Dr. Fiebert's paper makes a valuable contribution to research into domestic violence. A lot of attention has been paid to debates over whether women initiate assaults as often as men, and whether assaults by women are dangerous. Relatively little has been paid to why women initiate assaults. (One reason for this, I suggest, is an "ideology" that women are not violent and that domestic violence is a sign of male oppression of women--see The Duluth Model.)

Prevalence:

The first part is straightforward. Responses from 978 female college women indicate that, within a 5-year period, 29% (n=285) admitted to physical aggression against their male partners. Younger women in their 20s were significantly more likely to aggress physically than women who were 30 years and above. He points out a clear trend from the National Family Violence Surveys (Straus & Kaufman-Kantor, 1994) that indicates that from 1975 to 1992 severe assaults by men toward women have decreased, while the rate of assaults by women have remained the same. While Stets and Straus (1990) reported that women in the 1985 survey were six times more likely to sustain injuries and conclude "when violence is measured by acts women are as violent as men, when violence is measured by injuries men are more violent." McLeod (1984) reported (6,200 cases of domestic assault in Detroit) that women were three times as more likely than men to use weapons. In a similar vein, a look at the type of assault reported in the most recent National Violence Against Women survey (Hoff, 1999) shows that men are more likely than women to experience serious assault by being hit with an object, threatened with a knife or being knifed. When one combines the more serious forms of assault (hit with an object, beat up, threatened with a weapon, victim of a weapon) 96.8 percent of the women assaulted and 90.5 percent of the men assaulted experienced one of these dangerous forms of assault.

When he looked at prevalence of aggression he found women aged 20-30 significantly more likely to initiate violence than women over 30. He found no significant differences in initiation of violence depending on marital status. White women reported less frequent aggression than women of color.

Reasons Given:

The more interesting question, however, is why women initiate assault in an intimate relationship. Fiebert and Gonzalez report on one of the largest surveys conducted to look at this question, involving 978 female college student from southern California. Why is it important? Straus (1999a, 1999b) and Frienze (see Sorting out the reasons couples turn violent, APA Monitor, v. 29, #4, April 1998) express concern that if women feel they can "get away with it," they will slap and hit--but that, sooner or later, the man may strike back. If he does, he may do serious damage even if he pulls his punch.

Murray A. Straus cites this paper in his article on controversy over domestic violence research. There, Straus writes that "I knew I wouldn't hurt him" is one of what he calls "facilitators of assault by women within the family." .

.. many women told me "I knew I wouldn't hurt him" (in the sense of no physical injury as compared to causing pain) reduces inhibitions about hitting the partner and limits fear of retaliation. Statistical evidence consistent with this interpretation comes from a study by Fiebert & Gonzalez (1997). They found that 29% of their sample of 978 women college students reported having hit a male partner. Of the women who had hit, two thirds (62%) checked as one of the reasons "I do not believe my actions would hurt my partner" or "I believe that men can readily protect themselves so I don't worry when I become physically aggressive." The lower probability of injury for assaults by women is probably also one of the reasons why the cultural norms are more tolerant of assaults by women on their partners.

Immediate reasons

In a lot of the literature, we read that women committing domestic violence are acting in self-defense, against physical assault or against verbal abusiveness. Men, we are told, use domestic violence to control the relationship. Fiebert and Gonzalez' data seem to refute that notion.

Fiebert Table 2
 

Note that "my partner was being abusive" was one of the less-frequently stated reasons. The reasons the respondents were more ready to agree to were efforts to use physical violence to control the relationship. They would assault a partner if he were not sensitive to her needs, or they wanted to gain his attention, or he was not listening. These are not anomalous results from a few "extreme" women, as the ns show. Of the 978 respondents, 128 (or 13.1%) assaulted their partner for not being sensitive, and 123 (or 12.6%) for not paying enough attention. A young man contemplating a long-term relationship might well decide against it if he stands over a 10% chance of being physically assaulted by a woman seeking to control the relationship. Put another way, it is less risky to be verbally assaultive than it is to not be sensitive to your partner's needs or not paying enough attention to your partner. Only 10.1 percent of the women surveyed hit their partner for being verbally assaultive.

Fiebert and Gonzalez offer, perhaps, a less polemical perspective:

The immediate reasons that subjects offered for thier initiation of aggression of their male partners was in part a desire to engage their attention, particularly emotionally. Tyree and Malone (1991) referred to this motivation as "making contact," a misguided attempt by women to use physical aggression to reestablish emotional contact with their male partners. This rationale for female aggression offers a striking parallel to Bogard's (1988) finding that abusive husbands claimed "... that they use force to achieve a beneficial end such as improved communication" with their spouses. In additions, a number of these college women did not believe they would (or could) seriously injure their partners.

Deeper reasons

In the survey they offered respondents two sets of reasons for initiating aggression, five "immediate reasons" and ten "deeper reasons." Of the 285 women admitting initiating an assault, 280 endorsed one or more of the "immediate reasons." Agreement with each of the five reasons ranged from 38 percent to 46 percent.

Fiebert Table 3
 

The "deeper reasons" did not generate that level of agreement. In fact, 65 percent wrote out some other reason, instead. Many of the "other" reasons were similar to the immediate or deeper reasons offered by the researchers, but no content-analysis was attempted. The most common responses were that she didn't have to worry, because men can readily protect themselves (24% of respondents) and that she did not need to fear retaliation because most men have been trained not to hit a woman (19%.) The next most frequent category, "I believe if women truly are equal to men then women should be able to physically express anger at men" received a 13% response, while "I feel personally empowered when I behave aggressively against my partner," received only a 12% response

Critique

Fiebert and Gonzalez constructed the list of "deeper reasons" in consultation with Dr. Warren Farrell, author of The Myth of Male Power, and it is not surprising that the "deeper" reasons focused on social views, rather than the respondents' personal life experiences, such as feeling powerless or frustrated in life.

The reasons that the researchers selected were not ones that struck a chord with the respondents, it would appear, since 65 percent of the respondents preferred to write out their own reason and none of the ten "deeper" reasons received a particularly large response.

The unanswered question: Why do Men abuse?

The "deeper" reasons suggested by the researchers appear to focus on social and gender-based roles. Thus, they look at differences between why men initiate violence and why women do. For men, feminist research suggests that domestic violence is an effort to control women, and a sign of male oppression of women. But other, more gender-neutral research on the nature of aggression suggest that fear and powerlessness are major factors in resorting to violence.

It would be interesting to do a survey using reasons that reflect respondents' personal life experiences and situations in life. Perhaps this could be done with a gender-neutral list of factors, including ones we suspect more women will respond to, and ones we think more men will respond to.

Here's a list of some possible questions, that seek to define some (relatively) mutually-exclusive categories of life-experience that may contribute to initiating violence. These have been formulated through content-analysis of the stories that battered men have submitted to MenWeb and by in-depth discussions with experts on relationships, more than on any thorough review of the literature on factors believed to contribute to initiation of violence.

• I frequently feel frustrated or powerless in life and, frankly, sometimes I take it out on my spouse.
• If my spouse were different, or treated me differently, I wouldn't feel so frustrated.
• My life hasn't at all turned out like I expected or hoped it would be.
• Sometimes it's important to keep my partner in line, or get through to my partner, and hitting or slapping her is one way
• My partner often goes on and on, and a lot of the times it feels like she's pounding on me. The only way to make it stop, sometimes, is to strike out.
• Sometimes what he says is so outrageous, he deserves to be slapped to knock some sense into him.
• I have more difficulty controlling emotional and physical outbursts if I've been drinking or on drugs.