A POLICY BASED ON EVIDENCE? LETS START WITH DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Your editorial called for policy to be based on evidence. Let's start with policy on domestic violence. On December 5, 2011 the day before the annual anniversary of the Montreal massacre, the FREDA Centre at Simon Fraser University released a report, funded by the Justice Institute of British Columbia entitled 'Domestic Violence Prevention and Reduction in BC 2000- 2010.
The executive summary of the report took all of two paragraphs to define domestic violence as violence against women and then to "justifies the use of this term to reflect the language adopted by provincial policy without losing the gendered language of feminist scholars".
These "feminist scholars" have sold us a bill of goods. In November of 2011, Daphne Bramham wrote an article on domestic violence claiming that half of all BC women had been either physically or sexually assaulted and that only 8% of domestic violence victims are male ( elderly or disabled males as she put it).
Both the report and her article misrepresent domestic violence in crucial ways that influence our currently ineffective response to the problem. Domestic violence statistics are often inflated from government systems. Criminal justice statistics of domestic violence reflect not only true rates but also systematic biases in the way the police handle and subsequently record domestic violence.
Women are ten times more likely than men to call the police for domestic violence intervention (1) and far more likely to get a police response, including arrest (2). Hence, it appears from police statistics that men are the most frequent perpetrators. The reality is that when large sample victim surveys ask about domestic violence , the stereotype of the male as a perpetrator/bully and the female as hapless victim is not supported by the data.
Surveys from 1989 to 2007 keep finding the same thing; that women perpetrate domestic violence (including severe domestic violence) at least as much as men (3) and the most common form of domestic violence is two -way- both partners assault each other at the same level of severity.(4 5) Women are hurt somewhat more but only somewhat- men get hurt too for the obvious reason that everyday weapons get used, knives, frying pans, and boiling water, amongst other things(6) Here's another surprise, according to a recent survey by the Center for Disease Control, "husband battering" (where the woman uses severe violence against a non-violent man) is three times more common than wife battering(7).
Stats Can surveys also find gender equality in domestic violence perpetration and victimization rates (which they put at 1.3% per year) (4,8) . Controlled studies find that the same action is viewed differently by research subjects when the genders of the perpetrator and victim are varied.(9,10) If a man does it (for example- asks his wife where she has been) it is seen as abuse or control. If a woman does it, it's not. These results are found whether the research subjects are the general public or professional psychologists.
When the first shelter for battered men was set up in New Hampshire, the men reported that when they had called local women's shelters to ask for help they were told that they were the real batterers. All of these men had been injured, many were severely injured (11). When a spousal homicide occurs, the media asks the head of a local women's shelter why it happens. She will inevitably describe it as another example of violence towards women. When Marc Lepine killed women in a mass shooting in Montreal, it was presented as an example of male violence towards women. When Denis Lortie killed people in the Quebec Assembly the year before, he was simply a madman. The truth is, they were both psychotic.
The gender paradigm that shapes our views on domestic violence is pervasive and affects everything from police responses to custody decisions in family court (12). The problem is the scientific data do not support the gender paradigm beliefs- they were just a political theory that was wrong when it was written and is even more askew in the present.
We could improve our response to domestic violence by focusing more on prevention programmes and dropping the current government sanctioned discrimination that allows only women into shelters. Many abusive couples would benefit more from marriage counselors than the so called ineffective "psychoeducational" programmes currently in use.
Time for a change!
FROM: Prof-Don Dutton -- TO: The Editor, Vancouver Sun
Don Dutton is a professor of psychology at the university of British Columbia.