that a man who is prone to committing physical violence will partner with a woman of similarly low emotional maturity (or "differentiation") who is highly likely to commit the emotional abuse that will trigger his violence (just as children who have suffered frequent family violence commonly end up behaving similarly as adults &/or picking similar partners).  Tragically, this is sometimes truly "fatal attraction".

Reasons for DV: Lies, damned lies and feminist statistics
(& false ideology on the causes of violence)

Contrary to many myths constantly propagated by feminists, the picture of domestic violence going both ways is also confirmed by a 2014 study of young British adults (of average age 24, reported here, here & here), which found that not only were women more likely than men to be verbally and physically aggressive to their partners (including beating up, kicking, and threatening to use a weapon), but also, not surprisingly for most husbands, women showed a higher prevalence of controlling behavior — such as checking up on partners and manipulating/preventing them from seeing certain friends (or being "right" about all household matters), along with serious levels of threats & intimidation — and this was found to significantly predict physical aggression.  i.e. This study found domestic violence is most often caused by women's desire to control their partner, rather than by patriarchal values.  This article presents 71 potential reasons for DV (only one of which includes patriarchal beliefs).

UK researcher Lee Marks has also found that men are more likely than women to report being controlled & bullied in a variety of ways, including being monitored or spied on in their activities and spending, being deprived of food, or having property destroyed and messages/emails deleted and communication devices kept from them.  Other research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies shows fathers are significantly more likely than mothers to feel controlled and coerced, especially after separation or if there's been no physical violence — despite, or perhaps because mothers are more likely to be fearful (see Fig. 3.14 & following tables).  Consistent with this, research shows that partners with insecure attachment styles – especially the anxious kind (who are more likely to be female) – are much better predictors and explainers of the underlying cause of domestic violence.  Yet the latest feminist campaigns try to link the killing of women to patriarchal control motives, despite the research not supporting that (see more here).

Drug & alcohol use are also major contributors to DV.  A survey of 5,118 Australians found that of the DV incidents reported to police, 41% of IPV and 33% of Family Violence were alcohol-related, and these IPV incidents were 1.45 & 1.85 times more likely to involve alcohol and drugs respectively than unreported incidents (implying that drug & alcohol-affected incidents tend to be more severe), whilst the other family violence incidents reported to police (e.g. involving children) were not more likely to involve alcohol, but were significantly more likely to involve drugs.  The study also concluded, "there were no significant differences in the proportion of male and female respondents classified as engaging in no, low, and high Coercive Controlling Behaviours”.  Perhaps surprisingly, alcohol use has been found to be more prevalent in DV cases within wealthy areas than for poorer areas.

Analysis of the ABS 2016 Personal Safety Survey indicates almost one in four women and one in six men have experienced partner emotional abuse (or coercive control) from a current or former partner since the age of 15, and over half of women and a quarter of men who experienced partner emotional abuse also experienced physical and/or sexual violence by a partner (8 times more likely than those who have not experienced partner emotional abuse).  For emotional abuse from  a current partner, men were 45% of victims (with almost half of these experiencing anxiety or fear as a result), and whilst women were more likely to experience threatening or degrading behaviours, men were more likely to be subjected to controlling social behaviours, especially (see data in Table 28.3 here) being denied basic needs such as food or shelter, and getting threats to have their children taken away (or their children being lied to by former partners, with the intent of turning them against them, i.e. suffering parental alienation).  Those who experienced abuse or witnessed parental violence as a child were twice as likely as those who did not to experience partner emotional abuse as an adult — so childhood trauma is a bigger risk factor than being female (yet biased research refuses to acknowledge this).  The stresses arising from household cash-flow problems are also a significant risk factor — more so than income and socio-economic status.

It's also necessary to be cautious about aggregate statistical measures, especially as research shows a small number of repeat offenders are responsible for a disproportionate level of extreme violence.  For example, a Swedish study found 63 % of all violent crime convictions (not just DV) were committed by only 1 % of the population (with over 90% of persistent offenders being male), and in Brisbane in 2023, six boys who had over 2000 reported offences a year were responsible for 39% of all youth offences.  Similarly, 40% of all criminal incidents in Victoria in 2024 were committed by repeat offenders who had been charged 10 times or more in the period (comprising just 0.078% of the population), whilst the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) reports that the worst of DV also comes from a small minority of mostly-repeat offenders — citing a 2017 Northern Territory study that found 8% of couples accounted for 27% of all DV harm, and a 2016 Western Australia study that found half of all harm was caused by 2% of offenders reported to Police, but with homicides being best predicted by prior suicide attempts rather than prior DV reports.  Also note these comments on the AIC report reference high levels of bidirectional violence and relatively high violence by females, especially with weapons and not predominantly in self-defence, and – contrary to the emphasis on gender by feminist academia – key driving factors are the stress caused by economic hardship (though not in a simple linear way), often inflamed by alcohol, especially amongst Australia's indigenous populations (as Mark Latham also correctly points out with his usual provocative commentary in response to distorted presentation of DV statistics).  This is further reaffirmed by NSW BOCSAR analysis, which also identifies that violence often follows controlling behaviour by people who block their partner's contact with family or friends (see discussion of parental alienation here).

In courts however – where the alleged perpetrator is almost always male – a 1999 survey of NSW magistrates found only 16%  identified power/control (assertion of power and gender imbalance) as a cause of DV; rather they attributed causes to “relationship pressures and normal stresses of life, exacerbated by poverty, alcohol and drug problems, often with fault on both sides, and with a history of growing up in violence situations”.  Many magistrates felt that DVOs were used by applicants as a tactic in family court proceedings to deprive their partner from access to children, saying,

"In many cases it is the family law issue, such as access to children which feeds the potential violence.  If the family law issues are resolved satisfactorily the basis for a DVO often disappears.  It is disputes around contact to children which created the circumstances complained of.  The delays in the Family Court determining questions of contact are a significant cause of domestic violence.”

Consistent with the above, here's an interview of UK researcher, Deborah Powney talking about how her large-scale 2020 survey of male DV victims completely contradicts the false feminist ideology that is of detriment to everyone — men, women & children.  The summary of her research (the full paper is here) says they found that:

"male victims experience persistent and severe patterns of coercive control similar to those experienced by female victims.

Even in areas that are often seen as affecting only female victims such as economic abuse and sexual coercion, we found that over half of the male victims had their earnings controlled, and one in five men was forced to have sex as an ongoing pattern of abuse.

We found that men’s relationships with their children are often exploited to coercively control men, both within the relationship and post-separation. False allegations (or the threat of making them) to the police and social services as a pattern of abuse were experienced by almost two thirds of male victims in our survey."

Similar findings reported here conclude:

"for nearly four decades the best research indicates that men are also frequently the targets of domestic violence. And yet, the media and our political/judicial elite often frame domestic violence merely as violence against women...

Like men, women are frequently aggressive in intimate settings and the studies show not only that women stay in abusive relationships but also that they are intimately engaged in and part of the dynamic of abuse...

These findings have been confirmed by more than 200 studies... and found gender symmetry in the perpetration, the risk factors and the motives for physical violence in marital and dating relationships... despite the common assertion, most partner violence is actually mutual and... self-defence explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. Rather... the most usual motivations for violence... are coercion, anger, and punishing misbehaviour...

...men are twice as likely as their female counterparts to keep abuse to themselves because of the cultural barriers of a system that does not effectively protect them. The ABS reveals... non-physical abuse (for example, emotional abuse) against men have increased dramatically... those who deny the empirical research showing this considerable gender symmetry often resort to unacceptable tactics, including concealing those results, selective citation of research, stating conclusions that are the opposite of the data and intimidating researchers who produced results showing gender symmetry.  This insidious and manipulative philosophy that women are always victims and men always oppressors can only continue this unspeakable cycle of violence. And it’s our children who will suffer.”

Other research notes that, "While studies have consistently found that women initiate as much violence against their male partners as vice versa, two-thirds of domestic violence injuries are suffered by women".  It finds that the scenario "most likely to result in future injury to women is when she initiates violence" and "if one (partner) stopped violence, the other did too".  It thus concludes that, "the best way for women to be safe is to not initiate violence against their male partners".  It further observes that current batterer treatment programs are “ineffective... likely because they are not based on well-conducted research”, and, “Since much IPV is mutual and women as well as men initiate IPV, prevention and treatment approaches should attempt to reduce women’s violence as well as men’s violence".

Critics have argued that the "Conflict Tactics Scale" used in most studies is flawed and likely to miss some of the worst assaults on women – especially post-separation attacks. Yet two major studies using a different methodology also found that men comprise about 40% of those experiencing serious partner violence.  This research review covers the reasons for women's violence, such as control, defence/response to coercion, fear and retribution.  However, some aspects of the qualitative abstract are quite misleading (seeming to contradict the data the paper refers to, which is largely consistent with the other research I reference on this page) and the paper in some cases lacks clear quantitative comparison with the equivalent measures for men.  Most notable though is the evidence that an extremely high proportion (40-60%) of women that use violence have experienced some kind of childhood trauma through abuse or neglect.

Similarly, the Australian Government in 2022 ignored the evidence and support of a bipartisan parliamentary report recommending the recognition of male and child DV victims.

Ironically, the false "gendered violence" narrative that ideological and self-serving women's organisations continue to spread, throws not just male victims but also female lesbian victims "under the bus" — because recognising these victims would otherwise require them to question their ideology that all DV is driven by "patriarchal power".  And aside from a lack of resources to explicitly help such victims, the dominant public narrative that fails to recognise male victims and female perpetrators has real consequences in justice systems.  In a recent study, 70% of Australian men who contacted police after experiencing domestic violence were turned away.  Even the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (see here) found that men are less than half as likely as women to report being a victim, due to greater shame &/or likely failure of authorities to treat their reports seriously, or even to blame & arrest them rather than the female abuser (see also here).  In Tasmania, a former-feminist DV specialist went public about her finding that police were doing their job in an unbiased way (looking at the evidence and arresting just as many women as men), which predictably led to her being attacked by the feminist DV industry to get her pushed out of her employment and her work with the police.

In the UK, where half of male abuse victims don't feel able to tell anyone about it (vs 19% for women) and men may be three times less likely to report abuse than females, the UK Statistics Authority has had to issue two separate warnings about the use of feminism's misleading narrative to Keir Starmer (now Prime Minister) — once in 2009 to request the removal of the false term ‘overwhelmingly female’ when referring to victims of domestic abuse (a term that through constant repetition has infiltrated our common language and become an accepted "truth"), and then again in 2019.  Whether the distortion of language and statistics – including conflation of abuse reported vs experienced – is deliberate or not, the consequence is to further reinforce the misleading public narrative and reduce the support provided for those who are overlooked, which in turn makes them even less likely to report their experience.  Where support has started to be offered, as with the UK's "Men's Advice Line", the hidden demand is revealed by the rapidly growing reports, which tripled over the 5 years to 2023.

The false feminist narrative has become so pervasive & accepted that some women will openly and even proudly admit to attacking men and get away with this and with abuse of children, because society is in such denial about this occurring even in the face of stark evidence.  And as is revealed in this excellent and very personal TEDx talk, society's messages about DV – distorted by feminist-dominated media – contribute to male victims being in denial about being abused (thinking they can't be victims if they're male), and even when they come to terms with this, the expectation of no fair justice after a separation – resulting in not being able to see & look after your children – keeps fathers trapped in abusive relationships for years.

Straus' claim of bias also seems to be demonstrated in this review paper by Kimmel, which I critique here.  Similarly, this challenging video warns about selective use of statistics and reinforces my point above about emotionally immature people being more likely to select abusive partners (typically because of their childhood experience of their parents) — including, it suggests, the apparently "flawed", traumatised & used and unduly revered Rosie Batty (yes, this is rather confronting for victims to hear, but it doesn't have to be about "blaming" them, or their parents).  It also argues that governments are inherently oppressive and incompetent, which I am reluctantly starting to agree with and is consistent with the rationale for the competitive reforms I propose for human services and justice.

A 2020 survey by White Ribbon Australia (see my "Red Pill" comments) provides a typical example of feminism's systematic, one-sided misrepresentation of DV statistics – supported by a compliant, woke, mainstream media – as it deliberately conflated responses on attitudes to hitting and restraining, through articles headlined with "42% of Young Australian Men Don’t Think Punching a Partner Is Domestic Violence" failing to make it clear that this 42% figure includes those men who don't like to think they are a "DV victim" because their girlfriend hits them, as well as those men who think it's OK to restrain their girlfriend from doing this.

Here is another of so many examples from The Guardian producing a misleading headline of "one in three Australian men say they have committed intimate partner abuse", based on a measure that has been clearly designed to maximise this statistic by including anyone who says yes to, "Have you ever behaved in a manner that has made a partner feel frightened or anxious?" (which might, for example, include something like driving fast).  And as usual, the "research" &/or reporting completely ignores women who are perpetrators of abuse, even though almost a third (30.9%) of the men surveyed were victims of similar violence.  Moreover, the Australian Greens leader typically uses the headline to promote prejudice against men, whilist ignoring the research that found “fostering affectionate relationships between sons and fathers (or father figures) was associated with reducing the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) by as much as 48%”.

Similarly misleading techniques are used to exaggerate the prevalence of sexual abuse.  Ultimately the blatant dishonesty demonstrated by feminists is probably the most convincing evidence of the falsity of their narrative.  Most telling also has been the uncritical support given by feminist organisations to the  blatantly abusive Amber Heard (in the USA and in the UK).

Contrary to feminist ideology that all violence is caused by "patriarchy", "toxic masculinity" and disrespect for women, traditional "protective masculinity" and society in general (both men & women) shows much concern about violence against women, but very little concern about violence by women against men.  Other research suggesting that sexist attitudes are the primary cause of violence against women seems to confuse correlation (or "association") with causation and erroneously (albeit understandably) translates differences between men and women's attitudes to violence as evidence that this difference is the sole cause of violence against women (whereas I suspect some men's disrespectful attitudes to women are at least partly a reflection of, or caused by their experience of psychologically aggressive women to whom they are “fatally attracted”).

In any case, a 2013 study of US teenagers found more boys (5.8%) than girls (4.2%) had experienced dating violence, and other research in 2001 showed girls in Australia condone violence more than boys, but a repeat of this study no longer broke down these inconvenient results by gender, and shortly after, a program was started in some Australian schools in which boys were made to pledge an oath to never hit girls, but the girls (who can be very violent) weren't asked to do the same (see further comment on this in my recommendations).

And though they may be a minority, some women even proudly celebrate violence against men – encouraged by feminist "academics" who, based on the unquestioned premise that, "men’s violence against women is far more common, less justified, and more destructive than women’s violence against men", argue that, "society would be better off as a whole if more women were willing to engage in justified violence against men" and then go on to advocate that "women’s justified violence against men should be encouraged, protected, and publicized".

The notion that females can be just as, or more abusive than males, should hardly come as a surprise to most people, especially in schools, where Barnado's research on girls & bullying indicates girls employ psychological game playing, manipulation & emotional cruelty to a greater degree than boys, e.g. by excluding others, speaking behind their backs, making up & spreading rumours, sowing social disharmony and engaging in bitching, especially through social media (noting that females are found to be more aggressive than males online, where the threat of physical reprisal is removed).  Barnado's also report that, "boys are more forgiving; when they argue it only lasts a few days.  Boys don’t make a big deal out of arguments, they just have a fight and the next day they are friends again.  They are not as stubborn as girls; when girls argue it goes on for weeks."

Yet for all the above evidence and nuances, too often DV statistics are ambiguously quoted along the lines of, "Women suffer the majority of violence", in order to somehow support a logical leap to a narrative and policy agenda based on all domestic violence being caused by men's sexist attitudes, when the reality is that the causes of DV & abuse (by both genders) are much more varied & complex.

NEXT: Sexism & sexual abuse