#i have a gender studies degree.

[jopzer]

girljamie to go with girlroy ... i'm of two minds when it comes to s3 girljamie , i am both in favor of big chop AND she leaves it long but lightens it still... idk. bangs be upon her either way ig

(more of richmond's women's team can be found here <3)

[olskuvallanpoe]

Jesus is canonically simultaneously 100% god and 100% human, so that means even if the human part of him was cis, he’s still 100% gender non-conforming because a god can’t subscribe to human binary definitions of gender.

Therefore happy pride to the nonbinary king (of all kings)

[zouisalmightie]

sometimes i am put in situations that only could happen on tv but you can’t make this up

sonon wednesday my coworker called me during my prep period and was like hey can you come to my room really quick. and that’s normal like 1 im department lead so if they need something i told them to hmu and i got them 2. we’re friends so if you have to pee well fall each other to cover. so im like yeah sure what do you need. and this bitch goes [name of student i hate] keeps saying the n word with the hard er and i bet him he wouldn’t say that to a black persons face so can you come to my room to prove a point’ and she’s like laughing as she says this. with her whole class there like it’s some sort of joke; when she’s acting like she’s shaming this child. and like…. what the actual fuck. mind you, this kids that i hate HAS called me the n word with the hard er before my coworker KNOWS this because we all went out drinking afterward and i cried cuz i was so angry. so I was like what the fuck no and hung up on her. then like 30 mins later she texts me and says “that was such a silly call! i didn’t actually expect you to come lmaoooo. i just like to fluster them when they do things like that” and i didn’t respond and haven’t spoken to her since.

and we are in a bunch of group chats so i left the chats that aren’t work specific and blocked her number and blocked her on ig. and i don’t say anything to anyone at work cuz im grown and i can stop being friends with people without making it an announcement. and so today she texts one of our other coworkers that ive been friends with for almost 5 years now, like omg have you talked to asyah i think she blocked me on ig and idk what i could have done to deserve this it just makes me so sad cuz ive had people just stop being my friend for no reason before and i have abandonment issues please ask her if i did anything wrong. and so my friend came up to me like girl wtf and so i told her what happened and my friend was like this is the last straw for me she’s been saying fucked up shit for a while and i didn’t want to rock the boat but im tired of her.

and then my coworker texted one of my OTHER work friends like omg woe is me everyone is being so mean to me cue white woman tears™️ and im like…. i would have NEVER asked you to be in a position like this. when students do antisemitic things i stop that shit right then and there and never tell you about it because that’s harmful to you! and i thought we were friends i would never put you in a place of harm but you have the nerve to call me and ask me if i want a child to call me a nigger to my face? you laugh while you say it, then send me some fucked up not apology and then when im not fucking with your ass you drag my friends into your pity party? bitch fucking CHOKE.

i was just going to ignore her and leave it as it is but now she’s trying to play the victim like im the one in the wrong here. like im so mad! ive been mad since my homegirl came and told me what she texted her. im going to go to my union rep and let her know what happened too before this girl tries to tell the whole school im bullying her no one would believe her cuz ive been there for 6 years and have no problems with no one but i don’t like people being in my business and would rather get ahead of this but my GOD.

[non-un-topo]

White men in academia will really have a breakdown if they don't hear themselves talk approximately every 2 minutes

[jellogram]

Maybe it's because this is the Hates Sports website but I feel like discussions on here about transgender athletes miss two very vital points:

Height is a crucial factor in almost every sport. AMAB are usually taller than AFAB on average and that's a huge reason they're usually better at sports. If you grouped people together by height i.e. played everyone who is 5'6" together regardless of gender, you'd likely still see some gender variance, but significantly less. How much variance depends on the sport and the individuals. So AFAB are at a disadvantage, yes, but it's not because women are overall inferior. A lot of it is just because we're shorter.

The sports that are typically nationally or globally popular are almost invariably things that play into male body strengths. In addition to being shorter, females also typically have less upper body strength in exchange for things like flexibility. Activities that require this, like gymnastics, figure skating, and dance, are generally not valued in this country to the same degree as stuff like football and basketball which are tailor-made for people with AMAB bodies. So there are sports where being tall isn't a requirement, the public just doesn't tend to care about them as much.

So like, yes integrate sports, but there's structural misogyny at play here that I don't think should be ignored. Of course all of this is sweeping generalizations, there's a millions exceptions, not everyone is male or female, etc, but in general I think these two points get left out of the conversation too often.

[hoforwonho]

I’m always so scared I’ll say the wrong joke to the wrong person and they’ll be like, “wait you’re a misogynistic lesbophobe who doesn’t believe in global warming”

And I’ll have to say yes :/

[timeisacephalopod]

My coworkers were on about apparently B.C doing a fentanyl safe supply program that's allegedly accessible for people aged 12-17 with no parental consent and lost their shit about it because ThAtS bAd. Here's the thing. When I hear a claim like that it's best to look it up, because of it seems on its face really bad or frivolous or wrong and a bunch of people signed off on it something is missing information wise. For example, Stella Lieback being reduced to a punchline by everyone over that McDonald's hot coffee shit because everyone thought the jury was idiots for ruling in her favor, but if you look into it it takes .2 seconds to find out that her wounds were so bad it looked like she'd been in a shark attack.

So I looked it up and found one article I didn't trust because it's from the National Post, probably the only right wing news source in Canada that's even remotely reliable but I don't read that paper because of its political leanings, and given that no one else except The Epoch Times and The Rebel have reported on it I find this but of information WILDLY suspect. If the only ones howling are rightwing fuckos the information is not correct. It's probably based on some truth because the snippet of news brief I watched said IN SOME CASES (which does not read to me like "the government is giving 12 year olds fentanyl if they ask nicely LOLZ it reads like a dr has to sign off on an individual cases based on applicable circumstances) minors could access the safe supply program but given that they interviewed the guy who wrote the post article who's source was, allegedly, two concerned physicians I'm not going to take three people seriously when 2 of them are anonymous.

So pro tip of you hear something ridiculous and absurd policy wise look it the fuck up and see who is talking about it, because that'll tell you exactly how accurate that information is. And if the only people flopping on about it are fucking dip shits then maybe don't swallow that pill without a BUCKET of salt, maybe.

[artemismatchalatte]

Maybe I'm a bad English major but I'm not thrilled about my next class. It's Shakespeare. I honestly don't like him as much as I like many other genres and writers. I understand why I have to take the class (he's historically significant) but wish I had other choices.

[crybabydraws]

They just banned TikTok at my college. No school wifi for me I guess 💀

(please read the tags)

[rainbowgod666]

Isnt that a given...?

(WARNING: the tags contain a MASSIVE FUCKING RANT about the shit trans people go thru, because transphobia wasnt enough apparently WHO DO I HAVE TO KILL-)

[tkbrokkoli]

:O

[angeltannis]

Wearing my Predator shirt in hopes an annoying guy comments on it and I can tell him I’ve never enjoyed a single Predator movie

[sagevalleymusings]

Not to shit all over Canton Winer's extremely small and self-selecting sample of queer asexuals, but

the term agender was coined in 2006

the entire premise of The Second Sex was about how womanhood was defined as what manhood was not

The entire concept of "gender critical" is about how gender doesn't exist and has been integral to separatist feminism for over thirty years

Canton Winer is not the first person to use the term "gender detachment." I searched Google, Google Scholar, and JSTOR, and found a little over 30 results from as early as the mid aughts

Increased rates of non-gender conforming identities in asexual populations is already well established. In order to have non-conforming identities in either you have to have already examined your identity. Canton does admit this latter half with no mention of prior scholarship.

I can't find Canton's Gender Detachment thesis on JSTOR or Google Scholar but no examination of gender and sexuality can draw solid conclusions without discussing age and race, at minimum, since these two things have radical effects on how gender and sexuality are perceived

It's also a well studied phenomenon that cis people do not have a concrete sense of gender identity - much in the same way that white people do not have a concrete sense of racial identity. Their privilege as a cis person means that they do not need to think about their gender. "Gender Detachment" isn't a new concept - it is the default.

I tend to distrust people who say "research on [this topic] is pretty slim" because what it means is that they haven't done their research. Searching for asexuality in JSTOR yields at least 200 results, which is smaller than, for example, women, but the oldest cited source (and again this is just on JSTOR) is from 1973.

At some point Canton says "Almost all of my gender detached respondents were assigned female at birth" which is extremely telling in and of itself because this information is nearly useless without context (because knowing they are afab doesn't tell us if they are cis), and actually useless in context. Given what they've said about their sample here and other places, it looks like only 8 or so of the 77 were men to begin with, which means you actually can't draw any meaningful results about gender detachment among men literally at all. That's too small a sample size by an actual magnitude.

Like yes I do think it's helpful for someone this self-important social media savvy to bring awareness to this concept, but from what I've read so far this sounds... I don't know if there's a better word for it other than mansplaining, which I dislike using on non-binary persons, but this is where we're at. You want to be an allosexual amab *inventing terminology* for asexual afabs then as an asexual afab I get to call that mansplaining.

You run in lesbian circles and you discover immediately that this idea of frustration, apathy, and irresolution towards gender has been explored from a scholarly perspective for decades. Lines like "but that work has been mostly theoretical" and "My findings complicate the (often unstated) assumption that everyone “has” a gender identity" are so unhinged from real experiences of lesbian activists *who have written about this* as to be delusional. This PhD candidate has absolutely no idea what they're talking about.

Since when have we been assuming "everyone" has a gender identity? Has that concretely been established? Or is that something this author is assuming is an assumption? Because it hasn't been my experience. I've had to push at every job I've ever worked at to change their forms from asking about a person's sex to asking about a person's gender in an attempt to be more inclusive to those whose gender doesn't match their sex. Does that imply everyone has a gender? No, of fucking course not. It implies that we still don't have good language for talking about this, and maybe never will. It implies that asking about people's sex is outdated and asking about people's gender only makes that obvious. It implies that patriarchy is so embedded into our systems of hierarchy that attempts to make that hierarchy more inclusive will still, inevitably, institute a hierarchy with their solutions.

And I would sincerely hope, though I am not convinced that this was done, that his research doesn't simply drop this term and peace out. Because "inventing" a gender theory term this close to describing gender critical biological essentialism without talking about how close it is to gender critical biological essentialism is irresponsible scholarship. There is an entire movement of women using their "gender detachment" to oppress trans women. If you're going to talk about this, you need to talk about that.

i feel so seen!!

(twitter thread)

[emjoyy]

I finally saw Barbie and I’m having THOUGHTS™️. Like don’t get me wrong I loved the movie and I loved the feminist message BUT it’s bad feminism. Or at least it’s a very narrow and exclusive and binary feminism that presents itself as the ONLY feminism. I don’t think people understand that there are about as many feminisms as there are people and being critical of different feminisms is essential for healthy and thriving feminist discourse. But there are three things from the film that are keeping me awake at night.

1) where is butch Barbie?? Or gender non-conforming Barbie?? Why are all the Barbie’s so feminine?? As I child I would frequently cut off their hair and put them in Ken clothes and I can’t be the only one. And no, I don’t think Weird Barbie is butch or gender non-conforming - at least not in any meaningful way for representation of queer or female masculinities. I mean I do think weird Barbie is queer and I love her but she is not really gnc. It’s all so fucking binary. There’s men and women, and there’s Barbies and Kens.

2) why the fuck does Barbie go to the gynecologist at the end?? Like both my mom and I got so excited because we thought she was going to get a job at Mattel (TO BE THE ONE WHO HAS IDEAS) and instead she goes to the gyno, like what the fuck. It gives me the biological essentialism ick.

3) the most important of all - NOTHING CHANGES at the end. The ceos and Mattel leaders are still in charge and still men - there’s no women’s voices or changes to leadership or the leadership structure. America Ferrera’s character makes one Barbie idea and then goes back to being a secretary?? And yeah Barbieland changes with patriarchy and Barbie understands why Ken did that and then she leaves?? Like I can only assume things go back to business as usual in Barbieland (like the beginning of the movie) even though we see it’s NOT some utopia. Like why would you make a feminist film in which nothing changes at the end, especially regarding the gendered systems and power structures??? It’s very much a “safe” feminism, right? Like individual change is so powerful - look at Barbie’s transformation into a “real girl”™️ - don’t you dare think about systemic change at all. It’s feminism made palatable for corporations, which is to be expected but it still fucking sucks.

It’s a shame and it’s really a tragedy for the film and how it’s feminism will be integrated into the mainstream. That being said I’m glad it exists and I think it is a powerful feminist film, it’s just not perfect and that’s okay. That’s why discourse matters!

[alastor-x-reader-stories]

"Bite Me" - Alastor x Reader - Part 3

prev first

“Hey, Alphabet.”

Alastor’s eye twitched. He swiveled his head around 180 degrees, grinning down at the short king that had approached him.

“Hello, Lucifer! To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The king leaned more heavily on one leg, spinning his cane with his left hand. “Charlie’s getting kind of worried about one of the residents, so she asked me to look into it.”

“Aaaannd?” Alastor said, snapping his neck as he tilted his head.

Lucifer said your name. Alastor’s ears twitched.

Something was going on with you? Charlie was worried? What had happened-

“So what the fuck do you want with ‘em?” Lucifer said, raising an eyebrow.

“Pardon?” Alastor straightened up his posture as he spoke, turning to face the king completely.

“You’ve been stalking them for the past, like, two weeks.” Lucifer said. He spun his cane back towards him, nestling it under his arm as he motioned with his hand “Let me remind you: you’re not allowed to harm residents of the hotel.”

“I wasn’t aware I was attempting to.” Alastor said, eye twitching yet again.

“Then why are you following them- oh.” Lucifer cut himself off abruptly, seemingly having an epiphany. The fallen angel’s eyes widened, light gleaming in them “Oh! OOOOOH!”

“….what?” Alastor said, not following the king’s train of thought.

Lucifer was bouncing on his feet, grinning so wide it rivalled the Radio Demon’s. His eyes were practically sparkling “I know what’s going on~!” He sang, elbowing Alastor in the side “Y’gotta be straightforward, bambi!”

Alastor took a large step back and took a good amount of joy watching the king fall into his face. He cleared his throat, tilting his head slightly “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re implying.”

Lucifer rose from the floor, propping his chin up on his hands while kicking his feet behind him “You, y’know, want their attention!”

“That’s absurd.” Alastor hissed.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“None.”

“You sure?”

“Lucifer if you continue this pointless back-and-forth I will rip out your wings and grill them.”

Lucifer actually paused, letting the side of his head hit the floor as he studied Alastor. There was a bright flash of sparkles and the king appeared on Alastor shoulder in the form of a snake (with a hat). “That kind of sssoundsss like a threat they came up with.”

Alastor chucked Lucifer off of his shoulder. The king poofed back into his usual self mid-air and hovered there. “SooOooOooo…. Do they… y’know?” Lucifer giggled, fanning his hand outwards as rainbow-colored magic filled the space between them “Inspire you?”

“This conversation is pointless and I’m leaving.” Alastor scoffed, making true of his statement by immediately shadow-ing away.

Lucifer landed on his feet and put his wings away. Seems Bambi either doesn’t realize or is too stubborn to admit it out loud. Well. If there was one thing Lucifer learned about the glorified bellhop…

Is that man was made of 105% spite.

Later that day at dinner, Lucifer forsook his usual seat in order to sit next to you. While some of the residents were mildly confused by this (as usually people never ventured from their self-assigned seats), no one particularly cared.

You paid him little extra attention either, simply moving on with the meal as per usual. However, seated across from you, Alastor’s eyes were narrowed intently at the king. Lucifer grinned and dusted off the old charm.

“Heeey, y’know, I was wondering…why are you in Hell to begin with?” Lucifer said, propping his chin up on his hand “Surely an angel like you just got lost?”

Charlie spat out her drink on her end of the table and keeled over while coughing violently, Vaggie frantically rubbing her back to get her situated. Once she was all right (giving a shakey thumbsup), you gave the king a bemused look.

“It’s rude to ask a person of indistinguishable gender what got them hell-bound.” You hummed.

Lucifer paused in his response, too concerned with Charlie’s situation. She gave him another thumbsup and he hesitantly turned his attention back to you.

“Sorry, can’t help myself.” He lidded his eyes, leaning slightly closer “I simply can’t help but want to learn all about you~”

You put a hand over his face and pushed him back “Personal space.”

“Fair.” Lucifer said with one finger up, his voice muffled by your hand.

You retracted your hand and rolled your eyes “Well, I’m not a super share-y person…I mean I’ll do it during Charlie’s redemption activities but that’s about it.”

“And that’s okay!” Charlie chimed in, “I appreciate your efforts!”

You gave her a thumbs up. Lucifer took the pause to glance at Alastor, to find the deer man only paying half attention. Well. That wasn’t what he was aiming for. Absentmindely, Lucifer picked a fry off your plate and chomped down on it.

“Dad! That’s not your plate.” Charlie said, motioning awkwardly.

Lucifer was going to apologize (he’s a bit of an airhead, he knows…) but you made the funniest goddam squeak he had ever heard in his life. Never had he seen anyone so comedically offended by someone eating their fries.

He couldn’t help it- he laughed.

“Dad!” Charlie squeaked “Don’t laugh at them-!”

“S-s-sorry Char-Char but that SQUEAK- Oh my lord…”

He wasn’t the only one laughing. The spider person was joining in, throwing arm across your shoulders in a friendly manner while you seethed in silent resentment. Bar cat chuckled a bit under his breath, Vaggie and Charlie were both trying to suppress their giggles, and Nifty was howling with deranged cackling. Alastor took a drink from his mug but didn’t react much more than a slight snort.

“Lucifer I am going to fill your socks with mayonnaise when you sleep.” You muttered out.

Everyone burst into more hysterical laughter.

Except Alastor.

Who broke his mug in his hand like it was made of crackers.

At the sound of shatter ceramic, everyone’s attention shifted to him.

“Whoops!” Alastor grinned, shrugging non-chalantly as blood dripped down the hand that now had shards of ceramic in it.

“OhMyGosh, Alastor!” Charlie yelped, jumping to her feet “I’ll get the first aid kit-“

“No need, Charlotte!” Alastor hummed, getting to his feet. He reached over the table and picked you up by the back of your shirt like a kitten, tucking you under one arm as he walked off with you. “This one is responsible for the mug shattering, this one will take care of the wound.”

“Wait- Alastor-“ Charlie took a step to follow, but you waved her down and gave her a reassuring smile. Charlie hesitated a moment before sitting back down.

The table fell into an awkward silence. Lucifer was vibrating in his seat while grinning. Nifty was doing the same thing. The rest of the table-people wondered if they were somehow communicating this way.

Meanwhile, for you, Alastor had you held like a suitcase as he entered the kitchen, setting you on your feet.

You dusted yourself off and made for the cabinet the first aid kit was in. Alastor, frankly, had no plan other than to get you away from that joke of a king. So he was left standing their awkwardly as you patched his hand up gently. (He could’ve done it himself, it didn’t even hurt, he just did not want you wasting those ‘threats’ on that stupid lawn-gnome looking bastard)

“There you go.” You said, putting the unused first aid materials back in the kit and the kit back in the pantry.

Your name left Alastor’s lips.

You looked back at him, head tilted slightly.

His treacherous mind abruptly shoved forward the memory of you biting him. Teeth sinking into his shoulder, his blood on your face and the cold look you gave him afterwards. His heartbeat started to race. It was so different from now, your big eyes looking at him softly as though you could warm his entire soul with your gaze alone.

How amusingly two-faced of you…

“Alastor?” You said. He jolted back to the moment, tilting his head.

“Aplogies. Thank you, my dear.” He hummed.

“uh. Sure.” You said, tail flicking in irritation. “You’re a weirdo, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told!”

=============================================

Deer man's in denial.

[evidence-based-activism]

you’re still ignoring WHY the rates for men are so high, because women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes. Women abuse children more and initiate 70% of domestic violence, yet men are still portrayed as the villains. You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously. You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. and are very gender essentialist themselves. Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take.

Hi -

So, I'm going to answer this ask and the one that includes the bustle link that I expect was also sent by you? However, I'm not going to continue putting in this degree of effort (i.e., reading and researching the information you send) unless you start matching that effort. It will be difficult for you to do so in an ask (although I suppose you could try), so I suggest you reblog this post to further discuss.

So, on to the response:

---

No, there is not a significant reporting gap (at least, not one caused by sex).

You said "women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes", but there is no evidence that is the case. Let's take the crime data from two sources: the criminal victimization survey by the BJS [1] and the FBI crime data explorer [2]. These two sources are helpful for this discussion because the BJS attempts to determine total offenses including those not reported, while the FBI only looks at reported offenses.

For 2022 (rounding numbers) and looking at violent offenses (excluding homicide as the BJS report is interview based):

Male violent crime: 4,750,000 estimated by the BJS and 1,990,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 42% reporting rate

Female violent crime: 1,220,000 estimated by the BJS and 777,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 64% reporting rate

These numbers would suggest that more female offenders than male offenders are reported (i.e., a greater percent of female offenders, even though in absolute terms there are far fewer female offenders). However, there are some caveats to this data that makes me reluctant to state this conclusion:

The crime definitions between the BJS and FBI differ slightly. For example, I had to search through the "other crimes" for the FBI to find simple assault and several additional sexual assault categories to try and match the overall BJS "violent crime" statistic.

These stats are incident based not offender based. So, for example, if John commits 10 aggravated assaults and 5 of his victims report the assault to the police, 5 incidents are recorded in the system. Therefore, recidivism may or may not play a role in reporting rates.

I calculated the rate using the offender stats for individual offenders and "both male and female offender". Proportionally speaking a greater percent of female offenders are in the "both" category (23% vs 6%). Other statistics suggest more severe crimes are more likely to be reported to the police (e.g., 50% of aggravated assault is reported vs 37% of simple assault). If we make the assumption that violent crimes involving multiple offenders are more likely to be severe, then this could partially explain the disparity.

However, this point is essentially irrelevant, as the statistics previously discussed in the CDC report don't rely on reported crimes, they specifically interview representative samples in order to determine prevalence rates. (The difference between this data (and data in the BJS report) and the number of reported cases is how we know these crimes are under-reported.)

Just to drive the point home: the BJS study, which again, looks at both reported and unreported crime indicates:

Men take part in 84% of violent crimes and the only offender(s) in 79% of violent crimes (the stats for women are 21% and 17% respectively)

The offender-to-population ratio is 1.6 for men and 0.3 for women. That means the share of men in the "offender population" is 60% more than the share of men in the US population. The share of women offenders is 70% less than their share of the US population.

And before you send me another debunked myth: no men are not victimized more: the victim-to-offender population ratio for all violent crimes is 1.0 for both men and women.

I've also talked about how men don't under-report abuse (at least, not anymore than women do) in the past, so see this post for a couple more sources.

There's also no evidence that crimes committed by women get taken less seriously. However, it is true that when women do commit crimes, they tend to be less severe than the crimes committed by men (i.e., women commit more simple assault and aggravated assault). Given this, women's crimes may be taken "less seriously", but that's because the crimes are less serious, going by the accepted definitions of the crime. (And this is not my personal opinion! There is an actual "crime hierarchy" used in the American justice system that ranks crimes by degree of severity.)

In terms of legal consequences, women and men receive similar sentence lengths with one major caveat [3]. Caretakers of children, especially, young children, routinely received shorter sentences. Since women are more likely to be the primary caretaker of children, they'd be more likely to see this sentence reduction. However, this gap has been closing since the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing. Some research suggests women may receive harsher sentences than men for "traditionally male crimes" [4].

Either way, crimes by women are clearly taken at least as "seriously" as crimes by men.

---

No women do not abuse children more.

You said "Women abuse children more", but this is an oft-repeated statement from terribly misinterpreted data.

The misconception comes from data from the child maltreatment report from the HHS [5]. This report looks at reports of child abuse and neglect. In it they found that 52% of victims had a female perpetrator and 47% had a male perpetrator. At first glance, this looks like women abuse more children (hence the wide-spread misinterpretation), however this neglects to take several things into consideration.

First, since about 51% of the population is female, even if we considered nothing else, these values would suggest parity in maltreatment (abuse + neglect) rates. Of course, even this interpretation is deeply flawed, but I thought it merited pointing out.

Second, and perhaps most important, these stats are not looking at incidence or even prevalence rates. This isn't a rate at all. For example, you may be tempted to interpret these as "52% of children in a women's care are abused" or "52% of women abuse children". These are, and I must stress this, completely incorrect interpretations. These stats say only that of child maltreatment (abuse+neglect) victims identified by CPS, 52% of them were maltreated by a women.

Next, these stats fail to take into account the fact that many more women are the primary caretaker of children. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), mothers spend 80% more time caring for children than fathers. This disparity widens even further when you exclude the "entertainment" categories like playing or reading to children (130% increase, or more than double) [6]. This matters because it provides some insight into how rates of abuse would be different. You need to adjust for time spent with children to get a meaningful rate. Another way to look at this is that despite mothers spending almost twice the amount of time around children as fathers, they account for the same number of perpetrators. This alone should tell you that a child is more likely to be safe in the company of a randomly selected woman than a randomly selected man.

In case you still aren't convinced however, the report also clarifies that the perpetrator sex varied widely by maltreatment type. Women were the perpetrator in 58.5% of neglect cases (vs 41%) and 70.5% of medical neglect cases (vs 29%). But men were the perpetrator in 49.5% of physical abuse cases (vs 49%), 89% of sexual abuse cases (vs 8%), and 59% of emotional abuse cases (vs 41%). While no form of child maltreatment is ever acceptable, I hope I don't need to explain how abuse (which "requires an action") is different from neglect (which "occurs from an inaction") and requires different responses.

Speaking of neglect: there is much discourse on how much of the neglect (and medical neglect) registered by CPS is "true neglect" and how much is a result of poverty. This is particularly relevant considering single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than married couples or single fathers. Examples of this may include: a mother doesn't have enough money to buy food and pay for rent so she and her child eat very little until her next paycheck, a single mother can't miss work without being fired so she sends her sick child to school, a single mother can't pay for child care so she has to choose between leaving her child home alone or having an unfit adult (her own abusive parent? an unsuitable boyfriend?) watch her child. In all of these situations, something absolutely needs to be done to help the child, but it likely isn't the same something as a child who's being beaten or sexually abused by his father.

Other notes on neglect: even the relatively higher proportion of female perpetrators for neglect and medical neglect in this sample are well below parity when adjusted for time spent with the child. It’s also likely that men’s rates of neglect are likely severely under-reported here. Why? Because a neglect case is rarely (if ever) opened for absentee ("deadbeat") dads; it's also unclear how many men with non-primary custody are listed as perpetrators of neglect. (I ask you: if mothers are considered neglectful for failing to intervene on behalf of their child in abusive/neglectful situations, why aren't fathers?)

Other studies on child abuse perpetration (sadly no national reports) show:

Evaluations of child fatalities in Missouri over a 8-year period showed men inflicted 71% of fatal injuries on young children [8]

Evaluations of fatal and nonfatal abusive head trauma over a 12-year period at the Children's Hospital of Denver found 69% of the perpetrators were male (including 74% of the perpetrators of fatal head traumas) [9]

Data from conviction rates and victimization surveys suggest that 4-5% of adult, child sex offenders (as in child sex offenders who are adults) are female, meaning that 95-96% are male [10]

Altogether, this indicates that men are more likely to abuse a child in their care than women. Unsurprisingly, it’s safer for children to be around women than around men.

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No, women do not initiate more domestic violence/commit the same amount of abuse.

You said "women ... initiate 70% of domestic violence". It took me a while to find a source for this statistic, but I eventually found out it comes from a poorly done study that unfortunately finds company with a number of other poorly done studies touted by MRAs and anti-feminists.

Before we address that study specifically: a brief history of the nonsense plaguing domestic violence research.

To be clear, this is not a new discussion, we (the general we) have been having this same discussion about whether there's gender parity in domestic violence for, oh, 50 years or so. It is, possibly not entirely, but certainly mostly the result of the "Conflict Tactics Scale" (CTS). Intended for use in family violence research, it has several methodological flaws which make its results ... let's go with unreliable.

I really thought I'd discussed the CTS before now ... but can't find anything on my blog. But there is this post which is a nice pictograph about this next topic, which I will loop into our discussion of the CTS.

So ... why is the CTS so unreliable? Because "domestic violence" is not a homogeneous phenomenon. If I asked someone to picture an abusive relationship they are almost certainly going to imagine an abusive man controlling his partner through intimidation, likely restricting her behavior, and possibly hitting or otherwise physically harming her. This "typical" dynamic is what we think of when we hear "domestic abuse/violence". (I'd argue that it's what we should think of when discussing domestic violence, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.)

Notably, what this doesn't include is the -- far more common -- case of situational violence. A "typical" example of situational violence is arguments that "gets out of hand" and end with one partner slapping/shoving/etc. the other (switching between perpetrator for different incidents) or two people who routinely get "nasty" (name calling, personal insults) to each other during arguments. There's no intimidation or controlling behavior and it doesn't escalate. It also is generally not associated with significant victim hardship (i.e., no/little increase in depression, anxiety, or PTSD; little fear or feeling unable to escape the relationship; no or few physical injuries; little or no economic hardship; etc.). It's also what's predominately being measured by the CTS.

This isn't to say that situational violence is "okay". It clearly isn't, no more than a bar fight or slapping a co-worker is okay. It is, however, far more comparable to these examples (bar fight, slapping a coworker, etc.) than it is to the standard conception of domestic violence (which itself is more comparable to being a prisoner of war [11]). Some people have tried to resolve this by renaming the standard conception to "intimate partner terrorism" or "domestic abuse with coercive control". I have ... mixed thoughts on this, so I'm going to leave it at this for now.

If you'd like to read more about this, Michael P. Johnson at PSU (who originally proposed this division back in the 1990s!) has written a book and also has numerous articles about the topic.

I have a lot of sources about the CTS/differences in violence perpetration rates, but this post is already very long and I plan to make a whole separate post about this at some point. So, I'm going to briefly summarize the points and give some references that would be particularly helpful.

So, the issues with CTS include:

Failure to include a full range of possible violent behaviors, including many that are almost always perpetrated by men, including: rape, murder, choking, and suffocation.

Failure to examine post-breakup/divorce time periods, despite post-separation being one of the most dangerous time periods for abused women (but, notably, not men).

Failure to examine context. This gets back at the paradigm I mentioned above: studies that do examine context have shown that the vast majority of coercive controlling violence (i.e., traditional abuse) is perpetrated by men and the vast majority of responsive violence (i.e., self-defense) is perpetrated by women.

Failure to examine the severity of the violence and/or violence impacts. Studies have also shown that women routinely receive the more severe injuries than men. That applies to both the injuries received from coercive controlling violence and from situational violence. Notably, men are rarely ever injured from responsive violence. Women also routinely report more severe psychological and social problems as a result of abuse.

Extremely poor phrasing of the questions. The CTS is unique in its false positive rate, as has been established by several other measures of violence. For example, simply adding the stem "Not including horseplay or joking around..." reduced the number of violent incidents reported and also showed higher rates of female victimization than male victimization.

Inconsistency with every other scale/measure used for determining prevalence rates of abuse! Hopefully it is obvious why this is an issue, but as an example: if I created a new measure for "depressive symptoms" and I found that it correlated very poorly with every other accepted measure of depressive symptoms then my new measure would be considered to have very poor "convergent validity". In non-politicized situations, my measure would likely never make it to the publishing stage, and would certainly fall out of use once this poor validity demonstrated by another study. Unfortunately, science is not immune to politics any more than the people conducting it are, as we can see with the survival of the CTS.

I gathered this information from a bunch of sources, but I've selected a few reviews (i.e., papers that "review" or condense many other papers into one) that would be helpful to you [12-16]. I recommend [12] in particular, although [13] touches on much of the same information and is much shorter. Ultimately, the CTS can, at most, be considered a measure of situational violence (and it's not even very good at that!).

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So, finally, why is the 70% study [17] particularly bad?

All of the above problems with CTS apply, but in addition to all of that, they didn't just use the already flawed measure as it was ... no they, narrowed it down into 6 total questions. In total it asked about the respondent's perpetration of victimization of the following forms of violence: threatening with violence, pushing/shoving, throwing something, slapped, hit, kicked. They then "assessed" severity by asking a single question about injuries ("How often has partner had an injury, such as a sprain, bruise, or cut because of a fight with you?" and the corresponding victimization version.)

So, let's see ... failure to include predominately male forms of violence? Check. Further exclusion of even the existing items on the CTS that do examine this? Check! Failure to examine time past the relationship? Check. Failure to examine context? Check! Failure to examine severity of violence? Check. (Asking about a sprain or a bruise but not hospitalizations? broken bones? concussions?) Inconsistency with all other measures? Definitely!

Other problems with the study: they asked individuals to rate their perpetration and victimization, they did not examine their partners responses to such questions. This is a problem for a study like this, given that men tend to over-estimate their partners violence towards them and under-estimate their own violence towards their partner, and women do the opposite over-estimating their own violence and under-estimating their partners [12]. A note that a related problem has also shown up for the original CTS (i.e., if you asked both partners to complete the scale, their responses may agree on the "explaining a disagreement" item pair, but there was little if any agreement on the severe items like the "beating up" item pair).

To make a bad problem even worse: they condensed their multi-item (8-point) scales into binary (yes/no) categories and 3-item (low/medium/high) categories. This reduction in variance likely created artificially high rates for women and artificially low rates for men.

Hilariously (infuriatingly), they make it all the way through this data and then acknowledge that their study may not actually have examined domestic abuse at all! Instead it describes "common couple violence or situational violence", which, again, goes back to what the paradigm I introduced earlier. Of course, they don't revise their title or abstract to be less misleading ... that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Also, just to point this out: even this poorly designed, misleading study still showed "men were more likely to inflict an injury on a partner than ... women". So ... there you go. Even tipping the scales/design as far in favor of a "gender symmetry" result as they can possibly go, women still end up injured more than men.

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So, for the rest of your ask:

"yet men are still portrayed as the villains"

well when 1 in 3 men around the world openly admit to abusing women, and they are the perpetrator of 90+% of homicides, and 10-67% of men openly admit to believing non-defensive physical and sexual violence against women is at least sometimes okay it's pretty easy to see why women can see them as the villain/enemy.

"You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously."

This is one of those cases where critical thinking skills are pretty important! Let me start you off:

Do I think that a social media post will garner a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Or is more likely that people who agree with the post will comment on and re-blog it, spreading it more people who are more likely to agree with it?

Can I see the re-blog I'm making comments about (i.e., evidence-based-activism's re-blog?). If not, (hint: it's not in the re-blog viewer :)) is it possible that there are other hidden replies that are disagreeing with this post?

Maybe most importantly: do I need female-on-male or female-on-female violence to be as common as male-on-female and male-on-male violence in order to show compassion to those who do experience it? (Hint: you shouldn't!! Something doesn't need to be common to deserve sympathy and rare =/= excusable.)

In addition, this is touching on a pretty common issue with discourse these days -- the prioritization of "feeling" over "being". Someone (male or female) may feel safer around men, but statistically speaking they are safer around women. It's reasonable to respond to and accommodate people's feelings on an individual basis, it's not reasonable to base an ideology or policy around them.

"You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. ... Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take."

Similar to the last point ... views on social media are not representative of a population. Views that you, specifically, are seeing are not representative! If they were, then "well, I see more posts preemptively criticizing people for not including men than I see posts excluding men" (which is true, almost every post I read now-a-days includes caveats like "but men are abused too!! and women can be abusers!!") would have been a valid counter-argument to your ask. But see, I know that my experience on social media is not universal, and I should hope you can acknowledge the same of your own!

Also ... to be fair to all these unnamed "radfems", I'm guessing that you would consider my posts (like this response) to be an example of someone "saying this", which is very much not the case. I am acknowledging social trends and making reasonable generalizations to allow for communication about a complex topic (you know, the way people do for any and every topic ever), but I'm not claiming that no women is ever abusive or that no man has ever been abused. I'm guessing that these other posts are pretty similar (if less verbose).

side note, you also said: "radfems ... are very gender essentialist themselves".

Either you don't know what "gender essentialist" means or the people you are talking to/about are not radfems. I acknowledge that there are a number of people going around and saying they're radfems, but the nice thing about a political group like this is they have (at least some) defined beliefs.

So, for example, if someone went around saying they are a communist, but then when asked to describe their desired economic system, describes an economy based around the free market and decentralized production ... then they aren't a communist no matter what they call themselves. A command economy is a central tenant to communism, so much so that a desire to implement one/have one is intrinsic to being a communist.

In the same way, if someone is calling themselves a radfem, but supports the preservation of gender/gender roles or believes that femininity/masculinity is biologically innate ... then they aren't a radfem.

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TL;DR:

Violent crimes for women and men are reported at similar rates.

Women and men are punished similarly for violent crimes (i.e., people do take crimes by women seriously).

Children are safer in the company of women than men. There is insufficient research to accurately describe perpetrator demographics of "minor" child abuse/neglect, but there is significant research indicating that men are the perpetrator of the the vast majority of severe injuries, fatal injuries, and sexual abuse.

Men commit the vast majority controlling domestic violence (the type of violence people think of when thinking about domestic violence); women's violence is predominately responsive. Women are also the recipients of the vast majority of injuries (minor and severe) and are the victim of almost all fatalities.

Social media posts are not representative studies.

Critical thinking skills are important!

And, everyone -- regardless of sex or any other demographic characteristic -- deserves compassion when harmed. It is still appropriate talk about trends and create policies that assist the majority of those harmed.

A reminder that I will expect a reasonable degree of engagement with this information if you plan to engage in further discussion! I'll answer the bustle link ask, but after that I'll simply delete asks that don't make a genuine attempt to think critically about this information. (Clarifying questions are okay to ask though :)).

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References below the cut:

Criminal Victimization, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2022.

“National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Details Reported in the United States .” Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend.

Myrna S. Raeder Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 3 (1993) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol20/iss3/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20240406064949/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/jan/12/intimate-partner-violence-gender-gap-cyntoia-brown

Child Maltreatment 2022. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2022.

“Average Hours per Day Parents Spent Caring for and Helping Household Children as Their Main Activity.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm.

Shrider, Emily A., Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-273, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2021.

Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0296. PMID: 16263983; PMCID: PMC1360186.

Starling SP, Holden JR, Jenny C. Abusive head trauma: the relationship of perpetrators to their victims. Pediatrics. 1995 Feb;95(2):259-62. PMID: 7838645.

McCartan, K. (Ed.). (2014). Responding to Sexual Offending. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137358134

Comparison Between Strategies Used on Prisoners of War and Battered Wives | Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparison-between-strategies-used-prisoners-war-and-battered-wives.

Michael S. Kimmel. (2001). Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review. The Equality Committee of the Department of Education and Science. https://vawnet.org/material/male-victims-domestic-violence-substantive-and-methodological-research-review

Flood, M. (1999, July 10). Claims About Husband Battering [Contribution to Newspaper, Magazine or Website]. Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter; Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215068/

Walter DeKeseredy & Martin Schwartz. (1998). Measuring the Extent of Woman Abuse in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: A Critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/measuring-extent-woman-abuse-intimate-heterosexual-relationships-critique-conflict-tactics

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Whitaker, Daniel J., et al. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 941–47. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020.