Sometimes you do not know where to start.

The responses from both Refuge and Women's Aid to a recent article in the Independent on Sunday show the challenges we have in not only in ensuring equality of support based on need for domestic abuse victims, but also shows the how the domestic abuse sector has been corrupted by ideology where equality and humanity is irrelevant

Certainly, Sandra Horley is not fit to be the CEO of Refuge when she says, without evidence that has been proved, peer reviewed or published, "women's violence towards male perpetrators is frequently defensive or retaliatory."

She is implying the age old myth, that a female perpetrator is really the victim, and a male victim is frequently the perpetrator. With no proof.

Rather than go through each letter, I will try and summarise the bigger picture.

The original article shone a rare light into the lives and challenges faced by male victims of domestic abuse and service providers (including a local Women's Aid branch). In no way did it 'deny' that female victims existed.

Rather than just leave it at that and say great that the horrors of domestic abuse was highlighted, both Refuge and Women's Aid felt the need to muscle in driven by fear that there is awareness that male victims exist?

Why does that fear exist? Is it sexism? Is it concern about funding being redirected to men (which would not be right as we need to make sure victims of both genders are supported)? Or is it some sort of ideological impulse that says men's issues are not as important as women's issues? Or a combination.

Would they want ManKind or AMIS or Esteem etc to write letters to the newspapers about an article that featured just women, asking for a mention of men - of course not. Maybe those charities that support men should do.

They even get the figures wrong, as Polly Neate says 89 per cent of victims are women. That is an untruth shown time and again by the fact that surveys both in the UK and abroad show the figure to be c66 per cent. So men are not one in ten victims, they are one in three.

She may mean 89 per cent of incidents but again Dewar Research prove that to be wrong (it is 76%/24%) and also incidents are a warped figure that is spun to sound that a knife in the back counts for one incident as does being shouted at - both terrible, but are they really the same? Women's Aid thinks so.

The call for context is startling and hypocrisy of the highest order as never have either organisation, when running any campaigns or media articles about domestic abuse against women, have ever mentioned male victims and their children. They'll mention the 1.2 million women per year that suffer (one in four women in their lifetime), but never mention, let alone in the same paragraph, the 800,000 men (one in six men in their lifetime). Never will you see that.

The trading of statistics in their letters showing more women who are not married were victims than their male equivalents is to counter the startling but little known fact that married men are more likely to be a victim than married women last year. Factcheck also corroborated it. Again, I look forward to seeing this figure about married men when Women's Aid and Refuge talk about domestic abuse in the media.

What the responses do show is that the cat is out of the bag about what both organisations now stand for at a national corporate level (not at a local level as some Women's Aid groups openly support male victims).

It shows that the primary narrative for the existence of both charities is not one based on service provision (as they both were when formed and when Erin Pizzey founded the first refuge in Chiswick) but one based on ideology. A mutation of their original ideal and one far removed from the primary purpose of charities which is to support people in need.

The last line in Polly Neate's article shows this "Most such violence is a result of an abuse of power and control, which is rooted in the historical status of women in the family and in society."

That is an ideological statement and has no relevance (even if true, which it is not) when providing support on the ground for a victim of domestic abuse. A victim is a victim. What sort of charity openly espouses that its core belief is one based on ideology not one based on support for those in need - the former is ideology and the latter is a charitable need.

Plus what about female victims in same sex relationships (see fact 14), how does that fit into the patriarchy?

God alone knows what response a man would get if he called the National Domestic Violence Helpline (females and children only and jointly run by Refuge and Women's Aid) asking for support - he must be a perpetrator, he must be a patriarchal oppressor etc. Refuge think the first question a male victim who calls should be is asked is "You must have hit her first obviously."

In summary, the whole issue raised by the Independent on Sunday has been successful on three fronts.

Firstly, there was the article itself that raised the issue. Secondly, it exposed the sexist ideological hypocritical heart of both organisations. Lastly, there is a hope that Women's Aid groups up and down the land see the letters, decide they will not only throw their doors open to men (like some have) they will also change their name so they clearly cater for victims of all genders.

Posted by Skimmington