Tori Amos once sang, "Sometimes I hear my voice, and it's been here silent all these years."
The double−edged sword of gender inequality cuts both ways, resulting in a problematic gendering of any and everything, an unending scrutiny of females and their behaviors while males can often go under the radar and escape detection. To further generalize and simplify, women's bodies historically have always garnered attention and policing, and it continues to this day. However, such a contention may be more evident than positing that men have undergone a similar — and most likely a much less stringent — system of regulation. Because males are perceived as the "norm" and "ungendered," even scholarship on gender issues has fallen prey to this blind spot and overlooked them. I'm waxing poetic about this in order to establish that various factors, including what I've just mentioned, function to silence male victims of domestic violence (DV).
First, I'd like to address the unnecessary — to a certain extent — gendering that occurs. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief from 2003, men accounted for about 15 percent of the victims of intimate partner violence and women represented 85 percent of the victims. Such a gender discrepancy understandably calls for a much higher baseline of support and outreach to women but that does not necessitate the erasure and disregard for male victims. Framing problems like DV as gendered without provisions that seek to address it holistically can thus result in a problematic silencing of and preventable ire on the part of the overlooked gender — think men's rights activism.
Furthermore, the statistics most likely do not accurately represent the reality of DV. Last week, I touched upon the gender role strain that may result in men from a failure to live up to expectations for their gender performance. This relates directly in that there exist cultural norms that compel men to put on a macho facade that insists upon an individualistic approach to problems. Likely to keep their problems to themselves and assume sole responsibility for handling them, men shun help from others and resist any intervention and interference. They probably internalize their feelings and are less likely to articulate any forms of DV or their effects of shame and fear. Of course, this is also true among female victims, but it is more likely that men will have to deal with more disbelief and ridicule, a factor that pronounces the underreporting of DV among male victims.
Although campaigns on DV bring awareness to the plight of women, the flip side of this gendered approach perpetuates the abuse of men within the domestic sphere, as do our societal norms. Who is to say that DV must stay within a gendered frame and operate in an exclusionary way, especially when victims are ignored and have a lack of support?
Furthermore, relatively recent literature on DV found comparable levels of abuse and control in men and women, and surveys reported similar rates of assault and its first instance among men and women. That is not to say that DV is not a serious problem for women, but it is imperative to remember the male victims. I do not mean to insinuate my own perspectives and insist upon men's issues as a primary focus for feminism, but I do believe it is necessary to recognize the wide−range effects of gender inequality and address issues with a more universal approach that can still accommodate and emphasize women's issues. Despite the fact that men as a group wield more power and influence than women as group, men as individuals may not necessarily benefit to such an extent. Therefore, we must reframe DV outside of a gendered lens.
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Elisha Sum is a senior majoring in English and French. He can be reached at Elisha.Sum@tufts.edu.
