Is domestic violence a gender hate crime, and why does it matter?

Domestic violence, intimate partner violence, (IPV) and family violence are defined in Australian federal government policy as gender crimes, committed overwhelmingly by men against "women and their children."

A gender crime is a category of hate crime.

Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a particular social group, usually defined by race, religion, class, ethnicity, nationality, disability, age, gender, gender identity, social status or political affiliation. In hate crimes people are attacked because of who they are.

Government policies designed to reduce the incidence of DV and IPV are founded on the feminist analysis of these crimes as gender hate crimes that occur in the overarching context of a patriarchal hegemony constructed of unequal power relations between men and women, and adherence to rigid gender stereotypes that position women and children as the property of men.

The latest 12-year National Plan to Reduce Violence against women and their children released earlier this year by the Gillard government does not address female perpetrated domestic violence, IPV, and family violence against women and children. It is based on an ideological perspective that either does not allow that women are violent in families, or claims that if they are, their violence is considerably less than that of men, occurs in the patriarchal context and as a consequence of patriarchal values, therefore is not as serious or as frequent as that inflicted by men on women and children.

The National Plan defines domestic violence solely as "violence against women," that is, a gender-hate crime, as follows:

1.The term violence against women means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life. 



2.The National Plan targets two main types of violence: domestic and family violence and sexual assault. These crimes are gendered crimes – that is they have an unequal impact on women.

3…the majority of people who experience this kind of violence are women - in a home, at the hands of men they know.

The Plan also states that interventions to prevent DV, IPV and family violence "must be undertaken in the context of unequal gendered distribution of power and resources," and that two of its goals are "controlling macho, aggressive and ultimately violent behaviour," and "holding men accountable for their behaviours."

The Plan's bias is indisputable.

What the research says

A cursory search of the literature will reveal a plethora of international and some domestic research that challenges the feminist paradigm of DV, IPV and family violence. An Australian example is this 2009 paper by UWS lecturer Michael Woods titled "Domestic Violence in Australia." Critiquing government "desktop" research on which DV prevention policy papers are based, Woods notes:

The basic framework propagated by these papers that will direct legislation, policies and services for years to come is a gender paradigm. Yet gender as a central construct in any explanatory framework of DV has been demonstrated comprehensively as inadequate – it does not accord with the evidence from major international and local studies.

Woods concludes:

Internationally there is a growing recognition that a gendered conceptualisation of DV has passed its use-by date, and that such explanations do not account for the reality of DV research findings. Interventions based on a gendered approach are ineffective.

 

This last sentence is inarguable. The gender paradigm we have used to understand and address DV for the last forty years has not resulted in any significant decrease in the crime.

This 2007 Canadian study on Perceptions of Motives in Intimate Partner Violence (Hamel, Desmarais and Nicholls) concludes: "Results of this study provide empirical support for the existence of a gender bias within the field of domestic violence to minimize intimate partner violence perpetrated by women."

This US study (Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Volume 2 Issue 3, July 2010) on what researchers termed "Intimate terrorism" [IT] by women towards men concluded:

The results of this study indicate that the adherence to the theory that patriarchy is the foundation of IT in Western, developed nations deserves reconsideration. Because IT can be perpetrated by both men and women, against both men and women, it is imperative that researchers, practitioners, and decision/policy-makers reconsider their conception of the causes of both IT and CCV so that all potential victims are addressed and provided with services.

A 2005 study conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia titled "The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and theory: Part 1-The conflict of theory and data" concludes, among other observations that:

One detects a tendency to dismiss male victimization in reports where the female victimization rate is higher. It raises the question as to why this comparison is so often made. If group B is victimized less than Group A, it is nevertheless being victimized and the social mandate should be to reduce victimization of all citizens, not just certain groups. We would not accept this argument for any other pair of groups. Although women may be injured at a higher rate, men are injured as well. The inevitable conclusion is that feminist theory on intimate violence is flawed. It cannot accept the reality of female violence. While male violence is viewed as never justified, female violence is viewed as always justified. The data do not support this double standard.

Same sex domestic and intimate partner violence.

The 12-year National Plan is heterosexist in its focus. Based on a gender paradigm in which women are victims and men are perpetrators, it effectively renders same sex DV and IPV invisible.

This is because if the Plan were to acknowledge the seriousness and prevalence of same sex violence, its definition of DV as a gender-hate crime perpetrated by men against women would be discredited.

Again, a cursory search of the literature will reveal some significant material on lesbian DV and IPV, though the area is still very under-researched.

The following is a paper delivered at the Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference 2010 by researcher Justine Hotten, on the lack of services and research in Australia for lesbians who experience and perpetrate DV and IPV. The author concludes that Australian research inevitably assumes heterosexuality in issues of DV and IPV, due to the use of dominant feminist frameworks for identification of the problem.

This heterosexism is identified as a serious barrier to seeking help with lesbian partner violence, as the prejudice informs service provision.

This research from Murdoch University reports:

Some studies also suggest that the rate of violence is higher in same sex relationships. A 1985 study of 1109 lesbians by Gwat-Yong Lie and Sabrina Gentlewarrier reported that slightly more than half of the respondents indicated that they had been abused by a female partner. Coleman, in a 1990 study of 90 lesbians reported that 46.6% had experienced repeated acts of violence. Finally, Ristock's study of 113 lesbians reported that 41% said they had been abused in one or more relationships.

The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearing House offers this UK study on DV in gay and lesbian relationships. It states:

Domestic violence in gay and lesbian relationships, as in heterosexual relationships, ranges from physical or sexual violence to psychological, emotional or economic abuse (Bagshaw et al. 2000). Like domestic violence in heterosexual relationships, domestic violence in gay and lesbian relationships includes: a pattern of behaviour, involving one partner using and maintaining power and control over the other, which causes fear in the other partner (ACON 2004, p. 5).

The report concludes:

Future research could also seek to provide a better understanding of how current approaches to domestic violence marginalise people on the basis of sexual preference, identity, orientation…

Studies such as this one this one by Mark W Lehman (2007) conclude that:

The vast majority of experts state that same-sex domestic violence occurs to the same extent or more frequently than does opposite-sex domestic violence: on average one in every four couples.

There is a considerable body of evidence on female perpetrated DV and IPV, and enough on DV and IPV in lesbian relationships, to justify questioning the heterosexist assumptions on which the 12-year National Plan is based. Given this research, combined with the anecdotal evidence of victims and an increasing unease amongst commentators and clinicians, is it either legitimate or useful to continue to define DV, IPV and family violence as a gender hate crime, perpetrated overwhelmingly by men against women and children?

The National Plan outlines the Gillard government's intention to reduce DV, IPV and family violence over the next 12 years. In reality, the Plan will address only male perpetrated violence.

In so doing, the Plan will continue to effectively silence the voices of victims of female perpetrators in both heterosexual and same sex relationships.

The Plan continues to use the outdated and increasingly contested framework of gender hate crime. There is certainly more than enough reason to question the use of this framework as a basis for public policy, not least its ineffectiveness to date.

We urgently need a far more holistic approach to the problems of domestic, intimate partner and family violence, one that demands policy makers incorporate alternative frameworks of perception, of which there are several, into the official definitions and understanding of DV on which policy is based.

Domestic violence is problem that dearly costs our society both financially, and in terms of extensive physical, psychological and emotional damage, often life-long, to the women, men and children who are its victims.

Is domestic violence a gender hate crime? I would argue that evidence increasingly suggests that is not.

Does this matter? When policy designed to reduce this crime is based on a false ideological premise that cannot help but detrimentally affect services and outcomes, I would suggest the definition of the crime matters a great deal.