If Your Man Knew What to Say, Here’s What He Might Say If He Knew You Feared His Potential For Violence...

Excerpted from Warren Farrell's Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say.

(Permission to reprint granted by Warren Farrell.)
See www.warrenfarrell.com and www.warrenfarrell.info.

 

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Aren’t Women Injured More Than Men?

“Dear Editor: Your article [Time] on domestic violence states that women are unlikely to inflict much damage on men because wives are generally smaller. Yet in my experience as an emergency-room physician, I treated more men than women for such injuries.... I have seen men cut with an ax, scalded with hot water, smashed with a fireplace poker, and knocked out by a brick, not to mention suffering the common gunshot wound. One incident involved a woman who walked into the hospital with a broken nose after being punched by her husband during an argument. We set the nasal bones and discharged her. Two hours later, her husband was wheeled in. He was admitted with a fractured spine. As soon as she got home, she had grabbed him by the lapels and thrown him against the kitchen stove.”

— Velimir Svoren, MD; Chatsworth, GA29

Despite the fact that women are more likely to use weapons and severe violence against men, 1.9% of the men and 2.3% of the women surveyed said they had sought medical treatment for an injury due to partner abuse in 1992.30 Is this because a frying pan hurts a man less than a fist hurts a woman – because, as a female classmate of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes) put it, “They can’t paddle me! ...Girls have more delicate heinies”?31

Or is there something wrong with the way we are measuring who is injured? To measure which sex is injured more by measuring which sex reports to the doctor more is to make the same mistake we made by assuming women were battered more because they reported domestic violence to the police more. Women are almost twice as likely to go to doctors as are men – men’s injuries have to be much more serious before they seek attention.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When I do a radio show and ask men who have been severely battered to call in anonymously, it is rare for them to have sought medical attention even for a broken arm. But if they do, they almost always report it as an athletic injury (“I was going up for a basket, this guy put his elbow in my eye, I come down on my arm. I end up with a black eye, a broken arm and a ‘gee, sorry, man’”). No man I ever spoke with said that such an explanation created skepticism. So the second reason that measuring which sex is injured more by looking at the reporting of injuries to doctors is that men’s rougher sports gives them a natural excuse to avoid the association of the injury with domestic violence.

Third, doctors are not trained to cross examine the man to see whether the claim of an athletic injury might be a cover up. If the doctor’s a man, he’s more likely to bond with the basketball player by asking him if he made the basket! In contrast, doctors are now trained to cross examine a woman. The US Surgeon General sends out information on spouse abuse only to doctors who deal with women (28,000 obstetricians and gynecologists).32 It is designed to assist doctors in recognizing the subtle signs of spouse abuse among women and to encourage doctors to encourage women to report it. This is a result of feminist pressure to educate the medical community. Men’s silence has not created much pressure.

It is exactly the feeling that men are stronger – usually true – that gives women permission for hitting them harder and using weapons. This is even true in mother’s attitudes toward their sons vs. their daughters. Sons are more than twice as likely as daughters to be injured when their mothers hit them.33

How do we learn who actually does experience more injury? First, we need to remember that a “my-injury-is-worse-than-your-injury” approach to family violence does nothing to solve the problem – it just reinforces the one-sided blaming that undermines real solutions like communication.

If we do want data on who is more hurt, we need to stop asking about coping mechanisms – which is what who sees a doctor measures – and start asking both sexes specific questions about the actual damage and healing time of the injuries: “Was your skin broken – did you bleed? Did you suffer any bruises? Any scratches?...black eyes?...broken bones? How long did they take to heal? Was that the time it took with or without treatment?” But again, let’s work on solutions rather than on “who’s the biggest victim?” The only reason, throughout the book, that I concern myself with men as victims at all is because the pretense that men are only the perpetrators has led us to ignoring men or blaming men – and that poisons love between the sexes.