I agree, don't blame the victims and that there are a significant proportion of men who batter subsequent/prior partners, and that there is a percentage of men who batter, thus a chance or likelihood that a woman will get involved with a man who batters.
However, many young men don't continue to batter as they grow up. Many studies show that many (usually 30-35%) more young (college, 18-24, etc) men are abusive (either sexually or physically) than are older men (usually 7-15%). So, that seems to me to mean that young men stop being violent (or perhaps they stop getting involved with women -- unlikely; or perhaps they all die or go to prison -- unlikely; or they all go on to be extremely manipulative and emotional abusive without the using physical violence -- probably true for some, but not all). There's a huge body of data about male violence showing that men are most violent between the ages of 16 and 30 (at least in the US) -- approximately 40% of young men committing some felony level violent crime. By the time they are 35 or so, only about 7% are violent. Why should domestic violence/violence against women be any different? After all these are both male phenomena, based on male/masculinity, and it may be the same young men. We have a long history of believing that there is a class of CRIMINALS, when in reality many many different types of people indulge in criminal behavior, from assault, rape, illegal drug use/sales, embezzlement, etc. etc. and those are all overwhelmingly male endeavors. We who work in DV know there is not a class of WIFE BEATERS, but may still believe that in other crimes there is a class of CRIMINALS and thus the general information about male criminality does not apply to wife beaters. Sorry to rant a bit, but we simply don't really know how it works. We know there are men who will go on to batter over and over again, but there are men who stop (most without formal intervention). We don't know how to tell these men apart, nor do we know which of them will kill a woman and that means we have to keep acting as if all batterers will go on to do it over and over again, because that's what will keep women safer. Chiquita At 12:45 AM 01/23/2002 -0500, Joan Zorza wrote: >There is much data showing men who batter battered their prior partners (if >they had any) and will go on to batter their next ones. However, there is >not the data showing that women who are battered are more likely to be >battered in their next relationships. Whether a woman will be battered >depends solely on who her partner is. Statistically, this means that the >more partners a woman has increases the chance she will be battered by at >least some of them. And statistically, a small no. of women will have more >than one abusive partner even if they have few partners. But PLEASE do not >blame victims for batterer behavior. > ***End-violence is sponsored by UNIFEM and receives generous support from ICAP*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe end-violence OR type: unsubscribe end-violence Archives of previous End-violence messages can be found at: http://www.edc.org/GLG/end-violence/hypermail/
