Unfortunately, here in the UK, victim support is often specifically denied to men, especially that for victims of domestic violence.
No. Really, really not say that.
A lady who knows how to leave her mark on men
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Unfortunately, here in the UK, victim support is often specifically denied to men, especially that for victims of domestic violence.
No. Really, really not say that.
That's an awful story. I'm not entirely sure about it's relevance to what we were talking about, but it's a hideous case of miscarriage of justice. That poor man and his poor family.
Having read your posts before I was 99.9999999% sure that wasn't what you were saying, but this being the Internet and all, it sometimes does to check.
Unfortunately, I think it's the same here. Not so much that they're officially barred access to support, but that social stigma combined with lower numbers of men leads to a damning silence which must be a nightmare for victims. The one minisculely thin silver-lining for women nowadays is that there's a greater grassroots support network than in previous generations for those in need of help. (Though there's still the fact that people spend more on protecting donkeys than on victim support.)
It's assbackwards when victim support is tagged and bagged as a "women's issue", because it simultaneously gives those in authority permission to dismiss it as some kind of niche problem, and also places painful extra barriers in front of survivors who don't meet the gender criteria of what a "victim" is supposed to look like.
If we could just recognise and support all victims, and not focus on truisms about gender we might get much further along the path to ending domestic violence.
I hope we can get better at this. There's a new ad campaign on telly over here trying to raise awareness of the problem of Bystander Syndrome with domestic abuse. I notice the one of the ads running on prime time is about a male victim of spousal violence. It caught my attention the first time I saw it to hear the unexpected pronouns.
Have I dragged the thread completely off topic yet, do you think, or do we still have a couple of inches to go?
I think that perhaps some people could stand to read this paper from the International Journal of Men's Health--SiorX, sounds like you've already hit on some of its points, but I think this really does a good job of exploring the issues men face as a result of sexual assault. I used this as background research when I wrote a short story recently, on the subject.
WHy do you say that? I've never been a victim of domestic violence, but on the other occasions I have been a victim of crime the Police have always informed me that is is a matter of procedure that they MUST offer victim support to all victims of crime.
And then you get a letter from them offering it to you as well later. And that's just for having your motorbike stolen.
I had nothing when I was burgled. That's not my basis for my view.
The issue is not with all victims of crime, just ones like the man in this thread, or a man on the receiving end of domestic violence. Are there shelters ? Support groups ? Telephone lines ? Men are just as likely to be victims of domestic violence as women, they just don't report it.
"Just as likely" is perhaps an exaggeration, but there's a good article here for the second part - it states that women are nine times more likely to report an actual instance of domestic violence than men and men were the victims in 38% of cases that involved actual injury.
It also makes some good points about the inherent unreliability of some studies in to the subject with only female respondents and the tendency to disregard face slapping, thrown objects and verbal abuse.
I am certain that you could pick two numbers that add up to 100 and find a survey that agrees with you if you Googled hard enough. Until men report such violence when it occurs and are taken seriously when they do, I don't think any study will be reliable.
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