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Re:Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer” by throwanem on Friday September 09, 2016 @07:04AM (#12461027)
Such a book has a great deal of value, to be sure.

Is it possible that there are significant differences in the way abusive men behave, and the way abusive women do, such that more is required to make a book useful to abused men than simply taking a book written for a female audience and swapping pronoun genders throughout? It seems possible to me. And the book you mentioned implicitly disclaims relevance to a situation of the sort under discussion here:

> In addition, I have chosen to use the terms he to refer to the abusive person and she to the abused partner. I selected these terms for convenience and because they correctly describe the great majority of relationships in which power is being abused. However, control and abuse are also a widespread problem in lesbian and gay male relationships, and the bulk of what I describe in this book is relevant to same-sex abusers.

From the perspective of a man who has been abused by a woman, it is very hard to read anything in this paragraph other than "Go away. You do not exist. This is not for you." Perhaps you may object that that is not an accurate reading. Do you imagine an abusive relationship to be strongly conducive to objectivity?

In any case, I'm having a hard time finding anything like a companion volume for men abused by women. It seems pretty reasonable to imagine that such a book would exist, but if it does, it's sorely in need of publicity. I've found some dating books, and some books of statistics, and some websites that seem to regard the fact that women sometimes abuse men as evidence of some kind of overarching anti-male conspiracy, which I'm not sure is helpful. But I haven't found a "Why Does She Do That?", or anything substantially similar. Perhaps I'm just looking wrong.

Re:Introducing “Ask a Female Engineer” by wpietri on Friday September 09, 2016 @08:05AM (#12461377)
I think that's a totally legitimate criticism of this book. The material is clearly rooted in his personal experience, which was counseling a great number of male abusers.

I think that a lot of the core dynamic is similar, so I'd expect the book to be useful to anybody in spotting patterns of abuse and control. Personally, I found the book much more widely useful than the author's intent. But if someone in your position didn't want the uphill struggle of trying to read themselves into a book that didn't start out from an inclusive stance, I'd totally understand. Not only is that a lot to take on when somebody is already struggling, but I'm sure important differences would be missed.