Victim-shaming men is a double standard
DURING his short-lived marriage to the late comic genius Caroline Aherne, musician Peter Hook was routinely attacked with knives, bottles and chairs. He was emotionally abused by his wife or, as he puts it in his new memoir, ‘brainwashed’ with negative comments. After a violent outburst, Caroline would be very contrite but soon the pattern would resume of ‘serious screaming – banshee behaviour – putting cigarettes out on my arm, attacking me with bottles, knives, chairs and other furniture’.
‘It would be set off by the slightest thing – talking or looking at another woman was a favourite.’
Hook’s account of spousal abuse, which has, perhaps predictably, been fiercely condemned by Mrs Merton loyalists and by the brilliant comedian’s own family, is eerily similar to most stories of domestic violence.
The tiniest provocation setting off the tsunami of aggression, the mental torture designed to make victims feel they are worthless, the abuser’s remorse and self-pity and then inevitably the return to savagery as a form of control.
Problems with alcohol or drugs and the deep-seated unhappiness that cursed Aherne all her life, are also frequently factors in the abuser’s profile.
What gives Hook’s memoir the ring of truth is that he details the effects this abuse had on his self-esteem, leading to him becoming clinically depressed.
‘I was an abused husband and it’s embarrassing and you feel ashamed and you can’t tell anyone,’ he writes. ‘I needed help.’
In common with many victims who suffer in silence, Hook felt desperately ashamed. But he must also have felt terribly alone when you consider given the double standards that exist about domestic violence, the stigma is so much greater for men.
THE sea-change in attitudes towards domestic violence – that has taken decades to achieve but is still far from complete – means that when a woman finds the courage to speak out, she can now expect sympathy and support instead of recriminations and interrogation.
Men, however, invite nothing but contempt and, in this case involving a well-loved celebrity who is dead and unable to defend herself, outrage and denial.
We scoff at the idea of a strong, strapping man being attacked by a woman, particularly the petite Caroline Aherne. Our incredulity gives way to an unspoken tolerance for men being battered and beaten by women. We have seen the reputations of gifted entertainers like Jimmy Savile and Woody Allen demolished because of their vile and predatory behaviour. Yet we still can’t countenance the idea of a loveable wit like Caroline Aherne having a darker side.
But domestic abuse is not just solely a woman’s issue and while women are more vulnerable, the truth is that no gender has the monopoly on aggression, insecuhow, rity or a temper so black and fierce that it strikes at its nearest and dearest.
The backlash against Peter Hook – the vilification he endured this week, the charge that he is exploiting his dead wife to sell his book as if a leading light of bands like New Order and Joy Division wouldn’t have a ready-made audience for his work – is sheer victim blaming and it shames not him but all of us.
IT IS a throwback to the time when women and children didn’t report sexual or physical abuse, particularly when their abuser was a priest or someone of high social standing, for fear of being disbelieved or blamed.
If Hook felt the stamp of shame all those years ago, breaking the silence on his nightmare marriage has brought him more pain. He has been victimised all over again.