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Main All Abusers Are Male Discussion
I understand removing Real Life examples from sex and rape tropes, but it seems to me the recent cuts here were indiscriminate. For example with the nature of this trope I think it's important to point out if it's actually defined in a broad sense as Truth In Television, and that's more reference media than it is Real Life.
- In the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, "rape" is still defined as "the crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him without their consent and against their will, esp. by the threat or use of violence against them".
- Incidentally, the legal definition of rape in many jurisdictions is still "unlawful carnal knowledge of a female without her consent" Needless to say, this male troper, who was raped and is now a criminal justice major has to force himself to unclench his jaw every time he encounters a chapter on "Sexual Assault" in class. Apparently, it wasn't rape after all...
- Recently the United States Justice Department
has broadened the definition of rape to include a variety of forms of nonconsensual penetration of the anus, vagina or mouth against either sex.
- Held as true in the Middle Ages, at least legally. Whilst husbands were permitted to apply 'reasonable corrective force' to their wives (and children, and servants, and domestic animals), they could still be punished for domestic violence. However, any man who was so "weak" as to "allow" himself to be beaten by his wife was seen as deserving anything he got, and provided she didn't actually kill him she could expect no punishment.
- It could be argued that there exists a greater degree of under-reporting of female-on-male DV than male-on-female in the modern day for more or less the same reasons: as strength and dominance are much more prized in men than in women and women are expected to be more vulnerable, it's less shameful for women to admit to being beaten. The very fact that a serious depiction of female-on-male DV in media is rare may also lead male DV victims to believe that there is something "wrong" with them, and thus not report it.
Fairlyvexed. Truth is, we don't know how much female-on-male rape there actually is. Men are even far more reluctant to report it then women.
Some studies suggest it is significantly higher then 'common sense' would suggest.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdf
Victims of forced vaginal sex in a romantic relationship in the last year:
female: 2.3%
male: 3.0%
I think the ratio is something like 1 in 200 victimized men report sexual violence. The latest figures I've heard about women is 1 in 6 female victims report sexual violence. Letsay 95% of reported rapes have a female victim. 95* 6 = 570 female victims. 5 * 200 = 1,000 male victims. The numbers get crazy when you think about how little men actually report.
Victims of forced vaginal sex in a romantic relationship in the last year:
female: 2.3%
male: 3.0%
I think the ratio is something like 1 in 200 victimized men report sexual violence. The latest figures I've heard about women is 1 in 6 female victims report sexual violence. Letsay 95% of reported rapes have a female victim. 95* 6 = 570 female victims. 5 * 200 = 1,000 male victims. The numbers get crazy when you think about how little men actually report.
At the risk of starting yet another edit war, it's not true that the statistics show that men are more abusive then women. It depends on what statistics you look at. Police reports or crime surveys find more male-on-female abuse but that can be explained by the fact that 1. men rarely report criminal abuse to the police and 2. men don't view the abuse done against them as criminal in the first place. Studies that look at abusive behaviors without asking the participants to quantify the behaviors as abusive or criminal in nature find parity. They even find parity with sexual abuse in relationships.
- You find "parity" only if you use an All Crimes Are Equal approach, and I've yet to see a study that claimed the existence of parity that didn't involve equalizing horrifically unequal situations.
- By way of example, let's say a husband abuses his wife over the course of several months, but one day, she throw a pot at him in self-defense. Using the "right" methodology, both people in this case are viewed "equally" as being abusers, even though anyone who's not a computer realizes this is completely moronic.
Also interesting is that women in relationships characterized by non-reciprocal violence perpetrated by men were less likely to be injured then those in reciprocally violent relationships.
Reciprocally violent relationships also resulted in more frequent violence by women only, suggesting the researchers were tracking not just if violence happened but how often it happened by each partner(negating your criticism above.) Reciprocally violent relationships resulted in injury more often to both partners, but women were more often injured then men.
The study also mentions your critique that it's not capturing DV in a clinical setting, rather then just 'common couple violence'.
If we had battered men's shelters—thus a population of extremely victimized men to draw from—we might have a picture of the extreme end of female perpetuated domestic violence to compare to the extreme end of male perpetuated violence. Both of which are likely not captured by 'common couple violence'. As it is, we don't so you simply can't assume one way or another. (Except I've heard, anecdotally, about appalling levels of violence perpetrated against men; from beatings to stabbings to being shot at.)
- That being written yes, women can be abusers, and the tacit cultural assumption that they can't is both stupid and tropable. The write-up could probably stand some clarifications in this regard- most especially in how this trope is different the three pot holed in the first paragraph.