But What About Male Domestic Violence Victims?

But what about the men?!

Every. Single. Time. I post about women who have experienced compounding trauma by the legal system, whether it’s here or on a news piece, someone will ask BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MEN?!?

First, what about the men?! When I post about women’s experiences in court, nothing about that statement invalidates the male experience. It merely presents the perspective of a protective mother who has experienced gender bias in the court – a bias that has been confirmed by legal research carried out at the GW Family Violence Law Center.

Second, do you know who the biggest perpetrator of male violence is? OTHER MEN. 76% of violence committed against men is a result of men. So even when we talk about male victims, we need to also be talking about male perpetrators.

It’s not that we don’t believe that men experience abuse. It’s not that we don’t believe that women can be perpetrators. I personally have known many personality disordered women in my own life. It’s that this is a gendered problem with gendered consequences. That matters when we are having this conversation. 

Here are the statistics:

Males perpetrate 95% of all serious domestic violence. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 95% of reported assaults on spouses or ex-spouses are committed by men against women. Eight in ten murderers who killed a family member were male. Males were 83% of spouse murderers and 75% of murderers who killed a boyfriend or girlfriend

Over 85% of the people who commit murder are men, and the majority of women who commit murder usually do so as a defense against men who have been battering them for years. Ninety percent of the women in jail for murder are incarcerated for killing male batterers.

In 88% of the sexual abuse claims that CPS substantiates or finds supporting evidence of, the perpetrator is male.

Of cases where men reported being victims of physical aggression by a female partner, “most of the affected men had been violent toward their partners themselves.”

And yet, even with these known statistics, women have a far harder time convincing the justice system – the family courts in particular- that they (and their children) are the victims. Men do not have the same problem with credibility – as substantiated by Meier’s research.

Inevitability, someone in the comments is going to say that the reason the statistics are so skewed is because men don’t report abuse. Ok. That is absolutely a conversation worth having. But it’s a conversation we should be having on its own, not as a counterpoint to the problem that protective mothers face in court.

I am the mother of two sons – two males who are abuse survivors. I absolutely want to have a conversation about our boys and our men. But I also want to lay responsibility for violence against women squarely at the feet of who is responsible – and that is men. 

Additionally, I want our court system to acknowledge its bias against women’s claims of abuse. It is absolutely unhelpful when we want to talk about how women aren’t believed and someone butts in to ask about male victims. That isn’t the topic. That isn’t the problem being discussed. It’s women who are fighting this uphill battle against a system that purports to want to protect children – and that does everything except protect them. THAT is the problem.