Page 13 | To think the high volume of male abusers means some people find it hard to see when a female is an abuser?

BraykeDance · 2023-10-03T17:27:43+00:00

Having experienced first hand fairly extreme abuse from a female, I feel a bit like even in 2023 some people struggle to believe women are capable of extreme psychological, emotional and even physical abuse. I find often people want to victim blame by implying the man must have deserved it or driven her to it. Amber Heard being a great example of an abuser where I think if she were a man people would see much more clearly that she is an abuser. I understand men (for reasons I don't understand) have a greater tendency to be abusers in the sense of power and control; but women do this too sometimes. I found, as someone recovering from such am abuser, that many people minimised it and almost normalised behaviour that would certainly mean prison for a man. Which made healing as a victim a lot harder. And also made it far easier for the abuser to continue. AIBU to think we hold women to a different standard and sometimes reframe abusive behaviour or coercive control to fit with the idea of the female victim?

Sigmama · 05/10/2023 06:40

Op resorting to name calling doesn't help the cause

5128gap · 05/10/2023 06:40

BraykeDance · 04/10/2023 22:07

What do we feel this vitriol is about? It's one thing, in my eyes, to dismiss or minimise abuse by a woman - based perhaps on ignorance or unconscious bias - but a few people here are engraged by victims of female abusers discussing a self confessed female abuser. Some acussed this thread of being misogynistic. Some can't help repeated whataboutery. Some have been outright unpleasant.

I'm wondering what the psychological basis might be for this?

I tried to imagine myself going to a thread about victims of something, and telling them "oh that hardly ever happens" or accusing them of all sorts of odd things and it's unimaginable to do that.

I wonder what it is? What fuels it?

OP you have invited people to offer opinions on whether the high incidence of men abusing women makes men less likely to be believed.
None of the posts you have objected to have actually veered from this remit.
Its quite obvious that people are going to make comparisons between abuse carried out by the two different sexes, or else how could they possibly address the 'less' in your question?
People have indeed spoken of their experiences of abuse, but nothing about the question posed in your thread indicated you wanted this to be a space only for this purpose. You framed this as a debate on whether A is because of B.
Obviously some respondants will suggest that no, A is because of C or D. Or indeed they don't believe A to be the case at all.
When this has happened you have either become angry with the posters or ignored them, responding only to those describing abusive women. You may have found it better to title your thread 'Let's talk about women who have abused men' if you wanted a discussion that merely drew attention to incidents where men were victims.

Beefcurtains79 · 05/10/2023 06:41

Yippee! Another thread on mumsnet about how women are just as bad abusers as men!

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 06:44

Beefcurtains79 · 05/10/2023 06:41

Yippee! Another thread on mumsnet about how women are just as bad abusers as men!

Except it’s not.

ok it’s derailed a bit, but it was saying very clearly that yes, men do it more often and discussing the impact being a “minority” had on abused men.

Snoozysnoozy · 05/10/2023 06:45

No it isn't, it's about how men are is likely to be believed of they are the victims of abuse from their female partners.

It does make me wonder what the stats are for abusive relationships within LGBT couples though.

allyjay · 05/10/2023 06:45

Yeah and apparently men work together and get things done, whereas women just compete with each other for men. I can't roll my eyes hard enough. Ffs.

allyjay · 05/10/2023 06:47

I mean the misogyny is right there and nothing to do with women who are abusers

5128gap · 05/10/2023 06:59

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 06:44

Except it’s not.

ok it’s derailed a bit, but it was saying very clearly that yes, men do it more often and discussing the impact being a “minority” had on abused men.

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Except the OP has little to no interest in engaging with posts that attempt to address the question she posed unless it's to affirm her theory.
There's a similar one been going all week 'asking' if people think the other woman in an affair is a bad as the cheating spouse.
People start to respond in good faith, explaining why they disagree, and just as on here, are accused of lacking empathy with victims, deifying women, misandry and so forth.

Sigmama · 05/10/2023 07:04

If you wanted a serious discussion about this issue perhaps you shouldn't have mentioned herd depp

Katypp · 05/10/2023 07:09

Chickenkeev · 04/10/2023 21:46

Literally nobody has said women can't be abusers. There are are endless CF threads here all the time where women are abusers. It's just in romantic relationships, it is statistically more likely for the male to be the abuser. That is a statistical reality. And i find it really strange that people would have a problem with that.

I am not sure anyone has a problem with it. I don't recall anyone denying men are more likely to be abusers than women.
I (and I think others on here as well) do have a problem with posters who seem to be adamant that women can never be abusers and are aggressively shouting down anyone who disagrees with them. They would be first in the queue to criticise anyone minimising male abusers so they should just but out if they can't see how blinkered they are.

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 07:20

5128gap · 05/10/2023 06:59

Except the OP has little to no interest in engaging with posts that attempt to address the question she posed unless it's to affirm her theory.
There's a similar one been going all week 'asking' if people think the other woman in an affair is a bad as the cheating spouse.
People start to respond in good faith, explaining why they disagree, and just as on here, are accused of lacking empathy with victims, deifying women, misandry and so forth.

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Op’s been a little distracted either the JD/AH thing yes. But there has been some good discussion around that

its an interesting topic, and the thread kind of proved a point in places with the amount of “yes, but”

Ilovebudgies · 05/10/2023 07:44

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 07:20

Op’s been a little distracted either the JD/AH thing yes. But there has been some good discussion around that

its an interesting topic, and the thread kind of proved a point in places with the amount of “yes, but”

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Exactly. The whole point of the thread was to say how male abuse is down played, dismissed and not believed, and a well known case where abuse is admitted to on an audio by the abuser, is dismissed, downplayed and not believed right here on the thread repeatedly.
I wouldn't necessarily take objection to someone saying 'yes but it was a mutually abusive relationship' even though I don't agree with that personally, but people piled in to talk about how vile Depp is.

If a man is an abuse victim women automatically look for what he might have done first, how he might have caused it, but in reverse that is victim blaming.
If women respond with violence to men when they are abused it is self defense, but if men do it they then become the abuser. It would actually be pretty hard in the face of being hit repeatedly, to never hit back or push back.

And some of the first comments were like 'she must need help, she must be mentally ill' the automatic response was to find a reason or an excuse for the behaviour.

It's a really important topic because usually on Mumsnet debate around it is immediately shut down by feminists shouting MRA, I think MRA has already appeared, l at least once, in a thread about male victims of abuse!

5128gap · 05/10/2023 07:53

I also think that what the OP is actually describing here is men failing men. Men head up every single institution of power in the world. They also as I alluded to before, are responsible for the perpetuation of stereotypes that men are superior, more powerful and therefore a 'real' man would not allow himself to be controlled by a woman. So if he says he is, he must be a liar, exaggerator or otherwise shameful unmanly kind of man.
So if male victims of abuse are being failed by the justice system, support services, are being unfairly represented in the media, and are being judged by society, its probably going to be a lot more helpful to consider and challenge the men behind that than to restrict our exploration of the issue to the abusers themselves.
The OP is asserting there are two problems. Abusive women and the treatment of their victims, yet is very reluctant to allow the discussion to veer from a focus on the first. The refusal to explore anything beyond the notion that some women are evil is as blinkered as she believes other posters to be.

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 08:20

5128gap · 05/10/2023 07:53

I also think that what the OP is actually describing here is men failing men. Men head up every single institution of power in the world. They also as I alluded to before, are responsible for the perpetuation of stereotypes that men are superior, more powerful and therefore a 'real' man would not allow himself to be controlled by a woman. So if he says he is, he must be a liar, exaggerator or otherwise shameful unmanly kind of man.
So if male victims of abuse are being failed by the justice system, support services, are being unfairly represented in the media, and are being judged by society, its probably going to be a lot more helpful to consider and challenge the men behind that than to restrict our exploration of the issue to the abusers themselves.
The OP is asserting there are two problems. Abusive women and the treatment of their victims, yet is very reluctant to allow the discussion to veer from a focus on the first. The refusal to explore anything beyond the notion that some women are evil is as blinkered as she believes other posters to be.

Good post, can’t disagree with any of that

Baconisdelicious · 05/10/2023 08:25

Natalya123 · 04/10/2023 23:46

Generally, women get off much easier. It's a well known fact and has been discussed for decades!

United States

A 2001 University of Georgia study found substantial disparity in the criminal sentencing that men and women received "after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables". The study found that in US federal courts, "blacks and males are... less likely to get no prison term when that option is available; less likely to receive downward departures [from the guidelines]; and more likely to receive upward adjustments and, conditioned on having a downward departure, receive smaller reductions than whites and females".[9]
In 2005 Max Schanzenbach found that "increasing the proportion of female judges in a district decreases the sex disparity" in sentencing which he interprets as "evidence of a paternalistic bias among male judges that favors female offenders".[10]
In 2006 Ann Martin Stacey and Cassia Spohn found that women receive more lenient sentences than men after controlling for presumptive sentence, family responsibilities, offender characteristics, and other legally relevant variables, based on examination of three US district courts.[11]
In 2012 Sonja B. Starr from University of Michigan Law School found that, controlling for the crime, "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted", also based on data from US federal court cases.[12

United Kingdom

A paper examining gender sentencing disparities in a large samples of assault, burglary and drugs offences found that male offenders are subjected to significantly harsher sentences, even when controlling for mitigating factors and case characteristics. Men were 2.84 times more likely than women to receive custodial sentence for the offence of assault, 1.89 more likely for the offence of burglary, and 2.72 more likely for offence related to drugs. For offences of assault, the gender factor was stronger than any other ‘harm and culpability’ factor with the exception of the ‘with intent to commit serious harm’ factor.[14]

France

A 2020 study shows that women receive 33% (15 days) shorter prison sentences than men, even when controlling for all observable characteristics – including a very precise description of the crime. When pairs of mixed-gender offender are convicted together the gender gap is even higher - men receive 38.7 additional prison days and 10.7 fewer suspended prison days.

From a procedural point of view, when controlling for the type of crime, men are on average judged after shorter investigations, and are more likely to be sentenced after an accelerated procedure. When taken to court, men are 20% less likely to be discharged (6% vs. 4%). In 2017, 19.9% of convicted men were sentenced to prison, compared to 8.5% of convicted women.

Female judges have less bias that male judges. With decreasing number of female judges in the court the gender gaps in prison and probation sentences widens - prison and probation sentences are lighter for women, while suspended prison sentences are longer. The gender of the prosecutor seem to play no role. [15]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentencing_disparity

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we are in neither the US nor France.

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 08:30

Ilovebudgies · 05/10/2023 07:44

Exactly. The whole point of the thread was to say how male abuse is down played, dismissed and not believed, and a well known case where abuse is admitted to on an audio by the abuser, is dismissed, downplayed and not believed right here on the thread repeatedly.
I wouldn't necessarily take objection to someone saying 'yes but it was a mutually abusive relationship' even though I don't agree with that personally, but people piled in to talk about how vile Depp is.

If a man is an abuse victim women automatically look for what he might have done first, how he might have caused it, but in reverse that is victim blaming.
If women respond with violence to men when they are abused it is self defense, but if men do it they then become the abuser. It would actually be pretty hard in the face of being hit repeatedly, to never hit back or push back.

And some of the first comments were like 'she must need help, she must be mentally ill' the automatic response was to find a reason or an excuse for the behaviour.

It's a really important topic because usually on Mumsnet debate around it is immediately shut down by feminists shouting MRA, I think MRA has already appeared, l at least once, in a thread about male victims of abuse!

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You are missing the fact that the OP said the woman was psychotic.

Posters were saying if she was in psychosis she needs help. Not an unreasonable point.

From my perspective this thread is full of unevidenced stats, misquoted stats and MRA talking points. Which makes me think there is an agenda to it, and it isn't to talk about women abusers. In fact we have barely talked about women abusers, it's all been about the poor old men.

https://kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims/

I posted a comment about the data natalya is referencing on another thread where they were going on about this "bidirectional violence". The study authors said (paraphrasing) that in those relationships violence was nearly always instigated by men and the women had a choice to try to fight them off or run the risk of being killed/seriously injured.

For some reason natalya isn't interested in that.

This thing about male victims

A couple of weeks ago, The Independent ran an article on male victims of domestic violence. There were some factual inaccuracies in the report along with the use of the statistic that one in three …

https://kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 08:32

From the link in my post:

It’s harder for men to report, there’s much more of a taboo for men’
Exactly the opposite:

men are more – not less – likely to call the police
men are more likely – not less – to support a prosecution
men are less likely – not more – withdraw their support of charges.1

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 08:42

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 08:32

From the link in my post:

It’s harder for men to report, there’s much more of a taboo for men’
Exactly the opposite:

men are more – not less – likely to call the police
men are more likely – not less – to support a prosecution
men are less likely – not more – withdraw their support of charges.1

I read that link. Some interesting points raised

the bit you quote isn’t backed up by any data though, those 3 points (certainly the first 2) are just an opinion

and i understand that the bcs findings are generally thought to be a better indicator or crime than the police stats where there is an issue around under reporting, for example rape. I’d say that logic holds for male dv victims

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 08:44

But fundamentally, again, I don’t think anyone on this thread is saying anything other than yes men are the bulk of the offenders

where I struggle is the responses of “yes you’re a male victim but it’s usually women”. No need for the but

FloydPepper · 05/10/2023 08:46

I do agree with this bit

”It is quite possible to believe that no woman, child, or man deserves to be a victim of sexual or domestic violence (or indeed of any other type of violence) whist maintaining a feminist agenda to end women’s oppression.”

Natalya123 · 05/10/2023 08:48

Its quite obvious that people are going to make comparisons between abuse carried out by the two different sexes, or else how could they possibly address the 'less' in your question?

This bears repeating.

In almost every thread about male violence people start complaining about women being brought into the discussion, but you can't have a balanced discussion without looking at both sides.

I also see the big wedge of studies I posted have been completely ignored as they're not 'the right kind of study'.

Natalya123 · 05/10/2023 08:53

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 08:32

From the link in my post:

It’s harder for men to report, there’s much more of a taboo for men’
Exactly the opposite:

men are more – not less – likely to call the police
men are more likely – not less – to support a prosecution
men are less likely – not more – withdraw their support of charges.1

Why do the organisations that deal with it say differently? And why do more women claim to be abusers than men claim to be victims? There's no incentive for women to admit something that makes them look bad.

Half of male victims (49%) fail to tell anyone they are a victim of domestic abuse and are two and a half times less likely to tell anyone than female victims (19%).

11% of male victims (7.2% women) have considered taking their life due to partner abuse.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=mankind.org.uk/statistics/statistics-on-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse/%23:~:text%3DHalf%2520of%2520male%2520victims%2520(49,life%2520due%2520to%2520partner%2520abuse.&ved=2ahUKEwipmeH4td6BAxX-S0EAHQR_Cx4QFnoECA0QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2TpS8U8X5iJx6HuM5la90p

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 08:53

natalya I really can't be arsed to go through them all again, we discussed this on the other thread. The studies 1) include differences of opinion/disrespect and name calling in violence 2) show that mainly women are violent in response to mens violence.

Cherry picking stats to suit your argument is not scientific.

A scientific way to go about it would be "Hypothesis: women are just as violent as men"
Evidence:
Reported crimes
Self reported crimes
Deaths and injuries recorded at hospitals
Peer reviewed studies
Non-peer reviewed studies
Internet anecdata

Pretty bloody obvious that the evidence would suggest that hypothesis is incorrect.

Natalya123 · 05/10/2023 08:58

Oh, so AdamRyan is posting links from feminist bloggers. Now it makes sense. Definitely not likely to be biased there. 😂 Maybe I'll post some nice impartial 'facts' from an incel/MRA website lol.

AdamRyan · 05/10/2023 09:00

Natalya123 · 05/10/2023 08:53

Why do the organisations that deal with it say differently? And why do more women claim to be abusers than men claim to be victims? There's no incentive for women to admit something that makes them look bad.

Half of male victims (49%) fail to tell anyone they are a victim of domestic abuse and are two and a half times less likely to tell anyone than female victims (19%).

11% of male victims (7.2% women) have considered taking their life due to partner abuse.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=mankind.org.uk/statistics/statistics-on-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse/%23:~:text%3DHalf%2520of%2520male%2520victims%2520(49,life%2520due%2520to%2520partner%2520abuse.&ved=2ahUKEwipmeH4td6BAxX-S0EAHQR_Cx4QFnoECA0QBQ&usg=AOvVaw2TpS8U8X5iJx6HuM5la90p

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Telling "someone" is different to calling the police. And your link has no evidence that women are more likely to claim to be abusers than men.