Comments on: Domestic violence against men – I never knew

By: Paula Milliard-Mudd

Paula Milliard-Mudd — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:09:03 +0000

I am with the support of others attempting to start a Hunter Domestic Violence Support and Advisory Services Inc, which would include both Women, Children and Men. Could you point me in a direction where I would be able to find brochures on male DV. As you would appreciate there is plenty of literature out there for women, but in this area cannot find any for men. Your assistance would be very appreciated.

Cheers

Paula Milliard-Mudd

By: Paula Milliard-Mudd

Paula Milliard-Mudd — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:09:00 +0000

Cheers

Paula Milliard-Mudd

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:57:02 +0000

Shivers, I don’t see how you can claim that your attitudes do not belittle men, and then proceed to describe Jay’s experiences as placing him in a “male gender minority.” Surely this type of labelling does nothing BUT belittle the importance of his experience?

I also think you’ve mis-interpreted the source of the “domineering” behaviours I refered to in my last post. If you believe that those behaviours are limited to men then you would be very wrong.

As you now feel it is beneath you to continue contribution to this blog, I hope that your brief sojourn into reality has not too greatly shaken your belief in the victimisation of men as a “minority” experience.

To Jay, I am very deeply sorry to hear of what you’ve been through. The injustice of your situation is almost unspeakable, and the fact that you have been able to recount it so clearly is a testament to the strength of your character. I think its extremely important for men like you to continue to speak out, and continue to tell people what has happened. Don’t let the insensitivities of feminists and people with “daddy” issues discourage you from making your point, because many people are listening.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:57:00 +0000

By: shivers

shivers — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:57:06 +0000

This will be my final comment on this blog. My comments were in no way meant to be condescending, belittling or invalidating of any persons experiences. I thought I had made that clear. Also being told of “hiding behind statistics”, there is no hiding, it’s called research and using statistics to uphold a point of view, as opposed to limiting one’s opinion to within one own’s experiences. No need to apologise for my experiences of the past, none are required. Steven said, “but to be clear, many of the things you describe are similar domineering type behaviours that I, my brother and many other boys have or are growing up with today.” I rest my case, and leave you with your minimisation explanation of your ‘domineering type behaviours’. To Jay, I respectfully say “thank you” for sharing your experience, yes, we do need to hear more of those stories and do the drill down that would provide credible study narrative and statistics, and just because your experience is of the male gender minority, in no way invalidates your experience as it happened to you.

By: shivers

shivers — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:57:00 +0000

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:04:46 +0000

I have read all the above. Some people are so immersed in the politics of their gender that they simply cannot see imbalance and injustice. I am not interested in the ‘history of male dominance’, I am a human being who seeks protection for my innocence, protection from abuse and injustice. My story is probably not unique. I am intelligent enough to know that if this can happen to me then there must be others. I have no interest in the politics of gender which seems to sustain so many feminists.
I was a feminist once. No more.
I will keep this brief:
My wife decided to remove me from the family because she had taken another man as her lover. She wanted him in and me out. For 5 months I endured the most horrible psychological, emotional, social and physical abuse. I responded by trying to love her more, give ground on every issue. I let her abuse me and I did not protest.
For months she told me that she could kill me and get away with it because she was “a woman”. She told me that as the “woman she had the power to destroy” me. I thought this was nonsense. No one had the power to do such a thing. But I was wrong. She was right.
My wife told me that she had the power, as the woman, to take everything from me. She would take the kids, the house, the assets and ‘whatever man she wanted’.
After 5 months of this abuse she broke me. On that last night I told her that if she didnt leave with her boyfriend, I would tell the children about her and him.
My wife got very very angry. Later that night as I was lying in bed sobbing she came to me and began to punch me repeatedly in the head. They were heavy, ugly punches. I did nothing to protect myself. I got out of bed and just stood there and let her destroy my face. she closed an eye and knocked out teeth. But I am proud that I stood there for so long without threatening her or using force. I was as passive as is humanly possible. But then after some time I got scared. I was scared because I remembered the times she had said she would kill or destroy me. So I hit her twice. It was the first time I had ever hit or harmed anyone. We were both injured.
The police got involved. The female police that got involved immediately sided with my wife. I was the male and therefore the perpetrator, my wife was the female therefore the victim. With this support my wife had me charged with assault. They chose not to charge her with any offence. With this level of support my wife was able to throw in a few more accusations such as”he has threatened to kill the kids”. This ugly horrible lie grew wings on the back of unquestioned support from female police.
When I was released from hospital (2 weeks after the assault) the female police detective was waiting for me. She took me away and had me charged. At no stage was she ever interested in anything I had to say.
I was sent to jail on my wife’s statements. I was refused bail.
I had never been to jail before, I had never committed a crime. I knew nothing of this violent world I was being sent to.
I am still in shock about being sent to jail. i am still shocked that I could only be released by pleading guilty. What sort of system is this? it is a system where women act for women. Women in professional roles will act vindictively in unquestioned support of other women.
Once I was imprisoned, my wife was able to openly bring her boyfriend out of the shadows and into the life of my family.
I fought hard to survive in that dungeon. I wondered everyday how I ended up there. I wondered at the power of what my wifes could do through lies. I wondered at her ability to ‘destroy’ me. She was right, she could treat me in the most offensive way and then, if I acted to protect myself, I could be destroyed.
I pleaded guilty to assault so I could be released. To plead not guilty was to rot in jail for another 12 mths waiting for a court date. I accept my responsibility in hitting her to stop being bashed, but what choice did I have?
Upon my release she took out an AVO and included the kids. For 18 months now she has kept me from any contact with them. My family is permitted no contact. The kids dont know what happened to me. I disappeared, her boyfriend is now their new daddy.
Whilst I was incarcerated my wife stripped all my/our assets. When I was released I did not have access to a single dollar. I lost my job and career as a result of imprisonment.
I have lived on the streets.
I have no resources to fight back.
She refuses contact, she will not even release my personal items or clothing.
She was right. I was wrong. As a woman, she had the power to take my life.
She took it with such ease. All it required was a willingness to lie, a group of female detectives with jaundiced bias, and there you have it. My life over in a flash.
Each day is a battle to keep the will to continue in a world so wretched with injustice. I miss my kids. I miss my life. I miss my innocence. A committed, loving, affectionate, adoring, involved parent is now missing from the lives of his children. My wife has her boyfriend, the house, the assets and the kids. All so easy because of the inbuilt injustice affecting our two genders.
The greatest irony of all is that my ‘event’ is recorded as domestic violence against a woman. Officially she is the victim. She knows and I know how ridiculous this is. How many other stories are like mine? Even when we are abused and even seriously attacked there is a refusal to recognise, because of maleness, that we can be anything other than the perpetrator.
Even though she was so abusive of me, so aggressive for so long, I never stood a chance in our present system. As the official ‘victim’ I am sure she has had a bevy of support services to turn to. The violent one gets that support!!! I am dumbfounded that this could happen. There is something rotten in eden when the aggressor is offered support on a basis of her gender. In hospital, and upon my release i was not offered any access to support services. I know I am a survivor of a prolonged and extreme form of domestic violence. i know my case is not recorded as such in statistics.
After so many months of really significant abuse my trauma was very great. The trauma of jail was even greater. Being released and denied my family worse still. Ratchet that up even higher by leaving me destitute takes me beyond the scale of what I can endure.
Being destitute means I cannot afford a decent legal defence. I cannot compete with her resources. I lose. I have lost at every level. I wonder how I will ever trust a woman as a partner again. I doubt that I can find that trust again.
Once I was so ashamed to admit that I had been bashed and humiliated by my wife. It made me feel like such a failure. But slowly I am beginning to realise that my silence only enables the abuse to continue and go unmeasured. It allows people like ‘shivers’ to hide amongst figures and documentary support. The politics of gender and those who engage in it have missed the point entirely. Viciousness and violence is not gender based.

What wisdom have I taken from this? I dont know yet. I have battered down the hatches. I am just trying to survive. I am trying so hard because if I let go of that tenuous hold, my children will never know the truth. I will have truly disappeared. The stories they hear of me will only be the ones my wife chooses to weave.
I am trying to go on in this dreadful fight. I want my children to know that I never betrayed them. I never left them. My wife, their mother, had to virtually annihilate me to remove me.
I keep trying to get up the strength to keep fighting.
I know that I may not make it.

By: Jay

Jay — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 06:04:00 +0000

By: Steven

Steven — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:43:17 +0000

Hi Shivers,

I don’t believe that statistic, and I don’t honestly think that many people do. As a set out in my previous posting, I think our underdstanding of domestic violence as it relates to men as victims is limited by the inability of our society to accept that there are many men who are disempowered in their relationships with women.

I think your attitude to Philip goes more towards illustrating this point than rebuking it. To me, your comments apprear conceited and condescending. You suggest that he has no basis for his concern, and belittle his experiences as marginal and therefore unimportant. In short, it seems that you refuse to recognise Philip’s experience as legitimate. This is precisely the sort of treatment he has identified as being why he feels unable to talk about his experiences.

If more men like Philip were bullied less, and allowed to speak more freely about their experiences, I think our society would develop a much more enlightened and accurate perspective on men’s relationships with women.

In relation to your response to my previous posting (thankyou), I’m afraid that you can’t make a blanket statement about men in our society (i.e opressive, patriarchal, etc…) and then turn around and claim that, in actuality, you weren’t talking about ALL men. If this is the case, and the larger majority of men are good people as you suggest (and which I most certainly agree with), then you have implicitly accepted that we cannot live in a society which has the characteristics you describe (since presumably the behaviour of a society is, by definition, the dominant behaviour of individuals within the society).

I am sorry to hear about your own personal experiences, but to be clear, many of the things you describe are similar domineering type behaviours that I, my brother and many other boys have or are growing up with today.

To clarify my position on this comment:

“As much as I empathise with that man’s predicament, one can’t help but think, “welcome to the world of women as it has been f0r millenia.”

I’m not exactly sure why you can’t see that it is offensive to suggest that a male victim of rape is less important, and that he essentially deserves to be abused (“welcome to the world of women as it has been for millenia.”). The important thing is human rights, and those rights are explicitely denied by a person who suggests that a male rape victim is getting what he deserves. If only some people have human rights then I think it is almost by definition that the concept of those rights is being used to exact a kind of oppression.

The history of men hasn’t been all roses either. The ancient Chinese, for example, were castrating (something like) 40 000 men per year at the peak of their civilisation. Because of the opportunities available to castrates in the Chinese administration, many parents would castrate their sons and send them to the capital (with no gaurantee of work) in the hope that they would be accepterd into the administration of the empire. Many of these people starved at the city gates.

By: Steven

Steven — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:43:00 +0000

Hi Shivers,

To clarify my position on this comment:

“As much as I empathise with that man’s predicament, one can’t help but think, “welcome to the world of women as it has been f0r millenia.”