Talk:Violence against men

Wiki Education assignment: Global LGBTQ Rights and Representation

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 29 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ryankirzner22 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Laurencraven.

Edit request

Change:

"While females do assault males, males are far more frequently perpetrators and are significantly more likely to injure, harm or kill their partners."

To:

"The CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey during 2016-2017 found that men and women experience intimate partner violence at a similar rate, with 42.3% of men and 42.0% of women reporting having experienced physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and 5.5% of men and 4.5% of women reporting it in the 12 months prior to the survey. For severe violence, 24.6% of men and 32.5% of women reported lifetime exposure, and 3.0% of men and 3.1% of women reported exposure in the 12 months prior to the survey."

Citation: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs/NISVSReportonIPV_2022.pdf (page 5)

81.234.111.171 (talk) 13:16, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

To further explain the reasons for this edit:

• The reference for the original text is very old and several newer publications from the same source have shown the opposite. I propose using the latest available.
• The original text makes an absolute statement based on a single survey when other surveys showing the opposite result. I propose describing the survey findings instead of making an absolute statement.
• The original text is awkwardly written and sounds argumentative to me.

81.234.111.171 (talk) 13:55, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

There are a few things to consider:

1. This is well sourced, but a problem is that it is specifically about the United States instead of the whole world. So if you want to include this information, it should say that it is specifically about the United States.
2. Consensus on Domestic violence is that Worldwide, the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women. Note the "worldwide", so emphasis would need to be placed on the United States.
3. I think that your suggested text would need to be shortened as it's a bit academic. For example we don't need the statistics on 12 months prior to the survey.

—Panamitsu (talk) 00:38, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply.

1. I agree. I think it would be a good idea to include "in the United States" after "at a similar rate". The text that's currently on the page suffers from this problem to an even greater extent because it also uses a reference that only refers to the US, but doesn't mention US-specific things such as the CDC and NISVS.
2. While I think it's fine to keep the paragraph focused on the US because that's where the highest quality research seems to have been made, an option would be to also add a paragraph with examples of places where research has indicated that men or women are over-represented as victims, if you think that's important for balance. I would prefer not to do that because the article is about violence against men, not the relative prevalence of violence against men compared to women. That's why I think just removing the sentence I want to change would be a good option as well. The more I think about it, the more I think it would be my preferred option. Nevertheless, here is a paper comparing intimate partner violence among men and women in six European cities: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00038-015-0663-1 (full text can be accessed on Sci-Hub) Although, if there is similar research from the developing world (even if it only shows women as over-represented), it might be even better if balance is the goal.
3. I disagree with removing the 12-month statistics. I think those are the most relevant because people are more likely to accurately recall something that happened recently and because the 12-month statistics likely give a better view of the current situation as opposed to the situation decades ago when the violence captured by the lifetime statistic may have occurred.

81.234.111.171 (talk) 12:58, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Having though about this some more, I think it would be okay to not include the 12-month statistics. While I still think including them would be better, I don't think it would be wrong or misleading to leave them out. Perfection is not necessary.

With those changes the paragraph could look like this:

"The CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey during 2016-2017 found that men and women experience intimate partner violence at a similar rate in the United States, with 42.3% of men and 42.0% of women reporting having experienced physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and 24.6% of men and 32.5% of women reporting having experienced severe violence."

Or:

"The CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey during 2016-2017 found that men and women experience intimate partner violence at a similar rate in the United States, with 42.3% of men and 42.0% of women reporting having experienced physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. For severe violence, 24.6% of men and 32.5% of women reported lifetime exposure."

Or some grammatical variation of the above.

It may also be a good idea to add something from other parts of the world where the statistics look different, and perhaps a paragraph discussing the potential causes of such differences. The study I linked to touched briefly on how differences observed in the status of women and men in society could relate to differences in victimization and perpetration, and it cites some other studies that seem to talk about that in more detail. I don't think we need to look at that before making this change. I'm just noting this as something that could potentially be done to make the article even better after this improvement. 81.234.111.171 (talk) 01:42, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your co-operation. I think another issue is that it says "found that men and women experience intimate partner violence at a similar rate in the United States", which might count as an editorial or original research as the source doesn't exactly say that. Removing it isn't much of an issue though because the numbers speak for themselves. So modifying your paragraph, that'd make it:

"The CDC's National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey during 2016-2017 found 42.3% of men and 42.0% of women reported having experienced physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime. For severe violence, 24.6% of men and 32.5% of women reported lifetime exposure." —Panamitsu (talk) 02:19, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that. Thank you. 81.234.111.171 (talk) 02:29, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to let other editors chime in from now, so I won't add the text myself. Please pay attention to this page and if no editors share their opinions, let me know and I'll put this on a noticeboard. —Panamitsu (talk) 02:47, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

It has been a week now, and nobody else has shared their opinion. 81.234.111.171 (talk) 23:01, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll add it to the article then. —Panamitsu (talk) 00:27, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I will move the text from the sexual violence section to the domestic violence section and use it to replace the sentence starting with "While females" as described above. 81.234.111.171 (talk) 02:43, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology of Gender

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