But that alone doesnt say who is doing the abuse. Remember lesbians often date men before coming out.

Short version: They certainly aren’t more likely to have dated men than the female demographic that dates exclusively men, and also reports a much lower domestic violence incidence than them. The above absolutely does not hold water as refutation.

Long version:

Even if we assumed the following for the sake of argument:

1. X% of men are abusers
2. zero women are abusers
3. 100% of lesbians have dated men at some point
4. The lesbians have the exact same number of male partners on average as women who have had exclusively male partners
    

Then in aggregate, the abuse incidence between hetero women and lesbians would be effectively equal.

However, in reality, 2 is obviously more than zero, 3 is obviously less than 100%, and re 4, lesbians obviously have fewer male partners on average than hetero women. And all three of those facts push the incidence rate of DV for the lesbians up to be higher than that of women who have only ever dated men, without there being any change in how many male abusers there are.

When asking whether the perpetrator was male or female and separating the data, the stats shifted. Lesbians experienced less DV from their female partners than straight women do from their male ones.

Got a link for that?

Women are also capable of abuse of course

That’s arguably a significant understatement, according to this study:

In nonreciprocally violent [male/female] relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.