Does this Women’s Aid statement come across as dismissive of male victims, or am I reading too much into it?

MelissaMiranti · 2026-04-25T05:55:26+00:00

Paragraph 1: We help women and children. And men, I guess, if we have to, but we're going to prioritize mentioning male-on-male violence.

Paragraph 2: Here's why men aren't even victims actually.

New section: Here's why men suck and how they suck. We will steadfastly ignore any real evidence to the contrary no matter how true it may be.

whoisaname · 2026-04-25T07:03:30+00:00

As someone that is a male IPV survivor, this screen shot is really upsetting to read, but not surprising at all. I try to fight every incidence of this sort of thing when I see it. It took me years to be open enough about what happened to me to be able to, and that is from lots of therapy and lots of research. The real data, not the cherry picked disregard for male abuse victims, shows that men/boys are abused almost as much as women are, report it less (this is a big one in how accurate data is as men/boys report way less than even women/girls do because of the social stigma of it. My personal experience alone speaks heavily to this.), and are more likely to sustain serious injuries from "weapons."

JEVOUSHAISTOUS · 2026-04-25T09:13:16+00:00

Dismissive? It's downright victim blaming.

And then people wonder why some men might have a problem with feminism as it exists today. Must be the misogyny, yeah... must be...

For those who may be lost on the plot, here's an annotated bibliography of 270 empirical studies and 73 reviews spanning on over 440,000 people showing that male are as often the victim of DV - and women as often the perpetrator - as the other way around.

UnarmedRespite · 2026-04-25T06:01:26+00:00

A simple "we think women & children require a different skillset and we're not specialized for that" would have sufficed. Instead they tried to imply men don't deserve help

volatile-solution · 2026-04-25T06:23:08+00:00

well, tbf, it says in the name. so it is not for men.

also, it is kind of ironic that gay relationships have the lowest DV rates and lesbian ones have the highest dv rates.

Important_Gap8612 · 2026-04-25T06:06:01+00:00

You should* to post this in Everydaymisandry and im not sure but isnt that a big enough organisation for Toxicfeminisemtoxic

griii2 · 2026-04-25T09:23:02+00:00

How about the research re-tracing women?

Yeah, I thought so.

CatsAndSwords · 2026-04-25T13:36:47+00:00

Focusing only on how they dismiss male victims of domestic violence:

The subject has been extensively studied. They cite a single, 25-years old, N=44 study in Scotland only. That screams cherry-picking.
They again cherry-pick what they want in the article, an reformulate it in a way that diminishes these men's experiences. For instance:

a majority of men who said that they were victims of domestic violence were also perpetrators of violence

Notice, by the way, that they say they were victims (can we trust them?), but that they are perpetrators (that's a fact!). Whoever wrote that trash could have quoted other parts of the article. Focusing on these 13 out of 22 who committed some level of violence:

Eight others admitted retaliating abusively against partners who had abused them. [...] Some of those men who retaliated had, nevertheless, endured physically and psychologically damaging forms of abuse; being struck, cut, or (more rarely) stabbed with household items or knives, punched in the face, and being subject to malicious allegations.

You can get stabbed, but according to OP's text, if you retaliated, that doesn't really count as domestic violence.

Finally, do they apply the same scrutiny to female victims of domestic violence, or is it an isolated demand for rigor?

Anyways, the better question is why do they need to say this. As others have said, they could have just stated that they are not equipped to help male victims. Instead, they decided to dunk on people who are already vulnerable. That's despicable.

PS: The original article is more nuanced, but not without stupid takes.

it was misleading to attribute 'victim status' to those men who explicitly indicated that they did not see themselves as 'victims of domestic violence'.

Yeah, that's not how victimization study work at all, and for a good reason. Self-qualification of the acts you suffered from is extremely unreliable and biased.

Electronic-Link-5792 · 2026-04-25T10:32:56+00:00

They know they cant just explicitly say men arent victims because that would get criticism so they will give a disclaimer and do everything they can to downplay it by emphasising gay men first, claimimg men are likely to be liars etc.

SmallEdge6846 · 2026-04-24T20:49:12+00:00

My grievance is more so with the head chapter not the local ones (who do offer support to men aswell )

Jip_Jaap_Stam · 2026-04-25T10:53:30+00:00

Of course it's dismissive of male victims. That's one of their main tactics.

Hot-Celebration-1524 · 2026-04-25T11:30:39+00:00

Lol, the text introduces a liar narrative and implies that male reports of IPV are likely false or exaggerated. It pays lip service to the idea that all domestic violence victims deserve support (the motte), while casting male victims as unreliable or the actual abusers, and therefore undeserving of support (the bailey).

POO_IN_A_LOO · 2026-04-25T12:01:29+00:00

Sounds like pure projection. Would someone even publish findings along the lines of "this is how many women reconsidered being the victims of dv"? No, because this is all about the narrative and it is because it is self serving. These projects rely on funding, and if they do not have any metrics that justify the expenditure, then they will do their utmost to create them and here you can see an example of it.

If there was a movement for children akin to what feminism is to women, women would not be allowed near children based on the facts that women are the vast majority of murderers of children

Razorbladekandyfan · 2026-04-25T13:09:40+00:00

Of course it does. At this point why not just come out and say that they don't care for male victims. Also the way they put the female -on-male type of abuse last. Like of course they had to put the gay male abuse before that even though most men arent gay.

johnnycarrotheid · 2026-04-25T16:01:22+00:00

As soon as you see anything referencing Scotland, you need to understand Women's Aid and other groups in Scotland, have been absolutely scatty since the Controlling Coercive Abuse screw up they did.

Fought for the law, realised it was gender neutral, total flip to fighting against the law they proposed and got in.

They've been absolutely nuts ever since it

Motanul_Negru · 2026-04-25T15:18:00+00:00

All this kind of article creates is division, hostility and alienation. It's more than likely all it's designed to create.

LnTc_Jenubis · 2026-04-25T16:36:21+00:00

My rule of thumb is to flip the genders and ask the same question.

That second paragraph is just their version of "Well, acshually," which they are using to try and dunk on men for bringing the issue up. It serves no material purpose other than to propose that men are to blame for violence against men, and that male victims lie about their experiences.

Look at the actual numbers they are citing: a localized study from 2002 with sample sizes of 22 and 46 men. Using a statistically irrelevant sample size from two decades ago to make sweeping generalizations about an entire gender is wild. They had to dig deep for terrible data just to justify their DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) tactics.

To me, this is evidence that whatever organization decided this was okay to include doesn't actually care about egalitarian principles. Choosing to ignore nuance doesn't change the reality that it exists, and it's disgusting that you can literally hear the pride oozing from the person who wrote that.

Mdragoon88 · 2026-04-25T13:52:19+00:00

I would say more agenda driven than dismissive.

AdOtherwise3824 · 2026-04-25T15:24:02+00:00

That is one of the most "towing the line" posts I've read lol. "men can be victims too, oh but they admit to perpetrating in barely a majority of cases. No we will not discuss women perpetration." immediately into some reasonable stuff, but then turning to "the men abuse, but also abusers come from all walks of life, but also it's men."

Ok_Description8169 · 2026-04-25T22:52:52+00:00

The "Men re-interviewed said they weren't being abused" is a strange point.

Many women may very well re-interview during the rose-tinted portions of a relationship and take back their abuse statements. Or perhaps even do so out of fear.

Men would certainly do so for similar reasons, including societal shame.

This is gouging out your eye to spite someone kind of behavior. It definitely has self-defeating tones.

It's also dismissive and unproductive.

AdOtherwise3824 · 2026-04-25T15:26:59+00:00

That is one of the most "failing to tow the line" posts I've read lol. "men can be victims too, oh but they admit to perpetrating in barely a majority of cases. No we will not discuss women perpetration." immediately into some reasonable stuff, but then turning to "the men abuse, but also abusers come from all walks of life, but also it's men."

Punder_man · 2026-04-25T22:31:34+00:00

"Re-tracing me who were counted as victims in the Scottish Crime Survey, found that a majority of the men who said that they were victims of domestic violence, were also perpetrators of violence"

And yet, this is despite studies that show that women are actually slightly higher when it comes to reciprocal violence...
But heaven forbid they admit that yes, women can be just as violent as men...

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SlowAssignments · 2026-04-26T13:29:08+00:00

found that a majority of the men who said that they were victims of domestic violence, were also perpetrators of violence (13 of 22)

So now mutual abuse exists?

A significant number of the men re- interviewed (13 out of 46) later said they had actually never experienced any form of domestic abuse

So now they care about false accusations?

And the source they use was specifically trying to find men lying and with a sample size of 44. I wonder if there are studies on the opposite (or if they would ever even be allowed to be published).

The majority of abusers are men, but in other respects, they vary: abusers come from all walks of life, from any ethnic group, religion, class or neighbourhood, and of any age

They're ok with throwing men under the bus, as long as it's all men despite known differences in many of these aspects (otherwise dv rates would be the same across every single country and within every country).

Factual_Statistician · 2026-04-26T21:18:59+00:00

I didn't even read it because I'm that certain it does.

Blauwpetje · 2026-04-27T16:59:18+00:00

‘The majority of male victims of domestic violence were also perpetrators.’ I wonder if they even bothered to look at the majority of female ‘victims’.

Title	Does this Women’s Aid statement come across as dismissive of male victims, or am I reading too much into it?
Author	SmallEdge6846
Upvotes	133
Comments	100
Date	April 24, 2026 8:48 PM UTC (3 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/1surrrl/does_this_womens_aid_statement_come_across_as/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/does-this-womens-aid-statement-come-across-as.1578831 https://theredarchive.com/post/1578831

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