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[Vector]

Yep.

Also, Reelya, take a look at this.  The data is compelling.

[Neonivek]

Yep.

Just think of other ways to describe emotional abuse and you will get the laws.

Emotional abuse is certainly against the law, just not as emotional abuse. In a similar way that punching someone in the face isn't against the law.

[Max White]

Not sure how it is across the Pacific, but there has been a push to make emotional abuse a crime. he problem with laws is that they kind of need some sort of objective framework to function in, and with something this subjective, it can be tricky.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-03/new-domestic-violence-laws-target-emotional-abuse/4049150

[Reelya]

Yep.

Also, Reelya, take a look at this.  The data is compelling.

Thank you Vector, that was indeed a thought-provoking read, and it brings into one place a lot of the points i was mulling over. One thing jumped out at me (and it's actually pretty relevant to Anita's latest video):

Studies show that [domestic violence] treatment programs based on the patriarchal privilege model are flawed due to a weak connection between abusiveness and one's cultural or social attitudes.

This is what I see as the biggest danger of "-isms", they encourage one to see all of reality from specific orthodox positions - and those positions usually necessitate that you reject alternate theories about why something is occurring (or you won't give radical new ideas a chance). Then, you wonder why your prescriptions aren't improving the status quo. It keeps the -ism salesmen in business year after year, but you can see how having a flawed model of how abuse occurs can have real, negative consequences for both men and women.

Dutton argues that the numerous studies establishing that heterosexual and gay male relationships have lower rates of abuse than lesbian relationships, and the fact that women who've been involved with both men and women were more likely to have been abused by a woman "are difficult to explain in terms of male domination."

Umm ... what? Abuse in lesbian relationships is higher than straight? And bisexual women were "more likely to have been abused by a woman"? I'd put that one down to the stress / social stigma, but it's also higher than abuse in gay male relationships, so I'm having a hard time understanding how that would be a factor for lesbians but not gays.

[palsch]

I'd have to fish around to find more current statistics, but I don't think it's something that would show a massive skew in recent years - if it was near 50/50 20 years ago, i can't see it skewing to "only guys kill their wives" more recently, gender equality today is definitely better than 20 years ago, right? Or at least, i don't think modern America is massively more repressive than years gone by.

Sorry to drag back to this, but I've had these numbers lying around for a while without having a good time to post them.

The trend in this area is surprising.

The number of women murdered by an intimate partner has decreased far less than the number of men killed and, by 2005 the drop in women being killed had stalled and even slightly reversed. The men figures are more in line with general declines in crime over time but even sharper than the drop in murders.

I'd note that these numbers are often used in support of the theory that many men murdered by their partners are murdered in self defence. The argument is that the greatest changes in the last thirty years with regard to domestic violence is giving women more ways to escape. Not all women can take these ways - and arguably those most at risk are those least likely to be able to - but those who come to a point where they need to or are willing to take action have places to go and resources to use. This reduces the numbers who resort to violence in return.

I don't think the evidence is conclusive but it is compelling. While correlation doesn't equal causation, in this case you have a well described causal mechanism alongside the strong statistical trend. That's a good hypothesis in my book, although I have no idea how you would go about constructing a more robust test given the nature of the data.

[Reelya]

It's actually quite striking how close the figures once were. I can accept that less women are resorting to murder since social support exists to help them exit a toxic relationship.

Now, something occurs to me. The noted lack of support places for male abuse victims. The disparity between crisis shelter places for the two genders is over 100:1 in the UK for example (whilst the abuse prevalence is roughly even), which is an indicator of the difference in how seriously it's taken. If we hold that support structures and crisis shelters for females have reduced female killings of their male spouses, then it's entirely possible that if female->male abuse was taken more seriously, and social support was in place for male victims, we might actually see a reduction in the deaths of female spouses.

After all, when support places for women didn't exist at all, the spousal murder rate was almost identical between the sexes. And take into account, men and women who murdered their spouse tend to use the same justifications. "he drove me to it" => "she drove me to it". Are we to always believe the woman, and always call the man a liar when they say this? Women disproportionally use poison as a murder weapon, rarely a gun or a knife. If you poison someone, that's shaky as "self defense", and it fits the pattern of "breaking a cycle of abuse" rather than "fighting for your very life" - women's weapon of choice doesn't correlate well with the self-defense claim. And either gender could be locked into a "cycle of abuse" and want to end it. An abused man, after all, may have nowhere to go (since there's no social support for him), and an abusive woman can definitely threaten him with losing the house, access to kids, false accusations etc., to keep him there until he snaps.

It's not sexist to say this, since we just established that social support for females likely reduced the male death rate. Unless you want to hold to an orthodoxy that one group is always at fault, and the other group is always to be given the benefit of the doubt. I suggest you read the link Vector provided.

[Max White]

Firstly I would like to see that graph measured per capita rather than as a flat rate. What looks like a climb could in fact be a decline if your population is rising.
The next figure I will never get to see is the percent of women that are pregnant. Not to try and draw anything from it, simply because Vector mentioned before that the leading cause of death for pregnant women is murder. I like my data, the more you have the clearer the picture.

Now the hypothesis that women don't have to resort to murder as they now have other options available to them is certainly a possibility, although not a certainty
Another could be that for a murder to count towards that graph, their partner must be found guilty in a court of law, as such it is possible that the number of males is higher but masked by women receiving easier trials. I don't know if this is true, it depends on how that data is collected, but it is also possible.

[Reelya]

The conviction rates shouldn't make too much difference to the comparative figures, it's something like 97% conviction for males and 85% conviction for females, for killing their intimate other. It's a bigger disparity when you consider "acquittal" but not "conviction".

[Willfor]

I would like to point out, even though it was pages back, that "Tropes vs Men" is thing that exists. Except that instead of making videos, it would be better for their rights in general if they simply took all the money, and didn't use it to make anything at all (besides, of course, their bank accounts larger).

Source

[Vector]

An abused man, after all, may have nowhere to go (since there's no social support for him), and an abusive woman can definitely threaten him with losing the house, access to kids, false accusations etc., to keep him there until he snaps.

Yeah, but...

Man, do you not see the difference between "you lose the house and kids and I accuse you of rape" and "I'm home all day taking care of the kids, have no source of income, and am pregnant because reproductive coercion is a thing?"

I'm not saying one of these is a problem, but I am saying that I legitimately don't understand why the first one of these would drive you to kill someone.  Or how it could possibly be called self-defense.  The things you mentioned do harm by taking away privileges, which is important, but it isn't the same thing as the tactics that have traditionally been used to keep women stationary and powerless.

[Dutchling]

Having a home and not being accused of rape is a privilege now?

[Mech#4]

An abused man, after all, may have nowhere to go (since there's no social support for him), and an abusive woman can definitely threaten him with losing the house, access to kids, false accusations etc., to keep him there until he snaps.

I'm not saying one of these is a problem, but I am saying that I legitimately don't understand why the first one of these would drive you to kill someone.  Or how it could possibly be called self-defense.  The things you mentioned do harm by taking away privileges, which is important, but it isn't the same thing as the tactics that have traditionally been used to keep women stationary and powerless.

While I in no way am excusing this behaviour, it should never be assumed that everyone will be thinking logically in such situations. A person is a lifetime of experiences and if, in the past, they might've had bad run ins with the law or heard stories from friends or think the legal system is only out to get them then they may very well think that there is no other path for them to take, as illogical as that seems.

Of course, armchair psychology is all well and good but I can't claim to know for certain what other people think. This is all just drawn from my own thoughts on the matter.

[Vector]

That makes sense.  Thank you.

Having a home and not being accused of rape is a privilege now?

I think that the rape accusation thing is pretty serious.

I also think that "losing your house" and "having your kids taken away from you" is pretty different in scope from what is done to someone who never had control over property and is having control over their body taken away from them.  I'm trying to explain why, traditionally, domestic violence leveraged against women was of a fundamentally different quality, and why there was such focus on it.

[GlyphGryph]

And I think psychologically, it's not the content of the threats, it's the feeling of powerlessness and helplessness that is actually psychologically damage.

I'm not sure if the threat of physical or sexual violence is that much worse than a threat of leaving a person alone and destitute and taking their family away from them, assuming the person in question actually has the power to do such a thing. (The first is certainly a hell of a lot easier to threaten and be able to back up, admittedly) But psychological abuse is about knowing your victim and what they value and what you can threaten and seizing on every opening.

The context was in men murdering their wives to break a cycle of abuse. I don't think the things the abuser is using as a threat to maintain that cycle actually matters here.

I do think providing support for the victims in these relationships is pretty important moving forward, and is an area that's severely lacking right now.

[Vector]

There's studies cited in some of the links I've tossed that say that the results of psychological abuse are pretty much the same as that of physical abuse.  I won't question those.  However, what I was trying to explain is that back in the day of, y'know, total female financial dependence, "destitute" was simply the cost of leaving.  Not something someone would have to work at, or put any effort into whatsoever.  A lady came with her mobility and ability to control her own circumstances severely curtailed.  This is why I say a lot of muck about institutional society being abusive--there are situations that today we would say "huh, that looks a lot like the influence of domestic violence!" to but were passed down from the powers that be.

I think that we, as a society, take abuse and violence in general far too cavalierly.  I think we don't really care about the aftereffects.  But I think that also, people see a lot of things (lacks of resources) as sexism against men and injustice when there really used to be a huge historical problem leaned in a particular direction; those things were corrected; and now when stuff starts looking similar, there's more resources for women available, because things used to be crazy-bad and the resources are a holdout from that period.

I dunno.  I am positive that some of this is caused by actual shitty attitudes.  And I'm also pretty sure that part of it is caused by residuum, which I want to bring up so that we don't forget.

There should be more support for everyone.  The problem is that mainstream society really doesn't seem to care.