West Yorkshire Police campaign against DV

[ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving]

twitter.com/WestYorksOPCC/status/1134814353805500422

This episode of "missing the fucking point" was brought to you by everyone's favourite group of misogynists, the WYP.

Please provide reference? It's been in the Guardian and the BBC...

www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence

Actually you're entitled to the same lack of support, visibility, police attendance, spaces in refuges etc.

Karen Ingala-Smith recently gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament that it's women who are fleeing life threatening violence and are killed at a rate of twice a week, and many women come to MN seeking support. Those same women are having to deal with refuges which were originally set up by women, for women, without public funding, because no one gave a fuck what men did to women or how badly they were harmed, being redirected to centre males and males prioritised over their needs, and the funding streams denied to refuges that centre women and women's needs as their priority.

Women deal constantly with whataboutery and implications that to stand up for women's needs and rights is selfish and wrong while centering men (loudly and visibly as a virtue signal) is Good Double Plus. And this is the women's rights board. Where women are more than slightly fed up with constant demands to re centre men in their thinking and put the mundane issues of women aside.

Unless you can show that there has been a huge spike in violence by women on men. 40%? I don't think so.

You're conflating domestic abuse with domestic violence.
They are two separate categories. Domestic abuse includes a wide range of behaviours including non-violent abuse.

I did not ask you to put the issues of women aside, @michelleoftheresistance. And I did not advocate taking resources away from supporting female victims of domestic abuse, in order to support men.

This thread directly challenged the West Yorks PCC for producing a poster that highlighted a male victim. They suggested that all the poster showed was normal 'nagging' (not my term), and that it therefore was inappropriate. I offered a perspective of a male survivor of domestic abuse that I recognise the pattern the poster shows, and that it therefore works for its target audience.

Personally, I believe that under-funding of support services for all survivors of domestic abuse is a significant national problem, that needs to be addressed. You appear to resent any support going to men, because it distracts from women. It's an obvious fallacy to suggest that supporting men is somehow diverting resources from women - there are around 3,600 refuge beds for women across the country, and 20 for men. I don't think we've quite stolen all the funding just yet.

Rather than making this a competition, can we not agree that ALL victims of domestic abuse deserve support and help, and ALL perpetrators of domestic abuse deserve to be brought to justice? And that anything that helps with this - as the 'offending' poster does, in the eyes of this male victim - should be a good thing?

You might want to look at threads around here and understand that this also isn't about your not being equally deserving of help and recognition and support. It's about women constantly being told 'it's about ALL (male) x' and suffering accordingly as all services are realigned, redirected, refocused and women's funding used to make them 'inclusive' and 'fairer'.

Patience around here is getting a little thin. To put it mildly.

You're conflating domestic abuse with domestic violence.
They are two separate categories. Domestic abuse includes a wide range of behaviours including non-violent abuse.

"Domestic abuse" not only involves a wide-range of behaviours but includes abuse between family members - siblings, father-son, mother-daughter, mother-son, partners, step-children, grandparents and the many permutations of familial relationships.

www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-help

You appear to resent any support going to men, because it distracts from women. Please stop! michelle stated categorically that she thinks male victims are wholy entitled to the same support as female vicims are afforded. It isn't a competition. And if you don't like the sound of women talking to other women and not stepping aside for the rights of men, you are on the wrong board.

We see the abuse of men and women.

We see the woefully inadequate support on offer

We see the West Yorkshire Police and their continued lack of insight.

And we choose to centre women in our discussions. We won't switch to centring men, no matter how hard you try to make us feel a sense of shame for that!

You appear to resent any support going to men, because it distracts from women.

Did you notice the title of this board?

This one, single board isn't about men's needs. It isn't the job of women to fight for men's needs: you're demonstrating in your posts that declining to centre men and ensure nice balance in all support/comments is hostile to men. This is what this board talks about all the time. And those 3'600 women's refuges have almost all now been lobbied and pushed by funding to accept any male into them who identifies as trans. Regardless of how that affects severely traumatised women.

I went to school with a PCC. They were a weasel and sleaze. The most untrustworthy person in the year. When I told old school friends what they were doing, jaws dropped and there was universal disbelief.

It's not a good I think you have to have good credentials or experience to get. Just be a worm of a politician who creeps to the right people in order to earn their pieces of silver.

Respect is not something I have for them.

Great post Michelleoftheresitance

This one, single board isn't about men's needs
The OP posted a link to a poster that identifies some men's needs though...

It isn't the job of women to fight for men's needs
Well luckily there's a campaign here that includes men's needs, alongside women's needs, that the OP linked to so it doesn't have to be a woman's job...

Honestly.
Men are sometimes victims of domestic abuse. They obviously aren't victims of domestic violence and spouse murder to the extent women are. No one is saying they are. This campaign isn't saying they are.

This campaign has posters with female victims and male victims. Tbh it's pretty shitty to take issue with one poster that reaches out to male victims when the campaign is also reaching out to female victims.

The OP posted a link to a poster that identifies some men's needs though... and uses a very stale trop to do so!

Well luckily there's a campaign here that includes men's needs, alongside women's needs, that the OP linked to confused so it doesn't have to be a woman's job. If only they could do so without the stereotyping.

Tbh it's pretty shitty to take issue with one poster that reaches out to male victims when the campaign is also reaching out to female victims. Have another look at the straplines... all but the one the OP points out are pretty neutral, you could change victim and abuser in all of them. They don't rely on Bernard Manning jokes for understanding.

It's a comment on THAT strapline by THAT police force. Not the plight of men the world over.

I don't get it.

You think that coercive control is a Bernard Manning joke when an abuser is demanding to know where a partner is, and who they're with, and then threatening them. You call that nagging. If this is how yoh 'nag', you need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. It isn't nagging. Controlling activities and who someone can socialise with is abuse. The law is pretty damn clear. All the guidance produced by Women's Aid and every other charity operating in this space is clear that controlling somebody's movements and relationships is abuse. But you choose to characterise it as a negative trope about nagging.

The OP brought this up as an example of missing the point about abuse. This whole post was about dismissing the poster, and saying that it isn't valid. You hear the voice of somebody who has lived the experience that it is. And you attack me because I'm trying to make it all about men? No, I'm not. I'm taking issue with the core premise of this post - which is that the poster isn't okay.

I'm ducking out at this point. My message is simple - this poster isn't about you. Get over it.

Yeah! That's really what I said and most definitely what I think!

Pshaw!

Well said @SlightlyMisplacedSingleDad

I was a bit baffled as to where it says nagging on the poster too, if I missed it apologies.
Controlling behaviour can come from both males and females and it's good that they have campaigns to help both.
Pretty crappy to minimise domestic abuse in my opinion

Hey, just to clarify a few things about why I posted this, especially for SlightlyMisplacedSingleDad who I suspect doesn't know the back story with the WYP:

• The WYP have a long history of failing to protect, or believe, female victims of crime. They have a really high rate of women ending up murdered after reporting threats which were dismissed, and of dropping investigations after very little effort. They have also over reacted to a lot of vexatious hoax calls leading to them harassing women who had committed no crime. They're a bunch of misogynistic halfwits.

• I didn't realise the poster was part of a series, I though it was only abuse against men that the campaign was addressing.

• In the context of the WYP having received a lot of harsh criticism for their failure to address abuse against women, a campaign which solely targeted male victims of abuse would have been misjudged to say the least. That's what I meant when I said they had missed the point.

• As it turns out the campaign addresses both male and female victims of abuse, which is a good thing. The campaign also is nothing to do with the WYP, which is another good thing. Thank you to Squidzilla and theOtherPamAyres for correcting those points. My apologies for having misrepresented the campaign.

• I definitely agree that men can be victims of abuse in relationships, and should have access to services to help them. A campaign that includes them is a good thing - I just thought that the campaign was only about them.

• I still think the poster pushed a "nagging is abuse" trope. Yes the last text is a threat, but the ones before that are pretty benign. If your partner was out and you didn't know where they were and they weren't replying to your texts, would that not be a reasonable progression of texts to send (the last one excluded of course)? IDK, in my own experience of a controlling abusive relationship text number 1 would have been "where the fuck are you?" and if I didn't reply immediately it would have gone straight to threats to hurt me or himself, so maybe I'm just projecting. If you experienced abuse that followed that pattern of questioning SlightlyMisplacedSingleDad then fair enough, I'm not trying to undermine your experience. But I think they could have chosen a different example of controlling behaviour that sent a clearer/ stronger message for that poster.