Why is it always men?

@LadyTrunchbull @Another problem is that if you demand that non violent men take ownership for the actions of other individuals solely for sharing their biological sex they'll just regard you as bonkers and stop listening."

That kind of is the problem. If men really want to sort this issue out they need to talk to each other about it. And not tolerate unacceptable behaviour-even of a minor nature-from men in their circle. Because that creates a culture where men think it's OK. And in SOME men that can escalate into violence. And anyway can make a unsettling and unsafe -feeling environment for everyone. Including lots of other men.

Well you're endlessly going on about surveys even though there's lots of reasons they may be misleading.

Also any man who thinks women are 'bonkers' for that is a prick......especially if it's a man who has daughters.

What does endlessly complaining about crime stats accomplish anyway?

The only way to change anything is probably to get the non-violent majority on board. Even then, there will always be some violent crime, especially whilst sections of society are impoverished and crime offers the easiest and quickest route to money. Trying to completely eradicate violence is like trying to prevent 100% of dog bites. We already live in a pretty soft society in the west.

Another problem is that if you demand that non violent men take ownership for the actions of other individuals solely for sharing their biological sex they'll just regard you as bonkers and stop listening. Even if they share their sex with these violent men they likely share little else in common and in all probability these men (the violent ones) will have more in common with criminal women than with a middle class male librarian from Suffolk.

Well, 96% of the U.K. prison population are men (not sure who is counted as a ‘woman’ for the remaining 4%):

It is telling that almost everyone will recognise the names of those female murders and that is because they are so rare.

Perhaps you should post a list of let's say every man that has murdered his partner or ex partner so far in 2023 and we'll see if anyone finds them all immediately recognisable.

They won't of course because the OP is absolutely correct.

I agree with this. For all the talk of inequality, the message we send to powerful men is that power and money make them more eligible.

Men are violent because society allows them to be.

Men are praised for violent acts.

Women are vilified.

I'm not anti men in the slightest. I'm surrounded by wonderful men. I do think though that until relatively recently the power was completely in men's hands and they have continued to make a mess of the world. I'm sick of seeing men causing, fighting and supporting more wars and death. They all have one thing in common and that's their sex. I'd love to see what would happen if the world governments were 100% female. It'll never happen though, so the best we could hope for is a 50/50 split.

I agree that this male dominated world doesn't work well and that it is often rancid men and women who rise to the top.

The point I was trying to make that it is a mistake to be too hung up on sex/gender. The problem might lie elsewhere. Our system is obviously male dominated but it is also power and wealth dominated. I suspect that it is desire for power and wealth that leads to the rancid leaders and not the sex of the leader. Sadly women seem to be seduced and corrupted by power and wealth as completely as men are.

But I hope I'm wrong because there is no doubt that women are increasingly taking over and if that means we will have a better, fairer and happier future then I am all for it.

Yes, this I have no doubt of. Males fighting with other males for resources as has happened in the animal kingdom for millions upon millions of years. We've all benefited from it in some way as our bloodlines would be extinct had out ancestors not fought for dominance/survival.

But specifically regarding the discussion around DV I'm not sure I agree with the default mumsnet stance. When you have academics analysing 1700 peer reviewed studies (or surveying 32 different countries) and concluding that the sexes are actually quite close in terms of perpetrating DV, I don't think you can just dismiss it away with anecdata and some sarky catchphrases.

It's only really crime stats that show men as being massively more likely to commit DV and these won't pick up the non reported cases like surveys do.

This is what somebody posted on the othet thread a week or so back. It's from the charity Mankind who are experts in DV.

• Half of male victims (49%) fail to tell anyone they are a victim of domestic abuse and are two and a half times less likely to tell anyone than female victims (19%).
• 11% of male victims (7.2% women) have considered taking their life due to partner abuse. The charity has seen an increase in calls regarding suicide ideation over the pandemic period and beyond.
• 66% of the men who call the ManKind Initiative helpline have never spoken to anyone before about the abuse they are suffering and 64% would not have called if the helpline was not anonymous.
• Only 4.7% of victims of domestic abuse being supporting by local domestic services are men according to SafeLives data. This highlights how few men are being supported for local domestic abuse services.

No, Argentina did, by invading them. Thatcher decided to get them back.

I don't think this is new news........

the majority of women in the prison system are there because they have committed crimes of theft or violence, i.e. they are the very worst of womanhood

I am not sure being a thief makes you the very worst of womanhood.

There are far worse crimes, and thieves should not be in jail, but punished some other way.

I guess historically some those "thieves" were the sub-postmistresses who suffered miscarriages of justice as part of the Horizon scandal too.

The objective truth is that 99% of violent crime nationally and globally is committed by those with XY chromosomes. It's how it is and how is has always been. We can try to rationalise or wish this away as part of our current modern agenda, but it is the truth.

It IS an ambiguous question though because some will hit in response to being driven to the point of a loss of self control due to the other persons abuse.
Some people are completely mentally and psychologically tortured to the point where they lose control, and treated in a way that could provoke the calmest ,kindest person to snap eventually.

As for women not lying about something that shows them in a good light, if women told the truth and a lot of men who participated in the study lie then it will look like women abuse more obviously, but a huge amount of men are in complete denial about the fact they have abused women. They wouldn't even admit it on an anonymous survey.

I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

Abusive/controlling men are definitely masters of gaslighting and convincing women that 'they asked for it'. It's common for abused women to make excuses for their abuser.

It's also common for abusers to try and reverse things (DARVO is it called?) and convince the woman that they're being abusive by standing up for themselves or asking the man to pull his weight etc.

However, in the more recent study I mentioned they literally asked "have you ever hit your partner?" It's not really an ambiguous question IMO. What they found was that the number of women claiming to have hit their partner was higher than the number of men that claimed to have been hit, which does seem to support the 'men under reporting' theory.

I mean, I can't see why women would lie about something that doesn't show them in a particularly good light so I'm inclined to believe them tbh.

Abusive men often claim to be the victim.

Abused women are also often gaslit into believing they are the abuser.

And a hell of a lot of women don't ever believe or accept they suffered abuse. Even on here I've seen many threads where women are going through abuse at the more extreme level of the scale and they ask "Is this abuse?"....or threads asking "was this abuse?" detailing historic abuse which took them years or even decades to question. I've had the same experience myself where it took me forever to realise, and have seen the same with friends.

Just making the point before all the man haters start.

I agree it's a concerning trend but all of the above studies predate the trans thing by a fair few years. 1700 studies contradicting our commonly accepted view of DV is not something to be brushed off lightly IMHO and anybody who would attempt to do so would make me a bit wary tbh.

In the previous thread posters were being extremely selective and pointing out that some of the studies were very old and had small sample sizes etc but they were conveniently ignoring the 32 nation one and the 1700 peer reviewed studies as well as the other big ones. I feel like it often becomes tit for tat tennis sadly and this doesn't really help.

I would be wary of trusting the statistics about women and men in prison. There have been many instances when males who identify as women are actually counted as women, thus pushing up the stats for violent and abusing women
where I live nearly 90 women have been murdered by men this year. There have been no instances of men being killed by women for years.
and all I can think when hearing about the latest atrocities is male violence.

I'm not going to say too much right now as I'm up for work at 5am unfortunately and had promised myself an early night (before I opened bloody mumsnet, doh).

Ultimately, a stalemate is little skin off men's noses as they're currently in the dominant position if you agree with most strands of feminism (I think it's ultimately more complex with a minority of men at the top and many many more pretty much at the very bottom and disregarded in a way that women sometimes aren't - e.g. homeless men).

I feel like a lot of feminists have found the hill they'll die on, but I don't really want to wage battle or die on a hill and I don't think either are a necessary martyrdom if one stops myopically focusing on the minority of bad men (who admittedly cause most of the issues) and instead try and engage with the good men and the majority who are kind of in the middle but could go either way.

I feel like most men (and now most young women according to the studies) kind of view feminism as a bit culty and extreme and many feminists seem to embrace this sort of elitism but really it's a fart in the wind and not doing much in the real world. GC feminists I feel may be another story (as in actually making change/influencing ) but that's another discussion.

The above is a massive oversimplification but it's largely how I feel. I don't really consider myself a feminist or feel particularly inclined to declare myself as Spartacus lol but I broadly share the written goals of feminism (which aren't how it often actually goes in terms of how it actually manifests itself).

@LadyTrunchbull "We need to actually work with men and that's unfortunately where a lot of feminism falls down for me if I'm completely honest, much as it pains me to say it."

Can you say more about this? Because it seems to me that before we can work with men, men have to show themselves willing to work at all.

Realistically, what chance have we ever got of creating anything remotely approaching a matriarchy without first getting men on our side? That's the thought I always come back to.

For all the brave posturing we see the fact is that division will never get us to a better situation. We need to actually work with men and that's unfortunately where a lot of feminism falls down for me if I'm completely honest, much as it pains me to say it.

So you agree that a male dominated world doesn't work well, if it can only produce rancid leaders.

Also, people are very quick to quote police stats in DV debates, but can we really trust them? I mean this is the same organisation that investigates people for saying humans can't change sex and which sometimes records male crimes as female perpetrated just because the bloke suddenly decides he feels like a woman!

I think mass scale surveys of the public are likely more indicative because (as people say on here) if somebody tells you who they are you should believe them.