Abstract
This valuable paper addresses an important topic in domestic violence and abuse (DVA) that has begun to be acknowledged in recent years yet still remains marginalised and unnecessarily controversial. The topic is whether, and if so how, to acknowledge and respond to men’s experience of DVA, whether that abuse is from a male or a female partner, including consideration of the impact of the abuse on these men’s children.
In terms of our modern understanding, DVA was first challenged in the early 1970s by unfunded collectives that publicised and politicised ‘wife battering’. For many years there was resistance to acknowledging the needs of lesbians who experienced DVA as this threatened the construct of DVA as ‘men’s violence against women’ (for an example of such resistance see Scott, 1994, and for the harm done see, e.g. Goldfarb, 1996).
In the late 1990s, lesbian, gay and bisexual campaigners began to lobby for services for ‘victims’ in same-sex relationships and then later also for transgender people. Organisations such as Women’s Aid are now inclusive of lesbian and trans women ‘victims’ and a few, very small, services now exist to address the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people experiencing DVA. In fascinating research based on listening to the lived experience of several hundred LGBT people, including their experiences of marginalisation by the National Health Service and other services, the harm done by the exclusive definition of DVA as ‘violence against women’ has been revealed (Donovan and Hester, 2010).
Now that all women and gay, bisexual and trans male ‘victims’ are recognised, it is more than time to ask how we can attend to heterosexual men’s experiences of DVA and its impact on their children. In passing it should be noted that organisations such as Women’s Aid can legitimately limit their activities to certain groups of people if they so wish, so, for example, ‘women only’ services can be perfectly legitimate. The same, however, cannot be said for statutory services which, while they may have a range of particular services for particular groups of people, are under an Equality Duty obligation not to discriminate taking the service as a whole.
The hard-won lessons of feminist activism must not be forgotten. The importance of beginning with, and attending to, the lived experiences of ‘victims’, of being alive to psychological and organisational barriers to accessing services and an awareness that ‘victims’ have different experiences based on class, race, disability, parenthood and so on (intersectionality) are all just as valid when considering men’s experience of DVA. This methodologically sound exploration of robust empirical studies provides an appropriate platform for health services to begin to address their Gender Equality Duty obligations and to develop their responses to DVA so that all ‘victims’ and their children receive appropriate support.