Please tell me if this domestic abuse campaign is as misogynistic as I feel it is...

I think it's s very good, strong image. The fact that women suffer domestic abuse on a much more serious scale is irrelevant, as the image isn't suggesting otherwise.

And shmurf, sorry but your mother sounds awful.

It's the plural in the meme that causes the bother for me. If you changed it to 'A toxic woman can destroy a good man' then that reads differently to casting it as women as a class. And I believe that can definitely be something that happens and, as mentioned above, it may well be contributing towards some male suicides.

There's a big stigma around being a male victim of DV, and while that can involve very different patterns and outcomes to female victims, I don't think any of it is solved by pitting one class against the other.

The prodding bit does seem a bit tasteless in some ways, but I wonder if it's about people like my mother. I would honestly class her as borderline abusive. Maybe even not borderline.

My father is a really gentle guy, as is his brother. All my mother's family are extremely competitive and honestly quite confrontational. She seems to jump at the slightest chance for an argument and will say things to him which she would never tolerate in return. She literally follows him around the house when angry, saying things "don't you walk away from me" and "I'm going to keep following you until you answer me". This will go on for an hour or two until my father finally loses his temper and shouts something like "why are you being like this!", at which point she turns it all on him - "it's all my fault now is it?" and "how dare you speak to me like that."

My sister is NC with her because of this and she prevents her seeing him to spite her. She will just keep going until she gets the response she wants. She's even hidden his car keys when he needs to go to work or changed wifi password when he's wfh and will refuse to give them back until he 'hears her out' (basically takes a load of abuse). Also locks him out the house frequently when angry.

Wouldn't there being more women make it harder to demonstrate violent tendencies - i.e. if they only interviewed two women it would only take one of them to being violent to be able to state that 50% of female interviewees were violent?

It depends what you're trying to prove or disprove.

This study was set to disprove, sorry test male control theories.

In summary, the overall aim of the current study was to test several predictions derived from contrasting ap- proaches to IPV. Following initial investigation of sex differences in both IPV (between heterosexual couples) and aggression towards same‐sex non‐intimates in the same sample, we investigated whether men would show lower levels of physical aggression to partners than to same‐sex non‐intimate opponents, and whether women would show higher levels to partners than to same‐sex non‐intimates.

Given the sample sizes, the aim of the study and the fact that Dr Elizabeth Bates has built a career based on male victims of DV by female perpetrators, I'm sorry but I'm a bit dubious in regards to her findings as well as the way it has been presented in the media.

After all, what her study actually proves is that men are more violent to other men rather than female partners and women are less violent towards other women rather than male partners.

Which apparently translated into women are as violent and controlling as men , if not more. Then surprise, the number of women interviewed was 300 more than the men.

"See what I have to deal with?... It only took me poking him 1000 times..."

So according to that 'campaign', a man having a violent or abusive outburst, is in fact because he was being abused by the woman?

So the thousands of women who seek refuge from abusers, do so because they finally snapped and punched him in the face? He's bleeding on the floor crying and she's the victim who runs to a safe house holding the baby?

It would be hilarious, if it wasn't so sad, that the message in that picture actually undermines the real abuse experienced by men in violent relationships. The men who are verbally or physically abused, who never speak up for fear of being seen as weak or incapable. The ones who do need help, are lumped in with a group of men who feel it's acceptable to hurl abuse at a woman because she 'poked' him one time too many, then call themselves the victims.

I do think men are definitely responsible for the vast majority of serious violence though, and part of this could well be down to testosterone - like how male elephants become extremely dangerous during 'musth' when their testosterone rises significantly. Also, likely due to evolution of the male in having to fight for mates or defend territory.

But I do also think that men likely underreport violence. I've known a few male friends who've experienced pretty bad domestic violence (regular black eyes, hot saucepan thrown off hob at head, etc) and none reported it. It's also likely that a man who slapped a woman hard would be seen as an abuser whilst the opposite is a common comedy trope seen and accepted in romcoms, which are mainly watched by women.

@Shmurfyou don't think that the number of women(706) being significantly higher than the number of men (396) might have something to do with the numbers found in the research?

Statistical analysis isn't something I'm great at tbh. I hadn't noticed that imbalance, but surely they would've looked at the proportion of each group which claim to be violent.

Wouldn't there being more women make it harder to demonstrate violent tendencies - i.e. if they only interviewed two women it would only take one of them to being violent to be able to state that 50% of female interviewees were violent? Maybe I'm talking shit though. 😂

Of course 'we talk about that' - an entire verb 'to nag' was invented to address the suffering of poor men having to hear women say things they don't like with no equivalent for women.

@dandymandy Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom not the Republic of Ireland

@Shmurf you don't think that the number of women(706) being significantly higher than the number of men (396) might have something to do with the numbers found in the research?

They do have a certain style ...

Goady AF. Women-focused anti DV campaigns don't focus on demonising men. I don't think it's the same if you reverse the sexes, because there's a trope of it's women's fault when men do bad things/all men are good until women get involved. The same picture with a caption of maybe "some women destroy men too... but we don't talk about that" would sit better and sound more genuine to me (although I think there is actually more discussion of women on men abuse than these MRAs like to admit).

Ah, that one needs a share token. Here's one about the same study, sadly from the Daily Fail.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2669408/amp/Rise-female-relationship-terrorists-Study-finds-women-controlling-aggressive-partners-men.html

www.telegraph.co.uk/men/relationships/10927507/Women-are-more-controlling-and-aggressive-than-men-in-relationships.html

It's a goady image no doubt, but I think men struggle more than women to face up to abuse due to social stigma, which has been demonstrated by recent studies - I remember one where they asked women if they'd ever hit their partner and the result was surprisingly much higher than when they asked men, which they proposed was maybe because men were embarrassed to admit.

Men are definitely more violent but recent-ish studies have shown that women are more controlling and I sometimes wonder if that contributes to the 80 men a week who kill themselves - a staggering figure. Perhaps they feel 'defeated' and question their manhood.

I'll try and find the study I read a while back which was a bit of an eye opener for me.

Ultimately, it's not a competition though. I'd like to see both sexes helped which isn't a mutually exclysive thing. Never understood those who complain that men need to step up and help themselves but then protest against thing like International Men's Day.

Yup typical MRA bullshit. A shame really as I won't deny that there are men out there who need help and support, and some of their posts are ok/reasonable.

Then the mask slips...

She's probably asking him to take the bins out again as it's his one fucking job and she does everything else.

And that's just as bad male violence as we all know.

Females successfully convicted of domestic abuse in 2018 were 5,044
Males successfully convicted of domestic abuse in 2018 were 62,973.

Men do suffer domestic abuse from women but obviously women are at much greater risk form men.

It is absolutely sexist and very silly. MRAs love shouting about how women are more violent than men, how rape doesn't exist (but it suddenly does when they're talking about men being raped by women, ignoring the fact that men are usually raped by other men) and how men are the biggest victims of everything. It's all BS and the statistics prove that. NI...does that mean this is based in Ireland?

It’s just a nothing. Reverse the sexes and the sentiment is the same. Ignore it it’s posted by a stupid person.

Woman shouting at man - unpleasant. Man breaking woman’s bones - infinitely worse and a lot more common.

What do they mean by “destroy”? It’s not two men a week who are being murdered by their partners. This just reminds me of what Andrea Dworkin said - men will often respond to women’s words as if they were violence.