feminism is my passion

Sex is an extreme violation of the self. If somebody wants you to have sex with them as a way to confirm you like them in a "special way." that's coercion, not true love. This culture of "being vulnerable", in other words exposing yourself and letting somebody have their way with you, isn't how I plan to live. Honestly, at this point, if you choose that lifestyle, I don't want to hear you complain about it. If you have sex with somebody in order to keep them around or to gain status, you're the manipulator. If it goes wrong then... oh well. Offering sex to somebody because you have low self-esteem is also manipulation.

Many institutions are built on sex, sexuality, and sex appeal which is all male-minded satanism. If you publicly actively participate in upholding any aspect of sex, you're a male worshipper. If you do have sex, keep that shit to yourself."

I wonder what's your take on this.

Even if all women chose freedom, would we still be doomed to be under male control because of male biological superiority? (If you call male advantages that... I personally do, because they rule the world thanks to that.)

Unless there's bloodshed that significantly reduced the xy population, yeah. However maIes don't win because of their strength but their resolve. Dont get me wrong their physical strength helps a lot but I think focus on strength alone doesn't tell the whole story. Something I disagree with the blackpill about is the over focus of the aforementioned.

If maIes were the physically weaker ones they'd still be on top, just in a different way. I wrote a post on this topic but compared to other animals physical abilities men are average yet they still dominate animals much bigger than them, not through brute force but through using their conscious to create weapons that weaken bigger animals or to kill them from afar. The way the world is today isn't just about strength, there's multiple systems that allow them to dominate from the makeup of nations/societies (involving excess resource hoarding to lead women to them) to religion.

I've seen blind maIes access child sexual abuse material (sick parasites). Even in the womb the y chromosome releases chemicals so the mother doesn't see it as a threat (where she could easily get rid of it before they get to their full form). The taliban didn't rise to power due to their physical strength alone but being armed to the teeth, an external weapon. Xys are biologically wired for sexual violence & destruction and will stop at nothing to be able to continue perpetuating it. They will put up with any amount of discomfort & pain for a goal they deem worth it. Hell, they'll even kill themselves to prove a point. Testosterone is proven to increase aggression so factor that in & ofc they will have more drive for their motives. The average woman does not possess this resolve, the moment there's slight discomfort they run to moids/bad habits. Unless more women care more about their freedom than their life or even moids life, nothing is changing. MaIes will risk their lives & even sacrifice themselves to generally keep patriarchy going. Even on the less overtly violent side maIes will architect entire ways of life for their goals i.e. religion. Meanwhile it's too big an ask to say to not wear makeup, or suck dick, or offer maIes labour. Women have perseverance as well don't get me wrong it just goes to different things, women want to be with the "right" xy even if it could (& does) kill them trying. Women generally would not want to hurt maIes even if they could anyways (abortion, pre puberty, vulnerability that renders them immobile or near it etc), they have a certain level of affection to maIes despite everything. I think socialisation plays a part here. Even the extreme "misandrists" are nowhere hateful of maIes as the average maIe is hateful of women let alone the more extreme ones. However, I'm not saying women aren't capable of violence because women can be cunningly violent to other women & girls, not just physically but verbally/emotionally too. Essentially maIes don't make excuses while women will constantly make excuses.

I think the ability to get pregnant plays a big part in maIe domination, even bigger than physical strength. For one it puts a target on females backs bc they suffer all the consequences & risks of going through pregnancy while maIes get all the reward with no risk. Even if women were physically stronger, the moment they become pregnant they're vulnerable; how can you not be when there's a being growing inside & squeezing your organs to grow. Birth is traumatic & painful. Pregnancy is a hostile takeover of the body. Based on the above they'd shift their focus to using whatever means they can to get a woman pregnant for control. If physical strength wasn't viable they'd team up, attack women when they're not as strong i.e. as babies/children, use weapons, or even drugs to weaken women to get their way.

If this boiled down to strength of maIes alone & no aid from women like the original posts suggested then things would not get this far. MaIes aren't born super strong, even after they're born women raise & nurture them.

Towards the end of that post is what I often talk about that proves OPs point. Women would gladly sacrifice other women to save themselves, I've seen the way women have fought & risked it all for political/social causes that also affected maIes. Women can be violent, abusive, manipulative, and also support that energy where they see it & it's infantilising pretending otherwise. Also it's such a tired narrative, xys are destructive beings it doesn't matter how much you give them it wont stop or reduce their behaviour, eventually they'll want more so even the "save yourself" crew will be in danger & need to watch out either way. To think women have had little to no part in building patriarchal societies is ignorant. I wish it was true & for so long I believed it but take it from someone from a non western background I've seen first hand how this is not the case. If more women were truly against patriarchy & maIes, either the world would be different or humanity would cease to exist.

You would not survive in a world where every woman thought like you without there being mass retaliation and heavy casualties

Women are barely surviving this world & I'd not want me or my offspring to survive in todays world either. Yeah, I'd rather no existence than maIe dominated existence but I speak for myself and like 3 other women so what does it matter lol. I no longer take it to heart what most women do but I won't buy into the narrative that they're victims either. The tags of the post are right though there is no solidarity among women nor can there be.

100% agree. It gets to a point where it goes past raising awareness to counterproductive terrorism. This is exactly why feminism today is so spineless, many women see so much reports of maIe violence where the awareness has terrified them into further compliance. This is what happens when there's no praxis or mindset of moving past theory at any cost & learning from past mistakes others made. Theory is convenient especially in the day & age of social media where posts can go viral so that dopamine receptor gets fried & it feels like something has been done. This works for a period of time but eventually loses effect.

I remember seeing a woman on radtwt talk about leaving her abusive husband & so many women/radfems swarmed in discouraging her bc of the likelihood of being killed. Not even anything strategic or learning from the past to do better but just being sitting ducks, this is inevitably the result of an ideology that seeks reformation over liberation at any cost. More time gets spent on theory than practical action then when it comes to action people are afraid because of all they've read. It's like some sort of productive procrastination where more time is spent consuming thinking it's helpful but it's not.

I try to avoid these things although it's so much & always finds a way back to my fyp on social medias. Personally idc because I know nothing is changing. In the end most women complaining will still end up in an xys bed believing their nigel is an exception so I just click not interested & keep pushing bc I already know & I'm moving accordingly.

The below post gets into the dangers of being flooded with constant bad news, it speaks about the epstein files but relates to this aswell although I don't think women posting this stuff have these nefarious intentions the consequences are the same. I honestly think that algorithms push this stuff so much to further overwhelm & drain women.

So, this has taken me a very long time to get to, but I hope you still see this Anon (and/or this helps other people)!

This question is a bit difficult because it’s actually getting at three related questions: (1) Is there evidence for greater male variability in intelligence? (2) If so, is this a biological difference?, and (3) If so, does this account for the overrepresentation of men in STEM?

So, I want to start by pointing out that even if both (1) and (2) are true, this would not provide evidence for (3). In particular, while people in STEM are generally of above-average intelligence, “above average” does not equate to “extreme tail of distribution” which is what this question considers. For example, performance on an academic or intelligence assessment does not intrinsically equate performance within a STEM field (e.g., genius level intellects who cannot work collaboratively, “merely” above-average individuals who dedicate their lives to specific problems). Furthermore, the simple presence of ability also does not equate to the opportunity to excel (e.g., women who have been forced into domestic roles rather than pursuing education and careers). I talk about this a lot more in this post, where I challenge the idea that women’s underrepresentation is a result of inability.

Furthermore, since I now intend to talk about various measures of intelligence, I’d also like to point out that treating intelligence as a fixed quantity (as IQ scores do) rather than as a dynamic characteristic that can be developed over time may actually contribute to lower achievement and participation by minorities in STEM fields [1, 2]. In particular, we know that environment has a large effect on IQ scores, and we also have strong evidence that education – in childhood but also possibly beyond – can increase someone’s IQ score [3-6]. 

So, with that in mind, for first two questions: 

The first important issue to note here is that the majority of this research has some major flaws that draw conclusions into question [7]. While this paper highlights these methodological issues in respect to a paper arguing against greater male variability, in truth the same issues (e.g., reliance on the variance ratio, possibly erroneous assumptions about underlying distributions) are present in almost the entire literature base for this question. That being said, the existence of these criticisms doesn’t necessarily invalidate the field as a whole, but they do suggest that we must be cautious in drawing conclusions and making generalizations based on the existing research.

The second issue is that – based on my research – this question is not yet settled. There are many articles claiming to have found evidence of greater male variability in various domains, and there are many articles claiming to have no such evidence. That being said, none of the articles claiming to have found a gender difference in variability (question 1) provide support for the idea that this difference is innate (question 2). Indeed, there is evidence that suggests the opposite: that whatever small gender differences in variability exist, it is because of differences in socialization and culture. 

For specific studies, it was sometimes difficult to draw a line between what studies support the greater male variability (GMV) hypothesis and what studies challenge it, as the same results can be interpreted in different ways based on the author. As such, I’ve combined most of the work below:

A 1994 cross-cultural review [15] of verbal, math, and spatial abilities found no consistent GMV across nations. Instead, males were more variable in some countries and females in other countries. They suggest this means that average variance ratios are not meaningful as they vary by cultural context. 

This textbook chapter from 1997 [8] discusses a lot of the older research that supports the GMV hypothesis, noting that many tests find a small gender difference in variance ratio. However, they caution against over-interpretation of these findings given that: methodological issues tip interpretation towards a conclusion of GMV; GMV was not found for all traits or tests; and GMV varied as a function of ethnicity, age, and year of testing such that GMV appears to have decreased over time. They also explicitly note that cultural differences could be the reason for such findings, with the earlier caveats supporting such a conclusion. Ultimately, they conclude: “Within the practical realm, the meta-analyses that we have reviewed here provide no evidence that deficits in abilities are responsible for the underrepresentation of women in the fields of mathematics, science, and engineering.” and “The greater male variability hypothesis has become important at the very times in history when women have challenged the limitations imposed on them by society. This pattern should sound a warning to be careful of arguments that there is a generalized greater male variability or that any gender difference is explained by the finding of greater male variability.”

This 2008 article [9] looked at gender gaps in math and reading tests around the world and found boys were more variable than girls on both math and reading tests. However, this did not equate to having more boys in both tails of each distribution. In particular, there were more boys at the top of the math distribution and the bottom of the reading distributions. However, these results were not replicated in every country examined. Once again, this implicates cultural differences in gender socialization as a probable cause of these differences.

A Scotland population study in 2008 [10] found GMV in an IQ-equivalent test. However, they also found that the variability differences were smaller at the high end than the low end of the distribution. Furthermore, they compared their ratios to the male:female ratios in STEM fields and found that the GMV was substantially lower than the ratios found in STEM fields, suggesting GMV cannot account for these differences. 

This 2010 meta-analysis [16] of gender differences in mathematics took a unique approach to the question, using the idea that if the GMV hypothesis is true, then gender differences in performance would be greater for more difficult items. Their results did not show this pattern, suggesting the GMV hypothesis is not accurate. 

A 2011 study on mathematics performance [17] completed a meta-analysis and found a trivial variance ratio in favor of men. However, they also analyzed large random samples and found variance ratios ranged from 0.88 (which favors females) and 1.34 (which favors males). Ultimately, these results indicate that GMV is either not present or trivial.

A 2012 international meta-analysis [18] found a trivial variance ratio in favor of GMV, but indicated the results varied substantially between nations. They argue that this is evidence against the GMV hypothesis, as it indicates that males do not inherently display greater variance.

A 2016 study on various measures of intelligence in a nationally representative sample in Romania [19] found very few sex differences were replicated across measures. When sex differences were found, they were very small. They suggest this means that “any sex … variance differences are likely spurious and the result of sampling or measurement errors rather than substantive and stable effects.”

This 2018 meta-analysis [11] found GMV in boys’ grades than girls’ grades; however, they found the gender difference in variance was lower in STEM than in non-STEM subjects. This once again suggests that “greater variability is insufficient to explain male over-representation in STEM.” 

Another 2018 meta-analysis of differences in verbal performance [20] found a trivial variance ratio in favor of males.

A 2019 meta-analysis [12] looking at international exam scores broadly confirmed GMV from a global standpoint but found significant heterogeneity between countries. Furthermore, they found that the Global Gender Gap Index has a large impact on variance ratios, such that increasing women’s equality in various fields (i.e., political, economic, educational) increases their variance and decreases the gender difference in variance. Again, this suggests that gendered socialization plays a major role in GMV. 

A 2023 meta-analysis on creativity [21] found that “gender differences in the … variability of creative ability scores are minimal and inconsistent across different contexts, suggesting that the GMVH may not provide much explanatory power for the gender gap in creative achievement.” This article also digs into a lot of the methodological and interpretative problems of studies advancing the GMV hypothesis. 

Another meta-analysis from 2024 [13] looks at versions of another intelligence scale for children. They found that males were more variable on some domains, females on other domains, and no difference on other domains. The differences were often small.

A 2025 meta-analysis about Italian children [14] also found that gender differences in variability varied by the trait examined. 

Finally, this 2009 study [22] addresses many of the arguments I touch on above and is written (I think) in a way laymen can understand. This is the text of their abstract (emphasis mine):

Using contemporary data from the U.S. and other nations, we address 3 questions: Do gender differences in mathematics performance exist in the general population? Do gender differences exist among the mathematically talented? Do females exist who possess profound mathematical talent? In regard to the first question, contemporary data indicate that girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well. Focusing on the second question, studies find more males than females scoring above the 95th or 99th percentile, but this gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations. Furthermore, data from several studies indicate that greater male variability with respect to mathematics is not ubiquitous. Rather, its presence correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes. Responding to the third question, we document the existence of females who possess profound mathematical talent. Finally, we review mounting evidence that both the magnitude of mean math gender differences and the frequency of identification of gifted and profoundly gifted females significantly correlate with sociocultural factors, including measures of gender equality across nations.

If you’d like additional detail on this topic, I’d recommend starting with that article.

So, in conclusion:

Do men show greater variability in intelligence? Possibly. If they do, then this difference is most likely trivial in size and dependent on other factors. However, there is still substantial debate in the field on this topic, and a recent paper calls into question much of the existing literature.

If they do, is this difference innate or biological? Most likely no. Differences in GMV across cultures, a reduction in GMV over time, the correlation between GMV and social factors – particularly gender equality and economic indexes – all suggest that any degree of GMV that does exist is most likely a product of differing gender socialization.

If they do, does this account for the overrepresentation of men in STEM fields? Definitely not. The degree of GMV is trivial in comparison to the level of men’s overrepresentation, indicating that the GMV – if it does exist – cannot explain this representation difference. 

I hope this helps!

References under the cut:

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:

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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.

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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:

"The reactionaries' hope is that (...) the sheep-like people will allow themselves to be led astray from century to century. This eternal back-and-forth, which shows us in the past the series of partially aborted revolutions, the endless labor of generations succeeding one another in toil, constantly rolling away the rock that crushes them, this irony of fate that shows captives breaking their chains only to be shod again, all this is the cause of great moral unrest." (Page 60 of "L'évolution, la révolution et l'ideal anarchique" By Elisée Reclus. Available on the Internet Archive".

This quote pretty much sums up women's behavior as a collective. A portion of women fight for their "rights", only to give them up a few generations later...

Never forget that if women have been "oppressed" for thousands of years now (I do not think we can really talk about "oppression", I will explain why), it is because they were complicit in their degredation and made sure to preserve the institutions which kept them enslaved. A good example is Anne-Josèphe Théroigne, a French Revolutionary, who said : "It is time for women, strong in their shameful nullity, where ignorance, (...) and injustice kept them enslaved for a long time." Quite bold, right ? Well guess what : random Jacobine women inflicted what was called the "Republican Spanking" on her. Théroigne was stripped naked and publicly spanked ("lynched" would be more accurate). Here was a woman who wanted to set women free, yet she got lynched by her OWN kind.

This proves Madeleine Pelletier's quote : "Woman loves her servitude." Women, as a whole, are stuck in an endless loop of semi-freedom and slavery.

They taste freedom, only for them to realize that it is not what they want and that they actually prefer to be beneath a man, as this allows them to have no self-accountability. This is perfect, as they can blame everything on males without any consequences. They also proudly continue to birth the very beings they complain about all day.

NEVER forget that NOT ALL women were oppressed, only those who made the choice to marry a male were (which was the majority, obviously). Please, never forget that fact. It is crucial as it will allow you to understand that "oppression" and freedom are both choices to make. You either chose one or the other based on your actions. The law of coverture is a perfect illustration of this :

Whereas the unmarried woman, or feme sole, retained the right to own property and make contracts in her own name... It is not a coincidence if the "women" (I will explain why I put it in quotations) who more often had many inventions and were geniuses were either celibate or lesbian.

They chose celibacy and thus, FREEDOM. The reason why I put the word "woman" in quotations when talking about celibate or asexual "women", or lesbians, is because these individuals are not "women" per se. Indeed, as Monique Wittig said : "What makes a woman is a particular social relationship to a man, […] a relationship that lesbians [or celibate females] escape by refusing to become or remain heterosexual" (The Straight Mind). I thus understand and support the "women" who consider themselves to be non-binary because they do not subscribe to the social expectations of "being a woman" (i.e having sex with a man and having his children, let's be real). It is also the reason why St Paul said the following :

You either choose slavery (sex, lust) or you choose God (the Sacred Light within yourself). Years ago, I would have considered that quote to be stupid, now I fully understand it.

Finally, I want everyone to understand that, as fucked up as this statement is : every misogynistic institution of the past was created for a reason ! Every misogynistic statement from philosophers or writers did not come out of the blue. They saw how the "class" of women was behaving, so how could they not draw the conclusion they drew ? Women of today are no more intelligent than their ancestors, they are actually perpetuating their misery. The woman of the past married and had kids, women today still choose men above everything else. I still see women getting played by stupid men, I still see women hating on other women because of sexual competition, I still see women proudly inferiorizing themselves to appease their husband, I still see women grooming girls and other women into thinking that heterosexuality is the right way to live, I still see women being the main adherents of "patriarchal" religions, I still see women proudly asserting that they like being submissive to their men, I still see women letting their kids being abused by their partner, I still see women proudly sexualizing themselves and calling it "empowerment"... I could go on for hours.

It is not men who are brainwashing women to become submissive and subservient to them, it is OTHER WOMEN. "The Good Wife's Guide" was written by Darlene Schacht, where she encourages women to joyfully serve their families. There are plenty of books written by women telling other women how to be happy slaves. Women, as a collective, DESERVE their second class citizenship because that is what they subconsciously desire at the end of the day.

The only thing to remember from what I wrote is that simple fact : women, as a collective, will ALWAYS prioritize sexual gratification and male validation over ANYTHING ELSE. Their health, their sanity, their life, their family, anything else is secondary next to male validation. Acknowledging that fact is NOT misogyny, it is simply common sense. If you are intelligent, realize that the average woman is NOT your friend and that she could ditch you in a heartbeat over the dumbest thing. But this realization should not sadden you, it should only make you realize that you are part of a different breed of highly intelligent Beings, an Elite if you prefer ❤️ Realize that if you are TRULY different from other women, none of the misogynistic things that were or are said applies to you. Women have built their own cage and perpetuate their own oppression, men have NEVER been responsible for women's choices, despite what the average individual wants you to believe.

I will end with this Elisée Reclus quote : "To place upon others the responsibility for one’s own conduct means to be lacking in valor."

you can't be kind if people don't know that you have the ability and the power to be cruel. if you are kind, kinder than necessary, more polite than what is expected, people will just assume that, oh, she cares too much, she mustn't have power == i can take advantage of this. if you haven't already blatantly established that you are the powerful party in a relationship (business or interpersonal), you have to be cold. stay on guard. you can't be kind if people don't know that you have the power to be cruel.

i remember reading trustyourperceptions' post about how the hippie forgiveness and positive thinking is elevating for dudes but for women it's an admission of capitulation.

and it's true. for women it is an admission of capitulation because women are the underclass which does not assert itself. you are kind as opposed to what? what is your other option? what are you gonna do to me if i try to take advantage of your kindness?

kindness overlaps with bootlicking behavior too closely for people to ignore, they will correctly identify your excessive kindness as wimpiness.

I live in France and I can tell you that the Muslim women who supposedly 'fled' the oppressive lifestyle in Muslim countries actually imported it here !! No matter where they go, they import their oppressive and horrible mentality. If they were truly oppressed, they would not want to keep living their old lifestyle in a country that gives them actual freedom. They flee their oppression only to implement it in free countries. Then when these free countries inevitably become Islamic territories, they will probably cry about being 'oppressed'. It is an endless cycle. NOBODY hates freedom more than women. Nobody. Most women serve men's interests. That is the reason why the distinction between women and men is pointless : no matter who governs, no matter who has the religious or political power... men will be victorious in the end because that is what women want. Both the majority of males and females are in favor of male supremacy. What we call the 'patriarchy' is simply the logical consequence of most people's thoughts, actions, principles, motivations, values and wishes.

I believe the conversation was about how many women are already reluctant to submit sexually to their husbands (because they're just being used) and how healing it is in every way to go 4B; and of course the male-partnered tradwhore has to come into the conversation to say that acshully, having sex with your husband 𝘦𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 is what's healing, because it "helps with depression" and that you're hurting yourself more by not submitting.

For context I've been heavily involved in liberal & radical feminist spaces, skirted around marxfems but they're all similar behaviour wise while claiming to be better than others which is what all the below points are based on. All of these apply irrespective of the type of feminism.

Feminism failed - Around 2020/2021 when I was still a feminist, I read an article about how feminism failed and realised it was right. It highlighted how it's been decades of feminism yet it took a pandemic to set women back (women turning to sex work to survive, women quitting their jobs to take care of kids) and it got me thinking. All this pandering to moids, all this work, yet women are always one political disaster away from losing it all. Now tbf it isn't exactly a fair battle with decades of established feminism going up against millenias of oppression but the below points certainly do not help feminism move womens freedom/rights forward.

So much infighting - Nobody is ever a true feminist. Despite everything feminists would say about maIe violence & how it affects womens lives; they'd lash out, smear, or block women that actually hated maIes. I'll never forget being blocked by a big feminist page for saying how women would be better off living without maIes in our lives using their poll data collected on what women would do if maIes didn't exist for 24 hours. They claimed I was being hateful to maIes like come tf on everyone else gets to hate their oppressor but women. Also I've noticed feminists are generally nicer to maIes despite all the abuse but harsher to women they disagree with. Complaining about maIes is just a hobby to them, when a woman more serious comes along they attack that woman more than they attack abusive maIes. Similarly they defend maIes more fiercely than they defend women & girls. Says a lot about their character. I'll expand more on these phenomenons on lower points. Having civil disagreements among feminists is rare (which is what happens when there's no direction) as disagreements will end up in explosive fights full of abuse, smearing, doxxing, etc. It's especially worse as a lot of the time these fights are over moids.

No clear goal or direction - It can't even be agreed among feminists who the movement is for, who is benefitting & being harmed by the system, and the goal. I get that there's usually factions within big ideologies but there's almost no cohesion among feminists which makes it difficult to even discuss let alone advocate so instead of moving forward, feminists go around in circles. Feminism doesn't seem to actually be going anywhere.

Not helpful to marginalised women (in the west) - Despite claims of adopting Intersectionality, marginalised women are often left out of serious mainstream conversations by feminists i.e. black women left out of blm as voices & efforts are focused on marginalised maIes.

Lot of copium - Rather than addressing problems, many feminists want to pretend the problem doesn't exist with a sister circle of women that'll do the same.

Realised how toxic & complicit women are - Even several feminists can be toxic maIe lovers willing to drag any woman & her name through mud for maIes sake. So much enabling behaviour is peddalled in the name of "sisterhood" but let it be a woman that doesn't want anything to do with maIes and feminists have no problem excluding & hating on her. Feminists speak about how women are just too kind & empathetic for their own good which is very misleading. Women are manipulative & also calculative with their actions, they aren't the innocent victims feminists preach them to be (not saying they have to be innocent but it's disingenuous & reckless pretending otherwise). Women (including feminists) will be gentle with maIes but harsher with women; especially women that merely disagree with them. Another issue I have with feminists is that (especially with radfems) they push "men bad women good" agenda when women are also bad. Just because they're oppressed doesn't mean they cant be bad. Whenever women have power (esp over other women) they can be evil. Besides the fact that women still love moids despite everything they do & their "bountless empathy goodwill nature" mostly extends to maIes says a lot about their so-called "goodness".

Realised most of this is just a pass-time until women find & lock in their nigels - Even fierce radical feminists of the 80s that went all out eventually settled down with a moid & kids reflecting on their radfem days as a hobby. I'm not looking to do the same. Many feminists, even the most staunch ones eventually end up bragging about finding a good man that's not like the rest, he's different they're sure of it (said every woman ever). The thing that gets me is that they cant even shut up about their nigel in a space supposedly for women, they want to affirm their ego by flaunting their special nigel to other women then months down the line it's "actually he was a manipulative POS" sure sis.

Saw how common maIe panderering is - each type of feminist accuses the other of pandering to maIes when they all do it, just in different ways and yes this includes radfems which was my last straw. Also many feminists prop up maIe voices even for the most simplest thing, they'll stand behind maIes being treated like crap by other ones for defending women but they wouldn't do that to women. I've realised that for most feminists it isn't about helping women advance irrespective of maIes but reforming maIes for their personal desires which takes me to the next point.

Despite all the complaining, statistics, news, theory, analysis; most feminists want to be with a moid & reproduce at some point completely overlooking everything they preach - I've realised how performative most feminists are. Separatism & the notion of not dating or reproducing with maIes gets so much hate bc these women only want to complain & get dopamine off playing victim. They want to have their cake and eat it and I want to part in that. Gets draining being in these spaces if you actually want nothing to do with moids & their evil. You get attacked for hating or wanting nothing to do with maIes instead of wanting to reform them. It's at a point where I'm agitated seeing the same headlines, discourse, theory, etc repetitively. It's like a pest, it irritates me because nothing will change. Moids will continue to abuse women with no consequences & women (including feminists) will continue to love them. I just dont care anymore. I've noticed the maIe panderers & reformers obsess over the repetitive theory, headlines, stats, etc because they want to change maIes to make it easier to settle down with them. Those of us who see that moids are past the point of redemption & want them gone aren't spending our days dolling out the same stats & theories. Look at many serious separatist/4b et al pages, many of them don't talk about maIes much (second half of this anons ask was questioning why I don't prominently speak about men & misogyny) and this is because we see the pattern, have drawn our conclusions, and now want to move forward. Saw the below photo in my gallery & it sums up this point tho it applies to all feminist communities. Drives you crazy when you're not invested in maIes or forming relationships with them. SN; bear discourse is also an example of this.

Realised that this goes beyond witty one-liners & comebacks - I feel like many feminists have created a culture of who can have the hottest take & it's become a thing of snapping back at maIes sorta like the below video explains rather than caring about women.

At some point when you actually don't care for maIes, you don't feel much & the discourse means nothing. I dont care if their behaviour is social or biological, I dont care if they can be reformed, I don't care if I or my actions dont make sense to moids, I just view them all as threats & want to be safe from their evil. No amount of throwing stats & headlines at moids will get them to change. Even if you "win" debates it doesn't bring material value for women but of course this pads many feminists egos as they've got an interest in changing maIes.

Saviour complex - many feminists have saviour complexes which causes arrogance fuelling many of the problems above. People are more aware than they let on and this includes about misogyny but a lot of feminists care more about looking like heros to feel good about themselves rather than actually helping women & girls. P.S todays set of feminists aren't the first set (or even first 3) of women to have the 'theory' of patriarchy that they do.