The men who fall through the cracks

Forgetaboutthelonely · 2022-11-29T05:28:36+00:00

I'm making this an announcement for a few days because I think it's worth promoting. But we're still looking for moderators! Feel free to apply via the modmail.

SpicyMarshmellow · 2022-11-28T21:01:09+00:00

I think the way our culture has attached such extreme emotional gravity to female victimhood specifically for so long has also rendered men commonly incapable of recognizing when they've suffered the same things. Ask a dude if his S.O. hits him, and he'll say yes. Ask him if he's a victim of domestic violence, and he'll say no. We're told these days that this is toxic masculinity, because men are afraid of emasculating themselves by identifying as victims. But our cultural messaging has shown such a lopsided level of concern for women vs men in the exact same scenarios (when it happens to women it's a hush-toned PSA or heart wrenching sympathy story vs when it happens to men there's a laugh track) that men are conditioned to feel like if they used the same language to describe their own experiences that it would be disrespectful to the more dire suffering of women. That's the headspace I was in myself a long time ago, and I've since recognized several men I've known who were obviously in that headspace too as they were being raped and abused. This doesn't just effect crime statistics, but survey data too, because you can't just straight ask men "have you been raped".

neighborhoodpainter · 2022-11-28T18:08:32+00:00

Great post. Unfortunately, men raping other men might be brushed aside by some because "it's men doing it other men, so men need to sort themselves out". Something I've actually read on social media.

pvtshoebox · 2022-11-28T19:12:15+00:00

I would like to add:

Often we are told that, while men are victims, usually their injuries are mild or don’t require care. This is done to highlight once and for all that it is women’s victimization that matters.

But how is this injury gap measured? They ask nurses evaluating injuries.

Right off the bat, we know that men are less likely to seek healthcare (they call this “lower access to healthcare” in any context other than “men”).

Then, supposing a man attends an ED for treatment, he must be identified as a victim in order to be counted. For that, one of two things must happen.

First, he can self-identify as a victim, which we know men are not as likely to do as women are. This admission must be made to the ED nurse, who is likely a woman. That further diminishes the likelihood of admission.

The other option is that the nurse correctly infers that the man is a victim. I will tell you as a nurse, I was trained on the Duluth Model of domestic violence and there are absolutely nurses that will disbelieve men who make these admissions and openly mock them.

If everyone is told that only women are victims, then that is all we will see. It is so obviously biased it is amazing that anyone has fallen for this old canard that only women are victims - and more startling that it is accepted “common sense.”

TheTinMenBlog · 2022-11-28T15:29:26+00:00

We don’t hear the words ‘systemic discrimination’ applied to men, but when it comes to the one-sided collection of sexual and domestic violence statistics, I struggle to find a better word to describe it.

Did you know domestic abuse data is heavily based on police reporting statistics – so those who don’t report their abuse (which is often men) fall through the cracks of data collection?

Did you know that sexual violence data frequently skips over the hundreds of thousands of men who are sexually assaulted in the prison system?

Perhaps more shocking – did you know that highly gendered legal definitions of ‘rape’ exclude men raped by women?

Yes, in the eyes of the law it’s impossible for a woman to rape a man, meaning these men are classified into other categories, and often forgotten.

These are just some of the ways that men go missing from the numbers.

If you point to these missing men, or highlight how so many are erased from the records, you will naturally draw cries of misogyny and other such silliness, and I guess that makes the point crystal clear.

We don’t care about these men.We don’t want to talk about them, we don’t want to hear about them, we don’t want to see the numbers or listen to the stories.

We are comfortable now with our ‘9 in 10’ and ‘vast majority of victims are women’ statistics, until we realise what’s missing.

Until we are shown the uncomfortable gaps in how we measure, record, report or categorise our data.

For you can’t count what you don’t see, and all too often, what you can’t see – are men.

~Sources

Mankind, Reporting Abuse

Domestic Homicide

Domestic Abuse Related Suicide

FBI 40% missing Vox

When Men are Raped, Slate

N+1

Prof Lara Stemple, Prison Sexual Assault

Images by Steward Mclean, Caseen Kyle Registos, Kenrick Mills from Unsplash.

wish2boneu2 · 2022-11-28T17:53:39+00:00

Looks great, but just want to let you know that the long comment you posted got automatically removed, so no one can see it.

Strikester101 · 2022-11-28T16:53:53+00:00

I also want to point out that the male inmates face the most sexual victimization from guards (who are mostly female) while the female inmates face the most sexual victimization from other female inmates.

Despite this, the common misconception is the other way around.

JetChipp · 2023-09-01T21:25:54+00:00

Took me a while but I finally found it again, thank you so much for this.

Title	The men who fall through the cracks
Author	TheTinMenBlog
Upvotes	293
Comments	14
Date	November 28, 2022 3:29 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/z6zev6/the_men_who_fall_through_the_cracks/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/the-men-who-fall-through-the-cracks.1141522 https://theredarchive.com/post/1141522

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