Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    Either R. J. Gelles can't count, or the summary is flawed in some way.
    I find it difficult to understand how 7.5% of wives are victimized
    monthly while only 2.5% of wives are victimized between 2 and 5 times
    over the course of their marriage. Or are we talking about REAL short
    marriages here?

>	12.1% of all women reported at least one violent incident in 1975.
>	11.3% of all women reported at least one violent incident in 1986.

>	11.6% of all men reported victimizations in 1975.
>	12.1% of all men reported victimizations in 1986.

What is "victimization" defined as for this study?  If the authors wanted
to draw parallels between male violence and female violence, why where the
statistics not parallel?  (Ie; "violent incidence" for women, "victimization"
for women.)  Why did they not include persons with a history of abuse, since
it appears that abuse tends to run in family lines (men who's father abused
his mother more often abuse their wives, and women who's father abused her
mother more often end up in abusive situations)?

I find the non-parallelness of the question to call into question any
apparant conclusions about the rates of male violence as compared to the
rates of female violence.

D!

RE:  Female to male violence statistics

Gelles and Strauss also point our in their book "Intimate Violence"
that their study showed that the vast majority of female to male
violence occures after male initiated violence...

john

    Mike, thanks for keying all that info.  Some concerns:
    
    I always wonder about numbers like these as they rely so heavily on
    reporting.  Is there any sense in the studies you quote of ratio of
    reported:non-reported incidents?
    
    Also, as brought up, do the reports provide info about violent exchanges
    escalating?  Also, how are they initiated?  And by whom?
    
    F'rinstance, neighbors where I used to live- man beat the wife at least
    weekly, black eyes, smashed lips, really nasty stuff.  No matter how
    often neighbors urged her to, she refused to report it.  Finally she
    had enough and (yay, horray for her!) moved out and filed for divorce.
    
    He followed her to her sister's and she slapped him and then when he
    wouldn't leave, (her sister??) threatened to shoot him.  He reported
    the slap and threat and used it to countersue in the divorce.  I've no
    idea what the outcome was as I moved.
    
        --Margaret

    
    See also:
    
    MENNOTES
    430 - Domestic Violence
    
    (which contains some postings that Mike cross-posted to this conference) 
    
    -Jody
    

    Did anyone else catch NPR's special report on domestic violence
    on "All Things Considered" last night?  It was *frighteningly* well
    done.  The first half of the report consisted mostly of quotes:
    
    (These are approximations)
    
    "I really was a different person married than the one she got engaged
    to.  People called me Dr. Jekyl...I guess they were right."
    
    "Sometimes he'd start to hit me, and all I could do was grab our
    daughter and lock myself into the bathroom.  And he'd just sit out
    there and *wait* for me...two, three hours.  He'd drag the television
    and a chair over and wait.  It was terrible."
    
    "Through all that time, I didn't seek help.  I was a successful
    woman.  My own career, making over 100,000 per year, and I just
    couldn't accept that this was happening...I felt like I had to fix
    it."
    
    "I didn't know it was wrong at the time I was doing it.  I guess
    I know that now.  It was wrong.  I mean, I wouldn't like someone
    hitting me all the time, woulld I?" (nervous laugh)
    
    "You know what I hated the most?  Never being able to win an argument.
     Every time we argued, he'd win -- you know how?  By punching me
    in the mouth and walking away.  I couldn't say anything.  I couldn't
    do anything.  That was it.  He always had to win."
    
    Some rough stats: one third of marriages involve some form of abuse.
    
    		      in one out of ten marriages, this abuse becomes
                      violent -- either with hands, knives or guns.
    
    Scares the willies out of me.
    
    --Daniel

Yes, I heard it. It gave me the willies too. The quotes, from women
and men, were very powerful. 

Part 2 is on "All Things Considered" tonight.

Kathy

    I heard it also. I had to stop and go to the grocery store and just
    sat in the car until it was all over.
    
    Terrifying.
    
    Does anyone recall some of the reasons why women stayed?
    
    I remember:
    
    1. if she stays in the same job and the kids stay in the same school
       he'd find her
    2. not having any money to leave
    3. taking on a prisoner of war mentality, so that mentally even
       imagining escape was impossible
    
    I think there were others
    
    bj

    
    .16 > Some rough stats: one third of marriages involve some form of abuse.
    
    I believe what was said was that one third of marriages involve 
    at least one incident of violence of husband against wife.
    
    		- bruce

    Bonnie, I did the same thing you did, just sat in my car transfixed,
    listening.

    Another item they brought out - the women had NOTHING in common other
    than they were abused. There was no pattern or set of characteristics
    that differentiated them from other women. It was the men who had a
    profile. And they often came from abusive backgrounds. Big surprise
    huh?

    The part that really got me was that these men were not the typical
    "bar room bully", they often appeared the sensitive caring sort. That
    is truely scary. There is no way to tell until they attack. liesl

    Liesl
    
    yes, the thing that really stuck me was that many of the men
    appeared to be sensitive, romantic and 'a woman's dream' when
    they were dating.
    
    Bonnie

    Something I remember as a reason abused women don't leave is that
    they believe that the abuse is their fault, that they provoked it
    in some way, which is just what the abuser tells them. Also that
    women think relationships are their area of expertise, and that
    it is up to them to fix the problem.
    
    Eileen

They also talked about some of the reactions women got when they
*did* turn for help. One woman's parents told her to start acting
right so she wouldn't get hit. Another woman was told (by her
neighbor, I think) that she was probably exaggerating things.
And another woman's priest told her that Christ died on a cross
(implying, I guess, that she didn't have things so bad...)


!!!!!

Thank goodness we have shelters for battered women today that are
run by people who want to keep women safe!

Kathy

    The report on NPR was one of the most straightforward and
    emotionally affecting pieces on abuse that I've heard.
    What chilled me to the bone was the realization that there
    were so many abusers out there, the description of
    the cycle of recommittment after abusive incidents,
    and the fact that we've barely scratched the surface in
    the areas of awareness and prevention.
    
    Ron

    Re: the last few
    
    We unfortunately have a society that still reacts to women as property.
    The mentality involved tends to say, "the plate is mine, so who
    cares if I break it?"  While the forces behind violence are probably
    more complex, there is a general problem: when do outsiders get
    involved in "private affairs"?  Compound this with the general
    acceptance of violence against women, and you can end up with a
    problem whose scope is frightening.  We only talk about the cases
    of abuse that we *hear about*
    
    Some states have passed fairly broad laws to "protect" abused women
    form their batterers.  While on paper, many of them look good, the
    enforement is spotty at best.  In one case a women had the polic
    remove her husband for violating a court restraining order.  By
    law, he was automatically arrested.  What wasn't mentioned was that
    he was released by the police only three hours later -- he made
    a straight line for her house and beat her to death.  The police
    never bothered to inform the woman that he had been realeased.
    
    The powers that be just don't want to admit that there is a porblem
    out there -- I tend to think they do this because many people seriously
    do not believe that what happens even *is* a problem.
    
    daniel
                                         

    
    
    	To reiterate a neat bumper sticker:
    
    
    		To end
    		male
    		violence
    		men
    		must 
    		take the
    		initiative
    		----------
    
    
    
    	justme....jacqui

    Find one that says "To end violence, people must take the initiative"
    Ill past it on my car.....

Referencing: 97.23

   Recently, someone close to me was a victim of domestic violence.

   Her husband had been hitting her for quite some time, and
basically terrorizing her. Despite this, she refused to allow me to
help "convince" her husband that it really isn't in his best interests
to be hitting her.

   Well, one fine evening this husband of hers threatened her with a gun.
He later said that he'd merely wanted to "scare" her, but he had been drunk,
and the gun went off very close to her head. The way she described the
gun leads me to believe that it was a .32 caliber weapon.

   The above is background. What is really interesting is what happened
afterward.

   She went, of coursse, to the police. They refused to do anything about it.
   Then she decided to go to a shelter. She was going to get her daughter
and find a shelter. Well, it turns out that because she has a very good,
well- paying job the shelters funded by the state couldn't deal with her.
Her councillor suggested to her (I am NOT lying or exaggerating!) that she
quit her job and go on welfare; then she could be helped and protected.

   She ended up moving in with relatives, and still refuses to let me have
a "talk" with her husband. She does hava a restraining order against him
(I'm sure we all know how useful those are!), but she has made it clear
that she will not feel safe from him.

   My point is this: shelters are a band- aid. And they don't even adequately
cover the wound.

   To be honest, I believe that the only adequate way of dealing with
domestic violence is to implement a three- fold program:

   1. Teach women, as a group, that they don't have to tolerate this kind
      of crap. This will make it harder for men with the tendency to commit
      such violence to get away with it.

   2. Punish those who are prone to beating their wives with beatings at 
      least as severe as the ones they give their wives. This will,
      hopefully, give them a greater understanding of the effects their
      behavior has. If they demonstrate an inability or unwillingness to
      learn, then

   3. We should kill the slimey scumbags.

   Call it the Brownian Program. I've seen parts of it in action. I can safely
say that it is 100% effective.

   (Whew!)

    Uh... in case you didn't notice,  I do have a... um... problem with
wife/child beaters. Having grown up in an environment where I was abused 
and had to watch my mother and siblings beaten almost every day, I am a
little... er... unsympathetic towards such people.

                                             -Robert Brown III
                              (who is VERY angry with the system right now)
   

    Robert,
    
    The problem with your solution to wife beating is that beating
    the wife beaters would increase wife beating and not stop it. It
    is because those men have been too much beaten already that they
    do it in the first place. Any kind of behavior is learned, and only
    unlearning it will change it. Continuing it on a different victim
    will only reinforce what has already been learned. Not that it is
    simply learned. The anger that makes it seem "necessary" is as
    much a cause as the lack of training on dealing appropriately 
    with anger.
    
    Besides, when this kind of thing happens in a relationship, it is
    a dynamic of the relationship, not just a problem of the man. Men
    exhibit aggressive behavioral traits long before the point at
    which the couple have children, and it is harder for the woman to
    leave. The women who marry these men
    fail to notice these traits early, usually because they are
    all too familiar with them from their own childhoods and have
    low enough self-esteem that they believe that they themselves
    are the cause.
    
    If you look into the history of your father, I guarantee you
    will learn where his aggression originated. I have experience of
    this to some degree in my own family, and the pattern is crystal
    clear.
    
    Eileen
    
    

    This topic will always trigger a shiver up my spine.  I left a very
    abusive marriage after 5 years.  All the signs were there at the
    beginning but I was so in love with this guy, I found it unbearable
    to leave.  I guess as the marriage durated, the love I had for kinda
    dwindeled.  Slowly I was able to emotional detach from him.  I thought
    of my children's welfare and more than anything didn't want my daughter
    to accept a husband such as her father.  Anyway, after 5 years I
    finally divorced.  The next 5 years were those of great growth and
    some hard experieces as well.  I still love this guy but I love
    myself more.  
    
    About stopping the abuse.  The only thing I've discovered that works
    is for the victum to leave.  Now, very amazingly, I was in contact
    with him quite briefly and we started writing each other and phoning
    across 2000 miles.  He's since moved out here with me, and this
    man has come thru quite a metamorphis.  Myself included.  I'll never
    understand why he was so mean back then and I'll never understand
    why I put up with it so long.  Actually, I had quite some leverage,
    I should have used back then.  Anyway, I still fear that this is
    too good to be true, but time will tell.  From one of his past
    girlfriends,after our divorce, who he was going to marry, he never hit her once or
    did any of the things he had done to me.  He told me, that the shock
    of me leaving him put it all in proper perspective.
                                  
    I think the whole solution is one that doesn't happen overnight,
    but yes, you do have to look after yourself, no one else will.

	Was out at lunch, and caught this in the news: 

	There will be new rules in effect next week regarding police
	handling of domestic violence cases in Massachusetts. Officers
	will be able to make arrests, even if the complaintant is unwilling
	to press charges, if the officer finds evidence of a crime. Also
	a written report will be made for all domestic violence cases, even
	if no arrests were made. Also mention was made of improved enforcement
	of restraining orders, but I did not retain the details.

					Tom_K

  YAY!!



D!

    The improved enforcement of restraining orders will be implemented by
    immediate unconditional arrest of anyone found to be in violation of a
    restraining order.
    
    In addition, enforcement against physical abuse in the family is to be
    extended such that the term "family" includes -- this shocked me, given
    the prevailing mindset -- people in a dating situation.  This
    phraseology is support for unmarried couples and could, if handled
    carefully, be used as legal argument for MOTSS couples as legally-
    protected family, because I do not believe it was stated as MOTOS only.
    
    -d

    RE: .32 (D!)
    
    My sentiments exactly!
    
    Eileen