It has been known for decades that for most heterosexual couples, domestic violence is not gendered. The men are perpetrators at times, and victims at times. The same is true for their partners. Where DV is gendered is in couples in the minority of cases where the violence is unidirectional. In such cases, the perpetrator is more than twice as likely to be the woman as the man.
Tonight at 20:30 the BBC will be screening, Can violent men ever change? On the website is this piece. The only hint in the long article that men may not represent 100% of perpetrators is this:
Cafcass, the Family Courts Support Service, made 800 referrals [J4MB: To perpetrator programmes] last year, four times as many as five years ago.
The vast majority of those who attend are men.
Well, of course the vast majority are men. Virtually every programme is male-specific, because the state doesn’t give a damn about male victims, and by extension female perpetrators.
One reason to watch the programme is to catch footage of Denise Knowles – the final photograph in the body of the article – and David Eggins, both of whom work with perpetrators of DV. They deal with both male and female perpetrators, but of course that isn’t mentioned in the article, and I expect it won’t be mentioned in the programme, either.
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