Domestic Violence Against Men

A Hidden Phenomenon

You may well be chuckling to yourself at the notion that men could be victims of domestic violence at all but the ever-increasing incidence of abuse against men in the home and the media’s subconscious conspiracy to keep this very real issue hidden might well surprise you.

Watching Shooter, the latest action movie to be churned from Hollywood, I was irritated by a scene in which the love interest (Kate Mara) strikes our hero (Mark Wahlberg) across the face. Needless to say the slap definitely doesn’t hurt him; it merely wakes him to the fact that he has to give her his full attention while she explains her emotional turmoil. You may be wondering where the problem is: we frequently see women like this in films and TV programmes striking the man but never hurting him. The message is: it’s ok for a woman to hit a man because it can’t harm him, because, in fact, it’s not real violence. And therein lies the issue: why isn’t this recognised as violent behaviour?

According to Men’s Aid, many sources on domestic violence rely on report-based studies. Such studies usually conclude that domestic violence is predominantly a woman’s issue. This is understandable since, for example, in a random sample survey of both men and women in Ireland undertaken in 2003 by ESRI and the National Crime Council (NCC), it was found that 29% of women but only 5% of men report their experience of domestic violence to the Gardaí. Likewise, OSS, the domestic violence information and resource centre based in Cork, reported that, between 2000 and 2004, only 14% of their calls by victims were made by male victims. Essentially, there is much less reportage by male victims even though gender-neutral surveys the world over are finding that domestic violence against men is becoming as prevalent as it against women.

For example, in the NCC/ESRI survey, while more women than men experience violence over a lifetime, the exact same proportion of men and women reported experience of violence within the previous year. This indicates that more men are beginning to experience violence in the home. In many gender-neutral surveys in English-speaking countries, it has been found that in roughly half of relationships experiencing domestic violence, both partners are equally violent, with the remainder fairly equally divided between male-only and female-only violence. In addition, men and women tend to give similar reasons for perpetrating violence against their partners – quelling the myth that women are only violent in self-defence.

So why is our society one big ostrich with its head firmly wedged in the sand on this issue? We are only too aware how women and men are entitled to equality in all walks of life these days but we still have an ingrained and reinforced notion that a woman could not hurt a man. It certainly doesn’t help that films and TV programmes again and again churn out scenes depicting a helpless woman justifiably slapping a man across the face. We need to look past the tired stereotypes – only then might we become aware that women can be perpetrators and that men too can be victims of domestic violence.