Abuse is everywhere

[Eastwestt]

Cheating, lying, financial abuse, emotional abuse etc is so common, I’m actually shocked to come across any relationship that doesn’t feature abuse.

Not sure why I’m posting. It’s just something I have very depressingly realised lately.

Friends, colleagues, relatives etc - the experiences are countless. From all walks of life. Including my own experiences of men too.

Well said @Superlambaanana ! And on the suicide stats, I may have opened up that can of worms talking about women killing themselves as a result of democratic violence.

I couldn’t agree more with you. I get infuriated by the idea that any discussion about male violence against women and girls, always turns into ‘but women hit men too’.

what is so difficult for people to accept that male violence is a huge problem? Just because some men are lovely, and some women aren’t doesn’t change the facts.

i know lots of divorced people. Many get along fine with their ex. However, in scenarios where there’s a lot of nastiness and bitterness, it’s always as a result of a bitter, nasty ex husband. The male divorcees I know will moan about their ex wife occasionally, but it’s always about some minor tension that would happen even in a happy marriage ( who’s picking kids up/ taking them for an extra weekend etc). Some of their wives have definitely acted unkindly during the divorce, but I’ve yet to meet a man whose ex- wife is a continuing source of hassle.

Many of the divorced women I know, are essentially having to deal with the continuation of abuse from angry, bitter men. Sadly, this is done through the kids.

@Superlambaanana

Much abuse is hidden, most abuse is, across the board, while a man may stand on a hill spouting equality, privately in his own home and castle he can behave oppositely.

In the furture maybe once big brother has truly invaded our private spaces, maybe there will be no need for courts, endless years of gaslighting and the penalisation of victims who have been accused of being abusive.

Some of the black mirror stuff on Netflix like The Entire History of You, episode looks futuristic but could become part of accepted living in the future.

Yes, this.

There was an interesting thread a good while back with absolutely loads of studies posted in it. Legit studies covering dozens of countries and hundreds of thousands of participants. IIRC one was the biggest DV study ever conducted. The results were not what you'd expect.

Will try and see if I can dig it up.

Found it!

Lots of interesting studies etc posted in here around some of the stuff discussed above. May cut and paste some of the more interesting bits.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/feminism/4618145-domestic-abuse-male-victims-statistics

The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly similar rates as men has been termed "gender symmetry". The earliest empirical evidence of gender symmetry was presented in the 1975 U.S. National Family Violence Survey carried out by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles on a nationally representative sample of 2,146 "intact families". The survey found 11.6% of women and 12% of men had experienced some kind of intimate partner violence in the last twelve months, also 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" intimate partner violence.

Since 1975, numerous other empirical studies have found evidence of gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. For example, in the United States, the National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 found 18.4% of men and 17.4% of women had experienced minor intimate partner violence, and 5.5% of men and 6.5% of women had experienced severe intimate partner violence.[48][49]

In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" found that in the twelve months prior to the survey, 4.2% of both men and woman between the ages of 16 and 59 had been assaulted by an intimate.[50]

The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 found that from 1994 to 1999, 4% of men and 4% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 22% of men and 28% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 7% of men and 8% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[35]

The 2005 Canadian General Social Survey, looking at the years 1999–2004 found similar data; 4% of men and 3% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 16% of men and 21% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 6% of men and 7% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[36]

The 1975 National Family Violence Survey found that 27.7% of intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by men alone, 22.7% by women alone and 49.5% were bidirectional. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, resulting in almost identical data.[52]

The 1985 National Family Violence Survey found 25.9% of IPV cases perpetrated by men alone, 25.5% by women alone, and 48.6% were bidirectional.[53]

A study conducted in 2007 by Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesse Haileyesus, Monica Swahn, and Linda S. Saltzman, of 11,370 heterosexual U.S. adults aged 18 to 28 found that 24% of all relationships had some violence. Of those relationships, 49.7% of them had reciprocal violence. In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

In 1997, Philip W. Cook conducted a study of 55,000 members of the United States Armed Forces, finding bidirectionality in 60-64% of intimate partner violence cases, as reported by both men and women.[55]

The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 49.7% of intimate partner violence cases were reciprocal and 50.3% were non-reciprocal. When data provided by men only was analyzed, 46.9% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 53.1% as non-reciprocal. When data provided by women only was analyzed, 51.3% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 49.7% as non-reciprocal. The overall data showed 70.7% of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by women only (74.9% when reported by men; 67.7% when reported by women) and 29.3% were perpetrated by men only (25.1% when reported by men; 32.3% when reported by women).[56]

The 2006 thirty-two nation International Dating Violence Study "revealed an overwhelming body of evidence that bidirectional violence is the predominant pattern of perpetration; and this ... indicates that the etiology of ipv is mostly parallel for men and women". The survey found for "any physical violence", a rate of 31.2%, of which 68.6% was bidirectional, 9.9% was perpetrated by men only, and 21.4% by women only. For severe assault, a rate of 10.8% was found, of which 54.8% was bidirectional, 15.7% perpetrated by men only, and 29.4% by women only.[57]

In 2000, John Archer conducted a meta-analysis of eighty-two IPV studies. He found that "women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women."[58] By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice finds that women make up 84% of spouse abuse victims and 86% of victims of abuse by a boyfriend or girlfriend.[59]

From 2010 to 2012, scholars of domestic violence from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. assembled The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge, a research database covering 1700 peer-reviewed studies, the largest of its kind. Among its findings:[63]"

• More women (23%) than men (19.3%) have been assaulted at least once in their lifetime.
• Rates of female-perpetrated violence are higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%).
• Male and female IPV are perpetrated from similar motives.
• Studies comparing men and women in the power/control motive have mixed results overall.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#:~:text=The%20theory%20that%20women%20perpetrate,Straus%20and%20Richard%20J.

@FatPrincess, I will dispute something here.
To be clear, I am not agreeing here, as before I am questioning it not agreeing.
There is typically a massive imbalance in physical power and legal services are not that interested. A woman hitting a man is typically not as serious as the other way round. We have different standards for a reason.

• More women (23%) than men (19.3%) have been assaulted at least once in their lifetime.

Me being hit by a female partner is not that serious. Me hitting them would be far more serious, both physically and psychologically.

To clarify, this is not justifying men in the least.

Yes, I'd agree. But something is clearly going on here. We're told that men only make up around 20% of victims but then you see all these studies that seem to suggest differently. And we're not talking the odd isolated study. Meta review of 1700 peer reviewed studies, another study of 500k people, another covering 32 different nations, etc....

Across decades and hundreds of thousands of participants the results seem fairly consistent. It's only government stats that contradict which makes me wonder if this is the 'men not reporting' thing. It's not a popular suggestion and always seems to evoke hostility but the findings are there and hard to dismiss. It sort of makes me question everything I thought I knew about the subject tbh.

@FatPrincess, perhaps (I am guessing and it is a serious issue) that men not reporting has two parts, one is wrong headed shame and the other is it is not worth reporting.
A woman hitting me is fairly trivial, not just in itself but it does not leave that feeling of fear. It is really not worth reporting and not comparable to a woman being hit by a man. For a man, it might create nervousness, for a woman it can mean terror.
At the extreme, I had a ex-GF want sex, I made it clear I did not want sex. She got her way by making a threat to cause lots of trouble in my life if I did not accept. I accepted. For a man to do that to a woman could be traumatic, I can say the other way round was not.
There are hard aspects of living with someone else, but the above things were actually trivial.

A pity @FatPrincess and @Sweden99 have spoiled this thread with their determination to keep derailing a discussion about abuse of women with posts about the male perspective. 👋

I am literally arguing against her argument.

An ignore function is long overdue on MN

Or a sort of block function so you could automatically hide comments from selected routine-offender-posters. I would use it to hide people who routinely make nasty comments, those who show themselves to be misogynistic and male posters. Would make long threads much easier to read through too.

Well, that's the thing about public forums. You can't dictate how other people post. You're entitled to moan and people are entitled to just ignore you.

I certainly agree that most men wouldn't be in fear of their life from a woman, due to the fact most men could kill a woman in seconds with their bare hands with the reverse generally not being true.

However, it's not always trivial at all when a woman hits a man. My brother's best mate from school who I've known 20 years was badly abused for a number of years. He never reported it as she always threatened to stop him seeing his son. The whole thing affected him greatly.

He was a fairly small guy and she was quite big for a girl, about 5'9 I'd say and of athletic build. She'd competed in a number of sports at county level in her youth and had done full contact kickboxing for a few years, including a few full contact matches where you're trying to actually knock your opponent out. She was strong too and could squat 100kg for a good few reps.

I reckon he could've ultimately beaten her in a struggle of life or death but that was never the situation as he's the calmest guy you could imagine. Usually she'd fly off the handle and shout at him until he gave her an excuse to be violent. She headbutted, elbowed, punched, bit, and kneed him in the groin at various intervals. He got numerous black eyes, needed stitches one time, and still has a scar on his hand from when she threw a hot frying pan at his head which he blocked with his arm.

He was terrified of her. She was from a rough family where the dad was a known hard man and there was DV going on between the grandparents too - GD had to go to hospital one time after GM either bit or scratched him, not sure which. He didn't know any of this at the start. One of her friends actually tried to warn him on the night they first met (I was there too) and we thought it was just her being bitter that he'd been flirting with her first before her mate jumped in.

The friend said she'd beaten up her previous bf, and after my friend split up with her he was contacted by the police in connection to her assaulting the next bf - he declined to comment so it seems at least three instances of systematic DV went unreported.

After seeing all that I struggle to watch people minimise it, even if we as a group receive more injuries than men. And frankly why should they give a fuck about us if we don't about them?

On another note, I can see other posters are trying to shut down my comments. I wasn't intending to derail but those studies are 100% relevant as they relate to the very premise underpinning the thread. If people are complaining about the overwhelming amount of male violence when the reality may very well be that women are just as bad....well, I don't think it's wrong to question what's being said.

If they're more interested in painting a particular picture completely regardless of what the reality might actually be then surely that's a bit disingenuous?