> I believe it is a common strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in order to gain some sort of advantage over their partners following a breakup.
Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or murder from their partners or former partners.
> they are much more likely then men to be the victim
That's the common belief. How do we know it's true, and not a "just so" story?
My investigations into this led me to CDC reports (and others) showing that DV / IPV was largely 50/50. Harm was more often done to the smaller partner (i.e. women). But women also tended to use more weapons in their attacks.
These reports aren't hard to find. Most people don't look.
In particular, from the key findings sections of the report from the National Violence Against Women Survey:
"Women experience more intimate partner
violence than do men: 22.1 percent of sur-
veyed women, compared with 7.4 percent
of surveyed men, reported they were physi-
cally assaulted by a current or former
spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend or
girlfriend, or date in their lifetime; 1.3 per-
cent of surveyed women and 0.9 percent of
surveyed men reported experiencing such
violence in the previous 12 months. Ap-
proximately 1.3 million women and 835,000
men are physically assaulted by an intimate
partner annually in the United States." [1]
Rather than look at all cases of "harm", look at the serious cases, like murder, or harm requiring a hospital visit/stitches/broken bones/etc. What's the split then?
Each year, more than one million people in the United States
obtain restraining orders for intimate partner rape, physical
assault, or stalking (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). An estimated
18.9% of the more than 5 million U.S. women and 4.3% of the more
than 3 million U.S. men who are physically abused, raped, or
stalked by an intimate partner each year seek and are granted a
restraining order.
This is very good info. This highlights that the notion that men or women getting restraining orders to get back at a former partner isn't the primary motivation for getting a TRO or RO like the parent claimed.
"A common strategy" and "the primary motivation" aren't the same thing. The revenge / inconvenience / embarrassment / cost factor does come into play, however.
> Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or murder from their partners or former partners.
Whether or not that is the case, it is also possible that it is more that when they are (or, in the case of murder, expect to be) the victims of such things, they feel they don't have other effective remedies outside the legal system, whereas men feel more able to respond effectively (whether or not legally) with physical violence.
This goes both ways. When I (a man) was the target of some really pretty severe domestic violence (I was threatened with a knife, attacked with blunt objects and more several times a week), the reason why I eventually decided (quite deliberatively) to respond with physical force was that I looked at what my options were in the legal system and realized I didn't have any, that if I called the cops, they'd probably arrest me, not her. So I hit back with very measured force (except one time she hit me from behind with a blunt object and I hit back with full force once out of fear she might have knife in her other hand). Given the scale of what I was going through I don't think anyone would claim it wasn't self-defence.
So these things to some extent perpetuate eachother.
Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or murder from their partners or former partners.