An open letter to men on the most helpful thing they can do when talking about violence and gender with women.

Over the past year, there has arisen a troubling trend of men demanding to know statistics when it comes to whether men or women are abused or harassed more. #Notallmen has become #Mentoo

To begin with, it’s not a competition. Violation, towards anyone, regardless of how they identify is not okay. Secondly, at a systemic level, women are violated more than men. It’s an irrefutable fact, however you choose to look at it. And part of the problem that women face is having to deal with men who are so insecure they feel the need to shout down women to tell them that men deal with it too.

It’s exhausting. Women know men deal with it too. They do. They’re fighting for you, for themselves, for everyone. But ignoring the higher level of violence women face is indefensible. It’s like saying the black lives matter movement isn’t necessary because white people also face violence. Or that pride month is no longer needed in the UK because gay marriage is legal. The issue is deeper; these certain groups do face more violence.

It can be difficult to just sit at the table and demand facts and figures but what needs to be understood is that that’s actually one of the least helpful things you can do for women. They’re fighting against violence, oppression and discrimination as it is, they don’t want to have to sit and convince men to be their allies because although they see in the news a near- constant stream of women coming forward to say they’ve faced abuse or harassment by a man, they still want an exact number as proof.

Because then you’re making it about yourself and not women’ rights. It’s not about you or defacing your gender. It’s about equality. But we cannot have equality until we can at least make women feel safe and reduce the high levels of violence they face. If you want equality, if you truly want the world to be a better and safer place for women, if you actually want to be an ally, then all you have to do is take a seat at the table and listen. Let women tell you what it’s like to be a women and the microaggressions they face everyday, like men who refuse to believe them.

Unfortunately, simply by virtue of being a man, you cannot know what it is like. On that note, here are some facts courtesy of Women’s Aid UK:

• From April 2014 to March 2017, 73% of victims of domestic homicides (homicides by an ex/partner or family member) were women. This contrasts with victims of non-domestic homicides, where the majority of victims were male (88%) and 12% of victims were female (ONS, 2018).

• From April 2014 to March 2017 four in five female victims of domestic homicide were killed by a partner or ex-partner (239, 82%); of which the vast majority of suspects were male (238). 45 male victims were killed by a partner or ex-partner in the same time period; 7 of the suspects in these cases were male, and 38 were female (ONS, 2018).

• One study of 96 cases of domestic abuse recorded by the police found that men are significantly more likely to be repeat perpetrators and significantly more likely than women to use physical violence, threats, and harassment. In a six year tracking period the majority of recorded male perpetrators (83%) had at least two incidents of recorded abuse, with many having a lot more than two and one man having 52 repeat incidents. Whereas in cases where women were recorded as the perpetrator the majority (62%) had only one incident of abuse recorded and the highest number of repeat incidents for any female perpetrator was eight. The study also found that men’s violence tended to create a context of fear and control; which was not the case when women were perpetrators. (Hester, 2013)

• Over 80% (83%) of high frequency victims (more than 10 crimes) are women. (From a study of data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, a nationally representative household survey.) (Walby & Towers, 2018)

• In the year ending March 2018 the large majority of defendants in domestic abuse-related prosecutions were men (92%), and the majority (66%) of victims were recorded as female (13% of victims were male and in 21% of prosecutions the sex of the victim was not recorded) (ONS, 2018).