Statistically speaking, however,

This way of looking at things is called collectivism. It's the sort of philosophy that considers it okay to treat and individual according to the average experience of their group. For example, when someone points out that a woman can easily get help and a man is told to stop and consider his abuser's needs, collectivism says "yeah but that man's problem is smaller".

Well, that's the implication. That his problem is smaller than a woman's problem would be.

It's never actually said. Instead it's described in terms of statistics and numbers. And these numbers describe the collective experience, not the individual experience.

OP is making a complaint from an individualist point of view: if a particular man is being abused, then that man faces significant obstacles in getting help.

Just because fewer men than women experience problem X, doesn't mean that a man with problem X suffers less than a woman with problem X.

Dismissing the experience of the individual, or implying that it's "bullshit" to highlight that individual experience (which is horrifying, as I know from being on one side of this issue, which is all the perspective I need to evaluate how horrible it feels and whether it's okay).

People think the words collectivism and individualism map to:

Collectivism: considering others' needs

or

Individualism: considering only one's own needs

That's not what those words mean. What they mean is:

Collectivism: Considering the needs of a group, and making ethical decisions based on group situation descriptors (such as statistics) and the implied sums of experience. Holding groups responsible, as a unit, for crimes. Recognizing groups, as a unit, for their accomplishments.

Individualism: Considering the needs of the individual, and making ethical decisions based on the individual's situation (such as stories, relationships, health status, etc). Punishing or rewarding individuals for the actions they themselves committed.

But it's not even a matter of policy primarily. It's not like this policy is collectivist and that policy is individualist. Most prominently, these are lenses through which to view the world.

One of the dangers of collectivism is exactly this kind of reasoning (when collectivism is applied erroneously to individual policy or problem evaluation). Because more women experience X problem than men, we should prioritize the individual women's problems over the individual man's problems.

I am not accusing you of having said or implied the previous sentence

Now, collectivism isn't bad or good. Individualism isn't bad or good. The danger arises when one doesn't distinguish between them. In the above italicized thought, for instance, a collective issue is used to make decisions about individual response. That's not so good.

An example of good collectivist reasoning and ethics would be like: "After experimenting with different carbon tax rates, we have found that $65 per ton extracted results in the climate stabilizing".

Collective problem, collective analysis (those atmospheric CO2 readings basically involve all of us), collective solution (a law, which applies to everyone in the group, i.e. all Earthers)

An example of good individualist reasoning and ethics would be like: "Mike is constantly yelled at by Susan. Almost every day, she goes off the handle and yells at him for hours. His health is suffering from this. Therefore we're connecting Mike with a shelter and a social worker who's going to help him learn that he's too valuable to accept that treatment"

Collectivism, Individualism. Two lenses for looking at problems, just like physics and chemistry are two ways of looking at the world.

Thanks for minimizing the abuse I went through. Fuck you. Maybe a big part of why men are underrepresented in abuse statistics is because we are considered the abuser by default and are expected to just suck it up and take it. Go eat a bag of dicks, apologist.

Imagine being told that your pain matters less because not as many people who look like you suffer from it.

My siblings and I were raised by an abusive narcissist who spent most of her free time screaming at my dad, when she wasn't emotionally abusing and neglecting us.

But of course the cultural narrative was that men are only and always abusers, and women are only and always abused - so we normalised it; our whole reality bent around the notion that she was the poor innocent beleagured victim just doing her best to survive.

We took a vast amount of damage because an interpretation where she was the abuser simply wasn't available to us - instead of forming defenses against her, we rendered ourselves more vulnerable.

I don't take kindly to being told to go fix women's problems first before mine will matter.

Many changes start with people posting about it, like it is very likely if this blew up Google would modify the search term to include the help line for both, so I disagree that it is bullshit in that regard regardless of OP's intent

Yeah but if someone is searching "why is my wife/husband yelling at me," the statistics on abuse for that sub-popularion may not be as skewed. And providing resources for men (especially men with children) doesn't take Google that much more effort/money, and it provides a much needed service. As it stands, it is nearly impossible for an abused man (especially one with children) to seek out help using the types of services that are available for women. So if Google can help with that search a little bit, what's the harm in showing that info? Aaand, even for someone searching about their abusive husband, the googler may be a man, and most services that are for abused women don't have resources for men.

The biggest problem with statistics is it doesn't illustrate the full picture - most men in that position don't even realise they're being abused, or refuse to come out and acknowledge it.

Those men don't end up as apart of the statistic. So the statistic is more a indicator as to which gender is more likely to report their abuser, than which gender Is actually a victim.

No statistic is going to be accurate, because it generally relies on the data being available, when often not all of it is.

While I'm not outraged at Google, I do think they should absolutely add the help notice to the men's one since there's no downside to it and some people could still be helped

Yes, but the statistics are suspect. Are we going by reports? By people who get help? By people who ask? Convictions?

There was a professor where I live about 20 or 30 years ago who was researching domestic violence. The more data she collected the more it started to appear the domestic violence against men was about as high as it was against women. When she presented her results, she lost her tenure.

This was before the internet was well established, I heard it on the radio, and I don't remember her name. But I just looked at this page by Stastics Canada. Note this line:

In 2019, spousal violence continued to be significantly more common among women, with 4.2% of women experiencing such violence compared with 2.7% of men.

Now here's the interesting part. If we assume the gender spilt is 50% male and 50% female, which is very close to reality, that means women are 61% of the victims of domestic violence (4.2÷(4.2+2.7)). That's a pretty small difference in my opinion, and pretty dismissive of 39% of the victims of abuse.

Streisand effect go!