She Didn't "Pick Wrong". Society Failed By Creating Millions of Abusive Men.

The scale of the risk means we need to stop blaming women for "ignoring red flags" when men turn out to be controlling and abusive partners

Dr Emma Katz is widely regarded as one the world’s foremost academic experts in her area of research — how coercive control impacts on children and young people.

Emma specializes in the harms caused by father-perpetrated coercive control, as well as children’s and mothers’ resistance and recovery. Read more in her book Coercive Control in Mothers’ and Children’s Lives, published by Oxford University Press.

There is no end to the horrible victim-blaming things that people say about how domestic abuse victims-survivors should have “seen the signs” and “got out sooner”:

• “She should have seen red flags earlier”

• “She should have left at the first sign”

• “She should have chosen better”

As someone who has researched domestic abuse for many years as a university academic, I don’t believe these ways of thinking are correct or helpful.

In fact, I wish we could dump them all and never think of any of them again.

In this post, I’m going to explain what’s wrong with these kinds of responses and what we should be saying instead. This post is free to read, so share it far and wide.

Domestic abuse perpetrators — the numbers are massive, the scale is vast

Most of the ways that societies encourage people to think about domestic violence and abuse come from the wrong perspective.

People are encouraged to scrutinise and blame individual victims, rather than looking at how our societies are set up in ways that are creating far too many perpetrators.

As you might be able to tell, I’m a sociologist by training. This is really useful to me (and hopefully to you too), because it enables me to break out of looking at what individual victims-survivors did or didn’t do, and to instead explore the social problems that are fuelling domestic abuse and shaping the options that people have available to them.

Our societies create vast amounts of people (the large majority of them men) who want to coercively control and domestically abuse their partners and families in ways that are incredibly harmful.

So, how many perpetrators are out there?

Our societies typically don’t like to collect data on the numbers of coercive control or domestic violence and abuse perpetrators within populations. Statistics are almost always victim-focused. We know that around 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 women are subjected to domestic abuse in their lifetimes. That’s a huge number of victims-survivors. This tells us that domestic abuse is incredibly common.

What we don’t usually know – because we don’t make an effort to find out – is how many men are perpetrating all of this domestic abuse against women. (Though the large majority of perpetrators are men, women can also experience intimate partner domestic abuse from other women, and from people of diverse gender identities.)

In fact, when I recently Googled “how many male perpetrators of domestic abuse are there?”, most of the search results that came back were about the numbers of male victims of domestic abuse, not male perpetrators.

However, rare bits of research do provide some clues.

A study from the University of Michigan has indicated that 1 in 5 US men had been domestically violent toward their current partner or spouse. Men were asked: “Over the course of your relationship, how often have you ever done any of these things (pushed, grabbed, or shoved; threw something; slapped or hit; kicked, bit, or hit with a fist; beat up; choked; burned or scalded; threatened with a knife or gun) to your current spouse/partner?” Responses included “often”, “sometimes”, “rarely”, or “never”. 1 in 5 of the men said that they had “rarely”, “sometimes” or “often” been violent towards their partner.

There are about 130 million adult men in the US. If this “1 in 5” finding was scaled up to the general population (the study used a representative sample, meaning a sample that matched the demographics of the general population), then that would be about 26 million adult men admitting to domestic violence perpetration in the US.

In another study, almost 1 in 3 male college students in the US said they would have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will (i.e. rape) if:

• they wouldn’t have to face any consequences; and

• no one would ever know.

We know that a significant amount of men translate their readiness to rape into actual rape: 1 in 10 women in the US have been raped by their intimate partner.

A third study, on male attitudes towards male privilege, violence and control, asked a representative sample of young men from the US if they agreed with certain statements:

• A husband shouldn't have to do household chores: 22% YES

• Men should use violence to get respect, if necessary: 23% YES

• A man should always have the final say about decisions in his relationship or marriage: 34% YES

• If a guy has a girlfriend or wife, he deserves to know where she is all the time: 46% YES

Here, we find that a frightening percentage of young men hold beliefs that are typically held by domestic abuse perpetrators. For example, almost half (46%) of young men see themselves as entitled to know where their girlfriend or wife is all the time. This is particularly concerning, as many coercive control perpetrators constantly monitor their partner’s movements.

So, what does this mean? It means that when women seek to find a male intimate partner, they are at extremely high risk of ending up on a date with a man who will be physically violent, sexually violent or controlling towards them.

Just think.

If you went to a restaurant and knew that at least 1 in 5 dishes served there would send you to the hospital with food poisoning, you wouldn’t be comfortable going to eat there. You’d avoid it and would expect the place to get shut down, fast.

Well, this kind of level of risk is what women are up against when they try to find a man to have a romantic relationship with. If a woman in the US goes on a date with a man who went to college, there might be a 1 in 3 chance that he’d rape her if he was sure he could get away with it. There also might be a 1 in 3 chance that he’s the kind of man who thinks he should always have the final say in their relationship because he’s the man.

The data suggests to us that there are large minorities of men who prize violation, conquest, domination, power and causing suffering to others ahead of equal, respectful partnership.

If this sounds like “man hating” to you, take a deep breath. I’m just the messenger. I’m not the problem.

Believe me, I wish these statistics were very different. I wish there was no need for me to be writing about this. If you are a man or a woman who believes in treating women as equal human beings, it makes sense to be angry not at me but at the men who think that violence and rape are okay if they can get away with it, and at those men who secretly believe they should always have the final say and are entitled to monitor the whereabouts of their partner at all times.

So why doesn’t it make sense to talk about female victims-survivors “missing red flags”, “picking better men”?

Domestically abusive men don’t typically reveal their real thoughts and intentions on a first date, nor on the 10th date. They usually start out seeming really nice. Abusive words and actions are slowly and subtly introduced, alongside a lot of “nice” behaviour that dilutes the impacts of this subtle abuse. They typically wait until the target is entangled and entrapped – after moving in together, marrying them or expecting a baby with them – until they start to abuse more obviously.

Now, let’s look at the whole population of a country. Can all of the women in the population avoid these potentially tens of millions of abusive men? Of course not.

Yes, some individual women may be able to avoid getting into a relationship with a particular abusive man by spotting concerning behaviors.

But it is ridiculous to expect the generality of women to be able to do this when our chances of encountering an abusive man are so high. Thinking about the population of the US, should more than a hundred million women really be able to correctly identify and steer clear of the tens of millions of “bad men”? It sounds like a pretty silly expectation to me.

Abusive men typically fool their entire communities. They typically fool people who spend a lot of time with them, like work colleagues who they spend 40 hours a week with. Why should their partner be more able to notice signs of abuse than the rest of the population?

Furthermore, women are not encouraged by societies to break up with men at the first sign of problems. Far from it. Societies tell women that real love is tumultuous and is hard work, with many problems that need to be solved (usually by the woman).

Just have a think about the lyrics to popular love songs, or the plots of movies, TV shows or books.

Societies also tell women to be kind, friendly, and give men “the benefit of the doubt”. If a woman acts decisively to remove a man from her life, she might be judged as “harsh” and “overreacting”.

Finally, getting into a long-term relationship is hugely prized in our societies. This is why engagements, weddings and anniversaries are all so celebrated.

If we want women to really be able to behave differently in large numbers, the messages we send prioritising romance and giving lots of chances would have to shift. A lot.

It’s true that some individual women at some points in their lives may be able to get out at the early signs of abuse — especially if they happen to have the resources, knowledge or individual personal circumstances to enable them to do this. Indeed, my work – and the work of everyone who raises awareness of domestic abuse – helps women to build up that kind of knowledge.

But most women can’t do this, and it’s not reasonable to expect us to. Most of us go along with the rules, norms and ideas that are most commonly accepted in our societies. We stick with what is mainstream.

Of course we do.

And it’s not mainstream to break up with a man who has been a “great guy” when he starts slowly and subtly introducing abusive behaviors but is still being “nice” a lot of the time. It should be mainstream to break up in these circumstances, but it definitely isn’t right now.

Long term, reducing the terrible rates of intimate partner rape, domestic violence and abuse and coercive control can’t be achieved by expecting all the non-abusive people who are genuinely looking for love to be able to steer clear of all of the abuse perpetrators.

That approach doesn’t do anything about the millions or tens of millions of perpetrators who are already with us in our societies, seeking out and harming people even as we read this.

So what’s the answer?

If we ever want to see major reductions in these crimes, we need to start asking questions at a broader societal level:

• What is it about how our societies are functioning that is causing so many men to become domestically abusive and coercively controlling to their partners and families?

• What happens to make so many men grow up into a person who makes choices to domestically abuse other human beings?

There are no simple answers here.

But looking at how we can change societies, so that future generations have fewer potential abusers, is the way to go if we really want things to change.

Conclusion

I hope this post has provided a different perspective on the belief that individual women are to blame for not recognising signs of abuse sooner and not “seeing the red flags”.

If that belief is something you’ve been carrying around with you, I hope you will be able to put it down and walk away — like taking off a heavy backpack and walking on more freely without it.

Let me leave you with this awesome graphic. Credit to bebadass.in

Goodbye for now

Thank you for your continued support for Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz. I look forward to writing my next post on this site very soon.

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