Long article from mainstream media on male victims of family violence

This article appeared today on Australia's ABC news website (ABC is our publicly funded broadcaster, a little like the UK's BBC - often considered left-leaning):

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-01/male-victims-of-domestic-violence-shame-stigma-support/12495738?nw=0&pfmredir=sm

I think this is significant because it's actually a long piece on the topic of male victims of family violence, including personal accounts and discussion of public policy, and it tries to tackle different facets and perspectives on the issue. There's some real acknowledgement of lack of specialist services for men.

Towards the beginning there's an encouraging admission:

ABC News has found there are rising concerns many male victims in Australia are unable to access crucial support — and that some causes of domestic violence may be going unaddressed — because of a reluctance to recognise that men can be victims in the first instance, and a lack of services if they manage to overcome intense shame and stigma and reach out for help.

“The reality is, right now, those men have almost nowhere to turn — there are virtually no specialist family violence services for victims who are male,” said Troy McEwan, an associate professor of clinical and forensic psychology at Swinburne University.

But much of the article then veers off into a discussion about culture wars, basically saying that some kind of stalemate exists between "MRAs" and feminists that prevents frank discussion and action for male victims. I had no idea "MRAs" had that kind of power, since they're usually described by the mainstream media as contributing nothing.

“It’s like a stuck record rather than a progressive, productive conversation,” said Jacqui Watt, the chief executive of No To Violence. “How do we shine a light on something that’s not being properly talked about, when the minute you do, you get the MRA groups going, ‘See? We told you that men are victims, women are violent too.’”

Am I crazy? So there's no talk and no action on male victims because all the specialists and powerbrokers who know about and can do something about the problem are scared that a tiny, largely ignored and demonised group will get some kind of satisfaction from it being addressed?

The following quote gets closer to the real issue (emphasis mine):

The scarcity of services also “feeds the men’s rights agenda”, he said, because it legitimises their claim that men’s needs aren’t being addressed. “And that little bit of truth then enables them to generalise in all kinds of ways that are not so helpful.”

One “generalisation” MRAs frequently make is that domestic abuse is not “gendered” or caused by gender inequality — theories which underpin both federal and state government policies on family and sexual violence. The Federal Government’s National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, for example, briefly acknowledges both men and women can be perpetrators. Yet “overwhelmingly”, it says, “the people who carry out domestic, family and sexual violence are men, who commit violence against women”.

This is true, but experts say the lack of emphasis on male victims in key policies — and the prioritisation of tackling gender inequality over more immediate interventions — is at least partly why there are so few specialist services for men.

Feminist Michael Flood (whose work has been critiqued on this sub before) is quoted several times. eg.

Dr Flood, who points out many men’s rights campaigners seem to be more focused on “undermining attention” to men’s violence against women and attacking domestic violence services than building genuine support for male victims.

As a result, he says, their calls for attention to male victims are more likely to be seen as politically motivated — “part of an anti-feminist backlash” — and therefore not heard in good faith. “They’re actually undermining efforts to provide services for male victims of violence,” Dr Flood said. “And that is terrible because we do need to respond well to male victims.”

So Flood's argument is that "men's rights campaigners" are shooting themselves in the foot and preventing effective action by politicising the issue. Again, do they really have such political clout?

The article ends with a look at the UK's recent approach, which it suggests may be able to solve this "deadlock":

Last year, the [UK] Home Office published a position statement on male victims intended to “sit alongside” its broader strategy for ending violence against women and girls. The idea was to highlight the unique challenges male victims can face — and boost funding for agencies supporting them — without drawing comparisons or creating divisions between different groups of survivors.

“There are still disagreements about the numbers and context of violence against men, but hardly anyone, including in the women’s sector, disbelieves there are male victims of domestic abuse,” said Ippo Panteloudakis, the head of services for Respect UK, which runs helplines for both male perpetrators and victims.

And men’s groups which previously devoted energy to attacking women’s organisations, he said, have calmed down. “It’s not about taking resources away from one group of victims to give to another,” he said. “It’s about understanding that we need services that are appropriate for men, then overcoming the stigma and embarrassment that can prevent them from accessing those services.”

A government actually doing something means that advocacy groups have less reason to kick up a fuss? What a notion.

EDIT: I see I posted this a few hours too late - it's already up on menslib and mensrights.