Justin Trottier is used to seeing his cause go unrecognized.
Trottier is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Men and Families, a charity that runs two shelters for men escaping domestic violence.
“Nobody really takes [domestic violence against men] seriously because there’s really no pressure on them to do so,” Trottier said in an interview.
Trottier saw this firsthand in 2023, when the federal Ministry of Women and Gender Equality announced funding for projects related to gender-based violence. Its guidelines said programs for men or boys that are “victims or survivors of [gender-based violence]” were not eligible.
Even so, Trottier applied, seeking funding for programs to support LGBTQ men. The application was denied.
The centre filed a freedom of information request to understand whether the government had considered how domestic violence impacts men when it set its eligibility criteria.
The ministry’s response did not address his questions, nor did meetings with ministry staff. An email from the ministry this July clarified its priorities do not include men.
The ministry’s mandate is to “advance equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression through the inclusion of women and 2SLGBTQI+ people in every aspect of Canada’s social, economic, and political life,” the ministry’s email says.
This struggle to secure funding means centres like Trottier’s are underresourced — and that men who experience domestic violence can struggle to get help.
“There’s no ‘in’ for men and boys,” Trottier said, about the difficulty of getting funding.
‘Treated with suspicion’
In 2023, men accounted for about 20 per cent of all police-reported incidents of intimate partner violence, Statistics Canada says. Rates of domestic violence among men increased by 20 per cent between 2018 and 2023.
Support for these men is scarce.
A 2020 report from the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime recommended more research about male victims of intimate partner violence.
“Male survivors have reported not being believed, being treated with suspicion that they are perpetrators, or dismissed as men’s rights activists,” the report says.
“The needs of male survivors merit careful policy development to provide better service responses without jeopardizing gains made through the violence against women movement.”
Even when violence against men is acknowledged, policymakers may not prioritize preventing it.
In June, B.C. released an independent review about how the provincial legal system treats victims of sexual abuse and intimate partner violence.
The review recommended the province declare gender-based violence an epidemic. But it made no recommendations about supporting men who experience domestic violence — despite finding that 39 per cent of B.C. men had experienced it.
“We have an issue with empathy towards men,” said Alexandra Lysova, a criminology professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. who studies violence against men.
“We just don’t feel that our boys and men deserve help and support in the same way as women and girls do.”
‘A thousand cuts’
Men are taught to be “in charge and [in] control,” said Lysova, which makes it hard for them to ask for help. Men in abusive relationships often focus on coping, sometimes using work as an escape.
“The stigma around a female partner physically abusing a male partner is something that’s very much taboo,” said Geoff Thompson, a counsellor in Winnipeg who previously worked at a shelter for men fleeing violence.
“You would not want to talk about that as a man.”
Women are more likely to experience more life-threatening intimate partner violence. The men Thompson saw came to the shelter because their partner was physically abusive, but not endangering their lives.
The abuse men experience is like “death by a thousand cuts,” said Thompson.
The men he saw at the shelter had partners who stole their money or ID, tried to get them fired or attempted to ruin their reputation.
Women are nearly two times as likely to tell a friend or relative about abusive relationships than men, Lysova says.
And if a man does talk about experiencing abuse, it is likely not everyone will recognize it as such.
Many people think intimate partner violence always equals physical violence, says Carrie McManus, director of innovation and programs at Sagesse, a violence prevention organization in Alberta.
“If you’re someone who thinks that abuse is a black eye or a broken arm, [then] it’s really easy to make a lot of assumptions [that] the bigger, more powerful person is the person always perpetrating [the abuse],” she said.
“I think that lack of nuance, of understanding truly what domestic abuse is, often leads to people not caring. But not because they don’t care, but because they’re ignorant to the reality of what abuse looks like.”
‘A huge barrier’
Today, most shelters for people facing intimate partner violence are targeted toward women.
Men may feel like available supports are not for them, says Lysova.
She does not find that surprising. Government departments that respond to gender-based violence often focus on promoting women’s equality, she says.
“It’s still this very strong gender-based language with focus on women, which many men see as a huge barrier,” she said.
Canadian Affairs asked the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality if it supports programs that help men who experience intimate partner violence, and why such programs were excluded from past funding.
In its response, the ministry acknowledged men experience intimate partner violence. But it did not say that it supports programs to help men who do.
“Men and boys have an important role to play in ending gender-based violence,” the ministry’s statement says. The ministry has supported “projects that engage men and boys as allies, particularly in promoting healthy relationships and challenging harmful gender norms.”
The Public Health Agency of Canada has supported programs for men who experience intimate partner violence, the department says.
Trottier says that failing to support men can put women at risk for more violence. Often, both partners in a violent relationship act violently.
“These are couples that are violent towards each other, but by failing to intervene the day the man happens to be the victim, you’re making it more likely tomorrow the woman will be the victim,” he said.
Stigma
The Toronto shelter run by the Canadian Centre for Men and Families rarely has vacancies, Trottier says.
Since opening in 2021, it has served more than 300 families. While Trottier is glad for what it can do, there needs to be more places like it, he says.
“I don’t mind saying that what we’re doing is really just a drop in the bucket,” he said.
“We could easily have a dozen of these houses across the GTA and still not be fully able to accommodate the demand.”
All shelters need more funding, says McManus. Additional pandemic-era funding has stopped, while the need for services has risen.
“It’s hard to get funding regardless,” she said.
She also noted that there are more shelter spaces in Alberta for men than there used to be.
Some shelters publicly say that they support men as well as women.
The Thompson Crisis Centre in Thompson, Man. is one of them. The centre helps one or two men each year that need emergency shelter, says Helen Trudeau, the centre’s executive director.
She suspects the need is greater. “Because of the stigma that’s attached, [men] don’t know about us or our services,” she said.
“We’re labeled as women’s shelters, so I think that prevents most men from coming to approach us.”
The centre’s services for men look different than the services it offers women. Men stay in hotels, rather than the centre’s residential shelter.
Trudeau says she would support a shelter specifically for men.
“If they have the funding to be able to do that, that’d be great,” she said.
“It is a need, and once those barriers are broken, I think men would probably access the service more.”
Due to potentially pronounced power imbalances, male partners with disabilities/chronic conditions also face increased risks of physical, mental, and emotional domestic abuse, regardless of the orientation of their relationship.
Yes I agree there are men that face domestic violence and it is tough to get help. But it is the same with women and statistics show that more women are killed by men from domestic violence and the system needs to be upgraded to protest both men and women from offenders.