'Men are domestically abused more often than women'

[Fifyfomum]

Someone has just said this to a room full of people I am training with.

I am so angry because I KNOW that is is not true. I sort of said 'I don't think that is true' and he completely disregarded it.

What I wanted to say is 'I know that is not true, I am doing a degree in social justice and I research this sort of stuff all the time'

I am just so annoyed people will come out with such nonsense before actually exploring the facts. Drives me bloody mad!

Rant over (maybe)

That is great isn't it Buffy. I just want to quote that everytime we get people on saying how we can't say that male violence is the problem because men suffer from violence too. Or women do it too.

He is an arse. He is an arse because it is not a pissing contest. He is an arse because the gender of an abused human being is not the important factor. The important factor is that they are being abused. Anybody who wants to turn these things into a 'one gender is more awful' rant seems to forget that, in favour of point scoring.

From here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26758565

"HMIC said police received more than one million calls a year relating to domestic abuse and almost 58,000 victims - the vast majority of them women - were at risk of serious harm or murder."

If the BBC are actually quoting that i.e. making a specific statement that DV disproportionally affects women, it is a major breakthrough. They are notorious for minimising M on F violence. I haven't seen the report from HMIC but it must be in black & white and fuck off capital letters for that to have been stated in their article.

Maybe a response like this would be good:

"Hmm, as I work in this field, going by the statistics I believe that to be untrue. However as you seem quite sure of it I invite you to give a 20-minute talk introducing us to a selection of the published peer-reviewed evidence. Tomorrow OK?"

No there is no point scoring. Artetas. Funny you should see it that way. We want the problem named so it can be stopped. So that women's oppression by men can be stopped.

That's good that you managed to get your point across to him, you were probably too shocked at first by his comment to responded initially in the same way.

Just out of curiosity, are the stats of women unreasonably withholding contact with children from ex partners taken into account? I understand that this will most likely be after the relationship has ended but I experienced domestic abuse in a past relationship but the most abusive behaviour was mostly after the relationship had ended.

Gah okay the 'training day' is over thank goodness.

One thing really stood out at me.

We were shown a bunch of badly put together and pointless slides some of which showed the instance of abuse so vulnerable adults = 35% of abuse etc etc.

When it got to the statistic that 1.2 million cases of abuses against women (domestic) were reported in AFAIK 2010-11 and 781k of abuses against men were reported

Everyone in the room pipes up;

'yes but statistics aren't real and you dont know who isn't reporting'

the tutor then backed this up by saying that 'men often don't report abuse' to which I said as calmly as possible 'the same can be said for women'

So why is it that we have to qualify statistics when they show that women are more likely to be abused but we don't have to qualify other statistics? What the HELL is that all about.

I am enraged by the whole day, the guy didnt have a clue, he really was unable to give us the correct information and it was really boring. The best thing I can say about it is that it took 2 hours longer than expected and it is now over.

I am going to bash out some chords on the guitar and lose some of this pent up anger.

Fify Do you mind revealing the context? Why was your group receiving this training and what were this man's credentials?

Sounds like he was an incompetent muppet with an agenda. Will you get the chance to give feedback at all?

"women unreasonably withholding contact with children "

I worry about this because how many of those women were the women who didn't report abuse – and are worried about the man abusing the children (or on a lesser scale being irresponsible, aggressive, unsafe etc with them as evidenced by his previous behaviour).

While I'm sure some women do unreasonably withhold contact, when I see some of the monsters that contact has been awarded to, I think in a percentage of cases they will actually be reasonably withholding contact. But don't have the courts on their side :(

it is because women can be as bad as or worse than men (just as abusive and violent and nasty and greedy and whatever) but rarely as good as or better (so we can have a few non-executive directors but barely any executive, for example)

and it is really important at every opportunity to point out where we are The Same As Men and where we are More Shit than them

That's a good point Mitchy about the highlighting of where we just don't live up to the male default.

It was a safeguarding course, the man had no credentials. I have left a feedback form and hope to get the chance to report more clearly on my experience with the whole training course to be honest.

Some men must be confusing nagging with domestic abuse!

Where the hell do they get this data from?

A safeguarding course? Really? Can you contact the course provider and get him removed from their teaching schedule, because that is seriously out of order.

No I need a job with them. All in good time.

When it got to the statistic that 1.2 million cases of abuses against women (domestic) were reported in AFAIK 2010-11 and 781k of abuses against men were reported

So, I make that to be roughly 60 per cent of cases against women, and 40 per cent against men. If we really do want a pissing contest (and I don't personally), is that a massive skew? Is it so out of kilter that we need only concentrate on gender? What about economic factors? What about educational factors? What about intelligence? What about race? What about religion, or culture? How are these factors represented amongst the abusers?

There really is a gap in the market for decent training courses telling the facts in a coherent way not taking sides or letting bias interfere.

the man had no credentials

Shocking. And dangerous. I am glad that you are giving them detailed feedback.

Again that is from the British Crime Survey. Which is not borne out by figures collected from police and if you read the link I posted you'd see why.

Well I don't think those things need to be covered in a 4hr safeguarding course to be honest with you Artetas.

As I said what annoyed me was that some gave false, untrue information (more men are at risk of abuse than women) and that this was accepted by the course leader and that when it was mentioned that more women were abused than men, that it had to be qualified with 'oh but we don't know how many men do not report'

those things pissed me off massively and I HAD to rant about them because I couldn't rant about them at the time. Nobody is talking about a pissing contest(?) we are talking about widely inaccurate information being spouted as truth

"HMIC said police received more than one million calls a year relating to domestic abuse and almost 58,000 victims - the vast majority of them women - were at risk of serious harm or murder."

When it got to the statistic that 1.2 million cases of abuses against women (domestic) were reported in AFAIK 2010-11 and 781k of abuses against men were reported

So, I make that to be roughly 60 per cent of cases against women, and 40 per cent against men.

Do any of these figures mention who the perpetrator was in these cases? Everything I've read says that women are abused by men, but that men are also abused by men they are in relationships with.

He also told the room that we 'dont get sick pay' a couple of days ago, which I did manage to inform him was not true (in front of everyone) because sick pay is actually a legal right and that we all had access to it.

Basically he didnt know what he was doing and he was dangerous. I can't believe they are letting him train, its almost exactly like they've gone 'we need to train people, lets just let Dave do it' despite him having no information or knowledge about the subjects he is training people in.