Who is affected
When the person being abused is a man
More than one in six men in the United States have experienced violence or stalking from an intimate partner. Almost none of them expect to be believed.
By Nopa Foundation Editorial Team · May 5, 2026 · 5 min read
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts it at more than one in six men in the United States, around 20.7 million people, who have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. That figure comes from the same national survey that produces the widely quoted statistics about women. It is not a fringe claim.
What differs is not whether it happens. What differs is what happens next.
Men who reach out describe a specific sequence. They are not believed. They are laughed at, sometimes by the person taking the report. They are asked what they did to provoke it. They are asked why they did not simply hold her off, as though size settled the matter, which it does not when the weapon is a knife, or a false allegation, or the children.
So most of them stop trying. They stay for years, and many stay long past the point where a woman in the same position would have been urged out by everyone around her.
The forms it takes are not always the ones people picture. Physical assault happens, and often with an object. But far more common in what we hear is control exercised through the children, threats to make an allegation that will end contact with them, financial control, humiliation in front of family, and the constant reminder that no court and no friend will take his side.
Provision has lagged badly behind the evidence. Most shelters in most countries were built for women and children, for good historical reasons, and a man with nowhere to sleep frequently finds there is genuinely nowhere. Some services now offer hotel placement or dedicated accommodation. There are far too few.
None of this is a competition, and we will not treat it as one. Women bear the greater share of this harm and the greater share of the serious injuries, and the services built for them remain underfunded. Both things are true at once. A service that can only recognise one kind of victim will keep failing the other.
If you are a man reading this and something in it lands, you can call us. You will not be asked to prove it, you will not be asked how big she is, and nobody here will find it funny.