Domestic Violence Against Men Prevalence Implications and Consequences

Assignment Task

Introductions

Domestic violence (DV) has evolved into a human rights violation that nations have to address as a recent advance in international law.1 In Australia, DV has arguably become one of the most complex social and legal issues in recent times. Positively, the issue is now increasingly receiving heightened policy attention. The focus has logically been on women because they comprise the majority of victims. However, the available data also indicate that a significant number of victims are males.

For DV there is a range of reporting sources such as official criminal justice system, statistics obtained from police and court records, self-report victim surveys, health system and patterns derived from hotlines. There are some significant limitations to these data sources such as different definitions, non-reporting, and sampling issues. Personal safety and victimisation surveys show a higher rate than the official crime statistics and this means not all perpetrators are convicted by the justice system and therefore, the true incidence of DV remains unclear and higher than official crime statistics.2

The Australian Bureau of Statistics distinguishes between “prevalence” and “incidence”. Prevalence estimates the number of people who have experienced DV in the relevant population within a specified period, while incidence measures the number of reported

incidents of DV that have occurred within a specified period.3 Prevalence estimates show that DV in Australia is widespread, and that women comprise the majority of victims.4

Based on victimisation surveys in Australia, 80% of women and 95% of men do not report to the police, and 26% of women and 54% of men never disclose DV to anyone.5 In 2019, 24% of Australian women and 11% of Australian men above the age of 15 experienced violence.6 Queensland Courts’ domestic and family violence (DFV) statistics for 2021-22 indicated that 24.7% of Domestic Violence Orders (DVOs) were issued to protect male victims.7

Statistics clearly demonstrate that men constitute a distinct group of DV victims8 and experience DV perpetrated by their partners.9 Male victims of DV, like other victims, experience physical, emotional, economic and health issues10, but they have been “much less

DISCUSSION

The term “DV” specifically refers to “acts of violence that occur within intimate relationships and take place in domestic settings”.22 Society’s traditional associations of DV concern acts of physical abuse but this understanding fails to grasp the complexities such as the element of control that is exercised through a pattern of threatening or violent acts that can constitute emotional, verbal, social, economic, psychological, spiritual, physical and sexual abuse.23

Section 4AB of the Family Law Act 1975 defined “DV” as “violent, threatening or other behaviour by a person that coerces or controls a member of the person’s family (the family member) or causes the family member to be fearful”.24

The term “domestic violence” will be used throughout this study to refer to the phenomenon that elsewhere may be variously termed “intimate partner violence”, “family violence” or “domestic and family violence”. Australian jurisdictions use different terms for this phenomenon: for example, the Commonwealth, Tasmania, and Victoria use “family violence” and Queensland uses “domestic and family violence”. The main reason to prefer the term “domestic violence” to other similar terms in this study is the gender inclusivity of this term, its applicability to differing familial arrangements such as marital, de facto, and same-sex relationships, and its coverage of all forms of violence defined by legislation. It is recognised that there are ongoing debates about the appropriate term to refer to partner violence and the definitions of “domestic violence” and “family violence”, but these terms are often used.

CHANGING HISTORICAL VIEWS AROUND DV

Looking back through history, it is noted that there has been a change of attitude towards violence and the evolution of ‘legitimate and illegitimate violence’.27 Based on recreational activities and other popular cultural activities during the 18th century, violent behaviour was tolerated more compared to today.28 There was legal acceptance of wife-beating, or in more euphemistic terms; wife correcting. However this gradually changed and in the early 1970s, DV came to public and policy attention as a result of feminist activism and as a social problem in Australia .29 The women’s refuge movement started, and the main focus of research and literature was on female victims 30 as it was believed that men were the perpetrators and women

were the victims of DV.31 In creating such a gendered understanding of DV and related policies, the media had a significant role through which feminism achieved remarkable gains in Australian public policy.32 In the 1980s, Australian federal and state governments started the policy responses to DV33, and the “National Committee on Violence” raised the gendered nature of DV and the role of masculinity in its perpetration.34 Thus, most Australian policy responses, public discourse, action plans and prevention and intervention programs were initially framed in a gendered manner to protect the female victims.35 Some feminists’ gender-based analysis framed DV in a wider concept of gender inequality, influenced the society’s understanding of DV and shaped the policy responses. However, in the mid 1990s a non-gendered discourse was promoted as a competing discourse to promote an ungendered understanding of DV and ungendered policy and legal responses

It appears that policy responses primarily targeted female victims because they comprised the majority of victims.37 Therefore male victims did not receive much attention and there were not many studies about them.38 Gradually, research about other victims started and more people believed that women could be the perpetrators of violence too.39 This change in understanding and framing DV as well as its related policy responses were the result of competing discourses of DV that represented it as a gendered or ungendered phenomenon and consequently informed governments policy approaches

The victim’s personal perception of violence can play a significant role in reporting crime incidents. Some victims fail to report because they may feel ashamed and ridiculed.50 It is suggested that people who seek help may face the social stigma of being seen as weak or inadequate, and this in turn may discourage them from reporting.51 It is well established that all individuals regardless of gender experience shame and embarrassment when identified as victims, but men feel more humiliated and ridiculed because they find the victimisation a threat to their sense of masculinity.52 The basis of this appears to be the concept of masculinity that expects men not to become victims of violence53 and does not take the violence against men as seriously and negatively as the violence against women.54 If a man believes that reporting DV and seeking help are signs of weakness and not a masculine trait, and that it will likely result in humiliation, he will be less likely to report to police.55 It appears that the masculine gender roles that may arguably cause men to perpetrate DV can also deter them from reporting it, and this has consequently made it difficult to establish a reliable estimate of male victims.

Key points

Note: the previous title of my research was “An analysis of Australia’s response to male victims of domestic violence”. It aimed to examine the existing laws at the primary level, like DV legislation at federal and state levels, and the secondary level, like procedures (like police and other frontline responders) and policies, to establish that men remained invisible in policies and at the practice level. Note that legislation itself is gender neutral, but when it comes down to practice level, the procedures and policies can be very gendered and influenced by gender stereotypes. The outcome did not look very interesting based on the feedback I received from some supervisors. Therefore, I have changed it to the following:

Questions

1. I am trying to prove that male victims of domestic violence are invisible because of the masculinity stereotypes and the role of masculinity in victimization and policy discourse around DV. The stereotypes dictate that men cannot be the victims, whereas they can. In other words, I want to reconceptualize DV against men by unpacking the role of masculinity in DV and the policy discourse around it What am I trying to prove?

2. Proving the inadequacy of services or responses to male victims compared to females is an unsurprising and uninteresting finding as, in reality, women comprise the majority of victims, and most services target them too. Understanding the construction of masculinity in policy discourse around DV can potentially be of interest.

3. Deal with gender and its self-identification and fluidity, and then take a non-binary approach to deal with DV. The non-binary approach adds to the legitimacy of the study.

4. Create a conceptual or theoretical framework or both as required to show the importance of your research and its purpose. However, the conceptual framework is a must. Show how this framework applies to my research project and show the significance as well as the purpose of the study. Prepare a chapter for your framework, such as chapter 3, and just before the methodology,

5. Same-sex relationships are out of the scope of my research. But I will still mention it and suggest it in the last chapter for future studies by others.

6. The female victims are also out of the scope. We are not comparing men with women or pitting them against each other. My confirmation paper explains this further. Because it is a gendered crime, it is essential to deal with masculinity. But masculinity is a gender of which both sexes can show some levels of it. Gender is a self-identification thing, so even in same-sex relationships, a woman can show masculinity and perpetrate DV.

7. Talk about fairness and justice in the contract of equity. Differentiate between fairness and equity. Fairness and justice in contrast with equity.

8. Focusing on gender fluidity and a non-binary approach adds to the study’s legitimacy. This is very topical and important. This is an excellent way to defend yourself in the West. Also, mention other types of violence and the role of masculinity in it.

9. Say what you will be studying and focusing and say what you will not be studying or focusing on. I’m not talking about female victims; I will be talking about male victims and their invisibility because of their gender and masculinity. This is not to pit one against another or diminish the majority of the victims, namely females What is the best methodology? 

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