Domestic violence is female!

Since the release of "Sleeping with the Enemy" starring Julia Roberts, the topic of domestic violence has been widely discussed. There is now a veritable flood of television films that focus on the theme of a woman tormented by her abusive husband. As a result, more and more initiatives and groups like "Men Against Male Violence" are emerging, attempting to understand and neutralize the aggressive impulses of men.

In reality, however, physical violence in partnerships is predominantly perpetrated by women, not men. A total of 95 scientific research reports, 79 empirical studies, and 16 comparative analyses in criminological, sociological, psychological, and medical journals from the USA, Canada, England, Denmark, New Zealand, and South Africa demonstrate that violence in relationships is either predominantly and equally perpetrated by both partners or primarily by the woman. The studies are so unanimous in their findings that there is no longer the slightest doubt about these facts within the scientific community. The fact that neither the public nor politicians have yet acknowledged these scientific results is arguably one of the greatest scandals in the entire gender debate.

The uncovering of female perpetrators in domestic violence began as early as 1980. At that time, Murray Straus, Richard Gelles, and Suzanne Steinmetz published a comparative study on the topic in the USA. All three were considered experts in the field of "marital violence" up to that point, especially in feminist circles. In all their previous studies, Straus and his colleagues had assumed that battered husbands were relatively rare and, if they were, not particularly seriously injured. In 1980, the research team subjected all the studies they could find—around thirty at that time—to a more thorough examination. They arrived at the surprising conclusion that a total of 11.6 percent of women, but 12 percent of men, reported having been hit, slapped, kicked, bitten, pelted with objects, or otherwise assaulted. (Some studies, which used a broader definition of "physical violence," even found that 25 percent of those attacked were men compared to 16.5 percent were women.) This means that for every 1.8 million female victims, there were two million male victims. If a woman was attacked every 17.5 seconds, then a man was attacked every 15.7 seconds. This concealment of relevant information, according to Murray Straus, "raises some troubling questions regarding scientific ethics." After a further, even more thorough examination of the data, Straus and his colleagues refined their findings: In a quarter of the cases, violence was perpetrated solely by the man, in a quarter exclusively by the woman, and in half of all cases, the two parties attacked each other in no particular order.

The representatives of the women's movement were suddenly no longer so happy with their former idols. The fundamental feminist assumption was in danger of being shaken. Many researchers in the field of domestic violence now set out to prove that the study by Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz was a complete hoax—but they had to acknowledge that their own results confirmed their findings. Some studies even yielded more striking results: For example, American high school girls were four times more likely than male students to be the sole perpetrators of violence against the opposite sex (5.7% : 1.4%). A study in New Zealand found that women and men committed minor forms of violence against the opposite sex in a ratio of 36 to 22 percent, and serious forms of violence in a ratio of 19 to 6 percent. Straus also interviewed women who had sought refuge in women's shelters. Here, too, he found that about half of them had initiated the attack on their partners.

From then on, Straus was ignored and attacked by the same feminist literature that had previously quoted him extensively. He also faced personal attacks and slander. For example, Pat Marshall, president of the Canadian Association Against Violence Against Women, spread rumors that Straus abused his own wife—only after repeated requests did she apologize to him. Even more vicious, however, was the treatment of Suzanne Steinmetz, the woman in Straus's group: she received bomb threats, and her children were targeted by fanatics. Apparently unaware of any contradictions in their actions, adherents of feminist ideologies resorted to violence to enforce their view that women were far less violent than men.

Soon, studies from other countries corroborated the findings of Straus' research group, for example from Canada: 18 percent of men and 23 percent of women there were violent towards their partners, and 10 percent of men and 13 percent of women used severe violence. There, too, the sociologists who compiled these statistics initially only released the figures for female victims to the press, and often other scientists only later stumbled upon the true proportions of violent gender conflicts by chance.

Do these figures also apply to Germany? Probably yes. A study conducted by the criminological research institute in Lower Saxony indicates that the number of female and male perpetrators of domestic violence is nearly equal. The study was commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Women, which, however, only released its findings discreetly. Violence expert Luise Mandau suspects they were too sensitive and didn't fit the government's political agenda. At the same time the study's results were available, a new "Violence Against Women" campaign was launched, denouncing the "patriarchal violence" of men in hundreds of brochures. In response, the magazine Focus commissioned its own survey and arrived at an even more striking result: In both the former East and West Germany, the number of male victims of moderate to severe domestic violence was several percentage points higher than the number of female victims.

According to US statistics, violence perpetrated by men has continued to decline since 1975, while violence perpetrated by women has increased. While the causes of domestic violence are no longer open to objective discussion, experts' predictions are becoming increasingly dire. A team of authors, writing for the journal Social Work, found that even among teenagers in romantic relationships, girls react violently more often than boys. "There are as many violent women as there are men," explains Erin Pizzey, the founder of the world's first modern women's shelter. "But there's far more money in hating men, especially in the United States—millions of dollars. It's not a good political idea to threaten the large budgets of women's shelters by saying that not all the women there are exclusively victims. Either way, the activists there aren't there to help women cope with what has happened to them. They're there to justify their budgets, their conferences, their trips abroad, and their statements against men."

The one-sided portrayal of "domestic violence" as a male problem continues unabated at both the societal and governmental levels. Since "it is estimated that one in three women is affected by domestic violence," Minister for Women Christine Bergmann, in close cooperation with Minister of Justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin, wants to remove "violent men" from their own homes. A corresponding action plan was adopted by the German Federal Government on December 1, 1999. A similar model already exists in Austria. How many of these suddenly homeless men simply fought back, how many other men no longer dare to defend themselves because of such a one-sided law, remains unclear. In the future, proceedings in court are also expected to be swift and highly biased: simplified procedures against men and improved protection for women are demanded by the Berlin Intervention Project against Domestic Violence (BIG). In Switzerland, a "violence tax" for men was even recently discussed – a tax that would be payable by all men and only men. Why? "It must be acknowledged that being male is the most relevant common criterion for perpetrators." The Green Party proposed the same concept to the Bavarian State Parliament, and the magazine Emma demands it for all of Germany: "In the USA, male violence is the most frequent cause of injury for women who have had to be admitted to hospital emergency rooms." Long since refuted, yet cheerfully repeated – German female readers are being misinformed.

However, it's not just the Germans. Over the next four years, the EU plans to spend 20 million euros on projects aimed at outlawing violence – violence against women, of course. In 1993, the United Nations adopted the following declaration: "Any act of violence of a gender that causes or is likely to cause physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering to a woman, including the threat of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty in public or private life," is defined as a human rights violation. This declaration, too, refers exclusively to women. Men are not mentioned.