There are dozens of threads on here every week about male-on-female (MOF) violence, and this thread is in no way aimed at belittling those, but i was reading an article last night that made a lot of sense.
Essentially the article was saying that there is more female-on-male domestic (FOM) violence than the other way round. It went on to say that although the severity of the violence is less than when a man dishes it out, it's a lot more commonplace.
Generally violence commited by women is unreported and no one has any real ideas about how much takes place but from studies conducted they were saying something like 60-70% of the adult male population has had some form of violence committed by them at some point during their life by their partner. This ranges from slaps and thrown objects, to full on stabbings and being pushed down stairs.
The problem is that men don't report these attacks very often. Usually they have the social stigma of admitting they were attacked by a 'weaker, smaller' person attached, they also have the fact the no one takes it seriously, chucki in the fact that it's socially acceptable for a woman to hit a man but not vice-versa.
We've all seen the Little Mo storyline on Eastenders and the various storys and programmes devoted to FOM violence, we've all seen soaps where the man acts like a b'stard so his girlfriend/wife slaps him, when was the last time you saw mainstream tv devoted to FOM violence though?
Why is it acceptable for a woman to slap a man when he's cheated; but if the tables were turned and she was the one playing away from home, if he gave her a slap it would be domestic violence with the whole police drama attached.
It's more acceptable for the simple reason that a woman is less capable of inflicting actual GBH. But of the many men I've heard of who end up being hospitalised because of their wive's violence, they don't appear to be as emotionally affected as would a woman in the same circumstances.