Colour Scientist said:
Male victims of domestic violence are slowly gaining more recognition.
It's awful that the public reaction is so varied but I've seen this video on Facebook and Buzzfeed so it is raising awareness and stimulating discussion.
The charity seems to be doing some really good work too.
A lot of domestic abuse charities are female centred so it's great to see one geared specifically towards men, hopefully that would encourage victims to come forward. It's also nice to see that it is very much centred on male victims, as opposed to men vs women.
The public reaction is so varied in part because some people are invested specifically in the idea that domestic violence is something that only men do to almost exclusively women. That it's about a 60/40 split of female/male victims (and the expected split of perps given that it isn't primarily one orientation engaging in violence, though gay male couples are somewhat less prone to violence and lesbian couple somewhat more prone to violence than average, but not by enough to really be important) isn't really news. Strauss, Steinmetz and Gelles came out with research that came to that conclusion quite a long time ago and suffered death threats, people refusing to stock their books, people pushing to have their grant funding rescinded, bomb threats to venues they were speaking at, etc, etc, etc. On the upside, at least the reaction isn't remotely as negative as it was in the past.
Mankind is a British charity, and I don't know British law, but if someone were to do something similar stateside they'd have to rely on entirely private donations because they wouldn't be eligible for government assistance, which in the US (and Canada, as Earl Silverman found out in the years leading up being forced to shut down his men's shelter due to not receiving enough private donations to keep it open, not receiving any government assistance of any kind [explicitly for not being a women's shelter] and then hanging himself in the garage of it) requires that domestic violence groups serve women but permits discrimination with respect to sex (even claims explicitly that discrimination with respect to sex is, in this specific case, not discrimination if "comparable" services are offered; in practice "comparable" services does not mean "equivalent" by any stretch -- you know how "separate but equal" inherently wasn't? US federal domestic violence law doesn't even demand that much).
Flutterguy said:
Domestic violence can happen to anyone.
To raise awareness for a particular kind of violence seems silly to me. Like raising money to cure breast cancer. Just raise money to cure cancer.
The notable distinction in this case is that male victims are prevented from using most of the resources that exist. It can happen to anyone, but virtually all effort and all spending dealing with it is directed solely at female victims and presumed male perps. Seriously, thanks to "primary aggressor" policies if a man is a victim of an abusive woman, the best he can hope for if he calls the cops is to be arrested himself and her given an opportunity to file a temporary restraining order against him. That's his best case. As opposed to what happened to Louis Rodriguez fairly recently where his daughter made a domestic violence call against her mother so police beat him to death.
ultratog1028 said:
Same reason society turns a blind eye to males getting raped (even though it is rarer it isnt as rare as you think).
Look at NISVS 2010 "Previous 12 month" numbers, and remember that they don't consider a woman forcing a man to have intercourse with her to be "rape", but rather "made to penetrate." It's kind of shocking how similar the numbers are when you look at recent occurrences rather than including cases 40 years old after being filtered by social expectation, the failings of memory and rationalization (hint: when we're willing to tell women that things they didn't consider rape at the time were rape and help them come to terms with their victimhood, while telling men they really must have wanted it regardless it's going to slant the lifetime numbers -- see that video about joking about rape).
Johnny Novgorod said:
This is all USA figures, but apparently:
20% of all women suffered rape or attempted rape sometime in their life.
4.8% of all men were forced to penetrate someone else, usually a woman; had been the victim of an attempt to force penetration; or had been made to receive oral sex.
NISVS 2010 lifetime numbers, I'm guessing? Look at the previous year numbers for reasons given above. Funny how the previous year numbers are almost identical. To me, this indicates either a dramatic change in rates over time or a difference in how people process the incident.
InsanityRequiem said:
But back on topic, I do think that victim recognition is needed for domestic violence, which this video points out splendidly that both genders can suffer it. I just wish there was an extra segment in which the actors/camera people talked to the bystanders about their actions, since even when it shows the female as the victim (To a lesser degree of violent action as well), people mainly stayed away until one/two people finally stood up and told the male actor no. Was sickening seeing the people snicker, grin, and laugh at the male actor as the victim.
There have been other videos along these lines done in the past and the results are always the same. Just search YouTube and you ought to be able to track them down. Usually people argue that they don't mean anything because the actors chosen are both average sized, so the man isn't small enough and the woman isn't large enough. They even did one where one party slipped a pill in the other's drink and tried to slip off with an apparently drugged "victim". Same deal: people tried to stop the man from predating on the woman, but not vice versa.
Vault101 said:
I'm probably just being nitpicky but I'm not sure I agree with phrasing this issue as [i/]the other side[/i] which implies that a femnist vew is somehow "opoased" to the issue of male victims of domestic violence, which isn't true (aside from what people think)
I've seen feminists argue that we shouldn't have any resources for abused men because there's limited funding out there and any used for abused men wouldn't be getting used for abused women, who are the real victims. I've seen self-identified feminists derail arguments about men's issues to either use the primal misogyny argument (men's issues are "really" about some vaguely related women's issue because all gender issues are actually about misogyny, therefore if we fix one then the other will magically be fixed, therefore we should only work on fixing the related women's issue instead of wasting resources on two fronts), to argue that the issue in question simply doesn't exist because it doesn't make sense to them that it would from a perspective based on patriarchy theory and therefore discussing it at all is just an attempt to dismiss women's problems which are real and important, or last but not least, arguing that some source someone linked on the topic was from the wrong site and therefore the argument is invalid because David Futrelle can quote mine them for terrible things (seriously, I once saw him use something presented as an example of a comment that would get you banned from a site as the beliefs of the person posting the rules).
Vault101 said:
only as victims though (acording to the games industry) and I don't mean that in a de-railing "what about the wimmins" way, I mean that in a how soceity veiws each gender as "strong/weak" way...as in the expect the guy to be able to "take" it
The media does the same. Gendered terms for people only gets used when it denotes females as victims and men as perpetrators or if the people in question have already been named. Hell, there are a lot of people who think Elliot Rodgers shot 6 women when he shot 2 women and 4 men because we only mention the gender of the two women.
NeutralDrow said:
Domestic and sexual violence perpetuated by any sex against any sex is a feminist concern,
...which is why it's not that hard to see feminists arguing against abused men having any services or in favor of excluding men who are forced into intercourse by women from counting as "raped", or who support "primary aggressor" (read: arrest the man no matter what) domestic violence policies?
NeutralDrow said:
There's also the problem that reducing this issue to "men abusing women or women abusing men" ignores the abuse victims in the gay and lesbian communities, but that might be a bit derailing here.
Lesbians have services available to help them (the same ones as straight women, no less), men of any sexuality do not.
Grahav said:
Be careful with those statistics.
http://communityvoices.post-gazette.com/opinion/the-radical-middle/27667--one-in-one-thousand-eight-hundred-seventy-seven
I'd read that one before. Here's the trick -- he assumed a measure of under reporting, rather than assuming any gap between between the reported number and the expected 1 in 4 was under reporting. By the logic they use when talking about these things, for example, my alma mater had 2.5% of rapes reported (more exactly 39.5 rapes for every one reported assuming all sex crime on campus was rape), because that's how bad it would need to be for 1 in 4 women attending to get raped during their college career.
PoolCleaningRobot said:
Men are encouraged to show no emotion and instead women are "supposed" to be the emotional support for the whole relationship. That kind of behavior is too stressful for both parties and can't last.
I had once read a study that came to the conclusion that women on average don't actually want men in their lives to express their emotions, except in fairly limited ways that correspond largely to what women feel men should be feeling and how that should be expressed. Essentially they don't want men out of the "man box" as it's been called, but instead they want a differently shaped "man box."
PhiMed said:
Feminism is a movement that is dedicated to securing rights and opportunities for women which are equal to those of men.
That's all it is. Anything else you say it is is something it is not.
Ever heard the saying that someone "loves Christianity but hates Christians" (hopefully I don't offend anyone too badly here), suggesting that there's a difference between Christianity on paper and the actions of those who practice it? That applies to feminism.
Besides, I'll ask you what I ask everyone who offers that definition: Name a legal or institutional right that men have that women do not in a western democracy. Specifically excluding access to certain military roles, because I will agree with you there and it's being worked on. Anything else, because I can't think of any. I can of course provide cases where law or policy explicitly favors women. It's pretty blatant in VAWA and the ACA in the US (I can give details if you want, or you can see if you can find it, but I'm surprised Republicans didn't try a 14th Amendment attack on Obamacare). There's a crime in Ireland that boys under 16 may be found guilty of but not girls. There's a push in the UK that women should not be sentenced with prison unless it's absolutely necessary because they want to close women's prisons (men can rot, of course). There's a crime in Sweden that only men can commit against only women which makes certain criminal acts have the potential for more charges if it's male on female.
BloatedGuppy said:
See, this really annoys me. We're okay with "History", literally HIS STORY, because we all know what the fuck it means and only a few select, professionally outraged individuals seriously take issue with it.
But feminism, which historically refers to equality between the sexes, needs to have its definition changed because there's a "fem" in there, and who can be assed to endure that!
"Equalist". PFAH. You are killing language.
Not remotely the root of "history." You should probably be more offended by "hysteria" given that it roots from the Greek word for the uterus. Clearly this is how language itself demonstrates the age old adage "Bitches be crazy, yo."
Lacey said:
Y'know, just once I'd like to follow a link to AVFM and read something that doesn't conclude that the solution to helping men is to remove aid for women. Just once.
Oh, and all men's suffering is the fault of feminists. Yup yup. Don't forget that part.
But yeah, going to that site for reasonable discourse on gender is like going to Storm Front for reasonable discourse on race.
To be fair, providing any DV resources for men will necessarily remove some measure of aid for women, unless they increase total spending on DV resources.
If you want to be a bit less hate filled towards that site, last year for domestic violence month AVfM and shrink4men.com did a series called "In His Own Words" which is men that were in abusive relationships givign an account of what happened to them.
Hazy said:
This is nothing new. Domestic abuse towards men has always been seen as comedic. But I sure am glad people are catching onto it.
Firestone released this bad boy a couple of months ago and I was overjoyed to see the negative reception it received.
[sub]Remember kids, emotional abuse is funny as long as you're a woman![/sub]
I see your Firestone ad and raise you a yogurt ad that never would have been considered with a gender flip:
Lil devils x said:
I honestly have to wonder how anyone would seriously link anything from a voice for men and expect to be taken seriously with all the ridiculoussness that comes from the authors on that site:
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2013/04/02/reno-calls-a-domestic-violence-hotline-the-mra-reality-distortion-field-in-action/
When you listen to the audio of the call, the guy out right refuses to call the mens line, refuses to have a paid hotel room and wants to only be housed with the women in the women's shelter. Then goes on the site to say " He was denied help."
Didn't watch the youtube clip, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but is there any chance it's this part of Australia? http://dcp.wa.gov.au/crisisandemergency/pages/domesticviolencehelplines.aspx
That page is a clear example of the problem, either way. The Men's Hotline only mentions the possibility of male victims as an afterthought, and even that was in response to complaints (there's a screenshot running around that doesn't have that last sentence on it). The Women's Hotline doesn't consider the possibility of a woman as perpetrator, not even as an afterthought.
Lil devils x said:
The majority of the funding for " battered womens shelters" is by charities and private organizations. Women created these organizations by volunteering their time and donating their own money to open and run them. This is not as widespread for men because men have not done the same on the same scale.
1) Funny, when there was that short lapse in VAWA, I heard the claim that most of women's shelter's funding came from public funding, and not getting federal money meant they were mostly unfunded.
2) Tell that to Earl Silverman who ran the only men's shelter in Canada at the time and tried repeatedly to get government funding as a domestic violence shelter and was repeatedly refused because he served men but not women. At least until he had to shut it down and hung himself.
TheEvilGenius said:
I've actually done a fair bit of research on this topic, so let me chime in here. In the US, 830,000 men are victims of domestic violence (DV) every year. [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf] the Department of Justice flat-out refuses to fund any research on male domestic abuse. Men who are victims of DV, are often ridiculed and revictimized by the law and law enforcement. When they seek help from domestic abuse advocates, they get told that they "must have done something to deserve it."
You make it sound like a man who tries to get police help as a victim of DV will be arrested for DV because it's police policy to arrest the man (this policy also hurts gay victims particularly bad).
MeTalHeD said:
Oh really? Good lord, I actually stumbled across that article. I'll keep that in mind for next time. And...I've never heard of Storm Front before either...
From what I gather, I shouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole?
They're both generally awful (Stromfront moreso), though AVfM very occasionally has an article that makes a decent point, but we're talking applying the "stopped clock" approach. It's rare, but it happens.
