An Enquiry Into The Adult Male Experience of Heterosexual Abuse by Anne Lewis, M.A.
An Enquiry Into The Adult Male Experience of Heterosexual Abuse by Anne Lewis, M.A.© 2000 Anne Lewis
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Literature Review And Data Collection
3. Forms of psychological abuse
4. Characteristics of male victims
1. The police and the lower courts
The abuse of men by their female partners is a serious social problem, largely unacknowledged by society. It has the effect of exacerbating a sense of disempowerment which many men experience today. This study explores the nature and extent of abuse against men, how they are affected by it, and the social structures which enable the abuse to occur. My hypotheses were that the pain men experience as victims of female abuse is of such a magnitude that they are often unable to bear it, and also that there is a widespread prejudice against men which works against a just resolution in situations of heterosexual conflict.
The origins of the bias against men lie in certain philosophies within feminism which label a wide variety of historical and cultural developments with the single term 'patriarchy'. This simplistic reduction enables the proponents of these philosophies to condemn men as a whole for the problems of civilization.
My interest in this subject arose from my experience over the past twenty years in treating male patients with muscular problems. As I saw the pain in their faces and felt the tension in their bodies, some of these men began to tell me of the women in their lives who were treating them in ways which seemed to be negating of their sense of self and destructive of their ability to function.
In my research of the literature in this field I discovered that whereas studies of male victims investigate mainly physical abuse, those relating to the abuse of women cover physical, sexual and psychological abuse. I felt therefore that it would be appropriate to carry out a similar wide-ranging enquiry with regard to men.
My initial contact was with the editor of a men's magazine held in the State Library of New South Wales. He provided the names of various organizations which conduct groups for men. These fall into two categories: support groups, where men share their experiences in an environment of trust; groups which are open to the public (including women) and are working towards reform of the law and public policy. I forwarded to the convenors of these groups an information sheet about my research. This was circulated to members of the support groups either by post, e-mail or at group meetings. I was invited to address meetings of the groups working for reform.
Included on the sheet was an invitation for men who had experienced abuse to be participants in the research project, and to phone me to arrange an interview. The limitations I imposed were that the period of the abuse had been at least twelve months and that the relationship had now ended. I did not want to include men whose sense of empowerment was such that they ended the relationship after the first abusive episode. Also I wanted to avoid creating additional emotional stress on men who were still living with the abuser.
Through unstructured interviews I asked the men to tell me their stories, with particular reference to their feelings about the incidents. I interviewed forty seven men from the eastern mainland States (of Australia), Tasmania, and New Zealand. Twenty one interviews were conducted in Sydney in the homes of participants. For those who lived at a distance I recorded the interviews on the phone. The average duration of interview was one hour. For the protection of participants, all names and identifying particulars have been changed.
In choosing the method of unstructured interview, I was seeking to enter as deeply as possible into the world of the participants.
As I had been a victim of male abuse, I felt I would be able to empathize at a deep level with the pain and loss of self respect which an abused person experiences. I was strongly influenced by theorists such as Maslow, who advocates an I-thou relationship between the researcher and the subject involving a 'mystical fusion' in which knowledge of the other arises through becoming the other (Rowan, 1981, p. 84). Krieger (1991, p. 5) feels that when we discuss others we are always talking about ourselves. She believes that we should "see the world as self" and in this regard I found myself resonating with the participants' feelings of shame, anger and betrayal.
Since the participants had suffered abuse by a woman, my role as a female researcher was an ambivalent one. I found myself wanting to give to the men the kind of empathy which they had not received from their partners. I also wanted them to know that, as a result of my own experience, I understood the shattering effects of abuse. In the early interviews I disclosed what I had suffered at the hands of a man, but I then became concerned about a possible perception by participants that I might hold negative attitudes towards men, or even that I might be a radical feminist in disguise who would use the information against them. I then discontinued the disclosure on the grounds that it could influence the way participants presented material.
An assumption I brought to the research process was that the abused person must be given a voice. In my own experience, while I was 'under the roof' of the abuser, I had no rights. Had I disclosed to anyone what was happening I would have either been disbelieved or told to be submissive. Fine states that when we opt to engage in social struggles with those who have been oppressed, we probe how we are in relation to the contexts we study (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p. 72). It seemed to me that abused men are silenced the way I was, or if they do speak, they are not heard. A frequent question asked by participants was, "You do believe me, don't you?" and they would offer to show me legal documents to substantiate their stories.
I refrained from asking participants whether their behaviour could have contributed to the abuse. That question might have had a place within a different methodology. In the context of this study however I felt that since abused men are constantly being blamed for their predicament, such an approach by a researcher would have been disempowering.
My unwillingness to investigate contributing factors in the behaviour of participants is an area of bias in the study, since it is possible that in some cases the stories were slanted against the abuser.
Although there were a few occasions when I felt there could have been significant contributing factors to the abuse, I was surprised by an attitude from several men who blamed themselves for behaviours that I felt were perfectly normal and acceptable. This is consistent with the attitudes of those men in society who carry a deep collective guilt towards all women.
Researchers such as Olesen (1994, p. 166) have raised ethical concerns about using participants as a means to an end. The purpose of this study was not only to enter into the experiences of abused men, but to alert society to the pain they are enduring. To this end I am seeking to have the study published. At times the men seemed to experience a kind of enrichment from being able to tell their stories. Some of them could not get to the end without tears in their eyes. Krieger (1991, p. 153) writes, "People who let social scientists study them are giving an altruistic gift. They are contributing to the development of knowledge, not knowing where that development will lead or how it will impact on them."
Many of the participants in this study were well educated and had sought to work through their personal issues, either with a therapist or in support groups. Some of the findings will not be applicable to those few men who seek immediate help and are able to find it, or to those who retaliate with violence.
My initial impressions about the way men are treated were supported by the literature, and led to a line of enquiry concerning male powerlessness. This is related to the way modern society functions, in terms of both its structures and its attitudes towards men, and in the conditioning to which men are subjected.
The material from the interviews and the literature suggested an analysis under the headings of:
• Incidence and forms of abuse;
• The construct of masculinity.
McNeely and Robinson-Simpson (1988, p. 186) found that women have a higher mean and median rate for perpetrating severe violence than men. A bibliography compiled by Fiebert (2000) examines 117 scholarly investigations (aggregate sample size over 72,000) which show that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their partners.
Straus states that although women are more likely to receive injuries, men are more likely to be victimized by their wives. He claims that women also initiate violence rather than only becoming violent in response to their own victimization (cited in Mignon, 1998, p. 141).
Sniechowski and Sherven (1995) found that women more often use weapons than do men (82% of women; 25% of men). Cook (1997, p. 38) states that according to a study of 328 married couples published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family "Women were significantly more likely to throw an object, slap, kick/bite/hit with fist and hit with an object" .
In two Australian studies, the most common type of male behaviour which resulted in abuse was minor violation of household rules, and the three most common reasons women gave for abuse of their husbands were: to resolve the argument, to respond to family crisis, to " stop him bothering me" (Sarantakos, 1998, 1999).
Jason: She would throw hard objects at me, like photos, bottles, plates. This would happen if I did things like not putting clothes in the proper place, or not hanging a towel up. If we were out and she wanted to go home and I didn't, she'd put on one of these tantrums.
Kevin: She burnt a hole in my arm and hit me in the face with a cooking pot that split my eyebrow. She picked up a hunting knife and threatened me with it. I took that one off her and she took out another one and she threatened to cut my eye out and I could watch her kill Karen. We struggled for the knife and it went into her thigh. She then took out an AVO against me.
Andrew: She'd throw things at me — whatever she could find — ash trays or anything heavy. Sometimes she seemed like a person possessed. She would grab me by the genitals. "I'll rip your fucking balls off." she'd say. Then if I restrained her by holding her shoulders she would try to bite me or kick me.
Bruce: Once when I was about to drive off to cricket, she put her head through the car window and smashed a dish of Farex in my face, cutting my eye.
Roy: I had to work long shifts and often when I came home, I'd find my wife had left the children (the youngest was only a few months) and had gone down to the club, drinking and playing the poker machines. Sometimes when I went to get her, she'd smash a glass or a bottle across my head. Several times I had my head cracked open.
Stuart : She would get mad about anything at all and go off her head. She'd throw whatever was in her hand at the time — firewood, pitchforks, rocks. Once she threw a cup of hot coffee all over me. Then when I tried to run away she threw a glass bowl of nuts.
On another occasion she threw the cutlery container at me — knives and forks went everywhere. Then she picked up a carving knife and was trying to stab me. I grabbed her wrists and managed to escape. I ran to my car, but she ran after me with a glass in her hand and screamed, "You get in that car and I'll break the windows." Then she hit me with the glass on the side of my face. It severed my temporal artery. I was losing a huge amount of blood and she was still screaming at me.
Ian: She used to scratch me on the face and neck. One night I was lying in bed, half asleep. She came in, and with a full-blooded fist she punched me in the left eye. She had her engagement ring on and the huge stone nearly gouged my eye out.
Evan: Her abuse? Hitting with fists about my face and body. Kicking my legs. Biting at my protective arms. Throwing shoe polish or bottles at my head. Poking me in my face and body while screaming in my face. Once she knocked me down from behind and bit my right hand badly.
Geof: After she'd blown up about some triviality, I would just keep quiet, but then I'd be subjected to three or four hours of ranting and raving on what I was doing wrong. If I tried to leave the room, it would result in something being thrown. It started with things like fruit, but then she'd throw things that belonged to me, or something that someone in my family had given me and it would get smashed — usually something made of glass. Then she began to throw things directly at me. Once she threw the heater at me and it broke. But if ever I left the house, she'd lock me out. In the end I'd just sit there and agree to everything she said, knowing that within a few hours, if I was lucky, she'd run out of steam.
Michael: Our baby was very sick, and I said she should take him to the doctor. She was furious that I should make a suggestion about the baby. She started screaming and throwing things all round the house. Then she said she would take the children and leave and she grabbed the car keys. I knew she was in no fit state to drive, but I was particularly worried about the baby, so I stood at the door of his room and would not let her get him. She went to the kitchen and came back with a carving knife. She stuck it into my stomach and I knew she was about to stab me. I held on to the blade and it cut my fingers to the bone. Then she went back to the kitchen and threw a pot with chip fat at me. It hit me in the forehead and I nearly passed out.
Andrew: One day I left the house, and when I came back I found she'd smashed my CD's.
Richard: Every time I went to pick the kids up for access, she would jump on to the bonnet of the car to force me to attack her to get her off.
Geof: I'd do everything I could to avoid arguments in the car. If she was driving she'd get worked up to a point where she'd suddenly veer to the other side of the road and drive straight at oncoming traffic or she would steer off the road at a telegraph pole. Or if I was driving she would suddenly pull on the hand brake or she would grab the steering wheel and the car would go all over the road. Or without warning she'd give me a backhander straight into the face.
Robert: She got some scissors and cut up my shirts. On one occasion she lay down on the ground in front of the car so I couldn't drive off. On another occasion when I tried to go to work she got on to the bonnet of the car holding the baby. One other time I was on a night shift and it was raining. She ripped out the windscreen wipers, which meant I couldn't drive. Sometimes she'd lock me in the house. She'd take my keys, my credit cards, my identification badge and my money — anything she could get her hands on just so she'd have something to negotiate with at a later date.
In his work with abused men, Hoff (1999) has compiled a list of common behaviours of female partners. These include:
• Embarrassing the man in front of other people;
• Intimidating and threatening him;
• Insisting that anything he wants for himself is selfish or wrong;
• Frequently causing him to feel guilty and ashamed;
• Preventing him from taking a job or doing a course of study;
• Threatening to harm herself or the children if he leaves;
• Blaming him for her behaviour;
• Forcing him to leave social gatherings and restricting his contact with friends or family;
• Causing him to feel constantly afraid and 'on guard.'
Malcolm: Sometimes she'd go down to the pub at 1:30 in the morning and stay there for hours. If I said anything about it, she'd put on a tantrum — like a young child, stamping her feet, going red in the face, shaking, and just losing it.
Richard: She stopped doing any housework. I went to work very early and she would sleep in and not bother to wake up and get the kids to school. They missed a lot of school. In the end I had to ring her from work to make sure she and the kids were up. But then she'd throw tantrums and take it out on the kids.
Paul: A friend of ours had died. My wife said to me, "I wish you had died instead of him."
Mervyn: When she didn't get what she wanted she would resort to a tirade of verbal accusations and there were so many just in one sentence that I found it quite overwhelming. She would never give space to hear my side of the story or to any feedback about the effect of her behaviour.
Raymond: She had a gambling addiction and she would sit in front of the radio all day, seven days a week, listening to the races. When our son was born she completely neglected him. She couldn't be bothered feeding him or bathing him. I had to do everything. Then she'd scream and swear at me and tell me to leave him alone.
Mark: No matter how successful I was in my profession, she would make comments like, "Who did the work for you?" "Whose palm did you grease?"
Roy: Even worse than the physical abuse was the emotional. She used to say to me, "They're not your kids anyway; you've only been a sucker; I've been having affairs with other men all the time."
Michael: She just became cold and bitchy and cutting and all of the compassion just evaporated from her.
Ian: What hurt me most was her hostile attitude to me, particularly her tone of voice — it was always very stern and angry and vindictive. She was just so negative about everything I did or said. She'd exaggerate things to a ridiculous degree.
Derek: She saw my own family and anyone I wanted to maintain contact with as competition. She would go into a whining, carping, harping, nagging mood for days and weeks on end, in which she'd have bees in her bonnet about my mother, my father, my friends, my professional associates, and this would go on and on.
Alan: What I originally saw as playful teasing turned into hostility and ridicule. She didn't like my body shape — I was too thin. She'd pick on anything: my colour sense was terrible; I had difficulty in describing exactly what I liked. Then the little niggles became enraged tantrums, the little slap became contemptuous bullying. My saying "I don't like it" was taken as an insult from a cheeky child.
Steve: She'd say, "You're just a wog; my father warned me about wogs — you're
Tom: I wasn't the right person. I didn't have enough money. I didn't have the right status. I wasn't smart enough.
William: Nothing I did was right. I couldn't walk into the house without being criticized for something. She didn't like the way I walked, the way I talked, the fact that I was Australian. I did all the cooking and the housework, but she'd abuse me because I'd hung something the wrong way on the line, or I'd put the quilt on the bed the wrong way round.
Len: Shortly after our marriage and from then on she kept saying: "I don't love you. I don't know why I married you." I was always trying to work out what I had done wrong. She didn't like my friends or my family so I distanced myself from them. I then felt I should do all the work around the house. I did all the housework, all the shopping and all the cooking, but it didn't make any difference.
Geof: Every time I was hanging the clothes out, she'd come and stand behind me and tell me I was doing it all wrong. If I hung clothes out when she was not there, when she came home everything I'd hung up the wrong way she'd pull off the line, put in the wash basket and say "You've got to hang those up again." Then when the clothes had dried, she made me fold them a certain way at the clothes line — I was not allowed to bring them inside.
Adam: Whenever I tried to fix anything around the house, she would say to me "You stupid idiot, why can't you do this right?"; "What are you, a dummy?" When it seemed that our first child would not be a brilliant student, she blamed me and said, "He's stupid like you; your whole family are a pack of idiots."
Nigel: She told me I had to work longer hours to support her, but when I did, she said I didn't spend enough time with her. I used to buy her things she said she liked, but then she'd abuse me for it. I rang to say I would be working back and I got a verbal bashing you wouldn't believe because I'd disturbed her; then when I worked back and didn't ring, she abused me for not ringing. I was in a no-win situation all the time.
Geof: Every Saturday morning she'd say, "What are we doing today?" I'd say, " I'm easy, what would you like?" She'd yell at me for not having an idea, but she wouldn't suggest anything. If I said "I'd like to stay home or go down the park and play with the kids" that was the worst thing in the world. She'd rave on for two or three hours. What I was supposed to do was to guess what she wanted to do and then suggest it. When I managed to get it right, she'd respond, "All right we'll do that, but only if you want to."
Jason: She seemed to enjoy humiliating me in public, particularly when we were at the club. She would slap me across the face or throw food in my face. If we were having a dinner party she would make belittling, sarcastic remarks about me.
Ted: I'm overweight and when we were out she'd refer to me as the hippopotamus.
Geof: One day I took the kids to the park while she went shopping. She came down to the park and started punching me in the face because we weren't home when she came back — a lot earlier than expected. There was blood everywhere — I thought she'd broken my nose. My kids were with their friends and they saw the whole thing. Some of the friends had their parents with them — so there she was with her audience and she played it to the hilt.
Bruce: I used to play cricket on Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning was a nightmare because as soon as I started putting on my cricket gear she would start. One day she came to the ground itself and she kept screaming abuse at me on the field so all the spectators and players could hear it.
Some women had a need to control and humiliate their partner by demanding sex at any time. If the man did not comply, they would go on the attack. Retaliation included emotional blackmail, locking the man out of the house, making disparaging comments that he had failed the test of manhood.
Scott: For her, sex was a system of rewards and punishments. It was not a way for us to communicate. If I did something she didn't approve of, she'd turn off sex for weeks. I was not allowed to just reach out and touch her. She would recoil and say: "Why does everything have to be about sex?" She said to me once: "If you really loved me, you would cut off your penis."
Alan: Because I had told her what aroused me, she would use that against me by forcing an erection. She'd demand that I have sex with her to prove virility, love, worthiness. "What are you, a man or a mouse?" I wasn't sure so I did it like a machine. When I started to say "No," it was an inconceivable impudence. So she ignored it and did her mattress mastery over and over. When it wouldn't get up any more by itself, she'd tickle it into action. Pushing her off would have meant even more derision, so I lay beneath her wondering about my sanity and wriggled to end my pain.
Prior to the interview, Alan had sent me what he had written about his sexual violation.
Alan: The horror of being touched. The cowering on the edge of the bed with an erection I couldn't control. The terror of more bullying and being told to enjoy it or else more scorn. My stomach was sick like being hit in the groin. My balls hurt from being squashed. Nothing would stop her whenever she said I needed to prove my manhood. I couldn't run away — nowhere to go. I was so ashamed. While in the middle of it I had no means to make sense of the various contradictions that confronted me. Her sexual violation of my reluctant body had no name. Her demands were not simply an occasional inconsiderate insistence. This was a remorseless and frightening menace.
These included disappearing from the house without explanation, sleeping in the spare room, treating the man 'like a boarder', not passing on messages, not communicating at all with the partner.
Graham: If I forgot to put out the rubbish, I was sent to Coventry for two or three weeks. Then during that period I might commit some other minor offence which would mean another two or three weeks when she wouldn't speak to me.
William: She would eat with the children but I was not allowed to join them for the meal. There would be no food prepared for me.
Jason: When she was screaming and swearing, I would leave the house. When I eventually came back, she would not speak to me for days.
Bruce: Whenever she was unhappy about something she would disappear for a week or two and take our son. I never knew when I came home from work whether or not they would be there.
Richard: She demanded my pay packet; then she would go on shopping sprees and spend all the money and there would be no food on the table. The bills were mounting up and we were getting further and further behind. When I said I would manage the finances and I asked her how much she needed to run the house and what she spent it on, she said, "That's none of your business."
Peter: She kept making demands that I earn more money, so I finished up working three jobs, seven days a week. But no matter how much I earned, she would spend it all on luxuries and abuse me because we were getting deeper into debt, but I was not allowed to put any restraint on her spending frenzies.
Ted: I was like a slave to her. I had to do all the work, but no matter what I did she wanted more and more. I felt she was manipulating me and taking away my defences.
Geof: Although I was working full time and she was at home all day, she'd make me do all the housework and the washing and ironing. When I came home from work there would be nothing to eat. She'd say "I didn't know what you wanted for tea." Then when I said "You know I'll eat anything" she'd go into a rage, and then I'd have to cook tea. This happened just about every night, so I finished up doing all the cooking as well - otherwise the kids and I would never be fed. Then after tea I'd have to bath the kids and put them to bed. At that stage she would disappear, and I never knew where she was.
Robert: I told her I was going over to a friend's place to watch the football. She said, "Well you've got to be home by midnight." I explained that the Cup did not start till 1 A.M. She said "You're not allowed go to then." So I didn't go. I always gave in to her. I had been living at her place for nine months but she would never let me have a key. She said I had to put my car in her name, which I did. I had been off work and she said I was not allowed to go back to work. She started threatening me with AVOs if I went back.
William: The fact that I went to Tech. two nights a week - she considered that as me going out, so in retaliation she felt entitled to stay out Friday and Saturday nights all night — she'd come home at 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. I was not even allowed to discuss where she'd been or what she was doing. Yet I had to account to her every time I left the house.
Mervyn: As well as hitting me and scratching me, she used to threaten to burn the house down.
Stuart: I began to realize that her going off her head was just a power thing. It was like — "You do what I say or I'll go bloody bananas."
Robert: She refused to let me go to work and for three hours she badgered me. She had a carving knife and placed the two children at the front door, which was the only one that wasn't deadlocked. Every time I moved towards the door she'd go for me with the knife. I was terrified the children would be injured. I sat on the couch and she came towards me again. By this time I had no will to fight it. I said: "If you're going do it, just do it — just kill me — get it over and done with — I can't handle it any more."
Raymond: She would kick me in the genital area, she'd bite me on the shoulders and scratch my face and neck. She'd threaten to kill herself if I didn't give her the gambling money. Then she'd threaten to kill our son. In the middle of her screaming fits she would tell me and my son that I wasn't his father, even though we both knew he was. She also threatened to have someone bash me up.
Bruce: She rang me at work and said, "If you don't come home now I'm leaving you." So I went home and she obviously had no intention of leaving. Once when I was away I got a call at 2 o'clock in the morning and she said, "Well I've drugged Thomas and drugged myself, so if you're not worried, well don't worry about it." When I got home I found Thomas was OK.
Stuart: She used to smack my young daughter really hard with a wooden spoon. There were bruises all over her legs and buttocks. She used to cry and dance up and down with the pain. My daughter was using paint brushes and she kept putting them in her mouth. My partner said to her, "If you like it so much you can drink it," and she forced the liquid down her throat.
Richard: She made the kids write down that I belted them with a big leather belt with a buckle on it — just so she could present it to the Court.
Geof: She made a scrap book of newspaper articles about men who have killed their children during access visits. She read this to my kids, or made them read it and showed them the pictures. The book also had articles about men who kill their ex-wives. My kids told me that when they said, "Dad would never do that," she said, "You won't be saying that when you're standing beside my coffin and your father's in gaol facing murder charges."
In the Sarantakos (1998, p. 14) study there were a few cases when men tried to escape from abuse, taking their children with them, but the courts apprehended the "kidnapper" and returned the children to their "loving mother."
Francis: As our children grew older she gradually started to push me out of the picture. She would always correct me in my handling of the children and if I made a suggestion, she would say, "Oh no, we're not going to do it that way." I felt continually undermined — whatever I did was wrong.
Bob: She began treating me as nothing more than a boarder. She wouldn't speak tome at all. Everything I did or said to the children was ridiculed.
Joe: She would goad me for two or three hours at a time. I would go along with whatever she wanted to try to keep the situation placid. But she was relentless. Even when I left the house to go for a walk, she'd chase me along the street.
Ted: She'd walk past me in the house and spit at me, obviously hoping that I would do something so she could call the police.
Steve: She'd come up very close to me and she kept on saying, "Go on, hit me, that's what you want to do, hit me, go on." I was trying to get her to calm down. But she couldn't stand that — it would make her twice as bad if I spoke in a calm voice.
Some women seemed to have a need to keep their partners feeling insecure. If a man had counselling and began to define himself more clearly, the woman would feel threatened - sometimes seeing it as an attack on her, and would strike back. She would be even more insistent that her violence was entirely the fault of her partner.
Michael: On the occasions when she was willing to listen to what I had to say, she would become quite manipulative and say, "You're 100% right; I'm really sorry, I'm a bitch," and she'd pretend to come all my way. She'd be exciting in bed and there would be this outpouring of love and affection. But the next day she'd go completely against what we'd agreed.
Malcolm: Whenever she felt like treating me like dirt, she would. But there were times when she would be really nice to me. That was what kept me in the relationship.
Ian: Each time she took out an AVO, when we got to the court house she'd say she missed me terribly and wanted me back, so the case would be dropped. And each time I'd be silly enough to go back to her. She had me on the end of a string.
Harry: She was sinister and manipulative and calculating. When she felt she was about to lose me, she'd turn it on sexually just to keep me. Then the abuse would start again.
Anthony: She then went to the kitchen and opened the window and she started screaming as though she was being attacked. The window was only a couple of metres from our neighbours' window. I went out into the yard and she still kept up the screaming. The neighbours saw me outside and realized what she was up to.
Geof: She started punching me violently. As I moved away one of the punches landed in the door frame and she broke her hand. She told everyone I had attacked her with a cricket bat.
They had opened themselves to their partner, shared their sense of inadequacy, their fears and vulnerabilities. The woman then used this information as ammunition against them.
Alan: Her behaviour triggered off all those feelings I had that I was inadequate. She was very clever. She knew what my weak points were — that I was unsure of my competence as a social being.
Tom: Fundamentally I had an openness to my partner; there were no protections in place. In trying to cement the relationship I trusted her completely. But she betrayed that trust.
O'Donnel feels that female abusers tend to look for male victims who are either very logical or very idealistic. The abusive woman needs something immovable in the man's mind which she can destroy. An English research study on thirty eight battered men states:
"The majority of men who are abused are not seven-stone weaklings with Amazonian partners. They tend to be well built, but not aggressive. They're the sort of men who don't want to hit a man, let alone a woman. So when the violence starts they know they are just going to have to stand there and take it, and that tension produces its own kind of terror." (Wolff 1992 cited in Peloche, 1999, p. 6).
Detective Inspector Sylvia Aston describes the victims of female violence as:
"The most decent kind of men, the kind who would not hit back. But they feel weak because they think that they should hit back" (Thomas, 1993, p. 213).
Elizabeth McMahon, a counsellor of sexual abuse victims in Melbourne, states:
"In the case of women who sexually abuse, the victim is in years of sexual bondage before telling anyone....The male being sexually abused by a female is usually a very vulnerable personality who feels absolute shame and worthlessness" (Thomas, 1993, p. 138).
Many of the participants in the study fitted the above descriptions. They were quietly spoken, non-aggressive men. When they were being attacked they exercised restraint, either removing themselves from the vicinity or reasoning with their partner in an attempt to calm her down.
The situation of powerlessness in which the men found themselves both enabled the abuse to occur and was an integral part of the way in which they responded.
The physical symptoms men have reported after abuse include stomach pains, high temperature, racing pulse, thought distortion, anxiety, panic attacks (Hoff and Easterbrooks, 1999).
Norman: The effect it had on me was that my body became very tired and sore.
Evan: I was constantly tight in the stomach. All my basic physical functions were affected.
Mervyn: I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach - a dread of having to go through the emotional trauma of interacting with a person like that.
Mark: By the time the marriage ended, I had become anorexic. I weighed less than five stone. I felt so bad about myself I would run a hundred kilometres a week, rain, hail or shine.
Matthew: Each night when she came from work I would be tense and nervous. I didn't know in what way she was going to abuse me.
Stuart: I was on tenterhooks all the time. I was always checking on what my young daughter was doing to make sure that my partner would not attack her. I got into this habit of not only doing everything she said, but never making a decision for myself. I was terrified I would do something wrong and she'd blow up. I could never be myself. I always had to be one step ahead, thinking about how she might react. I was always looking for dangers, looking for signs. I had to guess her moods.
Bruce: When I came home from work and she was there, I would be just shaking, just waiting for her to go off.
In order to survive abuse, a man may block the memory of the experience because the pain of recall is too terrifying. If he were to relive the abuse he could become hysterical and be treated as a psychiatric case — the way women originally were (O'Donnel 1994).
Andrew: The more outrageous her behaviour, the more I felt I could not handle the situation....
A lot of men just close down emotionally. They can't even allow themselves to admit that they need love and tenderness and they're not getting it. If you ask for it in a relationship you're going out on a limb, because you're giving the woman power to say "No."
Alan: Whatever I did, or tried to become, or whatever I said, or however I behaved, I wasn't able to change the circumstances with anything that I could possibly do. I couldn't talk to anyone. Nobody would believe the fact that I felt so awful about what was going on. I just felt as if I was inadequate — that I didn't know what to do, that I couldn't do anything. I would try to do things just so I could hear her say "Thank you." But nothing I tried ever had the desired effect and so I felt even more inadequate.
Kevin: I felt like an idiot. I didn't know what I was doing wrong or what I could do to make it right. She would never tell me anything more than, for example, "If you don't come now I'll hurt Karen," and I would come home and she wouldn't even be there. I was losing time at work. It was making me feel stupid because I didn't know how to react to her and it was making me feel as if there was something wrong with me. I thought everyone else was managing their relationships, so why couldn't I get it right? So I started getting depressed.
Nigel: She reduced me to a state of total powerlessness. I couldn't function as a husband, as a father. I did everything she wanted and got abused for it. The more I gave in to her the more she destroyed me. I became like a little man just towing the line. I had to ask permission to go and see a friend. I was just her slave in the relationship.
Evan: I was disappointed that I could not be proactive about changing the situation.I felt stymied. There was a part of me that felt I should have been able to fix it. In the past it's always worked for me when I've used a reasoned approach. Why couldn't I get her to talk through the issues?
Malcolm: She made me feel totally insignificant. Whatever I wanted meant nothing to her. What she wanted was the only thing that mattered.
Tom: I had made her a part of my life at the very core. She had my complete trust. If she said something to me, I would believe her. So her view of me became my view of me. This sort of thing eats away at your self worth and isolates you from everyone around you. I had to give her everything she asked for because she set it up that I could be happy only if she was happy.
Nigel: Self esteem? You don't have any self esteem. You take on board all the stuff she dishes out.
Andrew: I felt less than a man because I couldn't find a way to handle her destructive behaviour.
Alan: It was as though I was looking in a mirror but couldn't see anything. Whatever identity I had all of a sudden had vanished. I was working on automatic pilot. I didn't know any longer what it was to be a man.
Scott: My sense of self worth was affected because I was facing a problem that could not be solved. I also doubted my ability to "do the emotional stuff" because I felt that women knew more about it than men.
William: All the horrible things she said about me just gnawed away at me and at some level I must have believed them, because in the end I became what she told me I was. I wasn't interested in life. I became what she wanted so that she had an excuse to treat me that way. She never kept a single promise that she made to me. We would have a discussion and agree on a solution, but when the time came she would always find an excuse to break it — and it would always be twisted around that it was entirely my fault. I had to change. There was nothing at all wrong with her. I was made to feel worthless.
Kevin: I haven't been able to work since we split up - three years ago. I don't feel like a worthwhile human being any more - no matter what my friends and family tell me. I feel like I am just such a worthless person, I don't even want to seek anyone's approval. A lot of the way I feel is tied up with the treatment I received in court and by the police. I was brought up to respect authority so when the authorities turned against me, I felt there was nothing left. The magistrate said "It's not the first time he's done it; it's just the first time we've caught him." I walked into that court knowing I was a good person. I treated my wife with the utmost respect. But after that magistrate said that, I felt I was just an animal.
Ian: My self esteem has taken such a battering that I feel I could never trust myself to get it right in a relationship with a woman.
Francis: I felt powerless - whatever I did was wrong. I blamed myself for not being able to get the kind of job she thought I should get so she could live in a really nice house. I felt she was not accepting my identity — I was not a smart businessman. I felt diminished by her attitude. I felt inadequate. I started to question my own judgment on things and my own worth as a person and my ability to achieve anything worthwhile. Part of me knew I could do better, but it was like - no matter what I did I couldn't get there. I felt like I was a failure in every part of my life — at work, in my marriage, as a father. Whatever study I did, she would see it as a waste of time. She showed no interest in anything in my life. I felt devalued.
Derek: I found her behaviour humiliating and embarrassing. I took it on board and I was very hurt by it and it didn't do anything for my self confidence. All that tension she used to set up and the moods she used to get in used to depress me and I used to have to go to work in a very difficult and stressful job and try to perform in a public arena in a state of depression. I believe to this day that I did not become as confident in my profession as I expected myself to be because of what I went through during this period of twelve years of marriage.
Adam: It got to the point where what self esteem I had, had gone. It just seemed like I believed within myself that I could not do anything. It got to the point where I was afraid to even attempt to do anything, because I knew within myself that I was going to fail - or she would tell me I'd failed. So it just wasn't worth trying. I was always doing my best, but my best was never good enough.
Evan: I became sad and morose. I had always been an outgoing, gregarious person, but I found it difficult to make conversation with people. It destroyed my belief that I was a worthwhile person.
Mervyn: In my relationship with Deborah, I didn't like to admit that I was scared — in fact it took me a long time to admit that I felt scared and was affected by her abuse. That admission was challenging to my own identity as a male. I could not even admit to my close and supportive friends how much her behaviour was hurting me. I felt ashamed about that - the fact that I had let it hurt me, and ashamed that I was vulnerable to her, that my life was a mess having got myself into that situation.
Anthony: When I asked my wife "Why are you trying to destroy me?" she said, " I've kept your bed warm for fourteen years. Now it's payback time." It sounded as though her whole relationship with me was nothing more than prostitution. I was destroyed.
Bob: I had a breakdown. I took three months off work, but when I went back I just couldn't do my job any more.
Roy: I became emotionally withdrawn. I couldn't think straight. I started making mistakes at work and one of these caused me a serious injury.
Tom: When she started treating me like a sort of attachment, I thought I must have done something, but I didn't know what it was. She said everything that had happened — I was responsible for it. I never had the courage to tell anyone what she was doing to me.
Andrew: I thought it must have been my fault because I had provoked her. I must have been a pretty bad person to trigger this in her. She had me believing that I was the total cause of everything.
Steve: I thought: "What's wrong with me; I'm working two jobs, coming home, bathing the kids, doing the housework — and still getting abused day and night; what am I doing wrong?"
Scott: Whenever she was unhappy, we would have to have a discussion about what I had done to cause it. I was made to feel responsible for all her feeling states.
Peter: I thought: "Maybe I'm causing this — maybe I am a bad person."
Michael: She could always get me to feel sorry for her. She could manipulate me into feeling guilty.
Mervyn: I started feeling just terrible about myself. I was always trying to decide whether I had caused the problems.
Malcolm: I started to feel in the end that maybe I was not such a good partner. I felt that I was no good for any relationship with a woman. She made me feel as though I was the biggest arse hole that ever walked the earth.
Ian: Although the logical part of your brain tells you that she's the one with the problem, at an emotional level you feel terrible. You ask yourself, "Why is this happening to me? I must have done something wrong."
George: When you're trying to maintain a relationship you often don't see these terrible things happening to you the way a person outside would see them. I felt split. I think I felt I was doing everything I could, but still wondering what else I could have done.
Joe: Why would someone I love so much want to hurt me emotionally, to confuse me?
Steve: She would twist things that I said, she'd deny things that she had said, and it got to the stage where I thought I was totally mad. And that was what she was trying to do. I started to believe that I would not be able to do my job, which always involved danger.
Tom: I did everything I thought I was supposed to do as a husband. I couldn't understand.... after all I still believed I had a wife. In the end I realized that 'us' never existed. You put into question whether you actually were that person because it's completely gone. Not only is it gone but what you believed in was actually a lie.
Alan: I thought of my options. Lock her out of the house as she did to me? The cops would come and take me away. Complain of domestic violence? She was too pretty and dainty for that to work. Leave? I could not abandon my kids. I would rather have died, and thought of it. Fight back? Somehow I couldn't see myself doing it. I don't know if it was cowardice, chivalry or intellect saying: "Lay a finger on her even once and all hell will break loose." Murder her but make it look accidental? Its appeal did grow, unbelievably.
George: I was distraught. I was pretty close to suicidal.
Adam: I found it hard to maintain my job, just trying to concentrate. I couldn't sleep at night. I felt cut out of life, lost, rejected.
Tom: I felt I was dying inside. The feeling is like a cancer that eats away at you every day until all you have left is pain that never goes away.
Steve: Many times I thought of killing myself. She not only destroyed me when we were together, but stopping me from seeing the kids - my life was not worth living then.
Jason: I went up to South Head and stood on the edge. I was very close to letting myself fall.
Roy: It got to the stage where I couldn't take it any more and I decided to commit suicide. I jumped off the bridge, but somebody saw me and got the police and they dragged me out.
In a study of abused husbands, Gregorash (1993, p. 92) states that they believed they had tried everything to deal with the situation, but their inability to cope with it left their wife with total power over them. They were in a hostage-captor type relationship. Some men would promise to do whatever the partner demanded, accept responsibility for untrue accusations, or make excuses for the partner's behaviour (Eldridge, 1998, p. 2).
Robert: Even after all this, I couldn't help feeling it must have been my fault, just as she said it was. She could manipulate anything I said to make it look as though I was to blame. I was no match for her. In the end I would just give in and say "Yes" to whatever she said, and of course that just made her worse. She'd say: "See I told you I was right all along; you're lying to me." I couldn't win if I agreed or if I argued. In the end it was easier just to agree.
Michael: I was always aware that my acceptance of what she would and wouldn't tolerate was the predominant factor of peace. If I bucked the system there was less peace. She didn't change; I had to. I was always aware that no matter what I did, no matter where I put the resistance, nothing ever changed.
In the study carried out by Sarantakos (1998, p. 16), family members were interviewed to ascertain the validity of the husband's account. "The statements of the wife's parents and children confirm the husband's assertion that he lived in fear, that he was constantly intimidated and that he experienced demoralization and powerlessness in his everyday life." Some children reported hiding their battered father under the bed to prevent further injuries, or they would hide him in the store room or in the neighbour's garage.
Men are placed in a difficult situation in defending themselves. Part of being seen as a 'real man' in our culture is the ability to be able to take it, particularly from a woman. Since most men are taught never to hit a woman, even in self-defence, when they are attacked, they are rendered powerless (Sniechowski and Sherven 1995).
Paul: When she slapped me across the face, I didn't really see that as abuse because everyone seemed to think that a woman could hit a man but never the reverse.
The methods men use to attempt to diffuse or avoid potentially violent situations include:
• Locking themselves in a safe place.
• Staying at a friend's place but without divulging the reason.
• Sleeping in the car, shed, garage or wherever they can find shelter.
Peter: Every time she got out of control and became violent and hysterical, I'd leave the house and I'd sleep in my car or at the beach. This would happen a couple of times a week.
Kevin: I took all the overtime I could get so I could get home as late as possible so she wouldn't abuse me.
Kevin: If I can spend 25 years doing good and still get punished, what's the point of trying to do anything good for the rest of my life.
Bob: I used to try and teach kids that they should always do the right thing, but
after what happened to me, I just didn't believe in anything.
William: She expected my whole life to revolve around her — what I wanted was irrelevant. I lost all my friends. I was not allowed to join them in any activities — or if I did, she would not speak to me for days on end — she'd just pretend I wasn't in the house.
Scott: Almost everything I did that wasn't done with her constituted a threat to her. By the end of the relationship I had no friends. I had no outside activities. I had nothing, because everything that I was interested in, every friendship I had, threatened her. She would make things so difficult for my friends that they just drifted away.
The man's feeling of powerlessness was an underlying reason for his failure to report the matter or to leave the relationship. Vogel (1996, p. 21) suggests that a man may come to believe what an abusive women says to him: "You're crazy and stupid; no one will believe you; the police will never arrest me." Women are ten times more likely to report domestic violence against themselves to the police than men are (LFAA, 1998, p. 3).
The situation for men in abusive relationships is compounded by their lack of options. They are usually reluctant to leave their children, who are often victims themselves. Overberg says that women who abuse men are likely to abuse their children as well (Cose, 1995, p. 208).
Abusive women take advantage of the man's powerlessness and his feelings of protectiveness towards his children. Being brought up to see himself as the protector of women and the family can cause a man to believe that by leaving the relationship he is abdicating his responsibility. So men decide to stay and take "whatever the women dish out to them." (Cook, 1997, p. 60) A further problem is that there are no shelters for the abused man (LFAA, 1998, p. 9).
When abused men seek help they are laughed at, or scorned, and they become extremely embarrassed. They are seen as weaklings or cowards. Because they know this is the way they are portrayed by society, they are reluctant to disclose their predicament through fear of further ridicule and being blamed for their situation (Easton, 1998). Men deny that they are being abused in the belief that they are supposed to be able to handle it. They claim it is not a 'real problem' and they will offer other explanations for evident injuries. Daly and Wilson (1988, pp. 519-524) state that the most unreported crime is not wife abuse but husband abuse.
The powerlessness which abused men experience within their relationships could not occur unless such abusive behaviour was tacitly accepted within the community.
My enquiry led me to examine the ways in which our social structures discriminate against men.
Several participants said that when they tried to report their abuse to the police, they were disbelieved, scorned, or had every obstacle placed in their way.
Typical police responses were:
• "What sort of a wimp are you to let a woman hit you?"
• "Run away and stop wasting our time."
• "You must have done something terrible to her to deserve this."
• "Look at the size of you! Maybe she was just defending herself."
Whereas a woman can obtain an Apprehended Violence Order almost immediately and without any requirement of proof, the police view in many cases is that a man should be able to cope with the kind of abuse a woman might engage in. In most cases the police are required to arrest someone if they believe domestic abuse has been committed. There is often little effort made to find out who was the aggressor. "Even if the man has a split lip and the wife is drunk and out of control, the man is likely to be placed in gaol" (Cose 1995 p.209).
Steve: The Chamber Magistrate said to me: "You're supposed to be the stronger one — to be able to take strong hits. If you go ahead with this, they'll laugh you out of court." Even if you've got a bloody nose and bruises, if you're a man, they say you have to have more proof to get an AVO.
Michael: The next thing I knew there were two police officers at the door. They saw the lump on my head, the black eye, and the bleeding and I told them what had happened. They said my wife had made a complaint that I had assaulted her, so they handcuffed me and put me in a paddy wagon. At the station the police said there was "a high degree of probability" that I would assault my wife again!
Kevin: I made two attempts to report her assaults to the police and they didn't want to know. One officer said to me, "For your sake and for ours we might as well not drag this into court. The magistrate won't believe that a woman is capable of something like that."
Jim: She would violently attack my 5 year-old son. Once she had him pinned to the floor, with her body weight on top of him. I would often try to separate him from her, but eventually I became afraid for his safety and I reported the matter. She then took out a restraining order against me, claiming I had threatened her with a gun. From that time onwards, neither the police nor the courts would listen to anything I tried to tell them about the danger my son was in.
Regardless of the degree of abuse sustained by a husband, courts will nearly always award custody of children to the wife (Cook, 1997, p. 62). Only one in six men who apply for custody of their children eventually gains it. The Family Court in Australia normally elevates the mother to the role of primary parent. The father is seen as the 'disposable' parent (Green, 1998, p. xi). The Court is also reluctant to grant joint custody. Commenting on the bias against men in custody decisions, a retiring Family Court judge stated: " The woman has had all the power; the man almost none" (Arndt, SMH, August 19, 2000).
Men are usually given only limited access to their children. Often they lose contact with them altogether because of the court's unwillingness to impose severe penalties on women who deny access (Arndt, 1995, p. 226). A study by Murray and Blackmore (1993, p. 154) found that 81% of men described their former partners as obstructive, undermining and uncooperative when it came to arranging access visits. Several researchers have linked the loss of relationship between fathers and children to the male suicide rate (Ambrose et al. 1983, cited in Smith, 1998, p. 24).
The loss is also reflected in a recently-established psychological condition which manifests as reactive depression, termed the "involuntary child absence syndrome" (Jacob, 1986, cited in Smith, 1998, p.12).
Cose (1995, p. 15) quotes the words of a counsellor:
"I've found it easier to console people with cancer and AIDS than to console fathers who have lost all contact with their children...It is one of the most devastating things that can happen to anybody... They can't get over it. Their children mean more to them than anything else in the world.".
When a woman is violent in a relationship, the court will not necessarily assume that she is a bad mother. If a man is seeking custody of his children due to his wife's violence towards him and them, he is usually advised by his legal representative not to mention the violence, or the judge may conclude that the man is a 'wimp' and therefore an unfit parent (Cose, 1995, p. 217).
Should a man try to protect himself from abuse, his wife may claim to have been assaulted and take out an Apprehended Violence Order. One of the most serious threats men face today is false accusations of sexual molestation of their children (Cook, 1997, p.62). Lawyers report that denial of access, Apprehended Violence Orders and false sexual allegations are common strategies in the armoury of custodial mothers who want to limit or terminate children's contact with their fathers (Green, 1998, p. 213).
Some of the worst forms of abuse against men involve the Family Court, vindictive women, and questionable legal practices. From several sources I heard that there were a number of practitioners, known to lawyers, who could always be relied upon to supply whatever evidence was needed to support a woman's claims of violence against her or of sexual molestation of her children. The Court rarely imposes penalties on a woman who makes false allegations, even when she does this repeatedly. Each time a sexual allegation against children is made, the man is usually denied access until such time as the Court resolves the matter.
Bob: After the separation, she continually frustrated my attempts to gain access, but the Court didn't do anything about it. Then she took the children interstate so I couldn't see them. She claimed I had sexually abused my daughters, that I'd hit her over the head and belted the daylights out of her and pulled her hair out. All our friends and neighbours knew the violence went the other way.
George: My wife would not let me see the kids. She claimed I was violent. Later the judge said there was no evidence I had ever assaulted her, but there was evidence that she had been violent to me. Then she accused me of sexually molesting my daughter. I was devastated. I didn't see my kids for ages until the Court finally decided I could see them. Then she again accused me of sexually interfering with my daughter. So again there was a long delay.
After a Court hearing which lasted ten days, the judge found that my ex-wife herself had molested my daughter in an effort to generate evidence against me. Despite this, she was still allowed custody. And the Court and the child welfare agency refused to take any action against her.
Jason: The pain of not being able to see your child is far worse than any abuse a woman gives you in a relationship. It's even worse than the death of a child, knowing your child is alive and you can't see her. It's just unending suffering. When I see children in their school uniforms and I'm not allowed to see my child... the pain is indescribable.
Chris: She then abducted my daughter to Europe. I received little help from the authorities here. Their attitude was that nearly all women who take their children out of Australia are fleeing from a violent man. This lack of cooperation has been experienced by many men I know in this situation.
They don't seem to understand anything. Justice Nicholson said on the 7.30 Report, "Oh yes, the Court is aware there is a problem [of false allegations] but no woman would ever knowingly falsely accuse a man of sexually abusing a child. They just imagine it is happening." On the question of women denying men access, the Law Reform Commission said there was no real problem!
Geof: What happened to me has happened to a lot of men I know. Where the man is applying for joint custody, the woman ceases all forms of communication with her partner a few months before the Family Court hearing, so she can say to the court, "there is no communication between us." The judge then declares that joint custody is impossible and awards custody to the mother.
After a separation, when the man tries to go back to the house to claim his personal property, the woman takes out an AVO and he is barred from the house. The man's property then 'disappears.'
Woodstra (1994) reports that a man who had been assaulted by his wife was being treated in hospital, where his wife admitted her guilt to the hospital authorities. Yet the police laid no charges until he pressed the matter. When he told his story in the Family Court in Toronto, the courtroom burst into laughter, including the judge. The man then dropped the charges.
McNeely and Robinson-Simpson (1987) state that men increasingly are defenceless, both socially and legally, when allegations of domestic violence are made (cited in Mignon, 1998, p. 140). Domestic violence is an issue framed in the media and in the political arena as one of male perpetrators and female victims (Gross, 1992).
According to O'Donnel (1994), the American psychological community denies the existence of abused men. Sarantakos (1999) states that in Australia a negativist attitude to husband abuse is sustained within the training schools of professions such as social workers, social welfare officers and counselling psychologists, most of whom have learned to interpret domestic violence as wife abuse. Sniechowski and Sherven (1995) feel that our culture as a whole has a deep commitment to the belief that women are helpless and innocent.
Abuse of men is treated in the way that rape used to be, with victims considered to be as guilty as their attackers. Men are disbelieved, ignored or treated with hostility (Thomas, 1993, p. 203). When men who have been abused report the matter to telephone counselling services, they are told to seek psychiatric help — not for the abuser but for themselves.
In his work with battered husbands, Thomas (1993, p. 195) states that in all cases where the relationship ended in divorce, the wife had convinced the police, social services, legal advisers and courts that she had been the victim. Society excuses female violence against men on the grounds that they are supposedly more aggressive because of testosterone, and are stronger and larger (O'Donnel 1994).
Kevin: I've put myself in my own prison because I don't want to have any interaction with society any more. I feel too vile, too dirty, because the mainstream of society says this kind of behaviour from a woman is OK.
David: The culture denies that the man needs help after the breakup of a relationship, or indeed, on how to function in a relationship. Therapists are not trained to look at gender issues from a male perspective — not even male therapists. They are taught about female specific recovery or people recovery, not male recovery. The culture presents women's and men's abuse in a different way. It's hard to describe female abuse unless its classically male-bashing you up or something. Often it's more covert and the damage is a lot harder to trace. When I originally told a therapist I was sexually abused by a woman, he said: "That can't happen — you're a man." Another one said: "Just forget about it; get on with your life." That kind of response would never be given to a woman, but it is typical for men.
Alan: Who to talk to for advice - family or friends? No way. I looked up the Yellow Pages. The voice answering the phone at the Rape Crisis Centre said: "Only women are abused." I spoke to a doctor. She seemed to listen to my stammering for a few minutes and then while scribbling asked: "What are you doing to make her behave that way?"
Andrew: Even after a lot of therapy I still feel that somehow I must have caused it all, because there is a big part of me that can't accept that women are bad. So if women are good and one of these good people does terrible things to me, it must be my fault; I must be bad. I think because society doesn't accept that women can be abusive, if a woman is like that, she can't accept that she's like that. Society says that women aren't aggressive — women don't attack men. So if a woman attacks a man, it couldn't possibly be aggression — it's justified behaviour.
Malcolm: When you're trying to be a good person and good partner and a good father and you get trashed - to me that's abusive. But our society doesn't see it like that.
Evan: I phoned the domestic violence help line to try to resolve some issues concerning the abuse, and the woman who answered the phone said: "If you admit that you are the perpetrator and your wife says she has been victimized, then we can help you."
David: After I had ended my relationship with this woman, she still had a key to my house. She kept on letting herself in when I was home. I managed to persuade her to hand over the key. I had a spare one hidden. She found it and began to use that. I felt I was being stalked. I would wake up in the morning and she would be in the house. But as a man I don't have any right to use the power that I have — which is physical. If I had thrown her out the door she would have gone to the police and they would have said: "What did he do to you?" and I would be in gaol. I stopped leaving a spare key outside, and then one day she smashed the front door in. It was as though she was telling me that she owned me. I had no privacy, no sanctuary from her — not even my own bed. My programming as a man meant that I was unable, physically, to push her away. A woman can overpower a man and he has no recourse in society. Therefore he has nowhere to go.
From the literature and from the data, it seems that men believe women are valued more highly than they are, and that men are at a disadvantage in their heterosexual relationships.
Andrew: Something that comes up a lot in men's groups is that men seem to need women more than women need men. Maybe the fact that women are so self-sufficient means we see them as superior to us. We need them so much we put them on a pedestal. And women will assume that role quite naturally. And then men feel diminished by that.
Mervyn: Men feel it's not manly to ask for help and support. If I don't play the traditional male role, if I admit I've been abused, I am vulnerable — my masculine identity is called into question.
David: Men are conditioned not to read books about the emotions — we're supposed to do all the rational stuff. Men are disempowered emotionally; they are taught to not have emotional expression and outlets — and they're not supposed to have friends they can talk emotionally to. One of the results of feminism is that it gives this idealistic view of women in that they are supposed to look at their victimship but they're not supposed to look at the way they use power. If the woman is always the victim, the only way she can solve the problem is by asserting herself. So if she's in the dominant position the man must have failed her in some way. But if she's in the submissive position then the man again is the one who's failing. The idea of "No means no" only applies when women say it. I find myself in a position where I feel tongue-tied in validating my own state. There is a hidden agenda that if a man wants sex, the woman is quite at liberty to say "No," but that if a woman wants sex, the man should always say "Yes." Also women can flaunt themselves sexually in any way they please and there is no responsibility attached to that. If a man were to do something similar it would be a crime.
The powerlessness men experience as a result of female abuse and social structures and attitudes is compounded by the conditioning society imposes upon them.
Hudson and Jacot describe the phenomenon of the 'male wound' which arises from the fact that at a very early age boys make a psychological transition away from the female norm ( cited in Thomas, 1993, p. 36). Whyte (1997b, p. 1) suggests that from the time they are weaned, boys, unlike girls, are not comforted but are taught to go off and handle things alone. This lack of acceptance of a boy's feelings interferes with his understanding of himself.
When a boy relinquishes the bond with his mother to show the world that he is not feminine, he will be fearful of any traits, particularly emotionality, which are identified as feminine. He is left "open, vulnerable and unprotected." (Goff, 1998, p. 5) In tribal culture the boy is initiated into the world of the adult male. Since our culture has no rite of passage into manhood, the young man rages against the mother in a defiant show of strength, to ward off the threat of being absorbed or smothered by the mother (O'Connor, 1993, p. 28). The process of rejecting the nurturing female world is seen by McLean (1996, p. 15) as deeply scarring to the boy.
Masculine behaviour seems to offer a security to men. It is like a mask which covers up what is really underneath, often an insecure man with a "fragile sense of gender identity." (Formaini, 1990, p. 13). The lack of help to grow into a man and the resulting desperate clinging to an "I'm fine" facade has disastrous consequences. Men's difficulties are with isolation. The enemies, the prisons from which men must escape, are loneliness, compulsive competition, and lifelong emotional timidity. Men who display anger are covering up feelings of fear and loneliness (Biddulph, 1995, p. 24).
"If a boy is four or five, he's told he's not supposed to cry. He's not allowed to play with girls, because if he does, he's a sissy. He can't hug boys, because if he does, he's a poof. He can't hang around with Mum, because then he'd be a mother's boy, and he can't hang around with Dad, because he's not there. So from then until the age of eighteen he's officially dissociated from the human race" (Thomas, 1993, p. 263).
"Most men don't have a life. Instead, we have just learned to pretend. Much of what men do is an outer show, kept up for protection.... A boy's spirit begins to shrivel very early in life, until (often as not) he loses touch with it completely. By the time he becomes a man, he is like a tiger raised in a zoo — confused and numb, with huge energies untapped. He feels that there must be more, but does not know what that more is. So he spends his life pretending to be happy" ( op.cit. p. 1)."
"Manhood requires such a self-destructive identity... a shrinkage of the self, a turning away from whole areas of life, that the man who obeys the demands of masculinity has become only half-human." (Horrocks, 1994, p. 25)
Farmer (1991, p. 3) describes men as the "walking wounded." When the wounds remain unhealed men carry lasting pain, even though it is hidden behind a façade of male bravado. When men deny their emotions, they can easily believe that only women have 'feelings', or more accurately, that they don't (Goff, 1998, p. 1) . The only emotion they are allowed to display in public is anger, and although men are intensely emotional, this realization is hidden from them (McLean, 1996, pp. 20-21) . McKissock believes that failing to feel one single emotion can lead to a shutdown in the full spectrum of feelings - including anger (cited in Biddulph, 1995, p. 185).
In discussing the question of their conditioning with participants, I found that it affects men in different ways. They can be totally cut off from their emotions, sometimes through fear of what could happen if they allowed themselves to feel anything, or they can experience intense feelings but believe that is 'unmanly' to display them. Another response is that having been taught not to express emotions in childhood, they may have difficulty in giving a name to what they are feeling. In general, the men felt that their conditioning increased their sense of powerlessness.
Alan: I did not have a language to describe the feelings I had. I believe that when a boy has to repress his emotions, he fails to learn a language to describe what he is feeling, so that in adult life he is like a stranger to his emotions. The normal conversations one has with oneself I couldn't have because I didn't have a language to describe it. If someone has asked me how I felt about the situation, I wouldn't have known how to answer them. I suppose bewildered. Because I had always needed to explain things to myself and found that I couldn't, I felt very frustrated with myself for not knowing what was going on. I'd be conscious of great anxiety, that there was something wrong, that I was not enjoying it — but I could not have described it to anyone. It's only in recent years that I've realized it was abuse.
Andrew: Men don't give each other the emotional support that women give each other, so if the woman is the only source of that in a man's life, when she withholds it, he is terribly alone.
David: For a heterosexual man to get affection and love (not sex), he can only get it from his partner when she says "Yes"; he can't get it from any other male or he'll be called a homosexual — even more by women than by men, and he can't get it from any other woman — and remember I'm only talking about affection. But the male then gets so needy for human physical contact of any sort that he comes to believe that sex is the only way that he can get it. The woman then has total power over him in that area. A woman can get affection from a range of females, but a man can't do the same. A man can become desperate for sex because it's the only way he can get his needs for affection met. Then the man is told he is bad because he's obsessed by sex.
The sense of powerlessness which men experience, both in society and as a result of abuse by their female partners, will be discussed in terms of disempowerment, judgment and identity violation. I will critique feminist philosophy in terms of its effects on men, and analyze archetypal patterns in gender relations today.
The theoretical perspective in social science which addresses issues of powerlessness is Critical Theory. Its ontological basis is modified realism, where objectivity is located in the historically and socially formed patterns arising from human struggle. It concerns the interests and values in a particular society which help shape its dynamics. The epistemological position of Critical Theory is subjectivist. Knowledge is historically situated and truth is whatever leads to empowering for individuals (Le Compte in Guba (ed.), 1990, p. 252).
Critical Theory seeks to uncover the causes of distorted communication and understanding and to render individual and social processes transparent to the actors involved, thus enabling them to pursue their further development (Smith in Guba (ed.), 1990, p. 181). Habermas uses the traditional Marxist category of alienation, i.e. all forms of human activity which are determined by external forces rather than by the agents themselves (Dews, 1999, p. 5). He believes there is an emancipatory interest of a pre-theoretical kind which is anchored in social reality itself. The process of self-reflection is seen as an expression of that interest.
In drawing on the ideas of Critical Theory, I was seeking to explore the alienation which men experience today. This results from a perspective which has come to form part of our culture that men are the oppressors, they are responsible for all the ills of society, they are intrinsically inferior to women, they are the sole perpetrators of abuse, and they carry all the negative characteristics of the human species.
I chose Critical Theory because the aim of this research was not to obtain an objective account of the interactions between people in conflict, nor to suggest an interpretation of the dynamics. It was to give disempowered men an opportunity to be heard, to be validated, and to gain further insight into their oppression. It was also to analyze how the social structures which work against men have served to increase both their disempowerment and the unwarranted guilt which many of them hold towards women.
The distorted communication which Critical Theory addresses involves ideas which come to be accepted by a society in a manner which precludes critical examination by the individuals affected by them. The workings of the external forces responsible for the generation of these ideas may not be apparent, so the disempowerment is concealed.
Masculinity is a construct with obscure origins. It is predicated on competition and the need to win, a fear of losing face, a fear of being seen to be vulnerable, and a fear of disapproval by others. These requirements of masculinity are rarely challenged by men, who expend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they are successful and are fulfilling their given role.
Society says to men "If you perform, you will get love and respect; if you fail, you will be a nothing" (Farrell, 1994, p. 15). Every man has to strive to reach a position of power and control, where he will be safe. Rich suggests that we have created a society in which men are so fearful of not measuring up that many would rather succeed at suicide than be perceived as failures (Cose, 1995, p. 198).
Although men hold dominant positions in society, there are only a few who win over others and stay at the top. The remainder are on the periphery. They are lonely, isolated, and confused. Men are divided against each other and live in constant fear of humiliation and in fear of other men (Goff, 1998, p. 5). McLean (1996, p. 16) sees men as competitors rather than allies: "A 'real man' stands alone — alone from women and from other men."
Whereas tribal men proved their worth by enduring painful initiating ceremonies, men today have to constantly prove themselves in the workplace. Tacey (1997, p. 124) suggests that in whipping men into a frenzy of over-achievement, tyrannical employers can exacerbate men's performance anxieties and their feelings of low self-worth.
Women's criticism of men has become so culturally acceptable that if a man tries to defend himself, or males generally, he is accused of sexism and of demeaning women (Arndt, 1995, p. 221). Women have come to regard themselves as victims, whose only means of achieving justice is to struggle for power against their male oppressors. The justification for the abuse of men by women is that in living in a male dominated world, women are forced to act in this way. Any condemnation of their actions comes from a male frame of reference and is therefore unreliable. The ideological presumption which underlies this position is that since men have greater financial resources and hold the most powerful positions in society, they cannot be in the position of victim.
Whereas 'power' is normally defined as control over other people, income and