Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, mgriff2k4 is angry that the picture to the right here showed up on his computer screen. Sorry, make that fucking angry. “Did this really just fucking pop up on my news feed?” he asks in the title of his post, adding in a comment: “sorry about the word “fucking” but im really pissed off about this.”
Why is he angry? Presumably, he assumes the statistic is untrue, and that it unfairly paints men as evil murderers.
Luckily, in this Age of the Internet it is trivially easy to find out whether statistics like this are true. It involves something called “Google.” mgriff2k4 did not bother to avail himself of this easy-to-use research tool.
But I did. In less than 5 minutes, I confirmed that this factoid is indeed true, at least according to the most recent figures on gender and homicide found on the Department of Justice’s web site, drawn from FBI data covering the years from 1976-2005. According to the FBI, 30% of women who are murdered are murdered by “intimates.” Roughly 20% are killed by husbands or ex-husbands; 10% by boyfriends or girlfriends. (In the overwhelming majority of cases the murderers are boyfriends, not girlfriends; men are ten times more likely to commit murder than women.)
While four times as many men are murdered than women, only 5% of murdered men are killed by “intimates.” Men kill women more than twice as often as women kill men. Women suffer far more serious injuries from domestic violence than men do; so it is not altogether unexpected that they are also far more likely to be murdered by intimates.
If you want to see what this means on a human level, I suggest you take a look at the excellent if depressing web site Domestic Violence Crime Watch, which links to stories in which men are the perpetrators, and in which men are the victims. There are far more of those in the former category than in the latter.
I should note that (as of this writing) one commenter in the thread also found his way to the DOJ site, and noted that men were more likely to be killed by strangers or acquaintances. But he didn’t bother to tell mkgriff2k4 that the sign in the picture was in fact accurate.
D’oh, shit, I just sort of skipped over the boilerplate. Yeah, that’s more fucked up than I thought.
Argenti Aertheri saus,
“Re: context, you fail at it, the point was the context of numbers next to each other 30% is large in comparison to 5%, and small in comparison to 70%.
Re: 3:2 — we’re ignoring it because it isn’t actually telling anyone anything. I already did that math, you can find it. Simple question, if the 3:2 has meaning, what’s it 20% of?”
3:2 has meaning. It means that men don’t kill their intimate partners in vastly disproportionate numbers. It may not be something that feminist want to highlight, but it definitely has meaning.
“Just a guess, but the radio silence here has been because I did that math already. It’s a meaningless ratio as anything other than intellectual curiosity.”
It’s meaningless to you because it doesn’t support the men as oppressor / women as oppressed theory. The silence here is not because you did the math already BUT WHAT THE MATH SAYS.
“Um, that all was me, not Pecunium. And no, I implied that if Arks wanted to discount all the statistics on account of statistics being inherently misandry, I was going to laugh at him. You seem to continue to miss that that was me snarking at the common MRM claim that all statistics are inherently misandry.”
Oops, sorry Pecunium. I’ve read that theme a man wrote this or a man did that on this blog that it didn’t occur to me that it was snark and then it seemed you were defending it. Like I said, I don’t know the back story of people here. I take it that many people here have engaged with the more militant segment of the MRM. For me, my interest in issues of gender equality was sparked when I did research for a project in ethics class. I’ve only looked at this for about a year. It brought back some memories long repressed. This kind of helps to deal with those experiences by letting me see them in a different light.
Of course my journey would start on feminist sites. They are the standard bearers of equality. Men’s issues seemed to be minimized or dismissed. Then I found the MRM, but there was too much anger. Then I found GMP, which I believe to be a feminist web site focused on men. It’s helped me understand feminists better. Why I got the reaction I got when discussing men’s issues on feminist web sites, but it doesn’t change how I feel. I almost laugh when I hear the feminists on the site say that it’s important to feminism to hear men’s voices (some even think MRA voices are important) and discuss men’s issues. I wonder how that happens when the first response is to try to bully the person into leaving the thread. Yeah, I come in hard, but I know I have to because that’s the response I’ll get.
If you think it’s important to hear the other side and what issues are affecting men, come by GMP.
Doesn’t that ratio ultimately simplify down to “percentage of all women who are killed by intimates:percentage of all men who are killed by intimates”? (Incidentally, looking at your numbers upthread, that’s not really accurate, and it should be much closer to 2:1, but that’s because the 4x likelihood of homicide should actually be more like 3x.) I’m not saying that’s necessarily an important number to talk about, but it’s not the nonsense you’re making it out to be.
To put it another way, here’s the math he’s doing: (number of women killed by intimates/total number of women killed)*(total number of women killed/total number of all women):(number of men killed by intimates/total number of men killed)*(total number of men killed/total number of all men)
which would simplify down to (number of women killed by intimates/total number of all women):(number of men killed by intimates/total number of all men)
It’s late, so I easily could have missed something, and I may not be making much sense. But it was just confusing me that you were treating the whole ratio thing like it was a completely arbitrary. It might not be important, per se, but it’s not totally arbitrary.
PsychoDan — you missed a step, it isn’t 20% of men who are murdered are murdered by intimates (that’s 5%), it’s that for every 100 women murdered, 20 men are killed by intimates. And worded that way it’s obviously silly at face value. (And yeah, I checked the 4:1 claim, got 3.x and rounded up since it was easier to use the 4x everyone was already using; I actually used the raw risks at one point and got fundamentally the same ~50% nonsense result) — The point was that if you try to look at male homicide as a ratio of female homicide, you get nonsense.
John — no, 3:2 does not have meaning, because it’s forcing the numbers to fit into a ratio of women killed. And “vastly disproportionate number”? 150% isn’t? Even accounting for the higher homicide rate among men, 150% more women are killed by intimates.
Uh, you are aware that the majority of the 825 posts on this blog so far are in fact devoted to what “the other side” says, right? And that most of the 164,000 comments here are also devoted to discussing what “the other side” says?
I’m pretty sure the regulars here have a much better idea of what MRAs say than most MRAs do.
PsychoDan — I’m tired, I’m not sure that was clear — I’m using 4:1 because it was used to arrive at 3:2. Of all women murdered, 30% are by intimates; of all men murdered, 5% are by intimates; it was stated/assumed previously that men are killed 4 times as often as women, thus 5%*4=20 (20%, of what?) — but 30:20 – 3:2. ‘Cept that’s nonsense because you can’t look at how many men are murdered by intimates in terms of how many women are murdered (or you can, but it doesn’t tell much besides how bored people are).
Pam says,
“What we are not, however, is SURPRISED by this factoid, and it is our lack of SURPRISE that, apparently, makes us (at least in some circles) … now, wait for it … misandrist.”
What makes the responses (I’m trying to be nice) misandrist is that they are more focused on the gender of the perpetrator and the victim then the actual victimization. I’m told that 30% and 5% have meaning. The implies that men kill women in vastly greater numbers (that is what is misandrist) when the reality is that it is a 3:2 (obscuring reality, more misamdry).
I’m told that the 3:2 ratio has no meaning, but the ration only exists because FOUR TIMES AS MANY MEN ARE KILLED. To say that the 3:2 ratio has no meaning implies that the 4:1 ratio has no meaning. That is what is misandrist. The thinking that if men kill men, that shouldn’t be counted in feminism’s gender war and if they can use that fact to obscure the fact that women kill nearly as many intimates as men, then double bonus.
Oh, one more thought PsychoDan — your math is valid for arriving at a valid result, my math is invalid because the premises are invalid, I know, that was the point of the experiment. It isn’t totally arbitrary, but it is conflating things in a matter that results in illogical results. (Sorry if my ice cream analogy threw you, I try to make all my math examples involve snacks, it keeps peoples attention, because NOMS!)
Re: GMP — yeah that’s about the closest there is to a moderate MRM site, but I refuse to read anything that gives Hugo a platform on general principle.
Argenti Aertheri saus,
“Re: context, you fail at it, the point was the context of numbers next to each other 30% is large in comparison to 5%, and small in comparison to 70%.
Re: 3:2 — we’re ignoring it because it isn’t actually telling anyone anything. I already did that math, you can find it. Simple question, if the 3:2 has meaning, what’s it 20% of?”
I forgot to answer your question. It’s not 20% of anything it’s 40% of the total number of intimates killed as opposed to 60%. Glad to do the math for you.
Anderson, you comparison is terrible. You’re comparing case where there is legitimate danger and pain if the person goes to trial (like Banks facing a longer sentence or a rape victim having to suffer, to be called a liar, a slut, having her personal life showed to the world,… with little chances of winning the trial) to your brother not bothering to fight for his children. What’s the worse that could have happen to him?
And I still don’t know why the picture made the mother such a bad mom. Was it because she’s irresponsible for not hiding it well enough? For having taken the picture? For having sex with another man?
Fuck. You.
If a woman enjoy the intercourse and then don’t (and it happens! for plenty of reasons) you should stop the instant the woman shows she doesn’t want it anymore. Same if the person is not a woman. That’s how you don’t rape people, asshole.
I’m an English major, so it probably goes without saying that stats aren’t my strong suit, but am I right in assuming that the take home message from these stats is: “a given woman is at significantly greater risk of being murdered by an intimate partner than a given man?”
“I’m told that 30% and 5% have meaning. The implies that men kill women in vastly greater numbers (that is what is misandrist) when the reality is that it is a 3:2 (obscuring reality, more misamdry).”
No, it means that if murdered, women have a much higher risk of it being an intimate partner. The 4:1 ratio has no meaning in this context. Because we are not talking about raw numbers here, this was never about the raw number of people killed, but rather if someone is murdered, what are the odds it was an intimate partner? And that answer is a lot higher if the victim was female.
“The thinking that if men kill men, that shouldn’t be counted in feminism’s gender war and if they can use that fact to obscure the fact that women kill nearly as many intimates as men, then double bonus.”
No, even working with the 3:2 ratio, that’s still a 150% higher risk to women. To inverse it, that’s saying that 67% of people killed by intimates are women, 67% isn’t just a majority, it’s a super majority (yep, I just repurposed a political term for stats, it’s late). That 67% btw, that’s when 3:2 becomes valid math. There is no 20% though, what would that even be, of women killed 20% are men killed by intimates? My head hurts now…
Argenti – It’s not 20% of anything. It’s only there because you’re multiplying by a ratio that’s already been reduced down. But the idea is this: the 4:1 was presented as the ratio of men to women killed out of the total population. 5:30 is the ratio of men killed by intimates out of men killed to women killed by intimates out of women killed. When you multiply them together, the men killed and women killed simplify out; they’re in the numerator of one of the percentages and the denominator of the other. It just looks weird because instead of looking at the raw numbers for (men killed/all men) and (women killed/all women), we got an already reduced ratio of the two.
And now I’m pretty sure I’m not being clear at all. This is what you should really take away from my last post:
here’s the math he’s doing: (number of women killed by intimates/total number of women killed)*(total number of women killed/total number of all women):(number of men killed by intimates/total number of men killed)*(total number of men killed/total number of all men)
If you can muddle through my probably poor wording there, it should hopefully make sense.
PsychoDan,
Thanks, I’m trying to catch up to the posts and hadn’t gotten to yours. I appreciate this.
“a given woman is at significantly greater risk of being murdered by an intimate partner than a given man?”
Yeah. In raw numbers, and sticking with the previous rounding because I’m too tired to dig up excel files again (and excel for mac remains evil)
women killed annually * % killed by intimates = 4,000~ * .3 = 1,200
men killed annually * % killed by intimates = 13,000~ * .05 = 650
As PsychoDan noted, the 4:1 ratio isn’t really accurate, so that really is closer to 2:1. But the 3:2 ratio was a thought experiment setting it in terms of the number of women killed, which, while interesting, is kind of useless (the level of uselessness should be made clear from my applying the ratio to the raw numbers and arriving at ~50% of men being killed by intimates, which um, is off by a factor of 10).
Argenti Aertheri says,
“Re: GMP — yeah that’s about the closest there is to a moderate MRM site, but I refuse to read anything that gives Hugo a platform on general principle.”
Hugo is not generally liked by the commentators on GMP. I’m glad he is no longer affiliated with the site. He quit last year something about disagreeing with Tom.
PsychoDan — I’m not sure why you’re involving the total number of men and women in general (particularly since that’s very nearly a 1:1 ratio)…oh, you want the total number of murders in general there, not the total number of people, that’s why it’s reading weird. Yeah, that’s the math I did above, and it does indeed work out to about 2:1.
John — that’s saying that women stand twice the risk of men (of being killed by an intimate).
w00t! for one less place giving Hugo a platform. Your claim about why rape isn’t reported is still disgusting though.
“Argenti Aertheri saus”
Oh! That was a typo of says! Here I was reading it as Argenti Aertheri-saurus…I am clearly tired if my brain is reverting to DINOSAURS RAWR!!
Oh, good. I was trying to do the maths based off the DOJ website, and I was getting about 2:1 as well. I think part of the problem some people are having (assuming good faith argument) is the 4:1 men murdered to women murdered ratio, which seems to be valid specifically for the year 2005. If you look at the entire period covered 1976-2005 it’s closer to 3:1 overall.
Maybe I’m not as bad at maths as I thought.
David Futrelle
When I said men’s issues, I meant issues affecting men not some men’s “issues” manifesting itself into an irrational hatred of women. I don’t know if that makes a difference.
Argenti – The problem there, the reason you’re coming up with that useless number, is that you’re putting the numbers of men and women killed annually in there twice once as part of the ratio between the two, and then again as the raw number.
John – Don’t think you’ve got any friends in this thread after that vile little display on the last page. I’m playing with numbers with Argenti here for the sake of playing with numbers, not to help you make some misguided point.
Incidentally, I don’t think the comparative percentage for men was even necessary in the original post. The point, for the most part, was that almost a third of murdered women are murdered by there partners, and holy shit, that’s a lot. The 5% number was only given to show that the same is not really a significant portion of the violence against men. The absolute numbers only matter if you’re trying to keep score, which is utterly pointless.
Argenti – And you got it while I was typing out that last comment. Yeah, that’s what I was going for. And the fact that my word-mash kept us talking past each other that long means I should probably get some sleep.
I don’t think the comparative percentage in relation to total murder numbers was very useful either. If you want a useful comparison to give a sense of relative scale of murder by an intimate partner by gender, roughly 2:1 is it. The 30%/5% numbers are useful if evaluating individual risk, but not for much else.
Kyrie says,
“What’s the worse that could have happen to him?”
He could have a vindictive wife who retaliates by attempting to limit his visitation and actively seeks to interfere with it. Feminists approach the discussion from the standpoint that in this case men don’t want their children anyway and the law will always be applied in a gender neutral manner. Feminist fail to realize that enforcing a visitation order often involves spending huge amounts of resources. It’s nit like you have the police and prosecutors on your side. If you don’t have the resources and the judge could be biased. You run the risk of not being able to see your children at all. Is that serious enough?
If a woman doesn’t have the resources to leave an abusive relationship, it’s not her fault. If a man doesn’t have the resources to continuously enforce a visitation order, which usually only ends up in him getting make up time, it’s his fault because the sole purpose and value of a man is the amount of financial resources he can gather. Some guys feel it is better to be assured some time than to be cut out of their children’s lives.
They approach the idea of a woman not reporting a rape because the justice system will victimize her some more.