Intimate Partner Violence In Lesbian Relationships

Besides devoting a whole month to celebrating one of the seven deadly sins (for the poorly uneducated, that would be “pride”), annual Pride Months are intended to normalize and even promote an ever-expanding list of sexual orientations (pan-, grey, or demi-sexual, anyone?) and gender identities. We are a long way from the simpler times leading up to Obergefell, where the main focus was on gays, lesbians, and whether their intimate relationships and, if they formed them, households, were just as likely to be healthy, in every important respect, as heterosexual ones. These debates seem almost quaint now that, for the most part, gay rights arguments about the healthiness and normalcy of same-sex sexual relationships have triumphed in public opinion and our laws, whether these claims are empirically valid or not.

Yet there is a set of facts, assiduously ignored or downplayed by mainstream media, that bucks the now-standard narrative. It has to do with violence against women by their intimate partners — that is, spouses, ex-spouses, boy- or girlfriends, live-in lovers, and so on.

Now, female victimization by intimate partners is a real problem that ought to concern all citizens of good will. But not only have progressives focused more attention on this over the years, they have often been selective in doing so, concentrating more on promoting feminist ideology vilifying men and casting doubt on the safety of heterosexual marriage than upon alleviating the plight of most real women.

For example, a disproportionate amount of liberal commentary on intimate partner violence has focused on abusive husbands, despite decades of hard data verifying that women in stable marriages face much lower risk than those in other relational situations. When they are not casting suspicion on husbands (ridiculously, often by lumping them in with boyfriends, live-in lovers, ex- or separated spouses, etcetera), they are fretting about males in general, amidst hand-wringing about “toxic masculinity.” (READ MORE from David Ayers: Marriage, the Catholic Way)

Lesbians being victimized by their female lovers? In the mainstream (although not LGBT)) media ignoring or downplaying the degree of intimate partners violence experienced by lesbians, while focusing almost exclusively on abuse of heterosexual women by their partners, is the norm, evident in many college classrooms and media punditry. But the fact is that, among women, in most measured areas lesbians are consistently somewhat to much more likely to experience intimate partner violence, compared to heterosexuals. Women certainly are not generally safer in the arms of other women. But this reality is inconvenient for progressives pushing the “gay relationships are just as likely to be as healthy as everyone else’s” narrative.

Three researchers compared intimate partner violence victimizations for homosexuals and bisexuals versus heterosexuals.  Published in 2013 by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it drew upon a national survey conducted in 2010. The sample was huge — 16,507 adults, 9,086 of whom were women. Since only about 1.3 percent, or roughly 118, of the women identified as lesbian (despite the bogus, inflated numbers often tossed around by gay rights activists), differences between them and heterosexual women that would be statistically significant with a larger lesbian sample were not in this study. But the differences are mostly consistent and clear none-the-less. 

This study is important and routinely cited by those concerned with intimate partner violence in the LGBT community. It is not the only research highlighting these realities, but it is probably among the largest and most detailed. Studies like this, and social scientists willing to honestly report politically incorrect results from them, are pretty hard to come by.

I cannot cover all of their findings here. But I can give readers a flavor.

The study defined physical violence as “a range of behaviors from slapping, pushing, or shoving to severe acts such as being beaten, burned, or choked.” The percentages of women experiencing such violence at some point in their lifetimes were 40 percent for lesbians compared to 32 percent for heterosexuals. For “slapped, pushed, or shoved” these percentages were 36 percent for lesbians and 30 percent for heterosexuals. For “severe physical violence” (including such actions as beating, burning, knives and guns, kicking and hair pulling), the percentages were 29 percent for lesbians versus 24 percent for heterosexuals. These differences were not statistically significant (see above) but they were not tiny and this data was consistent. In each measure, heterosexual women did better.

The authors reported the sex of perpetrator for a handful of measures. One was for overall intimate partner violence, in which they combined rape, stalking, and physical violence. Despite the inclusion of rape (where offenders are overwhelmingly male), over 67 percent of lesbians had only ever been intimate partner victimized in one or more of these ways by other females. Thus, this victimization does not primarily reflect the experiences lesbians had during some phase in which they had male intimate partners. Overwhelmingly, it is female-on-female violence.

Psychological aggression is harder to define. The list of behaviors the study identified in this category was lengthy and serious, including anger perceived as dangerous, name-calling and humiliation, demeaning, various threats including physical harm to the victim and others they love or even pets, preventing the victims from using their own money or contacting family and friends, destroying their property, and the like. Sixty-three percent of lesbians had experienced some form of psychological aggression by an intimate partner, compared to 47.5 percent of heterosexuals. Overall differences in psychological aggression actually were statistically significant, again, despite the small number of lesbians surveyed.

Putting findings like these together with what we have known about the relative intimate victimization rates of married women, the notion that we can be sure that lesbians are as likely to be in healthy intimate relationships as heterosexual women, and especially married ones, does not appear to be accurate. This runs counter to the pervasive image portrayed in the mass media. (READ MORE: IVF Companies Depend on Abortion)

Yet, other than shoring up the public image of lesbians in committed relationships, how does this muting of the facts help them? There are plenty of reasons to be concerned about these realities that have nothing to do with hating homosexuals or trying to marginalize and demean them. When are people going to be able to discuss facts like this, and the possible reasons for them, openly and honestly—not just in the gay press or scientific literature but in the public square — without fear that they will be accused of homophobia, cancelled, or worse?

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