Can we talk about female violence? I need to get my response straight

(maybe missing the point) but isn't mother against child violence always going to be more skewed against women because they do the bulk of the child care? In my home my dh sees the children about 10% of their waking day. In theory I'm the one who has to deal with them the most, so I'm the most likely to snap? Also when women do the majority of household chores and cooking on top of trying to keep their children in check they're under more pressure and more likely to react inappropriately (or even violently).

Not excusing it at all.. just saying that I'd expect it to be more likely to come from women than men because of actual time spent with children (which is patriarchy)

Arf RonaldMcD my comments were about risagburst.

Outsself I agree with DoctrineofSnatch, your posts are really interesting and thought provoking.

I can only think of one instance where female violence is supported and backed by culture and institution and that is in the parenting sphere, where mothers are allowed to inflict violence on their children. However, even that is an off-shoot of patriarchy as it were, because fathers are also allowed to inflict violence on their children and the growing challenge to the assumption that deliberately inflicting violence or physical pain on your child is OK, will dismantle the structure around mothers as well as around fathers because it was raised in order to support male assertion of the right to inflict violence, not in order to support female assertion of the right to inflict violence IYSWIM.

I'd never even thought about the role that anxiety must have played for my mum. I just sort of thought she liked the path of least resistance, so was happy to go along with societal norms. Having an "aha!" moment - this is where the personal is political, right? It's actually a bit embarrassing in that I see social construction everywhere but have just assumed she has a psychology and that's it.

I'm only being a bit facetious when I say: beauticians have a line in systemic violence, don't they? All that hair ripping and plucking, those vile and poisonous chemicals they apply to female bodies... obviously deeply patriarchal in values. Though once we're at the level of surgery it's probably back to the men to administer, though don't have any figures on that. Having said that, plastic surgeons, not the facial-disfigurement/ Great Ormond street type but the California, actually-made-of-plastic type have always 'felt' vaguely effeminate to me, with the unreconstructed part of my brain. I have an intermittent defiance and compliance cycle with this stuff, I'm not saying ditch your grooming routine or anything, whatever gets you through the day.

Anyway, I'm being vague and rambly to get to the point of saying, while it's true that individual women are violent, I can't think of a parallel phenomenon of "female violence" in the way that we have a massive problem of male violence, male cultural violence. Clearly I'm talking about acts of direct physical aggression; the symbolic violences that ezinma is describing are of a different order of violence. And I can't help wondering if this is a fact or one of the mythologies of patriarchy? I recognise that posters even on this thread have encountered violent females but they are not connected to a system of regulation or order (so I'm thinking of DV here) and because they apparently subvert that order then they aren't even treated as meaningful or actually dangerous. Or is it that we can't recognise female violence as a social phenomenon because of that order? Is this an example of 'the distribution of the sensible:' things that can only be seen and discussed because for political reasons we regulate and control what can be seen and discussed in any given context? So in this case female.violence isn't made sensible to us because to recognise it would be too subversive?

Outs, it's interesting that you use the word "reproduce". My mother's parenting was very consciously founded on the desire to do the job differently (and 'better') than her own mother. As well as the micrological power struggles between her and me over things like food and appearance, she was also fighting an internal battle to establish her own right to set the rules, to legitimise her authority as a parent — as I think many young mothers do. But often, the alternative 'norms' to the ones she grew up with, the discourses she sought to "reproduce", were rigid religious or 'common sense' ones.

At root, she was anxious about the very idea of women exercising power. The authority that a mother is given (or burdened with) over her children, in industrial-era patriarchy, is a bit of an outlier, given how women (of her class and era) have been socialised to be passive and deferential. She was unprepared for it, and overwhelmed by the depth of the guilt and anguish that followed. Much of what I experienced as symbolic or deferred violence stemmed from that — and the lack of support she got from my dad.

Outs, your posts have been particularly informative, thank you.

And that a decent man will not hit a woman, even if provoked. Is this an 'old fashioned ' view now?

A decent man should not hit anyone. If there is a valid excuse for hitting another man then it must also be valid to hit a woman in the same circumstances.

Er....am I supposed to be waving my willy around or was that directed elsewhere?

I'm with Buffy on this; a neat micro study of male entitlement. Some clear attempts at mansplaining, too, with the insistent assertion that x or y qualities are "feminism" or "feminist."

That's really interesting ezinma. It made me think about the symbolic practices of violence in my own family which are all around, I would say, the beauty and the regulation of the body. There is a really quite harmful violence around food; on the one hand a strong reproduction of standards of thinness but on the other, regularly enforced (when I was a child) and promoted (now I am an adult) overeating. That collective effort is definitely made by women in my family (though obviously inside and in line with patriarchal values).

What the hell?? Even my husband asks what the HELL is wrong with men!?

What's so instructive, is how very stupid he is.

He clearly hasn't read the thread and yet expects that because he stumbles in here and waves his willy around, we will all stand to respectful attention. Ignoring the fact that you can almost guarantee that every single woman on this thread is better educated, better read and better informed than him about this issue and many others.

Oh to have such blithe confidence in the worthiness of your own opinions, irrespective of how hopelessly uninformed by any small nugget of information they are.

No one has said that it's ok for anyone to hit anyone.

No one has said that women who perpetrate DV against their partners are right to do so.

My DS has ASD, he used to sit under tables sometimes and call out random phrases he had seen or heard and liked the sound of. The token MRA sounds so much like him. Regurgitating phrases he has seen no doubt on some lovely site such as AVfM all over an intelligent discussion, because he is MAN and we should all sit dutifully and take note.

Because male entitlement and patriarchy.

gah, the stupid is out in force.

I think that we agree that violence in any form is not what we approve of or condone as feminists or hopefully as a society.

I have worked with many men who have suffered extensive domestic abuse from women either IP or IF and that has been very difficult for me to reconcile personally.
I think that if we acknowledged that many women can also be violent or consistently verbally abusive/controlling/coercive then those women would be able to gain help. I know that many of them must feel desperate and have little support available to them.

Women's physical violence against other women can be systemic — in girl's schools, in same-sex couples, in segregated sports.

And, above all, within families, of course.

Hey Risa if you agree that the man in the video's slap was both puny and harder than hers.. Does that mean her slap was less than puny? Do you think maybe it's possible that she was not trying to physically hurt him at all, just humiliate him as per ridiculous the show that he signed up to?

Here's a question, can anyone point to an example of systemic female violence … which doesn't nevertheless conform to patriarchal standards?

As we live in patriarchy, I think that would be impossible.

Women's physical violence against other women can be systemic — in girl's schools, in same-sex couples, in segregated sports. But, for the reasons that you (brilliantly) outline, women are socialised not to (know how to) use physical violence effectively. They assert power in other ways, through what we might call 'symbolic violence'. To what extent they (are able to) apply effective symbolic violence against men in ways that could be considered systemic or gendered is little studied and poorly theorised. I suspect that, as with DV, much of the symbolic violence perpetuated by women is a response to the pervasive institutional violence carried out against them under patriarchy.

Well done to risa for getting it right. How unusual for an MRA

No I haven't called anyone an idiot or a "knobber" or anything like that.

And I believe noone should hit anyone except when self-defence is justified.

What "male entitlement" do you refer to?

I haven't called anyone names or resorted to personal insults.

I almost feel bad for all the women on this thread who were so kindly and intelligently attempting to point out the inaccuracies in everything you said some of your posts. There really isn't much point, you don't get it. You don't seem to have the capability.

I feel like the only thing we could do on your level to make you understand is to call you a knobber and run away.