“There’s some disagreement between people in the field of domestic violence and researchers who study violence more generally in their understanding of the dynamic of abuse.I see in your post that you kind of conflate “reciprocal violence” with “reciprocal abuse” which is part of the disagreement. Most domestic violence researchers would argue that there is no “reciprocal abuse.” Abuse is unidirectional and involves a system of power and control over the victim where violence does not necessarily.Often studies which conflate reciprocal violence with reciprocal abuse aren’t familiar with how domestic violence plays out in a micro scale and the frequency with which victims of both genders will use violence, distanced in time from their abuser’s assault, but still in retaliation or to protect themselves from their abuser. This is in parallel to a greater discussion within the field of criminology of how patriarchal laws allow for abuse and violence perpetrators to receive lesser sentences than their victims because their violence is considered “in the heat of the moment” whereas in the manifestation of “battered partner syndrome,” the violence is often labeled premeditated.

I hear what you are saying. I would be very interested in any research you may have about IPV abuse versus violence. Without anything other than your words/opinion, it’s hard to really formulate a response. From what I understand, abuse can take many forms, and violence is one of them. If the implication you’re making is that men are initiating most abuse, and women are only responding with violence in defense, then the data would reflect that men are the vast majority of unidirectional abuse. However, the CDC data shows the exact opposite. That women in heterosexual relationships are primary unidirectional perpetrators of violence.

In an IPV scenario, the abuser often uses their status or even physical size to dominate their victim, leading the victim to freeze. The victim may then be violent after a cooling off period when they feel less fight/flight (as with pushing an abuser as they leave the house or slapping an abuser who is unkind to their child). These are all considered “unprovoked violence” in the studies which don’t consider abuse dynamics in their analysis as with the first study you link here. Cis women typically experience greater severity IPV and are more likely to be killed, injured, or hospitalized than cis men (trans individuals also often have even higher rates).

If the abuser often uses their status or even physical size to dominate their victim(the most common description of an abusive man), why is 70% of unidirectional violence is being perpetrated by women?

“The second NISVS study is often misunderstood and I’ll link some explanation of the data here:Basically, as someone else has already articulated, it’s usually misrepresented to argue that lesbian relationships are the most violent (not realizing that that data does not specify the perpetrator of the violence) even though the data actually shows bisexual people experience the most IPV. In reality, after bisexuals, it’s gay men that experience the most violence with lesbians experiencing more specifically sexual IPV than gay men.Here’s another discussion of a different paper saying the same thingAll in all, the study still shows heterosexual and bisexual men are more likely to experience IPV perpetrated by a woman, while homosexual, bisexual, and heterosexual women are more likely to experience IPV from the opposite sex compared to their male analog.

**”**I was just confused why this was brought into the discussion since I didn’t mention anything close to the topic.

“The Canadian study does show an alignment in some ways with the multiple studies linked in the resources above but not in others. Again, this study looks at violence, not abuse, but for example, it does seem to show that women are significantly more psychologically affected by IPV than men and another factor noted often in domestic violence research—that women are far more likely to have economic barriers to leaving the relationship as the female victims included in the study were poorer than the men.”

This idea that violence and abuse are two totally different unrelated things seems to be a bit misleading. In the case of reciprocal violence I can see a case for it, but the main take away from these studies is that women are significantly more like to one the perpetrators of unidirectional violence, which is the opposite of the accepted social knowledge.

As far as the Canadian study, they concluded that “no consistent sex differences in the overall use of controlling behavior have been found”.

It is also well documented that women are significantly more likely to report being assaulted by a partner than men.

The U.S. NVAWS found that women who were physically assaulted by a partner were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to report that they sustained an injury, received medical treatment, or were hospitalized (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). However, when the effects of physical violence were considered along with the effects of psychological IPV during their lifetime, both genders suffered long-term psychological consequences (depression, anxiety, substance abuse)from IPV victimization (Coker et al., 2002).

"However, as you note, and contrary to the other studies, in addition to minor violence, men here were more likely to report greater five year threats of severe relationship violence perpetrated against them than women, although these values were equal to those of women within their present relationships. In parallel, men were more likely to report having experienced severe violence in the context of intimate terrorism than women, although the gender based rates of intimate terrorism are the same.The final study is a qualitative study of male IPV victims of female-perpetrated abuse and does not include male victims of male perpetrated IPV or women at all.

This study is about male IPV victims perpetrated by their female partners. I’m not sure what is invalid it.

Discussing the dynamics of IPV and domestic violence does not mean that male victims don’t exist or that their problems are less severe.

Agreed. The dynamics in relationships are a lot more complicated than the click-bait slogans it gets reduced to. I don’t think it’s productive to generalize any group if progress is the real goal. I appreciate your thorough response.