Why don't we hear more about men being abused by women?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Oxygen has the show Snapped. The title makes you think it would be telling stories like The Burning Bed where an abused woman can’t take anymore and finally kills the rotten SOB. In reality they show women who kill for money, jealousy or just plain old craziness. The show should be called Deadly Dames. Snapped almost gives a legitimate air to the show.

Most women might not be physically strong enough to beat the crap out of her male partner but they are still capable of inflicting great harm. Remember Lorena Bobbit?
Or how about this charming lady?

Women are seem to be more prone to using emotional abuse (think Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?). After years of being told that he is worthless, useless, lazy, stupid, lousy in bed and has a small dick do you think a man would be cheered as a hero because he finally lashed out at the woman and called her a miserable shrew? If she has been hitting, kicking and scratching him would he get a made for TV movie made about him because he finally blew away the abusive bitch? Hell no! His picture would be plastered across the NOW web site and Rosie O’Donnell would be on The View screaming for his balls.

Society says men are supposed to treat all women as ladies who are not to be hurt. “Never hit a lady,” we are told. Well when she starts hitting, she is no lady.

As other people here have mentioned, my wife used to get physical during arguments. Her father had been physically abusive and she continued the chain; hitting, punching and kicking during fights about money or whatever. I’m a good 6 inches taller than her and outweigh her by quite a bit so I would only hold her wrists and try to stay out of the way of her knees. I would never hit her but I have held her down to keep the blows away. Eventually I would just walk away.

One time she gave me a kidney shot so hard that I pissed blood. Another time she slapped me and her ring ripped open my cheek. If I had called the cops I would not have been believed.

I was never like the women who think they deserved the abuse for whatever twisted reason. I knew it was all because of what she had suffered at the hands of her father. We went through some counseling and she has been talking with someone about her temper and she has not hit in over 15 years.

62

Oh really? And you speak from experience, do you? Because if you do not, then how have you a valid opinion about what an abused person actually feels?

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Well, I can speak from experience. I had nothng to come home to but emotional & physical abuse, I had been isolated from my family, I had no friends, and I understood that if I called the cops I’d be treated as a nuisance, so I called the cops anyway, and asked them to take me out of the house before I blew my brains out. I went to a one-week treatment center, and then started going to Alanaon and putting my life back together. So yes, I can testify that the difference between “'it was so horrible I sincerely wished I was dead” and… being dead." is razor thin.

A few sidebars:

When I was released from the hospital, her “welcome home” attitiude was “well, this just proves that he’s fucked up. I always knew that was why he isn’t making more money.”

I had the cops take my shotgun away (forever), and my dad later told me that when he bought it for me when I was 16 he was wary because it had been used in a suicide.

While the while this was happening, I was a frequent contributor to the SDMB, (which my abuser resented as she did all activites and relationships of mine that didn’t bring more money into her life.) With this in mind, I now try to always remember that, however much we dopers seem to divulge and debate here, we really don’t know shit about each other.

And finally, not really relevant to the OP, but just to let you guys know how this all sits with me now; she’s dead. I forgive her. She didn’t make me hate myself - I loved her and that’s what made me hate myself.

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I am saying nothing about what a person feels. Only noting the difference between dead and not dead.

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Of course we don’t feel better about anybody being abused and mistreated. This thread is not about who has it worse, men or women - it is about raising awareness of what is actually going on in the world, rather than what we are being told.

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It’s the flip side of the standard ( and at least somewhat true IMHO ) stereotype that women care more about other people’s feelings than men do. That sounds warm and fuzzy, but to the extent it’s true about nasty women, it just means that they concentrate on hurting people emotionally. Like the famous “Texas Cheerleader Murdering Mom”, who went after her daughter’s rivial by killing the rivals mother, to hurt her emotionally.

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Please forgive the delay in answering. This wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I wanted to think about on Christmas. Right now, I’m damn glad I’m alive. That, however, is due to years of therapy, among other things.

Before I got myself sorted out, not only were there times I would have preferred being dead, there were times I attempted to become dead by committing suicide. A person who commits suicide as a result of emotional abuse is just as dead as one who’s beaten to death, one difference being that there’s a chance the person who beats someone to death will be convicted of a crime. Driving someone to suicide is, I think, legal and difficult to prove. There’s also the point which has already been made in this thread that it’s harder and rarer for a woman to beat a man to death.

Look, put yourself in the shoes of a man trying to leave his wife and still get custody of his kids. If he’s got photos of bruises and hospital records of other injuries, he’s got physical evidence he can present to the judge and show that his wife is abusive and possibly a liar, giving him a stronger case. If all she’s done is tell him he’s worthless, stupid, irresponsible, and will never amount to anything, it’s her word against his and he’s got nothing in the way of physical evidence on his side unless he happened to tape one of these harangues.

You’re free to disagree with me on this, and I could well be wrong. I was spared physical abuse and I’m grateful for that. I also don’t know what it’s like to be emotionally abused as an adult and I have no intention of finding out. I do know the damage emotional abuse does to a child and adolescent and part of that damage occurs when you believe your abuser’s right and all the awful things he or she says about you are true. One reason I’m glad to be alive right is the wonderful moments when I’ve realized they weren’t.

As far as I’m concerned, emotional abuse is much harder to prove than physical abuse because of the simple matter of physical evidence and, in the situations we’re discussing here, it sounds like men need all the physical evidence they can get and even that might not be enough.

68

Yes, psychological abuse is in its way as damaging as physical, but to suggest that it’s actually preferable for an abused person to die than live is…very strange to say the least, Siege. I wonder if I’m just not understanding you, because I can’t figure out how what you say makes sense. Even leaving aside that dead never gets better and wanting to be dead often does, having been both purely psychologically abused (by someone who was really good at it, who put deliberate and organized effort into it) and beaten nearly to death, if I were given the choice between which experience to relive, I wouldn’t have to mull it over. Enough pain, especially prolonged and combined with the physical effects of constant fear, does psychological damage all by itself, so you end up with the immediate pain plus the screwy brain, and very likely some long-term physical damage.

Though as an aside, I do understand the issue of wanting some evidence, and the difficulty of communicating about the pain of psychological torture. I recommend Peter Hoeg’s semi-fictional novel Borderliners (Danish, but available in translation) as an excellent examination of the subtleties of mental violence.

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You make a good point about emotional/psychological abuse, Siege (and Ensign Edison). I hadn’t thought to extend this thread to non-physical abuse, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is at least as bad (and possibly worse) than physical abuse, and there is also no doubt in my mind that women are engaging in this kind of abuse on a regular basis (and it wouldn’t surprise me that women excel in this type of abuse - I have three sisters, after all).

70

Very sad, but very true. That’s why I advise my family clients to carry a video recorder or dictation recorder with them. (I also adivse them on the need for a safe environment, including everything from bolt holes and emergency plans to counselling.) Unfortunately, most abused people (both men and women) for whom I have worked have been reluctant to get out of Dodge and have been reluctant to collect evidence via video/audio. They tend to let matters ride until they are so far past the end of their rope that they are unable to make good decsions with repsect to protecting themselves from abuse. That’s where family and friends can make a tremendous difference, by breaking through the isolation of the abused person.

On a lighter note, this morning a client gave me will instructions, directing that upon his death, his testicles be frozen and given to his ex (I talked him out of that one).

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Here’s why this whole distinction is bullshit-- have you ever met someone who was physically abused in a relationship (parent/child, SO, whatever) who was not also emotionally abused? Does anyone ever hit and only hit, not dish out other, less demonstrable, forms of harm with it? All things being equal, I’d rather limit the abuse I receive to the purely psychological, because adding physical damage to that takes it right over the line.

I will agree that having physical scars to show for it makes people believe you more, so in that respect, the physical abuse can be a key to recovery from emotional abuse. At least you can validate the fact that you WERE hurt, that this person WAS out of control, and that can be quite a relief and helpful in recovery. But when it’s happening? You wish they’d just yell at you and not lay hands on you. Because getting hurt really fucking sucks; it’s emotionally degrading and harmful as well as physically painful.

And before some wiseass asks, yes, I know this from personal experience.

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This may be somewhat of a hijack, but it’s not intended as one.

This thread was started before Christmas. On Friday, I bought Season One of Desperate Housewives, a show of which I’d caught only glimpses. I’ve watched most of it over the weekend and thought of this thread often.

In that series, I’ve seen women hit their husbands quite often. Only once, a man grabbing his wife hard; never a man hitting his wife (there is a murderer around, but he doesn’t murder because they’re women).

In the first episode, a husband who’s away on a business trip comes home early and for only about 24 hours. He wants his wife and wants her now; she’s happy about this but she explains he’ll have to wear a condom because she’s taking a break from the Pill (they already have four very young kids which are four armfuls). He says “bah, let’s risk it” and she slugs him. My reaction: laughter. I’m sure if he had punched her, I wouldn’t have laughed! Then again, with those kids, that punch probably counted as self-defense…

Gabrielle Solis hits her husband very often; she never adresses him with respect or love. To her, he’s just a credit card with a dick attached. The few times she’s nice to him it’s because she wants something. He grabs her forcefully once, to make her sign a post-nuptial agreement; he knows that she wants him only for her money. She makes these noises about “I thought being rich was what I wanted but it’s not”, but she’s not doing anything to find out what the heck is it that she wants, either. Shopping and putting down the man who bought her are what her life is about.

Bree… ugh. She’s like my SiL on steroids! I actually find it kind of funny that she won’t whip her husband for sex, while she’s perfectly happy to slap anybody who offends her oh so perfect sensibilities. What’s that term… castrating? I don’t have a dick but she makes my ovaries want to hide. Scary woman.

The series is fun and works a lot on karma (people do something, they think they’ve gotten away with it, but it somehow still manages to bite them on the ass). It also seems to say that a woman hitting her man is funny; that one grab by Carlos Solis was done in such a way that by then I can think of many people who’d be cheering him on. So, violence is ok so long as it’s on TV and involves pretty people? I don’t know… but there’s got to be material for a couple Master’s thesis there…

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Well, that seems to be another instance of it not being taken seriously. One generally doesn’t laugh at what is abhorrent (abuse against women), but one is much freer to laugh at the acceptable (abuse against men). Pretty simplistic for a thesis, there.

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I have noticed several posts here by men saying that they were abused but they wouldn’t report it because no one would believe it. How is it going to get better if it isn’t reported? If no one in authority hears it they aren’t going to know it is happening and they will never see it as a true problem. Not reporting it isn’t helping the next man that is abused. Women are always told to report it, put it on file, get a restraining order, etc. The same is true for men. Tell the police what happened, find an officer who is a friend of a friend or someone with power who will believe you and get it reported. Or don’t report it and know that every man in her life and any children she has will be abused.

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That’s good advice, pbbth, except the consequences for reporting it are too high for some men (loss of children, loss of family, counter-accusations, etc.). In my husband’s case, I don’t think he would report it if he had it to do over again, knowing that it would just be assumed that he was the abuser. It didn’t ruin his life, but it set him way back to fight the bogus charges. I think if he had it to do over again he would just leave her at the first sign of trouble and be done with it - no criminal charges, no legal fees, no nothing. It might not be the right choice, but I can see people making that choice (heck, when I left my abusive live-in boyfriend, I could have had him charged with illegal confinement, but I just wanted OUT and to forget I ever knew him).

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What about reporting it to a doctor, though? Couldn’t a guy get it documented that he had a soft tissue bruise on this date, and then make a legal accusation later?