Male Victims of Domestic Abuse Continue to Suffer in Silence
Last week, on the eve of becoming homeless as his house passed into
its new owner’s hands, Earl Silverman of northeast Calgary hanged
himself in his garage.
Silverman briefly
hit the news a month ago, when he closed his Men’s
Alternate Safe House (MASH), the only privately funded shelter for male victims of
domestic violence in Canada, for lack of funds. For three years, MASH had temporarily housed about 20 men and a few children.
As I
wrote in
a March 27 column, “This story did not light up the switchboards,
metaphorically speaking, of the media and government ministries.” The
fact that men suffering from abuse now had exactly nowhere in Canada to
turn for publicly funded shelter was the catalyst for a cavernous
collective yawn — and exactly one letter to the Post editor, scolding
men for their failure to become activists in their own behalf as women
did.
The letter-writer had a point; men do tend to suffer in solitude
rather than join forces to ask for help. As a result, abused are now
where abused women were in the 1970s, before government swung into
action to help. The problem of male abuse by their intimate partners has
been “outed,” but there is no
public system to deal with it.
So it would have been nice if somebody had written in to deplore the
disparity in treatment between female and male victims of domestic
abuse. For the silence on the letters page spoke volumes on the
stubbornly persisting public perception that only women are victims of
domestic violence, or that when men suffer abuse, they provoked it or
deserve it.
The well-documented fact is that 25% of domestic violence is
perpetrated by women against men who did not provoke it. Arrest
statistics don’t reflect that reality, since men are routinely arrested
in domestic disputes, no matter who provoked or did the most damage.
Explaining why he started MASH, Earl said: “When I went into the community looking for some
support
services [to deal with my wife’s abuse], I couldn’t find any. There
were a lot for women, and the only programs for men were for anger
management. As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services
telling me that I wasn’t a victim, but a perpetrator.”
Earl Silverman’s suicidal despair may have had some of its roots in personal
psychological issues
unconnected to a system that overtly excluded him. Warm and outgoing by
nature, he smoked and drank too much. But then most suicides are due to
a combination of internal and external factors. Some of the young girls
who have
recently committed
suicide
were known to be psychologically fragile; contributing factors like
“slut-shaming” seem to be what pushed them over the edge. They have
certainly had our full attention and sympathy.
The question is: would eliminating the contributing factors have
permitted these girls – and Earl Silverman – to find life worth living?
We believe so. We’re hell-bent on eliminating the contributing factors
to those girls’ deaths, as well we should be. Male suicides vastly
outnumber female suicides. We could and should also be looking at public
policies that would prevent what we know to be contributing factors in
the suicide of Earl Silverman and other desperate men before him.
According to a friend, “[Earl] believed very much in fairness and
justice and he was just staggered, constantly, that …something so simple
and so logical as gender rights and equality would be so impossible to
access for so many people.” His four-page suicide note urged changes in
the system. In other words, his suicide was in part an act of political
martyrdom.
It’s an easy fix to honour Earl’s last wish: Acknowledge the reality
that men suffer from their intimate partners’ violence almost as
frequently as women do, and almost as consequentially. Offer funded
shelter and
counselling to both
men and women who need it. And while we’re at it, offer funded anger
management to women who need it — there are many — as well as to men. We
will then see male suicide rates go down. It’s that simple. If we care.
Barbara Kay
National Post
bkay@videotron.ca
http://www.f4e.com.au/blog/2013/07/03/male-victims-of-domestic-abuse-continue-to-suffer-in-silence/
he
Supreme Court recently applied the gender equality note when a husband
was seeking divorce. It asked if it would have granted divorce to a
woman from her husband, who on developing some mental disorder had
become completely dependent on her, if she promised a huge sum as
permanent alimony.
The Indian media hailed the judgment as another landmark citing
gender equality. The question that remains to be answered is: would the
Indian SC or any such court in India
apply the same gender equality note when a husband complains of
domestic abuse including emotional, financial or physical abuse at the
hands of the wife or female partner?
Not likely in my opinion. Because the whole concept of gender quality
in India is used by courts only when it benefits women in general and
not men.
Take the recent spate of rape cases being filed all over Indian where
women allege rape on men when a consensual relation between them breaks
down and marriage does not take place. In most cases, it is alleged
that the man and woman had consensual physical relations and that man
did not keep his promise of getting married to the woman. Police and
courts accept such cases, the media highlight them and Indian rape
statistics increase for no reason.
However, can a man also file a rape case against a woman if she
decides to break a relationship after entering into a consensual
physical relationship? Will the same Supreme Court then have applied the
same gender equality note?
Now, let us come to more serious issue of domestic violence. It is a
fact that over 65000 husbands are driven to suicide every year, compared
to only 35000 wives. This is a statistical fact taken out of NCRB
statistics and cited by various surveys and news reports.
While over 13 civil and criminal laws exist to protect wives from
abusive husbands, the latter in India are not protected from domestic
violence or matrimonial abuse from wives. Revisiting the Supreme Court’s
approach of gender equality note all husbands must also be allowed to
file domestic violence cases because the court would have allowed a wife
to file the same if she had been abused.
The fundamental fact of the matter is that what’s bad for the goose
is bad for the gander, but not in India where different standards are
openly applied to the goose and the gander. Using words like "gender
equality" when it comes to benefitting women and "positive
discrimination" when it comes to denying access to laws and the legal
system to abused men, the Indian Judicial system is only denigrating its
status amongst its citizens and making a mockery of itself.
Our legal system should instead come clean and openly announce the
different standards that it applies to men and women so that men are
under no false impression that the courts would think with a gender
equality note if they approach them with a prayer. So much for gender
equality!
- See more at:
http://www.merinews.com/article/why-does-supreme-court-apply-gender-equality-only-one-way/15887535.shtml#sthash.g1kLEp6d.dpuf
he
Supreme Court recently applied the gender equality note when a husband
was seeking divorce. It asked if it would have granted divorce to a
woman from her husband, who on developing some mental disorder had
become completely dependent on her, if she promised a huge sum as
permanent alimony.
The Indian media hailed the judgment as another landmark citing
gender equality. The question that remains to be answered is: would the
Indian SC or any such court in India
apply the same gender equality note when a husband complains of
domestic abuse including emotional, financial or physical abuse at the
hands of the wife or female partner?
Not likely in my opinion. Because the whole concept of gender quality
in India is used by courts only when it benefits women in general and
not men.
Take the recent spate of rape cases being filed all over Indian where
women allege rape on men when a consensual relation between them breaks
down and marriage does not take place. In most cases, it is alleged
that the man and woman had consensual physical relations and that man
did not keep his promise of getting married to the woman. Police and
courts accept such cases, the media highlight them and Indian rape
statistics increase for no reason.
However, can a man also file a rape case against a woman if she
decides to break a relationship after entering into a consensual
physical relationship? Will the same Supreme Court then have applied the
same gender equality note?
Now, let us come to more serious issue of domestic violence. It is a
fact that over 65000 husbands are driven to suicide every year, compared
to only 35000 wives. This is a statistical fact taken out of NCRB
statistics and cited by various surveys and news reports.
While over 13 civil and criminal laws exist to protect wives from
abusive husbands, the latter in India are not protected from domestic
violence or matrimonial abuse from wives. Revisiting the Supreme Court’s
approach of gender equality note all husbands must also be allowed to
file domestic violence cases because the court would have allowed a wife
to file the same if she had been abused.
The fundamental fact of the matter is that what’s bad for the goose
is bad for the gander, but not in India where different standards are
openly applied to the goose and the gander. Using words like "gender
equality" when it comes to benefitting women and "positive
discrimination" when it comes to denying access to laws and the legal
system to abused men, the Indian Judicial system is only denigrating its
status amongst its citizens and making a mockery of itself.
Our legal system should instead come clean and openly announce the
different standards that it applies to men and women so that men are
under no false impression that the courts would think with a gender
equality note if they approach them with a prayer. So much for gender
equality!
- See more at:
http://www.merinews.com/article/why-does-supreme-court-apply-gender-equality-only-one-way/15887535.shtml#sthash.g1kLEp6d.dpuf
he
Supreme Court recently applied the gender equality note when a husband
was seeking divorce. It asked if it would have granted divorce to a
woman from her husband, who on developing some mental disorder had
become completely dependent on her, if she promised a huge sum as
permanent alimony.
The Indian media hailed the judgment as another landmark citing
gender equality. The question that remains to be answered is: would the
Indian SC or any such court in India
apply the same gender equality note when a husband complains of
domestic abuse including emotional, financial or physical abuse at the
hands of the wife or female partner?
Not likely in my opinion. Because the whole concept of gender quality
in India is used by courts only when it benefits women in general and
not men.
Take the recent spate of rape cases being filed all over Indian where
women allege rape on men when a consensual relation between them breaks
down and marriage does not take place. In most cases, it is alleged
that the man and woman had consensual physical relations and that man
did not keep his promise of getting married to the woman. Police and
courts accept such cases, the media highlight them and Indian rape
statistics increase for no reason.
However, can a man also file a rape case against a woman if she
decides to break a relationship after entering into a consensual
physical relationship? Will the same Supreme Court then have applied the
same gender equality note?
Now, let us come to more serious issue of domestic violence. It is a
fact that over 65000 husbands are driven to suicide every year, compared
to only 35000 wives. This is a statistical fact taken out of NCRB
statistics and cited by various surveys and news reports.
While over 13 civil and criminal laws exist to protect wives from
abusive husbands, the latter in India are not protected from domestic
violence or matrimonial abuse from wives. Revisiting the Supreme Court’s
approach of gender equality note all husbands must also be allowed to
file domestic violence cases because the court would have allowed a wife
to file the same if she had been abused.
The fundamental fact of the matter is that what’s bad for the goose
is bad for the gander, but not in India where different standards are
openly applied to the goose and the gander. Using words like "gender
equality" when it comes to benefitting women and "positive
discrimination" when it comes to denying access to laws and the legal
system to abused men, the Indian Judicial system is only denigrating its
status amongst its citizens and making a mockery of itself.
Our legal system should instead come clean and openly announce the
different standards that it applies to men and women so that men are
under no false impression that the courts would think with a gender
equality note if they approach them with a prayer. So much for gender
equality!
- See more at:
http://www.merinews.com/article/why-does-supreme-court-apply-gender-equality-only-one-way/15887535.shtml#sthash.g1kLEp6d.dpuf
