"Man Up" campaign & the continued media erosion of men.

eviltwin

py2006 wrote: »

It's safe Ireland not Safe women Ireland

So maybe a name change is in order? Even if that happened it still wouldn't be enough for some people.

Sleepy

eviltwin wrote: »

But Safe Ireland only deal with women. Its like a gay charity doing an awareness campaign on HIV/AIDS, its not saying only gay people are at risk but is focusing on the people they represent. I wouldn't expect Amen to start talking about domestic violence against women so why would you expect Safe Ireland which is an umbrella group for all the domestic violence services aimed at women to start dealing with men??

When society divides itself into sectors and each sector fights only for it's rights, I can't see us ever getting an equal world.

Should we band together and fight for the idea, we might just get it.

Zulu

Sleepy wrote: »

When society divides itself into sectors and each sector fights only for it's rights, I can't see us ever getting an equal world.

Should we band together and fight for the idea, we might just get it.

Exactly this! We will never achieve equality for all by only representing elitist groups.

Madam_X

Saw an item about this on the news and to me it just seemed to be saying "Calling all men: as men, you are potentially physically abusive to women and children - so don't be that man." It's very pointed, biased, discriminatory and exceptionally misleading. Not to mention grossly unfair.

It's not whataboutery to object to this campaign, it's merely to make the point that awareness of domestic abuse should be created with a holistic take, because it's not a gender issue (even if it may be more experienced by women - but that includes abuse of a woman/child by a woman, not always a man) it's something that can affect anyone. Like, what about elder abuse? Domestic abuse is unfortunately not confined to abuse of a partner and/or children.

eviltwin

Zulu wrote: »

Exactly this! We will never achieve equality for all by only representing elitist groups.

I don't disagree but I don't see how that will work. I'm not sure Amen would even want to be included in an organisation like Safe Ireland. I think in this case becasue the issue of violence against men is so new and still largely going undisclosed that they would be lost in a group like Safe Ireland. I think the first thing is to build the profile of Amen and then perhaps when violence against men isn't seen as such a "novelty" then a more inclusive organisation could form.

Galvasean

eviltwin wrote:

I think in this case becasue the issue of violence against men is so new and still largely going undisclosed that they would be lost in a group like Safe Ireland. I think the first thing is to build the profile of Amen and then perhaps when violence against men isn't seen as such a "novelty" then a more inclusive organisation could form.

I'm sorry, but I've never read such a pile of hogwosh! So what, we should only support the popular charities now?

eviltwin

Galvasean wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I've never read such a pile of hogwosh! So what, we should only support the popular charities now?

I never said anything of the sort

IvySlayer

It's like the Violence Against Women Act in America....all men are presumed to be guilty. The men can never be the victim.

Madam_X

Amen exists because of the lack of recognition of the issue of abuse against men, and the fact the bigger organisations focus on abuse against women specifically and are in receipt of far more funding. An organisation that just focuses on domestic abuse full stop would help eliminate the above biases.

Galvasean

eviltwin wrote: »

I never said anything of the sort

You said a group like Amen needs to build up its profile before it could join up with something like 'Safe Ireland'. So tell me, how much bigger a profile would Amen need before 'Safe Ireland' and its supporters should take the issue of domestic abuse against men seriously?

eviltwin

Galvasean wrote: »

You said a group like Amen needs to build up its profile before it could join up with something like 'Safe Ireland'. So tell me, how much bigger a profile would Amen need before 'Safe Ireland' and its supporters should take the issue of domestic abuse against men seriously?

Who says Safe Ireland don't take violence against men seriously? They release the stats on the calls and referrals they get. They don't deny violence against men happens. But they can't report on figures they don't have access to.

Amen are one organisation, the only one I know of, that works with men. Safe Ireland is the umbrella organisation for HUNDREDS of services that work with women. Of course a small group like Amen will get lost in that mix, that doesn't do them, or the men they represent any good.

Pat Mustard

The next instalment of the Man Up campaign, showing a typical Irishman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW9CVwoQbnQ

donfers

disgraceful but predictable

i heard a piece on the matt cooper show, he didn't mention male victims once, his justification was that he was doing piece on the domestic abuse of women and that the programme has done a piece on domestic abuse against men in the past

hello you imbecile, domestic abuse is not a gender issue.....all right-thinking men and women oppose any kind of domestic abuse against men or women, more of it occurs against women but that doesn't men we should in any way ignore or segregate the make victims of domestic abuse, wrong is wrong

i know the figures suggest that a lot more young males are committing suicide than young women, but if any organisation or campaign suggested or implied that it was an exclusively male issue i would be disgusted

all victims deserve to be supported and helped, we should not segregate them based on gender

Lon Dubh

I am glad I am not the only one that is pissed off by this campaign. I am a woman but felt that it gives a misleading impression, and I really hate the expression to "Man-up" and wish people (or at least organisations) would not use it.

eviltwin wrote: »

Who says Safe Ireland don't take violence against men seriously? They release the stats on the calls and referrals they get. They don't deny violence against men happens. But they can't report on figures they don't have access to.

If they are not looking for something they are not going to find it. If a group only look at service-providers for information about domestic violence they are going to get a very skewed picture of the overall situation in the country. If most services are directed at women, then that is what they will end up collecting statistics on.

I am not arguing that there should not be research on the service users, or gender-specific research, or even possibly gender-specific campaigns, but if you only work with women, and only campaign on violence against women, and only collect statistics on violence against women, then you are going to get and more importantly possibly give a very misleading picture of what the story is in the overall population.

It is a vicious circle. If people think domestic violence only happens to women, or that it is very very rare for men, then there will be a perception that there is not much of a need for funding for services for men, or not such a need to campaign on violence against men.

This then will result in male victims remaining isolated and not coming forward, which could then give the impression that there is no need for services for men (as it looks like there are little or no male victims).

I read part of a paper on domestic violence done in the US and they found that the picture was very different when they questioned men as well as women as opposed to just women, or almost exclusively women (I cannot remember their methods, but they did some sort of population-based study, as opposed to service-user based study, or instead of just looking at cases reported to the police, as male victims are less likely to come forward and report to the police)

I was surprised that the percentage of abuse of men was quite similar to the percentage of abuse against women. They mentioned that one of the problems with a lot of previous domestic violence research was that it collected statistics from service-users which were almost always women as the services provided were for women only.

Lon Dubh

Some Irish research to back-up my point above

http://www.amen.ie/Papers/15270.htm

On Tuesday 5th July 2005 the National Crime Council (NCC), in
association with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), published
the first ever large scale study undertaken to give an overview of the nature,
extent and impact of domestic abuse against women and men in
intimate partner relationships in Ireland. Among the notable findings
are:

• [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]15% of women and 6% of men suffer [/FONT]
  [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]severe domestic abuse[/FONT]
• [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]29% of women and 26% of men suffer [/FONT]
  [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]domestic abuse when severe and[/FONT]
  [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]minor abuse are combined[/FONT]
• [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]13% of women and 13% of men suffer [/FONT]
  [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]physical abuse [/FONT]
• [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]29% of women (1 in 3) and only 5% [/FONT]
  [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]of men (1 in 20) report to the Gardaí[/FONT]

and

the ACCORD research (2003), based on a survey of 1500 clients, found that
women were perpetrators in 30% of domestic violence cases, men were
perpetrators in 23% of cases and mutual violence accounted for 48%. An
interesting feature of this study, which involved couples attending counseling,
was that 84% of women and 74% of men agreed with their partner’s response to
this question, suggesting that the self-reported prevalence is quite
reliable.

and

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Galway GP survey, [/FONT][/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] 2005[/FONT]


[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Since the NCC report, a survey of 200 patients attending a [/FONT]

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Galway city GP practice in August 2005 found that 1 in 3 patients surveyed had [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] experienced domestic violence in the past while 6% reported that they were [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] current victims. 18.2% of men were victims of domestic violence. Dr. Caitriona [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Waters, who carried out the survey, said “the figure of 18.2% may be an [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] underestimate. There are probably more men out there experiencing domestic [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] abuse, but it is difficult for them to volunteer this information. In addition [/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] males do not attend GPs as frequently as female patients”. [/FONT]

[/FONT]

iptba

Benny_Cake wrote: »

I'm surprised at the Rape Crisis Network. As part of a job I had a good few years back I attended a day's training with them (some of those using our services had been sexuality assaulted) and as part of it we heard the story of a man who had been raped. They struck me as humane and even-handed at the time so why they have gotten themselves involved with this cack-handed campaign is beyond me.

However, in that scenario, the abuser was still male. It doesn't counter-act: "what did he do, not what is wrong with her."

iptba

I think a possible contributing factor to problems in the field is the phrase "gender-based violence" with regard to domestic abuse. It seems to imply that male-on-female abuse is a systemic problem, while female-on-male abuse is some sort of oddity.

jackofalltrades

eviltwin wrote: »

But Safe Ireland only deal with women.

To put it more accurately Safe Ireland only deal with women when they're the victims of domestic violence.
They completely ignore women when they're the perpetrators of domestic violence.

Its like a gay charity doing an awareness campaign on HIV/AIDS, its not saying only gay people are at risk but is focusing on the people they represent.

A better comaprison would be Sinn Fein running a campaign against sectarian violence in North Ireland.
Showing just nationalist victims and portraying the loyalist community as the sole perpetrators.

DamoKen

eviltwin wrote: »

So maybe a name change is in order? Even if that happened it still wouldn't be enough for some people.

As has already been suggested if it's a members only club maybe that's not a bad idea.

At least this way instead of understandable confusion a man seeking help would feel their name could now like the rest of the site ignore the overwhelming evidence that men also suffer abuse and the man seeking help like so many other male victims of domestic abuse can with disappointment fade back into the shadows instead of adding to inconvenient stats.

Zulu

eviltwin wrote: »

Who says Safe Ireland don't take violence against men seriously?

However serious they take it, it's not serious enough to feature in their campaign. To this point, their campaign consists entirely of men being abusive and women being victims. Putting aside the issue of how this negatively portrays men as a whole; can women not be abused by other women? Mothers, sisters, aunts, lovers?? No??? Does this abuse not warrant a mention in their campaign? It would appear not.

...but I suppose that would fly in the face of idea that women are victims, which appears to be the crux of this campaign.

hey don't deny violence against men happens.

Sadly (least we forget) domestic abuse is far broader than violence.

Galvasean

Galvasean wrote: »

I'm sorry, but I've never read such a pile of hogwosh! So what, we should only support the popular charities now?

Well it works for Pandas.

Piliger

eviltwin wrote: »

Who says Safe Ireland don't take violence against men seriously?

Have you visited their web site ? read their campaign ?

What is their Logo ? "Creating safety for Women and Children" what about men ??

What is their campaign headline ? "Don't control or abuse Women or Children"

This is a deeply prejudiced and misandrous and offensive organisation that is generating hatred against men across the board.

eviltwin

Piliger wrote: »

Have you visited their web site ? read their campaign ?

What is their Logo ? "Creating safety for Women and Children" what about men ??

What is their campaign headline ? "Don't control or abuse Women or Children"

This is a deeply prejudiced and misandrous and offensive organisation that is generating hatred against men across the board.

I know them very well, I work for one of their member organisations.

Just a bit of info on Safe Ireland, they are not really an organisation as such, they are the central point of most of the DV groups in Ireland from well knows groups like Women's Aid to the small local group that has 4/5 members. They collect all the data and release it to the media.

So far there is only one main group/helpline for men, AMEN. AMEN choose to be outside the Safe Ireland catchment, maybe they feel as the only group for men in such a large collection they will be "lost" but whatever the reason they seem happier to go it alone and thats fair enough.

But meanwhile all those organisations working for women still tick along doing their work and have to report to someone. They don't hate men, I'm not working there because I think all men are abusive bastards, I'm married to a lovely man, I have a son, brothers, I'm not telling my teenage daughter that every man is going to beat the crap out of her.

AMEN have a helpline, they collect stats, I don't know why they don't have a higher profile launch of those.

iptba

Sharrow wrote: »

DamoKen wrote:

Just had a look and have to say I'm shocked. Everything from the logo on blatantly ignores half the population in any sense other than the negative and only reinforces the victimisation of women and demonisation of men.

Irresponsible in the extreme. Are they government funded?

Yes.

http://www.safeireland.ie/about-us/our-funders/

Primarily via the HSE

2008 2009 2010
HSE Children & Families 491,845 490,963 414,800

But just to be clear, as eviltwin has effectively pointed out http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=81986709&postcount=54, Safe Ireland is only part of the funding: the groups involved individually get a lot more funding.
The Irish Times http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/1128/1224327206980.html refers to a €4.5m cut in funding to services since 2008. I presume this is for these bodies. So presumably the funding is in the millions - perhaps it is, or was, over €10m?

If one was cynical, one could even say groups and individuals who work in such sectors have a vested interest in hyping a problem to ensure funding and hence maintain their jobs or salaries.

Zulu

Here is the letter I'm sending to SafeIreland. Thanks to everyone for helping draft it (with your posts here), but in particular Cainos who I've pretty much quoted verbatim on one point.
I'm going to send this in twenty mins - any last min points would be greatly appreciated.

---

To whom it man concern.

I’m writing to express both my concern and disappointment with respect to your recent advertisement campaign “Man Up”. I find this campaign not only to be offensive & ill conceived, but also dangerous in it’s naivety. Honestly, I can not decide which is worse.

Firstly, the advertisement campaign to date consists of “normal men” talking frankly. Clearly these aren’t normal men as we soon find out that they are abusive. However, there isn’t a single depiction of an abusive woman. Why? Do women not abuse? Can women not be abused by other women? Mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, lovers?? No??? Does this abuse not warrant a mention in your campaign? I would suggest that it does. Domestic abuse is a greater issue than men physically abusing women.

Women abuse women, just as women abuse men. Men abuse men, just as men abuse women. Domestic abuse is not a gender issue. By painting such a biased picture you are ignoring that women can be abusers, and you are perpetrating a negative, sexist and prejudiced stereotype of men.

Secondly, I take it you are aware of propaganda? Propaganda has been used to get effect in the past to demonise sectors of society by only expressing biased opinions, and reinforcing prejudiced ones. When we only portray men as abusers, and this ad campaign is guilty of that, then we demonise men as a whole. We offer justification for extreme positions, for those few who hate men, and justification does nothing to prevent such hate growing. This is an appalling thing to let happen to the majority of innocent men. These ignorant attitudes mustn’t be allowed; these sexist messages have no place in an egalitarian society.

“Man up” I hope, is directed at the abuser. It appears that the “Man Up” is there to challenge all men’s misperceptions of masculinity and our misguided use of physicality. It belittles men in assuming that we are all potential abusers. “Man Up” is a call to action; in other words, not being an abuser requires action; in other words, we’re all abusers by default. This is grossly offensive. But taking that offence aside, has any consideration been made as to what message “Man Up” sends to male victims of domestic abuse? Are these poor victims of domestic abuse supposed to take it on the chin, like a “real man”?

I trust this clarifies the err of your ways. I can only hope you’ll acknowledge this mistake and try to portray a more balanced view in the future. I would also like to take this opportunity to commend the great work that you do in helping victims of domestic abuse, and I will stand beside you and join you in declaring that this has to stop.

Sincerely,
Zulu

CdeC

This is badly thought out,

A lot of depression and risk to mens health can be due to the fact that they don't feel "Man" enough and feel useless compared with how society percieves a man should behave.

Even the slogan "Man up" just doesn't serve to get past this issue that a man needs to be strong and in control at all times.

Also I imagine the perpertrators of physical abuse are men in most cases but there is also psychological abuse which can be delivered by both parties and be equally as damaging

Lemming

CdeC wrote: »

Also I imagine the perpertrators of reported physical abuse are men in most cases ...

The important word there is "reported", which I've added. If the figures that Lon Dubh cited above are accurate, a difference of 3% (29% vs. 26% of reported DV) does not constitute "most" in anything other than the most rigid interpretation of the word. It also ignores the 48% reciprocal figure that shows both sexes just as likely to engage in violence or abuse of some degree towards each other.

seamus

Lemming wrote: »

The important word there is "reported", which I've added. If the figures that Lon Dubh cited above are accurate, a difference of 3% (29% vs. 26% of reported DV) does not constitute "most" in anything other than the most rigid interpretation of the word. It also ignores the 48% reciprocal figure that shows both sexes just as likely to engage in violence or abuse of some degree towards each other.

As has probably been mentioned in this thread already, studies suggest that women when physically violent are more likely to resort to using weapons, and so in general cause more severe physical damage than violent men do.
In any case, I'm not sure how well the "men are typically physical, women are not" argument holds up.

In theory it seems obvious - schoolyard bullying is typically reported as being physical among boys and psychological among girls. And since domestic abuse is in the same family as bullying, it would stand to reason that men tend to use force and women tend to use psychological control.

But I'm not sure how true that is. After all, if a man solely relied on beatings to keep his wife "in line", she'd be gone like a shot. There has to be a psychological element to it that makes her stay despite the beatings. Likewise, I see no reason why an abusive wife would not resort to physical violence every now and again to keep her man "in line", safe in the knowledge that he would do nothing about it. Psychological and physical abuse are not in different families, so someone who has no scruples about being psychologically abusive is not going to be opposed to physical abuse - and vice-versa.

So trying to separate it out into violent or nonviolent is folly, as either can be worse than the other depending on context, instead all should be classed as domestic abuse.

Zulu

No reply from SafeIreland yet - must be very busy.

py2006

Zulu wrote: »

No reply from SafeIreland yet - must be very busy.

I doubt they will reply to you.

If they do it will be a generic response something along the lines of "Thank you for your email. We will take your comments into consideration"