COMMENT:

You may have noticed that we refer to abusers as male, and their victims as female. Aren't men abused too?

The issue of men being abused by women is raised in the literature, often to suggest that gender is not an important factor in abuse [52]. When tools are used such as the Conflicts Tactics Scale, which assesses the frequency of physically aggressive tactics experienced or engaged in by each partner during 'marital conflicts', researchers often conclude that women are as abusive as men and that 'mutual battering' or 'reciprocal aggression' typify abusive relationships [34, 41, 53]. The utility of such scales is called into question, however, for their lack of inclusion of the motive behind, or impact of, violent behaviours [1, 41, 54]. When this larger context is included, it is evident that women rarely initiate violence, women's aggression is mostly retaliatory or self-defensive and that the violence experienced by women, as well as its impacts, is far more severe than that experienced by men [1, 27, 41, 53-55]. According to Canadian police reports for 1999, 523 women died at the hands of their husbands or common-law partners [56]. This number is five times higher than the number of men who suffered physical injury or death at the hands of their female partners [47].

The claim by women's advocates that no abused men exist is, according to one researcher, as much an exaggeration as the claim that women are as violent as men [57]. Linda MacLeod, a prominent researcher in this area, suggests that the omission of male victims from discourses of abuse may be an understandable reaction to the repeated use of their existence to discredit the validity, importance, and magnitude of the problem of violence against women in relationships [27]. Many authors agree that while men who are abused should not be ignored, neither should the fact that it is mostly women who suffer violence in their relationships [1, 27, 39]. Ninety to ninety-five percent of the victims of abuse are women [8, 24, 58]. It also has been asserted that men are generally in a position to have greater financial security, better jobs, less responsibility for children, and greater credibility in society, and thus require less support in cases of abuse [27]. However, although this work focuses on women in abusive relationships, it is with the hope that the relatively small numbers of men experiencing abuse will also benefit from its outcomes.

Women in same-sex relationships also experience abuse at the hands of their partners [79, 83, 85], which provides support for the theory that abuse stems from power and control, and not simply gender, although gender is an important basis for relative differences in power [86]. Lesbians, bisexual, queer, transsexual and transgendered women can face increased difficulties obtaining support in the social context of homophobia and heterosexism [37, 85, 87, 88].

(adapted from: Dechief, L. (2003). Care, Control and Connection: Health-Care Experiences of Women in Abusive Relationships. Unpublished Masters thesis. University of British Columbia)


References

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87. Ristock, J., The impact of violence on mental health: a guide to the literature. 1995, Manitoba Research Centre on Family Violence and Violence Against Women and The Mental Health Division, Health Promotion and Programs Branch, Health Canada.

88. Broaddus, T. and G. Merrill, Selections from the annual report on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender domestic violence. 1998, The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs: San Francisco.