If you thought we’d come a long way since burning bras, think again. A new survey commissioned by the Women’s Institute (WI) reveals that depressingly, nearly two-thirds of adults (64%) in the UK believe misogyny is a significant issue, with almost a third considering it a really serious problem.

Conducted by Opinium ahead of International Women’s Day 2025, the poll underscores the everyday challenges women face, highlighting a troubling reality that women, particularly younger ones, experience misogyny in deeply personal and practical ways.

The personal impact on women’s lives

The survey found that women aged 18-34 are particularly affected by misogyny, sadly often adjusting their daily behaviour to enhance their sense of safety. In the past year:

• 41% of young women avoided eye contact or limited interactions with strangers.
• 37% shared their live location with friends or family while travelling alone.
• 42% pretended to be on a phone call when walking by themselves.
• 27% clutched a bunch of keys between their fingers as a makeshift weapon.

By contrast, men in the same age group reported far lower rates of similar behaviours: only 14% used a phone as a prop, 18% shared their location, and just 10% carried keys in their fist.

Melissa Green, CEO of the WI, emphasized the need for urgent action. “Our polling makes for depressing reading at a time when women and girls’ rights are being challenged on every front.

“For women to feel that the UK is a far less safe place for them is unacceptable and deeply concerning – and needs to be tackled through social prevention, as well as political deterrence, and in allyship with men.”

Read more: Late diagnoses of ADHD and autism in women – the hidden cost

A worsening trend?

The WI’s findings align with last year’s Girls’ Attitudes report from Girl Guiding, which revealed that sexism (used interchangeably with misogyny in their report) has risen in the last ten years. In that survey:

• 47% of 11-21-year-olds feel less safe because of sexism and misogyny, a significant rise from 17% 10 years ago.
• 69% believed they were expected to act differently because of their gender.

While it is difficult to compare directly across years, these statistics suggest that concerns over misogyny are not improving but may be intensifying. If more women are adapting their behaviour out of fear and reporting a decline in their sense of safety, the issue requires urgent social and legislative attention.

Challenging misogyny: steps forward

It’s not all bad news. Despite the alarming figures, the survey also found that adults are taking action to challenge misogyny in their daily interactions:

• 37% of adults have had conversations about gender equality with men.
• 17% have walked a female friend to her car or home to ensure her safety.
• 16% have refused to participate in misogynistic conversations.
• 13% have called out sexist language in conversations.
• 8% have intervened when witnessing a woman being harassed.

Encouragingly, the proportion of men and women challenging misogyny is relatively balanced (28% of men vs. 31% of women), suggesting a growing awareness across genders. However, there is still much work to be done.

How to combat misogyny

Tackling misogyny requires collective effort from individuals, communities, and policymakers. Here are some ways everyone can help challenge and reduce its impact:

• Call out sexist behaviour. If you hear misogynistic jokes or comments, challenge them.
• Listen to women’s experiences. Understanding their concerns fosters empathy and action.
• Be an active witness. Intervene safely when witnessing harassment.
• Support gender equality initiatives. Advocate for policies and practices that promote fairness.
• Educate yourself and others. Learn about misogyny’s impact and encourage discussions in your circles.
• Speak up when safe to do so. Challenge misogynistic behaviour when possible.
• Support other women. Offer solidarity and assistance to those experiencing misogyny.
• Educate young people. Encourage conversations about gender equality from an early age.
• Engage in activism. Support or join movements advocating for women’s rights.
• Encourage male allies. Help men understand how they can contribute to positive change.

The WI’s report paints a concerning picture of how misogyny continues to shape the everyday experiences of women in Britain. However, the growing willingness to challenge it signals hope for a future where gender equality becomes the norm rather than the exception.

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The post Misogyny in UK today: a growing concern, says WI survey appeared first on Silver Magazine.

“Back then it was different,” say those who are nostalgic for the days of racist sitcoms, Mr Humphries being free-passing for LGBT representation, and women’s arses being fair game for pinching at work.

In that context, “back then” ended sometime around 1985 with the last episode of Are You Being Served? But now, as Russell Brand claims everything was consensual during his days of promiscuity, “back then” has fast-forwarded to the noughties.

This was the era of lads’ mags and ladettes. When the glorification of shagging and boozing and not caring about your cocaine’s supply chain provided the sordid soil in which Brand’s career grew.

This was the era of lads’ mags and ladettes… the glorification of shagging and boozing and not caring about your cocaine’s supply chain

At the time, I was in my ludicrously misspent twenties, ending that debauched decade by working on the Australian edition of FHM and writing a weekly column in the Sydney Morning Herald, before moving to Dubai. Apart from not seeing a flake of coke anywhere, Dubai was not quite the men-and-merlot detox people who had never set foot in the Middle East said it would be.

Photo: Eva Rinaldi

Marina Hyde recently reflected in The Guardian about how she could have done better “back then.” Particularly regarding comments she made about Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of Andrew Sachs. Baillie’s name has been forgotten by many, but she was at the centre of the 2008 Sachsgate scandal.

Hyde looked back on what she wrote at that time with mortification and regret. She described Brand and Jonathan Ross as scumbags for calling Sachs, just so Brand could boast about having sex with Baillie, egged on by Ross. But she also mocked those who complained to Ofcom, and wrote that Baillie should stop banging on about it.  And – and this bit was conspicuous by its absence from the mea culpa – sneeringly criticised a piece Baillie wrote for The Sun, and used ‘Satanic Slut’ (a reference to Baillie’s Voluptua the Satanic Slut burlesque character) as a demeaning insult.

I was completely unaware that the prank caused Baillie to spiral into addiction

Living in Dubai at the time, Sachsgate didn’t get saturation coverage on the heavily censored local media. But we didn’t exist in a total bubble. I had a laugh about it with my flatmate at the time. I was completely unaware that the prank caused Baillie to spiral into addiction. She didn’t speak to her grandfather for eight years. That is time she can never get back.

Read interview with Jon Stewart of Sleeper: why we’re better now than we were in the 90s

This got me thinking about my time at FHM. It was an era of stereotypically working and playing hard. Of spending most of my time with my colleagues either in the office, at parties, or in the pub.

Georgia Lewis at work in Dubai

How complicit was I, a mere sub editor, in contributing to the culture that allowed – or still allows – alleged sexual predators to hide in plain sight?

I was part of a magazine best known for photographs of women wearing not very much. It can be easily argued that such content is inherently sexist, pandering to the male gaze. Even though the women were always aged 18 or over and consented to the shoots.

When it came to headlines, captions, and content, pretty much anything was fair game for a joke. Apart from rape or paedophilia. I can’t say for certain that racist or homophobic content never made it through the net, but I’d need to dig through the back issues that are probably lurking at my parents’ house 10,000 miles away to check.

As well as sub-editing layouts, I compiled the sex pages. Assorted adult toy tests, one staff writer plunged his bits into a tub of some sort of sex custard to fill a paragraph. Naked Barbie and Ken dolls photographed demonstrating human pretzel sex positions. That actually attracted the ire of Mattel, as FHM was published by the same company that had the contract for Barbie magazine. But po-faced legal letters were water off a duck’s back.

FHM was inundated with women keen to appear in the magazine… was I exploiting women..?

I thought hard about the monthly shoot and sex discussions I oversaw. Back then it was different! FHM was inundated with women keen to appear in the magazine. I never struggled to find models willing to pose in swimwear or lingerie for a shoot before I took them to the pub on expenses to chat about a sex topic. Was I exploiting women eager to boost their careers by getting them to talk about everything from foreplay to whether older or younger men were better in bed. While getting them a bit drunk after posing in next to nothing?

There was always a lot of laughter at the pub, everyone had plenty to say and when the magazine came out. I received delighted emails from the participants. One model is still a friend, although she did confide in me years later about how a young, cocky intern she met via FHM behaved inappropriately, grinding his pelvis against her in an unwanted advance. I wish she’d told me at the time, and I hope I would have done something about it.

I’m sure that not everything we wrote has aged well. It feels weird to have been part of the latest “back then it was different.”

The one incident that sticks in my mind is a harassment complaint from an entrant in FHM’s Girlfriend of the Year modelling competition. In the analogue early noughties, hopeful young women would often send photos by post, so the retouch artists had to laboriously scan loads of pics for the mag. One entrant received multiple phone calls from a retoucher, who saw her number on the back of her photo. I am pleased to report the retoucher (what a damn job title…) was fired. And nobody felt sorry for him, or blamed the entrant for being a scantily clad temptress.

I’m sure that not everything we wrote has aged well. It feels weird to have been part of the latest “back then when things were different.” Although some of the worst things I wrote in that era were in the Sydney Morning Herald.

I remember a clumsily worded column about bowel cancer versus breast cancer. And a ridiculously unsisterly rant about married female colleagues complaining that their husbands wanted sex all the time, while my own personal life was a car crash. I am relieved these columns seem to have vanished with the Herald’s website’s multiple redesigns.

But this week’s events gave me pause for thought. My tiny part in “back then” was miles away from Russell Brand, working on a magazine that was more interested in Shane Warne than the creepy, thesaurus-swallowing booky wooky author. But it was part of lad culture in a faraway country that will probably always glorify toxic masculinity to some degree. I won’t lose any sleep over it now, but I agree with Marina Hyde that we can all do better, and get things right this time.

Georgia Lewis

In a career that has spanned Australia, the Middle East and the UK, Georgia has written about all sorts of things, including sex, cars, food, oil and gas, insurance, fashion, travel, workplace safety, health, religious affairs, glass and glazing… When she’s not writing words for fun and profit, she can usually be found with a glass of something French and red in her hand.

The post Back then it was ‘different’, right? How many of us were part of it? appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Unquestionably we support the NHS and those at the frontline. And if there’s something that has become increasingly clear through the pandemic, it’s who the most important people in the world are. Clue, it’s not the billionaires with their begging bowls.

It’s time we recognised who we owe our comfortable lives to. And gave them more respect.

You’re getting my dander up, you grotty little man

I’m writing this after some whiney man in a Facebook group posted about a certain supermarket. And how their staff weren’t ensuring customers followed the one-way system guidelines. This genius then went on to have a bitch about some other stuff he felt they were getting wrong, and made it sound like the staff didn’t give a toss about customer safety.

My daughter works in the supermarket he’s talking about. I’m afraid I waded in. I know, I know.

If you want to know what I said, here it is. I’m not going to identify the supermarket. Firstly because it’s not their fault that customers are brainless idiots. But also I don’t want to get into trouble with my daughter. She’ll throttle me. Actually the store does an amazing job of managing stupid people like this, but anyway. Best not mentioned.

Gratifyingly, there were a number of supportive comments under mine, and I wasn’t the only one to take him to task. In fact, he got roundly slapped down, which was most agreeable. I don’t like bullying, but he deserved a bit of a verbal kicking – the dickhead. I hope he leaves it alone now, I don’t want to see him ripped apart.

I don’t like bullies at any time, but I particularly don’t like them when my daughter is on the receiving end. And some of the treatment she’s endured at work since lockdown is truly shocking – and cowardly. Bearing in mind without workers like her, people would be struggling harder to eat, or wipe their arses. You’d think there’d be a bit more respect.

I know better, sadly. To understand why I expect so little from the general public, let’s look at how people behave when there isn’t even a pandemic. Here’s a few nuggets she’s told me over the time she’s been there…

10 ‘secrets of the store’ in normal times

1. About 50 hand baskets a day are stolen. Seriously, people take those wire baskets home. God alone knows why, but it happens every single day.
2. Shoplifters favour the self-service area of the shop and think they’re really clever. They do stuff like swapping stickers on food and weighing the wrong things. What they don’t know is that their games are really obvious (I’m not going to tell you how, but they are). For every one of those that gets away with it, they bust 10 idiots.
3. She’s seen people she knows come in and try this whilst knowing she’s on shift, by the way. If you’re reading this, know that. She’s seen you and feels sad that you’ve done that in front of her, putting her in that position.
4. There’s a garage at the superstore. People go to the ‘pay at pump only’ pumps and then get angry because they have to, er, pay at the pump. Then they come into the kiosk and kick off, shouting at the staff. Always fun.
5. Shoplifters again – the self-scanner section. The number of times people try to walk out having paid for four items but have a trolley brimming with food. And FYI – if you ‘make a mistake’ in that area, you will get checked. Every, single, time. The random check is not random if you’ve been busted before.
6. Female staff on checkouts get called sugar tits by old geezers. Who also think it’s dead sexy to leer at them and lick their lips. They think it’s funny. It makes some of the younger girls cry.
7. When it was the minute silence on Remembrance Sunday there were people who refused to stop. And they got angry because the staff wouldn’t serve them until the minute had passed (I kid you not).
8. Reduced items go out same time each day. People come regularly to get the bargains and fill up their trolleys. You’d think it would be people who aren’t so well off, who really need the bargains, but it’s not. It’s greedy people driving off in their Range Rovers. Because it’s 8pm when the items are knocked down, and parents are home with their kids. So the people who could really do with a cheaper meal often can’t get there.
9. Also, the local restaurant owners come and totally plunder the reduced food. Not only do they monopolise the sale foods, they hide them from their competitors in different aisles. The staff are constantly having to find the food and put it back.
10. There are often physical fights over the reduced aisle with actual security guards detailed now, as staff members have ended up getting hurt in the scrum. That scene with the women fighting over loo roll? Nothing new.

See what I mean? Anyone who has worked in customer service at some point will identify with some of this, and how hard it is to put a smile on some days. But they do it, idiots notwithstanding.

Her store is regularly rewarded for its customer service – the staff go in there every day and strap it on. Even when people are dying of a virus, and they’re at risk of catching it just by going into work, they put themselves out there, every day.

Worse during the pandemic

You know stuff like this is going to be worse right now, don’t you. It’s obvious – all that additional stress, shortages of particular items, having to WAIT IN LINE for god’s sake… it’s a heady mixture for the superstore baddie. People are starting to lose sight of boundaries.

She’s had people do stuff like screw up a receipt and throw it directly in her face

The other day a guy tried to barge his way past a bunch of people queueing because ‘he only had two things to get’ and didn’t see why he should wait. When my daughter politely told him he had to, he shouted in her face. Then leaned forward and with his bare hands, moved her hair out of the way so he could see her name badge. So he could complain about her personally.

The feeling of anger I have for this moment alone is hard to put into words. And yes, she was upset. But kept her cool – she’s a smarter person than I am – and asked him firmly not to do that, and still made him wait. I might have hit him. I WANT to hit him. She made him wait, which was much more painful for him. She enjoyed that.

But he’s not the only one to abuse her or invade her space. She’s had people do stuff like screw up a receipt and throw it directly in her face because they disagreed with the total. Been called a fucking idiot more times than she can remember, and has to deal with drunk customers on a daily basis.

One woman came in the other day and slurred, “you’re gonna have to help me, I’m really drunk.” She was buying vodka. They had to explain to her that they couldn’t serve her – you can imagine how that ended.

Fancy hearing a few more fun things that have happened recently?

• A man paid for his goods with cash, and got his change in cash. Then lost it, because he didn’t want his change in cash. He’d wanted it put on his card. It’s not possible to even do that, but he yelled at a staff member for ages until he was removed from the store. Shouting and swearing and calling her a stupid bitch.
• People don’t like the one-way system and although staff try really hard to make sure everyone follows the (very clear) signage, there’s always people who just ‘nip down this aisle quickly’ and think it’s ok. Then they get upset when other customers shout at them.
• When this sort of thing happens, it’s not unusual for it to get physical, with customers barging each other with their trolleys. There’s a lot more security in the store than normal at the moment.
• The barging and shouting got so bad the other day a woman had a severe anxiety attack in the middle of the store and had to get an ambulance. Some people were kind – more people were laughing at her.
• Another day, a man went round the entire store any which way he liked, calling other shoppers c*nts and being deeply unpleasant. There was a store-wide round of applause when security kicked him out.
• The store has had to move the food bank donations container, because people – unable to find some items on shelves – were stealing the food out of it.
• The changing rooms are closed right now because of cross-contamination. So a guy literally stripped off his trousers in the store. Trying on strides in the clothing area. When a staff member politely told him that wasn’t okay, he really lost it at her. So badly that the poor girl had to finish her shift early and get a security escort to her car to go home. “I’ll be waiting for you in the car park darlin’,” he’d hissed in her face.

There’s so much more I could tell you, but I think this is enough. Imagine going in and dealing with this sort of shit on a daily basis. And as I pointed out in my post above, all this before you even take into consideration that they’re at high risk of being infected every time they go to work. There’s no PPE for the store worker.

This is brave. This isn’t staying at home doing Joe Wicks and overeating in the sunny garden. The rigorous cleaning and restrictions the store implements means that staff have been well supported, and very few have been ill. And they do everything possible to protect their customers. But it’s a risk, every day.

So next time you’re in the supermarket and your checkout bod looks knackered, or is struggling to be chirpy, cut them some slack. If you see customers behaving badly and feel staff ought to be working harder – spare them a thought. If you’re sitting inside a warm home, with a fridge full of food and reasonable to good health, you know who to thank, don’t you.

And if you’re one of those people who think it’s okay to take your stress out on staff – anywhere, not just in shops – then fucking stop it. Now.

They’re going through all sort of crap every day. Give them a smile and spread a little love.

Thanks

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

The post Supermarket workers are facing appalling abuse from customers. It needs to stop appeared first on Silver Magazine.

Looking back, I’ve never been entirely sure why I married Carol. I think it’s probably because at the time we were both really dysfunctional, and I had this idea that maybe together we’d be greater than the sum of our parts.

I was pretty flaky in those days – as well as being an astonishingly heavy drinker I was also enthusiastically working my way through a cornucopoeia of exotic drugs most weekends, and my behaviour was erratic and unreliable. I would work a bit, then lose interest or get fired. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call ‘a catch’.

Carol was literally a con merchant. She ran various scams and cons – and when we were in our twenties, around the mid-eighties, none of the above mattered to us very much. We kind of found each other in a sea of misadventure and just connected. We were both pretty broken. And hey, it was fun for a while – so we got married.

PLANS FOR FAMILY

Once we were married it became almost an obsession of mine to have a child. Reflecting on that now, there’s no way we should have been thinking about taking care of a child – we couldn’t even take care of ourselves. But it became my primary focus – I think I thought it would be the thing that would straighten us out, make us grow up.

Carol wasn’t fussed one way or the other at the time. She basically said we could have one but I’d have to look after it because she didn’t want to. I mean, that should have told me something. But I ploughed ahead anyway.

And we were lucky. Carol got pregnant really quickly and I was thrilled. I mean, not thrilled enough to actually shape up and become more responsible, but thrilled enough to tell everyone in the pub every night how pleased I was.

By the time Nicola was born Carol pretty much hated her already

As the pregnancy wore on, she became more resentful. Said she’d been lumbered with one child already (me) and now she had another one coming and I was useless and I’d ruined her life. She was angry throughout her pregnancy. It wasn’t a great start.

It didn’t help either that the birth was really brutal, or that she nearly died giving birth to our daughter. By the time Nicola was born Carol pretty much hated her already.

HAZY BABY DAYS

If I’m really honest, I don’t remember much about Nicky’s early days. I don’t think it’s unusual for dads to find it hard to bond with tiny babies. I felt inadequate and uncertain about what to do, and I couldn’t feed her; Carol – slightly bizarrely – insisted on exclusively breast feeding. So I never got close to the baby, and life seemed for me to just be the same. I was out most nights, to avoid the rows at home about how useless I was. It was a toxic, ever-decreasing circle.

As Nicky grew up though I found myself more connected – when I was sober. And I knew without hesitation that I loved her more than I’d ever loved anything, including myself. But my lifestyle meant I wasn’t a great father in those days, and that probably explains why I missed so many of the signs that something was wrong.

Carol was abusing our daughter and it took me a while to realise it. Unexplained little bruises on her body, a gradual withdrawing of confidence, her silence around her mother…

It’s really hard to talk about this, so I’m going to be brief and matter-of-fact about it. Carol was abusing our daughter and it took me a while to realise it. Unexplained little bruises on her body, a gradual withdrawing of confidence, her silence around her mother, her resistance to being at home alone with her – one day it all just suddenly fell into place. And actually one day I caught her. She didn’t know I was there and I saw her bite our child on her arm – hard – because she wouldn’t eat her food. It’s something that will live with me forever. The worst thing was that Nicky didn’t even cry out. She just looked resigned, broken. I knew in that moment that this was not a one-off.

I am at least able to say now that this shock brought me to my senses. I realised that Carol wasn’t fit to care for Nicky and I needed to get her to somewhere safe. Almost overnight I threw in my drinking and cocaine use (which was no picnic, I can tell you) and got my shit together. I found that I was able to do it for my daughter, when all the time I hadn’t been able to do it for myself.

But I had no idea how hard the road ahead was going to be. This was the late eighties, and it was still really unusual for a man to be the primary carer. And I had to fight with everything I had – literally and figuratively – to make my child safe. I knew I had to get her away from Carol before something really bad happened.

The courts always favour the mother – even these days – and I ended up having to go through a gut-wrenching court fight, which included having to photograph my child’s injuries

I had some money in a trust from my family that I released – I had to pay my lawyer over £20,000 to fight the case, despite the overwhelming evidence that Carol was an unfit mother. And I lost everything I had. Whereas Carol got support from the state, default custody, and Legal Aid, I had basically no rights. The courts always favour the mother – even these days – and I ended up having to go through a gut-wrenching court fight, which included having to photograph my child’s injuries to prove Carol was unfit to be a parent. Why do people find it so hard to believe that women can be violent abusers too?

During that time Nicky – now seven years old – was still with her mother, and ended up bearing the brunt of her mother’s anger towards me. I secretly bought a pager so she could reach me if she needed help and told her to keep the number hidden from Carol. One night Carol was angry with her because she wouldn’t stop bouncing on the sofa and threw her out of the house, in the rain, with no shoes on. I will never forget picking her up that night, shivering and crying. How I didn’t kill Carol during those days actually is a miracle.

Eventually I won. There was never an option that I would give up, and Nicky came to live with me, I gained full custody. And social services allowed Carol supervised visitation rights. It should have felt like a victory but I had been so devastated. Both Nicky and I were on our knees, it was like we had to start from scratch.

LEARNING TO TRUST AGAIN

Once in a safe space, all the fear and anger she had pent up in her came out, and she was like a wild animal, her frustration and bitterness spilling out of her

Nicky was angry. Once in a safe space, all the fear and anger she had pent up in her came out, and she was like a wild animal, her frustration and bitterness spilling out of her like spitting logs on a hot fire. She was beside herself some days. When she used to lose herself in her anger and rage I used to just try and hold her gently, and just calm her down with calm, quiet words, keeping her safe. Just making sure I didn’t react, but taught her gentleness again. It was heart-breaking. But we got through it. Bit by bit.

There was so much that could have made this easier and one of those things would have been having the support network of other parents. But a single dad in those days was viewed with suspicion. The mums at the school gate wouldn’t talk to me, and the men were wary of me – maybe they thought I might chat up their wives. Maybe they just couldn’t relate to me – after all, most of them were out there, slaying the dragon, building careers. And I was picking up freelance work and being both mum and dad to my child. I just know I never felt more alone in my life than in those early days. It was unbelievably lonely.

…a single dad in those days was viewed with suspicion. The mums at the school gate wouldn’t talk to me, and the men were wary of me

It’s also hard not to be angry looking back. If a father had done a tenth of the things to his child that Carol did to Nicky, he’d have probably been banned from seeing her for life. It is still hard not to feel resentful about that.

But the story has a happy ending at least. Nicky has grown up and is managing okay. She has PTSD but has spent considerable time in counselling addressing that. And we are still close. She is wary of having her own kids and I can’t blame her for that. But I hope I get a chance to be a grandad, although time is passing and it seems unlikely.

On Father’s Day, give a little thought to all the dads out there who have stood up and been counted

There has been so much talk about whether dads can step up and be as good as mums when it comes to nurturing and I find that wholly patronising. Of course they can – but like everything, these things are on a case-by-case basis. Not every man will be great at this, and not every woman either, as I know only too well.

On Father’s Day, give a little thought to all the dads out there who have stood up and been counted, however tough it’s been. In the meantime I’m off down the pub – but this time not to drink myself silly and snort lines of coke off the bar – I’m having a sober Sunday lunch with my daughter, and I couldn’t be happier or more grateful about anything else in the whole wide world.

As told to Sam Harrington-Lowe
All names have been changed
If you are a father struggling for your rights check out the resources on Fathers4Justice

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The post I did everything to rescue my daughter from her abusive mother. Don’t tell me dads can’t do the job appeared first on Silver Magazine.

A report created from data supplied by 24 difference police forces around the UK in 2018 shows that from our late 40s to around age 75, the volume of female victims drops, and male victims of domestic abuse numbers rise.

This is attributed in part to the decline of violent physical abuse, and the figures include other types of abuse such as psychological, emotional etc – put bluntly, in our younger years men are handier with their fists and as we age and become less fit, more women become abusers, but in a non-physical way.

It’s a growing issue that is revealed by some startling Home Office figures, and yet, as of last year, according to charity ManKind, only 0.8% of refuge beds were for men. The support networks and safe houses that exist for female victims obviously exist for good reason, but considering the volume of male victims, their needs are woefully under met. And it’s largely because men aren’t good at asking for help.

But support for men is scant. So what recourse is open to male victims – assuming they even have the confidence to do something about it? If you leave, you risk losing everything you’ve worked to build up, and if you stay, you commit yourself to accepting the ongoing abuse. Days off work for black eyes and scratches, lame excuses for bruising, avoiding your friends and family and plummeting self-esteem – this is not women talking here, but men, and it’s definitely no laughing matter.

Case study: Mark

Mark* is 54 and he’s sleeping on his mate’s sofa. He’s been there for a few weeks now whilst waiting to move into a shared flat with another friend – he can’t afford to just rent a place for himself. Mark doesn’t really want to be doing this; he’s a grown man with an executive job, a daughter at uni, and until recently a home and a wife. But Mark is sleeping on his mate’s sofa because he’s left his wife Jane*, and has nowhere else to go.

Mark is a victim of domestic abuse, and after years of living with increasing levels of domestic violence, has finally been forced to leave his wife, because if he hadn’t, she might very well have ended up killing him.

Mark and Jane met in the late nineties, and after spending the best part of a blissful, whirlwind year together, got married in a lavish ceremony in the Caribbean. Although Mark was sure enough about the relationship to marry her, it was clear there were problems right from the start.

“I noticed that she had a massive temper, and that she could be violent, because of the things she said, and things she’d done. You could sit in a room and know immediately that she’d been upset by something that someone else had said. There’d be arguments, sometimes about us, more often about other people, but in the early stages she wouldn’t feel that she could attack me, because I’m quite easy-going.

She was small, but for a small girl she could really pack a punch. So it’d be smack, one black eye; smack, another one to match

“It was generally to do with her friends or people around her, who she frequently fell out with. So I would try to be a calming influence, or more of a voice of reason. I’d say, maybe that this isn’t quite the way it is. And she would say, you don’t understand, you’re just weak.”

Mark hoped his approach might diffuse Jane’s anger, but over the years things gradually began to deteriorate. Their arguments worsened and her aggression and violence became more apparent. And Mark found as time went by that his self-confidence was shattered too.

“She smashed the kitchen to pieces once. I saw her – she broke her foot, kicking fuck out of the kitchen door, and her child was up crying, asking me what was going on. She just smashed our home to pieces.

“She could drive an argument out of nothing. So we’d have a situation, say, where she’d pick on something, or ask me a question. Then if she didn’t like the answer we’d go round and round, and deeper and deeper and deeper, until we’d get to a point where she’d yell at me, get out of the house, I just don’t want you here. And I’d be like, but I live here. And that, pretty much, was the point where it would get really, really violent.

“She was small, but for a small girl she could really pack a punch. So it’d be smack, one black eye, smack, another one to match, and I’d be crying, for fuck’s sake stop. Please. Look at the state of me.”

Men struggle to admit to the problem

Reported cases of domestic violence against men are on the increase, and estimates show these reports are just the tip of the iceberg. Men are backwards in coming forwards when faced with this situation – being beaten or abused is seen as embarrassing perhaps, or weak – regardless of whether they’re in hetero or LGBT relationships. So very often a male victim will only surface when he ends up in hospital, or even the morgue.

(Model)

It’s clear, therefore, that there are many more cases of ongoing domestic abuse that stay firmly behind closed doors. But it seems that gradually, men are learning to ask for help. The problem now is that there isn’t much that anyone can do for them. Detective Sergeant Phil Aldred at the Sussex Police Anti-Victimisation Unit is frustrated by the lack of practical support available to the men that pass through his hands.

“Men walk into the station and ask for help, and our hands are tied. We can give them advice, and the ‘there, there, there’ factor, but there isn’t actually anything tangible that they can leave the station with.”

Cristel Osmann was based at the same unit and responsible for spearheading a campaign some years ago, not just to raise awareness of this problem, but to activate agencies and groups to tackle it.

Often the most important thing is that someone’s actually listening to them for the first time

“First and foremost is the issue of getting men to admit that they are being abused, and secondly, to get them to ask for help,” she explains.

“There aren’t the same services for men as there are for women; it’s very difficult to access any services at all for male victims. Often the most important thing is that someone’s actually listening to them for the first time. And then trying to help them in a more practical way. It’s the same the country over when it comes to dealing with men who are being abused. The ‘too difficult’ light comes on, and so they do nothing.”

So this is why Mark is sleeping on his mate’s sofa. The bottom line is this. If a woman is being abused, there’s a range of agencies and organisations geared towards helping her flee the situation. For men, there’s very little. Also, the legal standing and very often the overall situation for an abused man is completely different to that of an abused woman, particularly if there are children involved.

He’s unlikely to throw her out, and she’s unlikely to leave, so he’s usually faced with staying and accepting the situation, or leaving and starting from scratch alone. And as the majority of parental rights hang with mothers, he doesn’t easily have the option of leaving and taking his children with him.

The danger is real – but also emotional

Don’t make the mistake of imagining that the abuse might not be serious. The police have been faced with some appalling damage inflicted on male partners, ranging from stab wounds to serial sadistic abuse, such as cigarette burns on hands and nipples. One particular incidence that Mark remembers indicates the level of violence that women are capable of.

“The rows had become more frequent and the level of violence more extreme. And then one night, she just lost it. I’ve taken two punches in the face, where the wedding ring that I bought her has just cut my eye open. I’ve got one black eye, I’ve got another black eye now, and the next thing you know, a table lamp which is about a quarter of a inch thick has been cracked across the back of my head. I’ve got an open gash and I’m bleeding everywhere.”

To me, the hardest thing is when you have a desperate man who’s sitting sobbing his heart out to complete strangers

This is pretty fierce, and Det Sgt Aldred comes face to face with this kind of thing quite often. But the problem he feels is less about the actual violence itself, and more about the effect it has on the men.

“Every time someone has a pair of scissors stuck into them, or an ornamental knife or a kitchen knife, it’s centimetres away from death. But to me, the hardest thing is when you have a desperate man who’s sitting sobbing his heart out to complete strangers. To me, that’s much harder than someone who has a stab wound which will get better, and will go away.”

Cristel identifies the issue of control. “I think that the dynamics of the relationship are exactly the same – it’s all about power and control, whichever way round it is. They will try and keep control of their partner by belittling them or abusing them by whatever means. I used to do a drop-in surgery and on one of the first nights this chap came in. He was nearly 70, he’d been married for fifty-something years, and he’d been suffering years of abuse. He just kept saying ‘Thank you for believing me’.”

Mental abuse is just as much of a potent weapon, but by far the most common factor in incidences of domestic violence is the use of drugs and alcohol – with alcoholism being top of the list. The largest volume of domestic violence reports come in over the weekend nights, but it’s the creeping, ongoing torture that generally never makes the headlines, where alcohol plays the greatest part.

Becoming part of the problem

So how do you deal with this? What do you do if your wife or girlfriend is subjecting you to violent or mental abuse? In all domestic abuse cases, the police find themselves called out time and time again to the same address. The incidences, over time, usually escalating in their severity, and in the worst cases with someone ending up dead.

I started to feel that what was happening between us was becoming part of me, like violence, and lying and manipulation was normal

The fact is that although your partner may be abusing you on a regular basis, it’s often very difficult to just walk away. Relationships are complex arrangements, and the abuse might only be a small part of it. But how do you handle it when your wife or girlfriend is screaming abuse at you, punching you in the face or holding a knife to your throat?

In a situation like this, it’s hard to know what to do. Maybe you try to calm things down, maybe you walk away. In some cases, instinct might tell you to fight back. What is clear is that over a protracted length of time, a domestic abuse victim will find his or her personality altered. Living with someone you love who persists in treating you in such a destructive way will eventually take its toll.

You live with fear, you feel alone, you are embarrassed by your injuries, which leads to a loss of self-confidence, and often you will find yourself dragged into violent exchanges which are completely out of character. Mark, who had never been a violent man before, was drawn into fight after fight, and he found that eventually, he began to buy into the violence, began to retaliate.

“I started to feel that what was happening between us was becoming part of me, like violence, and lying and manipulation was normal. And it isn’t normal. So you get to a point in a relationship where words aren’t going to work, and you start to lose the power of speech, because you get so mad, and then there’s nowhere else for it to go. I would never lash out first. No, I did once. I’d been drinking a lot of vodka, and she wouldn’t speak to me. I went mad, kicked the door in, and…I can’t talk about it. I really hate myself for it, really not proud of myself.”

Men generally get the blame

Usually when situations like this escalate and the police become involved, it is the male who will be arrested. The officers who arrive on the scene are faced with the responsibility of assessing the situation, and they quite often get it wrong. When Mark’s wife smashed a lamp over his head, the police were called, and yet, despite the clear evidence at the scene, it was Mark that was arrested.

“She’s still yelling at me and she’s then called the police, screaming, he won’t leave, he won’t go. So I’m saying, what have I done wrong? We’ve had an argument, and you’ve done this to me, so who’s wrong? Well it turns out that I am. Because I’m off, I’m the one in the back of the squad car, and I’m saying well, did you see any marks on her?”

Det Sgt Aldred acknowledges that this is a problem the force needs to address. “We’ve probably got it wrong more than we’ve got it right. But it’s very difficult to talk about this hypothetically – you have to make a decision based on what you see. So it may well be that the police turn up, there’s been a violent exchange between these two people, and they will act on what they see. And if the argument’s going on and they remove the male from the premises, it may not be until a later stage that they actually find out what the root cause of it was.”

We’ve probably got it wrong more than we’ve got it right. But it’s very difficult to talk about this hypothetically – you have to make a decision based on what you see

The main thing, it seems, is simply to be able to offer men someone to talk to. Mark left his wife, and was lucky enough to have the support of family and friends to see him through the break-up. But for others, an improved support network could be vital.

Charity ManKind reports that whilst one in six men will experience some domestic violence at some time in their lives, roughly one in 20 will actually seek help. And part of that problem is the lack of support available, with some men having to travel up to 150 miles to find help. Even if it’s just having someone to talk to.

“I wanted to talk to someone, to people who’d been through the same thing” says Mark. “You know, if you go to hospital you see people with broken arms, with their arms in plaster, and you know they’re going to be better in six weeks. My heart’s broken, and there’s no plaster. And there’s just sorrow.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• The police recorded 599,549 domestic abuse-related crimes in the year ending March 2018.
• This was an increase of 23% from the previous year.
• However, the latest available estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) showed that over four in five victims (83%) of partner abuse did not report the abuse to the police.
• Domestic abuse is not limited to physical violence. It can include repeated patterns of abusive behaviour to maintain power and control in a relationship, including psychological, physical, sexual, financial or emotional abuse.
• Women were around twice as likely to have experienced domestic abuse than men (7.9% compared with 4.2%). This equates to an estimated 1.3 million female victims and 695,000 male victims.

ManKind – Helping Men Escape Domestic Abuse

If you are affected by any of the issues in this article and would like to talk to someone, call the National Victim Support Helpline – 0845 30 30 900

The Home Office also funds the Men’s Advice Line, a confidential, free phone helpline for male victims of domestic abuse. The service offers practical advice, information and emotional support to male victims, as well as to concerned friends and family and frontline workers.

* Names have been changed

Sam Harrington-Lowe

Sam is Silver’s founder and editor-in-chief. She’s largely responsible for organising all the things, but still finds time to do the odd bit of writing. Not enough though. Send help.

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