I have been a victim of domestic abuse in more than one relationship during the past few years, undergoing not only physical violence, but also prolonged emotional abuse, financial control, alienation from friends and family, and more. There are few people today who would find themselves unable to empathize with me in such scenarios, and even fewer who could openly express their indifference toward my suffering without unforgiving public rebuke and shaming. The same cannot be said for male victims of domestic violence.
In the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, the percentages of male victims of domestic violence are roughly 40% [1:2], 50% [3], and 20%** [4], respectively. Even now, despite all of the activism, resources, and political attention directed toward women’s issues, victimized women may still struggle not only with recognizing the severity of their circumstances and escaping an abusive partner, but additionally with finding the help that they desperately need. Men, unfortunately, have it as bad if not worse in this regard.
Not only do men lack the same level of awareness for their issues, socially and politically, but they furthermore tend to have less social support and helpful resources than women, including shelters, which are a significant element of this. Similarly to women in certain cases, though, men may not perceive what they are experiencing as abuse, or they might simply not know how to escape their abuser. But unlike women due to differences in how they are perceived in society, they may also fear reporting due to stigma associated with male victimhood (being weak for allowing a woman to beat or control them, et cetera). At the same time, their abuse in the daily discourse over sex issues is regularly undercut or ignored, and reference to it is too frequently met with enmity, apathy, or contempt.
A public figure of any variety, but particularly a political figure, willing to state that my abuse did not or does not matter, or even the abuse of any other woman or women overall, would receive such a hostile response that it might very well snuff out their career and social life indefinitely. Yet there are still a number of individuals, occasionally fairly high-profile folk [5], who undermine, deny, mock, or react with great animosity toward any effort at initiating a dialogue over domestic violence perpetrated against men. (I have had the misfortune of encountering several in my time online.) But I am not asking for an apology on behalf of men from these kinds of people, or for anyone to lose their job as someone might lose their job for remarking that female victims of domestic violence are unimportant, because it is not my place to make such requests.
As I noted above, people like me, and women at large, are not the ones under attack in this respect. There exists a general concern in our culture for my health and safety, and acknowledgement of my worth as a human being. Though escaping abuse is always difficult, I at least have myriad places that I can turn to for assistance. As a woman, I am not the one who would be beaten by a violent partner only to have numerous individuals online and elsewhere supposedly fighting for human rights and fairness erase, degrade, and disparage me; belittle my bruises, joke about drinking my tears, shut down every discussion possible of my pain, act with intense anger at the mention of my victimhood. That fate is reserved for men, especially where domestic violence victimization is concerned, and without correcting this problem, we can never achieve any manner of genuine “equality” in our society.
