That's men for you: Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health
It is only since the 1990s that we have become aware that some women are violent towards men. What is still outside our awareness is the sexual coercion of men by women.
Traditionally it has been assumed that all sexual coercion is perpetrated by men. But research going back to the late 1980s suggests that men are not alone in this behaviour.
At least six studies have been carried out on the topic among college students in the US. They suggest that 30-40 per cent of men in the US have experienced some form of sexual coercion.
Now, sexual coercion is a very wide-ranging phrase, so let's break it down a little. A study conducted at California State University among 182 male students broke sexual coercion down into mild, moderate and severe forms.
A mild form includes behaviour such as a person insisting they be kissed or sexually touched even when the other party doesn't want to do so. It includes being touched by the other partner sexually when you don't want it to happen. About 35 per cent of the men complained of this form of coercion by women.
Moderate sexual coercion involves a woman insisting on having sex when the man doesn't want to, or insisting on having sex without a condom. More than 20 per cent complained of this.
The severe form of sexual coercion involves a woman using physical force or threats to coerce the man into having sex. This accounted for only 1-3 per cent of the complaints from men.
Studies suggest that younger men are more likely to be sexually coerced than older men, perhaps because older men are more likely to be in a long-term relationship and, therefore, less likely to be available to coercive females. And older men may be more likely to refuse to be coerced.
Why haven't we heard about all this before? I suspect it is due to the very gradual way in which hidden social behaviours come to light. It took until the 1960s or 1970s for society to become aware of "baby battering", and awareness of child sexual abuse took another decade or two.
This article is being written on the International Day on Elder Abuse. I remember the amount of hard work it took in the 1980s and 1990s by a social worker called Anne O'Loughlin to get this issue into public awareness. And do we really accept it even now?
Look how long it took for us to become aware of the suffering inflicted on women by abusive husbands. People had, of course, heard of wife beating but somehow the full impact wasn't appreciated until the 1970s and 1980s.
When that awareness came, men were invariably seen as the perpetrators of domestic violence, so there was a further delay in the growth of awareness that women could be violent towards men.
The issue of sexual coercion of men by women takes matters a step further and remains out of sight and out of mind.
In our attitude to gender differences we seem to move between extremes.
There was an old tradition that saw women as weak, bad and barely human, and men as good and strong. That view was replaced, in recent decades, by its opposite: that women were good and incapable of any wrongdoing but men were bad and capable of anything.
Perhaps what we really need to do is to realise that genders have a lot in common when it comes to good and bad behaviour. Then, perhaps, we can respond in a way that is based on reality and not on myth.
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.