And also, how do I get rid of these \ symbols when I write the quote marks -> ', see? It appeared again.
Edited by A-random-guy
Picking up from an ATT thread discussing a rewrite of the trope description: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=83936&type=att
The description of the trope has become bogged down with Righting Great Wrongs and explaining real-world implications of the trope. I have attempted to revise it without losing the points that previous tropers made, but the points they added opened up more cans of worms than can be explained in a few brief sentences. I am unsure what people would prefer this description to do about the real-world implications: a brief overview or a more thorough examination.
Edited by immichan Hide / Show Replies
I liked the thorough examination you'd written at ATT, but it'd probably be more suited for Analysis than the main trope page.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
You smart person, you— Analysis makes MUCH more sense for getting into the real world stuff. I'll work on a description that splits the content and bring the drafts back here.
Trope Definition:
If you learn about Domestic Abuse, rape, or other forms of interpersonal violence from dramatic works or Very Special Episode, you may come away believing All Abusers Are Male. Most works that address the seriousness of abuse frame it as something committed only by male perpetrators, usually against female victims. This isn't just when an individual work depicts a male abuser or rapist; this is an aggregate trope that exists through many works depicting male abusers and not female ones, creating the impression that abuse never has female perpetrators. Ongoing series may have multiple episodes depicting abusive men and none with an abusive woman. Some works have male victims, but still have male abusers without female-on-male abuse. Belief in this trope is implied when characters are anti-rape and anti-violence as male-only problems.
This trope is different from Double Standard Rape: Female on Male, Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male, and Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female. Those tropes acknowledge that women commit acts of domestic violence and acts of rape, but treat them as less harmful and easily forgive or dismiss them based on their gender dynamics.
Straight examples must imply or explicitly state that abuse/rape is only perpetrated by men, and women are either never abusive or never to the same extent as men. The most common aversion of this trope is the Wicked Stepmother. Most of the subversions and aversions listed on this page are intended to be a Plot Twist in the story... meaning that even when the trope is not enforced, the writers still expect the audience to believe in it and be surprised when an abuser is female.
Please avoid Take That! edits due to the nature of this trope.
Useful Notes (not complete):
This trope is not Truth in Television. In real life, female perpetrators are more common than fiction suggests, and they are just as capable of serious violence and mistreatment. People of any gender can abuse someone of any other gender. While more male-on-female domestic abuse and rape is reported to law enforcement and social service agencies each year than any other gender combination, this gets misrepresented as if ''all'' abuse is male-on-female rather than most.
The pervasiveness of tropes like this contributes to skewed statistics. Men and boys rarely see depictions of female abusers and male victims; many question whether their experience is really abuse and are ashamed to admit they have been abused, especially by a female abuser. Police officers refuse to file reports on what they consider unimportant, do not believe the victim's account, or consider a woman's abuse of a man "preemptive self-defense" and arrest him. Most domestic violence shelters ban men and sometimes older teen boys for the comfort and well-being of female victims, and people trying to bring attention to male victims or start male shelters have been ignored, ridiculed, or accused of diverting attention from women's issues
.
Many men abused by other men and women abused by other women are afraid of homophobic police officers. The officers may mistreat them or misidentify the perpetrator and victim based on masculine or feminine traits, such as assuming a Butch Lesbian is the perpetrator against a more feminine partner when the reality is vice-versa. Some officers won't believe abuse is possible outside male-female couples or will arrest both parties to sort it out later.
Edited by immichan
Rewritten description now in place. Big ol' cleanup of the examples needed... someday.
This is kind of truth in television and this page's existence is an unfortunate relic of "misandry". Women can certainly be abusers and attempts to whitewash female-on-male (or female-on female) abuse should be taken to task, but in reality, most cases do involve male perpetrators.
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Are you serious? You never thought that maybe, precisely because of this bias, men are less likely to report thier abuse?
One of these days, all of you will accept me as your supreme overlord.
- This website is entitled "Domestic Violence Statistics", and yet by reading the statistics mentioned on the home page one could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence was something that only women suffer from - of the eleven examples given, eight refer solely to women as victims of domestic violence or men as perpetrators.
- However, they do have an article about the overlooked victims of domestic violence (ie men).
- However, they do have an article about the overlooked victims of domestic violence
I removed this because there was no way of removing the natter and combining the two sub-examples' information, and it seems the page in question in fact has a section dedicated to male victims.
- In the SVU episode "Asunder", there was a police sergeant with a physically and emotionally abusive wife. The wife claimed she raped him, and when they asked around his precinct, they found out how horrible she was to him and how often she injured him. They, however, just treated this as motive, and after his wife recanted and admitted she made it up, they still treated him like he was a monster and she was in danger, despite it being the other way around. He is eventually hospitalized by her, and they think this is bad because he might have leverage in the case by not pressing charges against her. They continued on with the case and actually got it past the grand jury before a judge dismissed it as the BS that it was.
- If this is the episode I'm thinking of, it was pretty well showcased that it was a mutually abusive relationship, with both husband and wife taking shots at each other, downplaying this trope.
- In the SVU episode "Asunder", there was a police sergeant with a physically and emotionally abusive wife. The wife claimed she raped him, and when they asked around his precinct, they found out how horrible she was to him and how often she injured him. They, however, just treated this as motive, and after his wife recanted and admitted she made it up, they still treated him like he was a monster and she was in danger, despite it being the other way around. He is eventually hospitalized by her, and they think this is bad because he might have leverage in the case by not pressing charges against her. They continued on with the case and actually got it past the grand jury before a judge dismissed it as the BS that it was.
I hide this in the Law and Order entry because it seems the example may or may not fit the trope and the natter, but this troper doesn't know Law and Order well enough to fix it. Hopefully someone more familiar with the show can weigh in.
I love too easily, and yet, not easily enough.
Is it possible for a writer to depict a male abuser (and no female abuser in the same work), and still avert this trope?
Yes, I believe it is. Here's how it would go :
1. It is revealed that a child is being physically abused by somebody in his home. 2. The police investigate, and learn that he is an only child, living with his parents. 3. Both of the parents are viewed as suspects. The police are able to determine that it was the father, and seek to bring him to justice.
Imagine that, in one scene, an officer states, "The child's teacher says he showed up in school with fresh bruises last Wednesday morning. We've learned that his mother was out of town last week, so it must have been the father."
In this case, the abuser is male, but I would still consider it an aversion of the trope because the writers depicted both parents as suspects, and had the mother eliminated as a suspect based on evidence, rather than because of her gender.
Which leads me to another point. Some people have stated that just because a film, television show, or book depicts a man as an abuser, does not mean that they are saying that female abusers don't exist. Which is true ... up to a point.
Imagine the above scenario, about an abused child, but with a crucial difference :
Upon learning that the abused child lives with his parents, the police automatically assume that the father is the abuser.
As it turns out, the father is the abuser, and the remainder of the story depicts the police attempting to bring him to justice.
At no point in the story does anybody even consider that the mother might have been the abuser. The possibility is never even raised. The audience might realize later on that there was never any real justification for automatically assuming that the abuser had to be the father, but because the father did turn out to be the guilty party, the police were never given cause to stop and re-examine that initial assumption.
The fact that this story depicts a male abuser, in and of itself, does not make it an example of this trope. As has been stated, having a male character committing abuse does not constitute denying that female abusers exist.
But the fact that the story never portrayed it as even a possibility that the mother was the abuser does, in my opinion, make it an example of this trope.
The police - and, in effect, the writers themselves - automatically discounted maternal abuse as an explanation for the child's bruises ... Why? Because of this trope. Because of the stereotypical presumption that women don't commit abuse.
So, in my view, if a film, television show, or book depicts a male abuser, the question must be asked of it - Was there ever a female character in the story who was automatically discounted as a suspect simply because of her gender?
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Me not sure about this logic. I think it's inferring a bit too much.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Ano Sa
We might want to try to get more aversions on here—for example, is there only one PSA that averts this trope?
Edited by 71.76.139.66
I understand removing Real Life examples from sex and rape tropes, but it seems to me the recent cuts here were indiscriminate. For example with the nature of this trope I think it's important to point out if it's actually defined in a broad sense as Truth in Television, and that's more reference media than it is Real Life.
- In the New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, "rape" is still defined as "the crime, committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with him without their consent and against their will, esp. by the threat or use of violence against them".
- Incidentally, the legal definition of rape in many jurisdictions is still "unlawful carnal knowledge of a female without her consent" Needless to say, this male troper, who was raped and is now a criminal justice major has to force himself to unclench his jaw every time he encounters a chapter on "Sexual Assault" in class. Apparently, it wasn't rape after all...
- Recently the United States Justice Department has broadened the definition of rape to include a variety of forms of nonconsensual penetration of the anus, vagina or mouth against either sex.
(last example changed slightly to be more factual)
Secondly, we have these examples which were cut but have nothing to do with either sex or rape:
- Held as true in the Middle Ages, at least legally. Whilst husbands were permitted to apply 'reasonable corrective force' to their wives (and children, and servants, and domestic animals), they could still be punished for domestic violence. However, any man who was so "weak" as to "allow" himself to be beaten by his wife was seen as deserving anything he got, and provided she didn't actually kill him she could expect no punishment.
- It could be argued that there exists a greater degree of under-reporting of female-on-male DV than male-on-female in the modern day for more or less the same reasons: as strength and dominance are much more prized in men than in women and women are expected to be more vulnerable, it's less shameful for women to admit to being beaten. The very fact that a serious depiction of female-on-male DV in media is rare may also lead male DV victims to believe that there is something "wrong" with them, and thus not report it.
Fairlyvexed. Truth is, we don't know how much female-on-male rape there actually is. Men are even far more reluctant to report it then women.
Some studies suggest it is significantly higher then 'common sense' would suggest.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID45-PR45.pdf
Victims of forced vaginal sex in a romantic relationship in the last year:
female: 2.3% male: 3.0%
I think the ratio is something like 1 in 200 victimized men report sexual violence. The latest figures I've heard about women is 1 in 6 female victims report sexual violence. Letsay 95% of reported rapes have a female victim. 95* 6 = 570 female victims. 5 * 200 = 1,000 male victims. The numbers get crazy when you think about how little men actually report.
Edited by MercuryInRetrograde Hide / Show Replies
@Miss Mercury
HOLY HELL! WHAT LARGE NUMBER THAT IS! And I think subversion examples is insane enough...
Now I'm free to say that Gender Inequalities will lead to Crapsack World and threre's nothing we can do with that...
By the way, +respect for being polite and objective
Edited by Jomlos
At the risk of starting yet another edit war, it's not true that the statistics show that men are more abusive then women. It depends on what statistics you look at. Police reports or crime surveys find more male-on-female abuse but that can be explained by the fact that 1. men rarely report criminal abuse to the police and 2. men don't view the abuse done against them as criminal in the first place. Studies that look at abusive behaviors without asking the participants to quantify the behaviors as abusive or criminal in nature find parity. They even find parity with sexual abuse in relationships.
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I actually agree with that. It is debatable who does what more. Perhaps we should change this.
I would ask if 'who does what more' is even relevant. IMHO, what's relevant is helping people who need help, not pointing fingers at either gender.
Ach, I'm familiar with the statistics you mention Mercury- and they don't mean what you think they do. You find "parity" only if you use an All Crimes Are Equal approach, and I've yet to see a study that claimed the existence of parity that didn't involve equalizing horrifically unequal situations.
By way of example, let's say a husband abuses his wife over the course of several months, but one day, she throw a pot at him in self-defense. Using the "right" methodology, both people in this case are viewed "equally" as being abusers, even though anyone who's not a computer realizes this is completely moronic.
That being written yes, women can be abusers, and the tacit cultural assumption that they can't is both stupid and tropable. The write-up could probably stand some clarifications in this regard- most especially in how this trope is different the three pot holed in the first paragraph.
See you in the discussion pages.
- You find "parity" only if you use an All Crimes Are Equal approach, and I've yet to see a study that claimed the existence of parity that didn't involve equalizing horrifically unequal situations.
The studies I've looked at have categorized levels of violence and severity as well as resultant injury. (CTS and CTS 2 studies include levels of violence; the CDC study I mention below includes injury.) I think I know the studies you are referring to and they draw their sample from battered women's shelters exclusively which means they are not representative of the population at large.
- By way of example, let's say a husband abuses his wife over the course of several months, but one day, she throw a pot at him in self-defense. Using the "right" methodology, both people in this case are viewed "equally" as being abusers, even though anyone who's not a computer realizes this is completely moronic.
The studies I've seen, for example the center of disease control study, found that women engaged in 70% of the non-reciprocal partner violence. In other words in all cases of domestic violence where only one partner is violent, 70% of the time that partner is the woman. http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/97/5/941
Also interesting is that women in relationships characterized by non-reciprocal violence perpetrated by men were less likely to be injured then those in reciprocally violent relationships.
Reciprocally violent relationships also resulted in more frequent violence by women only, suggesting the researchers were tracking not just if violence happened but how often it happened by each partner(negating your criticism above.) Reciprocally violent relationships resulted in injury more often to both partners, but women were more often injured then men.
The study also mentions your critique that it's not capturing DV in a clinical setting, rather then just 'common couple violence'.
If we had battered men's shelters—thus a population of extremely victimized men to draw from—we might have a picture of the extreme end of female perpetuated domestic violence to compare to the extreme end of male perpetuated violence. Both of which are likely not captured by 'common couple violence'. As it is, we don't so you simply can't assume one way or another. (Except I've heard, anecdotally, about appalling levels of violence perpetrated against men; from beatings to stabbings to being shot at.)
- That being written yes, women can be abusers, and the tacit cultural assumption that they can't is both stupid and tropable. The write-up could probably stand some clarifications in this regard- most especially in how this trope is different the three pot holed in the first paragraph.
You're still supporting it, though, by deciding women can't be as severely abusive as men. Same difference really; when a woman does it, it's in defense or it just isn't the same.
For myself, I remain unconvinced of the traditionalist gender conception that women are—what a surprise—the only real victims.
We see what we want to see. Some people want to see their innate gender stereotypes confirmed.
Edited by MercuryInRetrograde
First, please avoid strawmanning. No one here has said that women are "the only real victims". I've already admitted that this is a stupid cultural stereotype and that the article should elaborate better on the nuances.
The article you link confirms my broader point, which I don't think I noted clearly enough- that women appear to be the victim largely because they're more likely to suffer serious injuries (this info is mentioned in the abstract, but I couldn't find it itemized in the tables). It's not a Straw Feminist conspiracy- it's just some people have more obvious bruises than others here.
Now, I really don't want to get into an extended Internet argument about this (that kind of off-topic crap is why I left the forums). I'm much more interested in writing up this page so that we get a better, more nuanced view. So Lets Make A Deal. You rewrite the description in a way you feel represents the issues here fairly, and I'll come by later to moderate it in such a manner that I feel is fair. Provided we don't simply delete each others' changes wholesale I'm willing to bet we'll get a much better article that will satisfy both of us. How about it?
See you in the discussion pages.
To be honest, I think including anything on what exact percentage of abusers are male vs. female, or if female-on-male abuse is more important then male-on-female or vice versa would be pointless.
1. It will blow up into an editing war. 2. There is no definitive answer, which ties back into one. 3. It's beyond the scope of tv tropes.
We don't have to go that route. People don't like reading numbers in a description because Everybody Hates Mathematics anyway. "Nuanced view" here basically means mentioning the fact that women can be abusers in the first place, and positing a few reasons why this is so common as to be a recurring trope.
Don't worry overmuch about accidentally ruining the page- I've serviced hundreds of articles like this and I can solve any mistakes you make. If this is your first time trying to modify main descriptions like this I can assure you I'll make it quite the pleasant experience.
See you in the discussion pages.
Why does this page even exist? Pretty much every example is an example of a series/work where there was a male abuser. Very few of them (Lifetime movies are probably an exception) are saying that only men are abusers.
And there's already a Domestic Abuse and Domestic Abuser pages.
Hodor
What I think is being gone for here is something like The Unfair Sex as regards Domestic Abuse. The description doesn't do a very good job of making this clear, though, which is why I think we should work on it.
See you in the discussion pages.
But wait a sec, there's also already Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male.
So, I guess this page is criticizing any series that even shows a male abuser. Because it's not like there aren't any male abusers. Showing one doesn't automatically mean that you're denying there are female abusers.
Edited by Jordan Hodor
I think it's more the prevalence of this over all media that's the problem. If a character is portrayed as abusive, almost inevitably it will be a male character. Just like if a relationship breaks up it's usually portrayed as the man's fault. Just one example doesn't matter; taken as a whole it starts to matter.
It's a meta-trope.
BTW, seriously... Some Guy, were you hitting on me using allusions to trope editing? Because the combination of tropegeeking and innuendo was kinda hot. XD
Edited by MercuryInRetrograde
Then maybe there shouldn't be examples. I had the same problem when someone was suggesting All Holocaust Victims Are Jews. It seems to imply a polemical intent when there likely isn't one.
Hodor
Honestly, the whole series of rape and abuse tropes should probably be streamlined better. The "OK when female on male" series just encourages people to dish on feminists. I can't really think of a good reason why we can't just have a single unifying trope for Unfortunate Implications regarding those acts in media portrayal. It'd make us a lot less schizophrenic.
Yes Mercury, the innuendo was deliberate. Mostly For the Funnyz, since until just this moment it hadn't occurred to me to wonder what sex you are.
See you in the discussion pages.
- The "OK when female on male" series just encourages people to dish on feminists.
Why do you think that? Personally, I'd leave them as they are because, to be honest, they _are_ tropes.
I'm female. Most people think I'm not for whatever reason.
Edited by MercuryInRetrograde
1. If this should be a cross between The Unfair Sex and Domestic Abuse maybe an edit should be done to make that clear.
2. I agree with Mercury In Retrograde about a lot of this. "If a character is portrayed as abusive, almost inevitably it will be a male character. Just like if a relationship breaks up it's usually portrayed as the man's fault." Also, in many stories there becomes this "I wish I was a lesbian so I wouldn't have to worry about abuse or violence" idea.
3. This trope IS different from Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male because this trope refers to the unfortunate implication that women cannot do it at all, whereas the "Abuse Is Okay If..." tropes imply that women can...but who cares, it's not that bad.
4. I think some people might use "Okay when female on male" to dish on feminists but I don't think it has to be that. That trope is very common and is an unfortunate implication of many plot lines (think The Wedding Crashers).
Ah. Well, as much as I'd enjoy flirting with someone intelligent enough to have a ready, credible citation to dispute a claim I make, you'll have to hit me up in P Ms since this really isn't the place for that.
It's a matter of overlap. Like in this case, while Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male is technically distinct from All Abusers Are Male in that the former is explicitly about both while the latter is only explicitly about the one, there's still lots of overlap. In my estimation the former has much worse Natter potential (I thought we got rid of that page picture) because of the inflammatory title, whereas this one could encompass that angle by implication since the opposite of All Abusers Are Male is No Abusers Are Female.
...Or we could just rename it to the latter. Aside from the Natter angle I really hate the "female on male is OK" tropes because they're a pain-in-the-neck to type.
Edited by 75.170.214.11 See you in the discussion pages.
- Also, in many stories there becomes this "I wish I was a lesbian so I wouldn't have to worry about abuse or violence" idea.
And I would be a living example why this is bullshit reasoning. On Fan Disservice someone argued that female-on-female rape was hot. I had some serious trouble with that one.
- Ah. Well, as much as I'd enjoy flirting with someone intelligent enough to have a ready, credible citation to dispute a claim I make, you'll have to hit me up in P Ms since this really isn't the place for that.
It's okay. Just thought it was cute. I have citations for everything I believe, it's part of what I consider to be due diligence as a human.
- edit*
Just had a trope related thought. Would it be useful to catalog the character tropes that are Always Female simply because when they're male they're considered abusive and not quirky? Clingy Jealous Girl, Abbhorent Admirer, Yandere come to mind.
I think the trope should emphasize the meta-ness.
Edited by MercuryInRetrograde
Hi, I did not understand this trope, is it about a work having only male abusers? Or about a character saying that all abusers are men? And if it is about the work having all of its abusers (and they often appear in small quantities, or only one) being male, then it just means that all the female characters are not abusers, and this does not mean that the whole In-Universe's Universe lacks any female abusers off-screen, I think All Abusers Are Male is a strong statement, Only Male Abusers is a more proper name in my opinion if that's the case. And going even further, since we have this trope, the creation of an All Abusers Are Female sounds reasonable, or, to repeat my previous logic, Only Female Abusers.
Edited by A-random-guy Hide / Show Replies