Customer Reviews

Rethinking Domestic Violence

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As a practicing psychologist with many years of professional experience and former editor of a leading psychotherapy journal I can heartily recommend Rethinking Domestic Violence to anyone wishing to get to grips with this topic. Dutton is one of the most respected and innovative researchers in the field, and this book is his latest review and synthesis. I strongly recommend it to therapists and policy-makers. Dutton has moved far beyond the simplistic and now-discredited feminist analysis of gender power relations into the fascinating but ultimately much more disturbing and demanding arena of psychopathology to explain domestic violence. Many readers new to the field will be surprised at his conclusions - well-documented and extensively researched - that female domestic violence is just as prevalent and severe in its effects as male domestic violence, perhaps more so, and that both phenomena are probably primarily caused by the same set of adverse early-life conditions that leave a life-long imprint and propensity towards violence in the hearts of many. A brilliant scholarly antidote to ideologues.

Rethinking Domestic Violoence by Donald Dutton is an important book in presenting a comprehensive look at domestic violence. It unfolds the new paradigm that is emerging regarding the prevention of family violence. As Donald Dutton makes clear in the book, our North American societies have depended too long on responding with a law and order approach to family violence. It is time for a different approach.

From Chap. 7, The Domestic Assault of Men.

"Proportion of female victims who feared for life in intimate terrorism relationships - 83 percent
Proportion of male victims who feared for life in intimate terrorism relationships - 77 percent
-Canadian General Social Survey

The last chapter reviewed data that have been troubling for feminists since the first US National Survey of 1975: women are as violent as males. Because this finding contradicts feminist theory, it has been suppressed, unreported, reinterpreted, or denied. The female violence rates have been portrayed as self-defensive violence, less serious violence, or a result of reporting differences. In fact they equal or exceed males rates, they include female violence against non-violent males, and they have serious consequences for males."

Interesting, that such a powerless group could so successfully suppress, unreport, reinterpret or deny such relevant information. If the above is true - and every major study, excepting those based on police reports, supports it - then how is that we don't know that women are as violent as men? Whose interest would that be in? What else are feminists telling us that bears closer scrutiny?

What amazes me is, how politically powerful women are, based on the notion that they have far less power than men. And that's why feminists suppress, unreport, reinterpret or deny any evidence of discrimination against men - it would erode their power base, if it turned out that men have it just about as bad as women. Why would we be supporting people (mostly women)in colleges and universities in producing studies only about discrimination against women, if it turned out that 98% of the soldiers dying in Iraq are male, or that female soldiers have a choice about combat, while men don't? Why would we be passing laws about violence against women, if it turned out that women are just about as violent as men? Why would we be putting so much more public money into breast cancer research, if it turned out that the incidence of prostate cancer were almost as high? Why would we allow women to kill their unwanted children, yet still demand that men spend 20 years of their lives, using their own bodies (our bodies,our lives)to support their own unwanted children?

Women, most of you don't have much interest in finding out more about this. Guys, we're screwed if we don't start finding out, and publishing, more of the truth.

The assertion that domestic violence is as prevalent towards men flies in the face of a large community of researchers. Further, it contradicts the experience of the battered women's movement. I have been honored to have been a part of this movement for fifteen years, and have certainly worked with bona fide male victims where a woman was the perpetrator. But they were a small minority - the vast majority were women abused by men. Underreporting alone can't account for this huge gap - the socialization of my gender towards power, control and violence can. Rather than "rigid gender politics," the analysis of men's violence against women is backed up by seasoned social scientists from many respected institutions - Dutton's work contradicts those sources, and inadvertently supports the so-called "Father's Rights" movement in their quest to cut badly-needed funding to women's shelters.

I hardly know how to begin a review of this book. The premises laid forth by Dutton and "proven" by the research he cites are ludicrous at best. I have worked in the field of domestic violence (for almost 20 years now), including as a government funded researcher doing controlled clinical trials for a number of years. This book represents a major set-back to the great advances that have come about due to the impressive body of legitimate research that has been conducted on this vital topic in recent years. There is so much wrong about this book that I can't even begin to review it in the space allowed. If anyone wants to read valid works and understand domestic violence, I reccomend reading Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft and When Men Batter Women by Jacobson and Gottman. The first is already a classic and the later describes a phenomenal ten year longitudinal study of 200 couples experiencing violence. Do not waste your money on this book.

Dutton is a controversial figure in the domestic violence field. Despite glowing recommendations here, the truth is that he is not universally admired. This book presents more rehashing of his tired ideas. As a DV expert with over thirty years of field experience, as a survivor, former shelter board president, former chair of a large statewide coalition of domestic violence organizations, a gubinatorial appointee to a statewide task force on domestic violence and a former CEO of a large DV program, I do not have much, if any, regard for Dutton's philosophies and theories.

Wonderful book for those who beat,bash and batter- and frequently murder their victims. These criminals can use this book in court now, to help themselves avoid punishment under the law. Perhaps it will sell as well as O.J.'s book - - - -