Hitting Home: men speak about abuse of women partners
In September 1995, Dr Felicity Goodyear-Smith wrote in her COSA Editorial:
Last month saw the publication of the Justice Department’s research project ‘Hitting Home: men speak about abuse of women partners‘, said to be the most comprehensive study of attitudes to domestic abuse which exists anywhere, and to present “prevalence rates of abuse of women by NZ men”. The results of this $1.5 million Hamilton project were said to show that men abuse their women partners at twice the rate previously thought, and of course there was an accompanying call for more funding to deal with the problem.
There are grave flaws in interpreting the data from this study as “1 in 5 men beat their women partners” or that “1 in 2 emotionally abuse them”. Firstly, the definitions of abuse used were extremely broad. Domestic abuse is defined as “abuse of women by male partners”. Physical abuse includes pushing, shoving, grabbing or throwing something at a woman partner. Psychological abuse includes insulting or swearing at her, preventing her having money (amount undefined) for her own use, criticising one of her friends or family, throwing or kicking something, or “trying to keep her from doing something she wants to do”.
There is a marked parallel here with sexual abuse statistics and other studies which seek evidence that women are victims of male brutality, and greatly magnify the problem to gain funding, support, vindication and ammunition. Just as gender feminism has expanded the definition of rape from a heinous crime committed by a violent individual against an innocent victim to the victimization of all women by all men, so too does this study expand the definition of domestic abuse to the point of meaninglessness. Trivialising violence in this way affronts the real victims of assault.
Hitting Home – hitting whom?
Men’s Centre North Shores Co-ordinator Martin Lewis said that Hitting Home is a distorted and damaging document and will do nothing to improve the situation for men or women.
Report on Violence: the research does not support the conclusions
by Greg Newbold
The recent Justice Department-backed study into violence in the family is deeply flawed by a failure to look candidly at all aspects of a disturbing issue, writes Dr Greg Newbold.
“The danger now is that, in the way of moral panics generally, false ideas about men’s violence in the home will lead to bad public policy, asinine law and, ultimately, the destruction of innocent people.”
Are New Zealand Men Really So Violent?
by Philip Gendall in the Massey University Marketing Bulletin.
Hitting Home is a sophisticated and carefully prepared document designed to promote a particular view about domestic abuse in New Zealand. The results of the study it reports are presented in a way that emphasises abuse and the study’s inflated estimates of it; given the nature of the study’s “findings”, the media’s uncritical acceptance and dissemination of them was predictable. Thus it is difficult to escape the conclusion that domestic abuse was defined in this study so that high reported levels of it were inevitable and, that having achieved this, the findings were reported in a way that highlighted this “fact” and guaranteed the maximum possible publicity for it.
Successful outcome for feminists
Feminist organisations like The Domestic Violence Centre subsequently used these statistics as if they were meaningful:
“In a NZ Department of Justice study, one in five kiwi men admitted assaulting their partners in the last year.”
The source for this quote was www.dvc.org.nz/stats.htm, but the website disappeared some time after 2009 when the organisation changed its name to Shine.
During the third reading of the Domestic Violence Bill on 12th December 1995, Member for Panmure Judith Tizzard told the house:
This report stated that the vast majority of New Zealanders saw violence not only as normal but as an acceptable way of dealing with disputes or betrayal within relationships.
…
As I have already said, the report entitled Hitting Home: Men Speak About Abuse of Women Partners hit home very hard, I think, with members of the select committee, other members of Parliament, and the community who read it.
During the public debate the Minister of Justice gave an assurance that Hitting Home (which focused on violence by men against women) was to be followed by similar studies focusing on violence by women against men and on violence within other relationships. The Ministry’s staff, when pressed on the matter, revealed that while this was what they had told the Minister, no funds were available for the job.
Skeptics award Hitting Home the Bent Spoon
The NZ Skeptics Society awarded Hitting Home the 1995 ‘Bent Spoon’ award. Copied from Page 21, New Zealand Skeptic, September 1995 Number 37:
The 1995 Bent Spoon
by Denis Dutton
This year’s Bent Spoon Award has ruffled a few feathers. In a controversial decision, what the Skeptics described as an “alarmist” Justice Department report on domestic violence in New Zealand has received the award.
“The report, entitled Hitting Home, paints a disturbing picture of New Zealand men as abusers of wives and partners, until you examine the fine print,” said Skeptics head Vicki Hyde.
“Since the report defines ‘abuse’ to include criticising your partner’s family, it is not surprising that half the men surveyed were guilty of some form of psychological abuse…By so exaggerating the extent of abuse, the report trivializes the real domestic violence that goes on in New Zealand,” Ms Hyde said.
For example, Hitting Home refers repeatedly to one particularly disturbing statistic, which was singled out in the Justice Department press release: “when they were shown some typical circumstances in which abuse occurs, 10% [of New Zealand men] said they approved and 56% did not really disapprove of hitting a woman. And in at least one circumstance, six out of ten men say the woman has only herself to blame for being hit.” This indeed would be alarming, were it true that bashing women was behaviour 60% of New Zealand males were willing to turn a blind eye to.
In fact, these figures were arrived at by showing men a list of possible provocations, including finding a partner “in bed with another man,” “physically abusing their child,” and hitting the man first in an argument. From the fact that the disapproval rating of respondents, once shown such circumstances, declined from “moderate to extreme” to “little or moderate” (even though 95%-98% disapproved), we’re served up the false conclusion that “56% did not really disapprove of hitting a woman.” They did disapprove, overwhelmingly, but not at the same level of disapproval as “she hasn’t cleaned the house,” and other trivial items on the list.
The report also inflates conclusions about the prevalence of abuse by its peculiar definition of “abuse” which runs the gamut from “Used a knife or gun on her” to “Kicked something” to “Put down her family and friends” to “Tried to keep her from doing something she wanted to do.” From this starting point, the report finds widespread “abuse” in New Zealand, as it would be a rare couple where a man had not at some time slammed a door or insulted a relation during an argument with his partner. Despite a title suggesting it is about domestic violence, Hitting Home is actually about abuse, understood as virtually any demonstration of anger. Even letting off steam to avoid “abuse” can be classified as “abuse.”
One of the report’s authors told the Listener that “Overall, the research found that New Zealand rates of abuse are about twice as high as rates based on what women say.” This is no surprise as the report’s inflated definition of abuse includes behaviours that even the “victims” didn’t think of as abuse.
In the press release, Vicki Hyde said, “It’s taken society a long time to recognize that domestic violence is a serious problem. It is vital, if we are to address this issue effectively, that research provides accurate, meaningful information on which policies can be based. By limiting its scope to men only and by defining abuse so broadly, Hitting Home misses the mark. It’s a great shame, since we desperately need well-founded social policies. This will disadvantage the women most vulnerable to serious violence. Surely, you can’t classify the experience of being strangled or threatened with a knife alongside hearing a rude comment about your brother.”
At our recent conference, Skeptic Hugh Young challenged the award.. His remarks and others follow. Further contributions will appear in the next Skeptic.
The Skeptics awards for excellence went to journalists with TVNZ, Metro, and the Listener.
“TVNZ’s Assignment series shows that we can still have thoroughly researched, critical documentaries on television,” according to Ms Hyde. The Skeptics praised Assignment‘s “The Doctor Who Cried Abuse,” an investigation of a Dunedin physician whose unwarranted diagnoses had wrecked havoc on New Zealand families. “Ellis Through the Looking Glass,” an examination of the Christchurch Civic Creche case, was singled out for accolades.
Vincent Heeringa of Metro magazine received an award for his article “Weird Science,” on the Auckland Institute of Technology Press and Listener journalist Noel O’Hare, author of a cover story on False Memory Syndrome received a Skeptics award for the second year running.
Strangely, the archived version NZSkeptic-37 ends at page 20, and omits the debate about the award. So here is the missing text, copied from Page 22 New Zealand Skeptic, September 1995 Number 37:
A Big Mistake
by Hugh Young
We have made a big mistake. Hitting Home is careful, thorough, mainstream scientific research. It may be alarming, but it is not, as we said, “alarmist”. It is a serious attempt to measure men’s attitudes towards, and the extent of, their violence. It is social science, not “hard” science, but it has done its best to attach figures to subjective psychological statements. If it can be criticised, it is for accepting the men’s reports of their own violence at face value, when the biggest problem associated with men’s violence is men’s denial. (“I just gave her a bit of a tap” — and she spent three weeks in hospital.)
One of our spokesmen (sic) publicly admitted to a level of domestic violence that is against the law. On Morning Report, he misquoted a question about male control, “tried to keep her from doing something she wanted to do (such as going out with friends or going to a meeting)” (p 225) as “tried to stop her from doing whatever she wanted…such as driving while drunk or abusing a child.”
We said in our press release that the report paints a disturbing picture of men’s violence “until you examine the fine print”. There is no fine print, nor any of the attempts to hide key caveats or qualifications that the expression implies. We said “the report defines ‘abuse’ to include criticising your partner’s family”. The 2,000 men were actually asked about “putting down her family and friends” (“criticising” is rational, “putting down” is not) in the context of a row or fight. The report did not define “abuse” from scratch, it took its questionnaire items from other such studies, giving references (p 173). Putting down one’s partner’s family in the context of row is psychological abuse because her family is something she has no control over, and is almost invariably irrelevant to the content of the row. A woman will feel compelled to defend her family, and an attack on her family is an indirect attack on her.
We said “you can’t classify the experience of being strangled or threatened with a knife alongside hearing a rude comment about your brother…” This is a misquote, and trivialises what is actually being discussed. The report does not “classify…alongside”, it ranks violence and abuse in seriousness (by inverse frequency of mention), divides them into four levels of seriousness, and reports that the most serious forms of violence and abuse are rare, and “just over half [of the men reporting any abuse] were in fact in the least serious group.” (pp 88-9)
In saying the report “trivialises” domestic violence, we trivialise psychological abuse: a man does not have to be violent to abuse his partner. In one classic case, a man terrorised his wife by getting out his rifle and cleaning it, without saying a word or touching her.
We criticised the report for investigating only men’s violence and abuse of women, yet it pretends to do nothing else. Its subtitle, on the front cover, is “Men speak about abuse of women partners.” It recommends that studies be made of women’s violence to men, and of violence in same-sex relationships.
Two indications of the limited extent of women’s violence:
There is no felt need for men’s refuges (if there were it would be instantly met by Rotary, Lions and the Round Table).
Wellington Men for Non-violence ran a flat for men for about two years. It was never used as a refuge for a man fleeing a woman’s violence, only for violent men giving their families “time out”. Studies that claim to show high levels of female violence are methodologically flawed, but be that as it may, this report is not about that.
We accused the report of saying there was no link between ethnicity and violence. It made no such claim, and could not, because it did not ask about ethnicity. (Perhaps it should have, but it says why it did not. The question is not an easy one to formulate, when two people of identical descent may describe their ethnic identity quite differently.) Do we have any evidence that there is such a link?
We said it “flies in the face of other research” in claiming there was no link between socio-economic status and violence. (Since when did one piece of research have to match another? Isn’t this just another way of saying that overseas research couldn’t be replicated here?) It says “We compared our results with a recent review of 52 studies… In no case was there total consistency across all studies reviewed…There are several possible explanations. The spread of social factors in New Zealand may not reflect the same degree of diversity as in America where most of the reviewed studies were conducted…” (p 97).
In fact it does find a weak link between socio-economic status and violence, but only in younger men. It is a truism among anti-violence workers (but apparently unknown to the critics) that domestic violence cuts across class boundaries, and a high court judge or cabinet minister is just as likely to beat his wife as a freezing worker or opossum trapper. Since the report came to this counter-intuitive conclusion by careful scientific study, what do we (who produce no contrary study) think it should do — cook the books?
We said “the contradiction is not surprising when you realise how broadly the report has defined the concept of abuse”. Psychological abuse is a relatively new concept, but it is no wishy-washy, New Age claim: ask any victim. Any torturer will tell you that the “best” torture is purely mental. It is not that the report has defined abuse more broadly, but that our sceptical critics seem unaware how prevalent or serious psychological abuse is.
We said “the deliberate avoidance of any identification of at-risk groups…”. This is simply not true. The report looks at age, education, income, marital status, employment status, and socio-economics status (pp 92, 160-1). We disputed most strongly the report’s statement that “‘in at least one circumstance’ six out of ten New Zealand men say the woman has only herself to blame for being hit”.
We implied that the specific circumstances justified the man’s violence. 36% said a woman is solely to blame if her man hits her for abusing a child. A further 3% said neither is at fault. Do we say they are right to condone his violence, bearing in mind that having their mothers struck for abusing them will do the children no good at all? Role-modelling in non-violence it ain’t.
Thirteen percent said no blame at all attached to a man (7% her fault, 6% neither) who hit his wife for repeatedly refusing sex, 22% (19+3) for yelling at him at the top of her voice, 28% (21+7) for not having a meal ready when she had been at home all day, 30% (26+4) for making fun of him sexually, 50% (48+2) for finding her in bed with another man (p 65). (The reaction of hitting the other man is not canvassed.) These findings indicate high levels of condoning of male violence. Are we not just shooting the messenger?
We criticised the report for its finding that 20% of men think a woman is entirely to blame if a man hits her in “self-defence against a woman who is actually attacking a man”. The actual wording is, “in an argument, she hits him first.” We Skeptics are now on record as thinking it beyond question that once a woman has struck a man, he need take no responsibility whatever for all his subsequent violence.
We said it presented “no perceptible evidence” that New Zealand men have quite a high level of anger and hostility. On pp 44-45 it describes how it asked the men six questions (the Brief Anger-Aggression Questionnaire) devised overseas (and apparently a standard test) and found that New Zealand men scored higher than men in other countries.
We Skeptics have taken information out of context, rewritten it in a biased way, and generally put the kind of spin on it that we so often accuse our opponents of doing, behaving like a tabloid newspaper. One of us called the report “victimology” (what is wrong with studying victims?) when it is a study of perpetrators, and “advocacy science” when it is simply applied social science. The only assumptions it makes that could be called “advocacy” are that domestic violence is an evil, and that men must take responsibility for their violence if it is to be eliminated. In challenging those assumptions, we are effectively taking the side of violent men.
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. The claims this report makes will come as no surprise to anyone who works in the field of domestic violence. It presents extraordinary proof for them. In attacking it, we have gone way out of our depth. We should stick to the urine-sniffing lamas and medical-advice-dispensing radio psychics that are our forte. This time, we have used the Bent Spoon to flick egg over our own faces.
We should graciously acknowledge our mistake, withdraw the “award” and publicly and unconditionally apologise to the authors of Hitting Home. This would be a good example of the kind of rational and adaptable behaviour we try to encourage in others.
Not A Mistake copied from Page 24 New Zealand Skeptic, September 1995 Number 37:
Shonky Research
by Walter C. Clark, Woodend
My feeling after having read the report is that when it was ready for the printer, the authors had in fact reached the point where they were about ready to consult with people experienced in such research, as a necessary preliminary to the main investigation. I would have suggested a smaller pilot sample. This should have disclosed the pitfalls that lay in wait for them. By taking such steps they could have avoided the traps that they later fell into.
In my view the study was very seriously, if not fatally, flawed by choosing either defective definitions, or no definition at all. Poor definitions results in banging the table and knifing the wife being placed in the same continuum of physical abuse. Absence of definition seems apparent where they compared their results with results from other studies. There is no guarantee that apples were being compared with apples, and not pumpkins. Similarly, to continue the metaphor, they studied only half the apple — no comparable study of female on male abuse/violence/insult a great many of the comparisons and conclusions were inappropriately drawn, though often there can be no certainty about this.
I found much of the writing rather confused, so that I cannot interpret it with certainty — e.g. p.35
“It has been shown that when asked direct, general questions about abuse, people [?men] say that they disapprove, but when the questions become less direct and more specific [sic!], a kind of underlying condoning begins to emerge.”
What does that passage mean? It is not highly charged, but the meaning is obscure to me.
There also appears to have been an unwillingness to face possible outcomes squarely, so rather than risk discovering that abuse could have a racial component [ethnic is only Greek for race], the possibility of having to face such data was excluded from the outset. It was neither honest nor wise. I found much the same problem with the discussion of education and income levels etc. as potentially associated factors in abuse quite unconvincing, and in fact very confused because different results appeared to be reported on different pages.
I thought it unfortunate that the authors discounted a valuable notion from an Australian study (p 61) of “justifiable” abuse and “okay actions”. There seems to be no recognition that different circumstances may justifiably alter perspectives. For example, it could well be justifiable to use some force to avoid a greater evil, such as real harm to a child. Restraint of a spouse intent on mayhem with a French cook’s knife could well be necessary rather than merely justifiable or okay. I found it unreal that there was no description of the circumstances of the questioned “abuse” or “violence”.
It seems to me that the researchers were just not up to the task. This showed in a variety of ways. They had no hesitation in citing data on non-molestation orders, but failed to note that most of these are granted on ex parte actions, where husbands have no chance to challenge the initial application. How many are struck out after the husbands are heard?
Again, on p. 25 I read “…nearly all research has looked at the abuse of women by men, presumably because it is regarded as the most common form of domestic abuse.” Is that presumption justified? Fide Newbold, in the US where handguns are freely available, the likelihood of being shot by a spouse is about equal for both sexes! What price this pre-eminence of male on female violence in the absence of any data?
Perhaps the most surprising outcome of this study, I deliberately refrain from dignifying it with the name of “research”, is that the authors do not make an urgent demand for the complementary sexually directed study.
The subject is of real importance. The investigation deserves to be carried out in a workmanlike manner. Sadly this was not competent.
If the Bent Spoon is for shonky research, which is more likely to mislead than to illumine future action, there can be no doubt that Hitting Home richly deserved such categorisation. It was ill-considered and of no value in the pursuit of reliable information upon which to categorise a problem, and to plan remedial action.
The Skeptics should not, in my view, change the award of the Bent Spoon. It seems that the investigators knew the results they wanted, and set out to get them. Their reportage achieved that end.
Copied from Page 25 New Zealand Skeptic, September 1995 Number 37:
Missed Opportunities
by Chuck Bird, Auckland
The Bent Spoon Award going to the authors of Hitting Home is what attracted myself and others to the conference. I was very impressed at the quick response of a group to this report after the lack of response to misleading studies done on sexual abuse.
I am concerned that changing the award at this time would not only give credence to this sloppy piece of research but would diminish the credibility of the New Zealand Skeptics.
I see little in value in reiterating the point about adding apples and oranges, that, Denis Dutton has done very well. What concerns me as much as the misleading statistics is that the authors of the report missed opportunities to find some of the causes of spousal abuse.
Firstly, there was no distinction between de facto and legally married couples. The incidence of sexual abuse of children is higher when they are living in a de facto household. It is likely that the cases of extreme physical abuse would also be higher in de facto relationships. I believe that the question was left out deliberately as the result would not suit the agenda of the authors of the report.
Secondly, the men should have been asked if they were victims of the various categories of abuse. It would have been interesting to see the correlation between those abusing and those receiving abuse. Overseas studies for multiple forms of violence between intimate partners indicate that men and women do use about the same amount of violence in relationships. Please note enclosed list of references.
In short, the authors asked questions that would give the desired answer. Namely that men are primarily responsible for domestic violence.
The fact is that this report is clearly flawed. It made no attempt to take a scientific approach to a serious social problem which can only lead to further polarisation of the sexes. This is why the executive of the Skeptics collectively awarded the Bent Spoon to the report.
Even if it could be demonstrated that some other publication is more deserving of the Bent Spoon, it is simply too late.
Firstly, that would be taken as endorsement of the report. It would have been better not to have even commented on the report in the first place.
Secondly, and more important for the long term future of the Skeptics, future awards would only go to publications that would not upset members of the Skeptics.
Next year ASH might get the award for using flawed data in regard to the effects of passive smoking. I personally support ASH, although I am not a member. However, I would not support ASH, Greenpeace, or any other organisation deliberately or even accidentally distorting the facts in the presentation of a study.
Perhaps in future awards could be selected in a different manner. A short list could be published in a newsletter. Members would then have an opportunity to express their view. A postal vote could possibly be arranged.
These matters are very much secondary to the question of giving the Bent Spoon Award to someone else. In hindsight the Hitting Home report might not have been the best choice. I and many others thought it was. To give the award to someone else now, would permanently affect all future award choices and no doubt restrict the topics printed in the newsletters.
Copied from Page 26 New Zealand Skeptic, September 1995 Number 37:
Bent Spoon Valid
by Nicky McLean, Lower Hutt
At the Auckland confab when the dispute over Hitting Home burst over the AGM, I felt that there was little that I could contribute since I had no idea of the content of the report and only recollections of other information, so rather than add ad hominem remarks to an argument that was already involving strong emotions, I stayed quiet. But now that I have read the report, I feel that the award of the Bent Spoon was valid and deserved. Whether it was the most deserving of the possible candidates I can’t say, as I watch very little TV, rarely listen to the radio (when chancing on a talk-back show while in search of music, I’m tempted to flee to a cave and ignore any shadows on the walls), and don’t read the infamous Women’s Weekly.
To be worthy of a Bent Spoon, or criticism generally, the candidate should be important enough to deserve attention, be a stupid or bungled or confused effort by people who should know better, and worst, be wilfully misleading with intent to profit. Although the report contains work by persons and organisations that has been properly done, nevertheless the report is dishonest. Honest research requires conclusions that best represent the evidence collected, and the evidence collected is that which most directly bears upon the issues of interest. (Spare me remarks about circles.)
The authors fail to follow principle. They mention discussions over the form of the surveys yet give no details, the only time they access issues of internal consistency is when they consider whether the sex of the interviewer had any affect (it didn’t). All they have to say about their decision to study only man’s abuse of only women, and only by interviewing men is that it breaks new ground. They make brief mentions of other research (providing that it can be found in computer catalogues) but no attempt to cross reference men’s self-assessment with their wives’ opinion, although one can easily imagine difficulties.
The authors do not seem to have noticed that they are all three women, and that going by the names in the acknowledgement, nearly everyone else in the Justice Department involved with the project is likewise a woman. Yet there is a hint that they could have noticed when comparing their results with those of other groups: strangely enough, the group that notes the highest prevalence of men’s abuse of women is the Women’s Shelter (p 87).
Another comparison is just brushed aside. Their sample group has a different pattern of income from that of the nearest NZ census. This is due to inflation, they suggest, except that inflation has been relatively low. What is less often admitted is that lower incomes have been falling, while high incomes have risen still higher. But this is a quibble.
What I regard as the most serious failing is the flaw in the basic data collection in that the questions are ambiguous. They wish to investigate men’s abuse of women, which I take to mean unjustifiable acts, since obviously, if there was a good reason for doing something, then it could not be regarded as abuse even if nasty because its motive was not a desire to inflict nastiness on a woman but something else again. To give a specific example, suppose that mum was chastising a child and dad shoves her away. (Ah, but what if the child had been hitting the cat, for catching a bird.) Whatever the complications, surely this is quite different from him shoving her aside as he walks by, just to show who’s boss, and the difference in the quality of the act bears directly on the question of abuse and abusive attitudes. This seems to me to be so obvious that it must have come up in discussion, yet the authors say nothing on the issue
Even if it didn’t occur to the researchers it must be likely that some at least of the two thousand interviewees had similar thoughts and responded accordingly to their question “not OK in any circumstances”, indeed some may even have lived such scenarios. So of what use is the remark “Not a single behaviour, even using a knife or gun, was judged as unacceptable by all New Zealand men” (p 144). Instead of judging their attitudes to women, it may be their imagination that is being put to the test.
Yet the authors remain oblivious to this issue when on page 61 they compare some Australian research that used the word “Justifiable” rather than “OK” in some circumstances. They merely recite the differences, with no sign of thought as to possible reasons. Thus, 7% thought that lethal violence was possibly justifiable (Oz) but only 1% possibly OK (NZ). Could this not suggest a difference in the meaning of the two words, as exemplified by the arguments over just wars even though all agree that wars are not OK? Data is however data, and fascinating patterns await your notice, as the comparison shows. As the severity of the act increases (shoves, slaps, throws object at, assaults), the Oz figures run 15,14,10,7, while for NZ 19,11,8,1. What might this mean, if anything? But instead, silence. The authors simply view women as irreproachable in all circumstances so that irrespective of motive, any act against them is fully and purely abuse, by definition.
Much of this could have been avoided by the simple means of instructing the interviewers to exclude thoughts of self-defence or protection of third parties. What is at issue is men’s attitudes towards women as revealed by their own choice between alternatives, not as driven by some factor external to this relationship. You could argue that some men might decline an act on absolute principle, whereas others might require severe provocation, some less and another group no provocation at all, and that this does indeed reflect their attitudes to women, but it also reflects attitudes to humanity at large. Few people are Jains.
Thus the questions asked, especially those concerning physical acts, fail to address the research issue square on and allow needless confusions that could have been excluded.
The authors’ treatment of the results they do obtain is grotesque. They are determined to push them into showing that abuse is common and serious amongst all men to such a degree that I feel that this was their fixed view from the beginning, and they ignore all interpretations other than the one they want upheld. This requires some crude steps.
They list eleven acts of physical abuse that can be ranked by the seriousness of the likely physical injury. For acts of psychological abuse, ranking is more a subjective matter but nevertheless the number of persons accepting such acts in some circumstances has the same strongly skewed distribution, from 19% down to less than 1% and 33% to 1% respectively. Well and good. But the factor they choose for analysis is “Number of types accepted”. This is lunatic, for it equates “uses or threatens with weapon” (two counts) with “shoves or slaps”, also two counts. No explanation is given as to why this choice was made or others rejected, instead they leap at once to shout (in bold type, p60) “one in four said yes to at least one type of physical abuse” and also “six in ten…psychological”, plus further drivel about the average number accepted and standard deviations.
Lunatic is the wrong word, and stupidity is out of place. This is deliberate misrepresentation, and I don’t mean that they got their arithmetic wrong, or that the interviewees didn’t make those responses. There is the story of the beggar with a sign reading “Wars 2, Legs 1, Wives 2, Children 4, Wounds 2; Total 11”. No doubt if a survey was made, statistics on this factor could be generated. What should have been used is “Worst type approved”. There may have been some thought of this as it is noted that if a particular abuse is approved, lesser ranked acts are likely to be approved also, but although the approval rates vary by a factor of about thirty with a clear connection to severity, this is ignored in favour of shouting (in bold) “A significant number say that physical and psychological abuse is OK in some circumstances” without noticing that 75% deny approval to any physical act, and 42% of psychological acts (such as harsh words), even as the authors have defined them.
It could be argued that reducing a wide range of acts to a single severity scale and scoring men’s views through their acceptance of various acts with a possible further weighting according to frequency is a hopeless task and to be avoided. Yet exactly that happens in courts when a judge decides on the number of years of imprisonment to impose, a practice with millennia of history, and operated by personnel in a not too distant department.
Yes there would be problems (which haven’t dissuaded the IQ testers!) and there would be arguments over rankings, but Weight of Abuse Approved or Worst Type Approved are at least attempting to assess abusiveness, unlike Number of Types, which involves declaring that all acts have equal weight, an absurdity built in from the beginning and which flies in the face of the prevalence data that by their existence demonstrate that everyone else views murder as more serious than shoving, rather than both being worth one demerit each.
One act, hitting, is considered in various contexts, and on p 65 there is an interesting list of circumstances ordered by the proportion of men who apportion blame to the woman being hit. At the top with 48% is “He catches her in bed with another man” (I suppose that everyone interprets this common euphemism the same way) down to 1% for “He can’t find a job”. As before, any thought about the possible meaning of this ordering or what men might be thinking is not mentioned. Instead, all are immediately equivalenced so that we have another Number of Circumstances report thereby enabling a leap to the obvious and only conclusion. Combining the trivial few percent who assigned blame to neither allows the authors to say “In one circumstance half the men say the man is not at all responsible”. Yes, but it is also true that the other half think otherwise. The next paragraph notes some acceptance of blame by men but ends with “there are no circumstances in which every man says that the man alone is responsible”.
The authors simply deem an act abuse and therefore wrong (which is anyway what the word means) no matter what motive lies behind the act. There are no distinctions between malicious hurt, wrong, justifiable, or what else do you expect? All acts are solely expressions of a wish to abuse. There seems to be no recognition of the fact that a relationship involves two people in close interaction. Men are assessed by an impossible standard whereas women are held to no standard at all for they are perfect in act and thought.
The conclusion states that men must accept responsibility for their actions; well enough, so also must women. Women must know that being caught in bed with another man is likely to provoke extravagant behaviour, as is endlessly reported in the news media, depicted in films and plays, and found in novels. In fact they do, and are not above flirting with someone else in a pub precisely so as to stir up the boyfriend (who is expected to go for the other bloke!). He of course should remain calm (dear friend, let us reason together) but may well not. If she abhors violence, she has a free choice not to precipitate it but sometimes prefers drama and risk. One can imagine circumstances when infidelity is his fault (he is boring, infertile, inadequate, obnoxious, unfaithful…) but her choices have their likely outcomes. Human behaviour is not often driven by one factor acting in isolation.
But the authors admit no complications. Scrutiny of their list of abusive actions shows what a surprised husband can’t do without being declared abusive. Violence is out, so are threats. Destroying something belonging to her is displaced violence, and abusive. So are words as they will almost certainly involve putting down family and friends (especially the close friend), and anyway, he is seeking to stop her from doing something she wanted to do and so is abusing her.
It appears that he must simply apologise for the intrusion, pack and leave. Only that would be approved of by the authors, who note on p 28 that 47% of the 193 female homicide victims in NZ (78-87) were killed by an existing or former male partner. Well, no-one approves of murder, but what has happened to the statistics on the other obvious combinations of who kills whom? Is it even surprising, considering that few people would have strong feelings about strangers?
In short, the ideals of research have not been met. The information that has been collected is of poor quality, and its analysis deformed. The conclusions offered were predetermined, and other possible conclusions ignored. Indeed, I doubt that the authors have a good understanding of statistical analysis, given that on p 181 they complain that their analysis computer programme allows only fifteen predictor variables for a logistic regression, and that they regularly used fifty predictor variables in their linear regressions. (See F. S. Acton’s Numerical Methods That Work, the section “What not to compute”.)
And while this “research” and argument continues, unambiguous abuse that is unambiguously serious also continues.
[…]
I hope that no-one imagines that I deny that there is a problem, or that things could be better. I am saying that this report isn’t going to help. I hope that we can stay clear of escalating displays of superiority in caringness, concernedness, and righteousness.
I agree that the procedure for selecting the recipient of the Bent Spoon award involves four persons other than the Executive so that our collective responsibility falls rather heavily on Dr Dutton, but I don’t see that there is much of an alternative for so scattered a group as the NZ Skeptics, especially when the members of the Executive happen to live in the same city. I was as usual surprised by the choice of recipient, but only in the sense that I hadn’t heard of it beforehand. I regard the award as appropriate, and retain confidence in the ability of the Executive to select the worthy in the future.
The Bent Spoon debate continues in New Zealand Skeptic, Summer 1995 Number 38. (All the following material is included in the archived NZSkeptic-38).
Rebuttal
by Hugh Young, Porirua
Walter C Clark, Chuck Bird and Nicky McLean criticise Hitting Home for not investigating women’s violence towards men, that is, for not being another piece of research altogether. When biologists can produce papers about the hairs on the legs of one species of fruit-flies, this does not seem excessively specialised. One reason that that was not done is simply money. To have achieved the same accuracy would have required interviewing 2,000 women, doubling the cost.
According to the Center Against Sexual and Domestic Violence in Seattle, 95 percent of all domestic violence is men beating women. Analysing violence along ethnic lines would likewise have doubled the cost, since presumably only about 200 of the present sample were Maori. It would cost as much again to interview 2,000 Pacific Islanders, also commonly characterised as violent.
Greg Newbold’s references to Maori in prison are disingenuous. He of all people should know that Maori are more likely to be imprisoned not because they are intrinsically more violent than Pakeha but, among other things, because they are disproportionately in lower socio-economic groups and less well-educated, and (in consequence) less able to manipulate the system to produce the outcome they want.
Again, Hitting Home did not look for or find the specific extent of Maori men’s violence against women because that is not the piece of research it was. All that research certainly should be done, but it is to the credit of Hitting Home that it didn’t pretend to attempt it. This was, after all, primarily about men’s attitudes towards violence, not about which men are violent.
As for Bird’s proposal that men be asked if they were abused, what would that prove? The most violent men might also claim to be the most put-upon, so?
Clark’s and McLean’s elaborate discussions of “provocation” are taken care of by the wording of the questionnaire (p 224) which specifies “ways of settling differences”. “Banging the table” (Clark) is not mentioned, nor “restraint of a spouse intent on mayhem with a French cook’s knife.” They seem to think some lower threshold of abuse, one that they think justified, should be ignored. That it is not does not fault Hitting Home, it just shows their places on its spectrum.
Does Nicky McLean really think that a man who thinks it is okay to take a knife to his wife would draw the line at shouting at her? The more items he agrees to, the more abusive/violent he is. There is no suggestion in Hitting Home that the different levels of abuse and violence are equivalent. Obviously the scale is quasi-logarithmic, like the Richter and decibel scales, and hence more sensitive at the lower end. Once that is understood, “number of types accepted” is a perfectly valid measure.
Chuck Bird confuses de-facto marriages with reconstituted families: it is step-parents who are more likely to abuse children than natural parents, regardless of the legal status of the marriage. This seems to be biological and has nothing to do with men’s violence toward women.
Pace McLean, it will be news to co-author Robin Ransom that he is a woman.
Hitting Home does have a significant flaw (as well as the truthfulness problem I mentioned in my main submission), not mentioned yet by its supporters or opponents. The level of non-response is very high, with only 60% of men contacted agreeing to be interviewed. It is hardly a way-out, New-Age supposition that violent men are less likely to talk about their violence than non-violent men. Therefore, Hitting Home probably significantly under-reports male violence and abuse against women.
Definition of Abuse
by Warwick Don, Dunedin
It could reasonably be expected that the term “abuse” would have been defined and its parameters explained at the beginning of the report. Instead it is not until p.30 that any definition is given — when it is, it is found to embrace a long list of behaviours (physical and psychological) of varying levels of seriousness. This does have the effect of trivialising the subject and of diverting attention from the more serious cases. The data would appear far less confusing and a far greater reliance presumably could be placed on the results if the more serious aspects had been separated from the less serious from the start.
Lack of Balance
On p.31 we are informed that “in this study <@145>domestic abuse’ is used to mean the abuse of women by male partners”. Such a restriction seems misguided given that behaviours in a partnership are never restricted to one partner. And often other people are involved. Such an approach to the subject resembles that of a biologist who decides to study the dynamics of a parasite-host relationship by concentrating on only one of the participants.
Exclusion of Ethnicity
A basic criterion of any survey which purports to be scientific is that all avenues are followed which are likely to provide vital information. If this means disregarding claims that following this or that line of investigation “would lead to unhelpful, inappropriate and insensitive cross-cultural comparisons”, so be it. To maintain that the survey’s methodology was inappropriate for making such comparisons does seem a way of avoiding the issue, particularly when we are informed that an ethnic analysis became a significant issue in the consultations made during the development stage (p.35).
Questionable Methodology
A number of the most puzzling and questionable aspects of the study appear in the section: The findings of Study 1 — a survey of 2,000 men. We are told that “most New Zealand men do not approve of a man hitting a woman,” and that nine in ten do not approve of hitting in any of twenty different circumstances (p.62). It seems this clear indication of a high level of disapproval did not satisfy the researchers. A “ten-point scale of disapproval” was applied from which each man was given “an approval of hitting score”. Suddenly “non-approval” becomes “approval” in relation to hitting a woman.
The conclusion drawn from this questionable methodology is “that New Zealand men do not strongly disapprove of hitting”. Somehow what began as a strong positive has become a strong negative, to the detriment of New Zealand men in general.
Contradictions
On p.98 it is stated: “as in our research, the Dunedin study found that domestic abuse was more likely to occur when the male partner was young and when he was poorly educated, of low socio-economic level, and unemployed”. Yet a major conclusion from the study is that “a man’s socio-economic level, educational level and personal income group give us no clue of the likelihood of his being abusive to a woman partner.” (p.146). Also little is made in the report of the fact that this “finding” was contrary to that arrived at in the majority of overseas studies.
How can questions be “less direct” and, at the same time, “more specific”? (p.35).
Major Conclusions of the Report
There seems no justification for concluding (a) that there is an underlying male acceptance of abuse in New Zealand, and (b) that a substantial proportion of New Zealand women are abused by their male partners, both physically and psychologically (p.21). The results of the survey, particularly when taking into account the wide definition of “abuse” and the suspect methodology, do not warrant these conclusions. It is worth noting that a desire to fit data to preconceived notions is a characteristic of pseudoscience.
Conclusion
The NZ Skeptics Society is opposed to pseudoscience in any of its manifestations. There seems little doubt that vital parts of Hitting Home can be described as pseudoscientific. It is therefore a fair target for skeptical attention. I have to agree with those critics of the report who have concluded that it trivialises domestic violence and conveys a level of abuse perpetrated by men which is not supported by the evidence. I support fully the awarding of the Bent Spoon for 1995 to the report, Hitting Home.
Fully Deserved
by Robert Woolf, Auckland
I have carefully examined the Department of Justice report on domestic violence entitled Hitting Home. I feel that this report fully deserved being made recipient of the 1995 Bent Spoon award.
Correction
by Nicky McLean, Lower Hutt
Despite the third paragraph of my contribution to the September issue, I would like it to be known that I do distinguish affect from effect (and impact for that matter), and an issue would be assessed rather than accessed, such as men’s abuse rather than man’s. And in the last paragraph I wrote few persons rather than four persons. But otherwise, my scribblings must have been clear enough.
As for the report, I too had to stare long and hard at some paragraphs, including the one quoted by Mr Clark in his letter [September, p.25, first paragraph]. I think the authors mean that when asked about “abuse” people disapprove readily, but if asked less directly about general abuse by being offered specific actions not labelled as abuse, many more say that they might do that, or could understand someone doing it. My bafflement peaked on p.148 of the report with “…most likely to agree with this statement were the non-abusive men” … “a clear relationship between seriousness of abuse and level of agreement with the statement” … “four out of ten in the most serious abuse group agreed…two out of ten in the least serious group.”
After a lot of thought, and checking with my father, I concluded that the paragraph was saved from literal self-contradiction thanks to overlapping definitions of “non-abusive”, “most serious” and “least serious” groups. A plague on the whole business!
Support for Award
by Jim Ring, Nelson
Hugh Young writes, “Hitting Home is careful, thorough, mainstream scientific research.” And later, “It is social science, not `hard science’…”
It seems to me he is using definitions of “careful”, “thorough”, “mainstream”, “scientific”, and “research” which are quite different to those commonly used in the community of “hard science”.
Hitting Home is a muddle. One could give numerous examples but Page 88 is a classic. It lists a “Seriousness of Abuse Scale (SOAS)” although this seems to have become contaminated with frequency. What to make of this sentence explaining the scale? “Where two types of abuse had the same frequency, the one with the lower number of times in the past year was given the higher ranking.”
Some time last year a young couple from next door came to use our telephone. Later the man shot and killed the woman. According to the SOAS that ranks as less serious than “Threatened her with knife or gun”.
Hugh Young seems so certain of things which he cannot know as established facts. “Any torturer will tell you that the `best’ torture is purely mental.” How many torturers does he know? Has he consulted a random sample?
Hugh Young again writes, “It is a truism among anti-violence workers (but apparently unknown to the critics) that domestic violence cuts across class boundaries, and a high court judge or cabinet minister is just as likely to beat his wife as a freezing worker or opossum [sic] trapper.” This gets us to the real point: how do they know? This is just political correctness.
I spent 25 years in teaching where I encountered a number of families where there was violence against children and wives. My experience was that domestic violence was very strongly correlated with socio-economic class and ethnic group. Furthermore most of the serious stuff was inflicted by men.
Now I am quite prepared to be shown to be wrong (I certainly did not encounter a random sample), but this will require evidence; I will not be convinced by a politically correct truism common among social workers. Just how many wives of cabinet ministers and high court judges are to be found in women’s refuges for example?
Hugh Young again writes, “-the report came to this counter-intuitive conclusion by careful scientific study…”. It did not. It confirmed a “truism among anti-violence workers” by means that will naturally confirm prejudices.
The statistic that I found least believable is that 67% of New Zealand men had personal knowledge of physical abuse by a man or a woman. Because this implies that 37% have no such knowledge and I find that incredible. What kind of sheltered life do these people lead?
No Evidence
by John Turner
I enjoyed reading the opposing points of view regarding the Bent Spoon Award, but was surprised to be advised by Hugh Young on p.24 that “We Skeptics are now on record as thinking it beyond question that once a woman has struck a man, he need take no responsibility whatever for all his subsequent violence”.
I have personally never seen a scrap of evidence to support that statement and can only conclude that someone has been “behaving like a tabloid newspaper” having “taken information out of context, re-written it in a biased way, and generally put the kind of spin on it that we so often accuse our opponents of doing”.
Bent Spoon Summation
by Vicki Hyde
Since the call for responses to the awarding of the Bent Spoon to the Justice Department’s Hitting Home report, we’ve received responses from 16 people, some of which of which have been published in this and the previous Skeptic. Others were in the form of private commentaries or conversations. One member contacted the authors of the report directly for clarification and further comment, and passed on the correspondence that ensued.
Our thanks to those who took the time to find and study the report and respond.
Five committee members have taken a closer look at the report and the award, and have supported the decision. While noting that it would not be possible to canvass all members about Bent Spoons (or get all members to necessarily agree), they have also made suggestions for broadening the decision-making process in the future.
Of the formal responses received, 14 supported the award, with comments ranging from a single sentence to a five-page analysis; two argued against the award (one of these came from a non-member).
In three responses, criticism was levelled directly at the press release announcing the Bent Spoon, primarily for poor choice of wording. Without being overly defensive, it is difficult to tackle a major, detailed report such as this one within the confines of a standard, 500-word press release using the pithy phrasing that the media will take note of.
While I could argue the points individually (surely one can still use the term “fine print” metaphorically), that would not be appropriate at this stage, given the general support for the award. We do try and be as professional as possible in our media dealings — if some members feel that we could have done better in this case, then we acknowledge that criticism and will strive to do better.
The selection process for the awards (outlined in the last Skeptic) appears to have met with general acceptance. Suggestions for broadening the selection group have been noted and we look forward to a more inclusive process — and a greater number of nominations — in the coming year.
The controversial and, in some respects, highly emotionally charged aspects of this debate — from the AGM discussion on — could well have seen this process disintegrate into a very messy, personalised fight that would not have done anyone, individually or the Skeptics as a whole, any good. But it has not.
A couple of responses suggested that this discussion should not have taken place, raising concerns that it could damage the credibility and effectiveness of the Skeptics as an organisation.
However, that we are able to have major differences of opinion, yet remain willing to argue rationally and reasonably, is, I believe, a reaffirmation of the sorts of principles for which the Skeptics stand and makes me, for one, proud to be a member.
UPDATE: Skeptics Reconsider
Then, in 2023, it seems the long march through the institutions finally conquered even the NZ Skeptics.
