If you want to know why violence against men by women goes so unreported and is so often dismissed with a wink and a chuckle, look no further than the difference in the press treatment of Chris Brown's assault on Rihanna and the press treatment of what happened to Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Geno Hayes last Saturday.
Never heard of what happened to Geno Hayes last Saturday? That’s exactly the point.
On Saturday, March 7, Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Geno Hayes was stabbed by his girlfriend Shevelle Bagley after the two argued. The sheriff's spokeswoman says Bagley grabbed a pair of scissors and stabbed Hayes in the head. After Hayes managed to get the scissors away from her, authorities say she then grabbed a knife and stabbed him in the neck. Hayes was taken to the hospital and is now recovering.
Bagley was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. Jail records show she was released Sunday on $25,000 bail (think that would have happened if the roles were reversed?).
While the disgusting incident of Chris Brown beating his girlfriend has been front page news and the subject of countless hand-wringing panel discussions – and will even have a full Oprah Winfrey show devoted to it - it’s telling that this attempted murder against Geno Hayes by his girlfriend was mainly covered only in the sports pages and sports press.
Domestic violence against women is real, prevalent, and unacceptable, and we are right to raise it and address it as we do. But domestic violence – both physical and verbal – against men is also real, prevalent, and unacceptable, and is woefully ignored and trivialized – often by the very "enlightened" people that should know better.
Suzanne K. Steinmetz found in "The Cycle of Violence," a 1977 study of 57 families from a wide range of socioeconomic categories and age groups that "60 percent had used physical aggression . . . to resolve marital conflicts. Thirty-nine percent of husbands and 37 percent of wives had thrown things, 20 percent of both husbands and wives had struck their spouses with their hands, and 10 percent of both husbands and wives had hit their spouses with a hard object."
Dr. Steinmetz also observed that there were few differences between husbands and wives in the type and frequency of physical aggression. Women, she noted, were "as likely" as men "to select and initiate physical violence" to resolve marital conflicts.
In "Spouse Abuse: Incidence and Relationship to Selected Demographic Variables," a 1979 study in the journal Victimology by Nisonoff and Bitman, it was found that "Wives reported hitting their husbands almost as frequently as husbands reported hitting wives, and a higher proportion of men reported having been hit by their wives than vice versa . . . men often are the victims of spousal violence."
Physical abuse is pretty self-evident, but what about verbal abuse? If you are a man and are wondering if you have been verbally abused by your girlfriend or wife, here are some things to ask yourself:
Did she embarrass or humiliate you in front of other people, including your friends or family?
Did she prevent you from taking a job you wanted, or going to school?
Did she force you, either directly or through manipulation, to quit a job you had?
Did she make jokes about her treatment of you, insist that she never did anything to hurt you, or blame you for her behavior?
Did she treat you as if you were her servant?
Did she insist that anything you wanted for yourself was selfish and/or wrong?
Did she withhold affection to "punish" you for any violations of her rules?
Did she intimidate you in any way?
Did she threaten you, or threaten to harm herself or anyone else, if/when you left?
Did she ever make you do things you felt were wrong or illegal?
Did she ever belittle your beliefs, or tell you that your faith is wrong?
Did she make you leave social gatherings, or restrict your contact with your friends or family?
Did she make you feel afraid, or like you needed to be "careful" around her?
Did she make you feel guilty or ashamed about yourself, your feelings, your beliefs, or anything else that makes you a unique individual?
Domestic violence – both physical and verbal – against either women or men is unacceptable and needs be taken as seriously when it is done by women as it is when done by men.
It’s time to treat it equally.