Male violence and harassment of women

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nekomatic
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by nekomatic » Sat Mar 27, 2021 7:55 am

Squeak wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 11:02 pm
Is any of that helpful to anyone who wants to be an ally but feels as though this stuff doesn't happen around you?
Yes, I think it is, and thank you for posting it. This discussion is giving me pause for thought about all kinds of things I didn’t expect, and I hope a lot of people are listening to it.

One random observation I have for people who think (as I have and often still do) they have no influence over this stuff because they’re not seen as alpha-male enough: we probably have more influence than we think, and that grows over time.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Aoui » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:02 am

Bewildered: The system is often set up to protect the man and not the victim. The blame goes to the victim time and time again and it's a lesson we learn early. If no one else sees it, then she will likely be skewered if she refuses to work with him. He can be being an ass in public and if it's not in your face enough, a lot of guys just say "ah..he's a good ol' boy, he'd never hurt a fly" and god knows what he's done to her when the guys aren't looking but it doesn't sound nice. Again, women have to have a lot of witnesses or they are the problem. We've got a guy at my work who is openly misogynistic and racist and god knows what else. He's been there long enough that it'd cost a fortune to get rid of him, so he's staying. Complaint after complaint has been made. It's not just women who see it too. The nicest, coolest, calmest man I know has refused to work with the jerk after he saw him hitting on one of his coworkers. The really cool, calm guy nearly spits bullets when he has work in the room next to the jerk. We women all figure him out in about 5 minutes. But complaints are always washed away. He'll make a fuss and they'll have to pay him out so much money that they just can't afford it. Also the women on the whole have been able to keep him at bay. Turns out if you get in his face and growl just the right thing at him, he gets scared he'll get in trouble..even though we all know he won't. So the point here is that if he has been reported by both women and men repeatedly and he's not being fired, what's the hope of getting anyone to take her seriously about the guy everyone else thinks is a saint but who isn't?? Plus a lot of things that are scary sound silly if you write them down. How do you write down that they give you the stink eye or look you up and down when no one is looking or brush against you in a way no guy would notice from 2 feet away but you noticed or that they put your hands on your arm...all too petty sounding. And if you don't report something right away, then you made it up...ugh. Or why did you stay there by yourself, are you stupid? Backed up again by how you are vicious because he's just a nice guy. Blech...I'm sure if she could have, she'd have gotten him fired already. Nezumi doesn't seem like someone who wouldn't think of that, it's just not anything that is helpful to her in her situation. it's sad, but that's just the fact of how things are and why we need to keep fighting so damned hard.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Squeak » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:27 am

JQH wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 11:45 pm
nezumi wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:34 pm
... I hope there will never be a day when I'll have to refuse to join a team with him on because then I'll have to tell someone what he did and I'm more scared of what that would do to my career and life than anything else.
This is the single most depressing thing I've read in this thread.
Ditto.

Nezumi, I hope you can get yourself into a much more rewarding and empowered job before someone tries to force you to work with this creep.

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Woodchopper
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:36 am

Grumble wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 10:03 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:42 pm
nezumi wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 6:38 pm


I think this might be the crux of where we all misunderstand one another. My concern is with the petty - the teenage boys who haven't been let in yet on the Facts of Life, yours might be with the teacher or boss who abuses their power, someone else's might be the roofie-merchant in the pub and yet somebody else's might be the sexual sadist serial killer. They could all be the same bloke, of course. They probably are. A tiny minority (about 1-2%) are the perpetrators of all the really bad sh.t (might as well swear since the subject is worse than the language).
If by really bad sh.t you mean things that are serious criminal offences, then I think a lot more than 1-2% of men have been perpetrators. Having read some of the criminology research but without having tried to work it out in detail I reckon its probably more like 10-20% of men.
Really? f.cking hell. By serious offences I assume you mean something worthy of prison time? Surely 10-20% haven’t been near prison? Even granting that crime is under-punished.
Yes, the great majority is never reported to the police, and after that tiny proportion of reports actually result in prosecutions.

If we look at the results of anonymous surveys the proportions of women who have since the age of 16 been a victim are: sexual assault or attempts 22.9%; 7.1% rape or attempts; domestic violence 16.9%; stalking 9.3%. There are other crimes as well. For child abuse, 7.5% reported physical violence and 11.5% reported sexual abuse that occurred when they were children (which are likely to be under estimates, to start with they won't cover abuse that occurred before the child was old enough to remember).

Of course we can't just add the above numbers together as many women are victims of multiple crimes, and some (though certainly a minority) of the perpetrators were female. But still, it would be remarkable if a man didn't know several women who are victims of of male violence.

Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... rvey-finds
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... vember2020
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... anuary2020
https://www.bma.org.uk/media/1793/bma-d ... t-2014.pdf

As for the perpetrators, that's much more difficult subject to research.

Concerning sexual violence the research I've found is on the US so it may not be applicable to the UK, from anonymous surveys it appears that men who commit sex crimes tend to be repeat offenders and "between 6 and 11% of men report committing or attempting rape" https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.117 ... 1219833820 or see here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamape ... 2C15700271

Concerning male perpetrators of domestic violence, for the UK 13% of men reported having perpetrated domestic violence within the last two years: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 0001717165

Among UK university students, 7% of men reported having perpetrated intimate partner violence involving punching, kicking or hitting with an object. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 0907001855

I assume that the actual rates are higher as some will not admit to it in a survey.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:42 am

bjn wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:34 am
By chance I was listening to the Dunning-Kruger episode of the Cautionary Tales podcast today, at one point it discusses the #metoo movement and says that a big part of it was really a DK thing. Women are experts in being sexually harassed, patronised, talked over and belittled for their gender, they live it daily from an early age. Men are mostly at the other end of the scale, we really haven't got a clue. Yes we know it happens, but in general it is a shallow second hand experience as we don't live it. Many men will perpetrate some of the low level aggravation while still thinking they are wonderfully woke, e.g. talking over or ignoring women without even realising it.

Men are in DK club, most of us don't know enough to know that we don't know enough. So even in a relatively liberal environment like this place, we can come out with lugubrious insensitive utterances, get hyper defensive and pointlessly nitpick. I think I'm now aware that I'm sufficiently ignorant that I can't meaningfully contribute beyond a simple mea culpa, so I've not posted much in this thread.
That's a good way of putting it.

Alternatively, for those of us old enough to be into Douglas Adams its like the The Somebody Else's Problem Field. Men just don't see things that make us uncomfortable, are difficult or are inexplicable.

We don't want to imagine that while we're having a drink with a friend that his wife is at home worrying about whether he's going to hit her when he comes home. Its easier just not to notice.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:58 am

Grumble wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:54 pm
I know that when my eldest daughter was born I looked at the girls going out on a Saturday night dressed to the nines in a different way, imagining that she would one day be one of them. In some cultures, here in the U.K. mainly in the past but very much present day elsewhere, this leads to fathers being very protective. It’s not a new phenomenon, and leads to all sorts of abuse up to and including murder. There is a (historically) new aspect in that instead of triggering over-protectiveness it now seems to trigger empathy and a desire to change things for the better. Can we harness that, even while we call out men like me for not being that way previously? Fatherhood is life changing but the change isn’t automatically positive, let’s reinforce the positive.
I suspect that part of the reason some men only become aware of the issues when they have daughters is that their other female relatives and friends don't talk to them about it because they think/know they won't be heard or understood. Or they don't want to 'upset' the men; women do a lot of emotional labour around men's emotions and are more likely to talk to other women. This needs to change on both sides.

I also suspect that many daughters don't tell their parents about the everyday and non-violent incidents because they worry they either won't be believed or won't be allowed out again if they do. I know that was true for me.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by purplehaze » Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:04 am

Two links to Hadley Freeman discussing sexual harassment, misogyny and sexism. I was wolf whistled and heckled from a building site when 9 months pregnant with my first child.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ey-freeman

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/201 ... e-vilified


Regarding the ONS survey linked:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... rvey-finds

This amount of sexual harassment is not done by a vanishingly small number of men.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:43 pm

purplehaze wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:04 am
Two links to Hadley Freeman discussing sexual harassment, misogyny and sexism. I was wolf whistled and heckled from a building site when 9 months pregnant with my first child.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ey-freeman

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/201 ... e-vilified


Regarding the ONS survey linked:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... rvey-finds

This amount of sexual harassment is not done by a vanishingly small number of men.
There has been a lot of talk about redesigning public spaces to make them safer. I guess it's easier to put up a few more street lights than to redesign male behaviour.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by mediocrity511 » Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:58 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:43 pm
purplehaze wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:04 am
Two links to Hadley Freeman discussing sexual harassment, misogyny and sexism. I was wolf whistled and heckled from a building site when 9 months pregnant with my first child.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... ey-freeman

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/201 ... e-vilified


Regarding the ONS survey linked:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... rvey-finds

This amount of sexual harassment is not done by a vanishingly small number of men.
There has been a lot of talk about redesigning public spaces to make them safer. I guess it's easier to put up a few more street lights than to redesign male behaviour.
It's an interesting one though, I've recently been reading some stuff about redesigning parks to make them better for girls and young women and yes some of It is about safety and mitigating male behaviour, but there's lots of other ideas about what makes public spaces female friendly. It's a bit off on a tangent I know, but it's another example of how issues that affect women and girls often aren't taken into consideration.

http://makespaceforgirls.co.uk/research/

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by purplehaze » Sat Mar 27, 2021 2:10 pm

I'm always reminded of this lovely video. (I would love to be going to Barcelona this year, sadly not and it's freezing cold today but the sun shines in this video) It's obviously a quote 'fantasy' for now.

What would a city designed by women be like?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-50269778

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:27 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:02 pm
And the task cuts back to the studio, and he is *f.cking mortified* to the point he can barely look Sanders in the eye. And he's trying to keep the comedy up but you can see the horror of what he was like in his eyes. I'm not saying that public shaming on national TV is a particularly effective or fast way of changing minds, but it's a good example of someone having that mirror held up to them and being shocked by what he sees and (I hope) being more aware of behaviour from there.
This is more-or-less me right now, fwiw.

Yesterday I suddenly found that I've badly upset people I've been talking with, mostly amicably, for the best part of a decade, with a few posts I tried to word carefully. And it feels horrible.

Like nezumi I feel very comfortable here. So it's easy (for me) to think, ok, we all acknowledge the extent and severity of this issue. We can take that for granted, and discuss some article/issue/point in isolation. And while that works for all sorts of other issues, like covid and brexit and climate change, it doesn't work for this one. Men in general, and discussions of sexism in particular, are regularly so awful that women can't take anything for granted or give anyone the benefit of the doubt. Failing to acknowledge things properly looks like denial. I knew all that once, and somehow got too comfortable, or thoughtless, and forgot.

So, ok, there is a distinction between deliberate coercive abuse, and thoughtless negligent harm. We all know that. The niggling doubt I spectacularly failed to articulate yesterday - that while introspection and men policing each other can do a lot to reduce the latter, it's unlikely to make much difference to the former - wasn't the bigger picture we were meant to look at. The bigger issue was simply that all men should be keener observers of themselves and each other, note their faults, and fix them. That alone will go a long way to making daily life a lot better for women.

A fact which has smacked me in the gut in the last 24 hours.

I'm also really impressed at the generosity women here have shown, even while calling me out. I'd assumed for a long time that men generally were expected to be 'doing something' about deliberate/coercive/sneaky abuse, and worried about what on earth I could do. I'm not sure where I got the idea from. It's surprisingly encouraging to get replies saying, basically, that getting my own house (and those around me) in order is enough to be getting on with.

Obviously I have plenty to do. But at least it is doable.

Thanks to everyone who's posted things, be it constructive advice or personal experience that must have been hard to write in some cases. There have been loads of great posts since I ballsed the thread up.

And sorry again to the people I've upset or annoyed, whether you posted about it or not.

And with that, I think I'd prefer to go back to just reading and not posting for a while.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by jimbob » Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:52 pm

mediocrity511 wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:58 pm


It's an interesting one though, I've recently been reading some stuff about redesigning parks to make them better for girls and young women and yes some of It is about safety and mitigating male behaviour, but there's lots of other ideas about what makes public spaces female friendly. It's a bit off on a tangent I know, but it's another example of how issues that affect women and girls often aren't taken into consideration.

http://makespaceforgirls.co.uk/research/
And of course those changes would benefit all - except those who want to intimidate others.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bjn » Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:47 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 3:27 pm
I'd assumed for a long time that men generally were expected to be 'doing something' about deliberate/coercive/sneaky abuse, and worried about what on earth I could do. I'm not sure where I got the idea from. It's surprisingly encouraging to get replies saying, basically, that getting my own house (and those around me) in order is enough to be getting on with.
It took me a while to get to this point,

The 'white knight' thing is much more obvious, I'd be fairly quick to step in to stop physical abuse happening in front of me. I've physically put myself between men in a street fight, I've run out into the street to help a screaming woman (drunk couple having a public barney, we called the cops regardless). It fits in easily to the traditional male roles of defender. The much harder thing is self examination for the low level stuff you may indulge in unthinkingly, or calling out friends and acquaintances when they are behaving like dickheads. It's definitely where I've failed and what I'm most ashamed of, especially the later.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by nezumi » Sat Mar 27, 2021 7:13 pm

bjn wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:47 pm
The much harder thing is self examination for the low level stuff you may indulge in unthinkingly, or calling out friends and acquaintances when they are behaving like dickheads. It's definitely where I've failed and what I'm most ashamed of, especially the later.
The calling people out for being dickheads thing is hard. There's a ton of social etiquette nonsense to get out of the way in your head like not wanting to interrupt as it's RUDE! We ladies get caught the same way, on our side it's the fear of seeming rude even when we're scared and really want to run away. It's inculated in every well-behaved child from such an early age that it's tough programming to break.

Everyone needs to learn mindful rudeness!
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by jimbob » Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:17 pm

nezumi wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 7:13 pm
bjn wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:47 pm
The much harder thing is self examination for the low level stuff you may indulge in unthinkingly, or calling out friends and acquaintances when they are behaving like dickheads. It's definitely where I've failed and what I'm most ashamed of, especially the later.
The calling people out for being dickheads thing is hard. There's a ton of social etiquette nonsense to get out of the way in your head like not wanting to interrupt as it's RUDE! We ladies get caught the same way, on our side it's the fear of seeming rude even when we're scared and really want to run away. It's inculated in every well-behaved child from such an early age that it's tough programming to break.

Everyone needs to learn mindful rudeness!
Thanks, and yes, it does seem unnatural.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Squeak » Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:16 pm

mediocrity511 wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 1:58 pm
[

It's an interesting one though, I've recently been reading some stuff about redesigning parks to make them better for girls and young women and yes some of It is about safety and mitigating male behaviour, but there's lots of other ideas about what makes public spaces female friendly. It's a bit off on a tangent I know, but it's another example of how issues that affect women and girls often aren't taken into consideration.

http://makespaceforgirls.co.uk/research/
Thank you. That's was a really useful bit of reading. And what's depressing is how little they're asking for, and yet how little of that has been implemented in the parks that I know.
• better lighting;
• pathways all around the perimeter of the area;
• more seating areas, preferably with seats which face each other;
• more swings;
• wider entrances in and out of areas;
• breaking down play areas into smaller spaces;
• Good, safe toilet provision.
And asking girls what sort of facilities they would like.

I suspect that, initially, a lot of girls won't know quite what they're like because there are so few examples of public facilities designed for and used by girls to inspire them.

But smaller play spaces and fewer access choke points for groups of older boys to dominate really would make a lot of people's lives better without great expense.

And if there are more girls and women about, then that in itself is likely to have snowball effects on safety and participation.

Separately, I want to thank the men here who are realising that were not asking you to stop beating your wives or drag rapists out of bushes but to think about behaviours in your world that seem normal to you, because they are normal. Changing this stuff is uncomfortable and hard but if we can make things a bit better for the next generation of women and girls, it will have been so, so worth it.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by JQH » Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:02 am

Squeak wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:16 pm

Separately, I want to thank the men here who are realising that were not asking you to stop beating your wives or drag rapists out of bushes but to think about behaviours in your world that seem normal to you, because they are normal. Changing this stuff is uncomfortable and hard but if we can make things a bit better for the next generation of women and girls, it will have been so, so worth it.
For my part I would like to thank the women here for making their points calmly and patiently. And not for the first time.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Tessa K » Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:21 am

JQH wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:02 am
Squeak wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:16 pm

Separately, I want to thank the men here who are realising that were not asking you to stop beating your wives or drag rapists out of bushes but to think about behaviours in your world that seem normal to you, because they are normal. Changing this stuff is uncomfortable and hard but if we can make things a bit better for the next generation of women and girls, it will have been so, so worth it.
For my part I would like to thank the women here for making their points calmly and patiently. And not for the first time.
I have however been sharpening my knitting needles... :D

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by temptar » Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am

Fishnut wrote:
Fri Mar 26, 2021 10:47 am
I have tried to make allusions without being explicit because I know the overlords and mods want to minimise references to the old place and I respect that. But given the succession of posts that have claimed little to no culpability in the poor treatment of women I feel I must ask those of you who were active on the Badscience forum in 2014-15 to cast your minds back.

Back to a time where we had discussions on whether street harassment of women was as bad as was claimed, discussions about the M&M analogy and whether it was unfair to men, discussions about whether wearing a Hawaiian shirt with naked women on it for a global broadcast on a scientifically significant occasion was appropriate. In all these discussions, and multiple others women, including myself, were belittled, dismissed, tone-trolled, accused of wanting special treatment, and were even called "shrill" by one poster. Our posts were subjected to a level of scrutiny that male posters, outside of cranks, never received. We constantly faced whataboutery, sealioning, derailing, mansplaining and direct bullying. Multiple women, including myself, left the forum due to our treatment in these threads. Some have never returned.

Now, many of the men who were most active in those threads are not present on this forum, and I doubt many mourn their absence. A few are though. And even more were present but stayed silent. Some of you may have reported posts to the mods, but barely any of you stuck your neck out to call out the harassment and abuse of women that was occurring in front of your eyes. You may claim you didn't see it. Maybe you didn't. It seemed to consume the forum at several stages and there were mass exoduses of posters on both sides but maybe you weren't active in Meaningless Banter, I don't know. But a lot of you were.

So either you saw but didn't recognise what was going on, or you saw but didn't care, or you saw, did care, but were too lazy or scared to get involved. I don't know. Honestly, I don't really care. Things have changed. This forum would never and has never put up with that sh.t and that's why I feel comfortable finally saying this.

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. And many of you walked past.
I realise the discussion has moved on but I want to pick up on this to some extent because one of the things which left me a little sick in my throat was the complete disparity between views in this thread and my experience in the thread fishnut mentions above. And that thread was not the only one. There is nothing worse than frequently being told that your lived experience is anecdote, and therefore does not count because it's not data. It happened a lot and not just to me. In the end, I left the place behind for a considerable amount of time and if I did venture in I stuck to very limited threads on the so called old place and it's why for a very long time, I never came here.

I've been assaulted in public 4 times and when I was 16, I was subject to some very bad harassment from a 17 year old male in the small town I lived in at the time. On every single one of those times, there were other people present, oblivious to or frankly ignoring the fact that I did not want the "attention" I was getting. People tell me I should be flattered some guy wanted to rub his penis against me in a crowded metro, and it happens all the time, and a PUA artist decided that the correct response to me providing directions was to pull me into him to kiss me and invite me to a sex party. If you are wandering around living under the delusion that people you know, men you know or work with don't do this, and still provide some sort of an illusion that they are fine upstanding men who would never do such a thing, you're wrong. In my experience, 75% of the guys who targeted me were people that presented a reasonable face to society. The first thing men have to stop doing is pretending they don't know people who act like this. Because what happens when they do it is oh, it's only X being X. Or It's only a bit of banter. Or he's joking, or She can't take a compliment or, She's a bit hysterical. How many of your friends have written off their ex-girlfriends in those sort of terms? How many so called psycho girlfriends? In two of the cases I mention above, I would say the guy was drunk behaving a way that all his friends thought was fine. How often do you tolerate that behaviour because "he'd a few drinks and sure, he's a great lad altogether"? This does not mean Random A Woman wants to be Grabbed Kissed by Great Lad Altogether. Doesn't matter if it is New Year's Eve or Wales have just beaten Ireland.

The discussion in the last few pages also regarding men suddenly realising this is an issue when they have daughters is pretty hilarious. I pulled a colleague up on this one. I said to him after he told me his daughters would be kept under strict control, you are just afraid someone will treat them the way you treated young women when you were a kid. It stopped him dead because of course, that was what it was all about.

It's not the daughters you need to look to here, it's the sons.

One of the most insulting things I see mostly on this debate in wider terms than here lately is how women are nothing special here, more men get assaulted. They do, this is true. But the conclusion that gets drawn is that women should shut up they are nothing special and should put up and not men should stop assaulting people. There's also a difference between what happens men who assault women and men who assault men (significantly less likely to be sexual also). I did not report any of the 4 assaults, because frankly, I don't think the cops would have found any of the four guys - and that was in 3 different countries by the way, and anyway, from my other brushes with police for perfectly reasonable matters, I am not sure they would have wanted to expend anything on it unless I presented a usable case. I lost no blood, after all. Do I feel bad about it? Of course, because next thing is the guilt complex about "protecting others".

But if you are going to pull the notallmen trick or the it happens to men too trick, then you need still to look to the perpetrators and not the victims. Instead we just strongly imply the victims are lying, because of course they must be, a man is innocent until proven guilty, right? This puts victims at an awful disadvantage in a lot of cases, especially where sexual violence or harassment is involved. Proof is hard. I'd like to tell more women to report but what's the point? Even if you get a sympathetic police officer, the system still assumes you are lying and the system depends on assuming an accusation must be false. And I am not sure how you address this because innocent until proven guilty is, in general terms, a good value for a justice system to have. But it does not protect the victims of crime.

tl;dr stop thinking you don't know the men who do this. You almost certainly do. Many of them assume that they absolutely have the right to behave as they do.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bjn » Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:21 pm

temptar wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am
tl;dr stop thinking you don't know the men who do this. You almost certainly do. Many of them assume that they absolutely have the right to behave as they do.
Personally, it came as a shock to me that I knew someone worse than that and never realised. If was I was to pick a piece of sh.t from among the people I knew/know, it wouldn't have been him. In my 20s there was someone from a social circle that was clever, engaging, handsome, dynamic and had women lusting after him (told so by several), of which he took full advantage. At the time I didn't notice untoward behaviour, turns out I was blind. He was also a rapist and is a child abuser and is only now going on trial for grooming a 14 year old girl. I've asked a few women from that circle and they said yep, he could be aggressive and unwelcomely handsy, graduating to rapes after I'd dropped out from the crowd. I was shocked, surprised and very angry, but I really was oblivious to this at the time. I can't recall anything that happened in my presence that required calling out and I was never told of the unwelcome attention.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by bagpuss » Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:03 pm

bjn wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 1:21 pm
temptar wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am
tl;dr stop thinking you don't know the men who do this. You almost certainly do. Many of them assume that they absolutely have the right to behave as they do.
Personally, it came as a shock to me that I knew someone worse than that and never realised. If was I was to pick a piece of sh.t from among the people I knew/know, it wouldn't have been him. In my 20s there was someone from a social circle that was clever, engaging, handsome, dynamic and had women lusting after him (told so by several), of which he took full advantage. At the time I didn't notice untoward behaviour, turns out I was blind. He was also a rapist and is a child abuser and is only now going on trial for grooming a 14 year old girl. I've asked a few women from that circle and they said yep, he could be aggressive and unwelcomely handsy, graduating to rapes after I'd dropped out from the crowd. I was shocked, surprised and very angry, but I really was oblivious to this at the time. I can't recall anything that happened in my presence that required calling out and I was never told of the unwelcome attention.
One day I took the bagkitten to the park after school - she was in Foundation stage at the time. There was a boy from her class in the park who she liked and got on with and they went off playing together. Meanwhile, the dad and I gravitated together and we chatted. I hadn't met him before, only the boy's mother, and didn't know her at all well. He seemed like a perfectly nice guy, charming but not overly so, an engaged father, and someone who pretty much anyone would have put in the "good guys" category on a surface acquaintance.

Over the next 2 years, I got to know the mother a little better and heard more of her story. At the time I'd bumped into the dad, they were already separated, maybe divorced by that point, I'm not sure. Her son and older daughter were difficult and challenging at school because of their experiences at home before she'd left him - I heard a bit about the son's behaviour via the bagkitten, obviously seen through the eyes of a 4/5/6 year old. The mum got herself and the kids out of the relationship and house with the help of our local GPs and they were all working on recovering from his violent and abusive behaviour towards them. She moved away with them over the summer when her boy had finished Y2 and I fervently hope that the greater distance from him has helped them all.

The only glimpse I ever saw of anything other than charming, pleasant, decent bloke in the father was at the Y2 sports day. He lost his temper and was shouting about some tiny annoyance that most people would barely have even noticed. Had I not known more of the backstory by then, I'd probably just have ignored it as someone having a bad day.

So yes, many men can put on extremely good fronts and be almost or even entirely convincing in the role of "decent bloke" that they're playing.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:17 pm

temptar wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am
tl;dr stop thinking you don't know the men who do this. You almost certainly do. Many of them assume that they absolutely have the right to behave as they do.
I agree completely, especially with your third sentence.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by individualmember » Sun Mar 28, 2021 2:37 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:58 am
I suspect that part of the reason some men only become aware of the issues when they have daughters is that their other female relatives and friends don't talk to them about it because they think/know they won't be heard or understood. Or they don't want to 'upset' the men; women do a lot of emotional labour around men's emotions and are more likely to talk to other women. This needs to change on both sides.
It may or may not be coincidental but it was only when I became a parent that my relationship with my mother changed in such a way that she could really talk to me about her experiences. I think it was a moment where I was able to understand a whole lot more and she could see it.

ETA, of course I was aware of the subject from the day I started work. I’m not smart or educated but in my first jobs at age 18 & 19 it was clear to me that most of the men were a..eholes and most of the women were keeping their heads down and I knew it was wrong.

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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by JQH » Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:16 pm

temptar wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am
There is nothing worse than frequently being told that your lived experience is anecdote, and therefore does not count because it's not data. It happened a lot and not just to me. I
The "anecdote is not data" trope started in discussions about medical quackery, where it has some validity. People began applying it more generally including discussions like this where it is not valid; here an anecdote is at the very least a data point and when 85% of women are reporting very similar incidents it most certainly is data.
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Re: Male violence and harassment of women

Post by discovolante » Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:36 pm

JQH wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 3:16 pm
temptar wrote:
Sun Mar 28, 2021 11:38 am
There is nothing worse than frequently being told that your lived experience is anecdote, and therefore does not count because it's not data. It happened a lot and not just to me. I
The "anecdote is not data" trope started in discussions about medical quackery, where it has some validity. People began applying it more generally including discussions like this where it is not valid; here an anecdote is at the very least a data point and when 85% of women are reporting very similar incidents it most certainly is data.
TBF I think temptar realises this as it's the source of a lot of the aggro that started on here to begin with, but yes.

On a separate note...

I drafted a full post earlier about something minor that happened to me a couple of hours ago, involving a man in a car revving his engine at me while I was out for a run, and the self-doubt about whether he was *really* doing it because of me, or why men rev their engines at people at all, male or female, and that I felt daft and annoyed at the same time, but well I felt a bit daft posting it as well and wasn't 100% sure where I was going with it, so I'll just leave it as this little very abridged comment here.

I think if guys are genuinely struggling to spot situations where they might need to step in, firstly as has been pointed out, they probably aren't paying attention enough. Secondly, it doesn't mean there's nothing that can be done. You can talk to your male friends about the same stuff that's been discussed on here more generally, and persuade them to be more conscious of it as well, because given some of the reactions on here I'd be astounded if they were fully clued up on it all. Or, if you have friends you chat to about politics or whatever, then I've talked about some issues affecting women experiencing homelessness here and here, all of which are connected with government policy decisions, so maybe you could bring that up too to spread a bit of awareness and hopefully some activism. Or failing that, if you have the cash (and I appreciate not everyone does), donate some money to a refuge or organisation that campaigns for women's rights (although, choose carefully...I shall say no more about that now). Nobody's expecting you to be able to solve the problem overnight but just...keep an eye out for opportunities I guess.
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