This year's White Ribbon campaign kicks off tomorrow with an event at the Sky Tower, which will be lit up to "shine a light on men's violence"....As part of this year's campaign, which is officially recognised with White Ribbon Day on November 25, a number of events will be held across New Zealand to raise awareness.
One of those is the Walk A Mile In Her Shoes event, where men must walk in a pair of women's shoes to show support.
Perhaps Coro St's beloved Tyrone could find a pair of Kirtsy's shoes... oh hang on, it should be the other way around.
I have no wish to be flippant but clearly Intimate Partner Violence is a two-way street.
Apologies for not delving back through my own references but here are some incidence estimates from Wikipedia (all supported):
In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" surveyed 10,844 people (5,886 women and 4,958 men) between the ages of 16 and 59, finding that for the twelve-month period preceding the survey, 4.2% of men had experienced IPV. Over a lifetime, this figure increased to 14.9% of men. Of the 6.6 million incidents of IPV in 1995, 3.25 million involved male victims, with 1 million incidents resulting in injury.[27] Since 2004, more detailed annual records have been maintained as a supplementary survey attached to the annual Home Office Crime in England and Wales reports. These reports have consistently recorded significantly higher rates of both male and female victims of IPV than the standard crime surveys. In the case of male victims, the figures range from a high of 4.5% in 2007/2008[30] to a low of 3.1% in 2009/2010.[31] In the Republic of Ireland, a 2005 report carried out by the National Crime Council found that 15% of women and 6% of men had suffered severe IPV in their lifetime, equating to roughly 213,000 women and 88,000 men.[32] In Northern Ireland, police records for 2012 listed 2,525 male victims of domestic violence, an increase of 259 cases from 2011.[33]
In the United States, the National Violence Against Women Survey carried out by the Department of Justice in 2000, surveyed 16,000 people (8,000 men and 8,000 women), and found that 7.4% of men reported physical assault by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, or date in their lifetime. Extrapolated to the population of the country as a whole, this figure equates to 6,863,352 men. Additionally, 0.9% of men reported experiencing domestic violence in the past year, equating to 834,732 men.[34] Also in 2000, the Canadian General Social Survey found 7% of men had experienced IPV from 1994 to 1999, amounting to 549,000 men.[35] Another Canadian General Social Survey, in 2005, found 6% of men had experienced IPV between 2000 and 2005, amounting to 546,00 men.[36] Data concerning campus rape, such as from a National Institute of Mental Health and Ms. Magazine study, has found a 1 in 7 sexual assault rate for men in U.S. colleges.[37]
In 2013, the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that from a sample of 16,000 U.S. adults, 26% of homosexual men, 37.3% of bisexual men, and 29% of heterosexual men had been a victim of IPV, compared to 43.8% of lesbians, 61.1% of bisexual women and 35% of heterosexual women. Although the study found that lesbians experienced IPV at higher rates than heterosexual women, it did acknowledge that the majority of IPV perpetrated against both men and women was carried out by men. CDC Director Tom Frieden stated, "This report suggests that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals in this country suffer a heavy toll of sexual violence and stalking committed by an intimate partner."[38]
In New Zealand, the twenty-one year Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, published in 1999, reported that of their sample of 1,037 people, 27% of women and 34% of men reported being physically abused by a partner, with 37% of women and 22% of men reporting they had perpetrated IPV.[39] Also in New Zealand, a 2009 report by the Journal of Applied Social Psychology evaluated samples of university students (35 female, 27 male), general population (34 female, 27 male), and incarcerated participants (15 female, 24 male), and found that 16.7% of the male respondents reported physical abuse (12.9% for students and 15.4% for convicts), while 29.5% reported bidirectional (i.e. both partners commit IPV against one another) violence (14.5% for students and 51.3% for convicts).[12]
The 2006 International Dating Violence Study, which investigated IPV amongst 13,601 students across thirty-two-nations found that "about one-quarter of both male and female students had physically attacked a partner during that year." It reported that 24.4% of males had experienced minor IPV and 7.6% had experienced "severe assault."[40]
White Ribbon Day promotes and perpetuates a stereotype of men as perpetrators and women as victims. That is why I won't support it.
4 comments:
Good on you Lindsay!
My view is that the feminists "foul their own nest" as it were by refusing to focus on the *real* problem areas.
Is it not correct that a large proportion of the violence is committed by Maori and Pasifika men?
Oh, and I'll bet that Muslim men too feature in the stats out of all proportion to their numbers here.
Oh, but that's all just too non-PC for the feminists. Much easier to tar ALL men with the same brush instead of focusing on where the real problems lie.
Be careful, you are letting the truth get in the way of the rhetoric and we can't have that when the feminists have an agenda.
While not a large study as such a policeman friend has been saying for some years that he found domestic violence fairly evenly split but there being support for women with the man generally being removed on a presumption of guilt despite him having been the victim of an assault.
3:16
@tranquil: mixing race into this is unnecessary and to many plain racist. As domestic violence is an issue in all socio-economic and racial areas it should be treated that way.
While woman are more likely to sustain injury from domestic violence (men tend to be a lot stronger) every peer reviewed study I've read on it (and that's a lot of them) shows it is committed at a fairly even rate between men and woman with many studies showing lesbian relationships have the highest rates of domestic violence. As a lot of domestic violence is non-physical in nature anyone the issue clearly needs to be gender neutral.
One study form the US showed that close to 40% of men that reported domestic abuse against them were arrested themselves, and with the prevailing attitude that men are always the perpetrator it's no wonder so few report domestic violence.
Of course, all domestic abuse is bad and I'm sure we all support highlighting it and trying to make it an issue people can talk about, but when the conversation excludes half the victims it's doing more harm than good.
I'm glad to see other people highlighting that this is an issue for everyone, not just woman. Love your work, Lindsay!
Indeed, Lindsay. While it is laudable to wish to curtail violence against women, the repeated exclusion of men from the initiatives exacerbates the very real problem of under reporting of domestic violence incidents against men. In addition to the usual reasons for under reporting (co-dependancy, shame and manipulation), men also feel that admitting to being a victim impinges on their manhood. This is worsened by the meme that men are the only perpetrators of domestic violence, strengthening the usual manipulative idea that they "deserved it", while reinforcing the idea that being a male victim is not "natural" and therefore the man's fault for not being "strong enough".
This is not just an academic observation. I have had abused male patients voice EXACTLY this idea.
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