Every fracture, bruise and STABWOUND I’ve had as a 6ft1 230lbs dude, in my 45 years on this earth were caused by one 5ft2 woman.
That 18 year relationship left me with serious PTSD, constant anxiety I’ll get a call she killed herself, constant anxiety she may seek contact again and severely aggravated my pre-existing dislike for any sort of physical contact.
It took well over a year before I was able to even hug the woman that is now my wife.
Hey man, I’m really hoping you have been able to get someone to speak to about your situation as well as medication to help manage your symptoms. I did not take those options, and it has taken me years to recover.
It sounds like you’re still carrying a lot of that weight, and I hope you can put it down.
We are taught from a very young age to not hit people smaller and weaker than us, even in self defense. And it happens a lot more than people realize.
Im so sorry yo hear this. Be aware that ither men can always help you! We are here united!!!
Have you tried any of the new MDMA-enhanced psychotherapy techniques for PTSD?
Even when the waters have calmed down, and a person is functional again, the shit is still there. But the shit itself can be actually cleaned up, to make space for more of the good things.
I’ve been looking into that here and so far it’s not accepted as valid (or legal to use MDMA) and while it looks promising, me being neurodivergent has my psychiatrist and psyhcologist a bit apprehensive to experiment with it.
I was abused by my ex-wife for years. The treatment I received from government agencies was more damaging than most of what I got from her.
Certain organisations that are used to inform governments, from elected officials to social workers are based on the assumption that only men are ever abusive, that all men are abusive and the women can do no wrong. It started with the Duluth model and was followed in Australia by a study done by White Ribbon that specifically excluded straight men from participating. I know this is the case as I attempted to participate and that is exactly what I was told at the time.
Our bureau of Statistics has clearly shown that at least ⅓ of victims are men.
This is what is meant when people talk about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity hurting everyone. It’s not “all men are bad!” But rather the idea that men aren’t allowed by society to have feelings other than anger, or are unable to be raped, or need to just “man up” when they are suffering-It’s all bullshit, and so harmful to men and boys. I’m so sorry for what you went through, and I hope you were able to find peace.
I think the toxic masculinity is another subject aside from domestic relationships involving man on man violence and how it’s given a pass (especially on tv) . Beavis butthead /jackass type stuff. At least that is more in context of what I’ve seen it meant to be towards.
Domestic abuse however should be considered regardless of gender. It would be better to drop the gender out of it entirely when discussing it. We should acknowledge anyone can be a victim or even an abuser. it’s actually very common that even both are abusers but that often doesn’t get addressed other than being ‘one cancels out the other’ or ‘you’re both bad for eachother’.
Eh, no. A lot of this crap is also being pushed by the latest wave of feminists who are of the “all men are rapists” type. I recall seeing this video a few years back about a guy trying to get into a meeting for those left after male suicide. Guy’s brother committed suicide, he wanted, needed to talk about this and was denied entry by a bunch of feminists who literally cheered that his brother had killed himself.
Everybody deserves equal treatment, men, women, or whatever you identify as. In the past few years though, there had been a clear push against white men because they must all be racist or something? It’s weird.
Either way, this is not just “toxic masculinity”, way too easy to again push it on that.
It is still toxic masculinity, people just aren’t prepared to acknowledge the massive role women play in propagating it.
It’s toxic humanity.
So the belief by neo-feminists that all men are rapists and undeserving of sympathy is due to all men’s toxic personality? Am I getting that right? Seems like victim blaming.
Calling it toxic masculinity isn’t victim blaming. Men are victims to toxic masculinity every day and it isn’t because they have a “toxic personality”, it’s because the “masculine” image and roles in society they are expected to uphold are toxic.
The opinions of “neo feminists” are not what is typically held true either. Very few people think that way.
“Toxic masculinity” is absolute dog shit as a name for it, and I’m sure the parent commenter is reacting to that.
People use the adjective in plenty of adjective-noun pairs as an intensifier all the time. The ones railing against “deviant homosexuals” are not distinguishing them from the vanilla ones, nor do people who decry “evil pedophiles” recognize and support a non-evil variety. Thus, a lot of people hear the name “toxic masculinity” the same way, as if it is denouncing masculinity as a whole.
I agree with all of that in every way.
Calling it toxic masculinity implies that none of this would be happening if patriarchy didn’t exist. That is horribly wrong.
“Toxic masculinity” doesn’t imply “masculinity is inherently toxic”, but rather it refers to behaviors that are generally considered masculine, and are being described as toxic. You can talk about toxic femininity as well. A lot of people do, in fact, they just call it “being Karens”.
… and that most men are guilty of. When we blame men’s suffering on toxic masculinity, we are referring to the toxic masculinity in the behavior of men, and therefore we are blaming men’s suffering on men’s behavior.
thats a reach
There is a problem here that your post is making obvious, but no one is seeing. Every form of discrimination against men is being described by feminists as “patriarchy.” It seems when all you have is a hammer, everything in front of you becomes a nail. The giant blowback feminism is getting is because of this one-word-fits-all aspect of their ideology. In this case, the dangerously deluded idea that if you just get rid of Patriarchy, male disposability will just go away and so will discrimination against men.
It won’t, because the common denominator is humans.
This is why you never hear feminists talk about the actual things that drive women to attack men without provocation. If they can’t pin it on the Patriarchy they don’t want to discuss it. Literally this excuses women from being held responsible for their actions… because when a woman does something like that, it’s just her, but when a man does it, it’s reflective of a bigger problem, aka “men as a class”. Women don’t have bigger influences that make them think they can get away with stuff unless you can blame it on the Patriarchy and not the simple fact that women can be just as evil as men and in fact can circle their wagons around an offender just like the Patriarchy can for miscreant men. Just look at how Sharon Osbourne and an entire crowd of women circled their wagons around Catherine Kieu. I can provide the video if you want. But that never matters to feminists - the idea that women have their own framework outside of “Patriarchy” by which they treat each other and men wrong is heresy to them. Patriarchy as the cause of all gender wrongs is as myopic as it is popular.
Yet it’s hard to even discuss this because talking about it draws the equally fascist elements of the men’s rights movement. And so myopia becomes the new 20/20.
That just sounds like deflection.
Men only shelter got shut down by me because feminists protested.
Do better women.
Uh oh! Looks like somebody called out feminism on some horrible behavior. Downvotes for you sir.
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I had the same issues with my first wife. At one point when we were separated she attacked me in public and tried to steal my keys so she could take my car, while I was holding my kid. I had scratches all down the arm that wasn’t holding my child, and I ended up retreating into a store, where she continued to attack me. When the cops showed up I was immediately cuffed, and she was treated as a victim, despite onlookers and even her telling them that she had attacked me. I would have definitely gotten booked except that a female officer was called to talk to her, realized what was going on, and made the male cops uncuff me and arrest her instead.
At the hearing for a restraining order the judge literally laughed, and gave her partial custody of the kid with no restraining order for either of us, and the local DA let her off with anger management courses and nothing on her permanent record.
Did you keep photographs of the scratches? Even if they don’t become useful for you, they can be useful for history books when describing this problem in the future.
I did for a few years, but it’s been 15 years since this all happened, and I’m sure they have been lost in the shuffle.
I’ve heard many horror stories like this…
Had a friend who called the police on his abusive girlfriend when she pulled a knife on him, they arrested HIM for abusing HER despite him having witnesses…
I’ve also knew a guy who had to leave home because of his abusive wife, and when he asked about Abuse Shelters for men, the office kept recommending him to Anger Management programs meant to rehabilitate abusers
There was rape training at one of the unis I went to, including sexual violence against men and women stats. The rape stats were pretty bad as they are, but the one that really stuck out to me was that 1 in 10 men got raped. Really fucking high, much higher than expected. And you never hear much about it until a friend of a friend got held down by several people and raped. Refused to come forward to the police or even get tested for STDs because he was afraid of what society would think.
That feeling can help us understand where women were at about 50 years ago. That’s the thing feminism was fighting originally: the total societal blind eye, alone feeling.
Women today don’t even know what it feels like, to have no one care. Which is a testament to the success of second wave feminism, at least in this domain.
I have a feeling that only scratches the surface of what is abuse. It’s a whole family dynamic. And I would prefer it if gender wasn’t part of the discussion It really slants it like you say.
I’ve seen people blame the victim of abuse simply because they aren’t the abuser and ‘should know to leave’ when it is actually a very dangerous situation they are in.
And in some of the programs on the subject of addiction it’s actually more common that you’ll get both parents are actually abusive however our way of being programmed (like in the programs you’re saying) we might side more with who shares our gender. Or worse: start thinking the person who is being abused deserves it because they are somehow annoying others into abusing them. Or even wants to stay for the abuse and people lose respect for the victim for not leaving.
In Australia (more so in New Zealand) they are at least a decade behind on what is going on in America when it comes to addressing abuse dynamics. They still struggle a lot to get cops to take abuse seriously and very behind on the training. Lots of these programs even believe that abusers think victims have evolved to take a hit. I dunno, some sort of messed up biology involving whomever or whatever the gender is they believe is the more common and whatever the gender of victim is most common.
sure, ok in worst case scenario let’s say there might be some fucked up narratives like that out there amongst why an abuser abuses, I’d like to see that (or any idealogical bases for abuse) challenged towards the individual abuser rather than confirmed to the victim.
Im sorry to hear this, remember men will always be there for you!
MASH hosted about 20 fleeing men and children in the first four months of 2013 before being shut down.
Glass half full. He probably made a massive difference in the lives of those 20 in those few short months. Maybe even turned some lives around.
glass half full with a hole in it
If your cup be full, may it be again
20 men being able to have a stable place for a few months is amazing. If every man who gets involved manages 20 saves before he gets taken out, the whole thing could still work.
It’s not the fun numbers like “helped 10,000,000 men then died happily of natural causes at a ripe old age”, but 20:1 is still pretty good.
And let’s be real here. It’s not like he would have avoided suicide for longer if he hadn’t tried to help. Dude was probably with us far longer as a result of his own stepping up.
Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.
My mother was the abuser in my home. She abused me and my father. That fact doesn’t prevent me from knowing that men are statistically more likely to be the aggressor. I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this comment. Life is scary and hard enough. May we all only share and receive kindness.
Xx love you.
I assumed you said that (about how men are far more likely to be abusers) to try to mitigate any reactions that take your very reasonable comment out of context. Any time someone points out that abuse or injustice can happen from the non-typical side of a binary situation, someone inevitably jumps in with a “well achually…” response. Sometimes it’s said with the best of intentions. Sometimes it’s just trolling our pushing a personal bias.
I disagree with others who say you are perpetuating something negative by saying that. That’s clearly not what you are doing. You are just trying to provide a preemptive response to an inevitable counterpoint. Your overall point was well-made and reinforces the tragic but insightful story behind this post.
I hope you and your dad have found peace and happiness away from your abusive mom.
It’s because you can’t say or do anything in regards to this issue without attracting people that have an agenda that has nothing to do with helping men but is simply anti-feminist.
I’ve read plenty of times online how people don’t even look for help because they were convinced online that help for men does not exist. But it does and it should be spread instead of people trying to persuade people it doesn’t exist just because they want to spread their ideology.
This is exactly how I interpreted it
May we all only share and receive kindness.
Well said, @cokeslutgarbage
Is this Lemmy’s rimjobsteve?
I know roger simon won’t show up. It was always his father who would beat him with jumper cables.
So sorry to hear that.
I read:
1 - men absolutely get abused
2 - we don’t need to entirely eliminate any of the existing narrative that women have it rough [but let’s add abuse of men to the picture]
No notes besides sending some love back, brother.
I think I interpret what you are saying as that you’re aware women likely need more help, but so do men, and we shouldn’t assume the smaller one doesn’t exist or ignore them because that group creates more issues than they have victims.
Thank you for that balanced take on this issue.
I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this comment
That despite being actual victim of abuse, and further witnessing your father be a victim of abuse, You still try to push the narrative that women are the only real victims and the only ones deserving of support.
and I dont say this to be mean, or snarky, or cruel to you. You’ve just got to realize how internalized you’ve got this shit.
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But why bring this up in a thread about abused men?
That fact doesn’t prevent me from knowing that men are statistically more likely to be the aggressor
Right there.
He is a victim if abuse, and deserves support and understanding. He deserves to be heard without caveats. He shouldnt feel the need to have to basically hide his abuse by saying “Yeah, I was abused, but women have it so much worse” to avoid a deluge of critical comments and attacks. Which very often happens anytime a man is a victim of abuse and speaks out about it in any capacity.
He deserves support, and understanding, and resources. Same with his father. Same with all victims of abuse.
But men don’t have access to such things, because societal misandry on the topic means resources for men are downright nonexistent, because if a man tries to access currently available resources, they’ll be shut down and viewed as an abuser trying to get to vulnerable women, and anytime someone does try to provide resources for men separately, They are either attacked with dubious claims like trying to take resources away from women, or are just straight shut down and ridiculed.
And statistics are only based on reported/known crimes. male victims of abuse, domestic or sexual, are far less likely to report due to the social stigmas associated with toxic ideas of what men should be.
Thank you for saying this. It is the same when men get raped by other men. “It is male on male crime” is such a stupid take, it is blaming the person who got raped because of the gender they were born into.
There are resources and help for men. You aren’t helping anybody but sexist trolls by pretending they don’t exist. The only thing you are “achieving” is that some victims don’t even try to get help.
Gonna break out all the alts for this, huh?
I don’t know what I’m trying to say with this comment.
That’s a indicative of nervousness over even discussing the problem. Which shouldn’t be the case. The existence of a larger problem doesn’t mean people should feel nervousness over discussing smaller problems.
Also this isn’t a smaller problem for the person affected. A man that is abused is no small problem for that man. It’s the biggest problem in their life, just as for a woman that’s being abused that’s the biggest problem in her life. The fact that more women are being abused than men doesn’t lessen the effect of the abuse on the individual whether the victim is a man or a woman.
There’s a tendency for statistics to override empathy for an individual. “Ah well, that doesn’t happen very often, so whatever.” But it did happen for that person and it’s just as horrible for that person as it is for individuals in that statically larger group.
So we should make an effort to prevent statistics from negating empathy. There shouldn’t be a stigma against someone talking about a problem that’s statistically less probable as if low probability means something didn’t happen and isn’t worth talking about. It happened and and we should be aware of how statistics can have the tendency to turn us into statistical psychopaths which prevents real problems from being addressed.
Because that part is completely irrelevant to the fact that men can be victims of domestic abuse and it’s often used to dismiss the men who are victims.
And the fact that he feels the need to pre-emptively dismiss himself that way is sad. He shouldn’t have to feel that way.
Yeah, he’s maybe taken it a bit far, but his point is still valid. If I’m talking about my experience with abuse it should be allowed to stand alone. I shouldn’t have to acknowledge its place in the meta.
It’s fine to discuss its place in the wider conversation, but I shouldn’t be forced to engage with it when sharing my experience. When people do try to push this it does unfortunately come across as invalidating my experience.
The original commenter posting that bit makes it seem like they’re minimising their experience for fear of others’ reactions.
That is very kind of you, cokeslutgarbage. Not my business but anyway: this may be the moment when a username deserves to be changed.
😂 I didn’t notice until you mentioned it.
Hoping there’s a r/rimjob_steve equivalent here on Lemmy! 🤞
you were saying?
Yeah it could probably use a cunt at the end for maximum efficacy
no.
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He wasn’t weak like some bigots may claim. It’s just not that easy to fight the whole world alone. And he tried just that. A very tragic story that is really good to know to start untangling the problem.
If you want a good band that talks about that and are pretty aproacheable, IDLES is a good recent punk act with a lot of bangers. Search for them on youtube, their videos hit hard and their live on KEXP is fire.
This is why, you’ll never see your father cry
This is why, you’ll never see your father cry
This is why, you’ll never see your father
+I mean that live: https://youtu.be/5Sbbiv5iSiQ
IDLES - Samaritans
You are goddamn right.
New album out soon! I can’t wait! Fucking class act.
This is really depressing. Men need those type of resources as well.
There are shelters for men. You can find them for example here (this is for Canada): Men and Families Canada
1-866-887-0015 for male sexual abuse survivors toll-free 24/7
Menand Canada for further resources
Heads-up Guys Canada especially for mental health issues
This is a list based in Ontario with additional helplines and resources in Canada also for women, indigenous people, LGBTQ+ and other minorities.
Men’s shelters are needed. Men are also survivors of domestic abuse.
I am a victim of abuse. We had a kid too. The court handed my daughter to my abuser when she made false claims and I was arrested. All charges were dropped but the custody battle was delayed and made wildly more complex than it needed to be by the mother. Two months ago I was finally awarded sole custody. It has been so hard. To say male abuse victims have an uphill battle is an understatement.
Stay strong, brother. One day when your child has grown up they’ll understand and be grateful that you fought so hard.
This is a classic case of the Patriarchy / Toxic Masculinity hurting men too.
For the government officials to fund a Men’s shelter would mean admitting that men can have moments of weakness, which the men in power do not like.
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It’s important to recognize that women are equally capable of waving around a kitchen knife.
Much less likely than a male though. Just look at the numbers.
Absolutely. This just means less resources are required, not no resources at all.
Would you argue for stopping funding for reasearching and combatting rare diseases affecting only a small population? If you were to base funding solely on utilitarianism, you would.
I never said any of that. Just pointing out men in gay relationships are more vulnerable because men in general are more likely to become physically violent in cases of domestic abuse.
How so?
Men tend to be more physically violent
That’s awful. He deserves to be remembered. Thanks for posting. Are there shelters in place now in Canada?
I believe there is only one in the whole country
Kind of an unfortunate username for that comment 😐
No, this is not true. Why are you writing this? That’s the opposite of helping people.
I think the trick here is you’re using “men’s shelter” to mean “homeless shelter that accepts men” (which Men’s Shelter Hamilton is) while they are talking about shelters for abused men - there’s a significant difference in what sort of services the two groups need. Same reason why no one argues that homeless shelters that accept women remove the need for domestic violence services for women, they aren’t the same thing and don’t need the same services. You can count the number of shelters for male victims of DV in North America on one hand with fingers left over, or at least you could last time I checked which was ~2020 (at the time it was two in the US and one in Canada, the CCMF shelter had just opened).
Your CCMF link isn’t to find the nearest shelter to you (which would be helpful if there were several options), but to talk about and start the intake process for the CCMF shelter. That the page title is “Family Shelter Registration Form” and they talk about “the” shelter should be your first hints. Here’s the poster for the facility: https://menandfamilies.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Poster-FamilyShelterCCMF.pdf
You are correct, that is what I meant!
Yeah, there is for example this in Hamilton. Men’s shelter Hamilton There are a few in Toronto and others in bigger cities.
People can find the closest to them for example on this site: Canadian centre for men and families
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Misandry is sadly extremely widespread and often not even recognized as a problem: Erin Pizzey who invented modern women’s shelters quickly found out that women were just as capable of being violent to their partners and logically tried to start men’s shelters as well.
What she had not expected was that instead with the support that she previously got with women’s shelters, the same did not happen with men’s shelters; instead she received insane amounts of hate, victim-blaming and death-threats from radical feminists. She had to repeatedly flee her countries because of material safety-concerns as a result of that.
In some way the peak I encountered of this kind of hate was some Fedi-site that had a rule banning misandry (good!), because it also harms trans people. Now the second part is very much true and as a trans girl I agree that it does and that that is bad, but that should not be the primary argument for why it is bad. That’s like saying anti-judaism is bad, because some Jews are white or saying misogyny is bad, because it also affects trans men or saying anti-black racism is bad, because it might affect white people with a strong tan: The statement is true and the secondary victim group fully preserves protection, but by making that statement you betray an incredibly bigoted mindset that doesn’t even respect the primary target-group enough to care about them at all.
There is a lot feminism that really just amounts to men-hating and that is why I do not use that label for myself. I believe in equivalent treatment and rights and so should everyone;
I think there are a lot of people who practice “White Feminism” which is mainly white women wanting to keep the existing power structures, but just replace the men with women and do nothing to actually address the cause of systemic inequality which hurt many marginalized women. Like all movements, the actual ideology and the movement in praxis are quite different and people are more motivated by a perceived vengeance and indignation than actually trying to get people onboard and change perspectives. This is why you get TERFs and the like.
I’ve always thought there were two types of feminists. The original feminists who actually want equality for all sexes, who are strong willed but also know and understand the difference between a genuine desire to help and the fucked up idea that “you are woman, therefore you’re incapable”
And the radical extreme feminists who want to go even further than equality and completely flip the script from patriarchy to matriarchy, purely out of bad experiences and shitty role models resulting in an “all men bad” belief alongside the idea that “we suffered, so you must now also experience our suffering too” and thinking that equality isn’t enough to right the wrongs. When in reality all they are actually doing is continuing the cycle.
My god, what an awful story.
I fucking hate having eyes when I read about this level of injustice. Fuck this world…
I felt my heart break after reading that…how can people be so cruel?
Men suffer too, and this kind of bullshit makes it harder for y’all to get help…
Isn’t like 33% of domestic abuse female > male? It’s more than you’d think I know that
also men with men relationship violence adding to the numbers. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29994648
Lesbian partner violence stats are also shocking. It’s as if everyone can be an abuser.
It’s really sad the way he was treated and extra aggravating that the bigoted side of the men’s rights movement has tried to take advantage of his death for themselves rather than to actually progress anything involving men’s rights issues.
On that note, I’m going to go ahead and remove the quote sentence from the bigoted and extremely misogynistic A Voice For Men publication in the Legacy section. It’s not even referenced anyways.
I’d just like to make the note that the men’s liberation movement is the exact opposite of the men’s rights movement, despite the two sounding similar.
The men’s lib movement was founded specifically as being complementary to women’s lib and uses many of the same approaches and intellectual analyses. It explicitly rejects the MRA/red pill narratives while still trying to figure out masculine toxicity and honor cultures, as well as trying to elevate the idea that too few men seek or are able to receive the care they deserve. It’s very much against the patriarchy.
Unfortunately, like many communities on lemmy, it’s less active here than it was on Reddit, but it’s worth using the term as a search of nothing else.
The Reddit Mens Lib group are atrocious. They in no way accept that men are not fully to blame for whatever rubbish that radical feminists come up with.
The men’s lib group here on Lemmy is just as pathetic. Read any of their posts and they do not sound like men, but instead like a beaten down, passive group of people that cannot stand up for themselves.
they do not sound like men
Ah I see. So, what are men supposed to sound like?! That misandry, right there.
Clearly like your average Facebook comment section under some inflammatory post. That’s how real men™ sound like.
Yes, exactly what this guy is saying is true. This is the kind of person whose presence is unwelcome in the men’s lib movement. This is the kind of crap up with which we shall not put, which is why I feel comfortable recommending it to people.
So, buddy, let me be clear. The harms we see and talk about and try to deal with are inflicted by toxic masculinity. It has nothing to do with “radical feminism” and I honestly have no idea what that means to you. I’ve heard the term used for everyone ranging from women who point out and fight against rape culture to women with purple hair. But, yeah, if you’re the kind of man who complains about radical feminism, especially when the discussion is centering around issues affecting men including everything from education to economics to the culture of violence and racism… well, your input is probably going to be disregarded.
So you’re saying people critical to the Men’s Lib movement aren’t welcome in the Men’s Lib movement?
That tells me everything I need to know about it’s “intellectual methods”.
I think you mean “critical of” and not “critical to.”
And while there is welcomed and active debate in the community on our approaches and domains of concern, people who are actively hostile and unwilling to engage in a well-intended discussion are not welcome, in the same way that homophobes aren’t welcome in the LGBT community and far-right types aren’t welcome in socialist communities. We don’t want racists in spaces for Black persons, and we don’t want to engage with transphobes in trans spaces.
In men’s lib, we study the semantics and semiotics of masculinity both in specific cultures and how the ideas developed over time. We study sex, sexuality, and gender. Most importantly, we try to understand these things as they impact the communities we live in. While most people would be happy to discuss any of those issues, someone coming in from a “feminism bad” perspective is not going to be interested in discussion. They have a lot of learning to do before they’re ready, and they’re usually more interested in arguing than learning.
extra aggravating that the bigoted side of the men’s rights movement has tried to take advantage of his death for themselves rather than to actually progress anything involving men’s rights issues
This seems quite inflammatory. Is it true? Where have you seen this happening? Can you please link to where you see this happening, so I know what you’re referring to?
Jesus Christ, 2013 is too late for that.
Well now I’m sad and angry.
