"What about the men that get raped?"

welcome to Mumsnet Acemumpower. What an interesting subject to pick for your first post. And a thread that had been dead for over a month, as well!
what brought you to Mumsnet?

I remember there being an anti-terrorism march not long after the 7 / 7 bombings.
Were muslims / arabic people allowed on the march? Of course not! Imagine how insensitive it would have been for the victims if fundamentalist muslims had been marching along with them.

The situation is the same with RTN, for the same reasons.

I posted about Reclaim the Night in AIBU earlier but only a couple of people have replied. Frustrating because if all the people who had been assaulted came out onto the streets at once it would block every road in London and have a huge impact.

In the US, a leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide: '"There are a lot of dynamics that go on in a relationship that involves violence ? power and control and the need for the abuser to be primary. A pregnancy can create a sense of possibly losing that primary position." ' -- From N.O.W. website.

From a BBC Health article -- 'Jalna Hanmer, director of the research centre on violence, abuse and gender relations at Leeds Metropolitan University, said there had been no detailed research into why men attacked their pregnant partners.

In some cases, she said they appeared to deliberately want the woman to abort her child.

She said the reasons seemed to vary from man to man, but it was likely that many men attacked pregnant women because they were at their most vulnerable.

"We know that domestic violence increases with marriage, when a woman has children and when she is pregnant.

"This is because the woman is in a more vulnerable position in relation to the man. Basically, they do it because they can get away with it," she said.

Women's Aid article here on violence against women in pregnancy

I think we can assume that men commit acts of violence against women because there's a power dynamic involved and they can get away with it out in broad daylight and at night too. They seek the sense of power that violence brings. They are empowered and enabled to commit violent acts by a wider society that turns a blind eye.

The only time I have ever been sexually assaulted I was engaging in a perfectly normal risk free activity.

I was about 13 or 14 and was on the metro in Paris with my mum during the day. Should society start warning women not to use public transport or they have only themselves to blame for being sexually attacked?

Some fucker groped me and shoved their hand hard enough between my legs to finger my vagina through my clothes. I was totally shocked and didn't even tell my mum.

I remember feeling really really angry that some man just went ahead and 'took' a piece of intimacy from me without my permission.

For me this is what RTN is about; the fact that men as a group feel entitled to sexually threaten and assault women and that society doesn't really have a problem with that.

I think we need all sorts of marches along these lines 'Reclaim Public Transport' for example.

I love your amnesty idea ISNT - I doubt there are many, if any, women who have not endured some sort of sexual attack, which is just gobsmackingly out of fucking order when you think about it.

I have never been assaulted,sexually or otherwise.
But i don't put myself in situations (anymore) where it is likely to happen.
When i was young i used to hitch hike every where,all over England and (with a friend)in France.
I consider myself very lucky and would hate my daughter to do what i did.
I WOULD report an assault to the Police and would encourage/support my DD to do the same were it to happen to her.
Is it really true that the leading cause of death among pregnant women is murder?.

True, math.
For the victimsd themselves also.

It's much easier to unambigously hate a stranger and therefore admit, report & follow through with proceedings.
Things are much more complicated in a case where the attacker is a man you may well love.
People are much more open (relatively) about the former.

ISNT, I think your idea is brilliant.

It's not just women who are not connecting the dots -- look at the police in the Warboys case and the extreme difficulty they seem to have had. More dots needed (obviously the will to connect them too)

'but it's the image of that lone stranger which is emphasized in the media, not your family friend or neighbour or husband as rapists.'

Yes, I agree, despite the fact that women are more likely to be assaulted by a domestic partner, and that the leading cause of death among pregnant women is homicide -- it is far easier for wider society and for men to believe that the rapist and the murderer is some sort of 'outlaw', a lurker behind bushes. The alternative is a very uncomfortable thought.

I think that adding up the small assaults is an important exercise. I think that threads like that give a lot of comfort too, to women who have had things happen and not reported, and carried it with them for years.

I'll bring my list if you start a thread

I really think that the police should have an "amnesty" - a special day when all of the women who have been assaulted in any way can go and report it to the police.

Would have loads of consequences:

• Police would be overwhelmed with queues out the door, making it hard for society / people to turn a blind eye or claim it's not a problem
• Women would feel a sense of closure I suspect feeling able to report it
• There would be a lot of names given and a lot of them would be of the same people, enabling the police to pick out some really dangerous serial offenders and do something about it

It's never going to happen though, is it.

Doesn't read right. The lucky few - women who haven't had anything happen / have no fear at all when out and about. There's one on MN who crops up sometimes and tells us we're all silly, isn't there.

yes would go along with that.

For me how it happened was

Enormously confident
A few random things done by men
Not nearly so confident and all too aware of what men can do, and that women have little recourse
Wary of men in all sorts of situations
That feeling reinforced by the media and society at large
Get pissed off
Join MN
Rant about it

I think this is probably the process for most women? Apart from the ones unfortunate enough to have had things happen when they were young. Apart from a lucky few.

I don't know any women who haven't had something happen to them. Most of them don't seem to connect events / see the wider picture / get angry about it though.

I'm not trying to downplay it, it's more a point about the fear. And how the risks of different situations are manipulated by the media to control women, instil them with fear, but not actually give them any advice that might be in any way helpful. And of course assure them that if anything does happen it will be in some way their fault (unless they are a virgin librarian going to work at 9am in floor length clothes on a busy main street).

Basically when women are randomly assaulted, they need to automatically call the police, and everyone there needs to be horrified and give evidence. At the moment, unless it is "serious", the approach seems to be to forget about it, it isn't that bad, haven't you got a sense of humour...

Everyone knows there's no point in reporting low level stuff to the police. In fact most people don't bother reporting really serious stuff. The whole thing is shit.

It just makes me so angry that women (especially young women) need to go around on edge the whole bloody time, waiting for some random bloke to do something.

You know they're there though, it's just the fact they bloody go and harrass / assault you that's the problem.

For low level stuff, which seems to be totally acceptable , like groping and shouting, there needs to be a change in the culture so that it is seen as totally unacceptable. Ditto forcing unwanted attention on women (all of this stuff is on sliding scale of harassment isn't it).

For serious stuff the police need to pull their finger out and we need to get prosecutions and convictions, the culture has to change so that the blame is placed squarely at the criminal's door.

I'm not saying that no-one gets attacked at night - inebriation and less people around make things easier. But still, most rapes are by people known to the victim, darkness is neither here nor there. Groping happens in well lit pubs and public transport, shouting all the time, and so on.