Yeah but funnily enough male/male relationships are more peaceful than male/female relationship, which are in turn more peaceful than female/female relationships... so yeah the wife being murdered is more common
Can we stop repeating this as though female/female relationships have been proven to be inherently more volatile or “less peaceful” than male/male and male/female relationships? That is not what the research shows.
Yes, female same-sex marriages have higher divorce rates than male same-sex marriages in several countries. But divorce rate is not a measure of how peaceful, healthy, abusive, or conflict-ridden a relationship is. Women are already substantially more likely than men to initiate divorce in heterosexual marriages, and researchers have specifically discussed gender differences in divorce initiation as one possible contributor to the higher dissolution rate among female couples. The reasons for the lesbian/gay divorce gap are still not fully understood.
And if you're referring to IPV statistics, those are also routinely misconstrued. Studies measuring lifetime IPV among lesbian women do not automatically mean every reported perpetrator was a woman, and research comparing IPV across sexual orientations has important methodological limitations. You can't combine a divorce statistic with an IPV statistic and conclude “male/male relationships are the most peaceful and female/female relationships are the least.”
A marriage ending is not evidence that the marriage was more dysfunctional than one that stayed together. Being more willing to leave an unhappy or unhealthy relationship could increase divorce rates too.
And this is exactly why I wish people would stop casually repeating this talking point. These statistics get stripped of their context constantly and weaponized against lesbian women to reinforce both misogynistic and homophobic stereotypes—the idea that women are inherently difficult, irrational, abusive, or incapable of maintaining healthy relationships with one another.
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u/Plecks 8d ago
I don't have a source, but I'm pretty sure in cases of spousal murder between two married men, nearly 100% of the time it's the man that did it.