“I’ve been stabbed with scissors in my thumb and my wrist. I’ve had a marble chopping board smashed over my head which needed 12 stitches… You know that you’ve got to leave but you have to go through a whole process to get to the point where you’ve actually got the strength to walk out that door…I don’t think I’ll ever recover. I know I won’t recover from what I went through. I’ve just learnt now how to live with it. But I’ll carry the scars for the rest of my life…”

Another battered wife?

Not this time.

Mark suffered from his girlfriend’s physical and psychological attacks for nearly ten years and the BBC have finally given a little attention to male victims of partner abuse.

It’s just a shame it’s all too little, and horribly late.

My mother was abusive to my sister, my father and me for years: mostly psychologically, but on occasions physically. Fractal’s mother was abusive to him, his father and his siblings too, more violently than in my case. Fractal also suffered abusive behaviour from his previous girlfriend (though to a much lesser degree) who he thankfully soon left.

Perhaps all this makes me more acutely aware than most people of female-to-male, and indeed female perpetrated in general, domestic violence and how badly it is ignored. Either way, it is a problem. Women are not the only ones being abused by partners they thought they could trust.

Domestic violence knows no gender boundaries.

The issue often gets press, but in these cases the crying victims on the posters are always female and publicity always refers to them as ‘she’ and the abuser as ‘he’.

The bias in this has finally been minorly highlighted by coverage from the BBC. But even this has its problems.

I posit that even in its attempts to highlight male victims it shows a worrying tendency to belittle their plight.

The article tells us that recent statistics show “men in their early 20s are just as likely to be abused by their partners as women”. Just one problem, look at the statistics: in England and Wales 6.4% of men said they were victims in the last year, compared with 5.4% of women.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought that 6.4 was a sort of bigger number than 5.4. Men in their 20s are not ‘just as likely’, but in fact more likely.

I honestly wonder how the hell this elementary mistake was made and worryingly I can only conclude it was a deliberate choice of words: surely only an idiot couldn’t tell when one number is bigger than another?

The BBC further provokes my suspicion with as it continues later with:

“Women are still more likely to be repeatedly abused in the home than men and to be physically harmed. The latest Home Office figures for 2007/8 show 2.2% of women of any age said their partner used minor or severe force against them over the last year. The figure for men was slightly lower at 2.0%.”

So, a difference of 1% is ‘just as likely’, but a difference of 0.2% is ‘more likely’? Would someone mind telling me why this is?

The BBC are by no means the only ones to continue to show women as the bullied and men as the bullies. At least they seem to be trying to report the truth behind the matter, if a little ham-fistedly. Across the nation, organisations and campaigns run by the government, the media and others fail to recognise that men too can suffer and women too can harm.

Research by the Men’s Advice Line states that gay, bisexual and transgendered or transsexual men “experience domestic violence and abuse at similar levels to heterosexual women i.e. 1 in 4 within their lifetime.”

Why then are men almost entirely missing from campaigns? Why does the topic of domestic violence seem to assume an almost purely heterosexual male-to-female phenomenon? Where are all the straight male victims, where are all the men and women being abused in homosexual relationships?

Mankind, a male health charity, believes that the government, the police and the mechanisms used by women for support in cases of abuse are simply ignoring male victims, saying: “there are 500 refuges for female victims and that is probably not enough… There are only 12 for male victims”. The LGBT domestic violence charity Broken Rainbow points out that the current services ‘fall short’ for LGBT people.

The Home Office, however, believes it is making ‘significant progress’ towards stopping domestic violence, citing the funding of both the Domestic Violence Helpline (which it emphasises is 24-hour and free) and the Men’s Advice Line.

What it fails to emphasise is that the Domestic Violence Helpline is in fact strictly a female-only service. They will refuse to accept calls from male victims. No matter that the circumstances are essentially the same: that they are being abused by their partners, that they are scared and isolated and need help. They have testicles and thus are banned.

The Men’s Advice Line, to whom male victims are referred, far from being open-all-hours, operates only 30 hours a week.

So, what of this £3.5 million being spent ‘to help victims of domestic abuse’, eh, Jacqui Smith? Could it be that you’re talking out of your arse again? Because in the article detailing how the money will be used, straight female victims are mentioned consistently and exclusively until the 14th paragraph, where Broken Rainbow are finally allowed to point out that: “domestic violence is not a gender issue but a human issue”.

Not that everyone seems to see it that way.

The Men’s Advice Line is good enough to take male perpetrators under its wing as well as male victims, recognising that men can often be the abuser as well as the abused. But what of the main women’s helpline, run by Women’s Aid?

Clearly someone needs to deal with women who abuse, if the helpline for male victims also deals with male abusers then surely the helpline for female victims are the ones to deal with female abusers? Not so, it seems. The perpetrators page on the Women’s Aid website says:

“The vast majority of perpetrators of domestic violence are men, who deliberately use abusive behaviour to control their partners and former partners.

If you are a man who is worried about your behaviour towards your partner, or if you have been abusive or violent, you can get information from the Respect Phoneline.”

Assuming a female abuser even bothers to follow this link after basically being told they don’t exist they get to a page which does, somewhere in the small print, also claim to welcome calls from straight women, gay men and lesbians who abuse their partners. The two links actually offered for help on the page? Female victims and male abusers.

Ho hum.

Excuse me if I hope that some of you are feeling rather depressed, grumpy and cynical right about now. Lord knows I am.

It’s a disgusting situation. Men and women can both harm and be harmed. Men and women who are being abused need help and support, men and women who are abusive need to learn how to change. We need to look at why it is that female victims get so much press and men get ignored, laughed at, in the worst cases, criminalised for being abused.

After all, it isn’t a gender issue, it’s a human issue.

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Read more stories of domestic violence against men on the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ page.