Invisible Victims: Men In Abusive Relationships

[Behind the Aegis]

1. This is an excellent article!

I was really impressed it addressed the concerns of the gay and bi male communities as well. We are often left out of these type of articles or only mentioned in passing. I was honestly surprised the numbers were not higher for those in the gay community for abuse. My experiences would place those numbers much higher, almost 50%, but it isn't really surprising to me, given the abuse we grow up with in life.

What I find interesting is the number of self-professed liberals and progressives who scoff at articles like this or seek desperately to change the subject, as if males being abused isn't a real issue or an important one. I am one of four boys and all of us have been in abusive relationships at one time or another. My parents are mutually abusive to one another.

Straight men, IMO, do have the worse end of the deal because they are usually ridiculed, ignored, or told to "grow a pair." There was a recent "What Would You Do?" episode which showed the differences when the attacker was male or female and female on male (they didn't use any GL examples).the former was NEVER ignored, the latter was not only mostly ignored, but people would actually stop, watch, and laugh, and that was physical abuse. When it comes to emotional abuse, men are treated as wimps or worse, as liars. For me, no one believed me until one of my best friends joined us for lunch and he lit into me. She almost punched him out in the middle of the dining hall. Once she spoke out, others started to realize I wasn't lying. It ended soon after.