Jeremy Kyle, a UK talk show host, interviewed a man concerning his experience of domestic violence. Geoff shared his story about how his ex-girlfriend assaulted him:
The young man was appearing on the programme to confront ex-girlfriend Dani about her abusive behaviour and her alleged cheating. During the course of the interview, he described how she had given him black eyes and punched him during their relationship.
Geoff told host Jeremy Kyle how Dani had locked her in their flat and he had had to escape by jumping off a third-floor balcony.
“I ripped all my back, all my legs, the lot,” he said. “I ended up in hospital because she wouldn’t let me out of the flat”.
This prompted a specific response from the female audience members: laughter. Fortunately, Kyle stood up for Geoff:
“It’s not funny though,” he told them. “If this was the other way around and a woman was sat here and a bloke had locked her in a flat and she had to jump out and injured herself, you lot would not be laughing.
“You would be saying, he’s a complete nightmare, he should be locked up and that’s disgraceful, but somehow if it happens to a bloke that’s funny. That’s not funny, is it?”
That does not quite do it justice. Watch Kyle’s reaction as the audience begins to laugh:
That is the proper response to this situation. It is one that many people would never have. It is also one that typically angers feminists whenever supporters for male victims or men’s rights activists use it.
Nevertheless, it is the appropriate response. This is not funny. A thirty foot drop could seriously injure or kill someone.
Consider the situation Geoff was in for him to think jumping off the third-floor balcony would be the better decision. Is it possible that he could have defended himself against his ex-girlfriend? Perhaps. However, if he laid a hand on her she could and likely would claim he assaulted her and he would end up in jail. That is the situation this man was in: stay and get abused, try to leave the normal way and face jail, or jump off the third-floor balcony.
As Kyle said, if the situation were reversed this would be no laughing matter, yet when the victim is male it is considered a joke.
It is good that Kyle defended Geoff. We need more people, particularly more public faces, challenging the idea that women’s violence against men is funny.
It is not.
Toy Soldiers 
Great article, but one small correction. Your distance for the jump is off by a factor of 10. What you described about it still holds true for the correct height.
It’s about time that someone in the media started to stand up for common decency, and common sense.
Feminism has done so much for us the past few decades, hasn’t it?
(Referring to the types of women who would laugh at this.)
He’s not Aussie, he’s English, and his show is produced over here in the UK.
Just by way of background info, in the UK Jeremy Kyle is not someone held in especially high regard, certainly not by the left-wing press – a muckraker at best, a scumbag at worst.
And yet he displays a better grasp of what equality is than many feminists. Even those that acknowledge female-on-male DV exists and is a problem will still qualify it with a ream of waffle about privilege, patriarchy etc. Kyle doesn’t do any of that.
Which says a lot.
The audience laughs because the institutionalization of that kind of abusive treatment makes men and boys more willing to sell their well-being, safety, health, and lives for less compensation.
That’s the essence of it, and that’s also why the men’s movement is gaining ground. The audience laughs because mocking the victimization of men and boys helps the audience pay less for the resources, manufacturing, infrastructure, defense, and so on that men and boys provide at the expense of their health and lives.
However, the process of industrialization that first liberated women from their traditional gender-assigned responsibilities is finally catching up to men’s needs. Men’s traditional gender-assigned responsibilities are at last being comparably industrialized. At the same time, men’s traditional gender-based rewards — primarily a wife and children in a community that fulfills its reciprocal responsibilities to husbands — are being reduced to a fraction of what they were. Thus, the market for alternatives to a wife, family, and the corresponding social status — alternatives that communities can’t control by access or price such as cheap ubiquitous porn — has exploded.
The men’s movement is progressing for the same reason the women’s movement eventually did: the technology curve has advanced to the point where attention to men’s and boys issues are becoming affordable enough for wider dissemination and acceptance.
Likewise, the degree to which a person or group disparages men’s and boys’ issues is a good rule of thumb for the degree to which they’re dependent on male self-sacrifice. It’s not because they hate men and boys. It’s because they’re too cheap to pay the proper compensation to men and boys for the personal losses and harms they risk and suffer in exchange for civilization.
And that’s why the audience laughs. They’re heavily invested in Male Exploitation Incorporated, and they’re dismissing male victimization and suffering, and punishing those who advocate against it, because it’s a threat to their economic bottom lines.
They laugh because they want to exploit men and boys as cheaply as they can get away with, and laughing at their harms and injuries makes men and boys value themselves less.
This is exactly why I never told anyone about my abusive experiences.
The audience at a Jeremy Kyle taping are unlikely to be the most compassionate crowd in the world. It’s the modern equivalent of visiting Bedlam to look at the loonies. So their response is exactly what I’d have expected.
Fair play to Jeremy for calling them on it though.