A related problem is the distinction between isolated incidents and social problems. Your story counts as an isolated incident because you're male, whereas if you were female and the attacker was male it would be treated as a serious issue by some well-organised lobbyists and any attempt to question this or suggest that male victims exist too would be shot down as a direct attack on you.
Of course, this doesn't just affect men; female victims of violently abusive women get similar treatment. There was a lovely incident where a really major feminist blogger wrote a post [1] which talked about her experience of domestic violence and attributed it to the fact that the abuser was male, just completely erasing victims who'd been treated in the same way by a women. Another women had actually experienced this from a female abuser and was quite distressed by being erased in this way, leading to a long discussion[2] in which said big-name feminist claimed without any sense of irony that not allowing her to treat other victims' experiences as impossible was somehow an attack on her and an attempt to erase her experiences as impossible, before going on to further erase the other victim's experiences and call her irrational.
As far as I can tell there's pretty much no real movement towards gender equality anywhere, and most of the anti-domestic violence organisations are actually anti-violence against women (but only if it's by men). Sady Doyle is still a respectable member of the online feminist community, the moderators of that blog went against their stated goals and the interests of their commenters to side with her, and I don't think anyone else cared.
Of course, this doesn't just affect men; female victims of violently abusive women get similar treatment. There was a lovely incident where a really major feminist blogger wrote a post [1] which talked about her experience of domestic violence and attributed it to the fact that the abuser was male, just completely erasing victims who'd been treated in the same way by a women. Another women had actually experienced this from a female abuser and was quite distressed by being erased in this way, leading to a long discussion[2] in which said big-name feminist claimed without any sense of irony that not allowing her to treat other victims' experiences as impossible was somehow an attack on her and an attempt to erase her experiences as impossible, before going on to further erase the other victim's experiences and call her irrational.
As far as I can tell there's pretty much no real movement towards gender equality anywhere, and most of the anti-domestic violence organisations are actually anti-violence against women (but only if it's by men). Sady Doyle is still a respectable member of the online feminist community, the moderators of that blog went against their stated goals and the interests of their commenters to side with her, and I don't think anyone else cared.
[1] http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/08/the-percentages-a-biogra... [2] http://noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/...