Domestic Violence against women is treated as a crime. This kind of domestic violence against men is also a crime but unfortunately the law in India varies between the jurisdictions as women are usually considered as victims of crime. This is one of the biggest reasons that domestic violence against women is largely highlighted or focused while on men it is mostly unrecognized. It is considered that men are always the perpetrators. Another reason why this crime is unrecognized is because men mostly, because of the social stigma, do not report such crimes. They fear that reporting such crimes would let embarrassment to themselves or to their family. In a recent study, it was found that men who report domestic violence against their partner are humiliated by the society as their masculinity was targeted by people. The researchers from some countries believe that the data and statistics depicting the date of male victims of domestic violence are very less because of underreporting of this crime. In that study it was also said that domestic violence is the crime which was underreported by most around the world.
Domestic violence against men was found to be one of the most controversial areas of research when it comes to the gender equality epically in a country like India where the dominance of men was found on women and not the other way around. In those studies, the researchers also claimed that determining or finding the rate of domestic violence against men will be very difficult because men from social stigma find reporting such crimes or even taking help from someone to be very embarrassing. Men find that if they admit that they are victims of domestic violence by women they are not “True Man” and are not following the role of a male in the society. This concept of “True Man” was found to be very common in countries like India where the dominance of male is significantly higher than women.
The researchers have found that domestic violence by men on women was more severe and the injuries caused to women by such violence are very serious while on the other hand it was also found that violence on men is not very serious when compared to that of violence on women. Because of it, men find it difficult to report the cases of violence against them because this leads men to not finding themselves as victims and sometimes they don’t even realize that a domestic violence has happened to them by their partner. It was found that women who are assaulting men are more likely to be avoiding arrest and prison time as compare to the men who are assaulting their women. In a country like India where women are always considered as victims of the crime it is found to be very difficult to convict them of such crimes and it is also one of the biggest reason why men do not report this crime because they fear that women will always be considered as good and they will the wrong doer and the women might have assaulted on them in self defense and the police and society will only believe on what the women is saying.
Forms of Violence which can be induced against Men.
The domestic violence can be considered as one of the cruel crimes in the world because it can affect the life of a person in a negative way like mentally, physically or even emotionally which can be said as the violation of the basic rights of a human. It was found in the study of Malik and Nadda that the most often offence by an intimate spouse is the emotionally affecting violence which was just followed by physical.
Let’s discuss different type of violence against men in detail.
Physical Violence
Things like getting hit or pushing by the wife or even by her parents or relatives comes under this form of physical violence. Under this form of violence, slapping the husband was found to be the most common form where 98.3 percent men were found to be suffered from it. The least form of physical violence was found to be getting assaulted by any weapon. The physical assaults cases was not found to be severe on men as only one-tenth of such cases was found in which the male was severely injured by his intimate partner.
Psychological Violence
The Psychological violence can also called as emotional violence. This form of violence was found to be the most common way against men. Around 85% of men reported that they were suffering from constant criticism by their partner. While 27% was suffering from getting insulted in front of other people by their wife or by her relatives. This form can also be treated as a form of mental abuse because the family of wife or the wife was found to be threatening the husband or his family under the wrong allegations of domestic violence and dowry.
Sexual Abuse
The sexual abuse form of violence against men was found to be very rare. As in the study done by Malik and Nadda it was found that only 0.4% men was suffering or had suffered this form of domestic violence. It can be concluded that domestic violence against men is found to be one of the most underreported crimes in the world especially in India. The government in order to solve this issue needs to bring new laws in favor of men for protecting their right and themselves from such crimes and Self help groups to be made for protection of men so that more and more men can report such crimes which happened on them Men and Women both are equal in the eyes of law and have equal rights and respect in front of society so Men who reports such crime won’t be considered as less masculine or “true man”. People should be also educated that it is also a very heinous crime and reporting such crime will only bring more peace and harmony in the society.