Men as protectors

You read our posts and think, I presume, 'but I don't think this way! I believe in equality, justice, I am not violent, these women don't understand me men at all'.

What value are your good intentions to us?

The value is that every man who thinks like this is one who does not do all the things you are discussing. And no, I don't want a medal for treating women with respect. Because I'm sure someone would like to mention it.

"What value are your good intentions to us?"

Exactly!

I thought there's plenty of insight into patriarchy here.

Don't see it if you don't want to. Go and do something else. There must be lots of stuff to do in RL. Go on.

I think what you're wanting to say there is 'ner ner ner ner ner ner'. Though once you've done that, I'd be curious to hear your answers to my questions.

On a par then

Thanks for that input cadno, very useful.

There is so little real insight into "men" shown here - if I thought for a moment, you were genuinely looking for a proper solution, it would beggar belief.

Many many men accept the pecking order between them based on size, strength and willingness to resort to physical confrontation. They fail to see, let alone appreciate, the fear and distress of women, tacked on to the bottom of this hierarchy. And to them, the easy answer is for women to seek a higher-ranking protector (i.e. a man) just as men themselves do (smaller man joins group or attaches to higher-ranking man as sidekick). The idea of abolishing the pecking order doesn't occur.

Ah yes, the excuses. At all costs, men must not to be made to feel uncomfortable. Who cares if women are uncomfortable (and scared and upset)? They don't really matter. What really matters is that men aren't inconvenienced in any way.

"Wasn't the basis of opposing making rape in marriage a crime not so much "I think it's just fine for men to rape their wives" but more "we won't be able to prosecute this successfully, because everyone will think the woman lied and she won't be able to prove she hasn't"?"

Hang on. Is it a good reason not to make something a crime because it would be hard to prosecute?? Surely it is as much about making a stand.

I've heard excuses from men about standing up to casual sexism: But what can we do? It's that generation of dinosaurs (ageism alert)! He's a good bloke really.

No. No. No.

Yes Buffy and also that if something happens to a man then it's important and must be stopped but if it happens almost exclusively to women then it's not really a problem. So, we must be very very careful about the tiny number of false accusations of rape that occur, because they affect men, but the thousands upon thousands of actual rapes that occur are not so important.

This is a question for the men - aren't you ashamed of your 'what can I do'? response? Doesn't it embarrass you that you can see what a shit world it is for all the women you love and yet you can't seem to dig down an inch to find any motivation or intelligence in yourself to do anything at all about it? Not one thing? Doesn't it make you look a bit...pointless...when you have to turn to women and ask them what to do - do you you expect women to be the target of violence and also to stop it, while you shrug?

I'm not talking about seeing violence on the street and stopping it cadno. I'm talking about changing the law to ensure violence is properly punished, campaigning against cuts that mean women are trapped in violent relationships, setting up refuges so that women have a safe space to escape to. All things that women have done with little or no help (or in some cases, active obstruction) from men. Why can't men as a group stand up and say 'we recognise that our fellow men are violent, and we will not allow it to be ignored any longer'?

Because they can much better play the hero individually when the police does nothing because the crime is not actually recognized as illegal?

Because the woman-hating laws benefit men so much?

There was this guy in Germany who opposed the law that made marital rape illegal in 1997. He is, I recently heard still in politics.

I hope his wife is okay.

And he was not the only one, by far. Many, many, many men just loved marital rape, so much that they went out of their way to protect their lawful right to rape.

Men can oppose male violence. Many men just don't want to.

The 'delicate' woman thing is such a fucking insult - tell it to a woman who's shoving an 8lb baby out of her fucking vagina!

'Protector' in this context means 'owner.'

This idea of man as family protector is odd as well really when you think about it.

Men are much more likely to abandon their children completely than women are. here

And family annihilators are predominantly male also. here

And yet they get protector status? When they are the parent statistically less likely to protect their family?

And it's not just the charity workers and the refuge staffers - it's the many millions of single mothers who soldier on, day in and day out, raising children that men have abandoned, being told they're the scourge of society, while men pay nothing, do nothing and get no criticism. It's the women who can't leave violent relationships but do everything they can to protect their children from violent men. It's the women who pick up the pieces when their best friend has been hit -again - and needs to be taken to A and E. It's the women like Laura Bates who highlight the ongoing, insidious, drip drip drip of micro aggressions that happen a billion times a day.

What can men do? They can get off their fucking arses and do something, anything at all.

The constant response from men on these boards is 'what can we do'? or 'we are all responsible' (ie women have to do the work too.) What men don't seem to see, right in front of their fucking noses, is the women already working, day in and day out, for little or no pay or recognition to solve the problems caused by men, while men sit back and say 'what can we do?' I think actually that's the biggest insult of all - the idea women can and do do absolutely incredible work to right the wrongs done by men and men can genuinely and honestly not notice one fucking bit of it.