Who is more likely to be victimized by teen dating violence? If you’re quick to think it’s girls, new data shows you’re wrong. In a surprising twist, recently published research indicates boys are more likely to report being victims of dating violence committed by partners who hit, slap or push them.I'm surprised it's that small a difference (and encouraged that the figures make it close to 95% of relationships that do without such violence). My sense is that girls are indeed taught that it's socially acceptable to slap boys, and women often continue to believe that it's appropriate to slap men for certain things even in adulthood. Perhaps they just don't usually choose to date the boys they have to slap.
Researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) conducted a longitudinal study of dating violence. While reports of physical abuse went down over time, they say there is a troubling gender-related trend.
Five percent of teens reported physical abuse from their dating partners in 2013, down from 6 percent in 2003. But in the last year, 5.8 percent of boys reported dating violence compared to 4.2 percent of girls.
“It could be that it’s still socially acceptable for girls to hit or slap boys in dating relationships,” says lead author Catherine Shaffer, a PhD student with SFU, in a release. “This has been found in studies of adolescents in other countries as well.”
In any case, most of this "violence" is pretty mild, and a lot of it is defensive (and therefore really appropriate, not just 'felt to be appropriate'). The inability to distinguish between legitimate violence and illegitimate violence is a problem with our current society. Much violence is socially beneficial, or we wouldn't maintain police forces nor prisons nor armies.
A slap is symbolic violence, like throwing a drink in a cad's face. It works only if everyone understands it's not an invitation to a brawl extended by someone who's outweighed by 100 lbs. It's a pretty useful social convention on those terms. I'd like to see more women stand up for themselves in this and other non-violent ways--violent ones, too, if that's possible and appropriate, but in any case nearly any response other than teary dissolution and complaints of claustrophobia 35 years later.
ReplyDeleteIn college once I found myself in the dorm room of two guys who took it into their heads to tease me with the half-serious threat of keeping me there. They couldn't quite make up their minds what they were planning, and never even worked up the courage to touch me. They just sort of cornered me and offered not to let me pass. I don't recall being terrified, I recall being absolutely furious. They gradually became aware that I was 100% serious, so they chickened out and stepped aside. It must have dawned on them how hard the situation was going to be to explain if it went any further, and in any case they just came to their senses. How might that have turned out if I'd been a sad little kitten, humiliated by my inability to stand up for myself? Afraid to admit where I'd been or what happened, because I might be grounded when my folks found out? Ambivalent about whether I had a right to a say in what happened to me sexually? Those guys were being jerks, but they weren't actually prepared to kill me to silence me. They knew exactly what would happen if they didn't cut it out. Now, decades later, there's no need for me to try to trash their careers or give testimony about what's "seared" into my "hippocampus." That's because, young as I was, I was adult enough to be trusted to go out alone into situations that might involve my ending up in a room with two guys. At the age of 15, Ford clearly was not.
To be completely fair, yes, my encounter was less serious than the one Ford is testifying to. On the other hand, I've also had drunk guys stumble into me and take liberties, without the need to enlist the aid of the United States Senate in sorting it out 35 years later, or add a second front door to my house to address my crippling claustrophobia. I've even been attacked on the street by a real bad guy, not a drunk frat boy, and got away only by luck. Still functioning! I'd really like to see the awe-inspiring power of the legal system focussing on that last kind of encounter, not on teenage fumblings at parties. And I'm really getting tried of hearing people refer to the Ford episode as a "rape." I call that deliberately dishonest.
You know, in all this talk about high school and sex, it won't surprise you to hear that I've been reflecting this week on my own experience and trying to compare it. I realize that a number of women I knew in those days who were sexually active, some of whom favored sex with exciting rascals rather than virtuous and upstanding young men, asked me to come along with them for meeting their exciting-but-dangerous boyfriends. They knew they could trust me to protect them, and also to keep their secrets.
ReplyDeleteI suppose my life has included some things that no one should be proud of, and other things that anyone could be justly proud of as well. But the opportunity to realize how much trust they reposed in me, and knowing that I did not betray it, is a thing I'll be glad of for as long as I live.
This has been an ugly episode. I'm glad to have come out of it with at least one good thing, even if it's purely personal. As for Kavanaugh, the Democrats had better hope they killed his ascension to the high court. If they failed, they will have turned a moderately conservative judge into a deadly enemy.
I agree with Tex that it'd be a lot better if women thought it was ok to slap a guy if he got fresh- like the old days. Tex laid it out much better than I ever could though. My wife and I just told our barely teenage daughter that last weekend.
ReplyDeleteThe testimony reminded me of the more thoughtless and weak version I received of the same treatment this week: a casual accusation of racism. I believe the D senators can't fully comprehend how wrong Kavanaugh believes a sexual assault is, or even a more commonplace contempt for women. They're so cocksure any R must routinely degrade women, and that he probably abuses them in private, too, whenever he thinks he can get away with it. After all, many among their own ranks do it routinely, it seems, and are often winked at; it was all free sex and love, right, until the quite recent re-tooling? They can't imagine that Kavanaugh would no sooner do such a thing than torture and kill puppies. As a teenager, he was a huge square. They'd have had nothing to do with such a geek, with his archaic views of how to act like a gentleman.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, my neighbor assumes he won't even get a rise out of me by assuming I'm a racist. He's correct in only one sense: I'm slightly desensitized to the charge because it's bandied about so casually now. He's wrong in another sense, though: unlike him, apparently, I consider racism a serious offense. I couldn't accuse someone of it casually, then write it off as a "difference of opinion."
I hear Corker now says he'll vote to confirm. The strategy may have failed; I certainly hope so.