Domestic violence is an important issue in same-sex domestic relationships, just as it is in opposite-sex domestic relationships. Many fewer scholarly articles have been written on domestic abuse within lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender relationships than have been written on domestic abuse within heterosexual relationships. Studies of homosexual domestic violence could have transformed the dominant public understanding of domestic violence. They have failed to do so. Studies of homosexual domestic violence largely conform to the dominant, gender-stereotyped public understanding of domestic violence. That conformity serves neither persons in same-sex relationships nor public welfare more generally.

Homosexual domestic-violence experts have pursued their interests much as have heterosexual domestic-violence experts. Two experts on therapy and counseling began their article, entitled “Domestic violence between same-sex partners: Implications for counseling,” with sensational claims about domestic violence:

Domestic violence is a major social and health problem in the United States that affects the family, society, and the future. Between 2 and 4 million women in the U.S. are physically battered annually by their partners, and 25% to 30% of all U.S. women are at risk of domestic violence during their lifetime {two authoritative references omitted}. In 1992, the U.S. Surgeon General declared domestic violence this nation’s number one health problem.{reference omitted} Domestic violence is also prevalent in the gay and lesbian communities, occurring with the same or even greater frequency than in heterosexual communities {four scholarly references omitted}^

This article lays technocratic claim to the major problem of abuse among those who claim to love each other, in the case where those persons have the same sex. After sensationalizing domestic violence against women, the article then claims that domestic violence is an even greater problem in the gay and lesbian communities. Sensationalizing domestic violence against women is closely correlated with gender-stereotyping domestic violence. Gender-stereotyping domestic violence does violence to the experience of gay and lesbian persons. Rather than confront that oppressive practice, scholarship on homosexual domestic violence has pretended that domestic-violence gender stereotyping is not relevant to public discussion of homosexual domestic violence.

In asserting its own importance, homosexual domestic violence scholarship displays all the winning discursive strategies of heterosexual domestic violence expertise. The study that began by sensationalizing domestic violence against women declared righteously in its conclusion:

Any person, male or female or gay or straight, has the potential to be an abuser. Regardless of whether or not the abuse is among heterosexual or same-sex partners, society has always been hesitant to intervene in domestic violence. Society and the gay and lesbian communities must put an end to denial of abuse in same-sex relationships. … With acceptance, awareness, and education, domestic violence can be suppressed in all of society’s populations.^

These aren’t merely harmless pieties. Reason and trust enable civilization. If everyone fears everyone else, including those closest to them, as potential abusers, then life for all becomes nasty and brutish. If any person has the potential to be an abuser, what reason could there be in the authoritative estimate “25% to 30% of all U.S. women are at risk of domestic violence during their lifetime.” None, none at all. Contrary to mythic history, domestic violence has always been a public concern. Nearly half of domestic violence victims are men. Domestic violence is in reality a difficult problem to solve. Expansive criminalization of domestic violence has been central to the rise of mass incarceration. Suppressing awareness and understanding of these realities serves none of society’s populations other than domestic violence experts.^

Homosexual domestic violence studies has favored expert cant and expert self-interest over honest acknowledgement of major problems in domestic violence policy. A scholarly study entitled “Lessons from Examining Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence” gravely declares in its abstract:

In placing the lessons of same-sex IPV {Intimate Partner Violence} in the foreground, we are able to uncover some common truths about IPV in general. Viewing IPV through a same-sex lens removes gender-based assumptions about the manifestations of IPV, enabling us to see how other cultural and systemic factors may contribute to IPV. At the same time, incorporating the experience of same-sex couples facilitates viewing gender as a marker for variables requiring further study rather than as an explanation. When we change our focus of IPV in such a way, we discover it is a function of a complex interaction of culture, social structures, social status, and interpersonal dynamics.^

This declaration of complexity and call for further study obscures the triumph of anti-men gender stereotyping of domestic violence, the deeply entrenched anti-men gender stereotyping in domestic violence research, and gender bias in the justice system’s response to domestic violence. Construction of elaborate domestic violence typologies without acknowledging the prevalent sensationalization of domestic violence against women functions similarly.^ Complexification serves authorized experts’ social status and self-interests.

Same-sex domestic violence scholarship has put forward calls to action subservient to hetero-normative domestic violence policies. Consider a 2012 law review article entitled “Same Violence, Same Sex, Different Standard: An Examination of Same-Sex Domestic Violence and the Use of Expert Testimony on Battered Women’s Syndrome in Same-Sex Domestic Violence Cases.” This article concludes:

First, we must provide a new and comprehensive same-sex domestic violence research study, examining the causes and prevalence of same-sex domestic violence. Second, we must provide more funding and additional social services to same-sex domestic violence victims. Finally, we must create a new expert testimony designed to explain BWS {Battered Women’s Syndrome} and how it pertains to victims of same-sex domestic violence.^

Decades of funding of domestic violence research have generated deeply entrenched anti-men gender bigotry. The call for a new and comprehensive study of same-sex violence keeps in the closet the problem of anti-men gender bigotry in domestic violence research and policy. The article notes the lack of social services for gay men who are victims of domestic violence. Men in general have had vastly inferior domestic violence services for decades. Denial or minimization of the number of men who are victims of domestic violence has supported that inequality. While arguing for equal protection, the article contributes to the unjust and unreasonable minimization of men as domestic violence victims:

While it is true that heterosexual women are most often likely to experience intimate violence from their male partners,7 empirical data now suggests that those in same-sex relationships are proportionally as likely to experience violence in their relationships. {note 7: cites two studies of domestic violence fatalities, glossing the final one with “(citing a number of studies that report between ninety-four and ninety-five percent of all partner assaults are women victimized by men)”}^

Beneath the superficial precision of “between ninety-four and ninety-five percent of all partner assaults are women victimized by men” is the reality that men account for an estimated 42% of persons suffering serious injury from domestic violence. Moreover, if domestic violence is the same in same-sex couples as in opposite-sex couples, then the dominant, gender-stereotyped understanding of domestic violence has been deeply flawed for decades. This article seems oblivious to that broad implication of its own fundamental claim. Consistent with that obliviousness, it seeks to build upon the legal success of Battered Women’s Syndrome. Battered Women’s Syndrome developed within a gender-stereotyped understanding of domestic violence. Battered Women’s Syndrome doesn’t provide a propitious starting point for justice-serving expert testimony in same-sex domestic homicide cases. The article’s final sentence declares:

Same-sex domestic violence victims should no longer be held to a different standard, but rather it is time that victims in same sex relationships receive equal protection.^

That’s roughly equivalent to calling for equal protection under law for black carpenters in the Jim Crow South. Calling for equal protection for same-sex relationships under domestic violence law and policy should embrace a higher ideal than expert self-interest within the dominant, gender-stereotyped expert discourse on domestic violence.