Passing privilege

but this is that should've read

But he felt this was irrelevant, as he'd never heard anyone endorse male violence. Said the kind of man who thinks VAWG is OK either has no friends or hangs out with similar low lifes. No one he knows thinks it's acceptable.

I have to say that all the men I know well have a particular loathing of abusive men. Anyone who hit a woman would be ostracized. I assume that's why so many violent partners put on a big act for anyone outside the home.

But if violent men take care to hide their views and crimes from other men, what can men do about male violence?

This too is my experience. I'd imagine that abusive men most often know that what they're doing is wrong and are not dissimilar to the type of bully who only picks on his victims when the teacher is absent.

Most men swim in a sea of distrust and dislike for women - like fish (but not those fucking clown fish), they don’t notice the water because it’s always all around them. Even men who like and respect women are often clueless to the implied violence in a lot of male speech.

I'm sorry but their just sexist bullshit. Most men don't swim in a sea of distrust for women. Most men are married/have a partner and that person is the most important person in the world to them. I'm genuinely sorry if your personal experiences have led you to conclude the above.

And FWIW I hear a lot of implied violence in statements like "I'll have his balls on a platter" - you don't really hear the reverse of this from men. The only thread I've ever seen boasting gleefully about domestic violence was the one on here where posters were sharing their stories about what they'd done to their male partners. It was pretty eye opening and thankfully not representative of most women.

DancelikeEmmaGoldman, there's a coincidence! I actually used that exact fish in water analogy in the chat last night.

I told him that I suspect he doesn't hear men justifying violence because of the kind of friends he has. He doesn't have a large friendship group but they're lovely. I can be quite confident about them because I've known them all for well over 10 years.

I'd be surprised if any of them thought VAWG was acceptable. But when I said so he said that even when he'd been at events with loads of strangers he'd never heard anything excusing violence.

You're right that men may be clueless on the topic but I don't think raising the subject again straight away would be helpful.

I'm hoping that just habong raised the issue will mean he'll pay more attention to what is said and how - be more alert.

Prawnofthepatriarchy, not doubting for a minute that your son is a good egg. But I wonder if men don’t hear the violence in other men the same way a woman might.

I know a lot of good men, who, watching sport on TV together, or having a few beers, will make jokes or say stuff that is misogynistic.

Or when confronted with the statistics for male on female violence, will deflect it, NAMALT. OR, as a friend’s husband will do, say, “well, what about men? They suffer domestic violence too.”

Most men swim in a sea of distrust and dislike for women - like fish (but not those fucking clown fish), they don’t notice the water because it’s always all around them. Even men who like and respect women are often clueless to the implied violence in a lot of male speech.

I was talking to DS1 about male violence last night. He said he didn't see what he could do about it.

I suggested speaking up if he ever hears other men saying anything to normalize violence, whether in conversation or jokes.

But he felt this was irrelevant, as he'd never heard anyone endorse male violence. Said the kind of man who thinks VAWG is OK either has no friends or hangs out with similar low lifes. No one he knows thinks it's acceptable.

I have to say that all the men I know well have a particular loathing of abusive men. Anyone who hit a woman would be ostracized. I assume that's why so many violent partners put on a big act for anyone outside the home.

But if violent men take care to hide their views and crimes from other men, what can men do about male violence?

EMALTFITBAC, prawn
(enough men are like that for it to be a concern)

There was an American study done that showed as many as a third of students would commit rape if they thought they would get away with it.

That ties in with my extensive experience of sexual assault. NAMALT but a significant minority are.

I remember a previous discussion on here about rape culture. RAINN (possibly the biggest authority on the matter with over 1000 service providers) made it very clear that their research showed the problem to be down to a small, deviant number of individuals and said it didn't find it helpful to blame it on a 'culture'. In fact, they said it actually took culpability away from the specific minority that were responsible.

Rape culture isn’t just about the numbers of men who commit rape; it’s about all the other men who commit other kinds of sexual assault or who are complicit by not calling out other men for their behaviour or attitude.

I’ve not been unlucky enough to experience rape, but I can count a long, long list of other kinds of assault, unwanted attention and male aggression. I was 7, the first time I was confronted by a sexual predator.

In one of my first jobs I was warned, by my manager, to be cautious about a male colleague. If he cornered you, he’d press into you and rub himself against you. This was a 9-5 job in a public space, but it was apparently my job to protect myself, not my colleague’s job to behave respectfully or my manager’s job to control (sack him).

If I complained, well, I’d been warned and there was nothing else to do. So there’s rape culture - for every man willing to commit sexual assault, there are other men standing by, if not cheering them on, then turning a blind eye.

For every man charged with rape, there were men who knew and didn’t speak up, cops who didn’t believe victims and judges and juries who let them off.

It might be comfortable for you to believe sexual assault is down to a small number of perverts, but every woman here knows different.

Chief of Disguise is the best title ever.

Also, she's right about the fact that you can disguise a woman as a man far more easily than the other way around.

A throwaway comment from the CIA Chief of Disguise, Joanna Mendez:

Wait. The CIA has an actual Chief of Disguise?

Its so Get Smart.

Ok. Sorry for the hijack. Carry on.

Why do so many on here take a lot of people disagreeing with them as 'trying to shut me up' or whatever? Its usual, if you have a strong opinion on something, or are waffling and NAMALTing that many will disagree, pull you up on it and maybe make some sarcastic comments. Coming onto a feminist board to NAMALT and basically tell women what their boundaries should be is never going to go very well.

Fascinating video ... and oh so true.

and so obvious

DAMMIT. Talking about toilets again. I actually care less about public toilets as a trans issue than any other. I don't think it's an accident that so many discussions seem to be directed this way.

'People who want to stroll in with a big beard etc are surely a different matter, and surely they wouldn't even be meeting the criteria of 'committing to living as a woman' which is necessary to get a GRC in the first place?'

No they wouldn't. But you sound a bit like someone saying that unless someone has gone through the process of a GRC, they should be excluded from women's spaces. That someone who has just self-identified as a woman and has not got a GRC shouldn't be in a woman's space. Erm, well, I'd agree with you. You mentioned that very few people have views that are trans-exclusionary, earlier in the thread, that it's a tiny minority that hold them. And yet it seems that you are one of them?

I'll agree mansplaining as a word is overused and can be sexist. But when a man explains that transwomen wouldn't be comfortable in a toilet alongside 'masculine blokes like myself' and that the comfort of transwomen should be prioritised over the comfort of women, because, erm, not sure, I'll take it as an appropriate term.

A throwaway comment from the CIA Chief of Disguise, Joanna Mendez:With women you have a broader range of what you can do [to disguise them]. You also have one extra step: you can turn a woman into a man... It’s almost impossible to turn a man into a woman.

That video was fascinating as is the above quoted comment. I've yet to see a man who has transitioned who truly passes. But I really think they should be trans and proud rather than trying to be something they're not.

I am surprised that it took over 100 posts before NAMALT was mentioned.

The two deviants spoiling it for the rest of us argument completely misses the point that there is a societal and entrenched behaviour towards women. It sets the bar pretty low, does it not, if the measure of success is that it's 'bad' if a woman ends up dead - does everything else 'go' then?

'Mansplaining' is a bit of a reductive term, but that doesn't mean that it loses all relevance when used in the appropriate context. I stand by using it when being carefully lectured by a man in a women's space which is specifically for feminists. I should not have to - and won't - justify or explain my argument about women's experiences to a man that has zero comprehension of what these actually mean.

Please understand, Scott, that when I say 'zero comprehension' I mean in the sense of actually having experienced it. I dislike the term 'lived experience' but it is appropriate here. You aren't female. Therefore you have no idea what it is actually like to be on the receiving end of male privilege and behaviours. You can read what we have written, you can appreciate the theory and the intellectual elements of it, but you will never sit on a bus late at night with every tiny hair on your body standing on end and your adrenaline pumping because a drunk man, who is significantly bigger, heavier and stronger than you, has decided to pay you some attention.

You'll never understand what it truly means because you can't. And it's for that reason that feminists like me don't take kindly to being told what we should be doing and thinking, because we believe that men can never be feminists because they are part of the oppressing class. Men can be allies though. And good allies recognise when their voices shouldn't dominate a conversation, and wait to be invited for opinions, views and contributions.

Frankly, I've been hugely amused by the dangling carrot

They always do like to dangle their carrots in these debates. It's very predictable.

if only we lived in a world where women had to go out of their way to monitor men's conversations in order to get a continuous running commentary on male opinions 

Just catching up, love this!

Talking to the likes of Scott here and IRL has made me realise something. There are too many people, men and women, who don't understand what the umbrella term transgender encompasses these days. When it's explained to them, they refuse to discuss it. Some are too desperate to be woke, others too prudish to talk about things like fetishes. Like Scott here, they revert to "I just want to be nice", "but what about the genuine transwomen", etc.
It's already gone too far. I wouldn't trust decisionmakers to get this right, because the terminology is so muddled, and how would you differentiate between the people we politely call "genuine transsexuals" and the rest of them?
And more importantly, why am I trying to accommodate transsexuals at all?
I would like to apologise to my fellow women, including those who have posted their experiences in this thread, for prioritising the feelings of men who have gender dysphoria, and I thank you for your patience with the likes of me who think that my arbitrary acceptance of some transsexuals trumps your discomfort.
No more. It's a blanket NO from me.

I think this discussion has moved on but anyway.

A throwaway comment from the CIA Chief of Disguise, Joanna Mendez:

With women you have a broader range of what you can do [to disguise them]. You also have one extra step: you can turn a woman into a man... It’s almost impossible to turn a man into a woman.

From . (Which is kind of interesting anyway but that comment amused me.)

Frankly, I've been hugely amused by the dangling carrot tone of our male visitor "Actually I am leaning towards agreeing with you, but you're going to have to be a bit nicer to me first."

It's such a fun intellectual discussion with the wims, consequence free for him.

I've been away for a few days so hadn't read this thread through. I recommend it as a lesson in goalpost moving and gaslighting from the male element of the discussion. It's been fascinating to see it unfold outside of real time. From racist tropes, to women's bodies are merely property, to male violence is women's problem to solve, homophobia, the 'why can't you just be nice to people who I don't want to have to deal with?' and all the way to 'my voice is just as important as women's in feminist discussions so

The same derails as were going on ten years ago.

One dude's enlightenment just isn't that important, and the women could all get much more done if they made the quite rational decision not to bother with the dude and his endless toddler tugging at mummy's hem behavior.

Indeed.

Pissed off bloke - "Why are women so emotional and so rude?"

Women - "Hey, mate, we're not the ones punching randoms in the street."

AAK That's my view too and I've started taking the same approach in real life. Apparently this makes me rude and dismissive .

I'm fascinated by the sense some men have that they're entitled to women's time and attention.

Oh, and I'm another person who has been punched in the street by a random man. He was just walking by and decided to attack me. He didn't even look angry or threatening before he hit me. This was years ago but it was quite shocking at the time. He hit me so hard I needed surgery. So even if NAMALT, I know from personal experience that it's impossible to tell which men are going to be violent arseholes in a public place.