Beyond staged retreat behind virtual ‘gender paradigm’ barricades: the rise and fall of the misrepresentation of partner‐violence, and its eclipse by an understanding of mate‐guarding

Abstract

The notion of partner‐violence as a male‐perpetrated phenomenon is not a scientific position but an amelioration of cognitive‐dissonance within a political mindset. Against all the data, this ‘gender paradigm’ persists as a series of staged retreats as new research debunks each in turn. Supposed highly sex‐differential injury rates, male unilaterality of perpetration, female self‐defence, male ‘control’, and female especial fear are all discredited as reasons to focus solely on men's aggression. By contrast, scientific theorising regarding the root of the great bulk of partner‐violence is in terms of the biological phenomenon of mate‐guarding. However, the usual model of male proprietariness over female fertility itself is in part a ‘gender paradigm’ position. Recently revealed sex‐symmetries necessitate a major overhaul of this model. Drawing on new understanding of the basis of pair‐bonding, outlined here is a parsimonious account of mate‐guarding as being by both sexes; notably women, owing to sex‐dichotomous mate‐value trajectory. This framework heralds the complete abandonment of the ‘gender paradigm’ and thus the end of a highly inappropriate intrusion of extreme ideology into science.

Citation

Moxon, S. (2011), "Beyond staged retreat behind virtual ‘gender paradigm’ barricades: the rise and fall of the misrepresentation of partner‐violence, and its eclipse by an understanding of mate‐guarding", Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 45-54. https://doi.org/10.5042/jacpr.2011.0021

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