Advocates will discover that more boys and men will become engaged in prevention and intervention efforts when dating and domestic violence organizations stop dismissing male victimization as inconsequential.

A half truth is a whole lie.
– Yiddish Proverb

"Dating Abuse" Defined

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, defines dating abuse as the physical, sexual, or psychological/emotional violence within a dating relationship.

The 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) documents that 8.9% of males and 8.8% of females report being a victim of physical dating abuse (CDC 2006). Many of these abusive incidents may be prevented by helping adolescents, both girls and boys, to develop skills for healthy relationships with others (Foshee et al. 2005).

It is important to note that much of the behavior, as defined above, is not confined to physical assaults and often is “abusive or coercive behavior.” The National Domestic Violence Hot Line (NDVH) defines abuse as a pattern of coercive control that one person exercises over another.

The Half Truth

Dating violence studies consistently document that girls and boys equally abuse and/or physically assault each other. Despite those studies, advocates routinely dismiss “equal physical assault data.”  Advocates claim that the studies and the data do not consider the “meaning, context, or consequences” of that assaultive behavior (O'Keefe, 2005).

However, the lack of “meaning, context, or consequences” does not prevent the vast majority of dating and domestic violence websites to claim and publish as a “fact” that:

. . . approximately one in five adolescent girls in the ninth through twelfth grades has reported being physically and/or sexually hurt by a dating partner.

This double standard that is an attempt to represent girls as docile and passive and boys as assertive and aggressive is biased gender stereotyping that causes many advocates, researchers, and laypersons to remain ignorant of or to dismiss the victimization of boys.

Minimize, Marginalize and Ignore

A cursory visit to the majority of the dating and domestic violence organization websites documents that they routinely minimize, marginalize and ignore the victimization of boys and young men. In fact, they regularly refer to abusers as “he/him” and victims as “she/her.”

At the heart and core of the feminist movement is the commitment to treat both males and females in an equitable manner. It is time to question why there is little or no attempt by the vast majority of dating and domestic violence organizations, public policy makers and the electronic and print media to publish data that documents the victimization of boys.

Meaning, Context and Consequence

The majority of domestic and dating violence organizations and many credible research journals publish the ubiquitous “1 in 5” female victimization data that is gleaned from the 1997-1999 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey (MYRBS). However, the MYRBS represents only a small subset of the national Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance (YRBS) survey.

Before further federal funding from the Violence Against Women Act for dating violence prevention, intervention and educational programs are granted to any organization, three questions should be asked:

(1)    Do they publish the “1 in 5” female victimization data and ignore the 8.9% male and the 8.8% female data?

(2)    If they claim the female “1 in 5” victimization data is valid, why do they ignore the fact that the same methodology documents males are physically assaulted as often as females?

(3)    If it is valid to minimize or ignore the victimization of boys because the “meaning, context, or consequence” of victimization of boys is not included in the survey, why do they publish the victimization of girls when the “meaning, context, or consequence” of their victimization is also absent?

Conclusion

The myriad of causes and consequences of dating and domestic violence are complex and multifaceted. Dating and domestic violence is not limited to nor does it primarily occur among adult heterosexual females and males.

Advocates will discover that more boys and men will become engaged in prevention and intervention efforts when dating and domestic violence organizations stop dismissing male victimization as inconsequential.

It is time for both genders to point their fingers at their own hearts and heads and not at each other. It is time to provide equitable prevention and intervention for girls and boys. And most important, reason and logic dictate that the proper cause must be placed before the consequence to effectively minimize or eliminate that consequence (Straus, 2006).

For more information, read “Dating Violence: Our Daughters and our Sons.”