Can men really grasp women’s reality re safety?

I think there is one factor that is overlooked. The respective biological differences between men and women mean that if a man wants to be 100% committed to building a career first he is free to do so. Then defer having children.

Unfortunately prime career building years coincide with peak fertility for women, of course some can make it work by partnering up with someone who is willing to take the career hit, but then both would be relatively disadvantaged next to the man who has made career his number one priority.

Of course some women roll the dice with their fertility and luck is with them and of course can be every bit as dominant/competent as any man (or however you desire to phrase it). We also see when women are given maximal choice there seems to be a regression to the historical mean. As seen in those Scandinavian countries. So general positive discrimination does not appear to thus far produce the positive result it was expected to.

I hope we crack it eventually, but I fear it’s all a lot more complex than first though.

Here's a few quotes from the recent AIBU thread. Do these posters really sound like victims to you?

I lunch, dressmake, walk my dogs for miles, spend time with friends and family etc.... I also volunteer for a small homeless charity, something I am so passionate about, being literally close to home. I feel totally fulfilled.

I haven't worked in 8 years and bloody love it! I got to go shopping without ds today and have a long lunch with a friend. Going to the gym now.

My sil is 44, rich and has NEVER had a job, lucky her! She has no trouble filling her day and has a great life.

I'm very appreciative of the fact I dont have to go to work. I enjoy my time to myself, get to pursue my art (and crafts!) and still be able to run the house as I like.

Dp earns the money then gives it to me. Why would I feel oppressed?

I would love to be a lady who lunches.

I am lucky enough not to work and stay at home with my son, as DH is a high earner. I feel extremely grateful for this every day, and try very hard not to take it for granted.

DH works 80 hours a week for a signficant amount of money, which allows me to be a SAHM and indulge myself, allow me to do all of my volunteering and my hobbies.

I'd love not to have to work. I wouldn't get bored, or lonely, as long as I could spend unlimited amounts of money on books.

I'd love not to work! My friend is married to the son of a billionaire and sometimes I have to block her on social media because her life is one long holiday.

I think working full time with a family is such a juggle. To have one parent at home is very useful, it certainly takes the pressure off and is a luxury.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable not working if DH didn’t make such a ridiculous amount of money/loves his job/was doing it before I came along anyway! And it wouldn’t be anyway near as fun not having the money to do whatever I like.

My DSis married a very high earner and has never worked a day in her life.

I don't have to work so I don't.

My OH wouldn’t have progressed in his career as much if he worked part time so this wouldn’t have worked for us.

I feel very lucky not to have to work. I never returned to work after Ds was born, he's 12 now.Our house is paid for and we have no debts so I don't anticipate going back to work anytime soon.

I love being at home and thoroughly enjoy it, despite the lack of crafting!

I'm a SAHM who has teenage children and is fortunate to be married to a high earner so I haven't needed to work since having kids. We do have a lifestyle that most people would find impressive.

Neither of us are resentful of the other; I have a huge amount of respect and pride in him and his success, hard work and dedication. He takes equal pride and pleasure in my staying at home with our child and sorting all the house and admin out, taking care of him. But I have old fashioned and traditional values and so does he.

I've never had to work a day in my life, and realise I'm very lucky. I do sometimes have fleeting moments though where I wonder what it would be like and whether I am missing out on something.

We are a team, we complement each other and we don't take each other for granted. I have the odd day when I miss earning my own 6 figure salary, but then I remember the stress, the rushing home for the nanny, the passing each other on the way to different airports as we both travelled internationally for work, missing first steps, first words and being told them by the nanny or the nursery, and think that I'm so much happier being at home, supporting my husband and my children.

I’m a SAHM, I left a well paying job to be one. DP makes good money. I don’t have to work, so I chose not to. I Would say I am extremely lucky getting to stay home with my little baby all day and watch him grow!

I 'live off my dh's salary' and luckily where I live I get the utmost respect for staying at home and raising my dc.

Quite!!! What a load of insulting bollocks. I am very happy at home with my baby and being a housewife. It’s very sad if your self-worth is tied into how much money you make.

When I did live in the UK I was a fairly high earner. I'd reached a point in my career where I was extremely respected and would get pretty much any job in my field that I applied for. I feel a million times more fulfilled and happy now as a stay at home parent.

My dh is 9 years older and in a well paid job and as I had never pursued a proper career (staid in low paying bar jobs for years as it was a laugh and didn't stop to consider my future 🙄) and I'd always wanted a family.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3764425-To-think-you-are-very-lucky-if-you-dont-have-to-work?pg=1&order=

I have just posted a pageful of how motherhood is incorrectly deemed not-work, emphasising the incorrectness of this, and you interpret that as implying that I somehow think that women who aren't careerists are inferior? That is impressive levels of wilful misreading.

Why are you making it all about you?

I'm talking about views like the below.

I Look Down On Young Women With Husbands And Kids And I’m Not Sorry

thoughtcatalog.com/amy-glass/2014/01/i-look-down-on-young-women-with-husbands-and-kids-and-im-not-sorry/

There are sooo many threads discussing other women looking down on SAHM, and I truly believe there ain't no smoke without fire.

And yet men refuse to do this and expect to "have it all", careerandkids, whilst his wife gives up her financial independence.

You keep using the word 'sacrifice', but most women I know enjoy motherhood. And the men sacrifice spending time with their children.

Men already don't care about women and they didn't care from birth.

You cannot honestly believe this? What a ridiculous assertion.

Men are socialised from birth to look out for themselves and expect female submission. Women are socialised to care for others and prioritise men. This is why they say WATM, they can't conceive of us not prioritising them, and it's why we, unless we stop and look twice and teach ourselves to recognise male dominance patterns, fall for it.

There are individual men who are self-aware enough and kind enough to resist their conditioning. They do not invalidate my class analysis. Male dominance behaviour is a spectrum, most men are not batterers but most men expect female submission to some extent. The phenomenon of women having to choose between perceived likeability and perceived competence whilst men don't is an example of male dominance at a structural level: women are expected to defer to men intellectually and women who won't defer are disliked.

like the implied inferiority of women who don't want to focus on their career.

I have just posted a pageful of how motherhood is incorrectly deemed not-work, emphasising the incorrectness of this, and you interpret that as implying that I somehow think that women who aren't careerists are inferior? That is impressive levels of wilful misreading.

I suspect that feminists might be concerned that women who have kids and do still want a career are left "holding the baby" if their husbands won't pull their weight. Even if those women are a minority, they still matter. And I know that I am concerned about how giving up work robs a woman of financial independence, which leaves her and her children vulnerable to abuse if hubby turns nasty once the kids are born. Many abusers only "turn" late in the first pregnancy or after the birth, again, Bancroft talks about how abusers will discuss with each other in group sessions how long they need to "play nice" before they start abusing women: too soon, she flees. They wait until she's vulnerable: her stopping work to raise kids makes her more vulnerable.

Being concerned about mothers' safety and financial independence has nothing to do with looking down on SAHMs.

There are loads of women who seemingly don't seem particularly bothered about taking a step back in their career

And yet men refuse to do this and expect to "have it all", career and kids, whilst his wife gives up her financial independence. Funny that. Men and women are given different messages from a very early age. Women being more willing to sacrifice financial independence for their children is in part a consequence of those lifelong messages, not a decision made in isolation, that's my point. PPs mentioned sex class analysis: wondering why women "choose" (it's not a completely free choice made in isolation) to sacrifice financial independence and men don't is a form of sex class analysis.

Nobody commented either on the study showing that women continue to be promoted more aggressively than men if they don't have children.

One study against a whole body of literature suggesting otherwise. If you give me a DOI for the study, I'll have a look at its methodology. Female executives aren't exactly representative of the entire female workforce either. Do childless female checkout assistants out-earn their male counterparts? Childless female academics? (Checks employer's sex pay gap report. Definitely nope.)

You ignored a lot of PPs posts yourself. You ignored the PP who asked what stops the boyfriend from walking away when his gf tries to goad him into starting a fight.

This is a thread about whether men understand the hazards women face. Domestic abuse is one of them. A woman working, giving her her own income and several hours away from the house per day that could perhaps be taken as leave without telling her husband so that she can see police/solicitors/letting agent/etc without him suspecting, gives her a stronger position from which to leave an abuser. With that understanding, who benefits from the normalisation of women being the SAHP? Abusive men do.

But you ignored a lot of my post.

There are loads of women who seemingly don't seem particularly bothered about taking a step back in their career, which is why I referenced the recent thread - I can post loads of examples from it if you really want.

Nobody commented either on the study showing that women continue to be promoted more aggressively than men if they don't have children.

Fact is that most of us aren't feminists. We're told that 'you must be a feminist if you believe in xyz' but many of us believe in equality and improving women's rights without subscribing to other elements of feminist dogma, like the implied inferiority of women who don't want to focus on their career. Most feminists won't say it overtly but it's very clear.

And yet we've been outearning men for over ten years now in both the US/UK. This trend only reverses around the approx age of motherhood (35yo) and female executives who don't have kids 'continue to be promoted more aggressively than their male counterparts' (according to a study by The Economist).

PPs have explained how we outearn men by a small amount in early career and how that amount doesn't add up to how much men will outearn women by by retirement age.

In light of the above, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that motherhood, and not deliberate discrimination, is the cause of the gap in earnings (alongside men doing 40% more overtime and 25% of women only working part time).

Let me fix that for you. "In light of the above, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that female parents are structurally discriminated against on a massive scale compared to male parents."

Two people have a child. One of them reduces hours or stops working, becoming financially-dependant on, and hence vulnerable to abuse by, the other. And somehow the one who does this is almost always female. This phenomenon does not happen because millions of women make choices in isolation. This is a consequence of a lot of factors, the undervaluing of motherhood being one of them.

When a mother returns to work full-time, she won't get the same pay as her male peers because she's been "out of work" for several years and so her skills are allegedly out-of-date. Let's have a look at those skills.

She will have learned to manage tantruming toddlers and sulking teens. She will have managed budgets and purchasing for an age-diverse family, identifying and prioritising essentials to cope with limited funds. She will have planned and implemented the logistics required to get children to their after-school clubs and move infants around with the lorryload of stuff that babies seem to need. She will have learned time management skills to cope with children's unpredictability in terms of needing the loo or losing their homework just before they're due to leave. She will have learned proactive communication skills so that she doesn't get told an ingredients list for cookery class the night before the class, but instead she asked her DC for any ingredients before she did the weekly shop.

These skills would stand her in great stead working with many of the academics I have had the misfortune to work with, who tantrum, sulk, have no concept of how long work takes nor how much if will cost, and seem to think that their lack of planning constitutes my emergency.

Sadly, these skills are not regarded as relevant to the workplace, which is why they don't get recognition when negotiating returning mothers' salaries. If we valued motherhood, we'd value these skills learned and used in the home as much as we value them when learned and used in the workplace, and we'd pay returning mothers accordingly.

Women outearn men until age 35 is just such an obvious attempt at spin that I can't be bothered to engage with it. Do most people's careers end at 35? Is that the retirement age? No? Then it doesn't make sense to only count what happens prior to that point.

Misogynists are exhausting.

It'll shut up the derailleur hopefully.

Fucking autocomplete..

I'm not sure why I even looked that up as it isn't relevant to the topic. Sorry.

we've been outearning men for over ten years now in both the US/UK
I can't find much to back that up.

www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2018/11/29/study-men-are-still-massively-outearning-women-in-the-u-s-infographic/

www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/heres-how-much-men-and-women-earn-at-every-age.html

This mentions early-20s women outearning men in entry level jobs: fortune.com/2016/04/12/women-are-out-earning-men/
Women of all races start their careers making less than white men, but the growth rate of their wages tends to outpace that of white men early in their careers. This starts to change around the age of 29 and the growth rate of wages for women in their mid-thirties begins to be eclipsed by that of white men. From: www.payscale.com/data/peak-earnings

And finally www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11832042/Women-earn-more-than-men-in-their-20s-until-the-pay-gap-hits-at-age-30.html

The £1000/yr extra appears to be it. And appears to apply to younger people in entry level jobs. Which could be simply down to girls having better academic grades, or choosing better paid entry level work (apprenticeship pay is very low, do more boys go into this?)
Also, and this is anecdotal - I know more NEET young men than women. If a proportion of men in their early twenties are sitting at home playing video games and having mum cook for them they will bring down the average, surely? Even if the unemployed ones are discounted the underemployed ones won't be.

@Ritascornershop can women not equally face blind spots when it comes to their nearest and dearest? Statistics may tell you one thing but when it is your husband/son/father/brother being accused would you honestly be willing to damn him on just the accusation alone?

Concerning the scenario you outlined putting holes in walls and destroying furniture is the greater over reaction here. I wonder why that wasn’t highlighted?

Men systematically exclude women from well-paid jobs.

And yet we've been outearning men for over ten years now in both the US/UK. This trend only reverses around the approx age of motherhood (35yo) and female executives who don't have kids 'continue to be promoted more aggressively than their male counterparts' (according to a study by The Economist).

In light of the above, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suggest that motherhood, and not deliberate discrimination, is the cause of the gap in earnings (alongside men doing 40% more overtime and 25% of women only working part time).

Maternity reform could indeed be the answer, but then we have to ask the question of whether most of us actually want our husbands raising the baby. There are undoubtedly some who would rather their husband took the career hit (or shared it) but most couples I know have a joint bank account and see themselves as a partnership rather than splitting their earnings. If there is no net financial benefit to the couple then I firmly believe most women would want to be the one on maternity leave.

I agree with much of feminism thought, but some elements have me rolling my eyes tbh. There was a recent thread on AIBU called something like 'not working is a privilege', and there was post after post by women who were happy as housewives - "my husband is a high earner and I count myself lucky I can stay home and focus on my hobbies"....that type of thing.

I honestly think a lot of us experience a change in priorities once the kids come along and it isn't all about work and promotions. Some of the women in the above thread even stated that they (shock horror) preferred a traditional setup.

I do care about things like men's lack of access to support networks, to be honest.

But even if we solved the full MRA suite of fathers' access to estranged children, too many custodial sentences, not enough counselling for men, male only spaces, etc etc men would still be violent to each other and men would still be violent to women. There's nothing about fixing those things that will cure the issue with male entitlement and ego.

Men have been in charge for all of known history, they have plenty of practice at it. If the structures they have set up don't serve all men it's likely they were designed that way, to reinforce the pecking order that men are so used to. The fact that the men at the bottom of the pile always have women lower down than them to lash out against is again probably an intentional aspect of the structure itself.

I can care about men's issues and I can care about individual men without feeling that it is somehow my responsibility to make their game work better for them when I would rather it wasn't played at all.

Finally, it is annoying to have to even consider the emotional labour necessary to fix men and their problems just so we can discuss whether they are consciously aware of how women have to maintain a higher level of alertness for their own safety than men do.

A somewhat ironic statement to make on a thread which complains about men not being interested in women's feelings on an issue which affects men more.

That's stretching the definition of irony somewhat. Firstly this thread isn't about complaining, but discussing, whether men appreciate women's perspective on safety. Secondly it isn't an issue that affects men more, it's a different issue to male on male violence. So there's no irony.

And the statement is an observation made by Bancroft, who runs counselling services for abusive men. So again, no irony.

Did you just present men as the discriminated against/oppressed group? Seriously?

Men already don't care about women and they didn't care from birth.

You cannot honestly believe this? What a ridiculous assertion.

"Can men really grasp women’s reality re safety? "

Yeah. Just watch any gritty drama set in a men's prison. Put yourself in the place of a non-streetwise prisoner. There you have it.

I'm as firm a believer in women's rights as any

LOL

but it seems that many women are woefully blind to the environment that men live in, which is a constant power play of dominance.

Not blind, just very much aware that it's a male problem that it's up t men to solve.

The comically misogynistic argument that it's women who make men beat each other up is noted.

I second the request for a board for MRAs, if only because it might function as a sort of containment zone.

My friend is a doorman and tells me that a lot of trouble starts with the girlfriend saying 'what are you going to do about it....you're not going to let him say that, are you?'

First, the trouble started prior to the girlfriend saying anything. It started when the goady fucker said the goady thing to try to start a fight. It's... interesting... that both you and your door supervisor friend blame the woman for a chain of events actually started by a man. (First rule of misogyny: women are responsible for what men do.)

Second, what stops the boyfriend from saying to her "actually, I'm going to do nothing about it and I am going to, as you put it, 'let him say that' because I'm not risking injury and death for the sake of your hurt feelings"?

I'm as firm a believer in women's rights as any,

But blame women for men's actions.

but it seems that many women are woefully blind to the environment that men live in, which is a constant power play of dominance.

This is worse than the constant fear of rape how? This is women's problem to fix how?

Why should the average non-violent man give a shit about people who don't care about his sex being the principle victims of said issue (violence)?

"Meet me halfway", said the dishonest man. I stepped forwards and he stepped back. "Meet me halfway", he said again.

Men already don't care about women and they didn't care from birth. We had to overcome female socialisation not to care about them in order to focus on healing ourselves and each other from the harm they caused. Why should we offer the olive branch? We don't even need to care about men for them to stop hurting each other and us. They could, and indeed must, solve their use of violence themselves.

It's not like the average bloke is the one responsible

He benefits. Every time a woman leaves STEM, or construction, or any other male-dominated industry where misogyny is rife, it opens up a well-paid job for a man. Men systematically exclude women from well-paid jobs and sexual violence and harassment are part of the toolset used for that.

Homeless men abuse homeless women

And non-homeless women too:

• www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/oct/04/aaron-barley-homeless-man-who-murdered-woman-who-helped-him
• www.thesun.co.uk/news/2808058/homeless-man-raped-pregnant-woman-and-smashed-her-jaw-after-she-helped-him-put-up-his-tent/
• www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Woman-Says-She-Was-Raped-By-Homeless-Man-503930101.html

It's an analogy of how people say 'men have all the power', when in reality it's a tiny proportion of men at the top.

It's likely that Mary Queen of Scots was raped and impregnated by Bothwell, marrying him to avoid the dishonour of bearing a bastard. Her position as queen did not protect her. The power that all men hold over all women and girls is rape and forced pregnancy. Wealth/poverty is a different oppression axis and is irrelevant to a sex class analysis.

I think this thread in particular got me going because it was asking why men don't consider women's reality in regard to a problem they suffer from just as much. A bit like a white person accusing POC of not understanding racism against Caucasians.

You have both reversed and misused that analogy. First, men are comparable to white people, not people of colour, in such an analogy. Second, "reverse racism" isn't analogous to male-on-male violence, white-on-white violence is analogous. What you are expecting women to do for men is the equivalent of expecting people of colour to understand and prioritise ending white-on-white violence. Hopefully, the fixed analogy shows you how ludicrous that is.

A somewhat ironic statement to make on a thread which complains about men not being interested in women's feelings on an issue which affects men more.

Lundy is a world-class expert on male pattern abuse. I'm inclined to trust his observations on abusive men's lack of empathy.

men who have therapy - they are great at talking about their feelings but remain terrible at being interested in anyone else's.

A somewhat ironic statement to make on a thread which complains about men not being interested in women's feelings on an issue which affects men more.

Men were 4x more likely to be assaulted by a stranger so have more to fear when walking alone.
Are men 4x more likely to be walking alone, especially at night? If so the levels are equal. If men are 5x or 10x more likely to be walking alone at night the equivalent risk is higher for women.

I just think that it's naive as a society to ignore men's reality of frequently poor mental health and lack of support networks and then be surprised when it manifests as violence and dysfunctional behaviour.

That presumes that input X always results in output Y. Whereas women can have poor mental health and poor support networks (think displaced refugee women for example) with no increase in violent behaviour.

Men at all levels abuse women. Homeless men abuse homeless women, rich men abuse who they like, black men abuse black women, teenage boys abuse teenage girls, refugee men in camps abuse refugee women in those camps. So men's status relative to other men is no indicator of how he treats women, who are always conveniently one rung below him.

What's interesting is what Lundy Bancroft says about abusive men who have therapy - they are great at talking about their feelings but remain terrible at being interested in anyone else's.
Few Bancroft quotes here, I highly recommend the book: click

I agree with your last point. I can't stand the 'persecution olympics' seen so often in identity politics.

I'm not on either 'side', so to speak, although I may have got a bit carried away in the heat of the argument. I just think that it's naive as a society to ignore men's reality of frequently poor mental health and lack of support networks and then be surprised when it manifests as violence and dysfunctional behaviour.

I think this thread in particular got me going because it was asking why men don't consider women's reality in regard to a problem they suffer from just as much. A bit like a white person accusing POC of not understanding racism against Caucasians.

Men who rape and commit sexual assault can come from any walk of life.

Yes there are poor men. Yes men can be victims. It's not about getting brownie points for how disadvantaged you are,,,that's really quite a patriarchal approach isn't it? Not considering all people as equals but trying to rank their degree of oppressed-ness. Rank them and try to gain advantage from the ranking.

Anyway, this is getting further and further off topic.

My point is that men suffer more from violence than us women and I've seen it having previously spent years working in an evidence based field, primarily on behalf of the police.

Of course, it's also men who are usually the perpetrators but I just don't understand the whole oh, poor menz, they should man up and start worrying about how I feel mentality.