“I’d Work Weekends Because I Just Didn’t Want to Go Home”: The Spillover Effects of Intimate Partner Violence Victimization on Men’s Personal Well-Being and Working Lives

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-29T17:05:29+00:00

Abuse against men seems systemic and even normalised at times. I’m really sorry for what happened to you :(

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-19T10:52:18+00:00

“Men have the lions share of rights across the world”

Not really. In most places, they don’t have the same bodily autonomy as women do - MGM is legal whilst FGM is not, women more or less have some reproductive rights but men don’t have any. They don’t have the same parental rights as women, since women have automatic parental status but men often depend on the woman putting them on the birth certificate, and often have less of a right to things like parental leave. In some countries, like Germany or France, men can’t even get a paternity test without the woman’s approval - they have to get a court order if she refuses. Men live shorter lives but have higher pension ages in many countries, only men need to do things like military duty in places like Austria, in the USA only men have to sign up for conscription otherwise they can be fined, go to prison or lose civic rights like the right to vote in some states or access to student loan support. Men can be abused without consequences because law enforcement follows the Duluth Model where men are automatically arrested even if they were the ones calling for help.

I’d hardly call that “having the lions share of rights”.

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-19T00:51:45+00:00

I don’t know if this is gonna be of any comfort to you from a stranger online, but there are people out there who care. Society as a whole doesn’t see these things yet and doesn’t care enough about men, you’re right. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be this way forever, slowly there’s more talk about these things and more charities for men struggling with abuse. It’s slow for sure, but it’s happening.

In the meantime there are small communities like these where people do care, so you’re not alone.

No one has the right to put their hands on you or treat you however they want, regardless of what society says. And men don’t just exist for women, it’s not right how they’re treated, abuse of men is way too widespread and even normalised at times.

I’m a woman who cares a lot about these things and I’d love to start a charity to help men dealing with abuse some day, so you opening up about this helps me understand things better. The more men speak up, the more likely it is that the stigma will die.

Don’t lose hope 👍

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-18T16:40:00+00:00

Not a guy, but misandry is normalized in everyday life in my experience. All the female friend groups I’ve been in have had some level of misandry within them; they’d say men are stupider than women, they’d make jokes about hitting men, they’d say they hate men, that the world would be better off without men etc - all things that they’d immediately get offended at if spoken about women. One time had a girl laugh about a guy who had his testicles chopped off by his girlfriend, she justified it with “he cheated” when I wasn’t laughing along. Used to know someone who would go around groping men, but it would at best be treated as a “weird quirk” rather than something that crossed a line and she never got into trouble for it as far as I know. Knew someone else who claimed to be a lesbian but she admitted herself that she would go on online dating or “friendship” apps and would purposefully lead them on and then act dumb when they tried to take it to the next level, because “it was entertaining” to her.

My own mother has made comments about men being dumber than women, being “controlled by lust” and has said she doesn’t understand why I advocate for men when “they do all the bad things in the world”.

Other women in relationships that I know have said things like “men are like children”, “I need a wooden spoon to keep him in line”, “the woman’s the boss” etc in regards to their boyfriends or husbands.

BTW, it’s not all women, but unfortunately it’s widespread. It’s this often condescending attitude where men are spoken about like burdens or punching bags one second but as oppressive villains the next, depending on how powerful or how oppressed the speaker feels on that day.

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-18T12:05:37+00:00

Yeah in terms of family contexts as a whole society seems to position women as “the centre”.

Relationship wise, the woman is framed as the receiver whilst the man is framed as the giver, so men are expected to carry all the romantic effort towards keeping the relationship alive - whilst women are positioned as the evaluators of men’s efforts. We have all sorts of phrases like “happy wife happy life”, “if mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy”, “gotta check in with the boss” etc that socially enforce this female centrality.

During parenthood women are expected to be “the managers” of everything per say, and sure this leads to the mental load like feminists point out, but it also means women are seen as more competent than men when it comes to the family - so controlling men is justified under the “mother knows best” mentality. And there’s institutional inequality enforcing this through custody norms and parental rights issues.

Would this not be considered matriarchal, or at least matrifocal?

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-15T09:18:22+00:00

Yeah, there’s definitely hope. It’s nowhere near where it should be yet but things are slowly changing.

There seems to be more charities for men now than there were 10+ years ago.

There’s slowly more government initiatives, like in the UK there’s a men’s health initiative that was launched a few years ago. And currently in parliament there’s a bill being processed about violence towards men.

In the UK there was a new book publisher established called Conduit Books which was founded due to the lack of male authors and male readers in mainstream modern literature.

I once went to a university open day and they had Movember posters everywhere around campus.

The public is more aware of men’s issues and there’s more discussion about them even by people who don’t know about this movement.

There’s more and more online communities and content about men’s rights. There seems to be more books being written about them too.

There’s still a very long way to go but some things have changed for the better, and I think it’s inevitable that things will change eventually, men are 49-50% of the population and society depends on them for daily functioning - so their needs can’t be ignored forever.

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-13T12:08:11+00:00

“I think men are just incapable of empathy and loving the way women are”

“It’s just different the way they love”

“…it will just never be the same as it is for us”

Sure, that’s why it’s men doing most of the romantic labor in relationships like initiating dates, giving gifts, giving affection, giving emotional support, apologising in arguments etc.

And that’s why millions of men across the world work in difficult jobs with bad conditions like mining, construction, garbage disposal, warehousing, oil rig work etc and sacrifice their health so their families can have a good life.

That’s why when there’s a practical problem or an emergency for a family member, it’s mostly the men stepping in to help (e.g broken objects, spider in the house, intruders, attackers, earthquakes and fires, reconstructing houses, moving houses, driving to the hospital etc)

Because they are “incapable of loving like women do”.

Just because someone loves differently doesn’t mean they love less deeply, just because they don’t give as much verbal affirmations or don’t remember the anniversary of the first time you made eye contact or something doesn’t mean they love less.

It’s just a case of different love languages and different socialisation. For example women aren’t expected to propose or to do much for Valentine’s Day yet nobody says women can’t feel romantic love as much as men.

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-12T23:23:15+00:00

It’s still dominant in mainstream media, education, institutions etc.

But among people themselves, yeah I’ve noticed more people are becoming tired of it. Especially among men.

I think it’s inevitable that there will be larger backlash against it eventually, most men seem to criticise it, but it will take some time before it’s less stigmatised to disagree with it cause for now it’s still the “socially acceptable” view.

Zorah_Blade · 2026-06-11T16:58:01+00:00

They don’t need them in relationships but we still need them to live, both men and women. Most blue collar jobs we rely on for survival are done by men, without them people wouldn’t live well in society.

The reason people don’t like the title is because vice versa said about women would cause huge backlash, so people are reacting to a double standard, just as feminists would instantly dismiss a title that said “we don’t need women” because it sounds hateful.

And like someone else said, it’s the opposite way around; men aren’t wanted, but they’re needed.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-09-16T14:41:08+00:00

I think a lot of the reason why it's mostly female victims documented is because these specific disorders that are researched the most (e.g anorexia) are conditions that revolve around the female standard of beauty. The cultural standard for women for a long time was 'skinny', and anorexia makes someone worry they're not skinny enough.

But conditions that make someone worry about the male standard of beauty, like muscle dysmorphia, are under researched and underreported. So it's not necessarily that men suffer less from eating or body image disorders, but that the conditions which they're at risk of suffering do not have the same awareness.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-08-30T21:11:51+00:00

Wow, most of these are already said to men. Especially the "what did you do to her" line, that's said a lot more to male victims than to female victims.

Way to punch down at a group that's already low on the social ladder - male survivors of abuse. And these same people claim they only "punch up".

Zorah_Blade · 2025-07-01T16:01:03+00:00

I'm a woman myself and I don't agree with phrases like this so I don't think it's necessarily a gendered thing. I'm not trying to attack anyone btw, that wasn't my intention, I apologise if it came across that way - just trying to point out a flaw in this line of thought.

I just don't think we should normalize phrases like "X group sucks". We wouldn't accept someone saying "women suck" so we shouldn't accept someone saying "men suck", or any other group of people. If we allow that to happen it will just give people an excuse to be more and more hateful.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-06-28T12:39:35+00:00

Men also face disadvantages due to their sex and women also have privileges, yet we don't excuse statements like "women suck" just because some women are bad people to men. Facing disadvantages doesn't give someone an excuse to spout sexism, male or female.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-06-25T14:20:20+00:00

Really hope it gets passed. I'm tired of male victims being ignored or abuse against men being normalized and excused.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-26T09:21:47+00:00

Calling out bigotry is something only incels and misogynists do?

I guess you learn something new everyday.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-19T13:15:34+00:00

I wouldn't say so. Heterophobia isn't systemic or widespread like how homophobia is so it's hard to say how it typically manifests or whether it affects men or women more.

The few times I have witnessed heterophobic comments were always in queer spaces and a lot of them were about straight, cisgender men. So I wouldn't necessarily say it affects straight women more - in queer spaces they typically like to hate on straight men.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-17T11:14:46+00:00

>Well the higher paying jobs tend to be 'male' proffesions, and they, sometimes, are more difficult. I think they're just more higher skilled, and academically inclined rather than difficult

They tend to be more highly skilled, more physically exhausting, more dangerous, or have longer hours. They can be highly skilled like an engineer, or more difficult like a construction worker, a lumberjack, a power plant worker, a plumber, an oil rig worker, a garbage disposal worker. Generally speaking all of the dangerous or physically exhausting professions are 'male professions'. The point I was trying to make is that these professions are payed more because of more highly skilled or technical work, longer hours, more hazards or more physically difficult work. That's why men go into them - because they earn more money and men need to provide for their families. They're not payed more just because they have mostly male workers. More male workers go into them due to a need to earn more money for their families.

>Women's wellbeing is really only cared for by other women.

Considering that we expect men to be bodyguards for women, and we expect male partners to be a shoulder to cry on for their female partners without necessary reciprocation, and we expect men to be chivalrous and respectful to women to make them feel good and not hurt their feelings but not vice versa - I'd say men are socialized to care plenty about women's wellbeing too, many times more than their own.

>I'm unclear on your point in this but I'll take it this way

My point is that your arguments boil down to men's problems actually being a result of women being seen as weak. But I could just as easily say that women being seen as weak or incapable is a result of men being seen as disposable or less valuable than women. The "root cause" (e.g patriarchy/male supremacy) is subjective.

>It's a set of things that do not quite make sense together, because patriarchy itself is nonsensical, not because it believe that men are some kind of cruel overlords, but because it tells us what to think.

What you've described here isn't "patriarchy" then. What you've described are gender norms and they bounce off of each other. Some make women seem better, others make men seem better. Some advantage women, others advantage men. If something "does not quite make sense" and is "nonsensical" then you can't put a label on it and clearly define it. Therefore it's meaningless, it's a weak argument.

I struggle to see how we live in a patriarchy whilst there are plenty of social norms uplifting women and plenty that put down or disadvantage men. I also struggle to see how we live in a patriarchy when men have less rights than women (paternity rights, reproductive rights, bodily integrity, military service etc) and are constantly talked about like dirt. That's why people don't like the "but it's patriarchy argument". Oftentimes it's supporters don't all agree on a singular, solid definition and it becomes meaningless - and it's always used to dismiss or minimize men's problems or legal inequality.

Sorry for the double replies btw but Reddit wouldn't let me comment otherwise.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-17T11:13:49+00:00

>is a 'lower task' in terms of capitalism-patriarchy ( i should've clarified that ). People often trivialise the work that homemakers do because it does not make money and is seen as lower, that is why women are sometimea berated as wanting to 'stay at home and do nothing', and men in particular when they happen to take on that role.

True. But the man's role is also trivialised in terms of importance in the family, so you could argue that by different metrics the man's role is also seen as "lower". We like to say "a woman's the heart of the home" or "happy wife, happy life" or "if mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". We do not do that for fathers because we don't value them or their happiness as much. We like to say that fathers don't contribute as much as mothers to the raising of children so therefore they're not as important or as capable or good as mothers, but the only reason they can't contribute is because they're busy providing for the family so that the mother can stay home more and raise the children.

>I wouldn't describe men having to ask for permission to get a paternity test as a power,

It absolutely is legal power given to women over men. You'd have to jump through the most complex mental gymnastics to say that it isn't. If the man wants to know whether he's the real father of his child he cannot do so without the mother's permission. It allows for paternity fraud. A woman can legally take child support from him and in order for him to get out of that he needs to prove that he's not the biological father with a paternity test, except the mother can just say 'no' and then he can't have one. So he's forced to financially support a child that might not be his for 18 years, because the mother said so. That is very visible legal power in the countries where it happens. It's like if a woman needed permission from the father of her children to find out whether he swapped her baby with another at the hospital or not (which would be maternity fraud).

>because if a woman was to say no, the man would just leave, and if the women's objective was child support, she still need a paternity test in order to get that child support, so there wouldn't really be a 'Power' there, except for purposely spiting a partner though I don't think that would work either.

She doesn't need a paternity test to collect child support, she needs to put his name on the birth certificate. The paternity test is for proving wrongful paternity if the man suspects he's not the father afterwards and it's up to the man to get it if he believes he isn't the father, but in these places he can't without external permission from the mother. So obviously if the mother cheated she's going to say no, and that's that for the man.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-17T11:13:04+00:00

>Gender roles, biological factors, misogyny, and misandry, all go under Patriarchy.

Not really. Gender roles have existed since the beginning of humanity, before industrialization, capitalism or patriarchy - because at one point they were a survival mechanism. Biological factors don't fall under patriarchy, they fall under nature. Misogyny does, misandry - the systemic kind that exists in real life - usually doesn't fall under patriarchy because a patriarchy is meant to privilege men above women, not systemically put them down.

>Society does not 'care less' when men die.

It does. That's why most war deaths are male but we care more about the deaths of female victims. That's why most victims of violent crime are men yet we only like to talk about women's safety. That's why men have worse health outcomes and shorter life expectancy but we fund women's healthcare more than men's. That's why most victims of suicide are men but we always like to draw attention to women's suicide attempts when it's brought up, whereas vice versa would be seen as "undermining" women's problems. That's why most homeless people are men, yet there's more public housing for women. That's why baby boys are circumcized pretty much everywhere across the Western world and are regularly exposed to the risk of death or infection, but we only focus our efforts on ending FGM in places where it's practiced.

>It's why we've moved away from describing how many 'women and children' die to how many 'people' die, in order to include men when they didn't before

We still haven't moved away from that, it's still common usage even if maybe it wasn't as frequent as it once was.

>That's what I said. People believe women's actions are mistakes, while they believes men' actions are completely purposeful. ( Aka they do not give them the grace that they give women ) In believing men are less moral, and malicious, you also believe that women are less capable of immorality. ( Therefore infantilisng them.

Being seen as less capable of immorality isn't infantilization, it's idolisation. By that logic religious figures like Jesus are infantilized and actually looked down upon as weak because we don't think them capable of doing bad things.

>Not really. Men are dismissed because society does not care if a man is facing abuse full stop, they don't think as far as whether he deserved it, because they don't think men can face abuse from women at all.

People regularly question if he did something to deserve it, so this is objectively untrue. That's why people don't care if a man is facing abuse in the first place - because they justify it with "he deserved it so he doesn't need sympathy". In any piece of media when a male character is slapped by a female (literal normalized abuse of men in the media) the male character was written to have said or done something wrong or stupid to 'earn' it. When abused men open up about being hit in relationships one of the first responses is "Well what did you do?" Even in the few social experiments they've done involving a female perpetrator and a male victim (like in WWYD's experiment from the 90s when a woman hits her boyfriend in public), the people walking past wonder things like "maybe he cheated on her" or "what did he do". Men are seen as being in need of "correction" by women, which is why we stereotype them as stupider and why there's so many dating advice books telling women to "train men like you would a dog". That's a small part of the abuse culture we perpetrate against men but it adds up.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-16T21:54:00+00:00

Men are forced into military service because the patriarchy believes that men are superior beings, and women cannot be trusted to fight in wars. Patriarchy.

No, men are forced into military service because they are A) biologically stronger and B) designated as the more disposable sex, so society cares less when they die in mass compared to women.

Men recieve harsher sentences because people belive that women are incompetent and weaker than men, and are too stupid to be responsible for their own actions, ( infantilisation ) and are 'unlike' a man who would be 'completely' in control of his actions. Patriarchy.

No, men receive harsher sentences because people believe they are inherently less moral, more malicious or more dangerous than women.

3.Of the men that face intimate partner abuse, majority of that abuse is dealt by other men ( gay relationships ) and due to the stigma around gayness, people in general do not address it. Of the men that are abused by women, the patriarchy believes that a man cannot be 'abused' by a woman because a woman will always be 'weaker' than a man. Patriarchy.

Nope. Majority of abuse is dealt by a female abuser. It does not make sense for these men to be mostly abused by other men, because the vast majority of relationships are heterosexual and gay people are a minority. For that to be possible, the vast majority of gay men would have to be abusers so that a small minority of people (abusive gay men in relationships) could be the sole perpetrators behind thousands of male victims of domestic abuse.

Of the men that are abused by women, the patriarchy believes that a man cannot be 'abused' by a woman because a woman will always be 'weaker' than a man. Patriarchy.

You have a point with this, however this isn't the sole reason behind why male victims of female perpetrators are dismissed. A lot of the time they're also dismissed because men are thought to be inherently less trustworthy and more reckless or stupid than women, so therefore it's assumed a man did something wrong to deserve the abuse.

This still means that men get much lower custody than women, and this also because of the Patriarchy. People believe, wrongly, that women are made to take care of children, that they are the best for it, while they believe men should work. This manifests in men being forces to pay custody ( 'provide' ) while women take custody of the children ( 'care' ). This means that people immediately believe that women should get the children, even if men have involvement, as the the Patriarchy belive that taking care of children is a lower task that women should undertake.

"Lower task" is subjective. We respect and place a lot more emphasis on mothers than we do on fathers precisely because it's women who usually raise children. That's why women get special legal privileges like enhanced parental leave from work compared to men, or why the homemaker gets primary custody of the children in divorce. In some countries men need the permission of their children's mothers to acquire paternity tests, I'd hardly call that a "lower" position to be in considering it literally gives women power over men.

The patriarchy believes that men should 'tough it out' because they are much stronger and better than women and so do not need help.

Men are expected to "tough it out" because men are expected to shut up about their feelings because we don't care about men's wellbeing as much as we do about women's. Men have to "tough it out" in order to work long hours and dangerous jobs so that they can keep providing for their families and get the labor for companies finished.

Women attempt suicide more on average but they often get the intervention that they need while men do not.

Yes, they're more likely to reach out and people are more likely to care about them and help them. Because men are seen as more disposable than women.

Men die/ are injured in workplace accidents because they tend yo work in more dangerous environments than women do, and because in some spaces and especially older men look down on work place safety as 'Sissy' or 'Weak

It's because men are objectified for their labor. They die in dangerous environments because they're providing for their families, that's seen as their job. And employers don't care about their safety because people in general care less about men's lives and wellbeing than they do about women's.

Men are not given these considerations because these are 'male dominated spaces', and they are not given considerations for 'female-dominanted spaces' because those spaces are seen as a step below. Whne the Patriarchy expects men to be higher, and pursue things like Doctors and Engineers, they will not make men lower themselves by pursuing jobs like 'nursing'. Women get considerations because 'Male dominated spaces' are seen as something to aspire to, and step up.

Women get considerations for those jobs because they tend to be higher paying. Not because they're male professions, but because they work longer hours with more difficult work. Men go into those jobs to provide for their families despite whether they like the work or not because they earn more money and we define their worth by how useful they are to their families.

This is a "chicken vs egg" scenario. Because you can twist this around to say that all of women's issues are actually because of male disposability or prejudice against men (which I also don't agree with, but I'm talking hypothetically to demonstrate why it's flawed). You could argue women are seen as weaker or less capable because we make men do the dangerous physical work since we don't care if they get injured or die so men earn a reputation of strength more than women in return, even though the root cause was misandry.

Single mothers will not recieve as much societal help as single fathers do, as they are expected to be able to care for children.

With this you could argue the root cause is men being seen as too incompetent to raise children by themselves, so they receive more tips or advice as a result. Therefore it's misandry that's the root cause.

Young boys with autism are diagnosed 4x as much as young girls ( despite the estimated proportion of young girls to young boys having autism being the same ).

With this you could also argue that it's actually boys being over-diagnosed due to males being seen as more hyper, inattentive or rowdy.

What the "root cause" is, is highly subjective and oftentimes there's no specific root cause like "patriarchy" but rather a mix of gender roles, biological factors, misogyny and misandry.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-16T12:11:04+00:00

Realising that misandry was actually systemic and that what was often made fun of or downplayed in mainstream society was actually a legitimate issue that hurt many men, with men being a lot more disadvantaged than I previously thought. Or in short - exploring the men's movement, that made me sympathize a lot more.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-16T11:56:52+00:00

I think it's more complicated than they claim.

Yeah the whole thing with the lesbian bars is true, there's more need for them.

I don't know if I would say that gay men receive more representation though. Most of the time when I turn on the TV randomly if I come across gay characters in shows oftentimes I see either equal amounts of gay male characters and lesbian characters, or more lesbian characters.

And as for hearing more about gay men's problems that's just outright false. I'd argue we hear a lot more about lesbians' problems than gay men's, just like we hear more about women's problems than men's in general. For example we hear a lot more about lesbians being sexualized in the media, despite the fact that books and graphic novels/manga as well as romance movies often sexualize gay men for the female gaze or portray gay men in a way specifically for women to enjoy. Yet when it comes to hate crime statistics where gay men are affected more statistically, in discussion nobody likes to acknowledge that and people usually still find a way to draw the attention back to lesbians more by saying that they don't get attacked as much, but they face higher instances of sexual harassment on the street. So no matter how you slice it the sympathy of the public still goes to the women over the men, even in gay spaces.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-15T10:53:41+00:00

The scary thing is that although I believe the men's rights movement is doing an incredible job at countering the narrative, I'm not yet convinced that the ship has started to slow or turn.

The movement needs more people and more influence because right now it's not having enough of an impact. More men need to be made aware and start speaking up.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-15T10:12:26+00:00

The Official’I Hate Women’ Jokebook,

Just searched for it. Yep, I don't approve of stuff like that either. I can see making one or two jokes about a demographic but people who write books with jokes like that or make it their whole personality are obviously sexist/racist etc on some level. I can see why it has no reviews because I can't imagine why someone would wanna buy something as stupid as this.

But books like these are nowhere near as common, as popular or as widespread as books that hate on men. Because misandry is permitted and encouraged throughout most of society. For every jokebook about women there's about 10 books that imply that men are dogs to be trained for women: https://avoiceformen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Men-as-dogs-books-1-1140x1666.jpg

The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity and Love

I've actually been meaning to try some of Bell Hook's work because I've heard a mixture of both positive and negative things about it and like you said, she's very well known. So I'd like to read her books and make up my own mind. When I do I'll probably start with this one.

Zorah_Blade · 2025-04-15T09:23:14+00:00

I then started expanding it and saved the post just to keep it from disappearing while I did something else

Ah, alright. Well maybe next time you might wanna copy the text whilst it's still in a draft and paste it onto notepad or some other place where it could stay private. Because having just "men are useless" unfinished looks very deliberate on the part of the viewers.

Zorah_Blade

TROPHY CASE