[This post is a collection of comments I've read on "Alas" and on "Pandagon," which I thought it would be worthwhile to gather together. The first section is a comment I wrote on this thread in 2005. The other comments quoted are individually credited and linked. --Amp]
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.
Some DV shelters have hotel vouchers or other such programs to help battered men; some don’t. I really think that if the MRAs would approach DV shelters with a spirit of cooperation –”we’d like you to have a hotel voucher program to help battered men, and we have a source of fundraising to make it happen, so that helping battered men doesn’t mean taking resources away from battered women” — they’d get a better response.
However, most MRAs are belligerent towards DV shelters and the people who work there. Most DV shelters are already turning away battered women and making due with insufficient staff due to lack of resources; into that situation comes stumbling some MRA folks who know nothing about DV shelters, who say, in essence, “You lying feminist bitches owe us help, and we don’t give a damn what it costs your current clients.” Is it any surprise that no fruitful relationships have resulted?
Despite this, as I said, many DV shelters do have voucher programs to help the rare battered men who needs help — because contrary to MRA mythology, most feminists aren’t man-hating monsters. But that there is DV help for men available is no credit to MRAs. Nor has any MRA organization, that I know of, made a point of seeking out those DV shelters that do help men and helping them with fundraising or other needs.
Ironically, if the MRAs were right - if there were as great a need for battered men’s shelters as there is for battered women’s shelters - then it would be a viable idea for MRAs to build their own shelter network, modeled on the work that feminists did building DV shelters. Fortunately, however, men aren’t that bad off, and in most areas of the country men’s shelters would die out for a lack of men needing their services.
For that reason - and here I disagree with many other feminists — helping the few battered men who need shelter-style help will probably have to be something added on to what already existing DV agencies do (conditional on doing so in a way that doesn’t take resources away from female victims). There simply isn’t enough “business” for a separate men’s network to be viable, and it’s morally necessary to help the (relatively rare) male victims, just as it is to help female victims.
But it’s not fair to demand that DV shelters divert already insufficient resources from battered women. If MRAs want existing DV shelters to expand what they’re doing to help men, then they’ll have to start working with existing DV workers in a respectful, reasonable fashion, including working on establishing grants to allow existing DV shelters to voluntarily add on or expand help for men. And I haven’t seen any sign that MRAs are willing to do that. (For more on what MRAs aren’t doing — at least, not that I’m aware of — see this comment by Robert.)
* * *
I thought this discussion of help for abused men, from a comments on Pandagon, was interesting. First, a comment by Jesurgislac:
I agree that the lack of support for male victims of domestic violence is an issue. But it’s an issue best resolved by the folks complaining that there is no support for male victims of domestic violence turning to and setting up that support: helplines for men to call, appropriate support for men wanting to leave abusive partners. Because men tend to be in a very different financial/social position from women, whether men suffering from domestic violence are in same-sex or mixed-sex relationships, it’s unlikely that the same support provided for women would be at all appropriate — not to mention, that what’s needed is more support, not less.
To give an example: suppose a man in a heterosexual relationship finds that whenever his wife loses her temper, she punches him. Her blows are not life-threatening and never do worse than bruise. Talking to her about this gets him nowhere - she’s either angry or dismissive. He’s embarrassed to talk about it with anyone else he knows, because it just doesn’t fit his world view or anyone else’s he knows - women aren’t supposed to hurt their husbands. He thinks about divorce, but on the surface they’re happily married, and the thought of having to admit to a lawyer that he wants out because his wife leaves nasty bruises almost every week is just too humiliating. Besides, what would he tell the children? They see their mother hitting their father, but they have no idea it actually hurts him.
I wouldn’t say this man doesn’t deserve help: he does. But it would be inappropriate to offer him the same help as offered to a woman who’s being beaten by her husband: because he doesn’t need that kind of help. He needs help specifically tailored towards a man being abused in a hetero relationship….
Which was followed by this response from Paul:
Male privilege is also a powerful trap keeping men in abusive relationships. After all, how could a (mere) woman, who might not even be able to inflict lasting physical damage, be abusing a real man? Any man who considers himself abused must therefore be a wimp and a coward, and if he’d just suck it up everything would be fine. I think men have to figure out for themselves how to help other abused men, from consciousness-raising to the kinds of counseling and physical help that might be appropriate to dismantling the structures that make “traditional” relationships ripe for abuse. Right now we’re barely at the Masculine Mystique stage.
In 2005, in a comment that’s unfortunately no longer online, Bean wrote::
I have written before about DV shelters for men.
The shelter I currently work for was founded and started by feminists. We help women who are in need of confidential shelter due to domestic or sexual violence.
We don’t have any sort of “all men are evil” mentality. In fact, for many years our Children’s Program Coordinator was a man — he left recently to pursue his Master’s in Counseling, and we were all very, very sad to see him go. While many of the women were a bit startled (and a few were uncomfortable) with a man working there, for the most part it was an extremely positive experience, especially for the children who were able to have a healthy relationship with a man. While that particular man has left, we do still have a couple of men who volunteer there on a regular basis. They are great, and very much welcome.
However, we are able to do a much better screening/interviewing process for staff and volunteers than we are for residents. And, sadly, most abusers (men and women) are upset (to say the least) about losing control over their victims. They do everything in their power to find them. Abusers have been known to call the shelters looking for their victims, coming up with all sorts of stories (including claims of being police, family, and even victims, themselves). If we were to accept men, we would be greatly increasing the chances of allowing an abuser access to their victims and knowledge of where the confidential location is.
Also, staff and volunteers are not living at the shelter — which brings up a number of other issues.
Now, we do have times when a female resident is the victim of a female abuser — a partner, a family member, etc. There are also times that a male abuser could ask a female family member or friend to seek shelter in order to help him find his victim. And because of this, we have to take a lot of precautions when accepting women into the shelter, as well. Honestly, the vast majority of our residents have male abusers — so this isn’t as big of a concern. But it’s one we do take seriously. And women who are abusive to other residents (whether they knew them previously or not) are not allowed to stay at the shelter.
Allowing all men access to the shelter puts all of the residents, staff, and volunteers at risk, not just the victim of a particular abuser. The longer a shelter is in one location, the harder it is to maintain our confidentiality. We are at constant risk of abusers (past and present) of locating us and doing damage — to the shelter, our residents, and to ourselves. That’s why we have a number of safety precautions, one of which is not allowing men in as residents.
Now, some shelters take this further than others. Some shelters do not allow teen boys to stay at the shelter. The shelter I work at once had that policy, too — but we changed it several years ago. We now allow boys up through the age of 17 (so long as they are coming in with their mother). While I am extremely glad that we have this policy, and would have a hard time working at a shelter who didn’t allow this (knowing how many more women would have to be turned away), I have also seen the problems this can create. We have at times, for example, had teen boys (as children of the victim) who are older than some of our residents (for example, a 17-year-old boy with his mother and a 16-year-old teen mom). In addition, some of these teen boys look and act like men, and some are already exhibiting abusive behavior — this can be extremely intimidating to the women there. We deal with these cases on a case-by-case basis, doing whatever we feel will be best for the mom and the shelter.
When we have the funding for it, we will voucher a hotel room for a male victim. Of course, we have almost no funding, and have already had to shut down programs for women because of this. We have extremely limited staff and resources as it is.
In my time working for various DV agencies, I have had very, very few legitimate calls from men seeking help. And even then, most of them did not want to come to shelter, and actually were just calling to find resources specifically for male victims (and I referred them to a couple of those resources in our area — yes, they are there, although admittedly, there aren’t enough).
I just spoke to Bean; she wanted to add that one shelter in our area — Monika’s House in Washington County — provides shelter to battered men (as well as women). Bean’s current employer makes a conscious effort to use language in their materials that applies to male as well as female victims.
In a later comment in the same discussion, Silverside wrote:
In my opinion, the entire emergency shelter concept, as a concept, has its ups and downs. It’s good insofar as there is supportive staff right there at the location 24/7, and that it’s easier to conduct group support meetings. There is often better security for the inhabitants, through sometimes not. But I have often heard it said by shelter inhabitants (not to criticize the fine work that Bean and other shelter workers provide), that living in emergency shelter, like living in any emergency shelter, means losing your privacy, having to live by rules that often seem intruding and coldly institutional, and leaving the comforts and familiarity of your own home and belongings behind. Living with other people in crisis is not always conducive to your own mental health either. Sometimes I think there is something to be said for letting victims stay in their own homes and remove the abusers to another location. I have heard of victims returning home, partly because their children were doing so poorly in an unfamiliar environment, that they figured they might as well go back home and deal with the crap that’s familiar.
Frankly, if I were in crisis (think Katrina here), I’d much prefer a motel room where there’s peace and quiet than a noisy emergency shelter with other people’s traumatized kids running around. So I wouldn’t be so quick to buy into me-tooism. Vouchers are a very workable solution in areas where there is a small population in question, whether that’s in remote, very low-populated rural areas, or among specialized relatively small sub-populations of homeless persons, such as men, heterosexual or homosexual, who are rendered homeless and without resources, due to domestic violence.
It should be noted here, that abused women with resources -– better paying jobs, family resources, etc. — generally do choose other options other than emergency shelter. It is generally the solution of last resort. That’s one reason why men, who tend to have more money relative to women, would seldom choose to go into a shelter. You would not only have to have a male who was beaten by an intimate partner and afraid to stay in his home, but so devoid of resources (unemployed?) that he couldn’t go elsewhere. Apart from who hit who and how hard, the domination and control cycles that battered women experience also affects their ability to earn a living and be economically independent, something I have never seen claimed about abused men.
(In that discussion, Bean responded to Silverside, and in essence agreed with what Silverside wrote.)
I’m not making the comments feminist-only. Comments discussing the best ways to help abused men are welcome; comments about how eeeevvvvvvviilllll feminists are, either said explicitly or implied, are subject to being deleted without warning.
