Monday, November 3, 2014

Domestic Violence Against Males

There has been a plethora of articles lately about domestic violence against women but nary a mention of domestic violence against men.  Why is that?  It happens much more often than people realize and even the statistics don't show as much abuse because of the stigma of a man saying that he was abused by a woman.  I am going to show you a couple of clips from a scholarly article by Barbara J. Drijber.


Note that the article also states that identifying men as victims of domestic abuse is harder because most of the research about domestic violence is on women abused by men. Why is violence against men being ignored? Are men less human than women? I'm sure that some women think so but considering the women I've run into, I'm starting to believe that the reverse is true.  These women have not only been more likely to start a fight but have also been more likely to encourage the man she is with to fight.  It's entirely possible that I just happen to live in an area where women are more aggressive than women in other parts of the country but, according to research, that isn't necessarily true.  Here is a chart from the above article.


What I found really surprising is that an article of domestic abuse against men in Scotland by David Gadd showed similar figures.  The article also states the following:

"Some of those men who retaliated had, nevertheless, endured physically and psychologically damaging forms of abuse; being struck, cut, or (more rarely) stabbed with household items or knives, punched in the face, and being subject to malicious allegations.”


While most U.S. Men probably don't retaliate as often, it's interesting to note that those who do end up being victims of even more violent attacks by the women with whom they are living.  So why is violence against men being covered up?  Could it be that feminists want to paint all men with a dark brush?  Are they trying to deliberately create a division between men and women?  Shouldn't equal coverage be given to both sexes?


Sources:


Male Victims of Domestic Violence; Babette C. Drijber, Udo J. L. Reijnders, Manon Ceelen ;


Male Victims of Domestic Violence; David Gadd1, Stephen Farrall, Damian Dallimore, and Nancy Lombard; https://www.brokenrainbow.org.uk/sites/default/files/Keele%20University%20Male%20Victims%20of%20Domestic%20Violence.pdf

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't think we're very good at figuring out things that involve human aggression. We can't measure it like we can, say, the distance between Earth and the moon, so we end up taking baby steps that are mostly weighted down with stereotypes, misunderstandings, and fears.

So we can sort of understand a jealous man lashing out at a smaller woman, right? But frankly, even if you're dealing with a man and woman of the same size, a female victim will be told, "He's not that big" by people she knows! Can you imagine how much worse it is when you're dealing with a female abuser?

Space Eagle said...

I imagine that would be pretty rough, Katy. I know from experience that some women can be quite violent. I never thought about abuse in lesbian or gay couples because I thought they would value the relationship enough to not be abusive since the numbers are so small.