"intimate Terrorism" and Injury of Dating Partners by Male and Female University Students

This article re-conceptualizes "Intimate Terrorism" to more fully reflect the fact that violence between partners is inherently a dyadic phenomenon. The methodological objective is to provide procedures for using the Conflict Tactics Scales to identify Intimate Terrorism. This study reports data on 13,877 university students which found that, among those in physically violent relationships, 20% of men and 26% of women met Johnson's criteria for Intimate Terrorism. Bi-directional violence was associated with the highest probability of injury. Results are consistent with other studies using Johnson's procedures on general population samples. Programs to reduce PV, including reducing violence against women, should address violence and coercive control by both partners. Since the introduction of the concept of Patriarchal or Intimate Terrorism (Johnson, 1995; Johnson & Ferraro, 2000), it has been the focus of wide interest. Intimate terrorism is one category of a typology of violence created by Johnson (1995) which provides a method of classifying couples into the following four types of partner violence (PV): Intimate Terrorism is violence enacted in the service of taking general control over one's partner. Mutual Violent Control involves both partners engaging in coercive control and violence. Violent Resistance is violence enacted in resistance to Intimate Terrorism. Situational Couple Violence is violence that arises in the context of specific conflicts that become arguments that escalate to violence(Johnson, 2006). The focus of this paper is on the Intimate Terrorist type because it is the central feature and most frequently cited aspect of Johnson's work. 3 Johnson's theoretical contribution has two aspects. First, it involves recognition of the fact that physical assault on a partner (Partner Violence or PV from here on) does not occur in a vacuum. It is inherently part of a dyadic relationship, even when only one partner is violent. Second, it incorporates the central place of coercion in the feminist theory of PV. Johnson's criteria for identifying types of PV use the presence or absence of both physical assault and a high level of coercive control by the violent partner. The physical violence does not need to be severe or chronic. In fact, Johnson states that " …the frequency and severity of the violence has no bearing whatsoever on whether the violence is classified as intimate terrorism " (Johnson, 2008 page 94). This is based on the assumption that a single slap can sometimes serve to assert and maintain dominance. This reflects the current feminist …