We have heard and read a great deal lately about the #metoo movement and domestic violence, accompanied by an unfortunately defensive response from some men.
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Some of the male commentary conflates serious problems of domestic violence and inappropriate sexual behaviour with the poor treatment of men in some relationships.
I know men who have felt unhappy in marriages, unfairly and too often criticised for their behaviour. I know others for whom this criticism has taken on a deeper, more sinister element and led to psychological problems and damaged children.
Some men emerge from child custody proceedings feeling, rightly or wrongly, that they have been ignored by a patriarchal judicial system which still sees child-raising as predominantly a woman’s domain.
But to present these men as some form of counterweight to the physical, sexual and mental abuse of women is reductive and unhelpful reasoning.
This is not a zero-sum game. Any argument that reduces the debate to absolute gender winners and losers is overly simplistic; in fact, in that respect it should not be a debate at all.
Discussion of domestic abuse should not dissolve into a competition between the sexes, and only an immature society would treat it that way.
Yes, men are occasionally the victims of physical violence at the hands of their female partners, but the statistics, court lists and newspaper reports attest to the fact that they are overwhelmingly outnumbered by battered women.
The litany of sexual crimes against children detailed in these pages is also largely a product of men, both in the act and the cover-up.
We should feel compassion for all people enduring difficult relationships, whether they are women facing the horror of a violent husband or men facing a vindictive partner across the table in Family Court mediation. We can acknowledge one without diminishing the suffering of the other.
But we must also remember that when some men feel aggrieved at the hands of their partner, they are angry; when some women feel aggrieved, they are terrified.
To forget that, despite decades of slow movement towards greater equality, inequality still exists is to forget history and ignore the present.
By the same token, any sentiment that all or most men are prone to violence and domineering sexual criminality is also divisive and fails to recognise the many men who have no such inclinations.
Discussion of domestic abuse should not dissolve into a competition between the sexes, and only an immature society would treat it that way.