Contact sexual violence by a partner — 19.7% of women vs 4.4% of men

US national data (CDC NISVS) show sexual and severe intimate-partner violence fall far more heavily on women — about 1 in 5 women report contact sexual violence by a partner versus roughly 1 in 23 men — the asymmetry the "DV is 50/50" claim leaves out.

The number

Partner sexual violence is sharply asymmetric: about 1 in 5 women (19.7%) report contact sexual violence by an intimate partner, versus nearly 1 in 23 men (4.4%). ^[1]

What it does and doesn't establish

Men are far from absent as victims (about 1 in 7 report physical intimate-partner violence), so the grievance that male victims exist and are under-served is legitimate. But the sexual, severe and injurious forms of abuse are not evenly shared — which is what "domestic violence is 50/50" obscures. Full context: do women commit half of domestic violence?

Sources

1 source · all archived at publication

[1]About Intimate Partner Violence · U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention archived ↗

By The Fieldnote Desk · How we verify · Corrections