Speaking from a professional background including research, and evidence-based-practice I have a long history of working with scientific research.

Now that I'm done humble bragging🙃...

1. This study is a review of existing research. It draws data from multiple studies. This is important with the rest of my points and understanding what we're looking at...

2. Most of the research articles do not differentiate violence that occurred in strictly lesbian relationships from relationships that lesbians were in with men prior to coming out as lesbians, and from bisexual relationships. So, most of the research does not at all speak of specifically lesbian relationships. (this point is huge and destroys most of the claims about specifically female-female relationships)

". Goldberg et al (2013) found a lifetime prevalence of 31.9% and a past year prevalence of 10.2% among lesbians asking whether an intimate partner, a “husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, or someone [the participant] lived with or dated,” had “hit, slapped, pushed, kicked, or physically hurt” the survey participant. Messinger (2011) found a lifetime prevalence of 25% among lesbians, and Walters et al (2013) found a lifetime prevalence of 40.4% among lesbians."

"or someone [the participant] lived with or dated" (I mean, come the fuck on)

3. I found only one study within the review that actually specifically states (and if you want to extrapolate any TRUTH about violence in female-female relationships, this is the piece of data you want to zero in on):

Morris et al (2003) found that 9.2% of women who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual had experienced being physically abused by a “female lover” in their lifetimes.

Morris et al (2003) is from a peer reviewed journal.

4. The overall review of research could practically be used to show men are the overwhelming root source/cause of violence, rather than about violence in LGB relationships or even violence in female-female relationships. (lez-be honest, there is so much research out there proving male violence in relationships already).

5. The research makes misleading statements like "Men and women both contribute to the prevalence of IPV among sexual minority women" when their data supports a statement like "Mostly men, but also few women contribute to the prevalence of IPV..." (this is a big part of my distrust for this article, along with point #8)

6. It seems this review of existing research continues to put lesbians in the same column/catagory with bisexuals or "women who have sex with women (WSW)" which skews or blurs data which specifically refers to lesbians and female-female relationships. They are blurring data together and/or referring to two completely different data sets in the same breath.

7. They get away with blending this data together because the review of research isn't specifically designed to analyze female-female relationships but violence in all GLBT relationships across several articles.

8. Importantly, and probably most damning, this review of research articles is from a journal (The Williams Institute) that doesn't, in my investigation, plainly, proudly state that it is a peer reviewed journal. Articles that aren't from peer reviewed journals don't go through the rigorous peer review process, and hold much less weight, and deserve much less consideration because there isn't any scrutiny by the peers within the field of study. This is why when a journal has a peer review process they will state loud, and clear that they practice peer review.

Edit:

9. When I put The Williams Institute into the journal database I use, I can see them in the results. When I apply the peer review filter, their work gets filtered out. This is surprising given they are under the umbrella of UCLA. I wonder if UCLA knows this. HAH!

They don't give a fuck about lesbians, and I get the impression they are trying to soften the data that shows the violence is from males, and it's male violence they are referring to and the entire root cause of this problem is male violence. They are trying to displace the blame on women/lesbians. This feels like DARVO.

In summary, the number you're looking for, and I would argue you could actually trust (though I would like to see more research on the topic) to speak for violence in female-female relationships is 9.2% (Morris et al, 2003).

The web article in "DC Volunteer Lawyers Project" is pulling this data from this study (the study I discussed): https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/IPV-Sexual-Abuse-Among-LGBT-Nov-2015.pdf

I've been an Out adult Lesbian with a registered phone number and health insurance for over 2 decades and never has anyone asked me - not the cops, not a doctor, not a pollster, no one - if I have experienced domestic violence at the hands of another woman.

You'd think, as one bit of the teeny percentage of Out Lesbians, that we would all have been interviewed at some point 😄 Lesbians are all the rage. Some people can't seem to stop talking about us. But yeah, 20 years, no phone call.

I have, as a matter of fact, experienced domestic partner violence from another woman. But no one has ever asked me about it. When it was happening, not even my friends asked. I was with a woman and therefore safe as houses. Even if a woman did get violent with me, I could fight back. Not like being hit by a man, yanno?

Wearing someone down to the point that you can actually hit em and come back takes a great deal of investment in shock and awe.

There's a lot to be said about how violence begets violence. As a mature adult woman, I can certainly appreciate how my upbringing and early relationships steered me toward intensely emotional, extremely physical people who used those traits to excuse emotional and financial abuse culminating in physical violence.

But that's not the sort of thing you think about when your girlfriend bites you bloody during sex or blacks your eye "accidentally" because "You were trying to be sexy" for a stranger at a bar that you can't even remember being in your sight line.

I tend to agree with itscalculated - this study, these numbers take into account women who get involved with men. It's a small, crappy study. The numbers are bad.

Even with my own experiences, I can't believe that half of lesbian relationships involve violence.

I tended to, I think A LOT of people tend to, have a rosy outlook about women. We are "the gentler sex" after all. But that silly romanticism doesn't take into account another woman's mentality when raised by and influenced by violent, angry people.

This study looks like crap and I wonder about who got interviewed.

I sure didn't.

Stay on your toes.

There are women who hate women, and some of those women are same sex attracted.

Ugh, I feel like the Big Horns Debbie Downer noise applies here.

Before I get maybe Reddit style pile driven I want to say Thanks for letting me feel better. Win or lose for me, this circle is a great idea.

edited for a couple of spelling things

The study is flawed.

The study does not account for who performed the violence, only asked as to who has experienced it. Based on the fact that men are responsible for 99% of rape and domestic violence, the math does not work out for women to be the perpetrators here.

Hardly any lesbians I know started out the gate identifying as lesbians, on average we come out later than our male peers.

I've always assumed it was because of your second interpretation, violence from men in their past. I also would not be surprised if straight women were less likely to recognize or admit partner violence, being invested in relationships with men.

I don’t know if the survey is legit, but I find this SO hard to believe. I have never seen a lesbian acting violently and even less when it comes to her partner. Also never heard of any case of lesbian domestic violence

People see that bi and lesbian women have reported dealing with the most domestic violence and assume the perpetrator is always a lesbian for some reason. Here is a quote from the first reference in that link:

"Men and women both contribute to the prevalence of IPV among sexual minority women. For example, the CDC found that 89.5% of bisexual women reported only male perpetrators of intimate partner physical violence, rape, and/or stalking and that almost a third of lesbian women who have experienced such incidents have had one or more male perpetrators."

Their reference was actually a summary of several studies, I didn't read the whole thing but every study I've read that includes the gender of the perpetrator is the same story. Bisexual victims are almost always abused by men, and for lesbians male perpetrators make up a shocking amount of that percentage. I've seen it stated at 40-50%. People just want an excuse to say gay people are bad. It drives me insane whenever I see people assume bisexual women MUST be being abused by lesbians as if they also don't date other bi women and men. As well as the fact most violence is committed by men but in this case for some reason it would be women? It's ridiculous.

ALSO the data is flawed in itself but other comments have already explained that much better than I could.

Survey size matters. It's also from 11 years ago. As does a reporting error: Straight women are perhaps less prone to report a violent bf or husband to police, esp. if it could alert CPS to children in the home.

I’ve always found it odd but attributed it to the possibility that some of the lesbians may be masculine identified or straight up TIFs. I personally know of a woman who had her nose broken by her TIF girlfriend… that testosterone didn’t suddenly make her violent she was already abusive but it did worsen it.

Where'd you see 2013? I deleted my first comment because I thought I must have remembered the wrong survey, but the numbers do seem to match up with a CDC survey from 2010.