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Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence, Second Edition. Philip W. Cook. New York: Praeger, 2009, 232 pp., $24.95 (softcover)
Ever since Suzanne Steinmetz's (1977-1978) article entitled, The Battered Husband Syndrome , appeared in the late 1970s, the subject of intimate partner violence (IPV) against men by their female partners has been the source of much controversy. The idea of men being victimized by their female partners goes against the very foundation on which the battered women's movement was based - that IPV is a function of men exerting their power and control over women in a society that condones men's domination of women. Phil Cook's (2009) second edition of Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence once again shows that it is nonetheless necessary to acknowledge women's use of IPV against their male partners in order for us to properly understand and eradicate all forms of IPV. Acknowledgment is necessary for male victims and their children to get the help they need as victims, and for female perpetrators to get the help they need to understand and manage their violent and abusive behavior. Acknowledgment of this issue will force us to reconsider our notions of, laws governing, and treatment paradigms for IPV, but IPV will remain a scourge unless this acknowledgment takes place.
In chapter 1, Cook reviews the extensive literature since the 1970s that shows that women use IPV against men at rates that equal or at least almost equal the IPV used by men against women. He also discusses the studies that show that in at least 50% of relationships in which IPV occurs, the IPV is mutual, physically instigated at least half of the time by the female partner. This is not the configuration of IPV that most battered women's advocates want us to know about. Battered women's advocates tend to cite the studies of women in shelters as evidence of the widespread and predominant use of IPV by men against women. But, as Cook points out, nonrepresentative samples, such as women in shelters, cannot be used to make generalizations about IPV and its causes and prevalence; such studies can only be used to infer the clinical needs of women in shelters. Cook then uses the 30 years of...