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The first part of this article summarizes results from more than 200 studies that have found gender symmetry in perpetration and in risk factors and motives for physical violence in martial and dating relationships. It also summarizes research that has found that most partner violence is mutual and that selfdefense explains only a small percentage of partner violence by either men or women. The second part of the article documents seven methods that have been used to deny, conceal, and distort the evidence on gender symmetry. The third part of the article suggests explanations for the denial of an overwhelming body of evidence by reputable scholars. The concluding section argues that ignoring the overwhelming evidence of gender symmetry has crippled prevention and treatment programs. It suggests ways in which prevention and treatment efforts might be improved by changing ideologically based programs to programs based on the evidence from the past 30 years of research.
KEYWORDS: dating; marriage; prevention; treatment; self-defense
The first objective of this article is to briefly summarize research on symmetry between men and women in perpetration of physical violence against a spouse or dating partner and symmetry between men and women in the motives and risk factors for partner violence (PV). These two sets of results contradicted deeply held beliefs and have been denied.
The second objective is to document the fact that the deniers of the research showing gender symmetry in PV have dealt with the denied research results by scientifically unacceptable tactics such as concealing those results, selective citation of research, stating conclusions that are the opposite of the data in the results section, and intimidating researchers who produced results showing gender symmetry. The third objective is to suggest what underlies the denial of gender symmetry in PV. The fourth objective is to suggest that efforts to prevent and treat PV could be improved by restructuring those efforts to explicitly recognize gender symmetry in PV.
The focus of this article is on physical assault, because that is the aspect of partner maltreatment that has been the focus of the most controversy. Two aspects of gender symmetry in physical assaults will be addressed: similar rates of perpetration by men and women and parallel etiology of perpetration. The criterion of symmetry...