Fear when GF mentions alcohol
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And I am absolutely sure that there are some factors that mostly affect female victims in violent situations, just as there are some factors that mostly affect male victims in violent situations - the experience for male victims and female victims has differences as well as similarities.
I actually think it's really sad that there is such a divisive line drawn between the genders on domestic violence stuff in general. As I said earlier in this thread, I see domestic violence as a problem of violent people, regardless of what gender they are.
It seems like domestic violence is caused by a combination of problems of attitude, beliefs and personality.
When I started reading about domestic violence, the percentage of male victims really shocked me.
This article from the UK ... https://www.theguardian.com/society/...estic-violence says ...
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"Data from Home Office statistical bulletins and the British Crime Survey show that men made up about 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09, the last year for which figures are available. In 2006-07 men made up 43.4% of all those who had suffered partner abuse in the previous year, which rose to 45.5% in 2007-08 but fell to 37.7% in 2008-09.
Similar or slightly larger numbers of men were subjected to severe force in an incident with their partner, according to the same documents. The figure stood at 48.6% in 2006-07, 48.3% the next year and 37.5% in 2008-09, Home Office statistics show.
The 2008-09 bulletin states: "More than one in four women (28%) and around one in six men (16%) had experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16. These figures are equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims of domestic abuse and 2.6 million male victims."
In addition, "6% of women and 4% of men reported having experienced domestic abuse in the past year, equivalent to an estimated one million female victims of domestic abuse and 600,000 male victims". ...
The official figures underestimate the true number of male victims, Mays said. "Culturally it's difficult for men to bring these incidents to the attention of the authorities. Men are reluctant to say that they've been abused by women, because it's seen as unmanly and weak."
The number of women prosecuted for domestic violence rose from 1,575 in 2004-05 to 4,266 in 2008-09. "Both men and women can be victims and we know that men feel under immense pressure to keep up the pretence that everything is OK," said Alex Neil, the housing and communities minister in the Scottish parliament. "Domestic abuse against a man is just as abhorrent as when a woman is the victim.""
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There is an article here titled "America’s girls have a violence problem" ... America?s girls have a violence problem | New York Post ... which concludes ...
"Girls need to be taught the same lessons in accountability as boys. The earlier we start doing so, the better."
I completely agree with that. Both genders should be treated equally, and that includes being taught the same lessons.
Some families simply don't teach accountability to their children, both boys and girls. If they did, then the levels of domestic violence would be much lower.
Those of us who grew up in families that did teach those simple life lessons like accountability and not hitting other people, assume that everyone else thinks the same way, so when we encounter someone in a relationship who months or years into the relationship reveals by their behavior that they don't live life by those simple rules, it is deeply jarring.
Domestic violence also seems to me to also be linked to a complete lack of empathy for other people, and entitlement. It seems like (and felt like when I was on the receiving end of it) an extreme form of someone putting their own selfish feelings ahead of someone else's basic rights like the right to not live in fear in your home.
I don't think that people who become violent when they are drunk is simply a problem with alcohol. If it was only a problem with alcohol, then every alcoholic would also be violent, which they aren't.
The really dangerous stuff seems to be when you have the combination of a person who has an anger problem, doesn't have empathy for how their words or actions affect other people, and who has no accountability, and who who then drinks.
Whether they are male or female makes no difference when you combine those factors ... the addition of alcohol to that mix lowers their inhibitions and you end up with either a verbally abusive person or a violently abusive person.
I guess that is the point I am trying to make in all this ... people who abuse others seem to have a similar set of attitudes and personality traits, regardless of what gender the abuser is.
How society addresses those traits, given how deeply narcissistic the environment that young people today are growing up in, is a massive problem. I am old enough to have been appalled when social media sites first started appearing at the number of people who started posting "selfies" of themselves constantly.
To most people my age, that was a jarring thing, but to younger people that was their normal, and now it seems to have become normal to so many people who are old enough that they should know how narcissistic that is, and who did not grow up with that level of overtly narcissistic behavior being normal.
There is an article here ... https://psychcentral.com/news/2010/0...nce/16772.html which reads ...
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"“Examining subtypes of perpetrators is an important way of learning more about why people are violent in close relationships. Understanding why different people are violent may be crucial for developing new ways to reduce violence in relationships.”
Walsh and colleagues analyzed data drawn from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study to examine normal personality, psychopathic characteristics, and mental illness among 567 civil psychiatric patients, including 138 women and 93 men with histories of domestic violence.
“Although both men and women engage in substantial levels of domestic violence, fewer studies have examined female perpetrators,” says Walsh.
“These new findings are among the first to highlight similarities between subtypes of domestically violent men and women.”
Prior studies of domestically violent men have found that perpetrators can be categorized into three groups. The study provides preliminary evidence that the following three subtypes also exist among female perpetrators:
- Antisocial perpetrators are often violent outside the relationship and have high levels of psychopathic personality traits
- Dysphoric perpetrators may have high levels of anxiety, depression and other forms of mental illness
- Low Pathology perpetrators have generally normal personalities and are rarely violent outside of intimate relationships"
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The other thing that I think is massively under-discussed is the role of the combination of psychiatric drugs and alcohol.
According to this article, one in six Americans now takes some kind of psychiatric drugs ...
One in 6 Americans Take Antidepressants, Other Psychiatric Drugs: Study - NBC News
One in six !
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...ata-finds-link reads ...
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"There has been an enduring controversy over whether psychiatric medications can trigger violent actions toward others. A review of the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting System by Thomas Moore, Joseph Glenmullen and Curt Furberg, which was published by PLoS One on December 15, found that such "adverse events" are indeed associated with antidepressants and several other types of psychotropic medications.
To do their study, Moore and his collaborators extracted all serious events reports from the FDA's database from 2004 through September 2009, and then identified 484 drugs that had triggered at least 200 case reports of serious adverse events (of any type) during that 69-month period. They then investigated to see if any of these 484 drugs had a "disproportionate" association with violence. They identified 31 such drugs, out of the 484, that met this criteria.
The 31 "suspect" drugs accounted for 1527 of the 1937 case reports of violence toward others in the FDA database for that 69-month period. The drugs in that list of 31 included varenicline (an aid to smoking cessation), 11 antidepressants, 6 hypnotic/sedatives, and 3 drugs for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Antidepressants were responsible for 572 case reports of violence toward others; the three ADHD drugs for 108; and the hypnotic/sedatives for 97.
Of the 1937 total case reports of violence toward others, there were 387 cases of homicide, 404 physical assaults, 27 cases of physical abuse, 896 reports of homicidal ideation, and 223 cases of "violence related symptoms.""
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So what happens when people taking psychiatric drugs combine those drugs with alcohol ? I don't believe that all of the one in six people taking psychiatric drugs abstain from alcohol, despite the fact that so many psychiatric drugs should not be combined with alcohol.
So there are multiple factors contributing here ...
- bad parenting by not instilling a sense of basic respect for others and personal accountability
- families in which kids grow up witnessing domestic violence then they model that behavior
- a deeply narcissistic streak in the way some people behave, which seems to be getting worse over time
- one in six people on psychiatric drugs
... and then into that mix alcohol is added.
To me, that combination seems like all the ingredients needed for exactly what we are seeing now, which is a disgraceful number of both men and women being subjected to domestic violence.
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