Violent Touch attempts to
present the topic of domestic violence in a more complete manner.
For too long domestic violence campaigns and presentations have
minimized three very important areas in their discussion, namely
the male victim, the female perpetrator and mutual partner assault.
Dr. Fontes is both the Employee Assistance Program manager for the
California Department of Social Services for over 4,500 state employees
and is a psychologist in private practice. During the mid-1990s
he was confronted with his own bias about victims of domestic violence
when as male victim sought his help. He realized that he did not
ask men the same questions he asked women when it came to their
victimization by the hands of their intimate partner. Faced with
his own biases and stereotyping of victims of domestic violence,
he decided to do his doctoral dissertation on the topic of the male
victim of intimate partner violence. His three years of research
found many things that opened his eyes to a more gender inclusive
approach to this topic.
Violent Touch is a summary
paper based on his 175 page dissertation:
Domestic Violence Against Men: Development of a Comprehensive Partner
Conflict Survey
available from UMI - Bell and Howell Information
and Learning
800-521-0660.
Violent Touch
covers the following topics:
- The
double standard that is used when addressing male and female victims
of domestic violence
- Can women be as aggressive as men in our culture?
- Are we more likely to tolerate violence by women than we do
from men?
- The very important difference between domestic violence statistics
that come from archival clinical samples vs. randomized surveys
studies
- That while women are twice as likely to report an injury as
a result of being assaulted than men who are assaulted, nevertheless
men and women are assaulting each other at nearly the same rates
in the general population
- That while many in the current domestic violence movement claim
that if women do assault their partner it is for reasons of self-defense,
available research suggests that only 10 to 20 percent of women
assault their intimate partner for reasons of self-defense and
that women are more likely to strike the first blow
- That male victims are 8 times less likely to report their victimization
than do women who report their victimization
- How patriarchal attitudes work against men who need to share
their victimizations by others
- How patriarchal attitudes, gender feminism, and gender politics
works against the plight of the male victim of domestic violence
in the public arena
- How we can break through the stereotype of the victim of domestic
violence to more affectively reduce domestic violence in our generation
Violent Touch : full document
in pdf format
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