Would you intervene if you saw a woman attacking a man?

[Aqualegia]

youtu.be?QYV6y1vH2Lk

It was really food for thought, for me.

I wouldn't step in whoever it was- call the police and intervene in a more subtle way, yes, but actively stepping in and trying to stop it? I'm a bit of a scaredy cat, though. The only time I have witnessed domestic violence that I know of (ie- not just between random drunks or whatever) was between two men and I called the police. My birth mother was a victim of domestic violence and I never realised how much that affected me until I actually saw it.

there was this as well. This was horrible.

Lots of people complaining when they are disturbed by a drum kit.

Total silence when it sounded like a woman being beaten. Not a single call to the police, nothing.

Horrific.

I would call the police, but not step in.

In terms of women being violent to male partners, I read some research which showed that male victims report this much sooner than female victims, at a much lower level of violence.

It is virtually all women who die from domestic violence.

Y Calmet, there's a popular belief that men are less likely to call the police to report violence against them, but research suggests that actually the opposite is true and men tend to report it sooner.

Karen Ingala Smith is very good on all this - if anyone wants info her blog is a good place to start.

is there any point in arguing that one type of dv is worse than another?

I'm thinking whether men or women are the victims, whatever the severity, it's all wrong and should be taken seriously.

Am I the only person who was thinking it would have been easy for him to stop her, as he was bigger and stronger?

OBVIOUSLY this doesn't mean it's ok for her to be violent, just that he is much less likely to need practical help from a stranger (though he would be equally likely to need emotional support, I think).

I think that it is a decent advert to highlight the problems that men facing dv or ipv/a face. Men clearly have an issue with it being taken seriously and have problems with coming forward.
These are the same issues faced by women

The problem as I see it is that they should really have shown the same result in the advert for both sexes facing abuse because in my opinion and experience no one comes to your aide.
Someone might call the police - I would - but again if I'm honest I'm unsure if I would if I saw the same thing happen to a man. That is awful.
This is me being really honest...and it is appalling as I often deal with people who have suffered seriously from DV/A

So perhaps their advert has a good point and has made me think about my prejudices

This is an excellent read for those tempted to think the 40% figure is accurate

I don't think it's wrong for people to be afraid of physically intervening. You don't know what's going to happen.

who does what to whom is good, I think

Yes Ronald Marianne Hester has done a lot of research in this area.

I hope you can bear with me here, I'm not fully versed on a lot of feminist issues, I'm just learning.

but, sincere question, why does it matter who suffers more? both genders suffer dv in varying degrees of severity and frequency.

I'd intervene if I saw anyone getting attacked. It's never occurred to me to question the gender, just the violence.

why does it matter who suffers more?

Because it's male violence against women - which is endemic in our culture - and leaves, on average, one woman dead in the UK at the hands of her partner or ex-partner, every 2.7 days.

MVAW is one of the most important feminist issues there is, imo. Ranging from low-level harassment on the street, to sexual assault and rape, to murder.

Honestly, I don't know what I'd do if I saw that.

If I was with Dh or some other people, I'd like to think that I'd step in and tell them I'm going to call the police.

Alone, I wouldn't want to risk getting punched myself by the male or female.
Very interesting and it has certainly got me thinking.

I have intervened with a group of young women who were pushing another teenager around. After that experience (only verbal but it still was horrible), I thought I'd butt out in future.

It's a good question FourForks.
I think there are 2 answers.
One is that there are always going to be decisions made about resource allocation, even at the simple level of the police deciding which 999 call to go to first. So choices might have to be made even though in an ideal world we'd be zero tolerance about everything.

The other thing is to do with what you think are the causes of the violence. Once you become aware of the vast difference in the amount of violence women suffer at the hands of men than vice versa, it starts to make sense to ask questions about why culture is encouraging men to be so violent to women, and whether we need to do something about the messages that are being sent out to them. If one group is attacking another group disproportionately then surely your best hope of finding a solution is asking what's different about the way those two groups are taught to behave. If we pretend that women hurt men pretty much the same amount as men hurt women, we'd miss those causes and thus damage our chances of doing something about it.

FourForksAche - Because male violence maintains women's oppression, not vice versa. Women as a class fear male violence. Men as a class do not fear female violence. DV is very much a part of this dynamic.

In addition if figures are misrepresented resources are moved away from those who need them most. Women are being turned away from refuges in numbers not seen by men. It's a form of gaslighting and used to minimise women's experiences.

And what Sabrina and Tunip said

sabrina, it seems from the link you posted that women attackers are a very small minority compared to male attackers. Also that women are more likely to be prosecuted for violence. This disparity in treatment worries me. then there's the problem of scale, male violence is much more often more physicaly damaging than female violence.

Men are attacking men too, which says to me that the problem is male violence, not just male violence against women.

I think you're right when you say that the dv against males stats seem overstated. Also, I felt the film was suggesting that women were to blame for that 40%, which is misleading.

I just feel uncomfortable at discussions about dv being reduced to who has it worse.

thanks scallop, yes, I see that misrepresenting the stats would do that.

Male violence is a problem for society, without a doubt.

Male violence against women is indicative of misogyny, patriarchy and the oppression of women by violence, as said so eloquently by scallops, men are not oppressed by male violence. Women are. Thus it is a feminist issue.

thanks turnip also. but what about figures for male/male violence? do men attack women more than they attack other men?

Yes, it does make me wonder about how a person turns out like that.

I've stepped in quite a few times over the years when I have seen a women being attacked by a man. I can't think of any occasion when I have seen it the other way round. The only time similar to that was when I saw two females fighting. I had to step in as the woman was getting a real pasting. There wasn't time to do anything else. I ended up being assaulted by the female aggressor, although strangely never by the men in previous similar scenarios. I think that would stop me intervening though in the future if I saw the woman as the perpetrator, although I would step back and call the police. Probably strange logic, although simply based on my experience.

fullfact.org/articles/bad_and_dangerous_to_know_do_men_commit_almost_all_crime-28939

this link might explain what I mean a bit. the figures in the article only quote murder but for a specific year, men made up two thirds of total people murdered. men were responsible for 90% of murders. So it seems to me it's not only a feminist issue.

But most male on male violence is not about control I guess.