INTRODUCTION
When analysing victimisation resulting from crime, it is important to understand that, though both men and women are exposed to various kinds of crimes, their susceptibility differs according to various factors, like the kind of crime, the area where they are, age, socio-economic level, and personal conditions. For example, women could become more exposed to certain forms of domestic or sexual violence, while, statistically speaking, men could be more prone to violent crimes.
Conventional narratives mostly bring out the susceptibility of women to different criminal activities, but it is equally critical to recognize the complex difficulties that men face while becoming victims of crime. The existing legal system, mostly provided in the Indian Penal Code, often lacks specific measures intended to address the vulnerabilities and challenges faced by men.
There is a significant gap in legislation in the IPC while specifically addressing the challenges facing men who become victims of crime, although many regulations are gender-neutral or aimed at protecting women, hardly any for men.
UNNOTICED VULNERABILITIES TO CRIME FACED BY MEN
India is considered a country dominated by males, with patriarchal societies all over. The societal belief is that males have always taken control over women. However, concerning the laws of India, India is not truly a man’s land. Though the public believes that women are more vulnerable to all sorts of crime, it should be taken into consideration that males are also the victims, mostly unnoticed.
Crimes against men have become increasingly common in India. Because of the societal framework that presumes that men are incapable of being victims, men and their problems are often ignored. It is commonly said in India, “mard ko dard nahi hota,” implying “men don’t feel pain” and “boys don’t cry.” This misplaced stereotype is the reason all atrocities against men are either not believed or not taken seriously. This has led to the making of laws in favour of women only, while the laws should have been formed, granting equal rights and protection to all genders.
Social attitude studies have further shown that the perception of violence depends upon the gender of the victim and the offender.[1] [2] The act of a man hitting another man is less likely to be taken to the police than that of a man hitting a woman.
However, because of stereotypes of society, and preconceived notions of masculinity, men are often discouraged from reporting these incidents or seeking help. When the victim is a male, law enforcement officers are less likely to report or file charges.[3] In the context of conflict situations, sexual violence against men has been ignored in favour of sexual violence against women and children.[4]
It is presumed that when a person talks of gender disparity, he is talking about crimes against women. Men and women are equally involved in achieving gender equality. Gender stereotypes and stigmatisation are barriers that hinder men from seeking help after being violently victimised. Men often feel that if they seek help after being subjected to intimate partner violence, they will be laughed at, written off, or booked as abusers.[5] [6]
TYPES OF CRIME AFFECTING MEN
Men have been more vulnerable than women in some of the crimes which can be categorized as:-
- Criminal offences against a human body:- Wherever a crime against a person or individual is heinous enough to cause death, it can be charged under any sort of homicide, such as Murder (section 300) and Culpable Homicide (section 299), wherein most of the victims are men. Similarly, heinous violent crimes that mainly afflict men as opposed to women, are Hurt (sections 319 to 338), Criminal Force (section 350), etc.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 79% of all homicide victims in the world are men; besides, in 193 of the 202 listed countries or regions, men were more likely to be killed than women.[7]
- Attempt to commit suicide- Section 309 in the Indian Penal Code deals with attempts to commit suicide as a crime. From the latest available data on suicides by the National Crime Records Bureau of the year 2020, it is found that the number of male suicide cases is over twice that of female suicide cases. From the available data, the suicide deaths in the year 2020 reported 1,53,052 cases, accounting for 419 deaths per day. Male suicide deaths were 1,08,532 (70.91%), more than the number of female suicides, which was 44,498 (29.07%); 22 deaths of transgender people accounted for the rest.[8]
- Intimidation- The most common violent crime type for both genders is intimidation. Most victims are males amounting to 1.1% of females and 1.6% of males. In addition, 0.9 % of men and 0.5 % of women are victims of assaults.
- Physical Assaults- Men are likely to be victims of physical attacks like robberies, fights, and street violence. Men are more at risk of being victims of violence, especially if crimes occur in cities or in the context of conflicts.
- Sexual Assault and Abuse: Women are disproportionately victims of sexual offences and domestic abuse. However, men are facing the same crime, and their vulnerability is not taken into consideration. Male sexual assault is often underreported and trivialized. Statistics from the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, conducted from 2010 to 2012, reveal that within the year before the survey, 1,270,000 women and 1,267,000 men were made to feel uncomfortable. The CDC fact sheet summary failed to mention male victims entirely, instead noting, “3 million women were raped in the past year preceding the survey,” without providing the comparative number for men.[9]
The sections concerning rape and laws that prohibit it make no mention of rapes or sexual assaults against men; rather, it implies that if a rape has taken place, women are the victims and men the offenders. Added further, women are accepted as victims and men as executors under IPC Sections 354 A, 354 B, 354 C and 354 D, that deal with sexual harassment, disrobing, stalking and voyeurism, under which the victim could be anyone of any gender, including men.
Due to the stigmatized society and the propagated myth that men cannot turn into victims of these crimes, neither male victims can report these crimes nor there are enough regulations in this regard.
- Domestic Violence: Although it is less common, men can also be victims of physical and emotional abuse in close relationships. However, due to the prevalent norms in society and ideas of what constitutes manhood, men may prefer to keep mum and not report such incidents. 52.4% of men faced gender-based crimes. Among 1000 males, more than 50% are said to have experienced violence once in a lifetime from an intimate partner/wife as per the research conducted in the Rural Area in Haryana, India [10]
There is an increasing rate of men who are now on the receiving end of harassment and suffering psychological and physical abuse at the hands of women[11], a fact that Indian law has refused to acknowledge. Due to perceptions of rape as a women’s issue, services designed to help victims are often not equipped to help men.[12]
- Cybercrimes: Like any other place, men in India are prone to cybercrimes such as identity theft, phishing, fraud online, and bullying. Since they increasingly depend on digital platforms, men are more vulnerable to online exploitation.
- Financial Exploitation: Men can be financially exploited using coercion, fraudulent schemes, misleading financial transactions, or even workplace exploitation.
- Hate crimes and discrimination: Men may also fall victim to hate crimes or acts of targeted violence because of their sexual orientation, caste, religion, or other personal characteristics.
- Discrimination at the Workplace: There are stringent laws on sexual harassment of women in the workplace like The Sexual Harassment Act for Workplace or the Vishakha Guidelines[13], over these years. However, no such remedy has been laid down for men if they are sexually harassed in the workplace.
CONCLUSION
To conclude, while innumerable types of crimes take place against men, the laws in India, as codified under the IPC, often do not cater to the specific challenges that men go through when they become victims. There are no specific laws addressing the vulnerabilities faced by men; instead, the provisions found in the IPC are primarily gender-neutral or focused on women.
Men have fallen victim to a host of crimes yet underreporting of the same is common due to societal norms, stereotypes of what constitutes manhood, and the belief that men must fend for themselves.
To combat these issues of victimization and the problems posed, laws must be more nuanced. This can be understood as the legal system integrating inclusivity and assuring equal treatment and protection for both genders while accounting for the diversity of experiences in victimization.
There have to be discussions from lawmakers, legal experts, and advocacy groups for continuous legislation to recognize and protect the rights of all victims, regardless of their gender, to close legal framework gaps.
Author(s) Name: Prabhnoor Kaur (Graphic Era Hill University, Dehradun)
Reference(s):
[1] Golden, Tom, “Male Bashing in Mental Health Research” (2 March 2015) < https://menaregood.com/bias.pdf> accessed on 25 March 2024
[2] N. T. Feather, “Domestic violence, gender, and perceptions of justice” (October 1996)
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01544134> accessed on 15 May 2024
[3] Monica Fagerlund, “Gender and police response to domestic violence” (7 April 2020)
< https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15614263.2020.1749622> accessed on 20 May 2024.
[4] Solange Mouthaan, “Sexual Violence against Men and International Law – Criminalising the Unmentionable” (1 January 2013) < https://brill.com/view/journals/icla/13/3/article-p665_4.xml> accessed on 21 May 2024.
[5] Onyango Monica Adhiambo, Hampanda, Karen, “Social constructions of masculinity and male survivors of wartime sexual violence: an analytical review” (29 November 2011)
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19317611.2011.608415#2b85d6ca-6520-4a3d-8e4a-aa9f2ee3f33d-b6de7b7c-de82-45a5-9538-313dd15c6659> accessed on 17 May 2024
[6] Julie C. Taylor, Elizabeth A. Bates, Attilio Colosi, and Andrew J. Creer “Barriers to Men’s Help-Seeking for Intimate Partner Violence” (25 August 2021) < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9554285/> accessed on 24 May 2024
[7] Gibbons, Jonathan, “Global Study on Homicide” (March 2014)
<https://www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf> accessed on 22 May 2024
[8] National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released the Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India Report 2020
[9] Lara Stemple, JD, Ilan H. Meyer, “The Sexual Victimization of Men in America: New Data Challenge Old Assumptions” (June, 2014) < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4062022/> accessed on 25 May 2024
[10] Jagbir Singh Malik, Anuradha Nadda, “A Cross-sectional Study of Gender-Based Violence against Men in the Rural Area of Haryana, India” (2019) < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6437789/> accessed on 25 May 2024
[11] Sarkar S, Dsouza R, Dasgupta A, “Domestic Violence against Men – A Study Report by Save Family Foundation.”(2007) <https://www.ipc498a.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/domestic-violence-against-men.pdf.> accessed on 23 May 2024
[12] Joke Depraetere, Christophe Vandeviver, Tom Vander Beken, and Ines Keygnaert, “Big Boys Don’t Cry: A Critical Interpretive Synthesis of Male Sexual Victimization” (16 December 2018)
< https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444022/> accessed on 19 May 2024
[13] Vishaka & Ors. v State of Rajasthan & Ors. (1997) 6 SCC 241
