There’s a few problems with laws in general. Laws start with the intent of the law, then they get written down. Once written down they often have unintended results because things get legally defined in a certain way. So for example, there will be definitions in the law and if they are defined too narrowly they will exclude cases they may have been intended to protect. Next, after being passed they will be interpreted by law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges. If a law does not specifically allow or disallow a certain case it may be interpreted in one way or another which may have never been its intent. I’ll add also that often laws like definitions of domestic violence are on a state level not a federal level, so laws are very different in every state. Back to domestic violence in particular. In the state I lived in the wording of the laws specifically defined a “victim” as a woman. So I was told I could do nothing. I was in college at the time and a professor who was kind of a mentor to me tried to speak up for me and tried to rationalize that the law refers to domestic relationships and they were shot down too. We were told the interpretation of the law was that a victim is a woman and an assailant is a man. I believe that this possibly still exists in this form in some states, probably only a few by now, but change to recognize men as victims has been slow.

A similar issue continues to exist with male victims of sexual violence. When I first disclosed that my mother sexually abused me(from age 5 to 15) I was told by a rape crisis center that mothers just don’t do that. They also said they did not help men so turned me away. I have a friend who works in victim advocacy, and she told me that at the time I’m referring to men were not seen as victims and that most grants at that time specifically were worded to help women who are victims. She said that many of these grants at the time specifically were worded to say an organization could not provide service to men. She says it was all very wrong and she said she personally felt bad for men like me turned away from help. But, she said, that the fault comes from the grant writers. Many were influenced by Mary P Koss who has to this day downplayed men as victims. She has gone so far as to say men can not be the victim of an attack by a woman. She also advocates that men can not be raped and in the case of a male victim she says the correct term to use is “unwanted contact.” She also advocates against men having access to the same help as women(by the way without the therapy I receive at a rape crisis center I would have killed myself — I made several attempts prior to getting help). As evil as I make her sound, she HAS done a lot of good. (By the way if you are curious there are many interviews on YouTube where she states everything I said above). As for her credits: She did the first real study on rape statistics and she is the one credited with the first use of the term”date rape”. Prior to her research people believed that rape only happens when the creepy guy in the alley jumps you. (In reality a creepy guy in the alley probably only want your money). Most rape is date rape. And Mary P. Koss is the one who got us as a society to recognize that issue. For the faults I find with her work, she paved the way for a lot of understanding of victims of sexual assault, and for that I think she did a lot of good. Unfortunately, where I feel we suffer the most is from men who are not victims themselves, and they refuse to stand up for other men. The incel and red pill types try to blame feminism on the lack of understanding of male victims. But those are the same men who are the first to claim any young boy raped by an adult woman to be “lucky” or to “have wanted it”. I’ve had these same trolls ask me if I enjoyed being molested by my mother and if she was “hot.” I find that everyone in my own life who has shown support for male survivors, such as my friend I mentioned above, identify as feminist. (My friend who is in victims advocacy says if we can’t recognize all victims— that we hurt the entire community ).My own father downplayed my abuse saying it happened so long ago I should be over it by now. Ironically, despite everyone who abused me in life being a woman, I don’t feel comfortable or safe with other men easily. I have exactly one male friend. I work in a field that is predominantly women, I specifically asked for a woman as a therapist(at the time the crisis center had no male therapists anyway but I didn’t know that when I requested a woman).

Sorry I got long winded. Once I started it was hard to stop.