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Introduction

Since the initiation of social science research on intimate partner violence (IPV) in the 1970s, scholars have debated the relevance of gender to our understanding of this phenomenon. Often described as the “gender symmetry” debate, the controversy involves both quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Some scholars who rely on survey data have found sex parity in the rates of violent acts perpetrated by men and women against their intimate partners (Archer, 2000, 2002). Those who compare rates of violence by men and women are examining the self-reported sex categories and actions of respondents, not gender, the socially constructed enactment of femininity and masculinity (Kimmel, 2002). Richard Felson has argued that sex parity in reports of IPV perpetration support a “violence perspective” on IPV over a “gender perspective” (Felson & Lane, 2010). That is, Felson and others believe that IPV is best understood as a form of violence rather than a manifestation of gendered power relationships. Felson is joined by a group of psychologists and sociologists who find the evidence of women’s use of violence in general social surveys a convincing rationale for rejecting gender as a key component in explanations of IPV (see also Archer, 2002; Dutton, 2006; Hines & Douglas, 2010; Mills, 2003). Other scholars, following the New Hampshire Family Research Laboratory approach, have adopted a “family violence” perspective that focuses on tensions within families as a system rather than gender per se. Straus (1976, 1977) has been a leader in this approach but was one of the first to identify male dominance and sexual inequality as primary causes of woman battering in his earliest writings in the 1970s. More recently, Straus has shifted his position to argue against ­explanations focusing primarily on male dominance and for gender symmetry and “bidirectionality” in IPV (Straus, 2008, 2011). Felson’s “violence perspective” argues that IPV is simply one form of interpersonal violence; Straus’s “family violence” perspective argues that IPV is a product of multiple causes but the most significant involves systemic problems within families. Adherents of both the “violence” and “family violence” perspectives argue that patriarchy and male dominance have received too much attention and that IPV is gender symmetrical.

Feminist scholars have long argued that IPV is principally an outcome of patriarchy and one of the mechanisms that maintains gender inequality (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Ferraro, 2006; Hanmer, 1996; Johnson, 2008; Stark, 2007). Their critique of the gender symmetry argument relies on four major issues: methodology, situational and structural context, motivations for violence, and the consequences for victims (see Johnson, 2010; Stark, 2010).The social survey data on which the gender symmetry debate relies uses an instrument that measures discrete instances of violent behavior. Researchers abstract violent actions from the context, meaning and historical development of intimate relationships (Dobash, Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992). The survey data on which they rely tends to equate a onetime slap in the context of a specific argument with a slap that is repeated each time a partner questions the authority of the other. Feminist scholars argue that the overwhelming data from police, shelters, courts, ethnographic and interview studies demonstrate that women are far more likely to suffer as victims of IPV than are men (Dasgupta, 2002; Dobash & Dobash, 2004). In addition, some large-scale, federally funded general social surveys—in particular, the National Violence Against Women Survey (funded by NIJ and CDC) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (funded by the DOJ)—show much higher rates of IPV victimization of women than of men.

Other large-scale social surveys report similar rates of IPV victimization, but much higher rates of injury and negative social and psychological consequences for women. The Canadian General Social Survey (GSS) of 1999, for example, reported that 70 out of every 1,000 women and 61 of every 1,000 men experienced violence from their intimate partners in the previous 5 years (LaRoche, 2005). More recently, the Centers for Disease Control’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported that 35.6% of women and 28.5% of men in the USA experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Black et al., 2011, p. 2). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey also reports that women and men both experience almost identical levels of “psychological aggression” from an intimate partner over their lifetime; 48.4% of women and 48.8% of men (Black et al., 2011, p. 45). Yet both of these surveys identified a much higher rate of injury and other negative impacts, such as interruption of daily routines, of IPV for women victims than for men. In the CDC survey, 80.8% of female victims reported any impact, and 22.1% required medical care; 34.7% of male victims reported any impact, and 5.5% required medical care. In the Canadian GSS, LaRoche (2005) notes that although “the percentages of all male and female victims suffering physical consequences in intimate terrorism were comparable, it must be emphasized that the number of female victims was significantly higher in virtually every category”(p. 12).

Johnson (2008) has demonstrated that part of the gender symmetry controversy stems from the fact that IPV is not one homogeneous phenomenon but rather varies depending on a person’s motivation for using violence. Randomly conducted surveys tend to measure violent acts outside of a context of ongoing coercive control, what he terms “situational couple violence.” Interview-based studies, often using agency samples, more often uncover a pattern of coercively controlling behaviors designed to subjugate an intimate partner, what he terms “intimate partner terrorism.” He suggests that those who find gender symmetry are looking at “situational couple violence” and those who find asymmetry are looking at “intimate partner terrorism” (Johnson, 2008, p. 3).

Stark (2007) echoes this argument and suggests the categories of fights, partner assaults, and coercive control, although he emphasizes that there may be little or no physical violence in situations of coercive control. But adherents of the gender symmetry position have reacted to Johnson’s and Stark’s typologies with data indicating women are as or more likely to use controlling behaviors and instill fear in their victims than are men (Dutton, 2006; Felson & Lane, 2010; Graham-Kevan, 2007; Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 2010).

The debate on gender symmetry in IPV remains as intractable as ever. One’s position depends largely on their perceptions of the data and nonevidence-based factors, such as ideological loyalties and personal experience. In this chapter, I argue that (1) gender matters at the individual psyche, micro-everyday, institutional, structural, and cultural levels of peoples’ lives; (2) gender symmetry arguments have been captured by individualistic and binary models of gender that conflate sex and gender, ignore theoretical analyses of both gender and violence and neglect the importance of intersectionality; and (3) symmetry arguments fail to incorporate sustained analyses of forms of IPV that are uniquely gendered. I include in this category rape and sexual coercion, reproductive control, and violence during pregnancy, as well as behaviors that are highly correlated with lethal outcomes, such as strangulation. I illustrate my argument about the importance of intersectionality with a brief case profile of a battered man. I also review narratives from women and men who have been subjected to coercive control and IPV and US national level data reflecting the ongoing significance of gender in people’s lives. I conclude with recommendations for research and policy that takes seriously the gendered nature of IPV.

The Continuing Significance of Gender and Sexism

As a group, women’s status in the USA has improved remarkably over the past 35 years during which the Battered Women’s Movement has existed. Women can now be found in nearly every profession, marital rape is no longer formally condoned in law, and the overall wage gap in median year round earnings has decreased. Women’s participation in electoral politics, their presence in higher education, and the ­representations of women in popular culture all reflect an improvement in the status of women between 1960 and 2012. Just as some argue that we are in a post-racial society, some analysts argue that we are now in a “post-feminist” era in which gender no longer restricts the opportunities and resources available to women or men. Yet we know that gender continues to play a significant role in how people experience the world.

Sociologists have documented gender differences from early childhood, including parental reactions to children (Kane, 2006), childhood sports (Messner, 2000), and toys (Kimmel, 2002). As adults, gender continues to affect our health (McKay, Messner, & Sabo, 2000; Schulz & Mullings, 2005), our careers (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2010; Padavic & Reskin, 2002), our relationships (Muraco, 2012; Rubin, 1984), and our income (Hayes, 2011; Hays, 2003), among other aspects of our lives and identities. The voluminous scholarship on gender leaves little doubt that gender has continuing significance. We are both advantaged and disadvantaged by our gendered realities, so my insistence on the significance of gender does not equate with an assumption of women’s oppression. Some gender symmetry proponents have portrayed feminist domestic violence scholars as male bashing, woman valorizing proponents of “victim feminism.” But appreciation of the continuing significance of gender does not depend on an antagonistic or unidimensional account of gender relations. At the same time, aggregate data comparing women and men as groups reflect ongoing barriers to gender equality in the USA.

Certainly, income is a major index of social equality. Women’s average annual median wage rose to 77% of comparable male income by 2011. While this is a significant gain over the 54% of 1960, a gain that is the difference between poverty and making it, at the current rate of improvement it will be 2056 before women reach wage parity with men (Hayes, 2011).

However, annual wage data by gender, like data on IPV, perpetuates the gender binary and disguises the differences in economic opportunities that are imposed by race, ethnicity, immigration status, health, sexuality, and motherhood. The range of factors that influence income complicates our understanding of the continuing significance of gender on one’s life chances. For example, women with children, on average, earn less money than women without children. It is known as the motherhood penalty. On the other hand, men with children, on average, earn more money than men without children—the fatherhood bonus (Budig & Hodges, 2010; Glauber, 2007). Scholars have demonstrated that the motherhood penalty varies by race, income, relationship status, and number of children (Glauber, 2007).

The gender wage gap in median annual income is much more significant when race is also considered; Black and Hispanic men earn significantly less than White men, but within each racial or ethnic category, women earn less than men. But the median annual income seriously distorts the impact of gender on long-term wealth. Rose and Hartmann (2004) examined the 15 peak earning years for men and women, and found by that measure women earned only 38% of male earnings. This translates into long-term financial insecurity, especially for women with no other earning adult in their families and older women who have not amassed a significant retirement. They explain this differential by the sex segregated labor market, with women and men still holding different jobs, men more often in high earning occupations, and women’s continuing role in domestic labor, especially child care. Although fathers are more involved in raising children than in the early 1970s, women are still far more likely to reduce workforce participation or professional advancement during their prime earning years, which coincide with their prime reproductive years. Because the USA is the last industrialized Western nation without a national childcare system, families must struggle with child care and usually the person with the lowest income is the one who stays home or works part-time. These gendered care decisions have long-term consequences for women’s and men’s earning capacity.

The ongoing economic disparities between women and men, as groups, suggest that gender still matters in terms of income and survival. Economic insecurity plays a key role in how individuals respond to IPV. We cannot deduce individual decision making from aggregate level data, but we know that people who depend on their abusive partner for income are more compromised in their choices to terminate an abusive relationship. As long as women face disadvantages in the labor market, their experiences of IPV cannot be considered “symmetrical” to those of men.

At the cultural level, we have also made great strides, but there are still vast differences in cultural representations of women and men and in those who control the technologies of representation. According to the Women’s Media Center, women are underrepresented in all aspects of the U.S. media industry. In 2010–2011, for example, women held less than 20% of the creator, writer, director positions in television entertainment, decreasing their participation from the previous 2 years (Yi & Dearfield, 2012). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the group that awards the Oscars, is composed of 77% men and 94% whites. Men make up 90% of the five branches of the Academy (Mohr, 2012). Women and men are represented differently in popular media, with women characters hypersexualized (Yi & Dearfield, 2012).

Obviously, we cannot employ aggregate data on gender disparities to make assumptions about the status of any given woman or man in a specific relationship. What the wage gap and the gendered media suggest is the continuing significance of gender in people’s lives. Those who advocate “gender symmetry” in IPV often overlook the ways that gender is woven into the fabric of contemporary life with very real consequences for the ways men and women view themselves, interact, and gain access to resources.

Intersectionality

The Battered Women’s Movement emerged in the USA in the early 1970s as an outgrowth of second wave feminism. Feminists of this era were working to address basic human and civil rights that discriminated against women as a group. Second wave activists often portrayed “women” in a homogeneous manner in opposition to similarly homogeneous “men” in an effort to demonstrate and remedy the egregious violations of equal rights existing in that era. Activists identified the laws and policies that normalized and condoned husbands’ violence against wives as a ­particularly debilitating and even life-threatening form of sexual inequality (Martin, 1979; Schechter, 1982). The Battered Women’s Movement has been one of the most successful aspects of second wave feminism, creating new laws, new services, new language and new consciousness about IPV. At the same time, many have criticized the Movement for adopting a universalistic view of women’s experiences and ignoring the intersecting influences of race, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, and physical ability (Richie, 2000, 2012; Smith, 2005; Sokoloff, 2005).

Queer theorists have also challenged the rigid gender binary that characterized much of the early Battered Women’s Movement and remains embedded in the gender symmetry debate. For queer theorists, as well as many social constructionists, there is no pre-linguistic biological reality that sets clear boundaries around and categorically opposes “men” and “women.” Rather, we socially and linguistically generate these categories that help constitute and perpetuate a gender regime. This regime is upheld by social science experts who insist on binary gender categorizations and frame data in terms of gender difference. Queer theorists work to reveal the processes that maintain the illusion of “real” gender differences and to unravel theoretical and empirical implications of a social world freed of the binary illusion. Both the violence and feminist proponents in the gender symmetry debate cement the gender binary by treating gender as an unproblematic social fact (see also Anderson, 2005).

Scholars who focus on intersectionality and queer visions of gender have helped to illuminate the limitations of the gender symmetry debate. For example, Andrea Smith, in her work on violence and colonization of American Indian people in North America, has identified historical sources of trauma that underline the inadequacies of male versus female comparisons (Smith, 2003). Smith articulates the logic of racism that is woven into contemporary relations. According to this logic, American Indian people, both female and male, are disposable and despicable and thus legitimately subject to rape and bodily violation. She frames her analysis within a critique of the “white-dominated-anti-violence movement” and Susan Brownmiller’s famous statement that “rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear” (Smith, 2003, p. 70). Such universalistic pronouncements disguise the multiple layers of oppression that structure the experiences of people of color. From the perspective of the history of colonization, simple comparisons of male and female use of IPV obscure the real, ongoing differences among people that shape their experiences of violence. These differences do not mitigate the need to address the high levels of IPV in communities that have suffered the impact of colonization, but rather demand a more nuanced understanding of the nature of partner violence.

Crenshaw (1993) was among the first scholars to develop an intersectional analysis of IPV). Crenshaw explained how African-American women had unique experiences of IPV due to the simultaneous, intersecting influence of gender, race, and class. She distinguished intersectionality from an additive model that dissects people’s lives into separate categories. Crenshaw reviewed the history of rape law and court cases that defined Black women as inherently unchaste and untrustworthy in contrast to chaste, reliable white victims. She argued that Black women have a ­different, less coherently oppositional relationship to Black men than White women have to White men. From the model of intersectionality developed by Crenshaw, a comparison of male and female perpetrated IPV is misleading and distorted if it excludes intersectional realities. The policy implications of this will be discussed in the final sections of this chapter.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on intimate partner homicides (IPH) provide a stark illustration of the importance of race in gender comparisons (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012).Women are much more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than are men. Approximately one third of female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner while about 3% of male murder victims die as a result of IPH (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012) However, rates of IPH of Black women have declined much more than those for White women. Between 1976 and 2005, the number of Black women killed by an intimate partner declined by 52%; the corresponding decline for White women was 6%. Black women, particularly “girlfriends,” are still much more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than are White women. IPH is the leading cause of death for Black women ages 18–45. Intimate partner homicides have declined significantly since 1976, but not evenly across gender and racial groups. Black men had a rate of IPH 20 times higher in 1976; the number of White men killed by an intimate partner dropped by 61%. According to official government data, both males and females of all races were less likely to die at the hands of an intimate partner in 2005 than in 1976 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2012).

More recent data from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey also highlight the significance of race and ethnicity. Black et al. (2011, p. 40) report that 19.6% of Asian or Pacific Islander women experience rape, violence, and/or stalking by their intimate partner over their lifetimes. The rates are 34.6% for White, non-Hispanic women, 43.7% for Black, non-Hispanic women, 37.1% for Hispanic women, 46% for American Indian or Alaska Native women, and 53.8% for women who identify as multiracial. The corresponding rates for men are not reported for Asian or Pacific Islanders due to low rates. The lifetime prevalence rates of rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner for other racial/ethnic groups of men are 26.6% for Hispanic; 28.2% for white, non-Hispanic; 38.6% for Black, non-Hispanic; 45.3% for American Indian or Alaska Native; and 39.3% for men who identify as multiracial. For rape victimization, the differences are more dramatic. One out of 59 White, non-Hispanic men experienced rape at one point in their lives (1.7%), while one in three women (33.5%) who identified as multiracial, non-Hispanic reported experiencing rape (Black et al., 2011, p. 3).

But these quantitative data are far from an intersectional analysis of IPV and homicide. They reflect the type of additive model that Crenshaw argued against. They do not tell us anything about why the rates are so disparate and what has caused homicide rates to decline more significantly for one group of women and not another. Nor do they explain why male deaths from IPH have declined so much more rapidly than female deaths. Women’s and men’s lived experiences of IPV do not surface in data that are limited to victimization and perpetration rates, gender and race.

At the phenomenological level, many factors contribute to aggressive behavior. Although males have a much higher rate of physical violence generally—both as victims and as perpetrators—rates of behavior do not reveal the lived experience of IPV. That experience, like all social experience, is filtered through the web of individual, institutional, structural, and cultural dimensions of one’s life. We cannot assume that these dimensions are determined by gender or that it is possible to extricate the role of gender from other aspects of one’s social location. We know, however, that gender remains an influential aspect of identity that also has implications for social life. People’s gendered lives are also shaped by other aspects of their identities but, in Joan Scott’s terms, gender remains a “meaningful category of analysis” (Scott, 1986).

Narrative Analyses of IPV

Many scholars have described the lived experience of IPV through detailed narratives collected from women (Chang, 1996; Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Ferraro, 2006; Ferraro & Johnson, 1983; Lemert, 1994; Pagelow, 1981; Raphael, 2000; Richie, 2000; Stark, 2007; Villalon, 2010; Walker, 1979; Websdale, 1998). Most of the women interviewed were seeking help from shelters or other domestic violence programs. Thus, the nature of their experiences with partner violence was consistent with intimate partner terrorism rather than situational couple violence. These narratives have shaped our understanding of the microdynamics of IPV perpetrated by men against women (Pence & Paymar, 1993). We know about coercive control, extreme possessiveness, pathological jealousy, surveillance, degradation, minimization and justification of abuse, destruction of property, pet abuse, threats, isolation from friends and family, sexual coercion and rape, abuse of children, rigid rules for behavior and demeanor, name calling, and various forms of physical violence from the narratives women have offered over many years. We know about the extent of the problem of IPV from survey data, but our knowledge of the dynamics of IPV has been constituted by thousands of these narratives collected since the 1970s.

Although the first survey data suggesting sexual symmetry in the perpetration of IPV was published in 1980 (Straus, 1980), narrative accounts of men’s experiences as victims of IPV have been slow to accumulate. One of the first studies to address male victims was limited to men in same-sex relationships (Island & Letellier, 1991). Island and Letellier’s work described the similarities between gay men’s experiences of domestic violence and those of women. But it told us little about men’s experiences of women’s violence in relationships. In 1997, investigative journalist Philip Cook published his book on battered men, arguing that he cut through political rhetoric to reveal that husband abuse was at least as serious a problem as wife abuse. Cook interviewed thirty men who described abuse by their wives. In response to Cook’s request to “tell me about the time you were most seriously hurt,” a respondent described his wife’s drunkenness and her assault on him when he tried to prevent her from leaving their home with their baby:

I got the baby away from her, and she ran up from behind and bit me on the shoulder and once on the chest. I could have dropped the baby because of what she was doing.

Did you go to the hospital?

No, I didn’t. The bites were pretty deep, though; I still have scars that don’t look like they are ever going away. It really did hurt a lot. I did have [my lawyer] take pictures (Cook, 1997, pp. 41–42).

While obviously a painful experience, this most serious injury, which did not require medical intervention, is a far cry from the most serious incidents described in women’s narratives. Cook’s interviewees also described instances of slapping, throwing objects, intentional sleep deprivation, and weapon use. Men also described “groin attacks” that were principally threats, but Cook quotes one man who claimed he was commonly kicked in the testicles multiple times by his wife. Interestingly, this man described how he attempted to control his wife when she attacked him: “I would wrestle her to the ground, pin her arms around her, and wrap my legs around her, and tell her to calm down, calm down” (1997, pp. 40–41). Although Cook’s intention was to present men’s accounts to illustrate the comparability between men’s and women’s abuse, and he wrote that he only selected portions of interview data, both the abuse described and men’s ability to resist it vary dramatically from the accounts of women victims.

Migliaccio (2002) provides a narrative analysis of the accounts of twelve heterosexual men abused by their partners. His sample includes two men from a divorce and custody group, two men referred by group members, seven men who responded to an internet posting, three by e-mail and four by phone, and the story of a man who posted his experiences on the Internet prior to committing suicide (Migliaccio, 2002, p. 32). All but one of the men indicated that they were larger and stronger than their wives and capable of defending themselves, but they refrained from using that strength to restrain their wives or to retaliate. Men said that they acquiesced to their wives’ abuse because if they attempted to resist, the violence escalated or led to later attacks. Two men said that they feared for their lives. Men also indicated that they believed it was always wrong for a man to hit a woman. However, half of the men reported that they had hit their wives, but always in self-defense (Migliaccio, 2002, pp. 34–35).

The men in Migliaccio’s study described some of the same nonviolent aspects of abuse found in the Duluth model’s power and control wheel. They felt they deserved the abuse because of their wives’ denigration and justifications for their violence. They were isolated from friends and family who disapproved of their wives’ abuse. Men’s sense of responsibility for their own abuse and disengagement from supportive networks contributed to their acceptance of the abuse. Men described rationalizations of the abuse similar to those reported by battered women (Ferraro & Johnson, 1983). About half of the men reported suicidal ideation and half indicated that their wives’ suicidal threats were one reason they remained in their relationships.

Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson provides lengthy analyses of a single case of a man, pseudonymously called NH, who maintained a diary describing his abuse during the last 2 years of a 20-year marriage (Allen-Collinson, 2009, 2011). She does not report how she located NH to study, but describes her methodology as including five face-to-face interviews and analysis of the diary. NH also described patterns of abuse, acceptance, and rationalization that are similar to those described by women victims of abuse. According to his account, NH’s wife scratched, “poked and thumped,” hit with a guitar, threatened with a knife, and put both her hands in his mouth and stretched it. She deliberately deprived him of sleep, broke or threw out meaningful possessions, and denigrated him as a parent, a husband, and a person. NH describes his wife’s minimization of her abuse and his own accommodation to persistent abuse that began on their first date.

Women’s Narratives of Their Own Violence

Pence and Paymar (1993) found that of the 100 women arrested and sentenced to their batterers’ education groups over 10 years (3.5% of the court-mandated participants), seven could be classified as serious batterers whose husbands were afraid for their lives. They argued that this small minority of women were similar to male batterers, but did not provide narratives from the women.

Miller (2005) spent 6 months recording weekly treatment sessions for women arrested for domestic violence. Based on the transcripts of these recordings, Miller identified three major themes in women’s accounts of their IPV: generalized violent behavior (5% of women), frustration response behavior (30%), and defensive behavior (65%). Within the groups, women were encouraged to talk about and take responsibility for their violence and to learn ways to avoid violence in the future. Women in the generalized violent behavior group, only five women, used violence both within the home and outside of it. They differed from male batterers in that they did not use violence as a strategy of control and did not, in fact, exert control over their partners. Instead, their violence was an expression of anger. The rest of the women were responding to physical and/or emotional abuse either in the immediate context or prior abuse. Thus, none of the 95 women arrested and sentenced to a treatment group were intimate terrorists who used violence as one strategy for exerting power and control over a partner.

Flinck and Paavilainen (2010) interviewed 24 women identified through helping agencies, personal contacts, and key persons identified by other participants. Flinck and Paavilainen catalogued three major themes in the women’s narratives: rejection of violence, justification of violence, and awakening and moving on (2010, p. 310). Most women rationalized and minimized their use of violence in their relationships. Unfortunately, these authors did not clarify whether “violence” was verbal or physical or how many of their respondents were truly acting in self-defense.

Dobash and Dobash (2004) interviewed 95 couples about violence in their relationship. This study is one of very few that included interviews with both members of a violent couple. The authors note the limitation of their sample, however, since all of the men had been convicted of a domestic violence offense. Dobash and Dobash report that the men were much more reluctant to describe their violent ­conduct than were women and significantly underreported the severity and frequency of their assaults. They also found that most men were not afraid of or harmed by their wives’ violence and instead viewed it as amusing or admirable. For example, one respondent, when asked how he felt about his wife’s violence, said “It did me good. I was quite pleased she did it because I knew she was starting to stand up for herself” (Dobash & Dobash, 2004, p. 341).

This reaction to women’s violence mirrors data from my own research. For example, one of the women I interviewed described how her partner enjoyed her violence:

I blacked his eye one time, ‘cuz I tried to defend myself by kickin’ him, ‘cuz he was sorta’ attackin’ me and I was on the passenger side, and I knew I couldn’t fight him off, and I started kickin’ him and I had bruises all up and down my leg and I gave him a black eye, and he thought that felt so good, I mean, that felt good to him, and he was really like proud o’ me for standin’ up for myself (Ferraro, 2006, p. 69).

Although there are more narratives by women of their own violence than there are narratives by men of their violent victimization by intimate partners, the available data is quite limited. It is puzzling that there are so few qualitative analyses of men’s accounts of victimization given the ongoing insistence that IPV is a gender symmetrical phenomenon.

Sexual Coercion

Men and women differ significantly on one particular aspect of IPV. Sexual coercion and sexual humiliation are much more likely to be perpetrated by men against female partners. Scholars who advocate the violence approach and report gender symmetry do not discuss findings on sexual abuse and assault. The general social surveys that have included questions about sexual abuse in relationships, however, report that a high proportion of relationships characterized by intimate terrorism include sexually abusive behaviors by males against females. The National Violence Against Women Survey found that over their lifetimes, 7.7% of women and 0.3% of men had been raped by an intimate partner; in the year prior to the survey, 0.2% of women were raped by an intimate partner and fewer than five men reported rape in the previous year. Although the survey measured IPV among same-sex partners, it does specify the sex of the person who raped an intimate partner. Women who reported multiple incidents of rape by an intimate partner indicated an average of 3.8 incidents of rape by that partner each year (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men have been raped at some time in their lives. (Black et al., 2011, p. 18). The vast majority of rape perpetrators for both women and men were male, 92.5% and 93.3%, respectively (Black et al., 2011, p. 24).Approximately one in ten women were raped by an intimate partner in their lifetime; the number of men reporting rape by an intimate partner was too small to provide a reliable estimate (Black et al., 2011, p. 40).

Men can be raped by women and experience sexual humiliation, coercion and pain at the hands of female abusers. However, all of the available data indicate that sexual coercion and abuse within intimate relationships is overwhelming perpetrated by males. This form of IPV is also present in at least 20% of all relationships characterized by IPV. It thus should be considered in any discussion of gender symmetry.

In-depth qualitative studies of women who have experienced IPV provide more graphic evidence of the ways sexual coercion is gendered. My interviews with battered women charged with criminal offenses reveal experiences of brutality and routine sexual abuse (Ferraro, 2006). Many interviewees describe forced sodomy, some describe violent rape and sexual humiliation, and most refer to their inability to deny sex to abusive partners regardless of the disgust that develops after repeated abuse. Other qualitative studies have documented high levels of sexual violence in abusive marriages (Finkelhor & Yllo, 1987; Russell, 1990). Some researchers have raised the issue of shame and embarrassment as a reason for the lack of men’s accounts of sexual violence by women. However, shame and embarrassment also inhibit women from reporting and discussing this form of abuse. In my interviews with battered women charged with crimes, I always wait until late in the interview to ask about sexual abuse and women find this aspect of their abuse the most difficult to discuss. We have many detailed narratives of women’s experiences of IPV and the corresponding research for male victims does not exist. As researchers explore this topic, it will be important to investigate the ways that sexuality is deployed by women who abuse their intimate partners.

Reproductive Control and Abuse During Pregnancy

Forced pregnancies, abuse-related miscarriages, and violence during pregnancy are uniquely female experiences. Researchers have documented the correlation between IPV and unwanted pregnancies, miscarriages, repeat abortions, and poor pregnancy outcomes (Campbell, Woods, Couaf, & Parker, 2000; Moore, Frohwirth, & Miller, 2010). Those who argue that IPV is gender symmetrical have acknowledged average weight and size differences between female and male bodies, but have not addressed the ways in which the female reproductive system is linked to distinct differences in the gendered nature of IPV. Women who are trapped in violent relationships may want to limit their number of children, both for self-protection and protection of existing and future children. Men’s denial or sabotage of contraception is a technique of control that limits women’s options. Women may also suffer miscarriages as a direct consequence of physical abuse, a fact recognized by many states in statutes increasing criminal penalties for abuse during pregnancy.

Strangulation

In the last decade, attempted strangulation has been identified as a serious form of IPV and a predictor of lethal violence. It is a particularly terrifying form of physical violence that can produce unconsciousness within seconds and death within ­minutes. Attempted strangulation may also result in life-threatening internal injuries that may not be immediately noticeable. Women experiencing attempted strangulation report feeling that their partners might kill them. One study of women in IPV relationships found that 68% experienced strangulation (Wilbur et al., 2001). The National Intimate Partner Violence and Sexual Violence Survey found that 9.7% of women and 1.1% of men experienced “choking or suffocating” from an intimate partner over their lifetime. While it is possible for women to attempt to strangle a male partner, typical size and strength differences limit rates of women’s use of this form of violence. A San Diego study of 300 attempted domestic violence strangulation cases found that 99% involved female victims of males. Only two cases involved female to male assaults (Strack, McClane, & Hawley, 2001, p. 305). This terrifying form of abuse is another example of the difference between men’s and women’s experiences of IPV.

A Male Victim of Intimate Terrorism

When we consider the intersecting influences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nation, it is clear that it is possible for a man to suffer the kinds of abuse we designate as intimate terrorism. Emory (pseudonym) was only 18 and had been arrested for attempted murder of his live-in girlfriend. Both were American Indian, living on the reservation, and they had two children. Emory’s mother had died of alcoholism when he was thirteen and his father was also an alcoholic who could not care for him. His father signed legal guardianship to a 34-year-old woman, Vicky (pseudonym). Vicky had been sneaking into the house to have sex with Emory and rather than attempt to keep her away or prosecute her for sexual assault, his father simply relinquished his son to her. When Emory was 15, Vicky gave birth to their first child, and had a second child within 2 years. Emory was still attending high school and was a winning member of the wrestling team. He was very small, about 115 pounds, and she was large, about 165 pounds. Vicky was extremely jealous and possessive, constantly accusing Emory of cheating on her. She resented his participation in school and sports and demanded that he account for every minute of his time away from her. She beat him and threatened him and he stayed with her to protect his two children and due to his ongoing emotional attachment to her. On the night that he shot her, causing a minor injury, she had bitten his finger to the bone. Emory took a plea to aggravated assault and received a mitigated sentence due to his history of abuse by her and his otherwise stellar record. His teachers and wrestling coach wrote letters attesting to his character and to their knowledge of his abuse. I believe Emory was a victim of intimate terrorism. It was an unusual case because Emory was socially and legally subordinate to his female partner. He did not possess patriarchal privilege, or social privilege, but was trying his best to survive in a very hostile world. His case illustrates the ways that our presumptions about gender can be inverted due to racial, ethnic, cultural, health, and age differences among others. We cannot always assume that men hold a dominant social position vis-à-vis their female partners, despite structural patterns of gender inequality.

Research and Policy Implications

We have limited information about men’s lived experience of IPV in adult ­heterosexual relationships. Survey data have provided results that prove that females are physically and psychologically abusive to their male intimate partners. Yet agency data from multiple sources reinforce our knowledge that IPV is highly gendered and that women are much more likely to suffer the negative physical and emotional consequences of IPV. We need much more narrative data to understand the unique experiences of men, the nature of their abuse, the factors that limit their options, and the services they require.

Too much of our research lacks consideration of intersectionality and the multiple dimensions of people’s lives that shape their experiences of IPV. This failure has been particularly troublesome for socially marginalized and disadvantaged groups among whom the concept of “male privilege” is not equivalent to the privilege enjoyed by upper middle class, white, heterosexual, able bodied men. As Richie (2012) notes, mainstream scholarship on violence against women is discordant with the lives of many Black women and has both contributed to their ongoing personal and social oppression and neglected the requirement for social justice that must accompany effective remedies to all violence, not only IPV, against Black women. Her argument could be usefully applied to the full spectrum of violence against all people.

Scholars on both sides of the “gender symmetry” debate rely on outdated data and assumptions about masculinity and femininity that are unsupported by current and reliable research. Do men enact masculinity through violence toward women? Does the general public endorse men’s right to establish dominance in their households through violence? Do women establish femininity through domestic labor and marriage? Are men too embarrassed to report IPV? These assumptions are often referenced in scholarship on IPV with citations to studies from the 1970s and 1980s. We require current data reflecting the dramatic changes in the economy, family, and gender relations, as well as the importance of intersectionality, in order to develop adequate theories and empirical studies of IPV.

From a policy perspective, none of the evidence of sexual symmetry suggests shifting to a gender neutral model of service provision for IPV. The programs that serve battered women occasionally receive requests for help from men, who they refer to counselors and occasionally the hotel voucher program that provides hotel rooms to victims of IPV. They are not, however, overwhelmed with requests for services from men. Minaker and Snider (2006) report that shelters for male victims of IPV were opened in Vancouver, British Columbia and in Britain but closed due to lack of clients. Even programs that are nominally designed to serve male victims report their clients are overwhelmingly women and children (Minaker & Snider, 2006, p. 761). It may be that male victims have unique and unmet needs, but we require evidence of those needs, just as evidence of demand was required to establish programs for women. Those programs continue to serve thousands of women each year, and to turn away thousands more due to inadequate funding (NNEDV, 2012).

Gender matters in our lives and in our experiences of IPV. Arguments about which sex engages in more violent acts distract us from the important work of generating the research, services, and policies that will end violence between intimate partners.