There are 2.9 million British men being misgendered by their own government. 2.9 million. That’s how many male victims of abuse there are in England and Wales, and all of them are officially categorised as women. ‘Male victims of crimes considered violence against women and girls’ to be precise. That is the name of the infamous policy document that the Government released this time last year to ‘destigmatise male victims of abuse’. An objective it failed quite literally on its own front cover. Take a moment to imagine how invalidating it must feel, for a man who is being abused to be considered a victim of violence against women? And this is not just a semantic thing. The whole way we help (or exclude from help) vulnerable men and boys follows this mental gymnastic dogmatic nonsense. For like the title of that document, the narrative is just as one sided; there is no help, no specific interventions and virtually no shelter for men at all. These millions of abused men are the ugly and inconvenient truth, stuck to the shoe of our domestic violence industry, that is being trodden across Westminster. And it humiliates us all. The only thing more shocking than this bogus categorising of men and boys is the answer given to “why?” And the words of our very own Minister of State for Home Affairs say everything – they’re scared. Our own Government are scared of sticking up for abused men and boys, scared of fulfilling their obligations as politicians, and as human beings. Worst of all, they are scared of the domestic violence industry itself. It’s a mess, and one nobody wants to talk about. So what do you think? ~ Source [1] Image by Camila Carvalho, Kiwi Hug, Gradienta, Dan Cristian Padure, from Unsplash. #domesticviolence #malesurvivors #mensissues

2023-04-09