Men Are Victims Too

Open any news outlet media today and you will be plagued with headlines prompting thoughtful consideration about the current state of the nation due to the recent change in presidency. Many claim that the current president represents a lack of education about women’s issues and rape culture. Among that, many have taken this opportunity to question if the vote for President Trump was representative of America’s view on women and their daily fights. Of these fights, the issue of domestic violence against women has become very prominent.

What many tend to neglect is that in the real world of feminism, the issue of domestic violence is not a women’s issue – it’s a people’s issue.

Every person in America has the potential to be affected by domestic violence without a strong dependence on gender. This one is for the men – the men who are also affected by domestic violence but are very rarely talked about, making the overarching issue even worse for the entire survivor community.

Today’s world gives men a bad reputation. The negative view of the way society now looks at men based on those who are in power, and their previous actions, causes strong neglect towards the issues that men face with domestic violence. It’s been statistically shown that men are also affected, in large numbers compared to the United States population, by domestic violence. That rate is lower than that of women, but the issue found within statistics is that they are dependent on somewhat unreliable methods of obtaining data. For example, statistics based solely on reported domestic violence and survey can fall prey to the cultural standards placed on men to dissuade them from reporting. Men are told to be strong and domineering, so admitting they were victims of domestic violence – especially at the hand of a woman – is as harmful to their cultural ego and reputation as emotion violence. Likewise, survey results can be problematic in obtaining correct data when the questions are skewed to only recovering certain answers. Broad questions about someone being a victim of domestic violence leaves little educational value for the survey taker to decide how to accurately represent themselves in the survey. Questions should be worded more in depth and give a full range of different forms of domestic violence without showing tendency towards the colloquial definition applied to hot topic news stories.

The greater issue of domestic violence against all people is a lack of education.

Instead of causing division over the human rights of men versus women, education about domestic violence should cover all genders as able body offenders and victims. In a form of true equality over issues that America so direly needs, it is more influential to give proper education on the various forms of domestic violence. Physical and emotion abuse being the most frequently talked about commonly dominate the public’s understanding of domestic violence. Frequently left out forms include financial and personal abuse. The use of personal information to coerce someone is a frequent under recorded for of abuse that many people in a household do face. Likewise, financial abuse is easily documented but rarely mentioned as a form when discussing partner violence. This is a call to action, to take necessary steps in reaching the general public to relieve all relationships and household tension by giving greater understanding of the frequency and types of domestic violence. With better understanding, this women’s issue can become a human issue that all may over come in time.