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Why Eric Bristow is wrong about male victims of sexual abuse

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The former darts world champion, Eric Bristow has lost his role with Sky Sports after suggesting that the footballers speaking out about being victims of childhood sexual abuse are not “proper men”.

It’s a shocking fact that between 2011 and 2015 there were an estimated 679,000 sexual assaults on men and boys in the UK and 96% were not reported to the police. Yet according to media reports, Bristow said on twitter that footballers are “wimps” and that the victims should not be able to look at themselves in the mirror for failing to get revenge on their abusers as adults. In contrast, Bristow said that darts players are “tough guys” and that he “would have went back and sorted that poof out”, later claiming he “meant paedophile not poof”.

In response to the comments made by Eric Bristow, the Sussex-based charity for male victims of sexual abuse, Mankind, issued the following statement “as a way of gaining greater understanding of some of the issues that Mr Bristow raises”. The statement says:

We recognise that Eric Bristow’s comments on his twitter account were unhelpful and could be received as deeply offensive by the courageous men who have agonised over whether or not to come forward and share their stories of historic sexual abuse. We also feel it is useful to separate the behaviour from the man. Over the coming days and weeks, Mr Bristow will no doubt be pilloried in the press. Sometimes this public shaming of people who express their misunderstanding of a social issue is just as unhelpful as the ignorance of their poorly conceived comments.

 

Let’s take a moment to unpack some of Mr Bristow’s misconceptions about how an individual responds to sexual abuse in the moment and how they choose to heal from this experience later in life. Mr Bristow’s twitter feed would suggest that in the first instance a child is fully in control of their faculties to resist a sexual perpetrator. Secondly, he implies that as a survivor matures to adulthood, they “should” seek out their perpetrator in order to take their violent revenge.

Both of these assumptions are often untrue for survivors of sexual abuse. Sadly, Mr Bristow’s views are not held in isolation. At Mankind, we regularly hear from our clients about a general lack of understanding about the impact of sexual abuse on an individual and the pain caused by friends and family members expressing unhelpful comments like “why didn’t you fight back?” and “surely you could have done something about it!”.

So let’s look at Mr Bristow’s first assumption, the idea that a young person can choose to fight off their perpetrator when the abuse is taking place. A crucial problem with this assumption is the idea that a person faced with trauma has full resource of their brain. When confronted with a traumatic event, the back brain referred to as the limbic system takes the lead. This part of the brain is unconscious, automatic and invested in survival. It is this part of the brain that will determine a person’s response when confronted with a serious threat. The front brain or neo-cortex where thinking, choosing, planning and reflecting takes place is bypassed. Accordingly, at the moment of trauma, the individual does not choose how to respond and may be surprised by the response of their body to freeze, take flight or fight.

When the fight or flight systems cannot be activated or escape is impossible, the limbic system can simultaneously activate a different branch of the autonomic nervous system, causing a state of freezing called “tonic immobility” – like a deer caught in headlights. There could be many reasons, both physical or relational as to why fighting or fleeing are not viable options, particularly if the traumatic threat is prolonged.

Now let’s take a look at Mr Bristow’s second assumption, the idea that a survivor of historic sexual abuse “should” want to exact violent revenge on their perpetrator. From our experience of working with men who have experienced childhood sexual abuse, we have seen that fantasies about taking revenge are common. These thoughts can sometimes be all consuming and can swallow up an individual’s every waking moment. However, these thoughts often remain just that; thoughts, re-occurring fantasises of what revenge might feel like. As clients begin to recover from their experiences and grow in different areas of their life, they tend to be less interested in revenge.

A far greater need is often their desire to be heard, believed and understood by their community. On another level, Mr Bristow’s comments about seeking revenge underestimate the potential complexity of a survivor’s relationship to their perpetrator. In the tabloid press, sexual perpetrators are often presented in cartoonish form where they are stalking strangers who were “born evil”. In reality, the majority of individuals who experience childhood sexual abuse are abused by a member of their own family, a trusted family friend or a person in authority. In the case of the footballers, their abusers had significant influence and power over their lives and indeed the continuation of their careers.

If we imagine a scenario where the perpetrator is an aunty, much loved by the rest of the family and celebrated for her superb community work and social standing, how easy is it for the survivor to seek revenge? For this survivor, to speak out may risk a huge rupture in the family. Worse still, what if they are not believed or their experience is denied? Where the perpetrator is viewed as a sinister male stranger who exists in a vacuum and was simply born evil, Bristow’s idea of a survivor seeking violent retribution is perhaps easier to understand. The idea of an adult survivor paying a visit to their aging aunt who abused them 30 years ago with the aim of beating her up is perhaps a less palatable concept.

It is all too easy to shower Mr Bristow in shame. Perhaps, it is more helpful to unpack some of the stereotypes and prejudices that are contained in his words. These are the views that persist in many sections of our society and act as a barrier to men in coming to terms with their abuse and finding a way forward that works for them .

Mankind is a Hove-based agency that offers support to men who have experienced sexual abuse at any time in their lives. All of its services are by appointment only and details can be found on the website www.mankindcounselling.org.uk.

For more immediate assistance for men who wish to talk about their own experience of sexual abuse, there is a national helpline run by Safeline www.safeline.org.uk who can be contacted on 0808 800 5005.

How can we stand by and do nothing for male victims of domestic violence?

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Writer, musician and insideMAN contributor, Chris Good, was subjected to severe domestic violence both privately and in public at the hands of a former girlfriend. Here he asks why women’s groups so often resist efforts to support male victims of domestic abuse.

The other morning, I was pleased to read that the Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk, was one of very few public figures to acknowledge male victims of domestic violence, even stating that more needs to be done to support them.

Putting it into perspective, it is a small, but significant, step in the right direction and I found myself encouraged that, even though it was news from Australia, the subject was credibly brought into the public sphere of our global society. As a UK men’s rights writer, I might have taken a quiet ‘celebration’ sip of my morning coffee after toasting ‘a fairer society’…had I not read this news in the context of feminist objection to Ms Palaszczuk’s stance.

At Palaszczuk’s mere acknowledgement of men as victims of domestic violence, she was, as reported in The Guardian Australia, ’warned not to put the domestic violence against men above women’. Unsurprisingly, this word of caution came from feminists and female focused domestic violence support services. But this is nothing new. A constant rebuttal to articles and campaign efforts that raise awareness of male victims, is that women have it worse and men are the main perpetrators.

In an attempt to pull focus back to women, Karyn Walsh, CEO of Micah projects stated ‘the overwhelming issue is the attitude men have to women as their possessions, as something they can control and punish. It is about their attitude.’   Not only is this statement a generalised and, at best, unsubstantiated idea -or accusation- of how ‘men’ think of women in our society today, but it is considerably off-topic, as Walsh shifts focus from male victims to male perpetrators.

What relevance does the attitude of a male criminal possibly have to a male victim? How can male victims be demonised alongside perpetrators, simply because of a feminist perpetuated gender stereotype? On what moral or ethical basis does one ignore a victim of crime because of perceived similarities to a criminal? And, perhaps the biggest question of all: Is this bigotry a good foundation for our societal norms?

The issue of domestic violence should not see a mention of the perceived or supposed attitudes of men, as proposed by a sub-culture of our population. Neither is raising awareness for male victims anything to do with taking attention and support away from the estimated 1.4m female victims. Let me be clear, it is our moral duty to help these women and provide services and refuge to them. However, I would rather hope our compassion, empathy and sense of justice, as a society, could stretch far enough to bring aid to the estimated 700,000 men who are reported to suffer domestic abuse, every year, without support, victim services, refuge, cultural understanding or, indeed, anywhere to turn.

This year I have somewhat vanished from the gender equality debate in order to work on my first book -soon to be available in all good stores…so on and so forth. In the book, I argue that our discussion of gender equality issues is so often steeped in allegiance to gender labels, movements and our own bias, that much needed change is prevented from seeing the light of day. We need to have a reform of our discussion for the sake of achieving effective change. This is, perhaps, most necessary in issues such as domestic violence. People are hurting; I can find no better reason for the mindless squabbling to end and for us to find a way to work together in order to support all those in need of help.

In the interest of true equality, I fully support the work of those who provide refuge and help to women, which should not be detracted from. But if we take a moment to focus on the victims of domestic violence and acknowledge that, by all accounts, men constitute around a third of those victims, can we really stand by and do nothing?

While our friends in Australia are busy deciding how they will help male victims of domestic abuse, here are the key facts about the UK’s male victims. And let’s ask ourselves: Can we really stand by and do nothing?

Every minute, a man will be the victim of domestic abuse

In 2014, the Office of National Statistics stated that a third of domestic abuse victims are male. That’s 700,000 men a year…that’s 1,917 men a day…that’s one man a minute suffering domestic abuse.

The report also showed that both men and women are more likely to experience non-physical abuse (emotional and financial) than any other kind of partner abuse. However, of those that are physically abused, men are more likely to suffer what’s called ‘severe force’ (34%) than women (28%), which involves being kicked, hit, bitten, choked, strangled, threatened with a weapon, threatened with death and the use of a weapon.

Only 0.4% of refuge spaces are dedicated to male victims

If we were to make support for all victims of domestic violence proportionate to the accepted percentages of female and male victims, how does nearly 400 specialist domestic violence organisations providing refuge accommodation for women in the UK, with around 4,000 spaces for over 7,000 women and children; compare to a total of 63 spaces available to men, of which 17 are dedicated to male DV victims only (the rest being for victims of either gender)? That equates to 0.4% of spaces dedicated to male victims.

Government allocated money for male victims was made all but inaccessible to them

In a “scraps from the table” offering to male victims, the Coalition government allocated £225,000 to be shared between 12 charities from 2011 to 2013, for the benefit of male victims. Only one of these was a service devoted only to male victims.

Domestic violence support should be focused on the victims

The inescapable fact is that the UK estimates 2,100,000 victims of domestic abuse each year and a third of these victims are men. Yet feminist and female focused organisations strive to keep the attention and provision focused only on women because, as Moo Baulch, CEO of Domestic Violence NSW, states, ‘the overwhelming number of victims were women and the overwhelming number of perpetrators were men’. Regardless of the perpetrator’s gender, male victims are in need of support.

Basing support provision on the gender of the perpetrator simply wreaks of ulterior motives and agenda when, in a civilised and compassionate society, our only focus should be on improving the situation faced by all recorded victims: relieving their pain, helplessness and loneliness.

Putting gender aside, with all victims of domestic abuse in mind, we must consider that in a society saturated with the depiction of male perpetrators and female victims, in a society that focuses 99.6% of its refuge support on women and in a society that denies men their cry for help, the ‘overwhelming number’ of unsupported, silenced and ignored victims of domestic violence…are men.

Chris Good is a writer and musician who writes on gender equality at Thought Catalog and is currently writing his first book on feminism and men’s rights. He is one of the contributors to the insideMAN book and you can follow him on twitter @goodwayround 

Chris’ personal story of experiencing domestic violence from a former girlfriend and the often callous reaction from people who witnessed it, is one of the powerful and important stories in the new insideMAN book.

BUY THE INSIDEMAN BOOK HERE!

Struggling to make a difference for male victims in Wales

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What’s it like being a man fighting for male victims of domestic violence in a world dominated by people whose primary concern is keeping the spotlight on female victims? Glen Poole of insideMAN speaks to Tony Stott of Healing Men, who has been campaigning on the issue in Wales for several years.

I’ve been watching men trying to influence public policy on gender issues for 20 years. I’ve seen fathers fighting for dads to have an equal right to be part of their children’s lives when parents separate. I’ve seen men who say their genitals were mutilated without their consent as children, fighting to protect boys from medically unnecessary circumcision. And I’ve seen men fighting for male victims of domestic violence to have equal protection and support.

The gender political war around domestic violence, in particular,  is one the most difficult gender battles to stomach as it puts anyone who attempts to advocate on behalf of male victims in direct conflict with those who work to help female victims—and nobody in their right mind would ordinarily choose to place them self in opposition to people speaking out for female victims.

Feminism has a problem with male victims

I have written elsewhere on the way the emergence of male victims and female perpetrators threatens the very existence of feminism and feminists who are the primary advocates of female victims. So it is a brave (or foolish) campaigner who attempts to tackle the status quo in a domestic violence sector that is dominated by feminists running services and programmes for female victims and male perpetrators.

One such man is Tony Stott of Healing Men who has been campaigning for male victims of domestic violence for many years, most recently in Wales, where he has been fighting the passage of a new Violence Against Women Bill—not because he supports violence against women, but because he believes it excludes male victims.

Last week Tony was at the Welsh Assembly watching the Bill being debated. He told me:

“I have been campaigning, pointlessly so far, against deeply sexist and unequal legislation being debated within the Welsh Assembly and wanted to see this at first hand in the Assembly chamber.”

Tony believes the Bill demonstrates that Wales has become a “Feminist One Party State”. He says the architects of The Bill have a gender political approach to domestic violence which can be characterised by the following passage from the book “Perceptions of Female Offenders” which describes the feminist view of the issue as:

“A result of patriarchal social systems where men are exclusively the batterers and females are exclusively the victims….This Neo-Marxian model posits the masculine (bourgeoisie) as occupying the upper rungs of privilege, authority, and power over the feminine (proletariat). Thus, domestic violence is the physical manifestation of his social dominance as it is forcibly imposed on her submissive feminine body. Conversely, female violence is initiated reactively, purely as a form of self-defence.”

Masculinity is seen as the problem 

Tony is particularly incensed by a passage in the “Task And Finish Group Report” which informed The Bill:

“Masculinity is associated with violence in most cultures and Wales is no exception; thus, all preventative work and interventions must be designed to address men’s violent behaviour, while at the same time recognizing that both men and women may be the victims of violence that is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.”

Tony believes this viewpoint is nothing short of discrimination against men. “Would such a gross and wholly stupid statement be tolerated against black or Muslim peoples?” he asks. “No! But this statement against men and boys is supported and uncritically welcomed by the Welsh Government. “

Tony is genuinely concerned that all victims of violence get the help and support they need. He has followed and engaged with every complex stage of The Bill since its inception in 2012 and even launched a epetition that gathered support from campaigners around the world.

Radical gender warriors

He feels that the entire process has been “hijacked by the radicalised gender warriors” in Wales and transformed from a project which could recognise the complexity of intimate human relationships (and the necessity of including mutual and female abuse and violence for the sake of children) to the Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Bill.”

After spending 90 minutes listening intently to the Welsh Assembly debating the Bill last week, Tony told be he was in “despair for men in Wales and fearful for the boys and girls in Wales who will be left to learn violent and abusive behaviour at the hands of violent and abusive parents”.

“The main discussion,” he says “was around the question of how quickly the Welsh Government could get organised to teach seven year boys the “masculinity is associated with violence .. and all interventions must address men’s violent behaviour” theme.”

“Some wanted this ‘education’ to be put in the Bill”, he said, “but the Minister, rather chillingly I thought, sought to appease by stating that the charity Women’s Aid have volunteered to send in staff to teach ‘Healthy Relationships’ in schools.”

Tony is deeply frustrated at what he sees as the refusal of the Welsh Government to give consideration to the needs of male victims, despite his constant hard work to bring the issue to the table.  But he isn’t giving up and he has one message for those who share his concerns—do not be silent!

—Photo credit: Flickr/ky_olsen

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Why feminism has a problem with male victims

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Our post about The Guardian’s censorship of male victims of genital mutilation has sparked some lively debate and brought the feminist campaigner Hilary Burrell to insideMAN. Hilary directed us to a quote by Dale Spender suggesting that people who aren’t feminists have a problem. Here our news editor, Glen Poole, responds to Hilary with an open letter outlining why male victims of various gendered crimes often find themselves at odds with feminism.

Dear Hilary

Thanks for your detailed comment on my article about The Guardian’s censorship of discussions on genital autonomy, which restricts the involvement of those who campaign for male genital autonomy in favour of those campaigning for female genital autonomy.

Let me be clear from the outset. We are seeing the world through a different lens. You are a feminist, I am not.

I am an integralist, which means I seek to integrate “what works” from many different word views and perspectives into my thinking. My theoretical framework for understanding gender issues is “integral gender theory”.

Not being a feminist, means I neither feel the need to attack it nor defend it. I can simply look at different feminist perspectives and ask myself—does this perspective work or not?

The Wisdom of Feminism

There are, as you say, some feminists who promote genital autonomy for everyone—male, female and intersex. One such campaigner is Travis L C Wisdom who is a feminist, an intactivist (ie a campaigner for genital autonomy) and a survivor of genital mutilation. I am a great admirer of his feminist approach to promoting genital autonomy—and I’m still not a feminist.

You say “feminism is about equality, people” which is a well meaning but ultimately meaningless statement which echoes (albeit more politely) the recent words of the feminist campaigner Kate Smurthwaite:

“Feminism is the same thing as gender equality, those who say it is not are lying assholes….please let them know they are misogynist dickwads.”

Kate’s tirade demonstrates why the  fundamental belief that “feminism = equality” is problematic. Just as beliefs  like “my religion=God” or “my religion=good” are also problematic.

More than one way to understand the world

There are many religions, many feminisms, many views of God, many views of equality and many views of what is good. People all over the world deny boys and girls the right to genital autonomy because they fundamentally believe the practice is good.

Some people campaign for genital autonomy for girls (but not boys) in the name of equality. Many of those people are feminists. They aren’t campaigning for equality for all, they are campaigning for better rights for women and girls, sometimes inspite of men and boys and sometimes in direct opposition to better rights for men and boys.

I pass no moral judgment on this. That it happens in an equal rights movements is not surprising.

It happened in the campaign for universal suffrage where some of those who campaigned for all adults to have the vote, realised they’d make progress a lot quicker if they campaigned separately for the male vote.

Not all equality campaigners are equal

People campaigning for the female vote were furious. They smashed things. They killed themselves. They planted bombs.

Today those people—the Suffragettes—are celebrated as heroic campaigners for equality. Many of those Suffragettes were wealthy, privileged women and in terms of voting rights they were under privileged.

Privilege literally means a “private law”, a law which applies only to one group or individual—like the right to vote or not. Like the right to genital autonomy or not.

It is true some feminists support genital autonomy for men and boys and yet campaigners against FGM worldwide have fought for laws that privilege women and girls and leave men and boys underprivileged. Just like some campaigners for voting reform  favoured an approach that privileged men in the first instance.

Suffragettes weren’t against giving men the vote, they were against an approach that privileged men and under-privileged women. Intactivists aren’t against ending FGM, but they are often against an approach that privileges women and girls and under-privileges men and boys.

And all over the world, feminists are campaigning for laws, policies and strategies that privilege women over men—most notably when it comes to “Violence Against Women” initiatives which focus on issues like domestic violence, sexual violence and FGM.

How men are underprivileged 

Feminists don’t, as a rule, set up campaigns to end domestic violence against everyone, to end sexual violence against everyone or to promote genital autonomy for all.

Feminism in practice is rarely about equality for all—there’s a reason it’s not called “equalism” or “genderism” or “humanism”. If anyone needs to know what feminism is predominantly about, the clue is in the name—it’s about female concerns and interests.

Feminism is rarely about equality for men and boys. Feminists can’t even agree whether men should have an equal right to be feminists, hence the ever recurring discussions about “can men be feminists” and the debates about how men should or shouldn’t be allowed to engage in gender equality work.

This is why male victims often have problems with feminism—and feminism has problems with male victims. Some male victims who were denied the right to genital autonomy, like Travis L C Wisdom, take on the struggle of work within feminism. Here’s what he has to say on the matter:

“I think that a current limitation of feminism is that it doesn’t incorporate male circumcision or the concept of a genital autonomy as an inalienable right across the gender continuum, it only focuses on Genital Autonomy as it relates to females and at times I will feel a bit betrayed.”

Feminism betrays male victims

How did the Suffragettes feel when campaigners for the universal vote focused on getting the male vote first? Betrayed!

How do male victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and genital mutilation often feel about feminism? Betrayed!

There are those who say that men can’t be feminists because they can never understand what it’s like to experience life as a woman. By the same token, it is rare to find a feminist who has experienced life as a male victim.

Too often feminism seeks to pull off the confidence trick of presenting itself as having the solution to all gender problems, while simultaneously ignoring and excluding those who seek to resolve the gender problems that men and boys experience—and excluding those who aren’t feminists.

I’m delighted that you consider the genital mutilation of females and males to be a human rights issue. However, you have never experienced life as a non-feminist campaigning for gender equality for men and boys Hilary.

Oppressive, controlling and dominating

You can have no living idea of how oppressive and controlling and dominating and dictatorial and fundamentalist and anti-male feminism can be until you’ve experienced feminism through the lived experience of a male victim of gender discrimination, campaigning for gender equality for everyone—men and boys included.

As some feminists say Hilary, you can be an ally, but you can never be one of us because you will never experience life through our eyes. And if you truly want to be an ally—rather than convert us to your belief that “feminism is about equality”—you will need to acknowledge and validate the fact that many male victims (including many intactivists) have the experience of being betrayed by feminism.

And when a group of people feel betrayed by a movement, unless that betrayal is acknowledged and addressed, there is no way forward. The only way for feminism to prove that it is really about equality and address the betrayal that many male victims of genital mutilation feel, is for feminists to campaign with equal urgency for all boys and girls all over the world to be granted the basic human right of genital autonomy.

If the pro-feminist Guardian was ready to do this, if it was ready to campaign for genital autonomy for all, with equal passion and commitment, there would be no need to censor passionate campaigners for men and boys’ right to genital autonomy.

Thanks for all you do campaigning to end FGM and for providing a page about male circumcisions on your website.

Best Regards

Glen Poole

—Photo Credit: flickr/fibonacci blue

Article by Glen Poole author of the book Equality For Men

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It’s thanks to women and girls I’m able to help male rape survivors

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Duncan Craig is CEO of Survivors Manchester, explains how he has been helping pushing the needs of male victims of rape and sexual abuse up the political agenda.

—This is article #84 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

In late 2013, The Ministry of Justice announced a £4 million Rape Support fund that enabled voluntary sector organisations to apply for a share of the fund to support the delivery of their services.

Great news!

Well yes, absolutely if you run an organisation supporting women and girls but not so great if you’re organisation only supports boys and men.

You see, the £4million Rape Support fund excluded organisations only supporting boys and men from applying. Not only did this prevent organisations such as Survivors Manchester, Mankind and Survivors UK from accessing much needed funds to continue to run our services, but it sent a clear message out to the public at large… “if you’re a male rape victim, we don’t recognise you”.

As the CEO of an organisation that supports male survivors of sexual abuse, rape and sexual exploitation, it was a message that was far too seriously wrong to go unchallenged. And so began our lobbying campaign. We took to social media; wrote letters to MPs, colleagues, and organisations in the field of sexual violation asking for support; and challenged the Ministry of Justice’s decision.

Seriously, what about the men and boys…..?

But in undertaking this lobbying campaign, I began to wonder… “why do I still have to make these stances? when will the discussion not have to end in ‘oh and boys and men too’”

Whilst all the lobbying activity, discussions and meetings resulted in fantastic win – a £1.3million ‘Male Rape Support fund’ that would be spread over two financial years; I soon realised that the real challenge is not about fighting for a small pot of money, but how to move the discussion on to a point where we can talk about victims of sexual violence without alienating anyone, male or female.

In looking at how to make the challenge to the Ministry of Justice, I turned to the Rape Crisis England and Wales website and began looking at what they had done over the 41 years they have been around.

How to make change happen

They have campaigned tirelessly to end the sexual violence committed against women and girls and helped thousands of service users to get the help they deserve. I’m so grateful to them for what they have done; for the sheer effort and determination they have made to ensure that the needs of women, who have experienced the abhorrent acts of violation that occur in sexual abuse and rape, are not ignored. I am grateful to them for continuing to keep the issue of sexual violation on the agenda and for always responding to the injustices in this arena.

However, I’m most grateful for showing me how to apply pressure in the right areas to make a change for those that you want to support the most – victims of sexual abuse and rape.

But don’t be confused here between specialist organisations that support a single gender or community and those that should be looking after us all and only look one way.

We don’t need to apologise for helping men and boys

Whilst Rape Crisis England and Wales focus on female victims, they acknowledge boys and men also experience rape and sexual violence and that the impacts on their lives can be similarly devastating and long-lasting, and they don’t need to apologise for their focus. Equally, organisations such as my own, Mankind or Survivors UK, shouldn’t need to apologise for focusing on boys and men.

But those charged with looking after the health, well being and safety of the general public have a duty to ensure that they don’t just look one way or the other! They have a legal and moral duty to ensure that whether a victim is male or female, boy or girl, man or woman… they should have equal access to support to help heal and recover from the trauma they experienced.

So why do we apologise? Why do those of us that provide gender specific support feel the need to apologise? and why don’t we stand together?

I think the answer is simple.

The passion and desire that we all have to help those we designed our organisations around, set against a difficult political climate and an even more difficult and tight funding environment has resulted in silo working. But the future needs to change if we are to thrive and early signs on the horizon look promising.

The newly formed male survivors’ alliance, although in its infancy, is already looking at the lessons we can learn from the women’s movement, and our early discussion with our female counterparts are exciting and give hope to a new movement, one where males and females stand proudly together with the aim of making central government and policy and decision makers listen to the voices of survivors.

So thank you to those women that paved the way. Never think that in our efforts to have the voices of male survivors heard that we are trying to silence you.

Lets stand together to ensure that all survivors get the help they deserve, regardless of gender.

—Picture credit: Sniper Girl

Duncan Craig is CEO of Survivors Manchester, you can find him on twitter @SurvivorsMcr 

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not the views of insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

What can a male survivor of sexual violence tell us about human kindness?

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Bob Balfour was sexually abused at the age of six. As an adult he has become one of the UK’s leading advocates for male victims of sexual abuse. Here he talks about the importance of human kindness.

—This is article #2 in our series of #100Voices4Men and boys 

Some days, I dream of a sexual violence/abuse victim-survivor activist protection programme, just like you see in those US films, with marshals flying in to rescue you from the bad guys – because you’ve done the right thing and challenged their power. When I watch those films and such an elite force goes into action to supply the witness with a new identity, I feel for both myself and the many others who’ve taken the decision, not only to disclose their childhood sexual abuse, but also very publicly to advocate and campaign for change in the ways we support its victims.

When you assertively challenge decision-makers and others who believe themselves to be professionals by asking them to step up to the plate and take a good, hard objective look at the evidence for change, the resistance you face as a survivor, male or female, is deep and well entrenched – especially when the call for change comes from male victims. You often find that people in power, in all its forms, resist considering paradigm shifts in intervention strategies for sexual violence/abuse crime victims. That resistance brings up unique issues for the male survivor, in my experience – fed by the taboos and myths which surround sexual violence/abuse.

My first sexually abusive experience occurred when I was aged six or seven. I now realize, aged 54, I’ve been searching since that moment for what it is to be male – in the sense of how maleness can help me to be more human than my abusers. In many ways, I’ve been investigating how to move beyond the constructions that build cloaks of gender – cloaks which are empowering of inequalities/abuse for both males and females. Does that make me a feminist? Perhaps – perhaps not… who knows? I prefer to think it makes me an explorer in humanness. The question is: what is humanness?

The legacy of sexual abuse is deep fear

I’m a big fan of Doctor Who and have been for a very long time. In a recent episode (available to watch in the UK at BBC iPlayer), the Doctor had to face his deepest fear, and he initially explores everyone else’s – even looking under the bed for that which stalks us in our dreams… fear itself. The legacy of sexual abuse in childhood is often a deep fear made up of so many dimensions even the Time Lords would struggle to unpack them easily.

In many ways the Doctor is looking to escape his fear and, given all the scandals and ongoing debate with the Home Office around who should chair a National Inquiry into sexual violence/abuse, it’s tempting to wish for that elite unit tasked with rescuing activists, especially as you see the pressures building on survivors and the resulting infighting and projection. Anger will always find a target if denied a voice within a safe transparent space. Power is situational and, at all levels of engagement with sexual violence victim-survivors, informed kindness is needed to allow survivors the freedom to discover their own paths to voice and recovery.

As I watched the end of the episode ‘Listen’, my liking for Clara, the Doctor’s companion, increased massively. We all need a Clara, I would suggest. I was lucky; mine was a First-World-War widow who lived on my Wallasey street in the 1960s. She made me bacon butties on a Victorian range every Sunday morning – she told me to always be kind. Her name was Mrs Rizten and I’ve always tried to do as she wisely advised and have never forgotten her.

Fear can make you kind

Finally, in ‘Listen’, Clara finds a way to free the Doctor from his fear of his fear. She whispers, in his lonely and scared childhood ear, the following:

‘If you’re very wise and very strong, fear doesn’t have to make you cruel or cowardly – fear can make you kind.’

I realized then I didn’t need a rescue unit – I just need to remember those words, and Mrs Rizten, when my fear creeps out from under the bed and I feel the threat of becoming cruel or cowardly. All I need to do is remember to be kind, both to myself and others.

Soon I will need that kindness, as I will be in court to help bring a little more justice for my childhood peers and myself, hopefully. However, mostly I’ll be there for all those who didn’t make it to the point where they could find kindness from the fear. It would also seem the Doctor is a Time Lord ‘care leaver’ – thank you, Steven Moffat. A timely and very kind gift. The Doctor is now even more special for some lonely little boys and girls, frightened of what lies under the bed.

Hopefully, they will also find that kindness really is the root of being human, regardless of gender, and that fear is a companion of us all indeed. In that lies our pathway to humanness and real justice against all abusers – it can ‘bring you home’, as Clara tells her Doctor. Brene Brown sums that up well and I suspect Mrs Rizten would approve:

‘To be authentic, we must cultivate the courage to be imperfect – and vulnerable.’

—Picture credit: BBC

About Bob Balfour: 

Bob founded Survivors West Yorkshire in 2000. It operates a self-help website, www.matrix-west-yorkshire.info. He recently obtained a BSc (Hons) Psychology with Counselling at the age of 53. He is currently commissioned by West Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner to develop the capability and capacity of third-sector agencies in West Yorkshire to bid for funding to deliver a West-Yorkshire-wide service for adult male victims of sexual violence from 2015. This is in collaboration with Rape Crisis services in West Yorkshire. He edits a sexual violence/abuse report series called A View From Inside The Box – copies can be found at: www.slideshare.net/Survivorswy.

To find out how the stories of Doctor Who supported Bob’s sense of hope as a child at, see How Dr Who Helped Me Dance.

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