I am a survivor of domestic violence. Four years of my life – four years too many – were spent with a man who physically, emotionally and financially abused me. His jealousy, which I found so flattering, even thrilling, at first, became a destructive force in our relationship, leading to bizarre accusations of infidelity, unforgivable insults, and actual beatings. In a strange way, the memories of the accusations and insults are more painful than those of the beatings.
The man is thankfully out of my life now, but I still keep up to date on domestic violence, reading everything I can about the issue. Some victims’ stories hit remarkably close to home: the fear, the lowered self-esteem, and the feeling of being constantly controlled. But one thing seems amiss in the present-day literature on spousal abuse: almost all of it deals with violence committed by men against women.
The question of husband abuse is controversial, to say the least. Many people deny its existence, while others acknowledge it but claim it is much rarer than wife assault and doesn’t carry the same risks for the victim. One battered women’s advocacy group in Canada, for instance, called domestic violence against men a “red herring.” Researchers disagree as to whether or not husband abuse is as widespread as wife battery; some say yes, others no. Nonetheless, the fact that husband abuse can and does occur means it should be taken seriously. Other individuals argue that because men are physically stronger than women, their chances of facing serious consequences such as injury or death are lower than women’s. However, weapons can cancel out any advantages of brute force, and other kinds of abuse – psychological, for example – don’t depend on the possession of superior physical strength.
What helped me recognize that domestic violence wasn’t just a gender issue was hearing the accounts of male victims. Canadian author Patricia Pearson’s book When She Was Bad devotes a chapter to abused men. Reading the book, I was struck by how much these men’s experiences resembled mine. Take the role of irrational jealousy, for example. One man interviewed said that his girlfriend forbade him to buy the Toronto tabloid the Sun because it carried a picture of a scantily clad woman on the third page; looking at the picture, in her mind, meant he lusted after other women. I remember my former boyfriend accused me of having a crush on a Chinese colleague when I rented the movie Rumble in the Bronx starring Jackie Chan. Those and other similarities made it harder and harder for me to boil family violence down to a simple question of men hurting women.
One might think that because of their bad experiences with their own partners, battered women learn to hate all men and therefore lack any sympathy for male victims of abuse. But many of these women empathize with men in a similar position. One man profiled in When She Was Bad found a source of sympathy in his landlady, who herself was beaten by an ex-husband. And some battered men show the same empathy. One of Pearson’s interviewees, for instance, ran support groups for both male and female victims of domestic violence (this man’s empathy even extended to animals; he rescued a cat from an abusive home).
My own encounter with domestic abuse has made me more sympathetic to others in the same situation, regardless of their gender. I realize that women are capable of violence and that men are capable of being victimized. Sure, I can understand why some female victims of spousal violence may distrust men and, conversely, why some male victims may distrust women. But in the end, the problem of family violence isn’t going to be solved unless everybody involved – no matter what their race, sex, and social class – works together.
Emily Monroy
Toronto, Canada