Looking at men differently now I know too much?

I've only just got in from an 11 hour day onsite (yesterday was 14.5hrs!) so I've not had the chance to read the replies. I wrote the reply I've just posted at about 11am and only just managed to finish it.

My job isn't always like this but when things go wrong it can be brutal - getting in an hour before bed still needing to eat/shower etc. That's likely part of the reason why I sometimes get annoyed when people wang on about male privilege in the workplace etc. Because men also do a lot of the hard, dangerous jobs as well. Like, the only other female I spoke to today was the planner who barely set foot outside of the portakabin and kept moaning about the cold - to us who'd been outside trying to fix a concrete pump for two hours!

But I also appreciate that you have sectors like the care industry which are hard and don't get the decent pay I do in construction. But when some women moan about unequal representation in construction I often really want to see how they'd get on working a day like I did yesterday.

Under capitalism, women who lack inherited wealth get to choose one of two options for getting enough money to live on:

1. Marry a man to depend on and hope that he's not one of the abusive ones.

2. Work, regardless of marital status, and have her own money and the independence that comes from that.

I agree. However, most men only have the second option.

I think there is a tendency in these discussions to assume that if a woman chooses not to be a SAHM/'live off a man' that she'll instead have a career. However, I think this is perhaps more a reflection of the fact that most feminists are educated white women who prioritise ambition and sometimes (not always) look down on non-ambitious women/SAHM. But we have to consider the wider picture and include all women, even those whose life philosophies we don't share.

If a woman is already a low earner in a non-career job she has much less to lose in marrying a financially successful man. I always think of the boss I had after first graduating. A multimillionaire who married his father's carer. They ended up divorcing years later and I still see her driving around in her Bentley Continental sometimes when I visit my hometown.

I doubt she would've ended up as comfortable as she is had she stayed a nurse. I also think a low earning male would likely have less chance of ending up in the same situation. Whether or not you would want to be 'a kept woman', some certainly do and benefit from it.

But even those that give up their career aren't always oppressed. Another poster put it quite succinctly in a previous thread titled You're Lucky if You Don't Have to Work. She said "why would I feel oppressed? He earns the money and gives it to me.'

Many good outcomes require an element of risk. Setting up a business. Leaving a steady job for a better paid one. Moving abroad. Admittedly these can maybe be reversed with less personal impact than a woman might experience in suffering a financially abusive relationship, but then the benefits if it works out are huge - having a high QOL without working, a bit like getting a significant inheritance/winning the lottery in some cases.

I sometimes think it's a bit like two siblings sharing a considerable inheritance. One chooses to keep it as financial security and lives frugally for their remaining days. The other lives the high life and chases their dreams. The latter may fall on hard times and regret their decision, telling everybody to ensure that they always keep enough money to be independent. Or he might be more fortunate and have a great life, telling his sibling that they've wasted their chance by worrying about 'what might happen'.

Hm, tried to google some research on all this, but it's honestly rather difficult to read.

One thing that did come up that I found interesting (my bold):

Summary

An often-cited finding in US-driven suicidology is that women have higher rates of suicidal behavior, and lower suicide rates than men. This pattern, however, is not representative of the global suicidality picture. In Asian countries, female and male suicide rates are similar. To stimulate new thinking about female suicidality, we put China at the center of our analysis, and the United States at the periphery, and then discussed the insights generated by this reversal. Insights include that the US-centered canon is caught in the mental illness paradigm; and that it generalizes to women assumptions and evidence that mainly apply to men. For example, China’s data challenge dominant assumptions that marriage offers suicide protection. For many Chinese rural women, suicide is an act of despair and protest against suffocating marriages and communities – not a plea for closer ties (nor an expression of mental illness). China’s evidence, including that women’s suicide-mortality has significantly dropped since urbanization, supports a paradigm-shift in suicidology.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-handbook-of-the-international-psychology-of-women/women-and-suicidal-behavior/3EEE4CFC60F6E2B909982B129FEBB57F

Agreed. So what do you think to our acknowledgement of what you raised and responses to this perceived inconsistency? Quite a few disparate and interesting points were raised. One other that I don't think's been mentioned, but has been mooted on this issue (perhaps it's research-based, but I'm not sure) is also that women choose methods with the person who's likely to discover the body in mind - those which are less viscerally distressing (and, therefore, also proportionately less successful). Lots to think about...

If we are willing to attempt an armchair analysis of why people attempt suicide and discount unsuccessful attempts as "cries for help" as opposed to the attempter being woefully misinformed about pharmacology, then we can look at men's methods and see that they go for violent methods. Hanging is violent, jumping off a building is violent, shooting himself is violent, you get the picture.

There's an element of choice in suicide. It may not feel like it at the time to the person who is considering it, but there is. This is one of the reasons why suicide prevention training and mental health first aid work without requiring interveners to carry handcuffs and be trained in restraint techniques: the intervener persuades the would-be suicider to reconsider for long enough to get professionals involved.

Men attempting to commit suicide can hence be viewed as men choosing to use violence to permanently "solve" (scare quotes because it's not actually a solution) a temporary problem. It can be framed as part of men's tendancy to use violence when distressed, in other words it's male pattern violent behaviour turned inwards towards the man himself instead of the more common behaviour of turning the violence outwards against someone else. Male violence hurts men, including the violent men themselves? Who would have thought it? (Hint: feminists.)

The Priory group state that work pressures (32%) and financial pressures (31%) are the two biggest issues negatively affecting men's mental health and that they "have a tendency to view themselves as a failure if they aren't able to provide for their families".

Newsflash: gendered roles hurt men too.

What's the stats like for women's mental health re work pressures and financial pressures? I know that my current job makes me very miserable. It woild be interesting to see the comparison.

Doesn't sound like they see going to work as the great privilege feminists make it out to be!

Under capitalism, women who lack inherited wealth get to choose one of two options for getting enough money to live on:

1. Marry a man to depend on and hope that he's not one of the abusive ones.
2. Work, regardless of marital status, and have her own money and the independence that comes from that.

It is well-known that abusive men use money to abuse, it's called financial abuse. The Relationships forum is littered with threads started by women who have discovered this the hard way.

Option two is the safest option for women. It's not the job per se that's empowering us, but the reliable access to our own money.

Actually, I may be getting confused with another thread where I responded to a comment on male suicide....

However, I don't think it really matters either way. I think it's a valid point. I'm not mentioning it to point out that 'men suffer too', because everybody knows that many times more men then women kill themselves. My point is that there's often inconsistency in the interpretation of data depending on the sex. Possibly due to confirmation bias.

So, as I said above, if somebody mentions that the majority of studies seem to show higher rates of female DV perpetration, somebody will usually ask "but which sex is dying the most?" However, if somebody mentions that more men die of suicide then instead they ask "but which sex attempts it the most?"

I think this inconsistency isn't often acknowledged so it's worth mentioning it.

Around a quarter of women experience sexual assault after the age of sixteen. Then there's childhood victims on top of that.

One in four is not "a few women".

With regard to this, while I can understand the need to counter the OP, and recognise suicides was one way to do it, it's a fairly clear sidestep from the topic of the thread that inevitably detracts and distracts from women discussing devastating abuse at the hands of males. As such, I'd say that your introducing this was closer to trying and dismiss every (fe)male problem and find a way to argue that it's a bigger problem for women than other posters' subsequent, inevitable, challenges to your intervention! I mean, come on - it's kind of obvious...

I didn't raise the topic. It was already being discussed.

But you and others on this thread seem to be starting from the position that you're right and anyone who doesn't agree is wrong,

Let's think about that. Here are some extracts from my posts:

• I wondered if I was stretching things a bit...
• I'd suggest that...
• Does this take into account...
• I just tried to find it to look at more closely...
• ...there are a lot of facts, reading of these can be selective and stats can be distorted. That's been the focus of my posts above, but I'm not sure you've acknowledged it yet.
• ...it's very, very complex, and the stats bear very close examination.
• This isn't to say that women "win" the debate - or, worse, are quintessential victims.

And here are some from yours:

• 🤔
• Please enlighten me...
• It's good to know that the whole forced birthing/reproductive rights issue has been resolved and all the pro life women have now seen the light.
• The first rule of misandry is that women feeling sad is worse than men dying.
• It's a dick move to try and dismiss every male problem...
• I'm far more closely aligned with the common female perspective than you are.

Yes, I recognise these are selective - but I challenge you to find anything as naively emphatic or rudely dismissive in my posts as in your own.

My issue is very far from "[I'm] right and anyone who doesn't agree is wrong".

My issue is that your claims aren't always supported by the evidence or carefuln analysis of it.

It's a pity, as some of what you say is really interesting and has made me think.

But you and others on this thread seem to be starting from the position that you're right and anyone who doesn't agree is wrong, rather than acknowledging that your views are simply an opinion. And not an opinion shared by the majority of women it seems. The existence of a patriarchy is also an opinion.

But anyone who points out that you could make similar arguments on behalf of men is a misogynist. 🥱 It sounds an awful lot like the accusations of 'transphobia' we hear when TRAs are not acquiesced too.

I don't even actually care all that much. I just have a lot of time sitting about at work and I'm an argumentative cow, so I'm happy to argue the toss when somebody whose never worked in my job tries to 'educate' me on how women couldn't possibly work in construction for all the misogyny lol.

25% of women isn't just a few.

and that's rape and sexual assault statistics. Never mind all the intimidation, harassment, cat calls, bullying and leering.

I agree. You won't get any support for that view here, though.

I have nothing but support for men getting their act together and setting up groups to talk about their issues, organising around issues like suicide, campaigning and fundraising and organising to set up crisis centres for male survivors of assault or abuse - you know, like women did over the decades to set up women's refuges and rape crisis centres.

Unlike women, men will get lots of funding and won't face the opposition and abuse women experienced when campaigning for refuges and RCCs, so they aren't being held back by lack of resources or support.

I have no problem at all with men organising to support men who are survivors of violence and abuse - primarily from other men, of course, but sometimes from women too.

My only question is - why has it taken them so long, when women have been organising to support each other, in the face of sometimes violent opposition, for ages? What are they waiting for?

For a few women.

It's a dick move to try and dismiss every male problem and find a way to argue that it's a bigger problem for women.

Re: dismissal. I don't see dismissal of male problems in our posts. I do see extraordinarily blatant dismissal of female ones in the tone of those of yours I cite above. There's really no comparison between the two approaches taken here!

As regards comparisons, I disagree. It's entirely valid - it's pretty obviously necessary, really! - to compare and contrast, and thereby better understand. The issue isn't, as you claim, drawing the comparisons in the first place. It's motivation for doing so.

With regard to this, while I can understand the need to counter the OP, and recognise suicides was one way to do it, it's a fairly clear sidestep from the topic of the thread that inevitably detracts and distracts from women discussing devastating abuse at the hands of males. As such, I'd say that your introducing this was closer to trying and dismiss every (fe)male problem and find a way to argue that it's a bigger problem for women than other posters' subsequent, inevitable, challenges to your intervention! I mean, come on - it's kind of obvious...

QED.

I think your prejudices are becoming increasingly clear, Gad. You're avoiding the more subtle distinctions and difficult points we're making in favour of increasingly clichéd MRA rhetoric. It reveals, to me, your own reservations about looking too closely at - facing up to? - our arguments. What if, aversive readers think, the feminists do, perhaps, have a point? And so, after post upon post of claiming the moral high-ground with reams of unexamined statistics, they fall back on emojis, insults and strawmen when these are rationally challenged. Like TRAs, you really do sometimes do our work for us.

This. It's so tedious. MRAs flock to these threads like fucking bees to honey.

GaIadriel your woman hating, male violence minimising, gazillion made up statistic waving posts are doing a sterling job of backing up the OP.

You can't possibly be fondly imagining the opposite.

You probably don't know this, but men flocking to these threads to stick it to women are ten a penny. It's so common on here, it's fucking boring.

Although, thinking about it, I'm sure you do know, your posting style is very familiar.

Because yes AMRAsALT.

Mate. We get it. You hate women. I don’t know why but you’re on a women’s forum telling women how men are worse off than them. Are you ok? Maybe if you tried meeting some women unrelated to you it might help. Have you tried square dancing?

Well, yes, you can't really accuse somebody of not trying hard enough to kill themselves. That's calling their bluff. But cries for help are a thing. People who jump off buildings aren't usually attempting a cry for help.

It's a dick move to try and dismiss every male problem and find a way to argue that it's a bigger problem for women. Dismissing male suicides on the basis of women attempting it more is like dismissing femicides on the basis that women hit their husbands more.

As somebody who completely rejects relationships with men you can't speak to the common female experience. 80-85% of women have at least one child and many studies have shown that the majority of women report that they're very committed to their heterosexual relationships - last one I read was 88%, which was in one of the psychology journals. Will try and find it.

Despite being a fairly atypical female I'm far more closely aligned with the common female perspective than you are.

And please enlighten me on the 'suicide myth' you refer to. Do you not believe that 3x more men die from suicide than women? It's certainly an odd kind of privilege that makes you want to kill yourself. We're told that men may not necessarily be individually privileged and that male privilege is more about how they'd actually be worse if they were female.

I'm not sure this is true. They wouldn't be as likely to kill themselves if they were female. And I don't agree 'attempting' suicide is hitting rock bottom like you say. Some of these will be cries for help, which suggests you still believe somebody might help you. Rock bottom is when you don't bother seeking help because you know there isn't any. When you just make it all stop.

The second rule of mental health first aid is that all suicide attempts are serious and you never dismiss someone as manipulative, controlling, or making a cry for help.

The first rule of mental health first aid is that you don't try to heal the person, you get them to a safe situation where the professionals can step in.

The first rule of being a dick on Mumsnet is promoting suicide myths to try to get one up on the feminists.

The first rule of misandry is that women feeling sad is worse than men dying.

Anti-abortion laws are appalling because they force you to stay pregnant, but one thing they do not do is force you to become pregnant in the first place.

I wouldn't want another situation where we're rude enough to lecture you on a condition you hadn't previously mentioned.

I was irritated at your apparent assumption that I had no experience of food harming me. TBH, most people have. Has anyone never suffered food poisoning? And we make our eating decisions based on our own risk calculus.

I've done my risk calculus based on what I know about men and what I know about myself. It's not in my interest to risk dating men again. I doubt I'll even bother dating women: I like the peace of being alone.

When I have a 6% chance of John Random being a rapist who can leave me pregnant and 0.3% of Jane Random being a sexual assailant who cannot leave me pregnant, then yeah, I will go with the biology and the numbers.

I'm autistic. Limited social skills are literally in the definition of autism. I can't detect the tells that some other people can detect. Numbers and an understanding of reproductive biology is all I've got to keep myself safe.

The other factor is that, being autistic, I am vulnerable to abuse. That's a fact, comes from the limited social skills. Vulnerable women are like catnip to abusive men. If a man is interested in me, it's more likely for me than for neurotypical women that he's an abuser.

How to keep myself safe looks like 4B: no dating, no sex, no marriage, no children.

Well, I'm not sure I know what non-literal fainting is, but it might be useful if you provided us with a list of your ailments. I wouldn't want another situation where we're rude enough to lecture you on a condition you hadn't previously mentioned.

And you say that 'no woman can force me to become pregnant'. It's good to know that the whole forced birthing/reproductive rights issue has been resolved and all the pro life women have now seen the light.

BTW it's most insensitive of you to mention cats to an ailurophobe.