Men Can Be Abused Too!

I feel like the last time I blogged was months ago, even though I only missed a week. It’s amazing how quickly this has become a part of my life and how similar this is to working out. Just like working out, blogging is one of those things that lend itself to either being very consistent or falling off the wagon completely. When working out, if you miss one day, it becomes easier to miss the next scheduled day and then the next one and then you’ve missed a month and you either feel like crap or you’re like me and you just laugh it off and say working out isn’t for you or as I said about the blogging, sticking to a routine isn’t for me.

Okay now that I have that nonsense out of the way, there is something that has been really bothering me. Before I get in to it, I’d just like to say that it has nothing to do with Chris and Rihanna or the debate about them and what happened between them. I just have a general observation of things people have said about domestic violence. Suddenly all the shows are discussing domestic violence, but most of them have a noticeable skew. Yes, I understand that women are either the most likely to be abused in a relationship or the most likely to report it, whatever the case, people often associate a battered woman with domestic abuse, but what about all the physically and emotionally battered men? Focusing on women makes it appear to be something that doesn’t happen to a “man” and so what is a man supposed to do when he finds himself in an abusive situation if the perception is that it only happens to women? There are men out there who are being abused everyday whether by a girlfriend or a boyfriend, but who speaks for them? Do they even know that it’s not okay for people to hit them or throw things at them? Do they even realize that they are being abused? I found one article that said, “Male victims are less likely than female victims to report it or consider it a crime, which makes crime data (crime reports or crime-based surveys) unreliable. But sociological surveys consistently show women initiate domestic violence as often as men and men suffer one-third of injuries.” Women are the face of domestic abuse much in the same way that young white boys were the face of the Catholic Church sex scandal, which is my way of saying that the abuse is not limited to only the faces you see. I didn’t know men were abused by women as much as they were until I went looking for the information. It’s shocking!

Another theme that I have heard repeatedly in the recent discussions about domestic violence is that no matter what a woman does, a man should never hit a woman, he can restrain her, but he should never hit her. I think people need to stop regurgitating this crap. This is part of the reason why a lot of guys shut up and take it when a woman hits them. The truth is that everyone should keep their hands to themselves, period. A woman should not slap a man if she does not want him to slap her back and vice versa. I’m so sick of society saying things like “girls don’t hit as hard as boys” and “boys are stronger than girls,” this may be true on average, but there are some girls out there who could give some boys a run for their money in terms of violence. When I was a substitute teacher, I saw a couple of girls step to boys looking to fight them. I remember one boy said something like, “I don’t hit girls,” and the girl responded by saying something like, “Well I guess I’m going to kick your ass then.” Obviously I got over to the kids as quickly as I could, and fortunately, there were no actual fights on my watch, but it was close.

I think I established in previous blogs that I am pretty much anti-violence and that goes for violence of any kind. In an ideal world, no one would hit anyone, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Of course restraining someone until they calm down is a welcome alternative, but do you know how much strength it takes to restrain someone who is out of control?

I didn’t write this blog to say that men are being abused at the same rate as women or to give a man a free pass for hitting a woman. I wrote this blog to remind people that violence is not appropriate when it is a man perpetuating the violence or when it is a woman perpetuating the violence. Saying anything less than that does us all a disservice.

I found this quote and I think it sums things up nicely:

"Domestic violence is a human problem, not a gender problem."
- Dear Abby

Status: Thinking that some double standards are more damaging than others.