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2/172017 Understanding Domestic Abusers: Gender and Intimate Partner Violence - Gender and domestic abuse - NYS OPDV general tern of Gender and domestic abuse About 97% of abusers are men who have a female partner.R Heterosexual men's domestic abuse is grounded in both inequalities in power and resources between women and men and social rules for male/female relationships. This context creates entitlement for men and vulnerability for women and makes men's violence work very well to control their female partners. Evan Stark points out that the tactics of men who abuse women specifically target aspects of sexual inequality, such as what he calls women's "default consignment" to housework, caretaking and sexual service. Coercive control is built on the rules for the victim's daily conduct as a woman, which makes it hard to tell where the constraints of women's gender role leave off and coercive control begins. No parallel thing happens to men, Stark says, even to men with abusive partners 78 Unlike women's violence in relationships, "male violence is more apt to be a pattern to be repeated in subsequent relationships rather than situational in a particular relationship "79 Perpetrators who are arrested for DV crimes or the violation of an order of protection are overwhelmingly male, and their victims overwhelmingly female $4 Men are also typically the perpetrators of more serious acts of violence. For instance, one stud y$ found the following breakdown in what men and women said their partner did to them: hat partner did Female victim Male victim Threw something at rn Pushed, grabbed or shoved meIr F 8.1%11 18.1%11 4.4% 5.4% Slapped or hit me 16.0%11 5.5% Beat me up 8.5% .6% �cIXA[ql-lillf -0-117M= Lesbians and gay men appear to abuse their partners at approximately the same rate as heterosexual men, though accurate statistics are hard to come by. Their tactics often exploit the victim's experience of heterosexism and homophobia, as well as inequalities other than gender, such as income or education. Women with male partners Any individual can choose to abuse their partner, and some heterosexual women do so, but women's violence usually takes the form of fighting or responsive violence. The smallest group of women who use violence in their relationship are women who actually abuse their partner.82 There are a couple of major reasons for this: • Women's attempts to dominate men are much more likely to fail, because "...sexual discrimination allows men privileged access to the material and social resources needed to gain advantage in power struggles"83 • Norms for female behavior work against women becoming abusers. These norms include: W:/www.opdv.nygov/professiorr,dstabusers/gmderancipvhhnI 22 29