Domestic abuse leaves a spouse bruised, battered, possibly bleeding internally, with broken bones and a severely damaged psyche. Where does he go?

Yes, he; the battered man, beaten by a woman who claims to love him.

During a recent discussion on my Newstalk1010 radio show about domestic abuse, a caller named Robert took exception to the media always, in his assessment, portraying the man as the perpetrator and the woman as the victim.

Robert suggested someone should do an ad campaign portraying the “other side” of the debate.

I challenged him by saying: “Why don’t you do it?”

So he did.

The ad campaign is being sponsored by the Canadian Association for Equality (CAFE), starting with a billboard to go up Wednesday in the heart of Toronto at the corner of Bedford and Davenport Rds.

The billboard features the image of an angry woman towering over a cowering male.

It reads, “HALF of domestic violence victims are men. NO domestic violence shelters are dedicated to us.”

It includes the Twitter tag #LetsTalkMen, and the website www.equalitycanada.com.

So are they right? Is female domestic violence against men as serious as they claim?

Robert (he prefers not to make his last name public) provided me with a paper by Prof. Martin S. Fiebert of the department of psychology of California State University at Long Beach, References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners.

“This annotated bibliography describes 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews) demonstrating that women are as physically aggressive as men (or more) in their relationships with their spouses or opposite-sex partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 440,850 people.”

Justin Trottier of CAFE says, “Men are victims, but whether it is macho stereotypes, or the fact that hospitals and police don’t take domestic violence as seriously when men are the victims, men are less likely to take action.”

A Statistics Canada report says “Females continue to be the most likely victims of police-reported spousal violence, accounting for 83% of victims compared to 17% males. This holds true for every province and territory across Canada.”

Robert told me that he doesn’t take issue with the fact men are physically stronger and can thus inflict more damage in domestic assaults, “but that is not the story of domestic violence, which is a power and control issue.”

When society views men as always the perpetrators and women as always the victims, a tremendous amount of power and control is given to abusive women.

Trottier says, “There are systems we can put in place to encourage men to report. When men come to the hospital with bruises, the hospital doesn’t ask whether those bruises are the result of domestic violence, but it’s standard practice to ask a woman who comes into an emergency room, whether she has bruises or not, whether she is a victim of domestic violence.

“There have been a couple of test cases; hospitals that have started asking both men and women whether they are victims, and they find that a surprisingly high percentage of men are coming in for that reason.”

Trottier recommends gender neutral policies at hospitals.

He stresses CAFE’s campaign isn’t to distract from the importance of helping female victims, but to address societal attitudes towards male victims.

It’s a worthwhile effort, as illustrated by a text a listener sent during my show stating: “These guys deserve to be punched.”​