I know the study you mean and you’re misrepresenting it. It asks people who identify as lesbian whether they have experienced domestic abuse at all, and concludes they’re more likely to answer ‘yes’ than straight women.
But that alone doesnt say who is doing the abuse. Remember lesbians often date men before coming out. When asking whether the perpetrator was male or female and separating the data, the stats shifted. Lesbians experienced less DV from their female partners than straight women do from their male ones.
Women are also capable of abuse of course, but a large amount of the DV lesbians received was still from men.
But that alone doesnt say who is doing the abuse. Remember lesbians often date men before coming out.
Short version: They almost certainly haven’t dated more men than the female demographic that dates exclusively men, while simultaneously reporting a much lower domestic violence incidence than them. The above absolutely does not hold water on its own as refutation.
Long (you’ve been warned, lol) version:
Even if we assumed the following for the sake of argument:
X% of men are abusers
zero women are abusers
100% of lesbians have dated men at some point
The lesbians somehow have the exact same number of male partners on average as women who have had exclusively male partners
Then in aggregate, the abuse incidence between hetero women and lesbians should be effectively equal.
But we know that in the real world, #2 is obviously more than zero, and #3 is obviously less than 100%. So how can it possibly be true that the DV percentage among lesbians is so much higher?
There are only two ways, at least one of the following must be true:
Lesbians have a significantly larger total number of romantic partners on average (the more partners you have, the more likely to ‘find’ one who’s been abusive, and one is all it takes to put a person into the ‘has been a victim of DV’ category)
the percentage of women who are abusers is greater than the X in #1
I found data about “sex partners” for lesbians, but that’s not the same as romantic partners, and surprisingly, I haven’t been able to actually find any hard data that simply says “self-identified lesbians have X romantic partners over their lifetimes on average”. I found a figure of 4-4.3 for “women” in general, but that’s no help here, both because there’s no ‘lesbian figure’ for comparison, and because that figure isn’t a ‘hetero women figure’ anyway. Kind of a dead end, here.
As for the second bullet point, see the link below about the woman being found to have been the perpetrator of DV in over 70% of m/f relationships in which only one of the two partners commits DV. That by itself can explain the disparity in DV incidence between lesbians and hetero women, I think.
When asking whether the perpetrator was male or female and separating the data, the stats shifted. Lesbians experienced less DV from their female partners than straight women do from their male ones.
Got a link for that?
Women are also capable of abuse of course
That’s arguably a significant understatement, according to this study:
Regardless, ultimately my point was that, regardless of statistics like these, I don’t say things like “are the lesbians okay”, because idiotic generalizations like that serve no positive purpose (making the speaker feel superior to the target doesn’t count as a positive purpose in my eyes), and I was trying to get the person I replied to to gain some empathy, with an analogy.
I know the study you mean and you’re misrepresenting it. It asks people who identify as lesbian whether they have experienced domestic abuse at all, and concludes they’re more likely to answer ‘yes’ than straight women.
But that alone doesnt say who is doing the abuse. Remember lesbians often date men before coming out. When asking whether the perpetrator was male or female and separating the data, the stats shifted. Lesbians experienced less DV from their female partners than straight women do from their male ones.
Women are also capable of abuse of course, but a large amount of the DV lesbians received was still from men.
Short version: They almost certainly haven’t dated more men than the female demographic that dates exclusively men, while simultaneously reporting a much lower domestic violence incidence than them. The above absolutely does not hold water on its own as refutation.
Long (you’ve been warned, lol) version:
Even if we assumed the following for the sake of argument:
Then in aggregate, the abuse incidence between hetero women and lesbians should be effectively equal.
But we know that in the real world, #2 is obviously more than zero, and #3 is obviously less than 100%. So how can it possibly be true that the DV percentage among lesbians is so much higher?
There are only two ways, at least one of the following must be true:
I found data about “sex partners” for lesbians, but that’s not the same as romantic partners, and surprisingly, I haven’t been able to actually find any hard data that simply says “self-identified lesbians have X romantic partners over their lifetimes on average”. I found a figure of 4-4.3 for “women” in general, but that’s no help here, both because there’s no ‘lesbian figure’ for comparison, and because that figure isn’t a ‘hetero women figure’ anyway. Kind of a dead end, here.
As for the second bullet point, see the link below about the woman being found to have been the perpetrator of DV in over 70% of m/f relationships in which only one of the two partners commits DV. That by itself can explain the disparity in DV incidence between lesbians and hetero women, I think.
Got a link for that?
That’s arguably a significant understatement, according to this study:
Regardless, ultimately my point was that, regardless of statistics like these, I don’t say things like “are the lesbians okay”, because idiotic generalizations like that serve no positive purpose (making the speaker feel superior to the target doesn’t count as a positive purpose in my eyes), and I was trying to get the person I replied to to gain some empathy, with an analogy.