Male Victims of Domestic Violence

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Mike Buchanan

My thanks to a fellow MHRA for bringing to my attention an outstanding paper titled, ‘Male Victims of Domestic Violence’, written for New Male Studies by Don Dutton, a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, and Katherine White, a student there.

The link to the paper in New Male Studies is here:

http://newmalestudies.com/OJS/index.php/nms/article/view/59

A PDF of the paper is here:

130501 ‘New Male Studies’ paper on male victims of DV

In case you’re too pushed for time to read the paper, its Conclusion is as follows (IPV is ‘Intimate Partner Violence’):

Both male victims and male perpetrators have a more difficult experience in the aftermath of IPV. Male perpetrators receive harsher legal penalties, and are judged as more capable of inflicting injury or instilling fear in their female partner. This is true even when they have been part of a bilateral IPV pattern. Male victims also fare worse when attempting to access services, as males are more likely to be labelled the aggressor and to be treated with suspicion and injuries they have sustained are likely to be minimized. Custody assessments are misdirected, focusing on the male as the sole source of threat to children for physical abuse. A major revision of our thinking is required, one that is empirically based and can alter an emotionally tinged stereotype.

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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  • Dutton has also pointed out that there is an issue of Systemic Bias and Institutional Bias which manifests as The Woozle Effect.

    “Woozles are usually not simply a matter of authentic misreporting. They also reveal a desire to read into the data an a priori position that is really not there, what Bacon calls “idols of the theatre”. … All the data reporting mistakes I have found in the literature, without exception, were made in the direction of supporting feminist preconceptions.”

    Rethinking Domestic Violence By Donald G Dutton, Ph.D.

    The Woozle Effect or “False Evidence By Citation” was coined by BeverlyHoughton in 1979, and comes from a paper “Review of Research on Women Abuse, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Philadelphia, PA.”

    There has been the recent Woozle by the EHRC and Women’s Aide 10 April 2013 – where in launching Advice to Employers on Domestics abuse. The EHRC claim as follows:

    In the UK, in any one year, more than 20% of employed women take time off work because of domestic violence, and 2% lose their jobs as a direct result of the abuse

    WebCitation Copies & EHRC Originating page

    Who Knew that 20% of employed women, One In Five, are being domestically abused and have to take time off work each year as a result? That’s Millions Of Women in the UK and they are all colluding with a Massive Cover Up of levels of Domestic abuse that stagger the mind?

    The EHRC have “Negligently” misquoted a 204 Report “Home Office Research Study 276 Domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking: Findings from the British Crime Survey – Walby, Sylvia; Allen, Jonathan
    (March 2004)    . That Report Says:

    Domestic violence has a detrimental impact on employment.Among employed women who suffered domestic violence in the last year, 21 per cent took time off work and two per cent lost their jobs. Among men in this situation, six per cent took time off work and two per cent lost their jobs.

    Source – See Page 5 Para 5

    Incidentally do note that the same percentage of men who suffer domestic violence loose their jobs, but as men don’t count neither do the Statistics or The Men. (Male Disposability & Invisibility)

    This Woozle is exactly what Dutton Highlighted when he pointed to the bias in the Woozle Effect and gender where matters are made emotional and made to fit and agenda and reality is thrown under The Bus. It is proving impossible to locate Woozles outside of the area of Women’s/Gender Studies and as Dutton observed “supporting feminist preconceptions”.

    This Same EHRC Woozle making 1 in 5 working working women a supposed victim of Domestic Abuse and having to take time off each year has also been tracked to other places, and it pre-dates the EHRC using it – but has a number of sources saying it came from the EHRC as far back as 2011 – The Circular of walking round a tree in your own tracks hunting the fictional Woozles are all too evident:

    Women’s Aide – 10 April 2013
    Walsall Domestic Violence Forum Example 1 Example 2 Example 3
    Bristol City Council – Domestic Violence and Abuse Policy & Guidelines (Source given as EHRC)
    The NHS – East of England Social Partnership Forum Statement on Domestic Abuse (May 2011) 
    Onus (NI) Ltd (established in 2007 by Women’s Aid branches in Ulster) Woozle being reported since at least 05 November 2011 and even Attributes Walby and Allen, 2004 as
    source. 
    WiredGov
    Florid – East London NHS Foundation Trust Attributes Walby and Allen, 2004 as source 
    HRMagazine Stephen Bevan (23 Jul 2012)