Men humiliated by companions, beaten, forced to accept degrading living conditions, or killed … happens, in toxic relationships. But unlike when the victim is a woman, the “strong sex” is silent in order not to undress of one’s virility, “value” still in vogue. On the other hand, there are very few entities to ask for help.
Alfonso spent ninety days between a hospital bed and a wheelchair. He fell from the stairs, reporting the subluxation of his left knee patellar. And since he had suffered the half -leg amputation as a young man for an accident, he didn’t know if he would come back to walking. It seems only a saddest story than others, but there is something else. A detail. To push down the stairs, the already disabled Alfonso was his wife. And he did it in front of their 5 -year -old daughter. It is a story that carries huge suffering. Physical and psychological. In fact, he is part of a silent minority: that of men who are mistreated and humiliated by their companions.
In the shade
The situation is expanding, even if enclosing the phenomenon in a number it is impossible, while it is ridiculous to mention it in relation to notors made of news such as the Sangiulian-Boccia case. The problem is cultural and methodological. It is the perverse effect of a society where the figure of the weak male is stigmatized. Admitting to being mistreated by the other sex means stripping of one’s virility. So we prefer to suffer in silence, often ending up not distinguishing the border between a dispute and a psychological abuse.
Female violence is still considered “mild”, and therefore bearable. The first Italian study on males domestic violence is dated 2012. Only that no others have been published. Then the University of Siena led an investigation into a sample of over a thousand men. And he did it on a zero budget. The Ministry of Equal Opportunities did not even respond to the request to promote the cognitive investigation. In the end, he came out that over 60 percent of the interviewees had undergone a physical aggression by a woman, while 66 percent said they were humiliated by their partner in front of other people. Thirteen years later these remain the only data available to photograph the phenomenon. Istat, who dealt with the bottom of gender violence, addressed the question only with regard to murders, that is, the most extreme and rare acts. The analysis on 2023 says that 6.7 percent of the assassinations was committed by women and that in 12 out of 20 cases the victim was a man. For the rest, it is necessary to rely on the very few associations that provide support for men. Among these there is “Perseus”, who has been fighting from 2019 to turn on a reflector on the phenomenon. He claims that in the first five months of this year 151 males asked for help, with a 100 percent growth compared to the previous 12 months. “Not existing a structured listening system for these victims” explains the sociologist Barbara Benedettelli, author of the book 50 shades of violence “the phenomenon is underestimated. The data on separation suicides is emblematic: in 2017 I detected 39, including 32 men. This confirms a serious submerged discomfort ». But the forms of violence change on the basis of those who put it in place. “Men tend to perform lethal acts, linked to explosions of physical violence or the inability to manage relational failure” continues. «Women instead often act in more indirect forms: psychological, economic, relational. But there is no shortage of violence and female murders related to revenge or sense of possession. It is necessary to overcome the rigid vision of victims and executioners defined only by biological sex. In addition, female violence is often demerged in “defense” ».
Double discrimination
There are many short circuits. Because for a man it is difficult to even find someone willing to listen. In 2006, the Department for Equal Opportunities of the Prime Minister established the “1522” anti -violence number, defining it: “Free, active 24 hours a day” and ready to “welcome with specialized operators the requests for help and support the victims of violence and stalking”.
Yet, although there is no reference to the genre of the person in need of help, the switchboard takes over only cases that have women as victims and as swabs males. The men who raise the handset (as we did to write this article) is recommended to “contact a consultancy” or 112. It is a paradoxical situation. Because he keeps the heterosexual males out and the LGBTQI+community. There is a story that explains this chaos well. Some time ago a boy named Marco showed up in the emergency room after being raped by his partner. The visit ascertained the violence, describing it in the report, but in the hospital they tell him that they cannot activate the “red code” because it is an act perpetrated by one male on another male. The same goes that the boy and his lawyer hear first at the female anti -violence center and then to the consultancy. In the end Marco was entrusted to a psychiatrist who, instead of psychological therapy, administered him drugs. Perseus thought about supporting him. “In Italy there are three anti -violence centers for men” explains Fulvia Siano, clinical and legal psychologist, president of Perseus. “There are 300 for women. Public calls are reserved for women who suffer violence from men.”
Victims
But something is changing. Slowly. At the beginning of July, in fact, the Councilor for Equal Opportunities of the VI Town Hall of the capital announced the opening of an “anti -violence counter for men” in the spaces of the local registry office. It is a zolletta of sugar in a sea of tears. Because the cases are many and also very different from each other. There is the man taken in the head of his partner, the elderly man who sleeps in the garage because wife and daughter do not want to make him enter the house. And there are those who, like Riccardo, ended up in the hospital with an open lip after being whipped with a charger. And he also heard that “if he had been sought”.
Still, tracing an identikit of these men is not difficult. “Most are bogged down in dysfunctional and toxic relationships,” he adds are. «It has an emotional dependence profile and struggles to recognize itself in the role of victim. They are criticized in front of the children, also diminished from a sexual point of view, painted as incapable ».
This is what happened to Francesco. His wife began to debase him in front of the girls. “It is good that they know that you don’t have anything,” he said to him. Then one evening, while he read a fairy tale to his daughters on the Latvian, the woman had approached and had touched the bassoventre. “You know, in the village certain stories turn, I wanted to know if you really got excited,” he said. The tension dilated until the lady broke a wrist. At that moment Francesco decided to make his private hell public by addressing the police. “But just then the Lockdown started,” he tells us “I was months at home with a woman I had reported. I can say I know hell ».
The problem is to understand when to put a point and say enough. “To realize you live psychological violence is not easy,” concludes they are. “Men must denounce when they feel destroyed by a relationship, when they are convinced that they are not worth or are not free to express themselves or live with serenity”. Without shame.
