*Content Warning: Discussions of sexual and domestic violence.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has launched the UK’s first strategy to tackle gender-based violence against men and boys.
The strategy, co-written by University of Manchester Professor of Criminology David Gadd and ‘We Are Survivors’ founder and chief executive Duncan Craig OBE, aims to build on the Greater Manchester Gender-Based Violence Strategy 2021-2031.
The strategy focuses on sexual violence, domestic violence, and ‘honour’ based abuse including forced marriage.
A key theme in the report is a critique of the central government policy on gender-based violence which the report accuses of treating men as “an inconvenience” within traditional violence against women strategies.
The report makes numerous recommendations including that the GMCA commits to hiring independent domestic violence advisors who will specialise in supporting male victims and that Sexual Assault Referral Centres be promoted to men and boys.
Professor Gadd, speaking to The Guardian, said that “[g]ender-based violence can be any form of violence that has a kind of gendered or sexed aspect to it. So a sexual assault on a man is clearly gender-based violence”.
Commenting on the release of the report, Kate Green, Deputy Mayor for Safer and Stronger Communities, highlighted that male victims account “for one in five reports of rape and sexual assault offences” to the police and that the true figure is “much higher as they are less likely to report cases to the police”.
The report points out that gendered expectations of masculinity make men less likely to report gender-based violence than women.
Additionally, the report criticises traditional gender-based violence frameworks as heteronormative and exclusionary to gay, bisexual, and transgender men.
The report comes four years after the “most prolific rapist in British legal history”, Reynhard Sinaga, was convicted of 159 sexual offences against 48 different men with well over 100 other likely victims.
The case, along with the conviction this year of a teacher, Rebecca Joynes, of 6 sexual offences against two boys are referenced by GMCA as reasons for committing to removing the “barriers men face in reporting experiences of victimisation”.
