Women will be observing the 100th “International Women's day' on March 8, while they are still not able to get equal opportunities and equitable treatment, both at home and at the workplace, and the stories of battered and abused women are countless. A not so well-known fact is that there are thousands of men who suffer from physical or verbal abuse from their wives, but they have to keep their suffering private, because of the social stigma attached to reporting it. “If you mention the issue of ‘battered men' in the East, the first reaction is usually laughter, followed by scorn. Women are now more aware of their rights through the media and Internet. They get frustrated when deprived of their rights and this causes an enormous latent aggression which drives them to verbal and physical abuse to give vent to their feelings,” said Professor Chamman Rahim, a lecturer of Social Sciences in Dar-Al-Hikmah College at Jeddah. From Moonstruck (1987) to Shakespeare in Love (1998) to Pirates of the Caribbean (2007), women hitting men may be seen in popular cinema, but the phenomenon is not just restricted to the movies. According to ABC News, every year there are 834,732 serious cases of women abusing men in the world. Abdullah Ali, who asked that his name be changed, said that his wife is not just aggressive, she is “evil”. “She always starts beating me without any provocation. One Friday night I was playing cards with my friends and she came over and pushed me off the chair and told my friends to leave home,” he said. He said that when they argue, his wife throws things at him accompanied by verbal abuse, and at one point even threw a phone at him which cut his forehead and left a scar. “I've never hit her back, because I am not that type of person and I do not want to leave her because of the children,” he said. Dr. Muhammad Attia, member of Arab Federation of Psychiatrists says that there are some reasons why men put up with the abuse from their wives. “He genuinely loves the woman and wants to keep the family together. His self esteem also takes a beating and he may feel that he does not deserve an abusive woman, who may be otherwise nice to look at, or richer, ” he said. Generally, men consider it an embarrassment to leave their wives because they have been battered, and may suffer in silence to stop the truth from coming out. Rehan Shah (name changed), an Indian said that his wife beat him up on the seventh day after delivering a baby boy. “She was sleeping when I arrived home form work. I proceeded to boil an egg but fell asleep. It was a loud thunderous sound that awoke both of us as the egg exploded and hit the ceiling. That was the first time when she beat me, which I was not expecting from her as a recuperating mother of a new born child. Perhaps anger and her feelings of pride at becoming a mother of a baby boy provoked her to do so.” Shah said that his wife frequently beats him but, but a few minutes after beating, she starts crying, saying things like, “Oh, I am really sorry, I have been so arrogant and I should not have behaved like this with you”. Professor Hani El-Amin, Consultant Psychiatrist and Head of the Psychiatric Department in Dr. Erfan and Bagedo General Hospital said that violence against men is more than physical. “Before the physical abuse, comes the verbal and the emotional abuse which is very difficult to take.” “A wife sometimes can also be psychopathic due to uncontrolled anger. Indeed, people while saying that they have not heard any reports of men being beaten by their wives, were quick to admit that it was not because incidents of this sort do not occur here in East, but rather because Eastern men are proud and do not admit that their women are beating them”. El-Amin said that most of the time verbal abuse precedes physical abuse. A lot of women may think about beating up men, but because men tend to be bigger, the feeling is contained. “Relationship abuse is assault, plain and simple. And it should not happen at all -- either from the side of the man or the woman,” said El-Amin. If wives are unable to physically beat the man, they may damage his personal belongings: writing the name of “the other woman” if their husbands are involved in extra-marital relationships on them, throwing clothes out of the closet and setting them ablaze have all been reported by abused men. Jamal Muhammad, an Egyptian accountant has lived for 13 years in a marriage where his wife was physically and mentally abusive, and said that many of his friends had the experience of their wives trashing their personal things in a fit of anger, rather than actually physically abusing them. “While abused women have support groups, men are left with nowhere to go and no one to turn to, thus forcing them to suffer in silence. While most of the countries are trying their best to fix the problem of domestic abuse and human rights, the case of battered men is over.looked. If you hit the woman, you go to jail. But if the woman hits you no one believes it,” he says. Two scholars and one renowned Islamic thinker believe wives can beat back their husbands in self defense. “The wife can use force in self defense to counter her husband's violence,” Saudi scholar Abdel-Mohsen Al-Ubyakan told IslamOnline.net. “If the husband hits her she can hit him back and if he tries to kill her she can kill him in self defense if this is the only way to save her life.” The fatwa stressed that a woman must use all other means to defend herself before resorting to counter-violence.”(She can) talk, scream, seek help from neighbors or call the police or those able to defend her.” Al-Azhar, the highest seat of learning seat in the Sunni world, agrees that women have the right to counter violence in self defense. “A wife has the legitimate right to hit her husband in self defense,” Sheikh Abdel-Hamid Al-Atrash, the head of Al-Azhar's Fatwa committee, was quoted as saying by Egypt's Al-Masri El-Youm daily. “Every person has the right to self defense, whether that person is a man or a woman because all humans are equal before God.” What would a cop do, when a woman abuses a man? A police corporal from the Northern police station (Shurta Shumaliya) in Jeddah, who did not want to be named, said to Saudi Gazette that he had witnessed a Saudi wife roughing up her husband at Al-Balad gold Market because he was not buying her a gold jewelry set she wanted. “I just told her husband to solve his matter at home but, I would have certainly arrested him if he was found beating her. Female aggression is usually seen as not very important,” he said. When the victim of spousal abuse is a man, many women perceive him as guilty and think may be he deserves this and the abusive woman becomes a “role model” for them. “I have seen my neighbor give her husband a proper flogging once. I encouraged her as it was good for her,” said Ramla Ahmed, a student of King Abdul Aziz University. “Men have become swollen with pride and overconfident. They take wrong advantage of women. I think all women should learn martial arts to defend themselves against domestic violence or at least learn how to throw a punch for her safety. If a husband hits you once, you should be able to hit him twice,” she said.
