Dear Readers,
So this is a pretty old article from back in 2013, but it has the age-old lies and garbage that desperately needs to be undone if male victims of abuse have any hope of forward progression. This was written by someone called "Karen Ingala Smith" (a literal Karen - I know, right?).* If you don't know who she is, she runs a twitter profile 'Counting Dead Women' in reference to female abuse victims who have suffered fatal abuse experiences.
Such deaths are undeniably tragic, and I applaud her efforts to help them. Having said that, if she had stuck to helping women in abusive situations and escaping from dangerous abusive partners, we wouldn't have a problem. Unfortunately, she seems to see male abuse victims as real abusers, competing with abused women, and a threat to her rhetorical view of the world (and probably her wallet too). Therefore, she sees fit to unnecessarily deny the existence of our experiences and silence us again.
So, for the sake of my fellow male survivors, I'm going to get down and dirty. Time to get messy!
A couple of weeks ago, The Independent ran an article on male victims of domestic violence. There were some factual inaccuracies in the report along with the use of the statistic that one in three victims of domestic abuse in Britain is male. I challenged these on twitter. I received the response below from a professional referenced in the article.
But I'm not going to move on. I'd prefer to talk about this statistic because it is unhelpful at best,
No it is not.
[And] it is derailing and dangerous at worst.
Again, no it certainly is not.
The claim of gender parity in domestic violence, or at least of much less difference than is conventionally believed, is nothing new, in fact it's been popping up - and out of the mouths of Men's Rights Activists - since at least the 1970ies (???). No matter how often or how robustly 'gender symmetry' claims are rebuffed and refuted, its advocates continue to regurgitate their position.
Ah, the famous 'MRA' boogeyman of MSM so-called "feminists". It's pretty easy to understand this, it's basically shorthand for "someone who looked at me funny.' And in response, we keep "regurgitating" our position because people like Karen here insist on doubling down on their web of lies to protect their privileged positions of power and status over the issue of domestic violence.
'A third of all victims of abuse are male'
Obviously, that's about 33%, and in recent years the figures have been recorded as much higher, but that's another story.
The data referenced, that approximately a third of victims of domestic abuse in the UK are male comes from the data from the British Crime Survey. It contrasts significantly from data from police crime reports which estimate that between 80-90% of violence against the person reported is by women assaulted by men.
You know why that is, Karen? Because most men do not report. This is common knowledge. In fact, they underreport more than women, which is saying something because women underreport already. A lot. This is an elephant in the room that is easy to acknowledge, unless you're a Karen of course.
The main problems with the statistic that a third of the reports are by men are
- It is about domestic abuse and/or conflict, not domestic violence.
They're the same thing, Karen.
The data does not differentiate between cases where there is one incident of physical conflict/abuse/violence or those who where violence is repeated. If we look at the data for where there have been four or more incidents, then approximately 80% of victims are women.
This is what we call 'goalpost shifting'. Karen makes a sneaky sleight-of-hand by suggesting that male victims of abuse don't count if it was a "one-off" (not a standard she'd applied to a wife slapped once by her husband, because it's abuse too). Note the way that she starts it by describing certain assault incidents as "conflict" as if to downplay the action of female abusers.
- The data does not differentiate between incidents where violence and abuse are used as systematic means of control and coercion and where they're not.
Another textbook example of abuse apologia. ALL domestic violence and abuse is used for control and coercion. Karen has got it disastrously wrong. And you know what the funny thing is? We've barely even started on this article, I'm not even halfway through.
- The data does not include sexual assault and sexual violence.
In 2013, there was little data for female-on-male sexual assault, and progress on further research in this field is intolerably slow. One big reason for this is likely because people like Karen keep trying to stifle it with their lies as we see here.
- The data does not take account of the different levels of severity of abuse/violence, 'gender symmetry' is clustered at lower levels of violence.
Again, we have the dishonest use of downplaying violence against male partners. What Karen is basically telling us is "lower levels of violence is not domestic abuse". Frankly, this is a pathetic argument of minimisation to make at best, and is morally abhorrent abuse apologist writing at worst. The truth is that even one incident of violence against a partner is unacceptable, and this is at the same moral and logical level as in the past where it might've been once considered societally "acceptable" for a man to slap his wife to "put her in her place". Either way, like the latter scenario, it's abhorrent.
- The data does not take account of the impact of violence, whether the level of injury arising from the violence or the level of fear. Women are six times more likely to need medical attention for injuries resulting from violence and are much more likely to be afraid.
I've heard this argument before, and here we see more goalpost-shifting from someone who basically is claiming that "level of fear" and "risk of injury or death" discounts anything outside that category as domestic violence. This is a blatant and utter lie, since domestic abuse does not have to be violent or lethal to be abuse. There are multiple types of abuse, including emotional and financial abuse. Would Karen argue that women suffering these experiences are not real abuse victims? I doubt it.
This sort of rhetoric maintains public ignorance about the realities of what abuse really is.
- The data does not differentiate between acts of primary aggression and self-defence, approximately three-quarters of violence committed by women is done in self-defence or is retaliatory.
Karen here has sunk as low as it is possible to get. It's not uncommon for "feminist" theorists like this to strive to maintain their cherished theories about the world by just subtly (or not so much subtly) accusing male abuse victims of being at fault or being the real abusers. For example, "retaliatory" is pretty ambiguous. In retaliation to what? Forgetting to pick up milk from the shop? Not being listened to? This is victim blaming and abuse apologia in one go, and it is not acceptable.
In fact, if these issues are taken into account, research consistently finds that violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women and levels are consistent with data of reports from the police.
"These issues being taken into account" is basically shifting the goalposts so much that they forget that there's even a football match. It's intended to deliberately set the bar so high, that incidents of abuse of males have to be on the same extreme level as females to count as abuse at all (unlike incidents of abuse of females, less extreme incidents undoubtedly still count). And even then, in the mind of Karen in all her rhetoric, she sees the male abuse victim as having to prove that he's not the "real abuser". So no, we won't take these lies or weasel words of yours into account, Karen.
This is supported by data from the Crown Prosecution Service that shows across the five years between 2007/8 and 2011/12, 93.4% of those convicted for crimes relation to domestic violence were men.
Karen, just stop. You're using data from before people even started to consider female on male abuse as a problem at all. Note also that she used the word "convicted", taking advantage of male under-reporting. (MORE RECENT DATA) I'd also like to remind Karen and her ilk that the first woman to be convicted of coercive behavior towards her partner was Jordan Worth in 2018. It's like estimating the population of England based on a census from 1595.
- Looking at sexual offences.
43,869 sexual offences were recorded by police in England and Wales in 2011/2012.
In the same year:
96.7% of cautions issues for sexual offences were to males
98.2% of prosecutions for sexual offences were against males
99% of convictions for those found guilty of sexual offences were male.
There's a pretty easy answer to this antiquated data. It's rubbish. Why do I say this? Because basically it refers again to convicted cases, and imagines that there aren't any cases of abuse against males that people do not know about. It's like arguing that no other women get abused because none are convicted. James Landrith, an American male rape victim (of a female attacker) who courageously spoke up about his experiences, never got justice or a conviction. The law is stacked against him because it doesn't acknowledge female forced-to-penetrate as rape (which is the same in the UK). Personally, my own abusive experiences I never reported, but does that mean that they never happened? Of course not. This argument is wafer thin and as flimsy as a chocolate chip cookie in a swimming pool.
54% of UK rapes are committed by a woman's current or former partner.
If sexual offences are excluded from consideration, then no gender parity.
'It's harder for men to report, there's much more of a taboo for men'
Spot on.
Exactly the opposite:
- Men are more, not less likely, to call the police
Where is her evidence? There is none, because this is a total and utter lie. As pointed out before, Alex Skeel's abuse by Jordan Worth was the first convicted case of a male victim of coercive abuse in 2018. Did he just magically pop out of the ground like a gnome, separate from all other men? I don't think so.
- Men are more likely - not less - to support a prosecution.
Utter bullshit. There isn't a shred of credible evidence presented here by Karen to prove that.
- Men are less likely - not more - to withdraw their support of charges.
See my point above. Then Karen cites her claim, one of only two citations. Who did she cite? Michael Kimmel, a biased and ideologically driven professor, chair for NOMAS (National Organisation of Men Against Sexism) who anonymously posted a revolting article called "Not a Two Way Street" outrageously claiming that "Men are NOT victims of what's meant by domestic violence and abuse". What's more, this is a man accused of sexual harrassment in 2018, a man who filed for retirement to avoid being held accountable for his actions, so I'd really consider anything he says to be suspicious.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/15/us-womens-rights-campaigner-accused-of-sexual-harassment
Another way to get round the issue of unrepresentative reporting is to look at who gets killed
No it most certainly is not.
Dead people don't get the voice of whether or not to inform the police. UK Homicide records between 2001/2 and 2011/12 (11 years) show that on average 5.7% (296 total) of male homicide victims and 44.2% (1066) of female homicide victims are killed by a partner or ex-partner.
So she admits that those 296 men were likely murdered by their partners at least (I doubt that most of them were gay men somehow).
Expressed as an average of those killed by a partner or former partner over 11 years, 22% were men, 78% were women.
Again, refer to what I said about how you don't have to be a stiff to be abused.
Note, the domestic homicide figures do not tell us the sex of the perpetrator, nor is the sex of the perpetrator revealed for all other types of homicide.
Funny that she says that.
Men are overwhelmingly killed by other men - regardless of the relationship between victim and perpetrator.
And now she's completely derailed her line from general domestic abuse into outright murder, suggesting that you have to be dead as a doornail to count as a domestic abuse victim. Like I said before, with things such as emotional abuse and financial abuse, it does not have to be lethal or cause physical damage to count as abuse.
Women are overwhelmingly killed by men - regardless of the relationship between victim and perpetrator.
Regardless? That's a bit of an odd thing to state. I was under the impression that we were focusing on domestic abuse. Perhaps not. Either that or her article is so poorly focused that it takes the readers to nowhere at the drop of a hat.
'Maybe the police see what they expect to see, gender stereotypes mean that men are more likely to be perceived as the aggressor'
Absolutely. Many police officers will testify to that, as would the Duluth model in the U.S.
Except that they're not. Research by Marianne Hester (2009) found that women were arrested to a disproportionate degree given the fewer incidents where they were perpetrators.
Either that or they turn out to be abusers more than you or Marianne Hester would care to admit, especially since back in 2009, female on male abuse was recognised even less so than today.
During a six year study period men were arrested one in every ten incidents, women were arrested one in every three incidents.
Interesting that Marianne Hester is cited as the only one of two resources (the other being alleged sexual harasser Michael Kimmel). Who is Marianne Hester, you might add? Well, it turns out that she's not an unbiased source either. She's in fact a Professor at Bristol University, the Chair in Gender, Violence and International Police in the Centre for Gender and Violence Research at the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol. Hardly an unbiased source again, a rather inconvenient fact dishonestly left out by Karen, the fact that much of her cited so-called "evidence" is little more than a confirmation bias circle jerk.
When women do use violence, they are at risk of greater levels or retaliatory violence.
So what? This means that it never happens? It is a blatant, undeniable fact that our society looks down on males hitting females. Even thuggish characters who love violence such as 'Marv' in Sin City consider that taboo. And how often has this trope come up? TW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyJXAallsyY
Karen here has come up with a simplistic, Victorian era argument, the idea that all females are small, delicate creatures (when it becomes convenient for people like Karen and harasser Michael Kimmel), and men are unanimously muscled hairy brutes. This is blatantly untrue (though try telling people like Karen they'll pretend to agree with you until it's inconvenient).
Women are penalised, not excused, not invisible, if they transgress gender stereotypes.
Are you kidding? Take a look at how "actresses" Amber Heard and Asia Argento were completely given a free ride by the #MeToo movement. Or Missing White Woman Syndrome that focused less on the crimes that Jodi Arias and Hope Solo committed, in fact Hope Solo seems to be getting treated as a heroin of women's equality by the press: http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2021/01/14/hope-solo-says-action-needed-close-gender-wage-gap/
'Women make false allegations'
Except when they don't and in the vast majority of cases they don't.'
Two words. Johnny Depp.
And again, I point to James Landrith, whose attacker threatened to falsely accuse him if he didn't comply with her assault. On a personal note, my own abuser blatantly used the threat of false accusations against me if I didn't comply with her sexual wishes. This is a textbook method for female abusers. Some male abusers do it too, but if we listened to drivel like Karen's, then we'd likely believe that all males lie about abuse and are actual abusers, but all women are not abusers, which is bunkum.
The Crown Prosecution Service recently released data for a 17 month period in which there were 5,651 prosecutions for rape and 111,891 for domestic violence in England and Wales.
Again, bad example to give considering that the law doesn't even consider women as capable of committing rape anyway, even if she forces her partner to have sex (forced envelopment), and like I said, please refer to the fact that she only uses convicted cases.
Over the same timescale, there were only 35 prosecutions for making false allegations of rape, six for false allegations of domestic violence, and three that involved false allegations of both rape and domestic violence.
So I guess that men don't lie about domestic violence either, huh?
'Women exaggerate'
Women overestimate their own use of violence but underestimate their victimisation
Seems unlikely given the content of this entire excuse for an article. OK, flippant comment aside, I'll get to this in a moment.
Women normalise, discount, minimise, excuse their partners' domestic and sexual violence against them. Women find ways to make it their fault.
Indeed, they do. Do you know why? Because most victims do that. It's very common for men and women subjected to domestic violence and sexual abuse to blame themselves, but it's not just women, though judging by what comes next, Karen would like to pretend that's not the case.
In contrast, men overestimate their victimisation and underestimate their own violence.
Oh do fuck off. It's pretty blatant to anybody with a working brain that male abuse is underestimated by men, even those to whom it happens. (EXAMPLES) Me personally, I remember when a boy in class said to me that "women do rape men", I fervently denied it, even though I'd already been sexually assaulted by a girl by that point, who was in the same class as me.
True to form, Karen cites work for this from Russell P Dobash, who wrote other works such as "Changing Violent Men", "Rethinking Violence Against Women", "Gender and Crime". Again, Karen is blatantly performing an idealogical mutual masturbation at the level of American creationists, and using outdated work from as far back as 1998 (much like alleged sexual harasser Michael Kimmel using citations from the 1980s). This means that the data Karen presents us is so far past its sell-by-date that it's absolutely useless.
But there's more.
Men are more likely to exaggerate a women's (?) provocation or violence to make excuses for initiating violence and, where retaliation has occurred, in an attempt to make it appear understandable and reasonable.
Here we see yet another piece of blatant lies and weasel words. Allow me to show the correct way of doing this.
Abusers are more likely to exaggerate a victim's provocation or violence to make excuses for initiating violence and, where retaliation has occurred, in an attempt to make it appear understandable and reasonable.
You see the difference? Karen in the previous article has cunningly used weasel words to equate abusers solely with males, and suggest that male abuse victims and male perpetrators are one and the same because apparently, male abuse victims according to Karen are just lying perpetrators, wolves in sheep's clothing. This is quite obviously not true as we have seen in recent years.
Paul Keene, used the defence of provocation for his killing of Gaby Miron Buchacra. His defence claimed that he was belittled by her intellectual superiority and that he lost control after rowing with her by text over a 12 hour period.
Given that this article is awash with intellectual dishonesty and moral bankruptcy, I have a sneaking suspicion that Karen uses Paul Keene and Gaby Miron Buchacra as textbook examples of what every man and every woman is like. Again, almost every abuser male or female has an excuse that they come up with as to why they feel justified in assaulting their partner. "She's being a bitch" or "He's an asshole that doesn't listen to me." This is not exclusive to male (or indeed female) abusers, but Karen would have you believing that it is in regards to the former.
That a jury accepted his defence is a further example of how men's violence is minimised and excused.
**Quick disclaimer.** What happened to Gaby Miron Buchara was tragic. It was a waste of life and should never have happened. There is no denying that. What is strange is that there are a few facts omitted by Karen in the article on the BBC about the case. I took the liberty of looking it up myself, and the BBC provided an article on the case. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-20813685
According to the article, the judge and jury gave the sentence because of the suggestion that she'd been emotionally abusing him and that he retaliated. Obviously, that's not justifiable reason to do what he did, certainly not in my eyes. What's also obvious is that this is exactly what Karen here has said that women who abuse their partners commit abuse for. "Retaliation."
What I found surprising about this particular case, is how the family responded.
'The family of Gaby said there was no right or wrong in the decision taken.'
A statement said: "We must respect what the justice system has ordered because at the end of the day, each one of us will have to live with the consequences of our own actions."
Now, that is a surprise. Was Gaby actually guilty of abusing her boyfriend? Not that it justified what was done to her, like I said. It just seems strange that the family aren't baying for his blood like one might expect. You see, "minimising male violence" in cases of a woman being killed by her boyfriend or husband doesn't usually extend to the families.
Given how Karen has spent this entire article subtly lying to its readers that female abusers don't exist, how females only abuse in retaliaton and self defence (i.e. While it's wrong for a man to do it, it's OK when a woman does it.), this smacks of the dog calling the cat hairy-arsed.
Not only by men and the women they assault, but by the legal system. The right to claim abuse as a mitigating factor in domestic violence homicide cases was vitally important for women like Kiranjit Aluwahlia, Emma Humphreys, and Sara Thornton, all of whom had suffered years of violent and abuse at the hands of the men they killed. (LINKS TO THESE CASES)
That such a defence could be used in Paul Keene's case only illustrates how differently women and men who use violence are treated.
Again, see my above point. And actually, that's something of a contradiction considering that she's arguing against these cases being treated the same.
Of course, now we hear the usual waffle and drivel from Karen and her ilk that we are used to, concern-trolling about "patriarchy hurts men too" and "gender roles". I'm trying not to yawn, but there you go.
A feminist perspective, based on an understanding of socially constructed gender roles and differences within the framework of patriarchal society does not mean that all men are violent to women, or that men are genetically pre-disposed to violence. It means the opposite.
Except you spent the entire article suggesting that "yes, all men accused of abuse are indeed violent to women" in the most brainless, drawn-out way. And there is mountains of evidence that the mainstream feminist movement has failed, and continues to completely fail, at responding appropriately to the problem of female-on-male abuse.
It means that women and men are socialised and that - within the limits of choice permitted by the social environment - we can choose to be different.
Basically "if men were more like women they wouldn't hurt women and if women ran everything and acted like men, we'd be in paradise". To be honest, she's saying a lot while saying absolutely nothing as well, like a politician, verbal diarrhea.
Whether coming from an anti-feminist Men's Rights Activist perspective,
There's that strawman again,
Or from a genuine desire to support those men who are victims of domestic or sexual violence, those who use statistics that overstate similarities between male and female violence are either doing so wilfully, to pursue their own agenda, or because they genuinely haven't taken time to - or have failed to - understand the statistics.
And now, we come to Karen's latest bad faith argument, tacitly implying that "advocates of male victims of abuse are the same as MRA misogynisy woman-haters". We've already been over her dishonesty, projection, hypocrisy, goalpost-shifting and weasel words to minimise and justify domestic and sexual abuse of males. She's even descended down into the depths of downright abuse apologia. We understand the statistics Karen (many of which aren't designed to show male abuse victims and are therefore outdated). We understand them a lot more than you do, clearly, otherwise you would never have written this pathetic excuse for an article.
I have no desire to deny any man's reality.
And yet you have blatantly done just that, so stop lying and pretending that you care. You don't. We know.
Denying women's much greater suffering as victims of domestic and/or sexual violence is a political act.
More of this "personal is political" bollocks so it seems. Karen appears to love her bad faith arguments, which equate to "advocating for male abuse victims denies what happens to women, so male victims should shut up, and suffer as they deserve."
The differences between men and women's use of violence and experiences of victimisation do not need to be denied or minimised for all victims to be deserving of safety and support.
For the love of God, Karen - you spent the entire article denying and minimising a whole swathe of victims (male victims) in the name of the paranoia that giving us male survivors the support that we deserve like anyone else is somehow robbing women or something (it's not). Don't even think about pretending that you care about all victims, because it's obvious that you do not.
It's quite possible to believe that no woman, child, or man deserves to be a victim of sexual or domestic violence (or indeed of any other type of violence) whist (???) maintaining a feminist agenda to end women's oppression.
Except no. No you can't have your cake and eat it. You've wasted your effort on an entire article trying to minimise and silence male victims of abuse in bad faith, using dodgy rhetoric, dubious sources, and all to protected your cherished ideas and comfortable theories of how the world works. We male abuse victims don't have the luxury of being able to pretend that our experience didn't happen.
So judging by what you've written here, no it really isn't.
Footnotes.
1 Kimmel 2002
2 Dobash et al. 1998
Any man experiencing domestic violence can contact the men's advice line.
"Here, have the scraps from the table you little worm"
So there we have it. Karen Ingala Smith engaging in a long-winded and pompous stifling of male abuse victims (I do apologise for the long response). This is unfortunately typical of MSM feminism, and now with the recent Johnny Depp case out in the open, the rock has been lifted for all the world to see.
For the rest of you, I hope you enjoyed by rather lengthy fisking of this feeble little article, and that you'll take away some ammunition to use against more lies, dishonesty and bad faith arguments like hers.
Finally, I want any and every feminist who thinks like Karen - in fact, anyone who agrees with her at all, to understand this. Male abuse victims blow the conspiracy theory of "patriarchy theory" out of the water, and that makes us an inconvenience to you. You may not like it, but that's tough.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, we male survivors are not and will never be here for you and your movement's convenience. It's time for you to wake up to this fact, the fact that we do exist, that we do experience abuse, that we do hurt and suffer for it even if you can't take it in.
It's time for you to adapt and do better. We will be acknowledged by society, whether you like it or not.
Sincerely,
The Invisible Man
*Admittedly I'm not always fond of the Karen meme like when that woman was aggressively being filmed outside her house and she was having a panic attack, but sometimes it is justified.
