Martin D. Schwartz

George Washington University | GW · Department of Sociology

There was a burst of creative social scientific investigation into hypermasculine male athletes’ violence against women in the 1980s and 1990s, but this interest has seemed to have dried up. Furthermore, the extant literature on this problem is for the most part atheoretical and devoid of sociological ways of knowing. Thus, the main goal of this pa...

Research on violence against members of college lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities has rapidly grown in the past few years. Prevalence studies show that sexual minorities enrolled at institutions of higher learning are at higher risk of being victimized by sexual assault, stalking, and intimate partner violence (IPV)...

Researchers have accumulated much social scientific knowledge about the scope, distribution, causes, and outcomes of the physical and sexual abuse of female students in North American institutions of higher learning. However, surveys of technology-facilitated stalking and the dissemination of unwanted sexual messages/images in college campus commun...

Although there is now a large literature on physical and sexual assaults at institutions of higher education, this article expands that knowledge by looking at Kelly's continuum of sexual violence and the concept of polyvictimization. On a campus where 44.9 per cent of the women reported stalking , and 61.4 per cent reported sexual harassment, this...

Since the mid 1980s, North American researchers have accumulated much social scientific knowledge about the extent, distribution, sources, and consequences of physical and sexual violence against college women. However, surveys of technology-facilitated stalking and image-based sexual abuse on college campuses are in short supply. Further, the few...

Previous studies of peer support for various types of violence against college students are heteronormative, being primarily concerned with the abuse of heterosexual women by heterosexual males. Using recent data from the Campus Quality of Life Survey conducted at a large residential college in the South Atlantic part of the US, the main objective...

Abusive Endings offers a thorough analysis of the social-science literature on one of the most significant threats to the health and well-being of women today-abuse at the hands of their male partners. The authors provide a moving description of why and how men abuse women in myriad ways during and after a separation or divorce. The material is pun...

This chapter draws together diverse sources in order to show how children are victimized by abuse at separation and divorce. It also reviews some of the cultural and structural reasons why woman abuse and child abuse are not handled appropriately in the family law context.

How many women are victimized by lethal and nonlethal physical and sexual separation or divorce assault? What are the key risk factors associated with these harms? This chapter seeks to answer these questions, drawing from feminist and other sociological perspectives on violence against women.

This chapter reviews widely read and cited social scientific theories of separation and divorce violence against women. Explanations covered include the male proprietariness thesis, the challenge thesis, a feminist/male peer support model of separation and divorce sexual assault, a rural masculinity crisis/male peer support model of separation/divo...

This chapter examines how new electronic technologies are used by men to exert control and power over women during and after separation and divorce. Included in this chapter are sections on cyberstalking, social network site intrusion, and image-based sexual abuse.

This chapter challenges the “common sense” notion that it is essential for a couple to be living apart to be considered separated or divorced. In making this challenge, the authors make the case for a broad, gender-specific definition of separation/divorce violence, one that includes acts of physical violence and psychological means of victimizatio...

This chapter argues that a single strategy will not end the atrocities committed both by men continuing their abuse after separation and by those who were not abusive during a relationship but became so after their partners left them. The solutions proposed are legal and criminal justice reforms; social services; economic policies; feminist men's e...

Abusive Endings offers a thorough analysis of the social-science literature on one of the most significant threats to the health and well-being of women today—abuse at the hands of their male partners. The authors provide a moving description of why and how men abuse women in myriad ways during and after a separation or divorce. The material is pun...

Often referred to by journalists, policy makers, and the general public as revenge porn, image-based sexual abuse is starting to garner serious legal and social scientific attention. However, theoretical developments have thus far not kept pace with the growing empirical and legal literature on this electronic variant of woman abuse. Further, this...

Critical criminological theory, the subject of this chapter, is a descriptive term that covers a broad range of theoretical positions. A criminological theory explains how and why some people at some times and in some circumstances deviate or not from some social norm or norms. Today, the Division on Critical Criminology of the American Society of...

Left realists continue to offer progressive ways of studying and solving various types of crime in the streets, in the “suites,” and in intimate relationships. This article briefly describes the central themes, assumptions, and concepts of left realism and charts new directions in research, theory, and policy. Special attention is devoted to using...

In 1988, Walter S. DeKeseredy announced Male Peer Support (MPS) Theory, which popularized the notion that certain all-male peer groups encourage, justify, and support the abuse of women. In 1993, DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz modified and expanded MPS Theory. Today, after twenty-five years of research, numerous studies from a diverse range of f...

Left realists contend that people lacking legitimate means of solving the problem of relative deprivation may come into contact with other frustrated disenfranchised people and form subcultures, which in turn, encourage criminal behaviors. Absent from this theory is an attempt to address how, today, subcultural development in North America and else...

Informed by several studies of woman abuse in rural settings, the main objective of this paper is to discuss how key principles of Second Generation Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) can be applied to help design appropriate community-based prevention strategies for improving the security of women living in rural places from abu...

Strikingly, scant attention has focused on the victimization of women who want to leave their hostile partners. Dangerous Exits, a groundbreaking work challenges the perception that rural communities are safe havens from the brutality of urban living. Identifying hidden crimes of economic blackmail and psychological mistreatment, and the complex re...

Data collected at Canadian public housing estates in eastern Ontario are used here to analyze two hypotheses. Overall these women report more violence than do otherwise situated women in other general surveys. More specifically, complex theoretical models were designed to generate two hypotheses for further analysis: First, that separated/divorced...

Aucune étude nord-américaine n'a examiné de façon systé'matique l'importance des divers types degressions sexuelles, notamment le harcèlement sexuel et racial, que subissent les femmes dans les logements sociaux. Les logements sociaux et les rues des quartiers pauvres du centre-ville sont les endroits typiques où se jouent les relations de force en...

Attempting to solve the problem of interpersonal violence by dealing with the private problems of individuals is a strategy doomed to failure. With high-level social forces combining to facilitate rape, abuse, and stalking, programs to end these problems must be painted with broad strokes. Male peer support is an important aspect of society giving...

Since the 1970s, many studies have enhanced a social scientific understanding of the lethal and non-lethal physical abuse of women during and after separation and divorce, but less than a handful have examined sexual assaults on rural women who want to leave, are trying to leave, or who have left spouses or live-in male partners. Further, none of t...

After decades of neglect, a growing number of scholars have turned their attention to issues of crime and criminal justice in the rural context. Despite this improvement, rural crime research is underdeveloped theoretically, and is little informed by critical criminological perspectives. In this article, we introduce the broad tenets of a multi-lev...

Although several studies find that the most dangerous part of an intimate relationship for women is when it breaks up, relatively few studies look at women who want to break up a relationship, are in the process of leaving, or who have left a relationship. This qualitative exploratory study looks at incidents of sexual assault committed by former h...

Although postmodern theory has virtually exploded throughout the social sciences, thus far it has only begun to touch criminology. This piece identifies some of the principal themes associated with postmodern thought, reasons for the current interest in it, and its potential relevance for criminology. There are many postmodernisms, but special atte...

In recent years “welfare reform” has become a vehicle for many neo-conservative social commentators to invoke marriage vows as a cure for poverty and the abuse of poor women. Their basic claim is that cohabiting relationships are not only more violent than marriages, but that married couples are happier, healthier, and wealthier than cohabiting one...

There has been virtually no research on the linkages between poor minority women's attitudes toward woman abuse and their experiences of mistreatment. In this article, this relationship is explored for 144 women from three racial groups living in public housing in a Minnesota city. One unique aspect of the study is the inclusion of Hmong women, mem...

The most important thing we have learned about violence against women over the past 20 years is that violence is gendered and learned and can only be understood in the context of gender inequality. Most violence is male, and although some violence is done by females, it is far from equal and often done for very different reasons. Among other major...

Many contend that the logical solution to woman abuse in marriage/cohabitation is for women to exit through legal separation, divorce, or other means. However, a growing body of empirical work shows that separation or divorce does not necessarily solve the problem of woman abuse. For example, in addition to experiencing lethal or nonlethal forms of...

One of the results of Western capitalism has been the increasing pressure for the privatization of the criminal justice system. Although there has long been private or nonprofit involvement in corrections, a newer response has been to turn entire prisons over to private enterprise, or to pay private prisons to house state or federal inmates. Progre...

This exploratory study attempted to deal with the surprisingly small amount of scientific study of crime victimization specifically on public housing estates, particularly in Canada. In this study, 325 public housing residents in six estates in an Eastern Ontario urban center filled out survey questionnaires, while fifty-one were interviewed. Compa...

Although it has not yet been applied to domestic violence and other types of crime in Canadian public housing, the social disorganization/collective efficacy model described in this article may help explain why people who live in such areas characterized by poverty and joblessness report higher rates of intimate partner violence and several other o...

The physical, sexual and psychological abuse of women in intimate relationships cuts across all sociodemographic groups. However, women who are socially and economically disenfranchised, such as those who live in urban public housing estates, report much higher rates of such victimization than do their more affluent counterparts. Still, a review of...

Routine activities theorists traditionally have assumed offenders' motivation and victims' suitability from demographic correlates, and have done little to study effective guardianship. In this paper we ask questions directly of male date rape offenders to test the proposal that male peer support provides motivation; we ask lifestyle questions dire...

That women have a greater fear of crime than men has often been termed irrational or paradoxical, but this article joins those who argue that the gendered nature of fear is well grounded. The authors investigate the extent to which various factors—including prior victimization, perceptions of neighborhood disorder, routine activities, and neighborh...

Despite many calls for integratedwoman abuse theories, few have made any suchattempts. Taking as a starting point thatgender blind and conservative theories maystill have some value, Hirschi''s social bondtheory is examined with insights from feministmale peer support theory and other criticalperspectives. The goal is not a formal newtheory but rat...

Stopping woman abuse on the North American college campus has not been very successful thus far. There is a major backlash, where students, faculty, and administrators too often either feel that the problem is not very significant or support the patriarchal rights of men. Programs begun by many campuses have not worked very well, partially because...

There are numerous methodological pitfalls in the use of survey data to study violence against women. This article reviews some of the major problems, including definitional problems, operationalization of concepts, recall bias, underreporting, question order, external validity, and the sex and ethnicity of interviewers. Recommendations for improvi...

1.Overview of Research 2. Police Culture and its Contradictions 3. Service Delivery 4. Male Rape: Contrasts and Similarities 5. Analysis of Attrition in Sexual Assault and Rape Cases 6. Complainants Speak Out 7. Proposals for Reform

Many researchers have been attracted to broad, national-level surveys as an antidote to the more usual practice of studying woman abuse in one location or campus and presuming that the results generalize to the entire population. However, the reverse error is also possible: presuming that one national rate may adequately represent a variety of diff...

Backlash critics of campus rape research have claimed that researchers exaggerate their figures by labeling as rape victims those women who experience bad dates. Although researchers have compared stranger with acquaintance rape victims, they have not compared women raped while too drunk to resist and those raped by force. This study of 65 rape vic...

The Historical, Social and Political Context of the Canadian National Survey on Woman Abuse in Dating The Incidence and Prevalence of Woman Abuse in Canadian Courtship 'But Women Do It Too' The Meanings of and Motives for Women's Use of Violence Risk Factors and Dating Abuse Progressive Policy Proposals

Cet article se penche sur l'influence que peut exercer la pornographie sur les comportements d'abus sexuels perpetres a l'encontre des femmes Canadiennes dans le cadre de relations intimes a l'Universite. Il apparait que si on ne peut etablir une causalite directe entre consommation de pornographie et violence sexuelle, la pornographie fournit un a...

Although legalized gambling, and in particular casino gambling, has become an increasingly important American leisure activity, it has not escaped extensive controversy. Among the many evils forecast for communities that open casinos is a major increase in street crime. This article will review what we know about the relationship between street cri...

What accounts for the fact that woman abuse in postsecondary school dating "happens with alarming regularity" (S. Lloyd, 1991)? Of course, demographic or behavioral characteristics (called risk factors) are associated with the types of male-to-female victimization uncovered by the CNS (Canadian National Survey) and other dating abuse studies. Never...

Data from a Canadian nationwide representative sample of 1,835 female college students were used to test a variety of propositions about women's use of violence in dating relationships. It has become progressively common in both Canada and the United States to argue that women are as violent as men. Although in a crude counting of violent acts thes...

There are 2 purposes for this book. In the 1st place, it is designed to be an introduction to the topic of sexual assault on college campuses. Throughout this book, we will present both theories and the latest empirical findings on a broad range of issues related to sexual assault. A few of the questions we will discuss include: How often does sexu...

PIP This study examines whether male support groups, specifically fraternities, supports the victimization of women, and the extent of its relationship to alcohol use. 119 self-administered questionnaires were analyzed. Among male subjects, 93.3% were Whites with an average age of 20.5 years; approximately 22% of this sample were members of fratern...

Routine activities theory has generally focused on macro-level data, and has ignored sexual violence. Although virtually all researchers in this area have built offender motivation into the theory, and have treated it simply as a “given,” few have tried to explain it. Feminist theory on campus sexual assaults, however, not only explains offender mo...

The experiences of prostitutes have been missing from studies of violence and rape, as has the problem of violence from studies of prostitution. Interviews here with 16 street prostitutes, most of whom are crack users, reveal an enormous amount of rape and violence against these women. Further, it is found that rape myths generally discussed in the...

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The process of the social construction of woman abuse includes the essential idea of typification: that how we typify abused women can be a part of justifying help, or it can provide the scientific justification for a male discourse which legitimates abuse and buffers batterers from guilt. Because Straus and Gelles are widely used by the press and...

Although all‐male friendship networks may have an important effect in motivating some men to physically, sexually, and psychologically harm female intimates, particularly in dating relationships, the study of the dynamics of these groups is still limited. DeKeseredy's early model has some of the best explanatory value, but it fails to address a num...

This paper describes the development of the Battered Women Scale (BWS), an instrument based on the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) designed by Spence, Helmreich and Stapp (1974) and widely used to measure gender role trait ascription. Following arguments in the literature that battered women have particular traits, and the argument here tha...

There is a severe lack of knowledge about sexual assault on Canadian college campuses. This exploratory study of 259 Canadian undergraduate women (mostly white, of British or European heritage, with about half from families of total incomes of over Can $50,000) provides evidence that although Canada generally has a lower crime rate than the United...

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Starr, MacLean, Keating, Life Span Developmental Outcomes of Child Maltreatment. Egeland, A Longitudinal Study of High Risk Families: Issues and Findings. Herrenkohl, Herrenkohl, Wu, The Developmental Consequences of Child Abuse: The Lehigh Longitudinal Study. Vietze, O'Connor, Sherrod, Altemeier, The Early Screening Project. Zuravin, Research Defi...

It is commonplace to argue that learning cannot take place in the mass class, that evaluations of teachers are lower, that students' grades are lower, and that it is generally a bad experience even if necessary. I argue here that some of these perceptions are wrong: at least fact-based learning is possible, good teaching is possible, and students w...

Left realism has generated enormous interest and controversy in critical criminology over the past several years both in North America and in the United Kingdom. While there are important similarities between the writings from these countries, there are also some deep differences and divisions. This article provides some explication of these simila...

Although there is an already large British literature both supporting and attacking left realism, and a growing North American interest on the subject among criminologists, there has been surprisingly little written which attempts to locate both the strengths and weaknesses of the left realist position on crime control. Perhaps the place where the...