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A photo of a single atom

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/trapped-atom-photograph-long-exposure-competition-spd/

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Best Science Channel Ever! 

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The Forgotten History of Charivari: What abused males used to go through during the 1400s-1700s

http://www.dewar4research.org/docs/skim-revisited.pdfhttps://www.purplemotes.net/2013/01/27/charivari-sex-inequality/

“A charivari, also variously called a skimmington ride and riding the stang, is a historical folk custom expressing public disapproval of personal behavior.  Domestic violence was a common motive for a charivari.  A man who beat his wife in southern England early in the nineteenth century could awaken at night to a noisy crowd, dancing in a frenzy around a bonfire outside his door.  They would be “a motley assembly with hand-bells, gongs, cow-horns, whistles, tin kettles, rattles, bones, {and} frying-pans.”  An orator would identify the wife-beater’s house with a signal chant:

There is a man in this place Has beat his wife!! Has beat his wife!! It is a very great shame and disgrace To all who live in this place, It is indeed upon my life!! [1]

Sometimes the crowd would carry an effigy of the targeted man to a substitute punishment, e.g. burning.  Sometimes the man who physically abused his wife would be abused by the community:

Old Abram Higback has been paying his good woman; But he neither paid her for what or for why, But he up with his fist and blacked her eye.

Now all ye old women, and old women kind, Get together, and be in a mind; Collar him, and take him to the shit-house, And shove him over head.

Now if that does not mend his manners, The skin of his arse must go to the tanners; And if that does not mend his manners, Take him and hang him on a nail in Hell.

And if the nail happens to crack, Down with your flaps, and at him piss. [2]

The practices of charivari varied across time and place.  But no evidence exists of a charivari that targeted a wife who had been beaten by her husband.  If the husband beat the wife, the husband was the subject of the charivari.

The husband, in contrast, was also the subject of the charivari if he was beaten by his wife.  In France about 1400, husbands beaten by their wives were “paraded on an ass, face to tail.”[3]  In England, a mural in Montacute House (constructed about 1598) shows a wife beating her husband with a shoe and then a crowd parading the husband on a cowlstaff.  Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary, 10 June 1667: “in the afternoon took boat and down to Greenwich, where I find the stairs full of people, there being a great riding there to-day for a man, the constable of the town, whose wife beat him.”[4]  A Frenchman who traveled in England reported in 1698:

I have sometimes met in the streets of London a woman carrying a figure of straw representing a man, crown’d with very ample horns, preceded by a drum, and followed by a mob, making a most grating noise with tongs, grid-irons, frying-pans, and sauce-pans.  I asked what was the meaning of all this; they told me that a woman had given her husband a sound beating, for accusing her of making him a cuckold, and that upon such occasions some kind neighbour of the poor innocent injur’d creature generally performed this ceremony. [5]

The figure of straw, crowned with horns, mocked the beaten husband.  Another example describes a neighbor taking the punitive place in the charivari procession on behalf of the husband.[6]  That’s the most probably meaning of the phrase “some kind neighbour of the poor innocent injur’d creature generally performed this ceremony.”  The public intention seems to have been to beat in public husbands who were beaten within the home.  Having a kind neighbor limited the public beating to material and personal representations.

Within the home, men and women abused each other.   Public punishment for domestic violence, in contrast, seems to have fallen mainly on men.  The academic literature on charivari for a beaten husband has emphasized ideology.  A wife beating her husband exposes the unreality of patriarchal ideology.  Publicly punishing the beaten husband attempts to protect ideology from reality.  Focusing on who are punished — men — focuses on the painful, personal reality.”

For more information on it:

http://www.dewar4research.org/docs/skim-revisited.pdf

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Gay =/= Special

There is nothing special about being gay. We talk about treating them like normal human beings, and not judging them based upon what they do in the bedroom, yet we throw parades for them and give them their own month while glorifying them for being born a certain way...

You are not heroic, brave, or an inspiration just because you are gay, especially when living in a first world country that respects you and glorifies you for your sexual orientation.

There are countries in which being gay is illegal, yet here we are, acting as if gay people need to be glorified every 5 seconds, hence why so many young teens go around trying to act as though they are gay despite being straight, whilst making the gay community look like a joke, because we go around acting as though being gay makes you “oh so” special. But it does not!

So, you want gays to be treated fairly, then stop glorifying it(parades, making a big deal of coming out, acting as though it makes you special, etc), and treat them like how you would treat any average human being.

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The Real Reason Towards Why Most Women do Not Go Into STEM

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19883140

The magnitude and variability of sex differences in vocational interests were examined in the present meta-analysis for Holland's (1959, 1997) categories (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional), Prediger's (1982) Things-People and Data-Ideas dimensions, and the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) interest areas. Technical manuals for 47 interest inventories were used, yielding 503,188 respondents. Results showed that men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people, producing a large effect size (d = 0.93) on the Things-People dimension. Men showed stronger Realistic (d = 0.84) and Investigative (d = 0.26) interests, and women showed stronger Artistic (d = -0.35), Social (d = -0.68), and Conventional (d = -0.33) interests. Sex differences favoring men were also found for more specific measures of engineering (d = 1.11), science (d = 0.36), and mathematics (d = 0.34) interests. Average effect sizes varied across interest inventories, ranging from 0.08 to 0.79. The quality of interest inventories, based on professional reputation, was not differentially related to the magnitude of sex differences. Moderators of the effect sizes included interest inventory item development strategy, scoring method, theoretical framework, and sample variables of age and cohort. Application of some item development strategies can substantially reduce sex differences. The present study suggests that interests may play a critical role in gendered occupational choices and gender disparity in the STEM fields.

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How People React to a Male Getting Abused by a Female:

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Extensive Research: Women Initiate Domestic Violence More than Men, Men Under-report It.

http://www.aeesq.com/2017/03/23/women-initiate-domestic-violence/

Domestic violence against men is often under-reported. Further, multiple studies demonstrate that in Intimate Partner Violence (“IPV”), women are more often the initiators of physical violence. Expert testimony that provides such crucial information is necessary to overcome the bias against men in domestic violence cases and related restraining order matters, especially where men are claiming self-defense or filing for protective orders against abusive women. Social workers and judges are often skeptical of such claims by men, and it’s time we bring science into the courtroom to end such systemic gender-based discrimination against men.

1. “Analyzing data gathered from 11,370 respondents, researchers found that “half of [violent relationships] were reciprocally violent.  In non-reciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more that 70% of the cases.” Out of all the respondents, a quarter of the women admitted to perpetrating the domestic violence and, when the violence was reciprocal, women were often the ones to have been the first to strike.  In addition, an analytic view of 552 domestic violence studies published in the Psychological Bulletin found that 38% of the physical injuries suffered in domestic violence disputes were suffered by men.” See: http://bust.com/general/9702-women-more-often-the-aggressors-in-domestic-violence.html, based on a 2007 report in the American Journal of Public Health published here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1854883/, which states:

“Methods. We analyzed data on young US adults aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which contained information about partner violence and injury reported by 11 370 respondents on 18761 heterosexual relationships.

Results. Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.” Id.

2. “”Domestic violence is often seen as a female victim/male perpetrator problem, but the evidence demonstrates that this is a false picture.”

Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.

Similar or slightly larger numbers of men were subjected to severe force in an incident with their partner, according to the same documents. The figure stood at 48.6% in 2006-07, 48.3% the next year and 37.5% in 2008-09, Home Office statistics show.” See: https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence. Also see the original 2010 report from the UK non-profit, Parity, here: http://www.parity-uk.org/RSMDVConfPresentation-version3A.pdf.

3. “Sophie Goodchild reported in a 2000 Guardian piece on a study showing that women were actually more likely to initiate violence in relationships, writing:

The study … is based on an analysis of 34,000 men and women by a British academic. Women lash out more frequently than their husbands or boyfriends, concludes John Archer, professor of psychology at the University of Central Lancashire and president of the International Society for Research on Aggression.

… Professor Archer analysed data from 82 US and UK studies on relationship violence, dating back to 1972. He also looked at 17 studies based on victim reports from 1,140 men and women…. [H]e said that female aggression was greater in westernised women because they were “economically emancipated” and therefore not afraid of ending a relationship.” See: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/crime/item/19133-women-more-likely-to-commit-domestic-violence-studies-show.

4. “When people see a woman being abused in public, they tend to be quick to react. People will even put their own safety at risk to try to protect a vulnerable victim. Unfortunately, when the victim is a man, people not only do not react — they often find it humorous.

About 40 percent of domestic violence is suffered by men, but the issues has never gotten the attention it deserves, for various reasons.” See: http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/05/29/watch-what-happens-when-a-woman-abuses-a-man-in-public-video/

5. “As a general rule, men tend to underreport [sic] both their violence against their female partners and their female partners’ violence against them. By contrast, women tend to over-report both the men’s violence against them and their own violence. The couples in the study were also given tasks by the study’s monitors, such as planning a party or discussing a problem with their partner, and were filmed and observed by the OYS [Oregon Youth Study] during those tasks.

As in many studies of IPV [i.e., Intimate Partner Violence], the OYS found that much IPV is bidirectional (meaning both are violent), and in unidirectional abusive relationships, the women were more likely to be abusive than the men.” See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-sacks/researcher-says-womens-in_b_222746.html, which reports on the 2009 research report of Dr. Deborah Capaldi, Ph.D., who is based in Oregon, entitled “From Ideology to Inclusion 2009: New Directions in Domestic Violence Research and Intervention,” “presented by the California Alliance for Families & Children and co-sponsored by The Family Violence Treatment & Education Association” at “an IPV conference in Los Angeles June 26-28 [2009]”. Id.

6. “Research showing that women are often aggressors in domestic violence has been causing controversy for almost 40 years, ever since the 1975 National Family Violence Survey by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire found that women were just as likely as men to report hitting a spouse and men were just as likely as women to report getting hit. The researchers initially assumed that, at least in cases of mutual violence, the women were defending themselves or retaliating. But when subsequent surveys asked who struck first, it turned out that women were as likely as men to initiate violence—a finding confirmed by more than 200 studies of intimate violence. In a 2010 review essay in the journal Partner Abuse, Straus concludes that women’s motives for domestic violence are often similar to men’s, ranging from anger to coercive control.” See: http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/.

“Violence by women causes less harm due to obvious differences in size and strength, but it is by no means harmless. Women may use weapons, from knives to household objects—including highly dangerous ones such as boiling water—to neutralize their disadvantage, and men may be held back by cultural prohibitions on using force toward a woman even in self-defense. In his 2010 review, Straus concludes that in various studies, men account for 12% to 40% of those injured in heterosexual couple violence. Men also make up about 30% of intimate homicide victims—not counting cases in which women kill in self-defense. And women are at least as likely as men to kill their children—more so if one counts killings of newborns—and account for more than half of child maltreatment perpetrators.” Id.

“For the most part, feminists’ reactions to reports of female violence toward men have ranged from dismissal to outright hostility. Straus chronicles a troubling history of attempts to suppress research on the subject, including intimidation of heretical scholars of both sexes and tendentious interpretation of the data to portray women’s violence as defensive. In the early 1990s, when laws mandating arrest in domestic violence resulted in a spike of dual arrests and arrests of women, battered women’s advocates complained that the laws were “backfiring on victims,” claiming that women were being punished for lashing back at their abusers. Several years ago in Maryland, the director and several staffers of a local domestic violence crisis center walked out of a meeting in protest of the showing of a news segment about male victims of family violence. Women who have written about female violence, such as Patricia Pearson, author of the 1997 book When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, have often been accused of colluding with an anti-female backlash.” Id.

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The Wage Gap is False

http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html

“But now there's evidence that the ship may finally be turning around: according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. In two cities, Atlanta and Memphis, those women are making about 20% more. This squares with earlier research from Queens College, New York, that had suggested that this was happening in major metropolises. But the new study suggests that the gap is bigger than previously thought, with young women in New York City, Los Angeles and San Diego making 17%, 12% and 15% more than their male peers, respectively. And it also holds true even in reasonably small areas like the Raleigh-Durham region and Charlotte in North Carolina (both 14% more), and Jacksonville, Fla. (6%).”

Also, women are less likely to hold higher positions in organizations, due to a differences between the intersest of the sexes(though they still view it as equally attainable), which can attribute to women getting paid less:

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=49601

“Women are underrepresented in most high-level positions in organizations. While a great deal of research has provided evidence that bias and discrimination give rise to and perpetuate this gender disparity, in the current research, we explore another explanation: men and women view professional advancement differently, and their views impact their decisions to climb the corporate ladder (or not). In Studies 1 and 2, when asked to list their core goals in life, women listed more life goals overall than men, and a smaller proportion of their goals related to achieving power at work. In Studies 3 and 4, compared to men, women viewed high-level positions as less desirable yet equally attainable. In Studies 5–7, when faced with the possibility of receiving a promotion at their current place of employment or obtaining a high-power position after graduating from school, women and men anticipated similar levels of positive outcomes (e.g., prestige, money), but women anticipated more negative outcomes (e.g., conflict, tradeoffs). In these studies, women associated high-level positions with conflict, which explained the relationship between gender and the desirability of professional advancement. Finally, in Studies 8 and 9, men and women alike rated power as one of the main consequences of professional advancement. Our findings reveal that men and women have different perceptions of what the experience of holding a high-level position will be like, with meaningful implications for the perpetuation of the gender disparity that exists at the top of organizational hierarchies.”

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If you believe women are Oppressed in the west, than you are retarded

http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/

Over 40% of victims of severe physical violence are menBert H. Hoff, J.D. *SUMMARY: According to a 2010 national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Department of Justice, in the last 12 months more men than women were victims of intimate partner physical violence and over 40% of severe physical violence was directed at men. Men were also more often the victim of psychological aggression and control over sexual or reproductive health. Despite this, few services are available to male victims of intimate partner violence.Physical violenceMore men than women were victims of intimate partner physical violence within the past year, according to a national study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and U.S. Department of Justice. According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (hereinafter NISVS) released in December, 2011, within the last 12 months an estimated 5,365,000 men and 4,741,000 women were victims of intimate partner physical violence. (Black, M.C. et al., 2011, Tables 4.1 and 4.2) 1 This finding contrasts to the earlier National Violence Against Women Survey (Tjaden, P. G., & Thoennes, N., 2000)(hereinafter NVAWS), which estimated that 1.2 million women and 835,000 men were victims of intimate partner physical violence in the preceding 12 months. (One-year prevalence “are considered to be more accurate [than lifetime rates] because they do not depend on recall of events long past” (Straus, 2005, p. 60))If one adds in rape (606,000 victims) the total is 5,427,000 women-but there is an issue of double-counting of an incident as both rape and intimate partner physical violence. 2 Of the lifetime rape victims, 82.8% were also victims of physical violence. This suggests that a sizeable portion of the 606,000 rape victims are included in the 5,427,000 physical violence victims. But even if one ignores the double-counting of rape and physical violence, the number of female victims of rape and/or physical violence is 5,427,000 for women, contrasted with 5,365,000 male victims of physical violence, so it is safe to say that about half of the victims of physical violence are men.There is a significant difference between the NVAWS and NISVS surveys, in the number of victims of physical violence (4,741,000 vs. 1,300,000 women and 5,365,000 vs. 835,000 men), for which I have no explanation. In the 2001 NVAWS survey, some 38% of the victims of intimate physical violence were men, but in the 2011 NISVS survey 53% were men. This is consistent with earlier studies showing that between 1975 and 1992 (Straus and Gelles, 1988, Straus, 1995), between 1998 and 2005 (Catalano , 2005) and between 2009 and 2010 (Truman, 2011, Table 6) violence against women dropped but violence against males stayed steady. (As a point of reference, Statistics Canada (2006, 2011) reports that 45.5% of the victims of present or former spousal violence were men. The 2010 National Crime Victimization Survey (Truman, 2011, Table 5) shows only 407,700 female and 101,530 male victims of intimate partner violence: for women that’s less than a tenth of the victims reported in NISVS.)This drop in intimate partner violence against females and steady rate of violence against males raises an interesting policy question. Given that there are many thousands of support programs, Web sites and public-interest media items for female victims of domestic violence, and no programs and only a handful of Web sites for male victims, perhaps males, but not females, have got the message that domestic violence is wrong. There are many programs for men to stand up against domestic violence by men, and no programs urging women to stand up against domestic violence by women.This ratio of men to woman victims of intimate partner physical violence is not reported in the Executive Summary or other fact sheets of the NISVS survey. Instead, the NISVS focuses on severe physical violence-but omits a major contributor to severe physical violence against men reported in the earlier NVAWS survey. Some 21.6% of the male victims in that 2001 survey were threatened with a knife, contrasted to 12.7% of the women (Hoff, 2001, Table 1). The NISVS omission of threats by knife or gun is not only curious, but it flies in the face of the Centers for Disease Control’s own recommendations on data for intimate partner violence (Salzman, T. et al, 1999) The section of that document that covers the victim’s experience of intimate partner violence includes sections on sexual violence, physical violence, threats of physical or sexual violence and “psychological / emotional abuse.” (Salzman, T., 1999, §3.3) 3 But NISVS survey respondents were not asked about being threatened with a knife or gun.Notwithstanding that omission, the NISVS 2011 survey reports that in the last 12 months, 41.7% of the victims of severe physical violence were men. (Tables 4.7 and 4.8) 4 Of the 4,741,000 female victims of violence, two-thirds (3,163,000 or 66.7%) were subjected to severe physical violence. (Table 4.7) For men, over 4 out of 10 (2,266,000 or 42.3%) were subjected to severe physical violence. The number of men is smaller, but that is still 2.26 million men. Well over $1 billion is spent to help female victims, but there are virtually no services available in the country for over 2 million men who are victims of severe physical violence by an intimate partner.Psychological aggression, control of reproductive or sexual healthWhat is more violent, brandishing a knife at your spouse in the heat of an argument, refusing to wear a condom, or calling your spouse fat or stupid? NISVS did not ask about knife-wielding, but did ask about condoms and name-calling. Men were more often the victims of both psychological aggression (“expressive aggression” and “coercive control”) and control of reproductive or sexual health.Name-calling is one of the forms of “expressive aggression,” which includes acting angry in a way that seemed dangerous, name-calling and insulting remarks. 5 The other category of “psychological aggression” is “coercive control,” such as restricting access to friends or relatives and having to account for all your time. 6 In the last 12 months, 20,548,000 men (18.1%) and 16,578,000 (13.9%) women were subjected to psychological aggression. For women, this was split fairly evenly between expressive aggression and coercive control, while for men, 15.2% were subjected to coercive control and 9.3% to expressive aggression. The main forms of expressive aggression against women were insults (64.3%) and name-calling (58.0%). For men the top items were being called names (51.6%) and being told they were losers (42.4%)NISVS did not present detailed data on control of reproductive or sexual health. It summarized that “Approximately 10.4% (or an estimated 11.7 million) of men in the United States reported ever having an intimate partner who tried to get pregnant when they did not want to or tried to stop them from using birth control.” (p. 48). “Approximately 8.6% (or an estimated 10.3 million) of women in the United States reported ever having an intimate partner who tried to get them pregnant when they did not want to.” P. 48)What services are available for men?Studies show that men are less likely than women to seek help, and those that do have to overcome internal and external hurdles. (Galdas et al., 2005)(Cook 2009)There has been little research on responses to male victims of intimate partner violence, in part because agencies refuse to fund such research. For example, the U.S. Department of Justice solicitation of proposals for Justice Responses to Intimate Partner Violence and Stalking (p. 8) stated “What will not be funded: 4. Proposals for research on intimate partner violence against, or stalking of, males of any age or females under the age of 12.” In the few studies done, many men report that hotline workers say they only help women, imply or state the men must be the instigators, ridicule them or refer them to batterers’ programs. Police often will fail to respond, ridicule the man or arrest him. (Cook 2009)(Douglas and Hines, 2011)In 2008 Douglas and Hines conducted the first-ever large-scale national survey of men who sought help for heterosexual physical intimate partner violence. (Douglas and Hines, 2011) Some 302 men were surveyed. This study found that between half and two-thirds of the men who contacted the police, a DV agency, or a DV hotline reported that these resources were “not at all helpful.” The study elaborates:A large proportion of those who sought help from DV agencies (49.9%), DV hotlines (63.9%), or online resources (42.9%) were told, “We only help women.” Of the 132 men who sought help from a DV agency, 44.1% (n=86) said that this resource was not at all helpful; further, 95.3% of those men (n=81) said that they were given the impression that the agency was biased against men. Some of the men were accused of being the batterer in the relationship: This happened to men seeking help from DV agencies (40.2%), DV hotlines (32.2%) and online resources (18.9%). Over 25% of those using an online resource reported that they were given a phone number for help which turned out to be the number for a batterer’s program. The results from the open-ended questions showed that 16.4% of the men who contacted a hotline reported that the staff made fun them, as did 15.2% of the men who contacted local DV agencies. (p. 7) Police arrested the man as often as the violent partner (33.3% vs. 26.5%) 7 . (p. 8) The partner was deemed the “primary aggressor” in 54.9% of the cases. In 41.5% of the cases where men called the police, the police asked if he wanted his partner arrested; in 21% the police refused to arrest the partner, and in 38.7% the police said there was nothing they could do and left.Some 68% of the men turning to mental health professionals said the professional took his concern seriously, but only 30.1% offered information on how to get help from a DV program. Although 106 men suffered severe physical injury, only 54 sought help from a medical provider. Some 90.1% were asked how they got their injuries, and 60.4% answered truthfully. Only 14% got information on getting help from a program for intimate partner violence.The best source for help was friends, neighbors, relatives, lawyers, ministers and the like. 84.9% turned to one or more of these sources, and 90% found them helpful. Two-thirds of the men sought online help and support, with half the men surveyed using Web sites and a quarter using an online support group. Some 69.1% found online support helpful; 44.9% used a resource for male victims and 42.6% for anyone experiencing partner aggression.The study concludes that informal help, mental health and medical services were the most helpful. The services least helpful werethose that are the core of the DV service system: DV agencies, DV hotlines, and the police. On the one hand, about 25% of men who sought help from DV hotlines were connected with resources that were helpful. On the other hand, nearly 67% of men reported that these DV agencies and hotline were not at all helpful. Many reported being turned away. The qualitative accounts in our research tell a story of male helpseekers who are often doubted, ridiculed, and given false information. This failure of service impacts men’s physical and mental health.Specifically, for each additional negative experience with helpseeking, men’s odds of meeting the cut-off for PTSD increased 1.37 times. For each additional positive experience, these helpseekers were about 40% less likely to have abused alcohol in the previous year. These findings hold even after controlling for other traumatic experiences, such as childhood victimization and being injured by a partner. (p. 10) The NISVS survey makes a half-hearted effort to remedy this situation. Buried in its recommendations is the sentence “It is also important that services are specifically designed to meet the needs of a wide range of different populations such as teens, older adults, men, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people.” We can do better than this.What should we do?We need to recognize intimate partner violence by women, understand it, and recognize it as a serious social problem.Public service announcements need to be de-gendered. Right now, they focus almost exclusively on intimate partner violence against women. There needs to be more public education about violence to men. There are many Web sites on intimate partner violence against women. These are all woman-centered, or use gender-neutral language. They tend to minimize violence against men. There is only a handful of sites addressing domestic violence against men. None of these (except for the Clark County IN prosecutor’s site) receive any government, foundation or corporate support.Feminist theory states that intimate partner violence is an accepted form of “power and control” by men in a patriarchal society. But according to Straus (2011) the predominant immediate motives for violence, by women as well men, are frustration and anger at some misbehavior by the partner. “They are efforts to coerce the partner into stopping some socially undesirable behavior or to practice some socially desirable behavior. … Studies have found that women engage in coercive control as much as men.”Further, intimate partner violence is more likely to be mutual or female-initiated than male-initiated. In an analysis of 36 general-population studies on IPV and dating violence, Straus (2011) found that women were half again as likely to perpetrate serious physical violence. The 14 studies which also examined whether the violence resulted in physical injury showed that men inflicted injuries more often than women, but the difference was not that great. The rate for women injuring a partner was 88% of the male rate. Studies with a high percentage of men inflicting injury are, without exception, also studies with a high percentage of women injuring a partner.Straus found that the typical pattern is that when there are severe assaults, in almost half couples, both severely assault. The two studies with extremely high rates of mutual assault (68% and 78%) are studies of very young couples and those results are consistent with a large number of studies that have found extremely high rates for very young couples. Studies which asked specifically about self-defense found that only a small percentage of female assaults were in self-defense, such 5, 10, or 15. For one study that found high rates of self-defense, the percentage was slightly greater for men (56%) than for women (42%) (Harned, 2001).There is other evidence which casts doubt on the idea that intimate partner violence by women is primarily in self-defense. Eight studies providing data on who hit first have found that women initiate from 30 to 73% (median=45%) of violent incidents. One found high rates of violence by women, even when male violence was statistically controlled.Is there “gender symmetry” in intimate partner violence? As Straus (2011) points out, studies often confound symmetry in perpetration with symmetry in effect. Women do experience more physical injury and psychological impact, but men experience these as well (Douglas & Hines, 2010). As IPV expert Strauss puts it, saying that violence by women is not a serious social problem “is like arguing that cancer is not an important medical problem because many more die of heart disease.” (2011, p. 284)In the last 12 months 5.4 million men were victims of intimate partner violence, 2.3 million victims of serious physical violence, yet there are virtually no programs to serve them. Intimate partner violence by women increases the chances that they will themselves be victims of intimate partner violence. Intimate partner violence is morally wrong and criminal, but there are few programs for women batterers to show them better ways to resolve conflicts in a relationship. Public education efforts are need to focus on girls and women. As Straus (2011, p. 285) states,It is not sufficient for prevention programs to be gender neutral. They need to be explicitly directed to girls and women as well as boys and men. In addition, more than just awareness of female perpetration is needed. The target audience of women and girls also needs to be informed that PV by a woman is morally wrong, a criminal act, and that it is a danger to women because it increases the probability of her partner being violent (Straus, 2005). States need to offer domestic violence services to men. Many say they do, but none have data on the number of men served. Some of these programs for men are male batterer programs. The Valley Oasis Center in California and a program in Longview, WA are two of only a handful of DV programs offering equal services to men. In King County (Seattle) when I asked about services for battered men I was referred to a male better program. The Snohomish County program north of Seattle says they serve males, but men who have tried to get help inform me they were sent away. Courts in California and West Virginia have found that DV programs discriminate on the basis of sex, in violation of equal protection provisions of their constitutions. (Woods v. Horton, 2008).In short, we need to recognize that intimate partner violence is a people problem, not a women’s problem.http://www.saveservices.org/2012/02/cdc-study-more-men-than-women-victims-of-partner-abuse/

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A Quite Biology Lesson:

There are only 2 genders.