All Homicides Are Equally Relevant
May 21, 2005
Law and justice are not always the same. - Gloria Steinem
There are those who continue to believe that domestic violence is only or primarily a serious problem for women and children. Public policy and domestic violence interventions, much more often than not, reflect this belief.
The discounting or minimizing of male victimization accounts, at least in part, for the fact that our public policy makers have implemented a Violence Against Women [italics added] Act and not a Family Violence Act.
We have been lead to believe that one of the reasons for the necessity of a Violence Against Women Act is that there is a dramatic difference between male and female intimate/family homicide victimization. And the editors of most major newspapers must believe that the victimization of males is minor because it is most always ignored or minimized.
The BJS report, Violence by Intimates, [ www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vi.pdf] documents that intimate murders account for 30% of all female homicides and 6% of all male homicides. This “fact” is often reported by the electronic or print media. However, is that an accurate and truthful depiction? Have the reporters checked the accuracy of this percentage differential?
The reason for the differential has been rarely, if ever, mentioned by the electronic and print media. The reason for the differential is that there is a dramatic difference in the total number of homicides in general between males and females. It is not a fair and accurate depiction of the difference in the numbers of male and female spousal homicides.
What is rarely, if ever, mention in the electronic and print media is the fact that between 1976 and 1996 of the 32,580 spouses who were murder victims, about 6 in 10 were women. A 60% to 40% differential is not quite as dramatic as the skewed 30% to 6% differential.
Between 1976 and 1996 there were 20,311 male intimate murder victims and 31,260 female intimate partner victims.
Male Victims
Female Victims
Domestic Violence Homicides
The stories below appeared for two successive days in the Boston Globe. Here there is no need to debate the issue of gender symmetry nor should there be any dispute concerning what domestic violence is or is not. The victims, both male and female, died at the hands of another family member.
On page B2 of the November 5, 2004 issue is a story about a woman who was sentenced to 20 years for the murder of her husband. She told the police that her husband had shot himself in the head. The evidence did not match her story and the jury did not believe her.
A mother was charged with hitting her 13-year-old son old with a hammer, burning her 10-year-old son with a cigarette, and then stabbing him. Her husband had already been indicted. It is only through luck or providence that both boys survived and did not make the homicide list.
On page B2 of the November 6, 2004 issue is a report of a man who was sentenced to 50 years in prison after being found guilty of crushing a 2-year-old-girl to death while raping her. The five year old rape victim and murdered child was his goddaughter.
On the same page is a story about an aunt and her boyfriend who are charged with the killing of her three year old nephew after being told by his siblings that the boy had left food on the kitchen table.
On page A5 is a story that a man who called the police and reported that he had “killed some people.” When the police arrived he was holding a hostage. After surrendering to the police they discovered that he had killed his girlfriend, another man and wounded two other people.
On page B8 is a story that a man killed his sister and her 4-year-old daughter after sexually assaulting both of them He then beat and killed her 2-year-old son. The police found antidepressants, Viagra and a pornographic movie playing in the bedroom where the bodies were located. He attempted suicide by stepping in front of a truck. Relatives report he was a very troubled man who was struggling with addiction to OxyContin and cocaine.
A Lack of Equal Justice
Despite evidence to the contrary, the gender feminists who control domestic violence education, intervention and public policy believe that “domestic violence” should never be viewed as a gender-neutral issue. And they have swayed our public policy makers because by its very title, the Violence Against Women Act, portrays women not men as victims.
Domestic violence occurs, gender feminists claim, because of the suppression of women’s rights, sexism and the power and control of men over women in society. Gender feminists ignore the fact that the vast majority of professionals have documents that this gender feminist claim is not true.
The majority of scholars and researchers agree that domestic violence is a complex and multifaceted problem that effects both males and females. Gender feminists minimize or ignore male victimization and suppress the truth about the causes and consequences of domestic violence because they care more about women’s rights than they do about victim or civil rights.
What is truly sad for all victims of domestic violence is that our public policy makers believe the gender feminist claims and the majority of domestic violence policies and intervention programs reflect those baseless and biased beliefs.
And all victims, both men and women, suffer the consequences of the of domestic violence victimization becoming secondary to the issue of women’s rights. Law and justice are not always the same. Those who want to pit the suffering of one group of victims against another, as Gloria Steinem has often done, do an injustice to all.
