This is a comment by Archy on the post “David Beckham, Jeremy Lin and Eli Manning: Taking a Stand Against Violence Against Women“.
“I want to know why those who are so in support of these violence against women campaigns haven’t already made, and popularized a similar one for men? Support for domestic violence is extremely gendered, only one gender truly gets any decent support. I have better chances it seems of bedding 2 models tomorrow night then seeing a decent campaign on suppporting male victimization and dare I say it, female perpetration that actually reachs even 1/4 of the level the violence against women campaigns get.
“To me, that is probably the most dehumanizing and saddening things I’ve noticed, that gaping black hole of awareness, we have had stats proving men get significant levels of abuse and women commit significant levels of abuse, yet for the last decade that these stats have been out (maybe longer) there still hasn’t been anything even remotely similar to the white ribbon campaign that I’ve ever seen even spoken about in the mainstream media.
“The only campaign I’ve seen is http://www.oneinthree.com.au which I’ve NEVER seen in Australian media, I only found it by chance in google. People need to realize the message they’re sending men, there is a good reason there are many bitter and aggrivated men, especially when the words ”violence against women’ are used. Having scars deep in my mind and knowing other men that have had physical, mental, n sexual abuse perpetrated by women as I have had against me, it pisses me off to never hear of the support for violence against men. I caused a bit of a stir with some female friends because I flat out refused to support the white ribbon campaign, told them I can’t support it as it should be violence against all people, or at least have created a brother campaign after all this time. There are no excuses left to justify the lack of support for men, clearly society doesn’t really seem to give a flying fuck about men and it’s very hard to care about others when no one cares about you.
“Imagine being a male victim of abuse, seeing so many resources for women but very little for you because you have a penis and you’re seen as the aggressor even if you don’t fight back. I’d like to see the creator of these campaigns of stopping violence against women tell me why they didn’t make it gender neutral, or why they or those who have the resources haven’t made a campaign for men and had it reach even 1/10th the awareness the white ribbon campaign got.
“Asking one gender to stand up n to end violence against the other gender whilst their own gender is ignored in regard to their own victimization especially at the hand of the other gender .. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how blatantly offensive that can be. If there were no anti-rape campaigns for women and I made one only for men, I’d expect women to be pissed off when no one else seems to bother making one.
“I am young, have very few resources and various illnesses to battle so I can’t do much to start a campaign but it breaks my heart to know that there are so many who say they support ending DV against all people, but there is only one campaign that barely gets a mention that I know of in Aus, haven’t heard of any globally. This chivalrous action that is expected of us quite frankly feels wrong. I especially get angry when I see violence against women AND children type statements, it completely dismisses violence against men as if it is different or doesn’t exist, and that women and children are the only ones worthy of our support.
“I fully support ending violence against ALL. Not women only, not men only, not one gender of adult and the kids only, but ALL.”
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Yep. I’ve quit supporting anti violence campaigns for women until such a time as men are given the same treatment.
Its become obvious that the only way to get anything done is to put your money where your mouth is and try to block these sexist practices wherever they crop up.
The groups already exist. The simplest solution would be to campaign against domestic violence and leave gender out of it. There are no reasons to not take that approach unless:
1) They approve of DV against men, or don’t care about male victims.
2) They want domestic violence to be synonymous with “violence against women” so as to diminish and ignore male victims.
3) They want males defined as always the perpetrators and never the victims and females to be defined as always the victims and never the perpetrators.
Most likely all of the above is the case.
That’s exactly it. Ladies n gentlemen, Eric M’s points are pretty much the reason why I do not like gendered campaigns. They have the effect of marginalizing anyone that doesn’t fit the narrative. If we have programs that are gendered then male victims can’t get help, female abusers can’t get help. Considering there is a large portion of male victims and female perps it leaves a hell of a lot of domestic violence going unsupported, it’s a half-arsed way to fix the problem really and won’t do major difference, it’ll just shift DV more towards men being the victim and women being the perp.
You’ve got a point. Sadly, it had never come to my attention that domestic violence against men existed until I was well into my 20s. The media is full of information about the opposite problem, which jives with our knowledge of the average difference in physical strength between men and women. It’s also part of our progress away from historical times when violence against women was almost normalized. It still is in many cultures, such as inside criminal gangs. But, of course, once one thinks about it for a moment, it makes sense that there are women out there with nasty personalities and a willingness to use weapons, and their victims certainly need support. Currently, just raising awareness of the problem would probably have a big effect in drumming up some support services.
Yeah I often see justifications of “men did it for thousands of years” so it’s ok to overlook what women….Support is badly needed. I was slapped n punched by female friends when I laughed at a joke, I got the feeling they felt entitled to hit men and that it was acceptable, I see other women hit men and no one bats n eyelash. Yet if one of us hit back BAMMMM there’d be a big uproar about it. A guy in school was slapped over the ear (cupped his ear, hurts a lot and can damage it due to the pressure on eardrum), he hit her back and he was the hated one in the school for it.
I think our society is teaching men that hittign women is wrong, but teaching women that it’s acceptable or at least no one cares if they hit men. It’s often seen as deserved, or humourous (guy kicked in the nuts by a woman for example), yet the reality is women can do as much damage to men mentally and physically but often men will not talk about it and hide the fact. It’s a largely unknown problem happening at a massive rate (both genders are doing a lot of damage to each other!) but we have so much support for women and awareness but nothing of the same for men that the men are suffering in silence.
Violence is not primarily about strength, it is about will. The will to do violence can frequently trump physical strength, especially with a force multiplier. Men do not always have the will to do violence, and women do not always lack it, although that is what passes for common sense. Common sense may tell you due to your view of the immediate vicinity (personal context) that world is flat, but it is in fact, not.
““I want to know why those who are so in support of these violence against women campaigns haven’t already made, and popularized a similar one for men?”
Because they approve of violence against men, obviously. Otherwise, they wouldn’t go so far out of their way to ensure that any and all mention of men is as exclusively perpetrators, never, ever victims.
You know it’s not that unbelievable either…It’s expected that men are invincible to a woman’s hits, that women only slap lightly whilst men put the woman through a wall (a comparison I saw a woman make here once to state that dv between the genders isn’t comparable).
You have a very compassionate way of pointing out a normative social horror: we live in a world that tolerates female perpetrators who inflict injury or death on male victims. What level of outrage would be appropriate in a similar scenario that involved religion or race? What level of public outrage would be appropriate if we lived in a world where law enforcement and criminal courts excused white people who mutilate and murder black people?
When it comes to this issue, I have no “nice” left in me. I have lost count of the broken bodies, mutilated minds, and lifeless corpses of men who will never know justice, simply because their assailants were women.
I try to keep nice as it tends to get better support by some people, anger can often push others away. So many good comments/discussions aren’t fully heard or understood because the person was angry and the listener got sick/scared off from hearing the anger.
Well said. It all goes back to societies expectations of men AND our expectations of ourselves. Simply put, real men don’t need any group to protect them from violence. This is in fact an extremely inhumane viewpoint. That’s one of the reasons men’s rights groups exist. The concept is called “male utility and disposability.” If a man can’t defend himself he’s worthless anyway. The irony in this is that feminists, the so-called champions of gender equality, have ZERO problem with this outlook. They don’t care. And they certainly aren’t willing to look at how this paradigm of male disposability fits into their theory of patriarchy – because it doesn’t.
Holy crap, so because they’re not supporting your needs, the needs of the women who have been abused don’t matter? That’s what I’m hearing from this. “I won’t support violence against women” in the same breath as “ending violence for ALL”? That serves to make ALL sound an awful lot like ME.
Fuck everyone, is that it?
Yes, there needs to be support for men. But it’s so hard to look at these comments complaining about ambivalence towards abuse of males that completely disregard or denigrate the abuse of women out of bitterness, especially on a website that’s meant for good men. Good men don’t abuse people. Good men don’t disregard abuse because it didn’t happen to their gender. Good men want abuse victims to have support, regardless of gender. And everywhere I put “good men”? It’s interchangeable with “good women”, because abuse is an issue of society, not gender.
The problem isn’t supporting women, it’s genderizing abuse to be man = perp, woman = victim. It’s also the lack of support for men but oodles of support for women, it further reinforces the man = perp, woman = victim narrative which has an effect of leaving male victims and female perpetrators without support (yes perps need support too). I refuse to support campaigns that say “Men can stop rape” or ones that ask MEN to pledge to never stand by and allow women to be abused, not because they help women, but because they genderize something that shouldn’t be genderized. I haven’t seen a SINGLE campaign asking women to stop raping or abusing men, men made the campaign that asks men to stop abusing women but women have not made a campaign asking women to stop abusing. Do you realize that as a victim of violence that makes me feel like women don’t really give a shit about me and other male victims? Do you realize that the government support I see and the fact most domestic violence is information is gendered in it’s wording leaves me feeling like no one cares? And yet I am asked to care for women ALONE?
I care for both genders, but I don’t care for campaigns that add to the genderizing of a non-gendered problem. If white ribbon asked both men and women to pledge to stop violence against women here in Australia it’d be a diff story, but time n time against I saw it was targetting just the men. If there was a campaign started by women that did the reverse and both had equal support, I’d maybe support them then but reinforcing the narrative of male = perp, woman = victim is something I won’t support.
I’ve often seen the “we need to target those most at threat” used as justification for gendered campaigns, so where is the violence against men campaign? I don’t think I’ve seen any campaigns to end general violence against men, even though men are 4-6x more likely to die from violence than women are, and receive the majority of violence overall against them. Do we need to reach 10x more likely to die to matter?
And if you didn’t realize I never said the needs of women don’t matter, I actually care about the needs of women hence why I suggested gender neutral campaigns where ALL people receive support. But I think it’s sickening that women seem to be catered for SOO soo much WHILST men get fuck all support (sickening because the men aren’t supported, not that women get so much support, both need a lot of support).
“But it’s so hard to look at these comments complaining about ambivalence towards abuse of males that completely disregard or denigrate the abuse of women out of bitterness, especially on a website that’s meant for good men.”
Not that it’s justified but that’s because the abuse of men has been completely disregarded or denigrated very often, even by quite a few feminists, DV support groups, etc. Maybe You and others need to try understand WHY that bitterness exists, maybe you’d feel a deep sense of sadness if you realized why they’re so bitter and it could help change everything for the better. Too often I’ve seen people use old statistics for talking about rape when the new ones clearly show men are being raped heavily, even near equally in a 12 month period, most of which is by females. Realize that many of us see how abuse is talked about in such a gendered fashion that it basically deletes us from the debate, how often men get talked about and then the “butwomengetitworse” brigade chime in and delete us again as if our suffering is worth fuck all.
Pretty much all of the bitter people I see comment on this stuff simply want it to be gender-neutral support. If it was gender neutral in the first place then anyone who needs help would get it, there wouldn’t be silly fights over who gets awareness, no fights over the lack of support. Supporting ONLY violence against women is targgeting half the problem, and leaving a whole load of abuse in the dark. Quite often there are people who go through abuse and continue that abuse in a vicious cycle, but if only the women get support then what happens to those men? Quite often I’ve seen women who feel it’s acceptable to hit men, they don’t fully understand how much damage they can do or no one seems to care. When domestic violence is worded so that women are the victim then how do these women understand their violence is truly damaging? Where do those men go for help? Women’s shelters may help men sometimes but they do a shit job at advertising the fact, hell where I live I’VE NEVER EVER seen men’s shelter or support for DV advertised yet I’ve seen it happen to men, even had it happen to me a bit.
There is a legitimate reason for this bitterness n anger, and no I don’t want women to lack support, I just want equal support thrown towards the men as well. De-genderize it, if a victim needs help they shouldn’t be turned away because they have a penis, I should NEVER hear of a story where a man calls for help and is laughed at, told to stop making fun, told that DV never happens against men so piss off, etc.
Why is this such a passionate topic for me? Because I’m sick of 50% of the population having shit support whilst the other 50% is continually supported AND then have the unsupported half asked to help the fight against the supported half’s problem alone. Sure I’ll help you, can you help me? No? Ok let me sacrifice my own needs to promote your needs whilst you don’t do the same for me. Isn’t that just a little bit selfish, to expect men to support women without ensuring the men have support? That is what pisses me off, not the fact that women get support (which I hope continues). It’s the fact that men need support too but nothing gets done about it, even by groups that I’m sure read stats and realize men need support but magically the resources they have, the people who start the campaigns just totally overlook the men and can’t help. That’s what makes me bitter.
OR a single campaign asking women to stop raping or abusing children, despite their being the chief architects of this atrocity. Men simply refuse to see these things about women, they don’t want to and will ignore any stats that say such. It is in fact the other and much more prevalent face of misogyny, unearned, and at times, undeserved, protection, provision and reward.
I think it’s important to note that not supporting gendered awareness campaigns that emphasize the woman = victim and men = abuser stereotype is not the same as disregarding the abuse of women.
Being in support of campaigns that are not specifically gendered is not the same as supporting campaigns with a gendered message in support of men only. In fact, I’ve mostly seen the desire for specific gendered campaigns for men mentioned by those who wish to see gender specific campaigns for both men AND women.
Some of the very worst abuse I have suffered came at the hands of women. Much of that abuse was justified in their minds simply because I was male. Over the years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse I was told that I was dirty and deserved what I got simply because I was male.
I grew up hating my male-ness and it has taken me a long time to accept who I am and although I may not fully love myself, I am taking great steps towards that.
From my own experiences I know how damaging gendered campaigns like this can be to people like me and I am highly in favor of campaigns that are gender neutral.
I want to see everyone supported equally.
I absolutely believe that wanting equal support for all – and many other things about me – make me a good man.
Maybe instead of b*tching about the problem and waiting for someone else to fix it you can do something about it, and refusing to support at all isn’t doing something”
Yes there should be a campain for Violence Against People. yes women face more severe violence than men but men still face violence.
you make a good point that men are just as likely to be a victim of violence. But then you lose credibility when you try to make it about women perpetrating this violence when for example 82% of Male victims of rape were attacted, not by a woman, but by another male. Instead of focusing on the real problem, only female victims are supported when there are male victims that need support as well. You turn it into a blame game. women are just as guilty of violence as men but they’re the ones getting the support. People are victims of violence. Victims should feel that they have support. it is a problem that this isn’t given as much light.
oh and if you did a anti-rape campain for men only.. and only gave a voice to those who’s perps were women, it’d be a small campain since more than 3/4 of those victims were made victims by other men. pointing the finger isn’t goign to get you anywhere.
I would love to see violence against women turn into violece against people. but that’s not going to happen with your blame game tactics…
The reason those studies show that 82% of male rape victims were raped by another man, is because the definition those studies use specifically preclude, the most likely way a woman WOULD rape a man- envelopment.
Man, where’s Typhonblue or Tamen? They explain this so much better than I can.
http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/NISVS/index.html
Please do some research. Tables 2.1 and 2.2, then read on to page 25 or so. You’ll find the majority of sexual abuse men face is at the hands of women. Rape also does not include being forced to penetrate or envelopment, so it automatically removes the majority of sexual abuse men face. In the last 12 months 1.1% of women were raped/attempted rape, and 1.1% of men were forced to penetrate, the numbers for the 12 month category become approximately 60% male rapists, 40% female rapists (if you include envelopment) and the majority of sexual abuse against females has a male perpetrator, and the majority of sexual abuse against males has a female perpetrator. These are the stats I use, when reading this document though understand that forced to penetrate is considered “other sexual assault” but I personally consider it rape.
I want more all inclusive campaigns, I want people to actively support campaigns for both, or have a campaign that caters to all. I don’t want to see campaigns saying “Men can stop rape” when there are no “Women can stop rape” campaigns. To me that implies men are held to a higher standard, I’ve seen camapigns started BY MEN to ask other men to speak out and stop violence against women but haven’t seen women start a campaign asking other women to speak out and stop violence against men. Do you understand how this can make men feel like women especially are ignoring them? It appears that we are being chivalrous to women, but there is no equal support back. Can you understand that for victims of violence by women especially this is insulting when we are expected to give a damn about female victims but no one seems to care about us?
I choose not to support highly gendered campaigns which detail the problem in the way that “Men can stop rape” does. This goes beyond helping just the women, it implies men are the only ones that can stop rape for instance and none of these campaigns seem to ask women to step up and fight abuse especially abuse of men. It creates a culture and stereotype that men are the abusers, women are the victims, and I won’t support that ever. I DO however support campaigns that simply just want to stop domestic violence rape, etc, usually the non-gendered campaigns but they seem to be quite rare.
So if you’re blind drunk, or sleeping, or otherwise incapacitated and someone has sex with you it’s not rape….. if you’re a man? “DOUBLE STANDARD” has just jumped out from around the corner and is screaming at me.
Hey, if you’re raped in the above scenarios, and a birth occurs do you have to pay child support for the next 26 years of your life, naw, that would be completely unjust!.
What if you don’t feel ready to be a father?
“yes women face more severe violence than men but men still face violence.”
What are you talking about? Men die 4-6x from violence than women. Most reports to police (at least in Aus) about violence, well 2x more men report it vs women. Violence overall affects men more severely than women, it’s been that way for a longgg time. Death is one of the most severe effects of violence, probably the most severe.
ht tp://www.who.int/entity/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/DALY6%202004.xls Violence stats at the bottom.
Good lord, what do they teach people these days if people even think women face more severe violence than men? Violence has always been the domain of men, mostly men vs men. Did you mean Domestic violence or sexual violence? Both of those 2 have more severity from the stat’s I’ve seen against women, although the gap between genders is closing fast.
The reason I don’t do anything is because I am battling cancer + mental illness currently, at most I can participate in comment threads online as it doesn’t take too much to do of course. It’s part of my learning experience to debate these issues online as well, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot already.
But it crushes me to know there are plenty of people in a position to do these things, as evidenced by so many violence against women campaigns, ones started by men even, but doesn’t seem to be much if any for violence against men.
The reason feminism gets talked about is because a lot of feminists talk about feminism not as women’s rights alone, but equal rights and support for all, catering to the issues of men and women, but others will treat it as only women’s issues. It’s a conflicting stance and very confusing to many of us who have been invited in by some and kicked out by others. It then becomes a point that some feminists say they are helping but it looks like feminists aren’t helping men, so it appears they are failing to do what they said. The issue is how feminists talk about feminism, either stop telling men you will help them and then not helping them, or just take a clear hardline women’s issues only stance. Feminism can’t be both.
“I’d like to see the creator of these campaigns of stopping violence against women tell me why they didn’t make it gender neutral”
Better yet, instead of waiting on others, how about be the change you seek. Create gender neutral campaigns if you feel they are lacking.
Health and resources issues to deal with. Unsure of where to start as well. But I would be surprised if I was the only person in the world wanting to start one, I am just flabbergasted as to why they don’t exist yet (or that I haven’t seen them advertised).