Can Discussion of Domestic Abuse Be “Sexist?”

Last week, I wrote an article about how abusive fathers are using the family courts to continue to abuse and control their victims. The courts award them custody and contact with their children and accuse the mothers of coaching the children to lie about the abuse. The point of the article was to show how the family courts minimise domestic abuse and that abusive fathers are rewarded rather than mothers and their children being protected.

The article was blasted as sexist because I didn’t mention that men can be victims of domestic abuse too.

Yes, men can be victims of domestic abuse too. However, the vast majority of the victims are women.

According to the ONS figures for the year ending March 2017, an estimated 1.9 million adults aged 16 to 59 experienced domestic abuse. 1.2 million of these were women and 713,000 were men. The majority – 70 percent of the victims of domestic homicide between April 2013 and March 2016 were women.

One in six men do report experiencing abuse from a female partner or ex-partner each year. However, women are more times more likely to suffer the most potentially fatal forms of violence – threats, knife or gun attacks, strangulation and sexual assault. Women are three times more likely to have suffered actual bodily injury and five times more likely to say that they are in fear of their lives.

When a man reports abuse it is significantly more likely that he has been violent with his partner. Women are much more likely to have been repeat victims of domestic violence, much more likely to be seriously injured and much more likely to report that they are frightened in their own homes.

These are the facts. Women are much more likely to be victims of domestic abuse, to be victims repeatedly, to be killed or injured. But in an attempt to be gender-neutral people ignore the facts or try to change them so they fit their own beliefs; maybe in an attempt to validate the male victims.

There is no single cause for violence against women and children but certain factors do seem to be among the causes. These include traditional gender roles and include disrespect for women, women’s inequality in the workplace and relationships and little support for gender equality. Men who are violent towards women are so because they have a sense of entitlement to be violent and to control their partners and former partners and this gives them the right to be violent.

A gendered approach to violence against women is essential. Men are the majority of perpetrators of violent crime; women are predominantly the victims of sexual assaults. Men and women can be victims of physical assaults but these are almost always perpetrated by men. It is most likely that women who kill their partners were driven to this as the only way out of an abusive relationship when the woman has been systematically abused for years.

There is also a problem with how statistics are gathered by the ONS. When counting crimes recorded, there is a “cap” where after the fifth incident against one victim the counting stops. When the cap is removed there is a 70 percent rise in the violence against women by their partners.

A gender neutral approach is not acceptable. It belittles women victims; it causes what little resources there are for female victims to be shared with male victims, so cutting the support for the women who need it the most.

A domestic abuser will also use the tactic of claiming that their victim is abusive towards them. The abuser will tell their victim that they overreact to everything, that they have got things wrong and they are remembering things wrong or the abuse didn’t happen. The abuser will claim to the police and the courts that their victim is the abusive one and they are the victim. They will present as calm and caring and as the victim and that this “hysterical woman” is the really the abuser.

The abuser will then start a “smear campaign” against the victim, turning family and friends against the victim and gaining their sympathy. An abuser will never admit to fault, they will never admit they have done anything wrong; they will blame their victims for everything. The abuser has to be right at all costs, has to be in control. It is their right to be abusive. They take no responsibility for their actions. This is when it becomes very dangerous for a woman and her children in family court.

I am not saying that all men are violent or that all women are not, some men are also victims of domestic abuse. However, what I am saying is that Family Court is a very dangerous place for women who have survived domestic abuse and their children and that the majority of victims of domestic abuse are women and also those most in danger. This isn’t sexism, this is fact backed by evidence.