Why Won’t Feminist Groups Acknowledge That Women Are Equally Likely to Abuse?

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Contact: Mike Buchanan

Telephone: +44 7967 026163

Toxic Femininity: Why Won’t Feminist Groups Acknowledge That Women Are Equally Likely to Abuse?

March 2, 2023 – Recent media reports were filled with lurid accounts of Samantha Smith, who stabbed her boyfriend 29 times in the chest and attempted to saw off his head with a bread knife. Last week, Smith was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the horrific attack.

After the verdict was handed down, Police Detective Constable Emma O’Har commented, “Domestic abuse isn’t isolated to women victims. Many men are in abusive, coercive, controlling, and violent relationships, and quite often they keep their abuse to themselves.” (1)

Hundreds of studies conducted around the world confirm the detective’s statement.

A summary of 343 scholarly investigations conducted in 40 countries concludes, “women are as physically aggressive as men (or more) in their relationships with their spouses or opposite-sex partners.” (2) Studies conducted in various regions and countries confirm this finding:

Europe: 15.2% of males and 14.8% of females report being victims of physical domestic violence in the past year (3).
United States: 6.4 million men and 5.6 million women annually are victims of physical violence by an intimate partner (4).
Canada: “2.9% of men and 1.7% of women reported experiencing physical and/or sexual IPV in their current relationships in the last 5 years.” (5)
Latin America: 54.3% of male-female comparisons reveal similar abuse rates between the sexes. Most of the other findings involve a female perpetrator and male victim (6).
Australia: Men and women “experience domestic violence at similar rates.” (7)

Sadly, feminist organizations refuse to recognize this growing body of research. For example, UN Women flatly ignores domestic violence against males (8). Another feminist group called “Every Woman Treaty” recently called for an international treaty to stop violence against women, ignoring the equally pressing problem of violence against men (9). Many other examples exist (10).

Experts attribute the systematic neglect of female-perpetrated violence to a syndrome they call “toxic femininity” (11), which includes these characteristics:

Talking negatively about other people, often to make oneself feel superior or to gain social power.
Playing the victim: Blaming others for personal problems or misfortunes, and portraying oneself as helpless or powerless.
Manipulation: Using emotional or psychological tactics to control others and get what one wants.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance calls on lawmakers, feminist organizations, and civil society groups to bring an end to the shroud of silence that surrounds male victims of domestic violence.

The Domestic Abuse and Violence International Alliance – DAVIA — consists of 74 member organizations from 29 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. DAVIA seeks to ensure that domestic violence and abuse polices are science-based, family-affirming, and sex-inclusive. https://endtodv.org/davia/

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