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

[BraykeDance]

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?

This and its the reason perpetrators like Lucy letby can gat away with things. One of the scariest statements i read about the case was what was said in one of the earliest meeting to discuss the death 'oh no it couldn't be lovely lucy' or something to that effect. Her sex was one of the contributing factors of her getting away with it an remaining working because no one would think a woman capable of such evil acts

It's not more likely though, men get away with a staggering amount of abuse. Doesn't mean women should get away with it, it means no one should. I don't think the "women are worse than men and get away with it" is helpful at all when it's the same story for male abusers.

The entire thread is about discussing women being capable of domestic abuse and male victims being ignored or shamed. How is it an irrelevant comment to say yep women are caple of abuse specifically psychogigical abuse😅

You didn't say "capable of" you said "better than men" do you not see the issue with that?

And I don't think anyone has said that.

At all.

What I think many people are saying is that women can perpetrate abuse which could and should be seen as equally or even more abusive as men in specific individual situations but are generally seen as less abusive, mentally ill or just victim's by virtue of their sex.

Ffs. I am fed up of this bullshit about Heard.
She did not cut his finger off, it was very clear in court that she didn't cut his finger off.
https://apnews.com/article/johnny-depp-amber-heard-entertainment-lawsuits-908375ac402ead74c0be557921d06701

Noone knows what happened to his finger, we know he dipped it in paint and painted verbally abusive messages with it after it was severed.

She has not been on trial for DV, lots of posters on here like to chat on about "innocent until proven guilty" regarding men but in the case of women (like Heard) its guilty from the outset.

Disgusting. And totally irrelevant to the thread.

Once again I said some can be better then. Its you who took this to mean something completely different and have gone off on a tangent implying that im belittling female survivors of domestic abuse.

And actually in this one sense women have an added layer of shame on their victim due to society's interpretation that DA is always male driven and a male in this circumatance should man up.

It's not that I don't think it's bad or deny it takes place, it's just that it's so rare compared to male violence that it's not something I feel a need to campaign about. I

Better than who? A standard man? An abusive man? A man who's killed a woman? You need to reword it rather than trying to defend it.

@BraykeDance

"@1dayatatime that's sad, but at the same time I think it's a terrible advert. Abuse isn't really about pushing someone :( it's a pattern of psychological complete destruction. I wish they would educate the public much more on the emotional and psychological abuse that is often the worst element and what keeps abuse victims silent"

+++

I fully agree with you on abuse also being on an emotional and psychological level and not just physical.

They chose physical abuse in this video in order to show the public's different attitudes to male abusing female and female abusing male.

What saddens me most is that so many members of the public (men and women) found female physically assaulting a male to be actually amusing. It reminded me of the dark days of 1970s style comedians joking about coming back from the pub and slapping the wife around.

Agreed.

And hence, as at least one pp has mentioned, why Lucy Letby got away with her activities for so long. A blonde white woman couldn't possibly be a murderer.

A lesbian woman told me that her appearing with a black eye one day was treated as a joke, because she was the 'butch ' looking one, and her partner was very pretty and feminine presenting. Very sad, she was the most gentle, sweet person - and people laughed at her.

But you have gone back to it being about physical da which yes male are going to be superior at. I was focusing on just the physiological aspects of abuse. Therefore the component not controlled by physical size. In this circumstance women and males are more on par. Alot of domestic abuse never escalates to physical abuse it doesn't make it less abusive. I know of a family where the woman is on 6 figures, in full control of the family finances, she takes the husbands car keys with her to work as she doesn't want him to waste the petrel. His card lives in her perse and he needs permission to use it. He has been completely isolated from his family as she doesn't like them. He has to ask permission to leave the house. She will take his kids and he will never see them if he dares disobey her. He can't afford a bottle of milk to give the kids breakfast.
Luckily he got out but the point is women are as capable of this form of behaviour as males. It does not requite physical size

My point which you complety mistook is some abusive females can be as bad or worse then even abusive males in this form of behaviour. I was very particular is excluding physical abuse from this.

I think that women can be abusive and are abusive.

I think there is no evidence they are treated more leniently than male abusers. And there is no compelling evidence that men aren't getting support. Male specific DV charities are rare because there is no demand. Male refuges are rare because there is no demand. Compared with female charities and refuges which are hugely over subscribed.

A lot of the time, the "evidence" is individual men telling their specific story, which doesn't indicate the scale of the problem of female on Male abuse.

Personally I think its rare. I tend to believe men who say their ex was abusive unless 1) they have had contact with their children stopped or supervised by the courts; 2) they describe their ex as crazy or psycho, bonus points for multiple crazy exes; 3) the police have been involved and said the man is the abuser or 4) ex has a non mol or restraining order

To me those are all hallmarks of an abusive man trying to deflect and minimise his abuse.

And the next time she makes up something about walking into a door or something because she doesn't want to be laughed at again or not taken seriously.

And once the covering up stage starts happening then the abuse escalates.

But by saying they can be "worse" are you saying they're worse than any male ever? It's just a stupid thing to say. If you'd said women can be just as bad at this form of abuse I'd agree with you.

And that's exactly why the 'men are physically stronger so domestic violence isn't that serious if a male isn’t the perpetrator' trope is extremely damaging.

I know lot's of members of the LGBQ + community who think it isn't physical abuse because they are equally physically matched male on male or female on female.

Which so many posters on this thread have said that they really only consider physical abuse to be serious, or see it as more seriousi f it's a male who could easily physically dominate a female.

Ignoring the fact that physically superiority may have nothing to do with domestic abuse and often, weapons are used, which is what usually happens with female perpetrators of domestic homicide.

@1dayatatime She did leave eventually. I thought it was interesting to mention because there was no difference in size, strength or sex. There was something else going on.

And also that people around her thought it was comical, which I find very shocking.

Im sorry but the size of an abuser matters hugely. Just as an angry adult is frightening to to a small child, a threatening 6ft 5 man is scary to a 5ft 5 woman. Size and strength matter.

I agree OP, and I will go one further and say that the death of Caroline Flack would not have had anywhere near such an outpouring of emotion if she was a man who had abused his partner. But it was Ok for Flack to abuse her partner because she was a woman.

Yes we know what you think.

But if someone broke into your house and threatened to rape you, do you think they should be treated differently if they were a skinny short weak looking dude or a tall, muscular dude?

Should the bigger dude be treated more harshly?

Were you going to fight off the skinny short dude but not the tall muscular dude?
.
Or does it really not matter when someone is threatening violence against you?

If it was a man at all I'd have no chance. I've never met a man that I'd be a physical match for if they were hell bent on hurting me, if it was a woman of a similar size to me I'd feel a whole lot less threatened because I'd have much more of a chance of fighting back and actually succeeding.

But no a smaller dude shouldn't be punished less harshly and neither should a woman. Doesn't take away the fact that in that situation a man is more physically threatening.

Isn't the reason she killed herself because of the massive amount of backlash she got for that incident?