We know we aren’t flashy. The world kind of forgets about us sometimes because we are next to the loudest kid in the class. We are proud generally of the co-operation we have with other places and groups. Our medical advances raise waters that lift all ships , we have a space program that primarily assists other nations space exploration. We have a military but we are primarily devoted to UN peacekeeping.

The Canadians were a pivotal force tasked with the Italian Campaign in WWII which had some of the most brutal on the ground city fighting of the war. My Grandfather was there from the beginning to the end of the Campaign… Yet I have heard Americans on here ask “Did Canada storm the beaches of Normandy?” as some kind of “gotcha” to shame us because they don’t know that we had our own beach operation but all they know is that Americans were there because Hollywood only shows American battles.

We are used to being kind of forgotten but we can be proud of ourselves for a job well done.

A complete absence of funding isn’t the same as saying it isn’t an issue. At a government level there’s always more problems than money and manpower to solve them. Approaching it from that perspective is not a particularly healthy way to approach these situations. Realistically when you look at the the two cohorts you see very different behaviours. Funding for all shelters is currently massively declining across the board in Canada and no one pilots a new program when existing ones are failing.

Think of it like this. If you do not fear for your life but are escaping from an abusive relationship with child in tow what sounds like a better option : seeking help by going to a friend’s or relative’s place where there’s familiarity and seeking help from an authority for assistance OR going blindly into a shelter system with a lot of unknowns? While it’s true that men do need support seeking help from a formal shelter system is not a popular option.

The reason why women don’t tend to rely on their existing support systems is because it’s the first place abusive partners stalk if they intend a violent attack, not just an abusive encounter but an actual physical assult that puts other family members and friends lives at risk.

Hotel voucher programs and reserved open spots in pre-existing shelter systems do a similar solve to contemporary shelter programs but the reason mens shelters close isn’t always funding related. In part it’s because men don’t often choose that route because a restraining order is usually more than enough to deter a female abuser and it is more comfortable relying on people you know. In the cases of DV homicide women are way more likely to be killed if they leave, men tend to be killed if they stay. It’s not a matter of just dry DV stats. It’s in the nitty gritty details of how these scenarios play out by gender divide that cause these initiatives to fail… which means it needs dedicated grassroots support which by and large isn’t happening not because people won’t donate but because while straight men love to complain that there’s no mens shelters they are not coordinating dedicating their free time to make it happen. Queer specific initiatives are generally more successful because the organization structures are dedicated and they often do not rely on government but community support. What straight guys need to imbibe is you do not need a government stamp to start stuff.

I am not arguing for Gender specifc shelters what I am saying is that it’s not a matter of how many reports of DV, the motivating factor in funding is how often each statistical group end in a homicide. It’s a stumbling block which means that the priority often overshadows services for men that do exist when doing a casual search even online.

The main needs of men escaping DV are mental health support and police assisted extraction, temporary housing and childcare assistance. The first two are decently prioritized depending on Province. Here in BC there’s decent resources directly through Coastal Health and less great coverage the Fraser Health Authority but childcare assistance is across the board spotty and really 99. 9% of the time the elements of making someone physically untraceable are not nessisary if the offender is a woman which means that if we were to look into hotel voucher programs and relocation services instead of permanent brick and mortar shelters for those cases you could likely provide options that fill the requirements for communities in smaller towns with a quarter of the funding of a shelter. Straight men generally do not have to skip town so they can often rely on their previously made support structures more so the time spent in temporary housing is often stays of less than a week.

What a lot of advocates in the space keep pushing for is a replication of the system because of the idea that it’s not fair to give men a “lesser service” but the needs of the cohort are completely different and we should structure care to fit the needs based on an evidence based model instead of pointing to something else that is designed for a group with completly different needs.

That is a space that is more generally lacking. A lot of spaces prioritize women in part because there’s a real issue with abusive men hunting down and killing their partners when they try to leave so women require a spy-like bugout infrastructure to safely leave. Historically this trend motivated womens groups and queer centric undergrounds to go above and beyond and was reinforced later by government grant because establishing support while victims are still alive is cheaper than the apparatus of investigation for their murder. It’s a balance sheet game.

This hunting behaviour is something highly statistically unlikely for women to do which tends to mean support for straight men could look a lot different and be effective but also the monetary government incentive to provide it is not as lucrative for governments who are always triaging spending in sectors that don’t somehow save them money.

It’s absolutely correct that these resources should exist but it is going to take a much greater grassroots effort to maintain and structurally speaking expecting it to look exactly like the model in place for women is probably in part the enemy of progress because those models are prohibitively expensive.

… Are you talking like a men’s specific clinic?Here in BC there’s all gender options which include men through the Fraser Health Forensic Nursing program which is available through emergency rooms. Or the SVPRO Program at UBC (https://svpro.ubc.ca/) or the AMS Sexual Assault Support Center.

A lot of the services on the West Coast are available to all genders and a lot of effort is being made to make services unilaterally available but you won’t find a lot of services strictly for men. There’s a push to make care more diverse which accounts for different cultural groups including men.

It’s definitely true that some options are confusing. The BC Women’s Hospital doesn’t have boundaries for whom they treat for sexual assault and rape related care. You could go there, but they don’t do the greatest job of creating an environment automatically comfortable for men. There’s also a lot of outside care groups that specialize on specific populations with special needs such as trans, indigenous and non-neurotypical people and people with disabilities that don’t specifically list men (though provide services for men who are part of the group) because they are focused on folks who have very particular hurdles to accessing care so they aren’t put in a position to educate their caregivers on their basic needs while in distress. Those groups are usually funded and created by advocates specifically from those communities.