I was in a domestic abuse training session this week and the person leading the training said that she has never seen, in 20 years of doing her role as a support worker for domestic abuse, a situation where the man isn't actually abusing the woman where a woman is accused of abusing a man. She said this is particularly the case where young dependents are involved because the woman usually is less powerful than the man in the first place and the man is often using his power to take advantage over the woman.
She said that in all the cases she has seen where a woman has reacted physically towards a man, there has been manipulative and controlling behaviour towards the woman first and the have reacted with overwhelm. I thought this was interesting.
What is other people's take on this?
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To think that women are often not abusive unless she's being abused?
Bigbrookie · 08/03/2024 08:16
yellowsmileyface · 08/03/2024 08:44
She may just be sharing her own experiences, but it makes me wonder what the purpose was of her sharing that observation? What overall point was she trying to make?
I think it's quite dangerous with regards to abuse to assert anything as 100% always the case, and I don't think it's right to invalidate the experiences of men who have been victims of DV from a female partner.
I do agree though that in many cases reactive abuse is a thing, and absolutely needs to be talked about. I think it's basically the goal of some abusive people to push their partners to the point of acting abusive themselves. It's part of the gaslighting so they can destabilise their partners and gain control over them, whilst playing the victim themselves.
As a result, many victims of abuse neglect to seek help because they genuinely believe they're at least as equally as abusive as their partners. Thus, it's important to raise more awareness of reactive abuse, but I think it's important we keep gender out of it.
MeghanThyStallion · 08/03/2024 08:40
That's interesting and rings true with my personal experience. My exH went to my parents to tell them that I'd tried to hit him. They were obviously horrified and pulled me up on it. What could I say? It was true, I had tried to hit him on more than one occasion. At the time I was so ashamed of myself that it seemed like explaining the circumstances would be making excuses, which could only make the situation worse.
With a lot of counselling, I'm still not proud of it but I can see that it was the action of an abused woman who was either terrified or had reached serious depths of desperation. ExH abused me physically, verbally, emotionally, financially throughout our marriage, adding on sexual abuse after we had children. On the first two occasions I tried to hit him, he was physically blocking me from getting away from him. On the third, he had left me stranded a 2-hour walk from home and wouldn't answer the phone, with the DC's nursery due to close for the day and no money for me to get a taxi. When I finally got home he laughed at me crying and jeered at me and I just snapped and tried to slap him. That's when he went to my parents. I wasn't acting in self-defence so agreed that I had been physically abusive towards him.
bombastix · 08/03/2024 08:45
It's often done by abusing men. The teacher shot with her daughter last year had been reported to the police by the filth that eventually killed her as being "abusive". She has been arrested.
This experience probably contributed to her not seeking help from the authorities when he became dangerous and then killed them all.
Nonewclothes2024 · 08/03/2024 08:55
Just looked up NCDV , 7% of perpetrators last year were female.
I wonder if any of these are self declared females ?
But it obviously does happen, they can't all have been abused first.
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