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Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.

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  • Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.

    Controversy ensues when science butts heads with liberal ideology: Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.


    https://vancouversun.com/opinion/col...beral-ideology

    UBC psychology professor Don Dutton, who is about to retire at age 72, has never had a strong desire to be the centre of attention, let alone be infamous. To his mind, he just follows the evidence.

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    But the expert on forensic psychology ranks high for controversy, at least in Canada.

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    Dutton has written hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, more than eight books and textbooks, won dozens of grants and served as an expert witness in scores of legal cases, including appearing for the prosecution in the 1995 murder trial of former NFL star O.J. Simpson.

    The more than 250 students who take Dutton’s courses each year learn about everything from the reliability of eyewitness accounts to personality disorders, from the roots of genocide to what makes serial killers tick.

    But on one subject, now known as intimate-partner violence, Dutton has become too hot for many Canadians to handle.

    That may be why outspoken Senator Anne Coolshas asked Dutton to speak to the Senate in Ottawa next Thursday, where he will outline how most domestic disputes involve “bilateral,” or mutual, violence.

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    Sitting in the living room of the Kitsilano home that he shares with his wife, Marta Aragonez, Dutton explains his research is readily received in many places outside Canada.

    The author of Rethinking Domestic Violence and The Domestic Assault of Women (both published by UBC Press) has already spoken to the World Bank, the University of Washington law school and many other institutions.

    His books have been published in several languages, including Japanese and Dutch. Scholars around the world have formally cited his research more than 7,000 times.

    But Canada is a place, he says, where gender stereotypes remain unusually strong. Few seem able to hear that women can be as violent as men in domestic disputes.

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    Dutton didn’t always think so. He started out his UBC psychology career in the 1970s, offering court-mandated psychotherapy to husbands accused of battering their wives.

    “In those days,” Dutton says, “I thought it was just the men who were doing it.”

    By the 1990s, however, Dutton realized many husbands were telling the truth when they said, “My wife is violent, too.”

    Mutual violence emerges when “couples don’t know how to stop”
    American researchers were discovering the same reality. Daniel Whittaker has found the most common form of domestic violence is mutual: Up to 75 per cent of victimized women were also aggressors.

    “Couples get into screaming matches that get physical,” Dutton says. “They are under stress and insult each other. And they just don’t know how to stop.”

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    The second most-common form of intimate-partner violence is perpetrated by females, according to Whittaker and others. The third most-common form, known as wife battering, is perpetrated by males.

    Weapons, despite being rare in domestic violence, are gender-neutral, including scissors and boiling water.

    Why is such data so little known in Canada?

    A key factor, says Dutton, is technical, at least on the surface. Statistics Canada’s widely used domestic-violence data is based solely on criminal reports — and women make the vast majority of complaints to police.

    Canadian researchers don’t take the extra steps that American and European researchers do: They don’t ask each partner if they contributed to the violence.

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    When U.S. scholar Deborah Capaldi has asked such questions, she’s found that in 87 per cent of the cases in which the man was arrested, the woman admitted she had shown prior aggression.

    In his presentations, Dutton also cites a study by Denise Hines, who followed 302 men who called a New Hampshire hotline that had been established for men involved in domestic violence (a rare public service). In three out of four cases the men had been injured. But when those same men sought followup help from another domestic-violence program, 64 per cent were told they were the “real batterer.”

    In one case, a husband called police after his drunken wife attacked him. The police found the man with a knife sticking out of his body. They still arrested him.

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    Most police officers that Dutton knows, male and female, are already aware that gender stereotypes about domestic disputes don’t hold up. But he says police feel their hands are tied by public perceptions about violence against women.

    Unlike many, Dutton has no desire to politicize domestic violence. Despite accusations hurled at him, he doesn’t belong to any sort of men’s rights movement. Still, he’s taken considerable lumps.

    The case of Fariba Mahmoodi
    Among other things, Dutton was devastated by the national attention given to 35-year-old Iranian student Fariba Mahmoodi, who convinced a B.C. Human Rights Tribunal he had created a “sexualized atmosphere” when she came to his Kitsilano home in 1994.

    Despite the tribunal learning Mahmoodi had stalked Dutton and lied at least three times to advance her career and her finances — and despite the B.C. Civil Liberties Association supporting Dutton by saying the ruling brought a new “chill” to freedom of expression on campus — Dutton emphasizes most “people do not know how bad it is” to be subjected to such a concerted public attack.

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    The Mahmoodi nightmare dragged on for years, but Dutton notes no other woman ever came forward to complain about his behaviour — “because I don’t do that kind of thing.” He has no idea what’s happened to Mahmoodi.

    SFU criminology professor Ehor Boyanowsky believes it’s a shame Dutton’s work, especially on intimate-partner violence, is not more appreciated in Canada.

    The problem, Boyanowsky believes, is that Canada is home to more liberal, “well-intentioned” people than most countries.

    “They follow their unanalyzed prejudices based on what they think is the right thing to do — rather than looking at the data and acting appropriately for harm reduction.”

    Describing Dutton as brilliant, but personally “timid,” Boyanowsky said the UBC psychology professor overcomes his cautiousness by working tremendously hard and doing deep research.

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    “He challenged the paradigm that men are the perpetrators and women are the victims in almost all cases. He follows the evidence. He’s a scientist.”

    SFU professor emerita of psychology, Kim Bartholomew, also admires Dutton.

    “He’s been courageous in maintaining his intellectual integrity in a field in which ideology is often more influential than data, and in which there are strong pressures against challenging the ideological view.”

    For his part, Dutton believes Canadian politicians, from both the left and right, have fallen into a gender trap.

    Liberal-left politicians and activists have turned domestic violence into solely a women’s rights issue, often defining the entire category as “violence against women.”

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    Conservative politicians don’t get the picture either, he says. Since they want to appear protective of women, they appeal to religious supporters by framing partner violence as a lack of “family values.”

    There is a significant reason Dutton wants policy-makers, including the senators he’ll meet on Thursday, to overcome their stereotypes and recognize men and women are similarly violent in relationships.

    If public officials understood the realities, Dutton believes they would realize the harm of domestic violence could be reduced by courts mandating both partners take part in couples therapy.

    As he prepares to retire from UBC after 47 years, however, Dutton is not optimistic Canadian politicians will accept the evidence.

    “I don’t see it turning around.”

  • #2
    On a lot of topics, scientific research seems to line up with liberal or left-wing politics pretty closely. But this isn't always the case, especially when it comes to gender, sexuality, and race.
    Well UBC psychology professor Don Dutton teaches in Vancouver, Canada, which is much more "liberal" and "well intentioned" than many other countries. And despite being liberal himself, he has run into roadblocks in Canada when the facts and evidence do not line up with existing liberal ideologies.
    Many gender stereotypes around violence and victimization which aren't backed up by the data are slow to die in Canada. Despite having a near academic consensus behind him about the symmetrical nature of domestic violence, he has found this hard to sell to Canadians, and especially to Canadian lawmakers.
    The data indicates that domestic violence is most commonly bidirectional, with women being more violent against men than the reverse. Public policy in Canada does not recognize this reality though. Men who seek help are often called abusers. And men who call the police are often arrested instead of their attackers.
    In one case, a husband called police after his drunken wife attacked him. The police found the man with a knife sticking out of his body. They still arrested him.
    Dutton notes that conservatives often aren't much better than liberals, but conservatives don't hold institutional or social power in Canada, so that isn't really an issue.
    Liberal-left politicians and activists have turned domestic violence into solely a women’s rights issue, often defining the entire category as “violence against women.”
    Conservative politicians don’t get the picture either, he says. Since they want to appear protective of women, they appeal to religious supporters by framing partner violence as a lack of “family values.”
    So basically everyone takes a gendered approach that supports women more than men, they just have different reasons for it. Showing how liberal id politics often reinforces traditional gender paradigms instead of moving away from them.

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