Domestic Violence Against Men

I was informed at dinner this past weekend that domestic violence against men is just as prevalent as domestic violence against women--but it goes unreported. My first thought: Really? 

I had never heard of this, but I wanted to be fair and recognize this concern.

Since dinner, I have seen two articles come out in the past week about two prominent women allegedly abusing their significant others. One is an American tennis star, Jennifer Capriati, and the other is a New Zealand business owner, Sarah Patricia Olliver. 

Interested in gender studies, I looked up information on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website to find out what compelling evidence there is about men being victim's of domestic violence. I do not doubt that this doesn't exist, but with the women's movement being so powerful, I wondered if men were even remotely as abused as women are in the American society. Although I found little reporting on whether or not domestic violence against men is unreported, I did find some statistics on what is reported:

• Nearly 3 in 10 women and 1 in 10 men in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking by a partner and report that the violence impacted them in some way (e.g., made them feel fearful or concerned for their safety, resulted in an injury or need for services, or they lost days from work or school).
• IPV resulted in 1,336 deaths in 2010—accounting for 10% of all homicides. Eighty two percent of these deaths were females and 18% were males.

Thus, it is true that men are abused, as the CDC reports, and I do not want to downplay this. But I found little information about men being abused at the same rates that women are. Thus, I would like to take a step back and possibly question my sister's boyfriend's motive. He studied English in college and took one women's literature course, where he always talks about this particular book he read called When She Was Bad, which highlights women serial killers. For some reason, he always finds interest in pressuring me about topics like these, and I am very perplexed about the situation as a whole.

My goal here is not to defend women and say that they are never wrong. Surely women are capable of abusing their spouses as well. But the claim about women abusing men as often as men do to women seems a bit over reaching for me. For my sister's boyfriend, I could see how it could be frustrating to believe something and not have the facts to solidify an argument. 

I would like to equate his thought process to the Hualiani et. al reading, where the critiques of unitary concept of culture as a nation-based variable is considered (p. 26). An example of this that comes to mind, which is also stated in the reading is that conceptualizing culture as nation may precede insights and perspectives about culture that need further analysis to reveal full complexities of culture, which includes unveiling power structures and position different cultural voices over others. Here, I think my sister's boyfriend may have some preconceived notions that he believes to be true, and I would urge him to really dig deeper into also investigating the violence that does affect women in our culture by unveiling the patriarchy as a power structure. Feminism, after all, is about gender equality, not taking over the world--despite what some people think.