https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/317413
With the media’s focus currently on the phenomenon of domestic violence against women, the head of Shovrot Shivyon (Breaking the Equality), Naama Zarbiv, presented some very surprising facts regarding violence directed not against the wife but rather the husband.
In conversation with Israel National News, Zarbiv related the background story to the facts she provided.
“Many of the men in our organization think that the figures regarding spousal abuse are symmetrical and present statistics from abroad,” Zarbiv says. “When I tried to talk about the phenomenon at a Knesset panel discussion, and requested statistics from the police so that budgets could be allocated accordingly, Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) – who was then standing in as chair of the committee – cut me off and muted my microphone, ‘explaining’ that violent women do not exist.”
“That really infuriated me,” she continues, “and I decided, in the name of freedom of information, to get hold of official police figures, because in the judicial system there’s a certain bias and we wanted to have a working figure to use.”
Zarbiv describes how “we requested statistics for grievous bodily harm (GBH), inflicted on men by women and the reverse. We especially wanted statistics for GBH because it’s something that can be proven with physical evidence, and also because a lot of people claim that while the phenomenon of spousal abuse against the husband exists, it refers to emotional abuse rather than physical.”
“The figures simply stunned us,” she says. Police statistics for 2020 showed that while 177 cases had been opened relating to the male spouse inflicting violence on the female, a whopping 2,068 cases had been opened relating to violence inflicted by the female spouse on the male.
This has long been a dirty secret. Part of it is due to the obvious power imbalance. On average, men are larger, stronger and more aggressive than women. In addition there is a societal stigma. The shame a man feels when beaten by a woman is completely unacceptable. No arms rush out to hug him and say "Oh poor baby! We'll protect you from her."
ReplyDeleteBut then again, how many agun's are also out there?
Seems the underdog status of women is now in the past. They are very empowered and supported, presumed to be the victim and pull at society's heartstrings. Of course this is an overcorrection due to the abuse that men used to do to women. I imagine with forums like these, over time, the pendulum will swing and correct itself a bit.
ReplyDeleteWomen know how badly men need what they have. They know they can get away with passive aggressive, covert abuse for a long time. Men aren't well versed in spotting these things. They don't even know how to define their own feelings. So they suck it up and act like they have it together, despite aching for connection and for their most primal, basic needs to be filled. At the very least there needs to be a public awareness of what the minimum acceptable marriage has in it, a baseline to hold both sides accountable for their part. And we as a society need to be open to seeing if a woman is not carrying her weight, she needs to be coached on this. Men can't be expected to forfeit their basic needs for the sake of keeping their wife happy. And if she's overtly abusive to the point where he's receiving bodily harm? He should not feel emasculated in reporting that his woman beat him. Men deserve a voice, too.