Chapter 8: Men Can Be Victims Too
Last Saturday, I told you that after everything I had already survived, I eventually found myself in another abusive relationship.
This time, I was married.
And for a long time, I didn’t know what to call what was happening to me.
I was a man.
I was supposed to be strong.
I was supposed to handle my problems.
And somewhere along the way, I had learned that when a woman hurts a man, you’re supposed to shrug it off.
Don’t complain.
Don’t tell anybody.
And definitely don’t call yourself a victim.
So I didn’t.
I made excuses.
I kept things to myself.
I tried to keep the peace.
There was public belittling and humiliation.
There were things said to me that slowly tore away at who I was.
And there was physical violence.
I remember one incident while I was driving about 70 miles an hour.
I was behind the wheel when I was assaulted.
Think about that for a moment.
I was trying to control a vehicle traveling down the highway while also trying to protect myself from the person sitting beside me.
It could have killed both of us.
But even after something like that, I still struggled to see myself as a victim of domestic violence.
Because I was a man.
And men aren’t supposed to be victims.
At least that’s what I believed.
There were other incidents.
There was betrayal.
There was another severe beating.
And through much of it, I did what many survivors do.
I tried to understand it.
I tried to fix it.
I wondered what I could do differently.
I wondered whether I was somehow causing it.
And I stayed longer than someone looking from the outside might understand.
Today, after years of looking back at my own life and listening to the stories of other survivors, I understand something very differently.
Domestic violence doesn’t check your gender before it enters your home.
A fist doesn’t hurt less because you’re a man.
Humiliation doesn’t cut less deeply because you’re a man.
Fear doesn’t become something else because you’re a man.
And being physically stronger than the person abusing you doesn’t mean you aren’t being abused.
Why Didn’t I Fight Back?
That’s a question male survivors sometimes face.
“You’re a man. Why didn’t you just stop her?”
Because that’s not how domestic violence works.
What was I supposed to do?
Hit her?
Become violent myself?
Risk being arrested?
Risk hurting someone I loved?
Risk having nobody believe what had actually happened?
There are reasons survivors freeze.
There are reasons they stay quiet.
There are reasons they don’t fight back.
And those reasons don’t suddenly disappear because the survivor is male.
I know that now.
I didn’t know it then.
Reflection
This chapter is bigger than my story.
That’s why I’m telling it.
There is a man somewhere reading this who has never told anyone what happens inside his home.
Maybe his partner hits him.
Maybe she humiliates him.
Maybe she controls him.
Maybe she threatens him.
Maybe he laughs about it around his friends because admitting the truth feels impossible.
Maybe he’s convinced himself:
I’m a man. I should be able to handle this.
Brother, hear me.
You don’t have to prove your strength by accepting abuse.
And asking for help doesn’t make you weak.
It makes you human.
RADV will never tell a survivor that their experience doesn’t count because of their gender.
Woman or man.
Young or old.
Rider or non-rider.
If you’re being abused, your story matters.
You deserve to be heard.
You deserve resources.
You deserve dignity.
And you deserve a bridge to something better.
That’s part of why Riders Against Domestic Violence exists today.
My experiences eventually taught me something I wish I had understood much earlier:
A survivor is a survivor.
Next Saturday, I’ll continue the story of that marriage and the road that eventually forced me to decide that enough was enough.
Not because I suddenly became fearless.
But because somewhere underneath everything that had happened to me, there was still a piece of me that knew:
This cannot be what love is supposed to look like.
My story. Our mission. Their hope.
— Dave “Grizzly Dave” Beatty
Founder, Riders Against Domestic Violence (RADV)