Thanks for the info on anon mode, I’ll click that link later and take a look. Back on older PC now regardless.
You are referring to this screenshot, right?
If you’re referring to the screenshot you just posted of the reddit thread, then disregard what I am about to write. I did not have access to the full post anymore when I wrote that comment. I’ll review the rest of the thread for other claims later. But for now I’m assuming this is the screenshot in question since it was what I was replying to above.
Looking at this screenshot, I stand by what I said. I also downloaded one of the spreadsheets and scrolled through it and did not see anything that contradicts what I said. I’ll try to explain it more clearly.
The lefthand columns are for the characteristics of the respondents. The individual respondents. What age are they, what nationality, what marital status, what sexual orientation, etc.
None of these fields are for characteristics of the relationships. Quoting just a snippet of your sentence to focus in:
That’s the inaccurate assumption you’re making. What it actually says is the rate for any kind of abuse from one partner on the other for women who identify as lesbians is 9.8 somethings.
You are assuming this implies a female perpetrator. But it doesn’t. Someone identifying as a lesbian on the survey does not imply that their previous abuse was in a lesbian relationship. It doesn’t tell us anything about their previous abusive relationship one way or the other.
As I said before…
Although… note that a girl who thought she was straight, tried to break up with her boyfriend because she realized she was a lesbian, was assaulted by the boyfriend when she broke up with him, then was kicked out of her home for being gay and entered into a non-abusive lesbian relationship would present as the exact same person in these studies. e.g. “Lesbian who experienced IPV within the last 12 months.”
Given the largest age categories surveyed are 18-19 and 20-24, it’s not implausible at all for them to have experienced more than one relationship in the past 12 months. And given that this is true repeatedly across multiple years of surveys, the surveys are consistently capturing different people, since the same person can’t be in the same age category for more than a few years in a row. If the surveys were following the same people we would expect the largest age categories to get older over time, but they don’t.
Does that make sense now?
As a thought experiment to help crystallize my point: imagine a regressive society where 100% of women who come out as gay are assaulted by state appointed agents as a punitive type of conversion therapy. In that society, 100% of lesbians would report having experienced abuse in their past. And the numbers on a 12 month rolling period would still be huge, especially for lower age brackets where people are more likely to have come out. Even if there were 0 abusive lesbians in such a society, a survey like this would show massively larger numbers for abuse reported by lesbian respondents.
Hopefully that helps clarify my point. This is why I said:
It’s worth emphasizing that this data doesn’t say that lesbians are more likely to commit IPV, or that lesbian relationships have higher rates of IPV. It has never said that, previously or now.