Domestic violence: ‘As a man, it’s very difficult to say I’ve been beaten up’

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Mike Buchanan

Only a few days after a dreadful episode of Newsnight (a previous post refers) which all but ignored male victims of domestic violence – and gave a propaganda opportunity to Women’s Aid, a charity with income in excess of £2 million pa – it was good to see a sympathetic treatment of male victims in a piece written by Emily Dugan in today’s The Independent on Sunday:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/domestic-violence-as-a-man-its-very-difficult-to-say-ive-been-beaten-up-8572143.html

Some comments in the article, by a spokesman for Women’s Aid, are interesting:

Alan Gibson, an independent domestic violence adviser for Women’s Aid which runs the men’s refuge in Berkshire that is helping Dave, said: “Four organisations phoned us today looking for places for four different men. They’ve been attacked and abused, but there is only one room available in the country and someone will have to decide which of those four men is most in need.”

I’ve just spoken to one of our supporters with deep knowledge of DV. While he has the highest regard for Alan Gibson, it’s his view that organisations such as Women’s Aid will seek ever more government funding to run men’s shelters, thereby providing militant feminists with ever more funding to campaign against men’s human rights. How can Women’s Aid resolve their public position that men use violence to subjugate women, with running men’s shelters?

About Mike Buchanan

I'm a men's human rights advocate, writer, and publisher. My primary focus is leading the political party I launched in 2013, Justice for Men & Boys (and the women who love them). I still work actively on two campaigns I launched in early 2012, Campaign for Merit in Business and the Anti-Feminism League. In 2014 I launched The Alternative Sexism Project, aiming to raise public understanding that the sexism faced by men and boys has far more grievous consequences than the sexism faced by women and girls.
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  • I used to be a supporter of Women’s Aide until I witnessed Disabled Women within Refuges being abused, discriminated against and terrorised by the organisation.

    being Domestically abusd inside a supposed DV refuge is lower than law and seeing A Chief executive threaten eviction of the abuse was pursued via police – safeguarding authority – social services – Local Authority as Funder and even Ombudsman … well It speaks volumes of just how rotten the Domestic abuse industry has become, and why so many women I have spoken to post time in refuge have vowed they would never go back.

    I am already aware of Woman’s Aide organisations regionally pushing the view that their model of Refuge – Support is the only valid one and they have been and do ignore male voices which have been able to show better and lower cost options.

    Men have ideas and ways to do the same job and quite possibly better (No Abuse and further DV needed Thank you) with quicker set up times, lower capital costs, faster start up times and to allow equality of access for all man and their children … and it always seems to be that money is the obstacle especially where lower amounts of money are needed.