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One community is finally developing counselling services for male survivors of sexual and physical abuse. But when it comes to issues of funding, some in the women survivors' community are not supportive as they fear that new services may take away from other more well-established services. Read auntie's advice for the men who are looking for a fair solution.

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It is also that men dealing with sexual abuse and violence get more attention than women.

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Auntie, I can't help but disagree with this statement. Most men who face sexual abuse will keep it hidden and let it eat them up inside. Most men's experiences will go unnoticed.

I agree that as more women are abused then men they should get a greater amount of funding to meet their needs, but you know...Just because you're given a gender at birth doesn't mean you have to live your life serving that gender exclusively as this article alludes to. People can and should help each other without any thought exclusivity. An inclusiveness of women for helping men and men for helping women idea would get far more accomplished than sectoring it and then having joint strike forces going out to fund-raise occasionally.

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Originally posted by lawgirl:
While I support Auntie, as a general rule, I think she missed the point of the question here. I agree that a joint initiative is a good idea, but I feel like she didn't really address the reality that this writer was coming from.
If what he says is true, there have not been resources in his community for male survivors. And they are clearly much needed!
As we know, violence tends to be cyclical, and it is in the interest of every woman that men who have been the victim of violence get the treatment they need. Without suggesting that male victims of violence and abuse will necessarily abuse others, every man who gets the treatment he needs is less likely to assault a woman.
Wouldn't we all prefer that women didn't get assaulted in the first place!?

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Originally posted by kropotkin1951:
I found it interesting that despite the fact that the woman in this relationship was physically larger and stronger and had initiated the violent fight when the police came they took the husband into custody. I am making the presumptions about their roles from not only my own knowledge of them as peaople but also from the woman's story of what happened told when she was sober.

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Originally posted by Grape:
It has been sold as an exclusively male-perpetrated practice but that's far, far from the truth.

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Actually it is much like saying you know if your poor and white then there is something really the matter with you becaue we know all white people were born with a silver spoon shoved up their ass. Come on pull up your socks your poor because you have personal failings and your gender, race ethnicity or what ever proves it. Others like you don't have those problems so quit your whining.

[ 24 March 2006: Message edited by: kropotkin1951 ]

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Originally posted by Makwa:
Oh for gosh sakes, do some math and look at the stats. It's not that far from the truth.

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That depends on which stats you look at - the 1999 General Social Survey found that 7% of men and 8% of women reported experiencing violence from a spousal partner (common law or marrited) in the preceding 5 years. The stats vary depending on the means employed in their gathering and the areas of domestic violence examined - data taken from police records and clinical samples (IE samples consisting entirely of abused women) show one thing, while studies conducted on random representative samples show entirely another.

It differs depending on the type of abuse as well - sexual is generally male-perpetrated, child abuse/maltreatment is generally female-perpetrated, spousal murder is male-dominated, etc. Where physical assault and verbal abuse are concerned (in intimate relationships - married, dating, etc) gender parity seems the norm.

If you're interested in reading the research, I accumulated a bunch of studies on the topic for a paper a while back. I have some of these in PDF if you're interested:

Foo, L. and Margolin, G. 1995. “A Multivariate Investigation of Dating Aggression”. Journal of Family Violence. 10.

Grandin, E. et al. 1997. “Couple Violence and Psychological Distress”. Canadian Journal of Public Health. 88.

Greene, Kelly and Marion Bogo. 2002. “The Different Faces of Intimate Violence: Implications for Assessment and Treatment”. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. 28.

Hamby, Sherry L. and David B. Sugarman. 1999. “Acts of Psychological Aggression Against a Partner and their Relation to Physical Assault and Gender”. Journal of Marriage and Family. 61.

McNeely, R. L. and Gloria Robinson-Simpson. 1988. “The Truth about Domestic Violence Revisited: A Reply to Saunders”. Social Work. 33.

Murty, Susan A et al. 2003. “Physical and Emotional Partner Abuse Reported by Men and Women in a Rural Community”. American Journal of Public Health. 93.

Schafer, John et al. 1998. “Rates of Intimate Partner Violence in the United States”. American Journal of Public Health. 88.

Sommer, Reena. 1994. “Male and Female Perpetrated Partner Abuse: Testing a Diathesis-Stress Model”. University of Manitoba PhD dissertation (unpublished)[I don't have this one in PDF unfortunately]

Straus, Murray A and Stephen Sweet. 1992. “Verbal/Symbolic Aggression in Couples: Incidence Rates and Relationships to Personal Characteristics”. Journal of Marriage and Family. 54.

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Sure a handful of women abuse men, but it's far from the norm.

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Read the studies - it's not just a handful.

There's a good book I read a while back called "Biopolitics Rising" by John Fekete that discusses the issue (as well as many others). You should give it a read if you're interested.

[ 24 March 2006: Message edited by: Grape ]

Men deal with it differently (at least from what I know) then women. And you know what? It doesn't matter!

ABUSE IS ABUSE. And it needs to be stopped and it needs to be prevented and the victims need HELP.

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male survivors of sexual and physical abuse

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Originally posted by Haruo Nakagawa:
The scars their victims suffer are just as traumatic, but cannot be verified, because their abusers were too smart to "hit" or "sexually abuse" them. Those who are emotionally or psychologically abused get left out in the cold, YET again.

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Originally posted by Makwa:
This, to me, is merely another method by which the reasonable needs of wymmen who support those who flee life threatening situations are regularly undermined.

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I think that Makwa was focused on the stats concerning the physical abuse of women by male partners. I don't happen to have those to hand, but I must say that the figures Grape is giving us above look curious to me.

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Originally posted by Papal Bull:
Most men who face sexual abuse will keep it hidden and let it eat them up inside. Most men's experiences will go unnoticed.

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Originally posted by skdadl:
CN, I don't think that that was Makwa's point, actually, and it wouldn't be mine.

I think that Makwa was focused on the stats concerning the physical abuse of women by male partners.

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Originally posted by paxamillion:
I must admit to being relatively poorly informed on this issue. However, isn't this often the case for women as well?

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Originally posted by Crippled_Newsie:
Yeah, that's just what sexually abused 10yo boys are after. You got 'em dead to rights.

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I know the problem best as a problem of adult women, which is in no way to deny that other groups of people experience abuse - clearly, they do. Above all, children do, children of both sexes.

I also know, though, that traumatized people are usually a very long way short of being able to think generously or in politically neutral terms about anybody else's problems, and it seems to me obviously cruel to expect them to do so.

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Originally posted by Makwa:
This is what I mean. Yes, perhaps many men in relationships feel emotionally or psychologically abused. However, they were never beaten or bruised. Shall we then equate them, and demand equal assistance, i.e. housing, support etc?

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They should certainly be offered support in the form of professional counselling or support groups as any other victims of abuse should.

The question, as I see it, isn't whether abused men and abused women should be treated equally - I doubt anyone would assert that gender should play a role in deciding the "value" of one's experience of abuse.

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Originally posted by Critical Mass2:
bump

Rebick may have blundered terribly with Audra but someone with her record deserves more consideration than being drowned out.

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I don't care who it happens to, abuse is abuse.
Men deal with it differently (at least from what I know) then women. And you know what? It doesn't matter!

ABUSE IS ABUSE. And it needs to be stopped and it needs to be prevented and the victims need HELP.

Stop turning this into a political issue, you know why? Because it is only hurting people, plain and simple.

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Papal Bull very well said. You took the words right of my mouth.

[ 18 April 2006: Message edited by: virge47 ]

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Originally posted by paxamillion:

I must admit to being relatively poorly informed on this issue. However, isn't this often the case for women as well?

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I have to agree. I think that MOST victims in general are reletively poorly informed. Knowledge is power and we can only provide the tools.

Victims either get help in 3 situations.

A) They are encouraged and become informed.
B) Their abuse is reported and help offered
C) They break down years later and finally deside to deal with it.

Getting to the breaking point is saddly how most learn of their abuse. I think abuse awareness should be taught at elementary schools as a class and not as a reason to sit in the Gym for an hour video show.

When I first started dealing with my abuse, I was sent away from organization after organization because they only helped women Survivors.

It took me years to finally be ready to deal with my abuse, and then it took me years to find a place to find other male Survivors.

I even had to put up with women telling me that if I was abused I MUST be an abuser now that I was an adult.

Yeah, we get all the attention... Sure...

It's not entirely true that men's issues get all the attention. It's just easier for men, once they find their voice about a particular issue, to get the attention of people who hold power. And who holds the balance of power in almost every significant sector? Well, men of course. Not the average man, of course. A very small cadre of the power elite. Monied, connected, smug and arrogant.

But I'm not going to supply the condescendingly simplistic "of course male survivors of sexual abuse deserve support and assistance", because that much is obvious. It's more complex than that.

Just as women survivors faced enormous obstacles when they began to tell of their experiences, men do too. The obstacles just come from different places in the patriarchy.

Women who show public strength, who insist on being heard, get shut down, labelled with whatever your favourite sexual slur, epithet, etc., by those in power. Men who discover the courage to speak out about their experiences with abuse come up against a whole other series of societal expectations of what it means to be male, a man, how as a man you're expected to suck it up and move on. It's just another angle on the same power politics.

I, for one, am really really tired of so-called progressive people fighting for a piece of an ever-shrinking social funding pie. By doing so, we play right into the hands of those who would see us forever divided, disunified and dysfunctional. We hand them our power, our ability to make progressive changes and empower the most vulnerable in society.

The only way to address the funding issue is to continue to demand it from government - demand more, a lot more. And in the mean time, fundraise your ass off, create projects that are self-sustaining, that generate revenue that can be put towards the various forms of support required.