Breaking the Silence: Male Victimization in Domestic Violence with Dr. Alexandra Lysova

Dr. Lysova returns in part 2 to explore the often-overlooked issue of male victimization in domestic violence, discussing the barriers men face in reporting abuse, the cultural perspectives on intimate partner violence, and the psychological impacts of such experiences. Dan and Dr. Lysova discuss the need for more inclusive support systems and better communication strategies to help male victims feel safe and understood. 

Dr. Alexandra Lysova is a professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University. 

Special Guest: Dr. Alexandra Lysova

Dr. Lysova on:

  LinkedIn

  Researchgate

Canadian Centre for Men & Families

Hines, D. A., & Lysova, A. (2024). Male intimate partner violence victims’ experiences with seeking help from legal system services over time and across countries. Partner Abuse, 15(3), 250–280. https://doi.org/10.1891/PA-2023-0018

🎞️ Video version of the show@PsychotherapyAppliedPsychology on YouTube
🛜 Check out the website: Listen to every episode on your podcast player of choice

Connect with Dan
☏ Leave a voice message on Speakpipe
🔗 LinkedIn
📬 TheAppliedPsychologyPodcast@gmail.com

🦋@danielwcox.bsky.social

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Episode Overview
• 1:02 The Invisibility of Male Victims
• 3:45 Challenges in Engaging Male Victims
• 6:18 Gender Bias in Service Provision
• 11:54 Reporting and Help-Seeking Behaviors
• 14:20 Passive Coping Strategies and Systemic Barriers
• 18:55 Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Male Victimization
• 23:47 Factors Behind Intimate Partner Violence
• 26:10 Psychological Impact on Male Victims
• 28:12 Identifying Signs of Abuse in Men
• 30:00 Advice for Male Victims and Support Resources
• 31:48 Academic Pushback and Challenges in Research

Transcript

0:00

[Music] Male victims of intimate partner violence are often invisible to both public discourse and clinical settings. In this episode, we explored the psychological impact of that invisibility, the cultural and structural barriers to help seeking and how service providers and researchers can do better. My guest, Dr. Alexander Lasova, is one of the world's leading experts on this topic. Her research challenges dominant narratives, highlights the complexity of male victimization, and calls for more inclusive approaches to support, language, and intervention. I'm your host, Dr. Dan Cox, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia. Welcome to psychotherapy and applied psychology, where I dive deep with the world's leading researchers to uncover practical insights, pull back the curtain, and hopefully have a little bit of fun along the way. If you find the show valuable, consider sharing it. It's one of the best ways to keep the conversation going. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Alexandra Lasova.[Music] It's very unfortunate. I still don't see much change in a way that we start to prioritize the help of boys and men. Maybe very recently, in fact, probably due to some political changes, and people have noticed that they're actually boys and men experience difficulty. And they're actually struggling, and we know they're struggling in the education system and the health system. They're struggling all of a sudden. So I'm so glad we've finally seen it. So we need to develop better ways and preparation of how to talk to men. It's extremely difficult to invite them to the research, to do it to the study. They don't trust researchers, and for a good reason, I know a couple of examples. They don't want to talk about the weaknesses. And it's for the service providers, what I think is important is just to even have this idea in mind that it may be a victim before you're not a perpetrator. Not to have these boys is just based on gender, that it's a man by definition is a perpetrator. So I've seen in the literature examples of how boys can affect our vision of men. For example, one example of famous researchers conducting interviews with men who killed their partners in the increase in. And when they said that the relationships are extremely toxic, they're extremely violent. There was a lot of bidirectionality. They simply dismisses. They never even took it into consideration. Oh, they just blame in the victim. Oh, they just do not take responsibility. It's a lot of moralizing, rather than trying to understand what if the relationships are extremely toxic. It doesn't mean that we kind of exonerate them. No, they killed their partners and they should be in prison. But understanding how we could help earlier, just simply understanding that that's probably was the case. We shouldn't dismiss the experiences, but listen to this and learn how we could do better next time. So that's my approach, more human approach, more reasonable and more humane to men. So yes, researchers should do. We need to develop several certain strategies. Men don't like to be called victims. They don't like certain words. If people ask this kind of directly to them, this question using the word, they say, no, I'm not a victim. I'm not here because I'm a victim. So no, they will not go to build this report with a service provider. But if we ask them, what terms do you prefer? They still want to keep some agency. So they want to say, man who experience abuse, right? Like something like that. So certain other types, certain other questions, but but acknowledging that they may experience that and asking questions about it in a kind of finding way to really ask that. It's not kind of surprised for these service providers, but that's a reality that these men may leave. So is it the case that because of, I mean, as you're talking about sort of the internalized stigma, the way people respond and react to that men are even less likely to report abuse than women are. Oh, much less likely. Yeah, much as likely. So on this conf-- on Canadian study, they do that because the questions are behavioral. So it's, it's, it doesn't ask them to you to interrupt to see themselves as victims. So they simply answer to the behavioral items. But when it comes to the question of recognizing that you're a victim and going to look for help, this is where it gets very difficult. Men are much less likely and statistics Canada shows it. If you look at the, at their charts, you can see that they're always women going for help, going to a family friend, going to a family friend or coworker, going to a doctor, talking to a, but with men, it's just unlikely. They wouldn't go to, they talk, I think the only similarities that they talk to a coworker, whom they trust, but it may be to some family members, but it's not, they don't look for formal, formal help that's likely. And we did a recently a study on coping strategies for male victims, and we see that which they choose most likely what it's called passive coping strategies. Not actively looking for help and doing something, but passively saying, oh, I'm at work. So trying to avoid family communication, staying in the family, going away, doing something for work or substance use. So that's another way to escape reality. So we see that and that's dangerous. So if we, if we develop better understanding among service providers, that men can be victims, so there will be more willingness to, you know, to help them and to be more welcoming to men. Many shelters are still open only for female victims of abuse. Many non-governmental agencies still open only for female victims of abuse. If we do it more, gender inclusive, right. If we make it for any victim of abuse, you may be anybody. And if experienced violence, common will help you. So yeah, it's, it's when you saw many, many steps in the direction. You said earlier that men don't often don't trust researchers and that there were some exact, you had some examples of like good reasons why they shouldn't. Could you give us one of those examples? Yeah. So in that study, men were called to participate and report on the experiences with their children. So they, it was on custody issues and parental alienation issues and men, honestly, during the study and talk to the researcher about the experiences, the complaint about the criminal justice system, they complained a lot about unfairness, the way they treated in the criminal justice system. In the report, the one that was published by that researcher, it was calling them some kind of labels like all these weak people, something like this. So it was, they were called terrible words. And the experiences were very much not just twisted. They were interpreted in the way as. In a disrespectful way. So it's, yeah, I actually call the question for the ethical review to look into this because this is something that damages the trust with our researchers. It's, it's so researchers can definitely describe experiences of, they seem to send them a see that. Then we describe it in a neutral way, right, without disparaging them. Yeah, so. Right, right. So when you look at, when we look at intimate, intimate partner abuse across different nations and cultures and that sort of thing, do we see big differences? So question, we don't see great big differences in our right now we did the study in seven English speaking countries. But again, it's mostly England's complaint Australian New Zealand Canada United States, all these countries, we don't see many differences. And there's a lot of clarity, especially in relation to male victims of domestic violence. We, when we look at some studies that did comparative research in Europe and there are studies that compare experiences between both men and women in six largest cities in Europe in six different countries. We don't see many differences in the rate of violence. So again, we look at the rate of violence. It's harder to look specific with types of abuse experience by them, but again, not big differences if you take European countries. I'm, I'm glad to see right now there are some studies coming from some other countries and I'm seeing, for example, studies from Africa, especially in relation to male victims, they show in some interesting forms of abuse attack with maturity or something very specific for the cultural context. We still don't see very good population based studies. It's mostly come from smaller samples. Again, I know they're very interesting country right now I'm looking at is Japan. A lot of secrecy. The domestic violence is very much hidden. And people do not talk about this much, but I know there are some studies that government of Japan is doing. So we look into those rates of violence there. So again, what I would say in the, we do have, I'm a part of the big international dating violence study where there were 32 countries. This is where we see big difference in the rate of violence starting with as low as about 10, 15 in Scandinavian countries going up to about 70 in Iran, Afghanistan, in some other countries. So we do see a huge range in relation to victimization of men and women. And we do similar, we do similar differences in the very big range in world have organization studies. But it's only for violence against women. We also the published studies regularly when they also have about 30 countries. And when they look at violence against women, it's mostly in relationship and family context. We see a big range starting from again, about 10% in some European countries and go into 50 60 and 70% in some countries like Wanda. It's a lot of violence there. So it's, yeah, so we do see in the world there is a big range in prevalence rates of violence against men, both violence against men and women types of victimizations. And how the society street domestic violence in some countries is just not. It's not, it's not a big deal. It's not considered to be a serious issue like now in Russia. I wouldn't say. We treated more seriously several years before now. It's not, it's, it's not something people really discussed that openly. So it's engine to depending on the political situation. It's changing. Okay. So, so, so across when you're just looking across like these, the handful of English speaking nations, you don't see tremendous variability. But when you're looking globally, you do start to see a lot more variability. Yeah. And these are mostly based on cultural norms is how you make sense of it. Yeah, this is how it makes sense of it. Yeah. We, there were some examples that didn't make sense to me. For example, in Russia, the homicidrate is much higher than in some European countries in Canada. For example, or even the United States. And of course, Europe, where homicidrate is very, very low. It's about one between one and two and in candidates two, per 100,000. But in Russia, it used to be 20, 35. It was very high. But the domestic violence rate according to the service was nearly similar. It was about 25% like in the rest of the world. So to me, it was surprisingly how because I would expect domestic violence rate would be correlating with homicidrate. So higher homicidrate, higher domestic violence rate while it is, it looks like it's the case in many countries. It's may not be the case in some countries. So overall trends, yes, more violent societies, the weaker rule of law, more gender inequality indexes higher. Then yes, we see more violence in intermature relationships overall, but it's not always a perfect correlation in some countries. Okay, so we've talked about this somewhat, but are there other things or what do you think about in terms of like what differentiates relationships where intimate partner violence against men happens versus those where doesn't happen. Okay, good question. Interesting question. How do you differentiate those relationships? Interesting that there was a study in 2006 by Archer in United Kingdom who looked at the changes in patterns of violence in different societies. And he found that in countries where gender equality is higher, so women have more power in the society. There is more mutuality and more violence against men. So I would say sometimes I think that strong independent women, not much afraid of their partners, they know the system as an aside. So it's not again, I'm not saying that this is the only factor that may push women to do that, but women feel protected in the society. And also there are many, many different factors like personality traits, intercommunications skills, stress in the family financial children related, any other stress, they're all play a role. So again, it's hard to say it's a general question, but violence happens where there is a certain stress, there is a certain history of violence in prior relationship or in childhood experience of violence as children. It's a very, very strong, the strongest predictor of any violence is experiences violence as a child. So when we know those who experience violence as children, so they were disciplined physically by parents or they were actually physically abused by parents, they are more likely to become perpetrators or victims in the relationship. It looks like they learn the idea that violence is just normal part of life. And violence, if you love people, you actually perpetrate violence against them. So it's almost like love equals violence. This is the norm they acquire when their parents say just because I love you, I hate you, right? It's because I want the best for you. This is how I discipline you. So they learn this concept. So I see it happens violence against men happens in relationship where, you know, partners just consider it as a norm. I just think it's this is they don't know about the other ways of dealing with violence and relationship. They just this is the best way they have. So yeah, it's a fortune. Are the psychological impacts of intimate partner violence or abuse are they when you think about the psychological impacts when men are victims versus when women are victims or the impacts about the same. A little bit different overall same a little bit different. They are similar in a way that men experience the the nobody likes to be, you know, nobody likes violence, right. Men tend to experience less fear than women do. This is the statistics Canada findings and also we know it from focus groups men. It looks like the experience serious long term consequences or reviews. So post traumatic stress disorder depression suicidal thoughts and that may be very similar to women and maybe even in some ways more damage and for men. But this is something we need to look into. Within attention to the fields of male victims of domestic violence. There was not much attention to look into the consequences of abuse for men. But we know again the all series their long term consequences for their psychological health for their well being. One of the questions or had a couple questions around, I know you're not a therapist, but you know sort of thinking about whether it's therapists or thinking about social workers or I mean hell even law enforcement like how might folks be able to like what might they what might be like signs or indications that perhaps this person this guy is experiencing intimate partner abuse. Yeah, good good question. So these are the clear signs of indication that so I yeah, so I can just based on the research that we've done to think about it. So they will be silent for a long time. They will not be they will not be initiating they will not be very actively talking about the experience is men are shy in this respect. They're very embarrassed. So they will be silence. The idea is that not to take silence for the lack of violence or just because they're not victims not to take it that way. So one man told me took took him 12 years to finally get the idea that the relationship he was in were extremely toxic and very dangerous and right now looking back he says I can't believe it. I spent 12 years of my life living in this hell rather than looking for help early and getting out of it. So I think men would be. It's important to be proactive with men to be proactive. I mean they they may be of course they have some have some injuries on them from violence and that's clear that they were victimized. But I think it's very important to find the way to talk to them and what I know some men reported that when the police officers treated them humanly was when the police officers themselves were victims of abuse. So they knew what it's like and they would just take them to the side and say you know what I know what it's like. So talk to me tell me what it is. I really trust you. I trust your record. So the point is it's kind of if it's if it's more humane relationship to the victims of abuse something we do towards women right now the way we treat women right now. So if we have the same so there is a chance that men will review what happened to them many of them would stay silent because they think it will never help them. It's a many of the men really believe the criminal justice system works against them. And doctors just don't get that as well. So it's it's important to you from the beginning saying I'm aware that it's not just women men also experience abuse in different forms. So basically be proactive about it's showing that we are aware of this. It's not a surprise to us and we hear to help. So whatever you want to help we can help you with this. Please reveal to us. So just to be open and frank with them. And is that so based on what you said earlier what it makes sense when asking to ask direct questions more about behaviors rather than using terms like abuse or violence but instead does your partner ever slap you does she does she do they ever whatever. Yeah that's right that's exactly that's a strategy without using words victimization victim survivor they don't like this either. But yeah most specific forms of behavior does it ever happen that she did something to you like did she did to behave in this way. It's it's more about helping them understand and they say yeah it was not violent but yeah she did it she actually tried to attack me with a knife but she because she didn't feel well. We need to try to explain that but they will say about certain forms of behavior that happened. They will never call them violence but this is what it is this is violent. If there's a man who are listening to this who were suffering from intimate partner violence what what would you suggest to them what would you tell them. It depends if they are in currently in a relationship or they were prior priorly they into in previously in violent relationships so if they're previously so it's good it's behind them but there is still maybe trauma experiences of that. I would say to this man especially those who in currently in relationship is that there is help available. There are organizations there are many men who experience violence in the past and they right now helping other men to deal with this to find out bad relationship to develop other relationships. So and I find it extremely helpful those men who right now out of those violent relationships they say my love has changed so much in so many ways they feel much happier right now they got jobs. So and they feel after therapy they did in British Columbia in Ontario so they actually won't go to Canadian Center for Men and Families. There is a wonderful organization CCMF Canadian Center for Men and Families they have many resources online you can contact them and they have headquarters in Ontario but they also have branches in British Columbia in Alberta in Quebec. So they can always refer you to the specialist to the psychologists to the focus groups to they there are many I know initiatives right now when they men help each other they get together with the groups and talk to each other and help each other and it helps tremendously. I've talked to again men who benefited so much and they said thank you so much we have those resources now not like back in the day when they couldn't find anything online. I know the outreach programs non-governmental organizations are working more on violence against them in the United States when many more efforts to help men in the US as well in the United Kingdom. Men's project there is a wonderful organization there so yeah there are resources you not alone it's almost like what we said to female victims in the past. It's almost the same thing you're not alone and it shouldn't be like this there is a way out of this relationship there is a way to better life no one deserves that. So one of the questions I asked everyone that I talked to and you sort of alluded to this the beginning of our conversation is have you gotten any pushback for your work? Yes of course it was a pushback yeah it's a it's a it's a hard topic to study again to my surprise I'm for so much for opening query and and respectful disagreement and I always believe that academia is is the place where we do this type of research. It's exactly why we hear to feel the gaps in our knowledge in order to help people better but then yeah there is a backlash and there were kind of situations at the conferences when somebody is yelling at you and telling you that you shouldn't ask this question whenever. Really somebody somebody is actually yelling at you. So it's like it happens when I presented at the conference in Australia and it was on women's aggression just because it's out the side of the issue there is a male male victimization but there are women perpetrated those violent acts. So we looked at women at the rationale why the violent how the violence is another big interest in topic and how we can help this women and as it turned out we're not good at it as well. So that many resources we have to help women who are aggressive and need help so at the outside the discussion was that how do you even why do you even ask this question as if there are no more questions to good questions to ask why we've been here so it was. Yeah it's there was a heated debate on that and you kind of have to protect you have to defend yourself defend your topic provide statistics and be there right just to resist and protect and and do not do not succumb to this attacks. It is harder to get grants it's just harder to get grants on one grant application I've got it was exactly this kind of comment why don't you take another topic and it's about the male victims of domestic violence. Yeah so it's like why do you even study that so the question they're D itself why it's not important while we have some other more important issues so I find it's. It's not it's not good for academia to do that. Yes and then one one another example I can give you so we were trying to publish a paper on with our research or focus groups on male victims and one of the reviewers who rejected the paper said that how do you know how do you trust men that they tell you the truth. So it's almost a suggested we should give a lie test a lie scale to our respondents and I was thinking at the time I just try to think about the situation with female victims of abuse and trying to imagine if they ever were. It would be courageous to ask that question saying how do you trust your female victims of abuse that tell you that you so it's a lot of double standards but good news is that with even with this pushback it's important to go forward and doing our work and we see the change so the great thing is that we actually see the change change in slowly in public attitudes in academic community for sure. There is more acceptance of this issue there is there were any more publications the graduate students not that much deterred from going to study this issue just because they don't think it will be a damage to the career in the future so we finally doing that in the in the past several years I see there is a change. One of the things you said early on in this conversation that I thought was interesting is it seems like some of the existing theories about intimate partner violence because that work was really geared towards women who are victims that a lot of the theories sort of presumed this particular sort of gender dynamic right so it's sort of and that. Studying male victims kind of undermine or yeah sort of undermines the theoretical underpinning of those frameworks so it's almost it's a threat to the theory it's a threat to the explanation or at least that those as universal explanations for this phenomenon Mike is that my own track at all. It's a perfect question absolutely this is exactly how the feminist especially advocates see that as a death is a threat to their main paradigm the main framework they work in and this is where I see the difference between real scientific theory which we actually try to falsify because only when it's falsified for the falsification principle it's actually truly scientific theory. This should be conditions when it can be falsified when it actually becomes an ideology the idea that you should question even because it's the truth and it's truth and you just do what we're told to do so this is where I see a big difference when. I've scientific theory very important instrument we use to explain the world turns into a ossified several ideas that are shouldn't be challenged and become ideology so let us why it's called paradigm or ideology sometimes and I would say feminist theory is an important theory it played a very important role in our attention to domestic violence intimate partner violence. It's still very important for us to understand the differences in violence against women internationally cross culturally we see many differences in different societies and gender equality is one of the serious predict factors that predicts violence against women in societies where women do not enjoy equal rights with men. The violence against women are much much higher right so we see that feminist theory it can be a viable theory in the different context when it comes to Western societies right now it's getting it's in some ways it's it's not it doesn't explain many things anymore for example I told you violence and lesbian relationship right now is one of the highest rates compared to heterosexual relationship and any other relationship sexual minority groups why. We wouldn't think that that would be the case right so it's just an instrument it's just a tool that if it's not working we develop other tools to that explains violence better and we see that some sociological psychological fear is it's just explains it better we see the new factors down there so like sort of tell me if I'm on the right track here is. That some of you know in sort of the social sciences broadly you know we think about sort of you know predictors of phenomena and that for any phenomena pretty much there's multiple predictors and those predictors explain certain amounts of the variance right they explain certain amounts of the outcome why is this thing the way it is well it's for a whole bunch of different reasons so that a lot of the variables in feminist theory that those are variables in the model but they're not the in they're not all. They're not all of the predictors so it's not to say like none of these things are relevant but it's that they are they are likely in certain you know again explain a certain amount of the variance in the in in violence and it very it's going to vary across cultures across across cases yeah yeah agree you and I mean and we should you should we should use this valuable information for explain certain variants in why why violence happens especially. Is in cross cultural studies this is what I'm finding right now the major application of the feminist theory is in relation to the international context especially to in the developing and non industrial as countries this is where we see that it works quite well and it predicts those changes right those those high rates of violence in the country's where violent women cannot even drive cannot leave the house alone and so on so forth so we see that right and it works. However when it comes to the countries where there are men and women enjoying so much more equality it's not perfect equality yet but we're striving there right it's it's getting much better for women in in the west and Canada the United States it's getting better and it looks like there are we need there are many more different factors that play an important role like I told you one of the most significant predictors is a experience in child abuse that's consistent and very strong predictor then verbal aggression in the couple. This is a strong predictor physical violence we know that if partners starting raising voices each other yeah it's a strong predictor that it it may lead it may be associated with also higher physical violence and the rest of other factors like substance use we know it to various mechanisms of facts chances of violence in relationship people just more likely to hurt each other when they on the on the influence of alcohol so we know we know frustration and stress affects people right we know level of education also plays an important role in social status plays important like there are so many different factors and I think by focusing on gender and inequality and dominance of men in the society it's important in certain context it's still important and I'm thinking it's important in this kind of international context in non industrial as well to look at that but in our context it we need to explore all other factors as well because knowing them we can actually deal with this is situation much better if we know that this is what predicts very high chances of abuse later on in this puzzle relationship that this happens really in childhood or during the growing up or in dating relationship so we just much much better equipped to address violence more effectively. Folks who are listening to this and who want to learn more who are more interested in your work or related work are there any particular resources that you that you want me to point them to so things that would include in the show notes that you think would be a value for folks want to go further. So I think they can if they interest in my work specifically my publications on man's barriers to help seeking we publish the paper that is cited quite well we identified internal and external barriers for men to find help and we provide citations of men who actually tell their stories to us. So this paper and many other papers about the rates of violence coping strategies of man they all published on Google scholar there's under my name and also yes researchers researchers net I think researchers so there are papers and I have some papers there in full length papers so it can be that people can actually read them if they want. So people can just contact me by email and I'll be happy to send a paper papers whatever they want. Great well Alexandra I can't tell you how much I appreciate this has been I've learned so much. Thank you so much thank you so much for inviting me into talking about this important issue I really appreciate that. Yeah it's my it's it's absolutely my pleasure. That's a wrap on the first part of our conversation as noted at the top of the show be much appreciated if you spread the word to anyone else who you think might enjoy it. Until next time.[Music]