men report much less than women according to the biggest DV charities
You're resolved to stick to the facts - great! The difficulty with this is, that there are a lot of facts, reading of these can be selective and stats can be distorted. That's been the focus of my posts above, but I'm not sure you've acknowledged it yet. For example, you discounted the author of the below italicised quote on the basis that she's an activist and apparently not much more. I could discount your refs to charities, above, for similar reasons, of course. But the fact is that neither of us (I assume) has read Kimmel, her source.
‘It’s harder for men to report, there’s much more of a taboo for men’
Exactly the opposite:
- men are more – not less – likely to call the police
- men are more likely – not less – to support a prosecution
- men are less likely – not more – withdraw their support of charges.1
1 Kimmel 2002
In the absence of a comprehensive, expert knowledge of this issue, we are all left, to some degree, to common sense and real-life experience, which are far from invalid in many contexts - let alone one relating to two groups with a difference in strength of up to 160% and of which one is statistically responsible for 98%+ of sexual crime (and an overwhelming proportion of physical violence that inflicts hospitalising damage). I mean, come on - 160% and 98%? You rarely get more dramatically significant differences than these! You cited something around 70% in relation to Islamic terrorism earlier as similarly significant.
In this context of this quite extraordinary disparity in both the capacity to inflict life-ending harm and the readiness to do so, trying to counter this with alternative narratives really does come across as a bit NAMALT/WATM.
Put simply, Yes, men can be victims, too, and their suffering shouldn't be disregarded.
But do men face relative certainty that the other half of the population could kill them with their bare hands should they simply so choose? No, they don't! Do they live with the same risk of abduction and/or extended abuse for another's depraved gratification, should the whim so take a passing individual on a wintry walk home? No, they don't. And, however low this latter risk, will this certainty of vulnerability to extraordinary unpleasantnesses have an immeasurable (and I choose this word in quite deliberate opposition to some of the selective pedantry above) effect on women's lives? Yes, it bloody well will.
This isn't to say that women "win" the debate - or, worse, are quintessential victims. This isn't to dismiss men's experiences. It's simply to say that this is many women's lived reality globally, whether they suffer with trauma-induced fear, or walk alert with their keys in their hand after each good night out.
I do sometimes wonder why lived experience - awful tautology! - seems to be validated to an almost absurd degree in all contexts excepting that of women, which is, conversely, challenged and dismissed as inaccurate / invalid / a dangerous victim-complex etc. - and as needing an impossible standard of peer-reviewed evidence to be so much as voiced.