Customer Reviews

Violence and Gender Reexamined (Law and Public Policy: Psychology and the Social Sciences)

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While Richard Felson (2002) argues that mysoginy has no relaitonship to domestic violence, his argument is internally inconsistent in terms of both statistics and substance. First, the numerical data he presents often contradict his conclusions. For example, Felson states that "women are just as likely as men to be the victims of violence from their partners, at least in Western Countries." This statement directly contradicts his own research findings (p. 37) and Bureau of Justice Statistics (Craven, 1997) which which he provides that show that 20.7% of women are victimized by intimates compared to only 2.8% of males (Felson, 2002, p. 49; see also page 111 for another example).

On a substantive level, Felson frequently conflates the trivial with the traumatic. For example, Felson argues that women's greater use of complaining and anger in relationships "casts doubt on the idea that men's violence against their wives reflects a greater desire to control them" (Felson, 2002, p. 104). Felson thus compares complaining with a "tooth loosening assault intended to punish, humiliate, and terrorize" (Dobash, Dobash, Wilson, & Daly, 1992, p. 75). Note also that the radical feminist theory of domestic violence which Felson purports to critique never states that men have "a greater desire to control" their wives than do their wives but rather contends that battering is a technique by which men control women. Felson thus fails to address the central feminist proposition that battering results in increased power and control for men.

These errors in fact and logic re-occur throughout Felson's work and completely undermine his argument which is unfortunate because this is a topic which deserves careful, well-documented, and thoughtful consideration.