Thank you . . . seriously . . .
So, women are twice as likely to report domestic abuse as men. I do tend to wonder about three things:
In what circumstances are men actually likely to suffer domestic abuse, from who
Odd questions, but I'll answer them: From their partner, when their partner abuses them. What else could the answers be?
Historically, have women been more inclined to "expect" domestic abuse than men?
No way of telling with any degree of certainty because there's so little historical data on the subject. How could you, for example, assess domestic abuse and attitudes towards it in 16th century England? At best you could find a handful of pieces of information, not enough to make a reliable assessment of the whole country. For example, Shakespeare frames a husband hitting his wife as an act so bizarre and shocking that witnesses seriously question the husband's sanity. Was that the norm? Probably not. But it must have been an understandable attitude shared by at least a non-trivial amount of people or else it wouldn't have fitted into a play written then.
Are men (as a result of fear of being laughed at) less inclined to report domestic abuse than women?
Of course, but that's only one factor. Another factor is who they would report it to. Domestic violence support services are for women, not for all people. There's been a bit of a change in that recently, but too recently to remove the factor entirely. There have been cases of men who are victims of domestic abuse calling a helpline for support and being treated as an abuser. That's obviously the opposite of helpful. Why take the risk? Then there's the general trend of help not being for men and the related trend of men not asking for help even if they need it. Again, there's been a bit of a change in that recently and again it's too recent to remove the factor entirely. Then there are social norms, which treat abuse by a woman against a man extremely differently to abuse by a man against a woman, to the extent that a woman can harangue, threaten and hit a man in a public park and most witnesses will blame the victim for being a man. And yes, that has been tested. It's hardly surprising given how successful feminists have been in promoting antimale sexism over the last few decades.
There have been a number of studies that asked people about their experiences on domestic abuse (rather than relying on self-reporting to existing organisations) and got about the same results from men and women for all scales of abuse. The sole statistically significant difference is death, which could be explained by average differences in strength. That doesn't seem to affect the chance of abuse(*), but it probably would affect the chance of death from the abuse.
* The worst domestic abuse I know of personally involved a victim a foot taller than the abuser, twice their weight and probably 4 or 5 times their strength. The victim was hospitalised 3 times with broken bones. The key issue in domestic abuse is the will to do harm, not strength.
