Men's Group

Overall, the studies found, most violence of all kinds against women (64%) came from current or former intimate partners, while that is true for only about one-sixth (16.2%) of men. Women were also far more likely to be stalked than men (16.2% versus 5.2%), and two-thirds of women’s stalkers (66.2%) were current or former intimate partners, compared to four in 10 for men (41.4%). A 2005 Department of Justice study also found that between 1998 and 2002, 84% of spousal abuse victims were female, as were 86% of victims of abuse at the hands of a dating partner. Males made up 83% of all spouse murderers and 75% of dating partner murderers.

THE CLAIM In another effort to show that men are discriminated against, many men’s rights activists assert that women attack men just as much as men attack women, if not more. The website MensActivism.org is one of many that criticizes what it characterizes as “the myth that women are less violent than men.”

THE REALITY Men’s rights groups often cite the work of Deborah Capaldi, a researcher with the Oregon Learning Center, to back their claim. Capaldi did find that women sometimes initiate partner violence, although women involved in mutually aggressive partner relationships were more likely to suffer severe injuries than the men. But Capaldi studied only a very particular subset of the population —at-risk youth —rather than women in general, invalidating any claim that her findings applied generally. In fact, the 2000 Department of Justice study found that violence against both women and men is predominantly male violence. Nine in 10 women (91.9%) who were physically assaulted since the age of 18 were attacked by a male, while about one in seven male assault victims (14.2%) were victimized by females.