Won't Somebody PLEASE Think About The MEN?!

OK, I know I JUST posted, but then I was reading me some online news and found this "poor menz" article by Robert Smol on the CBC's website. Smol discusses men in abusive relationships, how they have less access to post-abuse/post-violence services than women, and how the general problem of abused men isn't given enough weight.

I'm not here to say that men who are in abusive households shouldn't have access to protection and counselling services that are available to abused women. Obviously, these services should be available to everyone. My frustration stems from a particular quote: "much still needs to be done and the biggest challenge, in my view, is what to do about men. Not men as perpetrators — there we seem to have a handle on things". We seem to have a fucking what on WHAT? We have a HANDLE on men as perpetrators of violence in the home? In what way is that?



Smol goes on to say that violence by women against men as an issue is deserving of more attention. I can get behind that. Sure, there are probably people who aren't conscious of the numbers as far as these attacks go. Of course, he also points out that what numbers you get regarding the issue are dependent upon the study you choose to read. Naturally, this is true of pretty much any statistical analysis, no?

A StatsCan study shows that 6% of men and 7% of women either are in, or have been in spousal relationships where they experienced physical abuse. However, when it comes to the numbers in incidents reported to the police, the victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly shown to be women (83%).

In what way does that number, that 83%, say to you that we have "a handle" on men as perpetrators of domestic violence? Yeah, you're right. Even though women are still more often victims of being "beaten, choked" and attacked with a "gun/knife" (23% of women vs 15% of men) and ONLY women are victims of sexual assault (16% of women vs 0% of men), clearly the biggest problem in the matter of spousal/domestic abuse is how we can POSSIBLY help the men. THE BIGGEST.

It's certainly not a culture that disregards women as autonomous human beings who deserve control over their own physical bodies. It's not a society that blames victims of physical abuse for their lot. Look at the tee shirts that got produced after The Incident of domestic violence between Chris Brown and Rihanna. "Rihanna Deserved It" on Cafe Press (before the well deserved flood of rage forced them to take it down), and "I Beat It Like Chris Brown" (which was available on several websites). There was talk that the beating occurred after Brown suspected that Rihanna had given him herpes. What I'm saying is that there was a lot of victim-blaming rhetoric. People scrambled to figure out how she might have provoked him. Provoked him into slamming her face into the steering wheel, punching and biting her face.

I heard comments like this from both men and women at the time of the assault. Because this kind of attitude is INSTITUTIONALIZED. It's part of our culture. Even women believe it, which is part of why women are hesitant to come forward about abusive relationships.

Speaking from my limited experience, I can tell you that when you think you can trust someone and then they start to exhibit this kind of behaviour, you rationalize it. You find ways to blame yourself for their actions, or you excuse them because "zie didn't really mean it" or "most of the time zie's great". I could imagine this being a behaviour that's shared among abuse victims, regardless of gender.

And I think that there is an aspect of rape culture that is responsible for the lack of police reports from male abuse victims. The need to keep up a machismo facade may explain why men would be unwilling to come forward about abuse at the hands of their female partner. That's just another part of the rigid gender roles that feminism is trying to dispel. Mr. Smol goes so far as to say "I can't accept any notion that gives women a different moral or legal standing when it comes to domestic violence". You know what? I can't fucking accept that, either.

The fact of the matter is that men and women, in society as well as in relationships, do not start out on equal footing. Men, generally speaking, hold the power, or at least the potential for power. It's not acceptable to me that men are not believed when they try to come forward about being victims of abuse, but nor is it acceptable that when the situation is reversed women are told that they should be more subservient, that they should behave themselves to avoid inciting the violence, that they deserve what they get. So while I agree that abuse against men by their female partners is a problem that should be addressed, I don't think that means that you can ignore the deeply culturally ingrained issue that is male privilege and the entitlement that too many men feel to women's bodies.