John Berry <berry.joh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The stats do support that men are victims of spousal abuse almost as much > as women: > > http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence > Those stats are an oversimplification, and they not very reliable for many reasons. They are oversimplified because they do not record the severity of attacks. They are not reliable because many attacks are not reported, and because attacks are not easily counted, in integer values. But there is one form of attack that is *always* reported, and which always occurs in integer values: murder. In the U.S., according to Wikipedia, "1,181 females and 329 males were killed by their intimate partners in 2005." Women are 3.6 times more likely to be killed in domestic violence than men. (By "integer" I mean it either happens or it does not; there is no middle ground. There are, of course, assaults with intention to kill that do not result in a fatality, but in this case we are only counting deaths.) Granted, some of those cases were homosexual men or women killing same-sex partners. But homosexuality is rare, so the majority are heterosexual partners killing one another. The ratio of women dying was higher before the invention of firearms, because bludgeoning or beating someone to death takes a lot more strength than shooting them. The Colt pistol was called an "equalizer" for that reason. It made small, weak men and women as dangerous as strong men. It made murder physically easier to carry out, and more prevalent as a result. - Jed
