Acceptance of “mutual abuse” in regards to male domestic abuse victims

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xhouliganx · 2022-04-27T19:51:45+00:00

I think it’s interesting to see so many feminists use the mutual abuse argument in the case of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. I’ve often seen feminists argue that abuse requires an imbalance of power and therefore mutual abuse cannot exist. Just another example of the inconsistencies of feminist rhetoric.

Maldevinine · 2022-04-27T20:15:00+00:00

There's a deeper issue, which is the attempt to get all violence classified as abuse.

Much of the violence in relationships is not abusive, but instead is simply two people with poor impulse control and poor conflict resolution skills forced into a small space. There will always be arguments in relationships and it takes skill to have those arguments without them turning violent because violence is an effective dispute resolution mechanic. Feminism likes to claim that all of that violence is both deliberate abuse and motivated by misogyny because that gives them more power.

I like the naming scheme of "Domestic Violence" and "Intimate Terrorism". It allows the two to be seperated.

SuspicousEggSmell · 2022-04-27T20:50:53+00:00

The fact that the same crowd who say KAM and celebrate women killing their abusers are in a huff that Johnny made a vulgar text after being abused for a long time by amber is very telling

Oncefa2 · 2022-04-27T22:25:24+00:00

This is actually one of the very first findings that we discovered when we started formally studying domestic abuse. This is also what Erin Pizzey noticed when she opened the world's first domestic violence shelter for women, and then tried to open one for men after seeing how common this was.

Suzanne Steinmetz, a feminist btw, called this the battered husband syndrome. The idea is that a lot of men put up with abuse for a very long time because they're conditioned to not fight back or report it. But then they finally snap after a while.

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1979-08674-001

Of course it wasn't long before other feminists came along and then coined the battered wife syndrome, trying to say that all violent women are acting in self-defense.

Which is not what Steinmetz was trying to say about men originally. It was just that battered husbands exist, not that all abusive men have an excuse because women are naturally violence.

But basically all the research has supported the existence of a battered husband, at least as a relatively common pattern, instead of the battered wife theory (although they certainly exist).

Ryunysus · 2022-04-27T22:40:55+00:00

I genuinely hate the general fauxgressive reddit opinions as I have seen on so many discussion threads here that the abuse was mutual and Johnny is as abusive as Amber even after all the recorded proof. Mutual abuse is just a scapegoat to absolve women of any abusive responsibility. Funny how mutual abuse never works when men abuse women because in those cases the abuse is strictly one directional from man to woman, but whenever a woman abuses a man there is always a chance that the women abused the man only because the man abused the woman.. This is such an idiotic double standard.

HyakuBikki · 2022-04-27T22:42:24+00:00

I really really despise the "both sides" angle that gets pushed when it's very obvious that one side is the aggressor and the other is just defending themselves. I had to deal with that alot growing up, somehow lashing back at your abuser once is equal to the torment you had to endure from them for literal years.

Truth is that most people,including family members, really would rather look the other way and pretend nothing is actually wrong than to actually step in and help the men in the family. So you'll usually end up hearing alot of "Well you both did this and that wrong" in order to cause the least amount of conflict as possible.

Sorry-Difference5942 · 2022-04-27T21:27:38+00:00

I have very mixed feelings about the concept of mutual abuse, but I generally think it has some place as a concept within the world.

At the risk of trauma-dumping, I was in an abusive relationship with a very ardent feminist who more likely than not had untreated BPD. I struggle to call it abusive because she never did anything physical, but I think if the roles were reversed people would very clearly think poorly of what she did.

During that relationship I became someone I hated and barely recognized. Over the course of our time together I learned there were many fights that were just... unavoidable. I normally try not to show my anger or raise my voice during arguments, but I've learned I will under certain circumstances. One of those being if I'm guilted or pressured into staying and arguing when I need time alone to sort my feelings out. And oh boy was my girlfriend not about to let me "walk away" from arguments - she considered that losing and she could never lose.

I could go on for so long about how many different ways this kind of thing happened but generally, instead of just leaving, I'd try and try and try to make things work and she'd increase the pressure on me until I would snap. It was weird to snap. One minute I'd be sitting there apologizing for the berating I was getting and trying to get the hell away, and the next I'd bubble over in rage and give up on all decency. If a screaming match is what she wanted, a screaming match was what she was gonna get.

I don't condone it. I look back and I'm embarrassed by my behavior and realize I should have just left her. But I loved her. Or thought I did. Or thought I should - both her and society said that was my job. She'd use that a lot against me. If I really loved her then I'd take her feelings more seriously, right? Right?

Looking back, she fucking DARVO'd me. I went to a therapist after we broke up, convinced I was an abusive asshole. And looking at my behavior, I believed it. I mean, what guy yells at their girlfriend, breaks up with her every three weeks, threatens to leave them while on a trip somewhere, or has said vicious things about how little he respects her and how much he dislikes her? Me. I did those things. And I get to live with knowing that to this day, she considers me to be an abuser and has had no observable introspection of her own actions.

I guess I understand that mutual abuse does exist, and I think it should give us a lens to look at someone's actions through, but it's not an excuse from consequences. I know the things I've done are hurtful and wrong. I know sometimes they were justified. Justification doesn't make things right, but it does give an avenue to look at things and see who is escalating the situations, who is making them untenable, and seeing how much of the same behavior would exist without an abusive force in someone's life.

2022-04-28T07:49:49+00:00

Yeah, honestly I don't like either/or talk in general and only see gray.

But yeah I generally only see this used one way. If people see a couple abusing each other, they're quick to say "He is abusing her because he is an abusive asshole" and "She is only abusing him because he's probably an abusive asshole and deserves it."

Like, they'll say "It is only the fault of the one who raised their hand"....unless it was the woman who first raised her hand.

Physical abuse shouldn't be blame-shifted. Verbal and emotional abuse shouldn't be ignored. These two are hard to reconcile if you're looking for a black or white answer. And people focus on the first if the man got physical first, and the second if the woman got physical first.

Johnny's case tends more towards black and white. But people act like if "the white" isn't bleached to perfection, it must be "the black". But these ideas of perfection are, frankly, comparing human nature to a standard that doesn't exist.

vagrantgastropod1 · 2022-04-27T22:38:57+00:00

Meanwhile, women kill their abusers and receive rounds of applause (and honestly I don’t blame them it’s usually self defense anyway) but the moment a man being abused even raises his voice he is somehow also an abuser.

Man_of_culture_112 · 2022-04-28T00:01:44+00:00

A lot of people are using this now.

T_Nightingale · 2022-04-28T00:46:42+00:00

Mutual abuse is not shifting blame, but it's really easy to do so by using mutual abuse claims. Two parties can both be guilty of abuse, two parties can both walk away, one party probably went further and stopped the other from walking away.

Uniquenameofuser1 · 2022-04-28T01:36:34+00:00

https://yanahelps.com/blog/what-is-reactive-abuse/

Algoresball · 2022-04-28T15:31:09+00:00

The thing to keep in mind is that relationships are always complicated and the poster abuse victim doesn’t really exist

Title	Acceptance of “mutual abuse” in regards to male domestic abuse victims
Author	ExMuzzy
Upvotes	54
Comments	28
Date	April 27, 2022 6:27 PM UTC (1 year ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/udaadg/acceptance_of_mutual_abuse_in_regards_to_male/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/acceptance-of-mutual-abuse-in-regards-to-male.1113176 https://theredarchive.com/post/1113176