–just that the sincerity of the MRA crowd is, shall we say, in question.

Sigh.

This is not a typical US or UK issue, DV is international. While the number of female victims is considerable larger, male victims are existing in not in such a small number and their problems are more or less ignored.

Topic and Question: What Kinds Of Help Do Abused Men Need?
First of all I think, their complaints should be taken seriously, and this is up to now nowhere the case.

———-
text, reference below

Growing numbers of Japanese women are punching their spouses, lovers and male co-workers…
A 2005 Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (Japan) study on violence between men and women found that among married couples, 26.7 percent of women and 13.8 percent of men had been beaten at least once by their spouse.

Source:
December 29, 2006, Mainichi Newpaper,
December 31, 2006, Yomiuri Weekly Ed.

Gay men tend need on-going support and security - similar to the needs of abused women. Their relative wealth (to abused women), however, means they have less need of state services.

Heterosexual men, however, tend to want one off contact with someone who can give them information about their rights and options and do not take up offers of on-going support. There is a national (Government funded)
help-line and website for male victims which (surprise!) was originally established by feminists*. The majority of male victims who call are also (self-admitted) perpetrators. There is also a national help-line for the LGBT community.

I’m not sure that the UK findings can be directly ‘translated’ to the US because we have a different housing and welfare system. Although there is one refuge (shelter) for gay men (mostly occupied by young gay men experiencing homophobic abuse from family members), there are none for heterosexual men and over 400 for women.

In the UK, however, refuges are a form of housing provision specifically for those needing security and safety as state housing assistance is available for anyone - male or female - who is homeless. Whilst the provision of permanent subsidised housing is subject to more stringent criteria, this is not rationed on the basis of gender or sexuality. There is simply insufficient evidence to show that heterosexual men need refuges of their own within our context.

* Just to be clear - this includes both male and female feminists

Archer, J., & Ray, N. (1989). Dating violence in the United Kingdom: a preliminary study. Aggressive Behavior, 15, 337-343. (Twenty three dating couples completed the Conflict Tactics scale. Results indicate that women were significantly more likely than their male partners to express physical violence. Authors also report that, “measures of partner agreement were high” and that the correlation between past and present violence was low.)

Arias, I., Samios, M., & O’Leary, K. D. (1987). Prevalence and correlates of physical aggression during courtship. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2, 82-90. (Used Conflict Tactics Scale with a sample of 270 undergraduates and found 30% of men and 49% of women reported using some form of aggression in their dating histories with a greater percentage of women engaging in severe physical aggression.)

Bernard, M. L., & Bernard, J. L. (1983). Violent intimacy: The family as a model for love relationships. Family Relations, 32, 283-286. (Surveyed 461 college students, 168 men, 293 women, with regard to dating violence. Found that 15% of the men admitted to physically abusing their partners, while 21% of women admitted to physically abusing their partners.)

Cogan, R., & Ballinger III, B. C. (2006). Alcohol problems and the differentiation of partner, stranger, and general violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21 (7), 924-935. (A sample of 457 college men and 958 college women completed the CTS. Results revealed that significantly more men than women reported being victimized by their partners.)

research shows women are the more violent gender. I’m sick of people making out that only women are victims and therefor only women are entitled to help. Men have just as much right to funded shelters as women do.

Is it correct to call 15 percent of all victims to be just a few? How many are they?

Yes, it is currently appropriate to call male victims ‘a few’. The size of the problem needs to be better established. This can be done by establishing an ‘Office of Men’s policy’ in Louisiana {similar to the existing Office of Women’s policy} with perhaps five workers.

All efforts have to start small. Until the size of the group is better known, no grants will be available for shelters. The men simply will not come forward without a safe environment for them to come forward in. The biggest problem would be the ridicule they would be exposed to from other men.

The group should provide a hot-line for abused men to call in for help. Perhaps they could provide one initial shelter or contract with the homeless shelters to target the initial load.

Men seeking a restraining order in Louisiana are first directed to the women’s DV group to have the request vetted. For the case I know about, they approved the request without any problem, but the man felt very uncomfortable having to go through that group.

I think, but do not know for a fact because the statistics are not kept, that the two biggest problems are 1) male suicides and 2) male murder/suicides. I feel that this problem needs to be put to the head of the table. Identifying the causes and proposing solutions should be the main initial focus of the policy group.

I suspect that a primary cause is depression, lack of any emotional support, the loss of freedom, the feeling that they have been enslaved, deep, utter poverty coupled with no social support because their ‘income is too high’ {because the takings are ignored}, a feeling of powerlessness.

If in some cases depression turns into psychosis for women, does it also do that for men?

Followed by identifying, ranking and prioritizing the other issues using the Pareto principle.

Many Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs) demand that existing Domestic Violence (DV) shelters do more to assist male victims. Most Domestic Violence (DV) shelters feel that they can’t take in men because they can’t both allow in men and provide for the security of their female clients.

I agree that it would be completely inappropriate to place male victims in a shelter for women.

I think it is inappropriate to have a ‘no men at all allowed policy’. Certainly they should be vetted to not allow any abusers in.

Finally, a question: If a DV shelter wanted to set up a program for men, whether for emergency shelter or for other kinds of help, what financial resources are available to them?

I don’t know.

I’d love to see an MRA run grant for start-up programs to treat male victims of domestic violence, for example. Or government programs. Or other private institutional programs. But do any of these exist?

I don’t think so. There was a group running a intervention program for child support/parenting issues in New Orleans - but that they were washed away by Katrina. They were more of a marriage group. I don’t know of any MRA groups with funds or grant writers. Perhaps up North they do better.

It is difficult enough getting men over their fears {of being abused further} to get them to come forward and go public or testify before the legislature.

Is it correct to call 15 percent of all victims to be just a few? How many are they?

I think, public resources should be diverted 1:6. Why should female victims receive 100 percent and male victims nothing? Why should 15 percent of all DV victims be ignored?

RE: lying

What I meant by lying is that women lie about being victims and men lie about being victims. Abusive women also use deception to control their victim. One thing I have heard said on the helpline from men is that their abusers will tell them, “go ahead calls the cops, who do you think they will believe me or you?”
I sense that this happened a lot to abused women prior to our ‘get tough on domestic violence laws’ that we now have in place.
A recent client came to us by referral from a social worker. This man was in the hospital having sustained multiple injuries from his abusive girlfriend. The social worker informed us that this man’s girlfriend was beating him up, he called the police and just stood there with his hands at his side, not defending himself while she continued to batter him until the police arrived. Many men know that if they defend themselves against a woman’s physical abuse they will, more than likely, be the one that the police take off to jail. The police did not arrest her.

I’m glad to hear about your organization.

I think the claim that’s been made here in regard to lying is that male abusers may specifically use deception in order to find, and return to their power, female victims.

Are you saying you’ve seen the same behavior from female aggressors in pursuit of male victims?

I kind of got the impression you’re talking about another kind of lying — the false accusation rape kind of lying — which I’m not personally concerned about being a common behavior in either gender. (At least not instinctively, although reasonable data is always appreciated.)

Reply:
This can be said of female victims also from my experience. There has been a helpline that specializes in supporting and assisting male victims of spousal and intimate partner violence for nearly seven years now. I am the founder and director of said non profit. We are not widely known because it’s near impossible to get any funding to promote our agency and services for male victims. Although we are not well publicized we have had over 16,000 calls to the helpline since inception. The line is available nationally.
After speaking with thousands of male victims and those who are concerned about a male victims I can tell you, male victims need many of the same services that female victims are offered.
Men lie about being victims and so do women, lying isn’t exclusively a male thing. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have about male victimization.
By the way, we are not affiliated with nor are we part of the Men’s rights movement. We have supported and sheltered female victims too. We do what we can with limited resources.
Sincerely, Mrs. Jan Brown, Domestic Abuse Helpline for Men and Women
director@dahmw.org

The last several posts here have been off topic, so I’d prefer to let this digression end here, if folks don’t mind.

You are right, LT does not stand for O-3. It’s a very old handle (Circa 1996) that I still go by online in most places. LT is actually shorthand for Little. Rand is short for Random. Why is it shortened? When I started the handle, most places had character limits on handles, hence the shorthand. As a note, I didn’t even know about Ayn Rand untill 1999.

That “Favorite Quote of the Day” came from a book of quotes I dug up from my research on an entirely different topic. It was simply the most interesting quote I came across that day.

19 May 2007

Favorite Quote of the Day

The modest virgin, the prudent wife, or the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life, than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes. Oliver Goldsmith

posted by LtRand @ 8:59 PM

If it’s not available for security reasons, it’s not available. I’m not saying they should put a man and a woman in ajoining rooms or that they should ignore security. That’s part of assessing “available resources”, true?

Super.

Also: the rest of us read the other “radical blogs.” Coming in by insulting them is not endearing.