Domestic violence against men

Domestic violence against men is violence or other physical abuse towards men in a domestic setting, such as in marriage or cohabitation. As with domestic violence against women, violence against men may constitute a crime, but laws vary between jurisdictions. Intimate partner violence (IPV) against men is generally less recognized by society than intimate partner violence against women, which can act as a further block to men reporting their situation.^{[1]: 1 [2]}

While women are substantially more likely to be injured or killed in incidents of domestic violence,^[3][4] men are less likely to report domestic violence to police than women.^[5][6][7] Men who report domestic violence can face social stigma regarding their perceived lack of machismo or other denigrations of their masculinity,^{[1]: 6 [8]} the fear of not being believed by authorities, and being falsely accused of being the perpetrator.^[9][10] For men and women alike, domestic violence is among the most under-reported crimes worldwide.^[11][12]

Intimate partner violence against men is a controversial area of research, with terms such as gender symmetry, battered husband syndrome and bidirectional IPV provoking debate. Some scholars have argued that those who focus on female-perpetrated violence are part of an anti-feminist backlash, and are attempting to undermine the problem of male-perpetrated abuse by championing the cause of the man, over the serious cause of the abused woman.^[13][14] Others have argued that violence against men is a significant, under-reported problem, and that domestic violence researchers, under the influence of feminism, have ignored this in order to protect the fundamental gains of the battered women's movement, specifically the view that intimate partner abuse is an extension of patriarchal dominance.^[15][16][17] One of the tools used to generate statistics concerning IPV perpetration, the conflict tactics scale, is especially contentious.^[17]