Kathleen Parker
THE ORLANDO SENTINEL
September 3, 1997
To infer from media reports and some feminist activists, American men pause from their favorite pastime of beating women just long enough to change the channel.
For years now, we've been fed a daily diet of bruised faces on billboards, news releases with ever-escalating domestic-violence statistics and service announcements like this 1995 radio spot: "Each year millions of women are attacked by former husbands and boyfriends."
Some of the popular statistics routinely consumed and regurgitated by the media include:
All false.
A new Justice Department study indicates that while violence-related injuries to both men and women are higher than previously thought, reports of domestic violence against women have been vastly exaggerated. Yes, some men are beating up women and children, and, yes, some women are beating up men and children. But, no, these abnormal incidents do not constitute a national pathology.
Domestic violence -- even one incident of which cannot be tolerated -- is nonetheless aberrational behavior that belies the fringe-feminist contention that American society is a violent, patriarchal construct bent on violating and harming women.
The Justice Department research, which studied violence-related injuries treated in hospital emergency departments, found that one-third of all emergency room visits by women are owing to injuries. Of those injuries, 3 percent are a result of violence. Of all violence-related injuries, one-third are caused by domestic violence. In other words, 0.3 percent of women's injury-related emergency room visits are owing to domestic violence.
That number may not be gratifying to a woman whose husband just broke her nose, but it does suggest domestic violence is not precisely epidemic.
Meanwhile, another study released last March by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- "National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1992 Emergency Department Summary" -- showed the leading cause of injury to women (as well as men) is not domestic violence, but accidental falls, followed by motor vehicle accidents.
Figures show that automobile accidents account for 13.6 percent of injuries to women treated in emergency rooms, which, math whizzes, is a good deal more than 0.3 percent for domestic violence.
None of these findings should be interpreted as good news. The fact that anyone -- man, woman or child -- ever has to seek treatment for injuries inflicted by a so-called loved one is disturbing beyond redemption. Based on its findings, the Justice Department projects that, annually, 204,129 women and 38,790 men seek emergency-room treatment from domestic-violence injuries. That's too many people acting stupid and doing damage.
But, it's unfair and counterproductive to exaggerate statistics to advance an ideological goal, as some women's groups -- and our own government -- have done. Everyone from President Clinton on down has repeated the erroneous figure that 37 percent of injuries to women are inflicted by spouses, former spouses or boyfriends. The CDC and the Department of Justice reports clearly refute this claim.
In fact, the Justice study shows that men are victims of domestic violence in about 16 percent of reported abuse cases, contrary to the popular claim that women constitute 95 percent of abuse claims. The study does confirm, however, that women are more likely than men to be victims of abuse by an intimate partner.
Given the horror of even one domestic-violence incident, what difference does a little exaggeration make? Doesn't the end of eliminating violence justify the means of massaging the data? Who's hurt? We all are.
By exaggerating reports, we've created a climate in which men are assumed to be vicious and are easily damned in child-custody discussions. Women are assumed to be victims who need the government to bail them out of bad relationships. And family dynamics continue to deteriorate as divisive rhetoric alienates the sexes.
There's no excuse for domestic violence, as the Family Violence Prevention Fund's advertising blurb goes. We unmistakably have a violence problem in this country, for which we might seek cultural solutions. But women are not being battered by men at an alarming rate.
We do not live in a society characterized by male brutality against women. And demonizing men at the expense of truth ultimately does more harm than good.
PARKER can be reached via e-mail at kparker1@aol.com
Excellent post. Thanks!