Not really sure why I am writing this, but predatory men

[CormoranStrike]

Not all men of course, but here’s my history - and these are just the ones I remember.

Aged 12 - a man masturbated in front of me as I walked home with friends along a quiet country lane

Aged 15 - doing my paper round in the rain and a man offered me a lift. He did not give off good vibes at all and my spider senses kicked in.

Aged 19 - heavy breathing, sexually explicit phone calls at work.

Aged 30 - colleague kissed me on the back of my neck in the office to say well done about a work thing. I was too stunned to move.

Aged 48 - colleague asks me to go for drinks to discuss a work problem. Then proceeds to blatantly ask for an affair.

I am a very ordinary looking woman. I was a very shy child. I give no indication whatsoever of wanting these approaches.

And yet again my heart sinks hearing of the tragic loss of another young woman who - like us all - deserved better, and has fallen victim to someone (the case is active and I am deliberately not naming names).

Why do some men think we are fair game? What can we do to help change this?

But the good men are only really the good men because they aren't like their creepy mate ..if they weren't highly aware of what it's like they'd actually make an effort to be decent honest guys. As it is they get where they get as far as women go by using the other men as a yard stick. When you hear women talk about their wonderful new boyfriends , how often do you hear what merely should be a list of basic behaviour. He calls or texts , he pays for half the shopping, he drove me home from.work when the meeting over ran and I missed the bus etc there's rarely anything spectacular to report. And that's because they know how low the bar is.

I have a number of problems with the whole, 'Schools need to teach kids about this,' line:

1. It's not an issue of being taught. For a start, many male abusers will have attended courses on sexual harassment in the course of their working lives - and it will have made zero difference ...

1. Indeed, many will have attended lessons in school - schools already teach this stuff - and you can see the difference it makes.

1. It puts the onus on teachers teaching, rather than structural change. Much like the pressure on 'mothers' to educate their girls and boys.

A young man is violent? It's his mother's fault for not teaching him better. Or school's fault for not teaching him.

1. It essentially privatises a structural issue. That is, we teach the individual to be 'better' - rather than looking at the wide range of societal and legal factors that help sustain male violence.

And, crucially, we therefore leave all those societal and legal apparatus intact.

1. Every time someone says, 'Schools need to teach X,Y,Z,' they are implicitly saying, 'I accept a radically defunded and narrowed public sphere. I accept schools being pretty much the last part of the public sphere - and let's off-load stuff we'd have once sought to have addressed separately, within the public sphere, onto schools. Rather than demand a widening and increased funding of the public sphere.'

1. Schools are very cash-strapped. When people say, 'Let's teach this in schools!' stop and think for a minute.

Do you want a fresh-faced young graduate, in Geography, English, Maths, Sports Therapy, whatever - who has done a two-hour on-line course in sexual harassment - leading this talk? Or would you like expert courses, run by experts - who have perhaps 10 years of study and work experience in the area - along with evidence-informed legislative change?

I'm a teacher myself. My colleagues are bloody amazing. They care, they are self-motivated, they will roll up their sleeves and do what they have to do.

But, just sometimes, I wish the public would dream a little bigger, and demand a little more, than 'Let's teach this in schools!!!'

Where would you start then @thecatfromjapan?

@thecatfromjapan

I have a number of problems with the whole, 'Schools need to teach kids about this,' line:

1. It's not an issue of being taught. For a start, many male abusers will have attended courses on sexual harassment in the course of their working lives - and it will have made zero difference ...

1. Indeed, many will have attended lessons in school - schools already teach this stuff - and you can see the difference it makes.

1. It puts the onus on teachers teaching, rather than structural change. Much like the pressure on 'mothers' to educate their girls and boys.

A young man is violent? It's his mother's fault for not teaching him better. Or school's fault for not teaching him.

1. It essentially privatises a structural issue. That is, we teach the individual to be 'better' - rather than looking at the wide range of societal and legal factors that help sustain male violence.

And, crucially, we therefore leave all those societal and legal apparatus intact.

1. Every time someone says, 'Schools need to teach X,Y,Z,' they are implicitly saying, 'I accept a radically defunded and narrowed public sphere. I accept schools being pretty much the last part of the public sphere - and let's off-load stuff we'd have once sought to have addressed separately, within the public sphere, onto schools. Rather than demand a widening and increased funding of the public sphere.'

1. Schools are very cash-strapped. When people say, 'Let's teach this in schools!' stop and think for a minute.

Do you want a fresh-faced young graduate, in Geography, English, Maths, Sports Therapy, whatever - who has done a two-hour on-line course in sexual harassment - leading this talk? Or would you like expert courses, run by experts - who have perhaps 10 years of study and work experience in the area - along with evidence-informed legislative change?

I'm a teacher myself. My colleagues are bloody amazing. They care, they are self-motivated, they will roll up their sleeves and do what they have to do.

But, just sometimes, I wish the public would dream a little bigger, and demand a little more, than 'Let's teach this in schools!!!'

These are really good points. It is structural.

@ReceptacleForTheRespectable for sure it’s a comedy trope. And what’s the comedy there? It’s all about not touching her sexually, basically taking her prized virginity.

I’d like to dub every single time that trope is used with a totally deadpan - have fun, do not rape my daughter, or sexually assault her. End of. Try adding canned laughter to that.

I’ve seen it time and again on screen, and certainly in real life I’ve heard dads - and women - joke about, “I’ll have my shotgun ready when she turns 16” about their newborn girl.

I’ve never personally been aware of any real life situation where a father has tried to intimidate a date. Not saying you haven’t, but I haven’t.

When those fathers are joking though, are they really saying it because they really believe that the rape and sexual assault threat is so high? I don’t. I think that most men don’t assault women, and whilst they are well aware that some do, their perception of “some” is a fuck of a lot less than reality.

Honestly though - I don’t know, and I would LOVE to have a frank exchange with a large number of men on what they know their friends and colleagues and acquaintances do.

I don’t want to argue with you, because this is just my feeling and I don’t have data to substantiate it.

@ThrowingAShellstrop

Where would you start then *@thecatfromjapan*?

I really do think a very basic starting point - because there's such a pre-existing body of work and research, because it's winnable - is around domestic violence. And build outwards from there.

@Cocomarine I had a similar chat with my partner recently. I was doing a bit of a rant about some of my friends' knob-end partners and he said "They can't all be bad, which ones are the good guys then?". I came up with a tiny handful of people and he was shocked but when I explained why the rest of them were not "husband material" he couldn't argue with my reasoning.

Totally agree that the bar is often so low e.g. "He left his wife and newborn for the weekend to spend a load of money they didn't have on beer and strippers in Amsterdam but all his mates were going so he couldn't really say no could he? He did buy her some flowers at the garage on his way home".

It does ask the question as to who, should be training boys from a young age not to do such things. I feel schools should deal with this at a young age as to how to treat women and girls. And it should be on the curriculum all through school. Too many women I know have suffered like this too.

Schools already have so much to teach though. I mean I woukd expect schools to enforce and/or discourage certain behaviours and to challenge the harmful stereotypes many if which are contributors to the situation. However raising children is the parents job. What subjects should be abolished in order to cover this?

I’ve had numerous experiences - 2 attempted taxi attacks which I luckily got out of. Then booked a private cab to pick me up on nights out and he told me he would half my fair for favours. Happened at work too with older married males when I was in my 20s - I was too scared of losing my job to report. Even had fear in a flat share with a guy who got infatuated
I will protects my dds with my experience and putting in place as many safeguards as possible as I doubt these guys will ever disappear

And all over my social media is the ‘not all men’ comments and a man actually posted on my status that he felt scared being out at night too.

I despair.

The man at night who is scared too? Does he not realise who it is he's scared of? Other bloody men, and men like him will still argue that men aren't the problem.

I agree @thecatfromjapan but I don’t really understand how that could be put into place without utilising schools. Misogyny is already so ingrained in our society that most of the time, men and women alike, don’t know they’re contributing to the problem and certainly can’t recognise it in themselves.
Maybe a huge media coverage, similar to the one we saw last year after the death of George Floyd, might go a little way to start the ball rolling but people are so quick to forget.

Sad and angry sums it up.

Women face male agression and sexual harassment every day. Murder is the most extreme result of that and is statistically rare but men causing women to fear for their safety is commonplace. Even when it’s something like a shouted comment from a car, we know how quickly things can turn ugly, so we try and keep our heads down and don’t attract attention. When you’re out and some strange man decides he wants your attention and your mind goes into overdrive trying to calculate the lowest risk, best way to defuse the situation - you don’t want to encourage him in any way, you just want to be left alone, but you know if you’re too abrupt it might make him angry. When you’re going home and a group of men get into your almost empty tube carriage and you’re balancing the risk of having to move past the group to get to the door versus the risk of the staying put and ending up alone with them if the other passenger gets off at the next stop. All the while knowing that statistically it’s the male friend of a friend who shares a cab with you so you’re not alone who’s more likely to assault you - most women are raped by men they know. Then the weekly stories of some man murdering his wife or ex wife ...

Enough.

The thing is, Throwingshellstrop, a lot of this is already taught in PSHE in many schools.

Are you talking about a nationally mandated Chen's of work, devised by a government-selected body of experts? And a clearly demarcated space in the national curriculum? Or even exams, to ensure it's given the space in a timetable?

Or the system we , in fact, already have? Where semi-autonomous academies teach a range of largely self-devised lessons, of varying scope and quality, within the PSHE timetable?

The first scenario demands state-intervention and (implicitly) an acknowledgment of the structural nature of male violence.

I would suggest we are nowhere near that.

The second scenario is what we already have.

It's probably worth pointing out that, despite PSHE lessons and school policies, existing legislative and safeguarding approaches result in (mainly female) student victims of sexual assault being taught alongside the perpetrators.

And that situation demands a huge shift in the premises on which legislation and even safeguarding are based.

After all, what good does it do to have lessons teaching boys to 'be nice' and girls to 'have strong boundaries', when the students are living within a social and legislative system that essentially demonstrates how meaningless and consequence-less that is?

Honestly, the older I get, the more I think that legislative change is incredibly necessary. It's the discursive power of the state, and it needs to say that it takes women's right to be considered full, autonomous beings seriously.

@Bordois YES! Spot on.

I feel so sad fo poor SE, and all the women killed by men

The sad thing is the police are telling women to be safe on their way home, but that won't protect women. The majority of incidents I have had have not been strange men on my way home. They have been work colleague's, a supervisor at uni, an ex boyfriend, a friend of a friend. I once had a group of boys follow me when out with my dad and my grandma! Avoiding walking home alone would not have protected me. Am I supposed to not leave the house? To live alone to protect myself?

Men know not to rape or hurt women. But they do it anyway. Men are taught from a young age that their wants, needs and feelings are the most important thing. They are taught to hate women. Porn teaches men violent, abusive sex is aspirational.

When you mention male violence, every man on the vicinity will come up with some story about how their friends girlfriend slapped him once. Any topic of male violence will always come back to "what about violence against men from women'. Men know that male violence exists but they hate women too much to care

I have come to the conlusion that the 'good guys' are the ones who dont feel the need to have power over us, they actually like women and dont feel threatened by women with opinions or intelligence, I dont mind a man feeling 'protective' of me so long as its the same type of 'protectiveness' I feel for them, I want to take care of my dh, I worry for his health ans wellbeing etc.

IME, the arseholes just hate women in general and are just after power, sex and violence are simply an add on.

@MonochromeMinnie

And yet so many people believe we shouldn't have and don't need a right to single sex spaces anymore.

I used to attend a womans circle and they ended up opening to men that identify as woman and anyone questioning this was out of order. It just ruined my safe space but I dont know the answer to this.

Until we change our legal and social values, nothing will change.
The liberty of men is far more important than the lives of women and children. That fact is the foundation stone of our legal system.

a big block of flats gives anonymity to an extent
This is why I feel safer living in a flat mind you I've still had men in the residents committee 25 years older than me trying to hit on me 😡

When I was a teenager my dad would never let me walk home alone. Because he knew the risk
Why do you think men don't like their daughters wearing revealing clothes? Or walking home from the pub?

Men know the threat to women. I cant tell you how many times men have tried to walk me home, or tell me not to do things for my safety. I don't think men are shocked by the threat to women in anyway shape or form, but even if they arent abusers or violent themselves, they benefit from the power dynamic other men being violent gives them. They benefit from the fact that women will be a little bit scared of them.

Why do you think men don't like their daughters wearing revealing clothes? Or walking home from the pub?

Because they don't want other men taking liberties with their property.