What Comes Before Why: Specifying the Phenomenon of Intimate Partner Violence.

In our article, ‘‘The Continuation of Intimate Partner Violence from Adolescence to Young Adulthood’’ (Cui, Ueno, Gordon, & Fincham, 2013), we found that being victimized by relationship partners in adolescence was significantly associated with both perpetration and victimization in romantic relationships in young adulthood. Though not our primary focus, we included gender as a covariate and tested its main effect on young adult intimate partner violence (IPV). The results showed that women reported higher levels of perpetration and lower levels of victimization than men did. We appreciate Kristin Anderson’s (2013) commentary on this finding and agree with many of her observations. In particular, finding a resolution to the seemingly endless polemic about gender issues in IPV would be most welcome. As Carney, Buttell, and Dutton (2007) pointed out, this is ‘‘a debate that has been troubling for feminists since the first U.S. National Family Violence Survey of 1975 found