This story will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with what male victims of domestic abuse face when it comes to getting taken seriously and getting any kind of services in their time of need. But there are lots of denialists out there, some out of self-interest because they think victimhood is a female prerogative or perhaps out of macho posturing because they like to think men are invulnerable – whatever the reason, there are lots of people in denial about the vulnerability of men to Intimate Partner Violence.
This is a simple story. A woman stabs her boyfriend three times with a knife and punctures both of his lungs. She also stabs her son during the same session, incidentally. She of course bonds out. No danger to anyone in the community, after all. Being oppressed will do that for you.
The man finds he has nowhere to go and that basically no one in the DV advocacy community cares enough to do anything about it. At that point his cousin, Sharain Spears, steps in. Thank God for female relatives, the kind that see through the bullshit and do something about it.
Here was a man who was doubly disposable – he is black and he is male – and the system treated him exactly that way – a system he was paying for in taxes. This is basically the same issue as Brown v. Board of Education. I could go through all the places he tried to get help and all the other roadblocks he hit, but go read the article itself. They deserve the clicks for publicizing this.
Like I said – simple story. And pretty common too.
Something else that’s common is the denial that men are victims of domestic violence, the denial that women initiate most domestic violence, that men have gendered trouble coming forward about it, or that men have gendered trouble getting help and any kind of real support when they are victims of these crimes. I am getting pretty disgusted about this kind of denial, whatever the reason for it.
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