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Besides all that, I've read many times that lesbian relationships have much higher rates of domestic violence, so...?
I think I have already written my completely unfounded hypothesis trying to explain this on The Motte, but I'll summarize it again. Men have more ways to counter psychological manipulation. A husband angrily snaps at his wife who's trying to guilt him into doing something, and she stops; the cycle doesn't form. With two wives, neither of them is big and scary and aggressive enough to do so, so when one of them starts this, the other can either submit and leave herself open to further demands, or counterescalate with some manipulation of her own. A few escalations later there's a cold war in the house, and both women are thinking the other one is an abusive bitch.
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what you are also looking at is more reporting in queer relationships, the recipient lesbian usually is empowered enough to seek her way out if things go south or get litigation/filing involved. Within a heterosexual relationship however, the recipient woman will likely find more emotional support and ways to cope so leaving a pragmatic alliance like a marriage doesn't make too much sense, if things aren't super horrible and danger isn't imminent. However, this is changing and most women even in hetero-relationships will try to get out at the very beginning of violent outbursts.
Women in general seem to like getting official enforcement involved, with officiating labels that give them a sense of security in the personal realm, lesbians also get married more, thus the misunderstood ''high divorce rate'' statistic that floats around. In general, women are trained to ''secure'' resources and alliances, and the current culture also empowers them to walk out more if things go south. For a queer woman to have fought against the practical norm of hetero-relations (let's be real, the hetero coupling is the best pairing for a multitude of socio-economic reasons), then to have gone so far as to get married to another woman requires a certain level of resilience and ability to strongarm (being queer is genuinely difficult), so the chances of such a person remaining passive and accepting abuse is fairly low, they are likely self-reliant enough to report and get out quick.
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I don't know if I'm right, but my hunch is that even if that is true, men nonetheless have a higher rate of causing serious damage because they are much stronger than women.
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There’s no way. Testosterone is a helluva drug.
The BJS has this survey, which shows ~2x rates for various crimes, but doesn’t separate lesbian from gay. It’s still a weird result. There’s definitely a higher reporting rate, but I’m not sure what causes that, either. More trust in the police? An urban bias?
If you download the NCVS stats yourself or otherwise figure out how to filter it, let me know!
It's probably mostly reporting bias -- women hit their partners all the time in relationships, but when that partner is a man it's:
a)no big deal because she hits like a girl
b) kind of embarrassing to report that your girlfriend is abusing you
In a lesbian relationship, neither partner is used to receiving any kind of violence, and both are socially predisposed to treat any kind of violence (done by someone other than themselves!) as a relationship red line -- so that cops/statisticians are much more likely to hear about it.
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I’ve heard about this as well but when I looked at the research, it’s nothing very conclusive and the most famous study didn’t differentiate between lesbians who experienced violence from male only and male and female perpetrators.
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This is an angle explored by thetinmen I honestly just take it for granted at this point that the other side of the coin gets completely ignored. Maybe public discourse is just fucked.
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