Misleading campaign trying to con the UK about the horrific level of domestic violence committed by men against women

That might be true, but do you have the money for it? Does anyone?

And how would you know which individuals to target, given you believe you can't tell which groups will be violent until it is too late?

Better to look at changing the culture of toxic masculinity and campaigning to catch the attention of groups we know are a statistical risk.

FWIW, I also find it worrying that your emphasis is all on 'listening to' individuals - and while I do have sympathy with men who are violent for reasons that have to do with their own experiences of toxic masculinity, I have a damn sight more time for their victims.

But if individuals are treated as such, they are listened to and their individual problems found and effectively solved, there would be no need for the campaign.

Obviously, given we are discussing how best to run a campaign ...!

Oh well if running a campaign is the most important thing.....

No, sorry.

We need a proper, wide analysis. You can't just focus on case by case when you are running a campaign.

I don't explain the facts. No one can fully. For each individual case, there will be combination of possible causal factors, which can be studied. Across a large number of cases some commonality may occur but not be present in every case.

So how do you explain away the facts?

How does it help to disguise them?

I agree society needs to take wider responsibility for crimes re socialisation etc.

However I think this issue is wider than gender.

Regarding biological factors, I believe these can be heavily intertwined with socialisation, as experience shapes brain development and physiology, which in turn affects behaviour, perception and understanding. I view brain physiology as being meta- stable.

Naive in that I think it misses the wider context of gendered violence.

I would say masculinity is by definition socialised. You are talking about 'maleness' as something that might be socialised or biological, but I don't think that gendered violence is biological at all. It is something that can change.

Post-traumatic shock is connected with gender in some cases - for example, it's more common in ex-military men who've not had proper counselling (toxic masculinity at work), and it can be related to past abuse (toxic masculinity again).

These things tend to relate together, which is why it is helpful to look at the bigger picture of gender.

The myth I am referring to is the myth that people who abuse (or rape) do so because they are somehow aberrations within a culture, monsters or outsiders. That means we don't have to consider how the culture might have shaped them, and we don't have to believe they (or that culture) can change.

Naive, how?

What definitions are you applying to maleness and masculinity?

When I used the term 'going rogue' it was in reference to QuiteIrregular's post. It is not uncommon for domestic violence to occur with the onset of a mental illness being a factor, as with people suffering from Post Traumatic Shock, for example, either - so not mythological.

That sort of connection would be overly simplistic, if "toxic socalisation" was a single factor which was easily isolatable and could be analysed on its own. Of course it has interactions with (and indeed I'd suggest it includes) substance abuse issues and mental health questions.

Why are men trained to drink heavily in ways which result in them becoming violent, whereas women's drinking has no such overall social result? Why do men seek mental health help at lower numbers? Why is men's mental angst so often expressed in harm to others, whereas women's is so often expressed inwardly upon their selves and bodies?

Understanding all these questions better might help us to deal with the problem of male violence. But it will also need men who haven't committed violent acts to think about how they've been trained, sociaized, encouraged to process their emotions and regard their bodies. It won't be helped by them saying "Only bad men or unlucky men do that, I haven't been programmed that way"

No, that is naive.

And there is a distinction to be made between maleness and masculinity, I think.

Sadly, domestic violence isn't 'going rogue'. It's too common. A lot of people grow up with it being their 'normal'. You're buying into a myth.

Whilst I said that I thought suggesting violence to being somehow caused by 'maleness' was harmful (whether biological or social), I did not claim there is no cause behind violent acts. My point was rather only making the connection between violent acts and maleness / toxic socialisation etc is overly simplistic. I really think more factors need to be considered, such as substance abuse and mental health, in order to tackle violent crime.

As for people 'going rogue' anybody potentially could, man or woman....shouldn't get too complacent.

Teachers then did not regard it as any worse than other chants and "white kids get teased too" and "you annoy them" - i.e. minimisation, my fault, TheyAreVictimsToo.

That makes sense (ie., that it's a crap approach).

Wanting to admit that it's mostly men in practice, but in theory there's no cause for it, seems to be much more man-hating than the feminists who suggest that "toxic masculinity" or "socialisation" are to blame.

Agree strongly with this.

Yes, the "lots of men aren't violent, so it's not gendered" does seem to overlook two things:

1. across our society, it is hugely gendered

2. there must be a reason for that

Saying that "lots of men abuse other people physically" without continuing to "and that must be caused by something" is bizarrely dismissive of men. Unless a significant minority of men are just born with a tendency to harm and abuse others, there must be something about how our society trains and treats men that encourages this behaviour.

Wanting to admit that it's mostly men in practice, but in theory there's no cause for it, seems to be much more man-hating than the feminists who suggest that "toxic masculinity" or "socialisation" are to blame.

It also suggests that anyone would be quite right in treating any individual man as if he were liable to suddenly go rogue and start harming people, which is precisely what I think people who don't like "generalisations" in this sense are arguing against.

Thanks for alerting us to this, BigChoc. It never stops, does it? Straight from the Ally Fogg School Of NotAllMen And WomenDoItToo.

Wouldn't it be impressive if F4J and the other leaders of this campaign were focused on working with WA to challenge the silence around domestic abuse, and to proudly stand against the men who put both their wives and children in danger

Yes - this.

Especially because I firmly believe this would change those stats. Not all men who are violent, were brought up by violent parents or exposed to horrible, violent ideas of what it means to be 'masculine' - but I think a lot were.

I think it's fine for a poster to be based around the facts of crime rates. In fact, I think it's a necessity.

Otherwise, you leave space for the arguments in the comments sections that say: women and men have comparable rates of violence (no they don't); women lie about being attacked; women provoke men into attacking them and then the man is charged; men are too scared and scarred by stereotyping to report violence against them.

Now I can see that the latter point could be true but it's a massive leap from that fact to say domestic violence isn't gendered. And it's a giant backwards step to say we can't name the truth.

Wouldn't it be impressive if F4J and the other leaders of this campaign were focused on working with WA to challenge the silence around domestic abuse, and to proudly stand against the men who put both their wives and children in danger . . . but, no, they'd rather put their energies into trying to fudge the statistics than actually changing the statistics.

Yeah, but people do look at stats for violence other than killing, carrie.

This campaign isn't about killing.

I think it's problematic to talk about the numbers of people who are killed every year, because it could be that women are more likely to beat and less likely to kill (I don't necessarily believe that myself).

I do think the post about individuals right at the top of this thread is useful though and that it's not wrong to use a member of the opposite gender who can make a point to all people. Eg a woman abuser can also get the point across to a male abuser, can't they?

I never suggested you weren't.

But, clearly, this is not the campaign you would have chosen to run. You said as much yourself. Me, I have problems with it too - but I like it a bit more than you do. So, we are in the same boat, discussing what we'd do differently.