Faulty Statistics - Blog Posts

Note: The phrase “the chart” refers to the graph in iamretrograde’s post, titled “Comparisons of Intimate Partner Violence Against Various Categories.”

I did a reverse image search on the chart, followed by searching for the text. This led me to this site http://chart-mining.com/comparison-of-intimate-partner-violence-against-various-categories/, which has the graph followed by a source. They source it as being from http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02 . I followed the link, but it didn’t have the image, just a page telling me that I could use the website’s search bar to help find what I was looking for.

I tried searching for some of the keywords used on the image with the site’s search bar and discovered two things:

1. The site has an extreme anti-LGBT+ agenda and is extremely biased.

2. I could not find any mention of the supposed statistics. I did find this article: http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF08L44.pdf , which says, “ ‘Domestic violence is reported to occur in about 11 percent of lesbian homes,’ the article [this is referencing another study] states. It goes on to claim that this is ,about half the rate of 20 percent reported by heterosexual women.’ However, this comparison fails to note that the highest rates of domestic violence among heterosexuals occur among those who are divorced, separated, cohabiting, or in sexual relationships outside of marriage; married women experience the lowest rates of domestic violence of any household arrangement.” Which, as far as I can tell, is claiming that this is study doesn’t count because heterosexual married women are less likely to experience domestic violence than unmarried heterosexual women who have a male partner. This may be true, I’m not sure, but I fail to see how this proves their point. In addition, these figures are significantly lower in both cases than the figures given on the graph.

I then looked up the article they reference. It’s here: http://www.glma.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageID=691 . The organization publishing it, the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (yes, they will also be biased) has removed the statistic and didn’t cite their sources, so that’s mostly a dead end. I found a few other sources, but all of them have various flaws (convenience sampling, over-specificity, etc.) that make them not useful.

Overall, I could not find anything to back up the statistics in that graph. If we accept the statistics provided by an anti-LGBT+ organization, who have a vested interest in the opposite result, then we have clear evidence that domestic violence occurs at lower rates among two-woman couples than one-man one woman couples. Since two-woman couples would have twice as many opportunities to occur, this would seem to indicate that, from a domestic violence point of view, it is safer for a woman to be in a relationship with another woman than with a man. Furthermore, it is safer overall for everyone than that chart indicates. (This does not mean the given statistics are good! However, they are less bad.)

If someone can find a source to back up the chart, I will absolutely reconsider this; until then, it looks like its claims are false.

Heterosexuality is Stockholm Syndrome