Women Abuse Men: It’s More Widespread Than People Think

Excerpt from Special supplement to The Washington Post, December 28, 1993

By Armin A. Brott

"Despite all the evidence about female-on-male violence, many groups actively try to suppress coverage of the issue. Steinmetz received verbal threats and anonymous phone calls from radical women’s groups threatening to harm her children after she published "The Battered Husband Syndrome" in 1978. She says she finds it ironic that the same people who claim that women- initiated violence is purely self defense are so quick to threaten violence against people who do nothing more than publish a scientific study.

Steinmetz’s story is not unique. Ten years after that study, R.L. McNeely, a professor at the School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin, and Gloria Robinson-Simpson published "The Truth About Domestic Violence: A Falsely Framed Issue." The article examined various studies on domestic violence and concluded that society must recognize that men are victims "or we will be addressing only part of the phenomenon."

Shortly thereafter, McNeely received letters from a Pennsylvania women’s organization threatening to use its influence in Washington to pull his research funding. Robinson-Simpson,who uncovered some of the most important data, largely was left alone. According to McNeely, "she, a young assistant professor, was assumed to have been ‘duped" by the senior male professor." (end quote)