Who-Stole-Feminism.-How-Women-Have-Betrayed-Women

NOBLE LIES 195Gelles and Straus are careful to say that women are far more likely tobe injured and to need medical care. But overall, the percentage of womenwho are injured seriously enough to need medical care is still relativelysmall compared to the inflated claims of the gender feminists and thepoliticians—fewer than 1 percent. 26Murray Straus estimates that approximately100,000 women per year are victims of the severe kinds of violenceshown in the TV film The Burning Bed. That is a shockingly highnumber of victims, but it is far short of Senator Biden's claim, derivedfrom feminist advocacy studies, that more that three or four millionwomen are victims of "horrifying" violence.Straus and Gelles have made other discoveries not appreciated bygender feminists. Among them is the finding that because of changingdemographics and improved public awareness, there was a significantdecrease in wife battery between 1975 and 1985. 27Moreover, though theyonce reported that battery increased during pregnancy, they now say theywere mistaken: "Data from the 1985 Second National Family ViolenceSurvey indicate that the previously reported association between pregnancyand husband-to-wife violence is spurious, and is an artifact of theeffect of another variable, age." 28Gelles and Straus consider domestic violence to be a serious nationalproblem. They have for years been advocates for social, medical, and legalintervention to help battered women. All the same, according to theirstudies, more than 84 percent of families are not violent, and among the16 percent who are, nearly half the violence (though not half the injuries)is perpetrated by women.Journalists, activists, and even gender feminists make extensive use ofGelles and Straus's research. Some researchers manipulate their data toget shocking figures on abuse. If you overlook the researchers' distinctionbetween minor and severe violence, if you never mention that women dojust as much of the shoving, grabbing, pushing, and slapping, you arriveat very high figures for battery: three million, four million, six million,depending on how slack you are in what you count as battery.The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence gives shocking figureson abuse in their fundraising brochure: "More than 50 percent of allwomen will experience some form of violence from their spouses duringmarriage. More than one-third are battered repeatedly every year." Weget the impression that one-third of all married women (18 million) arerepeatedly being battered. Where did the coalition get these figures?Either they relied on their own special gender feminist sources or theycreatively interpreted the FBI's, Department of Justice's, or Gelles and