“This is ABUSE” is an abusive website about relationship abuse, which I came across through this advert:
Dream girlfriend makes a presumption that I will ask the girl something indecent, which I admittedly do. However nothing will happen until I ask my third question or spend 1 minuet thinking up what sort of perverted and evil act I want to see her perform, after which the interactive video portrays “me” as an abusive man. All this is well and good, it has a message it wants to get across, which it does effectively. However I have some issues with the site, which starts when I go to the dream boyfriend version, I expect to see the reverse, a woman being abusive to a man, however my boy lover becomes abusive towards me. That is not very faire, what about boys/men that are abused? The problem however does not lie in what is faire, the problem is stereotyping the woman as the victim and the man as the oppressor. This strategy may have a negative effect on men, particularly because it is a view that has become normalised in our culture.
Imagine that you are the man from an abusive relationship and are presented with these two videos, Presumably it is not going to make you feel to good about your self, but it shall get worse, because you go to the website that produced these videos.
First you read “Relationship abuse can happen to anyone.” you feel a bit better and think you might get some help from this web site, but as you navigate through the site, you start to get the impression you are the bad one, there must be something wrong with your gender. The media you are met with only show abuse towards girls by boys, four films and four posters.
This web site is clearly for girls in need, which is important, but becomes misleading and dangerous when it says it is for everyone by actually stating “Relationship abuse can happen to anyone.”
I would like to see the site change there tag line to “Help and support for female victims of domestic violence”, the web sites for gay (broken rainbow) and men (mens advice line) do it explicitly so why can not this site do it? If they on the other hand want to be inclusive to everyone I think they should create different pathways to the web sites content, which is determined by ones gender and or sexual orientation, that features media and support that is relevant to the visitor.
To the websites credit, they do tell male and gay victimise where they can get help in the FAQ section and under the “Need Help?” heading.
What say you?
I couldn’t agree more, I checked out all the links and it made me feel quite angry at how narrowly focused they all were. As someone else pointed out, they are also very heterosexually based. “Anyone – as long as you are a girl in a straight relationship.”