Last weekend, Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, released a statement on twitter admitting that during a party conference in Glasgow in 2013, she had slapped her then-partner as they were having a row over a computer cable, claiming she felt “threatened”. She was arrested but charges were dropped. She goes on to say her and her ex have “moved on and forgiven each other”.
Underneath Moran’s statement, the following exchange took place: “I admire you candour and courage in addressing this”, wrote one woman, “this should be an end to the matter”. A man then responded: “Would you say the same if she was a man?”
And therein lies the reason that this incident, despite taking place nearly six years ago, has exploded on the internet and caused my back to arch like a cat walking on broken glass. How do we talk about violence against men in such a way that supports male victims but still acknowledges that violence against women and girls around the globe is a much more common, historical and culturally systematic issue?
Well, we can start by saying that any intimate partner violence is abhorrent. One third of domestic abuse victims are men, and according to the BBC, “Police in England and Wales recorded 149,248 incidents in 2017 - more than double the number reported in 2012”. I mentioned the incident to a friend “I 100% know women who have slapped their partners when they are drunk” she writes. I think of my female friend who used to throw crockey in fits of rage. If a man had done that to her, I would have told her it was a red flag and a very serious storm of abuse and control was on its way. Yet I didn’t say that to her because she is a woman. I listened and made us another cup of tea.
Moran hints that she felt “threatened” - a passing insinuation that it was an act of self-defense. After all, it would be naive to ignore the reality that men are often bigger and stronger, and the threat is often a very real one. But a woman slapping a man around the face often has connotations of humour; think of EastEnders or Dallas. There’s a high-octane, almost pantomime-like drama; the man normally “deserves” it, the scorned woman huffs off. Even among those of us who would like to think of ourselves as progressive, we have deep-rooted notions of masculinity, such as a woman can’t really hurt a man, a man can “take it”, men aren’t vulnerable. These messages are harmful and need to be exposed as what they are; gender stereotypes that are no good for anyone. We have to start by believing men can be victims in order to respond to them as such.
And yet, to suggest that this is a crime that takes place in equal measure, irrespective of gender, is to ignore the facts. It is to ignore that two women die every week in this country at the hands of a former or current male partner; it it to ignore that 7.9% of women in the UK will experience violence compared to 4.25% of men. It is to ignore women are four times more likely to have experienced sexual assault by a partner, and female victims of abuse are more likely to experience other types of abuse also, such as emotional or economic. And even with these statistics highlighting the extent of the issue, there are endless cases in which the police and the criminal justice system routinely fail women over and over again. Just last week The Centre for Women’s Justicesubmitted a super-complaint to HM Inspectorate of Constabulary for failures to protect victims of rape and abuse. This isn’t a game of one upmanship; violence is an epidemic that is killing women routinely and we have to try to understand it in order to prevent it.
The disproportionate levels of violence towards women and girls also paints a bigger picture of a woman's place in society. Whilst I don’t doubt that women are abusers, too, hell bent on control and able to cause huge emotional and psychological damage if they so wish, women exist in a society which is fundamentally not on their side; underrepresented and underpaid, they still burdened with the majority of domestic and caring duties. Women’s lack of economic, social and cultural power makes them vulnerable. And in this way, the violence against them historically has been accepted, overlooked, ignored, in some cases inevitable. Remember when we called white vest ‘wifebeaters’? Remember when police didn’t respond to calls because it was “a domestic”? Only recently was the video game called Rape Day, which users were encouraged to commit sexual assault to progress, removed. We are constantly bombarded with a messaging that normalises violence and sexual violence against women on a scale that we simply don’t see with men. Violence against women is a terrible crime that isn’t just between two individuals but is also a symptomatic expression of men’s power in society.
Layla Moran’s confession is important because violence against men is real, and it needs to be taken seriously. Perhaps, also, the growing numbers of men reporting the crime suggests thanks to a more tolerant and open-minded society, men feel they can admit what has been happening to them behind closed doors. Yet this conversation can not be used to undermine the efforts that prevent violence against women or in anyway belittle the reality that this is a gendered crime. There’s far too much at stake.