Do you think that men are oppressed?

Conversely, women hitting men is often seen as unimportant or irrelevant because, hey, it's not like she could do him any real damage, is it? Such attitudes have been exhibited in this very thread.

As you say, though, that attitude completely ignores the emotional damage that a violent relationship causes.

Well I see what you mean dittany, I was in a bit of a hurry :) Of course if there is less chance of you being killed, it is less terrifying. What I meant was that if you are being physically/emotional/sexually abused by your female partner, however few people that is happening to, for those who are in that situation it must have pretty much all the same effects as it has on women. Loss of self-esteem, depression, anxiety, pain, restriction of freedoms etc etc. I don't want to write off the experiences of men going through this, I am sure there are some.

But as HerB points out, a huge proportion of people think that hitting/hurting a woman is ok, whereas a woman beating up a man - that's against the natural order. The natural order is men hitting women, and that's because a) it's happening a lot more and b) it's a self-fulfilling prophesy so it continues, as people won't stop it happening due to its "natural"ness.

HerBeatitude, I can see what you mean about context. That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'll think about that some more. Thanks for the thoughtful post.

Oh think what I'm trying to say there is tht DV against women has to be considered as part of the general oppression of women as a class, as it taps into ideas about women being responsible for men's behaviour, asking for it, etc. (And the victims themselves internalise these attitudes). Whereas DV against men is obviously grotesque and wrong, but it is not part and parcel of a systematic oppression of men as a class.

I think we need to bear in mind the context in which DV is committed by and against men and women as well.

I can't remember the exact figures, but is it a third of young men who when asked, agree that it is OK to hit a woman if she annoys you enough? And that a large percentage of young women are also in agreement?

That is a very different context to the one in which women are violent to men - I don't think you'll get anything like a third of people saying that's OK. When a woman is a violent abuser, we all recognise her behaviour as aberrant; when a man is, there are a large number of people out there who genuinely think that the victim must have deserved it, or that the perpetrator just went a bit OTT, but the psychology and attitudes behind his behaviour are basically accepted as reasonably normal on the continuum of behaviour.

I don't think you can compare male vs female DV, either as perpetrators or abusers, unless you bear in mind all the time, how differently men and women actually behave and are treated in society. It's supremely dishonest and simplistic to say it's the same thing. That's not to say that one's a problem and the other isn't - obviously both are a problem - but without context, it's all pretty meaningless IMO.

Not you, Snorbs. But you must have heard it as it is an incredibly common line - "actually women are just as violent as men"/"commit as much DV as men" -

Elephantsandmiasmas, where has anyone tried to argue 'that women are "just as violent"' as men?

All I've said is that some women commit DV although I have repeatedly acknowledged that men do it more.

But that's all from me for the moment, as I've got to go and do Family Things. I will return to this later.

HerBeatitude, that's interesting. I'll look into that in more detail. You're right in that the Home Office stats exclude sexual assaults as they're counted separately.

And you're also right that the HO stats exclude emotional abuse - they exclude emotional abuse perpetrated by both men and women.

I will agree with WA when they say that emotional abuse can often be more destructive than physical violence. Emotional abuse tends to be a much longer term drip, drip, drip thing whereas violence can come out of the blue and be seen as an aberation that is apologised for and swept under the carpet. But emotional abuse doesn't need strong muscles.

As I said earlier about looking at the emotional abuse heaped on MN members by their mothers, sisters, MILs etc, I think that women are well represented among emotional abusers. Indeed, my personal belief is that is that roughly as many women are emotionally abusive as men although, in both cases, abusers are a minority of the overall population.

tabouleh, I think I've already mentioned why classing other abusive behaviours as violence can make things more complicated. It's not to say that the other abusive behaviours are acceptable, but it does make it confusing when we start talking about stopping child contact because of DV.

You're right in that men tend to be stronger than women. I'm twice the size of my ex but that didn't stop her physically attacking me on several occasions. And, yes, the cuts and bruises those attacks left weren't (thankfully) broken bones. But then I have read, and believe to be true, that the real legacy of DV is less the physical scars but the emotional ones.

Also, by concentrating simply on violent acts you have demonstrated the issue with classing all kinds of domestic abuse as DV. Physical violence is only one type of domestic abuse. I take your point about the relationships section here being a sad litany of male-on-female domestic abuse. But take note of how many other threads there are of MN members having serious problems with their mothers, MILs, sisters, SILs etc. Many of those show clear signs of emotional abuse by said mothers, MILs etc. Do you think those abusive women treat the men in their lives any better?

Nevertheless, I'm uncomfortable with any suggestion that some kinds of domestic abuse / violence are better or more acceptable than others. As Women's Aid itself says, all domestic violence is unacceptable.

"I would want to see men setting up "Men's Aid" to help all these poor defenseless men who are at their wits end, in fear of their sanity and lives due to their wives abuse of them - it won't happen because it is just not a major issue."

It has happened because it is an issue. ManKind and Men's Advice Line are two organisations that perform the same role as Women's Aid and there are others. And there are also a (admittedly very few) men's refuges.

"Rates of self-harm or injury in women?s prisons rose 48% in recorded incidents between 2003 and 2007. [In 2006, women accounted of 11,503 or 49% of total recorded incidents of self-harm, even though they form only around 6% of the prison population]" link :(:(:(

*obvious

...who, by the way, like to claim that the government has an anti-men conspiracy going on. So we can deduce that they don't watch the news or, er, know anything.

I don't want to minimise crime done by women to men, if a man is beaten up by his female partner (and yes it can happen, not all women are tiny gossamer fairies and not all men are hulking rugby players, plus many men would not hit back) then I don't suppose it's any less terrifying or upsetting than it is for a woman. The only difference is that there is much less chance of him being seriously injured or killed.

But I think it's obviously that men commit more crimes in which women are the victims, than women commit crimes in which men are the victims. Most women in prison are there for drugs offences, stealing and handling stolen goods. This is not to say that women never commit violent crimes aimed at men, but it is incredibly rare. In contrast, a vast number of men commit violent crimes aimed at women. Rapists, flashers, wife-beaters, "honour" killers, serial killers, wife-murderers. Someone is doing these things.

To argue that women are "just as violent" is to fly in the face of the obvious truth, supported by any statistic not provided by an MRA.

Blimey, Dittany, talk about guilt by association. So because one FNF report makes one reference to a twunt (Gardner), therefore FNF is a misogynistic organisation? And because I think FNF perform a worthwhile role, that makes me a misogynist too?

Given the way that you throw the word around I suspect that "misogyny" doesn't mean what you think it means.

oh, and are these men raping and serial killing men? NOpe, it's women they target on the whole, although some of these men prefer to target other men

Yes, I think it's important to remember that while some men are disenfranchised under patriarchy, patriarchy-capitalism is run and organized by an elite group of men.

So it's men oppressing women and men oppressing men.

Yes, I also get angry when I hear comments like "women commit as much crime as men", then you do the research and you find that women are shoplifting and men are raping and serial killing.

I think I might be guilty of having had thought of beating the shit out a man, once or twice.

Home Office Online Report 18/04 "Violent crime in England and Wales" shows that domestic violence accounts for approximately 35% of the violent crime experienced by women and 9% of the violent crime experienced by men.

they exclude sexual assaults?

WHY?

oops that should read more here

Re the 1 in 6 figure, this is what Women's Aid have to say about it:

"One misleading statistic, which is often repeated, is that - while one in four women experience domestic violence - so do one in six men. These figures are, however, based on single incidents, of a criminal nature, and without regard to:

?severity of violence
?whether or not it was repeated - and if so, how often
?the complex pattern of overlapping abuse of various kinds
?the context in which it took place.
They also exclude sexual assaults - which are overwhelmingly perpetrated against women, by men - many of whom are partners or former partners of the victims. Finally, emotional abuse - which is often not regarded as a crime, but which survivors often find even more destructive - is excluded from these statistics."

[http://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-violence-articles.asp?section=00010001002200170001&itemid=1266&itemTitle=Statistics%3A+men+as+victims+of+domestic+violence more here]]