Gender Studies Resource Links

  Abstract A review is made of feminist explanations for spousal homicide, and a failure to investigate intrapsychic processes is noted. Recent work on suicide is cited as showing insight into cognitive processes involved in spousal homicide, for example, as an escape from pain (called “psychache”).  Certain personality features, such as insecure attachment and borderline personality, are reviewed as especially vulnerable to psychache. For unknown reasons, males seem more susceptible to destructive behavior upon relationship dissolution. The main target of this destructive behavior is the self, followed by spousal homicide. "In a study of 6,321 partner homicides, only 6.5% of female victims experienced domestic violence in the preceding month" "5% of male victims in opposite-sex pairings were perpetrators of violence in the month preceding the homicide" "Perpetrators of murder-suicide had profiles consistent with suicidal people but not with murderers" Mur...

  Abstract A review of 20 articles (with a collective  N  of 16,463) was conducted assessing reasons given by perpetrators for their commission of intimate partner violence (IPV). College, community, and batterer intervention program samples were used. Five studies used Follingstad's (1991) Motivation and Effects Questionnaire to assess reported motivations. This had an advantage in standardizing the definitions of motives, which varied widely in other studies. Perpetrators of IPV, whether male or female, do not describe their motives in gender-political terms. Instead, they describe them in psychological terms, such as anger, frustration, or gaining attention. The most frequently endorsed reasons were anger (68% by women, 47% by men) and gaining attention (53% by women, 55% by men). Self-defense was the least endorsed (7th of seven motives). The implications of this finding for the gender paradigm are discussed. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330771094_In_Their...