Reliable data are needed based on a nationally representative sample about domestic violence in Ireland, writes Michael Kimmell
When one is the subject of two such vituperative ad hominem attacks, as were written by John Waters and Mary Cleary and published in The Irish Times this past week (January 7th and 10th), one is always tempted to respond in kind. But those who sling mud succeed only in sullying themselves.
Besides, it's not often that a foreign social scientist is the subject of so much attention in the nation's leading newspaper. While not exactly flattered by the content of the attention, one can at least take some modest comfort that writing the simple, sober, empirically-based truths about domestic violence will deeply rankle those who have such obvious political biases.
Both Mr Waters and Ms Cleary make several claims about me and the research on domestic violence.
First, there is the charge that I am a feminist. Mr Waters says I am "an American feminist", and Ms Cleary maligns my "deep-rooted, pro-feminist views". To this I plead guilty. Being a feminist means that one observes the pervasive inequality based on gender, and that one declares that such inequality is wrong and ought to change. I am proud to stand on the side of the less-powerful in society.
But both Mr Waters and Ms Cleary imply that my political commitments make me an unreliable social science researcher. As a social scientist, trained to undertake and evaluate empirical, quantitative research, I can assure readers that ideological and political commitments will often guide one's choices of research topics, but they never encourage a good researcher to avoid or ignore results which challenge those commitments.
I stand by every empirical claim I made in my opinion essay as grounded in the best available social science data. Their allegations that I misrepresent or distort findings are utterly without merit.
Readers of The Irish Times might be interested to learn that it was on the basis of my status as a social scientist - and surely not my ideological commitments - that I was offered the chair in sociology at Trinity College, Dublin, a few years ago (a position which I could not take up because of a family health emergency).
And it was as an empirical social scientist, well versed in the literature on domestic violence, that I responded to the tender offer to review all the existing research on "gender symmetry". After several months reading every extant study which purports to find gender symmetry, as well as a large number which find dramatic asymmetry, I issued my report.
What I concluded was that the studies which find gender symmetry are deeply flawed, both methodologically and substantively.
First, some of them, like the Marriage and Relationship Counselling Services' (MCRS) study in Ireland, undertaken by Dr McKeown, asked only couples in marital therapy about their experiences. (And they asked only one question; about whether they had ever experienced domestic violence.) This may tell us a little bit about couples in therapy but it tells us virtually nothing about the Irish population.
Second, studies which find gender symmetry typically ask only intact married couples about their experiences (thus excluding all unmarried cohabiting couples, as well as ex-spouses) and omit some forms of domestic violence (like sexual assault by a spouse or ex-spouse, for example). Thus, such studies tend to omit some of the more obvious asymmetries in domestic violence.
But such variables must be included in a comprehensive analysis of domestic violence. For example, far more Irish couples are cohabiting without being legally married than ever before. Shouldn't they be included? And assaults by ex-spouses, dramatically asymmetrical, are also forms of domestic violence.
Ms Cleary's addled laundry list of accusations bears so little resemblance to accuracy that it is impossible to respond to all her charges in one short essay.
Take two quick examples. She proclaims that one US-based study found that "36 per cent of the victims of domestic violence annually are men". But that study was based on the Conflict-Tactics Scale, of which I offer a lengthy review and critique, because it asks questions based only about the past year, and only about "marital conflict". It excludes sexual assault by spouses and ex-spouses. And still it found gender asymmetry of two-to-one.
Ms Cleary also accuses me of basing my analysis on "single-gender studies" by which, she means, that only women are asked about their experiences.
I deliberately excluded from consideration all studies based on police reports and hospital intake interviews for the same reasons I removed those studies that only ask people in marital therapy.
I based my conclusions entirely on those nationally-representative samples which asked both sexes about their experiences with a wide range of categories of assault and violence.
Claims of gender symmetry are based on selective readings and misreadings of credible social science data. While Ms Cleary is politically motivated and distorts these studies, I would have expected the canons of journalistic integrity would impel Mr Waters at least to report it accurately. Those misreadings seem to be motivated far less by compassion for battered men than from rage at the worldwide struggle for gender equality.
Both of my critics appear to subscribe to a zero-sum model of compassion about violence - as if compassion for women who are battered would somehow mean we would be less compassionate about men.
I made clear in my original opinion piece in these pages a simple truth: we need to be compassionate towards all victims of domestic violence. Personally, my compassion for those women whose lives have been torn apart by domestic violence has made me more, not less, compassionate towards those few men who have also been victimised.
Even if my critics were right, the only logical response would be to dramatically increase funding for domestic violence prevention and intervention. Neither of them suggests that the number of women is wrong, or too low, but only that the numbers of men is equal to it. Why don't they argue that public funding should be doubled?
Finally, their claims fly in the face of all logic. The single, most obdurate and intractable gender difference around the world is violence. Every single psychological inventory finds dramatic differences both in the use of violence and in beliefs about violence as a legitimate way to settle differences. In the public sphere, men outnumber women in every category of violence - assault, battery, murder. On this gender asymmetry, I would hope, we would all agree.
So why would the home be any different, especially when abusive men expect to be listened to in those homes, that they are entitled to exercise unchallenged control over their households, and to brook no interference from that control.
At the conclusion of their attacks on me and my work, as well as the sensible and thoughtful reporting by Medb Ruane, both Mr Waters and Ms Cleary call for more and better information about the incidence of domestic violence in Ireland. And with this, I couldn't agree more.
What we need is solid, reliable, survey data, based on a nationally-representative sample of Irish people, who would be asked about their experiences of violence. This should include both married and unmarried respondents, of all ages, and should include the widest variety of categories of assault.
And there needs to be honest debate and discussion among reasonable people about the extent and incidence of domestic violence in Ireland. Since The Irish Times has set itself as an arbiter in these discussions, as a good newspaper should, perhaps the Times should sponsor a public debate.
Dr Michael Kimmell is a sociologist based in New York and a spokesman for the US-based National Organisation for Men Against Sexism