Mainz, September 6, 2007: Domestic violence is often perceived by victims as even more distressing and humiliating than violence between strangers. They feel even more helpless and at its mercy, do not want to lose the perpetrator due to ambivalent feelings, and hope that everything will turn out all right in the end. Therefore, it is right that this problem has been placed on the agenda of criminal policy.
By Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael Bock
Chair of Criminology, Juvenile Criminal Law, Prison Administration and Criminal Law at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
It is all the more troubling, then, that particular interests have seized upon this issue. Despite ostensibly gender-neutral provisions, current projects aimed at combating domestic violence recognize only men as perpetrators and women as victims. They envision increased control or punishment only for men and more help and protection only for women. Men and elderly people who are victims of female violence have no chance; children only have a chance if, by chance, the father is the perpetrator. This was once again made clear in the statements of leading female politicians during the first and second readings of the so-called "Violence Protection Act" in the Bundestag. "The abuser leaves, the victim remains" was the prevailing sentiment.
In countless initiatives by the relevant state ministries, municipal prevention councils, and even purely private or church-affiliated organizations, the issue of domestic violence is addressed in this way. The condemnation of male violence and the removal of actually or allegedly violent men from their homes has long been the subject of a broad societal campaign. In Baden-Württemberg, new records in the number of "red cards"—the popular term for the police measure of issuing a restraining order—are constantly being reported, often in the style of sports news. The days when the police and courts downplayed or reacted only very hesitantly in cases of domestic violence are long gone—as long as men are involved!
But why this division of perpetrators and victims along gender lines at all? It is claimed that this reflects empirical reality. Men are indeed the perpetrators and women the victims. But international research tells a different story. Representative surveys demonstrate this clearly and in large numbers: severe physical violence between partners is distributed roughly equally between men and women. Only studies that rely on the selective material of publicly registered cases, and thus methodologically fall into the trap of the dark figure of unreported cases, find more women as victims and more men as perpetrators. But even this is easily explained. Men lose something when they go public as victims of female violence: at the very least, their face and their self-respect, if they are even believed at all. Women, on the other hand, gain: attention, material and emotional support, housing, and better chances in all family law disputes. And they certainly don't have any trouble convincing anyone of their victim status. It is therefore no wonder that studies on publicly registered cases have a gender bias, while studies with unselected samples shed light on how it actually behaves. This belongs to electromagnetic radiation; it encompasses the spectral range visible to humans between UV radiation and infrared radiation.
Meanwhile, high-level scientific studies have been published that methodologically examine the relevant studies, critically evaluate them, and summarize their main findings. The British scientist John Archer (Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review; Psychological Bulletin 2000, pp. 651-680) arrives at the following conclusions: Aggressive behavior is exhibited almost equally frequently by women and men. Measurement methods, the type and size of the samples, and some other differences among the 82 studies included in the analysis resulted in only minor deviations from this overall finding. There is a slight preponderance of perceived injuries for women (62% of cases in a total calculation). From Germany, only the study published by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (Wetzels, Peter et al.: Crime in the Lives of Older People, 1995) has become known. She cites victim figures of 246,000 women and 214,000 men.
Often, both partners are involved in the violence. Severe physical violence is usually just the end result of a long chain of escalations and mutual psychological and verbal humiliation and abuse. This finding calls into question the somewhat comfortable position of retreat, since, after all, combating male violence accounts for half of all violence. These behavioral patterns of women and men can only be sustainably changed if the shared "history" of these conflict-ridden relationships is also addressed jointly. However, all constructive forms of communicative conflict resolution, therapy, or mediation are stifled from the outset if one of the two parties in the conflict, namely the woman, is given a legal tool that allows her not only to dispossess and get rid of the "disruptive" partner completely risk-free and effectively, but above all, to legally and socially enshrine a one-sided role distribution between a malevolent perpetrator and a virtuous victim. This, however, achieves nothing but an understandable hardening of the stance of the man, who is unjustly stigmatized as solely responsible, and a repression or trivialization of her own role in the history of violence on the part of the woman, who is solely cared for as a victim. If children are involved, they will not experience any change in their parents' behavior that might compensate for the damage already inflicted by the violence. If the two abusive partners enter into new relationships, the same mechanisms repeat themselves, because the measures of the domestic violence protection law only produce winners and losers, but not partners who have grown through learning processes.
But it's not just about men and women; it's also about children and the elderly. Once domestic violence is identified as male violence, it obscures the fact that women are actually more involved than men in violence against children and the elderly. The argument that women are more frequently involved in raising children and providing domestic care may be true, as may the fact that being overwhelmed is often the root cause of child abuse and violence against the elderly, but this doesn't change the facts or the need for intervention. In contrast, arguments related to stress and strain are neither mentioned nor considered when it comes to men. Here, violence appears as a freely chosen evil.
In light of the international state of research, the one-sidedness and incompleteness of current policies on violence prevention become obvious. The question then arises, however, as to why the obvious is being ignored. The German government remains completely silent in the justification for its draft legislation, which can only lead to the conclusion that it is either criminally ignorant or pursuing a deliberate policy of disinformation. As a social scientist, one is accustomed to asking in such cases: cui bono? The answer is simple. There is status, money, and positions to be distributed in the fight against domestic violence, including the necessary accompanying research. Women's monopoly on victim status is reflected in the names of ministries, in special departments within the police and public prosecutor's office, in working groups of prevention councils, and in departments of churches and non-profit organizations. The women's movement has succeeded in gaining the power to define a social problem and in ideologically and institutionally imbuing social policy accordingly. Not only money, but entire identities now depend on this monopoly, because without it, "experts" would become lobbyists, the luster of "helping" would be tarnished by withholding it from most victims, and the solidarity-based women's networks would be tainted by cronyism and backroom deals. That is why this monopoly status must be defended, and that is why the truth is so threatening.
But how can this work? How is it that in the media age and in a scientific civilization, the truth can be successfully obscured? This only works with the great taboos of an era, with the deeply ingrained myths and prejudices against which information and enlightenment are powerless. With dogmas that are clung to "counterfactually." And unfortunately, this is the arena we are also in when it comes to domestic violence. The icon of the helpful, benevolent mother cannot be damaged because that simply cannot be allowed.
This can be seen in the dramaturgy of the taboo being broken. The first reaction is spontaneous denial: "I don't believe it," "that can't be true," "women are much weaker!" If the taboo breaker has the audacity to continue presenting results and facts, the taboo must be protected in other ways. For example, through jokes and strained laughter. The taboo breaker is supposed to laugh along. It would then have been just a joke on the side. But if he doesn't find it funny that many victims of violence are left without protection and help, the only remaining option is to personally marginalize him as a cynic, a misogynist, or a secret accomplice, so that what he says no longer matters.
It's women and men who react this way. Across party lines and with balanced public broadcasting. Men, in a supposed chivalry, are often even more zealous and zealous. "Men against male violence." In the undeniable cases of female violence, the men "deserved it," one hears. This stereotype is also perpetuated by many films and commercials, in which men are showered with "deserved" slaps and kicks. Much like in the past, raped women were accused of being sluts, of having provoked it, or even of enjoying it, men today fear secondary victimization. After the primary victimization, the actual experience of being a victim at home, they experience a second violation in the form of public degradation: at the pub, in court, on television. They are seen as weaklings, henpecked husbands, and immediately suspected of having provided plausible reasons through their own misconduct.
This is the mental barrier that most male victims of violence refuse to confront. Yet, by remaining silent, these men are once again distorting the statistics on publicly recorded domestic violence, which the "experts" can then report on with outrage and demand for new measures. And so, a politicized campaign is perpetuated, leaving the silent and the truly vulnerable empty-handed. The new law protecting against violence will cement this imbalance. The mere accusation of threatening violence against the woman or children should be sufficient grounds to remove the man from the home, and he will subsequently be unable to prevail in court against a different notion of normality. One expert has therefore called the law a "first-strike weapon." The man facing legal proceedings under this law will – regardless of the outcome – not only lose custody and visitation rights, but also the respect and love of his children, because besides the accusation of sexual abuse, there is no better way to portray the “evil” father as the source of all evil than by needing the police to protect oneself from him.
Author: Prof. Dr. Dr. Bock