How can we increase respect for women

[Flufffluff11]

I've had a lot of chats with male friends and acquaintances about this lately.

A lot of them told me that boys are taught to disrespect girls, from many influejces, from a young age to a point where they don't see women as human.

So if a woman tries to say how life needs to be improved for women. If she tries to talk to men about feeling uncomfortable or scared on a walk alone through a town for example, men don't listen because their brain automatically thinks of the woman "as not even human" . They are also under pressure to look manly in front of each other, and some of them do this by disrespecting women in front of other men

Again, not all men. But the crime rate against women is huge. Men are not going to change, as it doesn't affect them negatively. I'm really interested in talking to other women about this.

How can we raise respect of women in society, in general?

You don't have to personally experience it. We are looking at the bigger picture.

Crime against women has been described as a national emergency in the UK.

None of us are going to have had the exact same experiences as each other. Things have happened to my friends that haven't happened to me and vice versa. It's about the bigger picture.

Eg my friend was in a park and had a man come over and masturbate in front of her. That hasn't specifically happened to me.

Stuff has happened to me that hasn't specifically happened to my friend.

We al know that disrespect of women is going on.

Hmm, possibly send year 11 boys to do national service and then they sit GCSEs a year later. Or two.

Wouldn't be very fair to the mature ones though.

But the reason such work was ‘traditionally associated with women’ under patriarchy was because it was unvalued, unpaid or low+paid, viewed as unskilled and just part of women’s domestic duties.

Do that if you want.

Some other ideas

If you use social media, we can Write social media posts about women's rights online. I post a lot about women's rights on my social media account.

Contribute to discussions on other social media posts. There are a lot of online discussions about women's rights.

If you have money to spare, Contribute money to women's rights charities.

Start groups

Well clearly something is going very wrong. VAW is off the scale. Look at the news FFS. I don't see many stories of women and girls abusing murdering and stalking men.

That’s what I’m saying, we need to fight against the idea that this work has no value, not women doing that work

It actually occcured to me in the midst of my panicking about prepping for the worst, internet going to etc - I then thought how much the internet going down would solve for us. So much horrible disgusting stuff on there would just be gone.

Women's health, menstruation, menopause, childbirth and all the thousands of womb conditions need to be much more respected .

I had terrible womb pain for a long time. I went to different doctors so many times and was dismissed. I was told it was constipation. I have heard similar stories from a lot of friends.

I intend to agree thst some form of NS is required. Too many young men festering in their bedrooms gaming.

I do agree women supporting women is important, I just don’t really agree that women have become “weakened as a group” and that it’s therefore on us to fight back and change things.
Women can support each other, speak up, educate, set boundaries etc but we can do all of those things and men can still choose to disrespect us. That’s the bit I was getting at in my original comment.
If the issue is men not respecting women then surely men have to be a huge part of the change too? Men need to call other men out, boys need to be taught from a young age, and men who behave badly need to be held accountable.
I don’t think women should have to become stronger, louder or “fight back” in order to be treated with basic respect. We can absolutely support each other without putting the responsibility for changing men’s behaviour back onto women.

No we just get men complaining that paternity leave isn’t equal to maternity leave 🤦🏻‍♀️

Another point I’d like to make is we can’t make men respect us. If we are out and we get sexually assaulted or graped we can’t shout stop or make men respect us while they want to use our body’s and create fear in us for those things. We can’t stop that from happening no matter what we do.

Yes but no one is saying that men don't also have to change.

The UK government have juat started classes in schools teaching boys from a young age on how to respect girls. That is one way that they are trying to get boys and men to change.

I wanted to focus on how women can influence and support change for women

Well, we could make Lysistrata a set text in schools? The ancient Greek version would be delightful but maybe start with an English translation? Lots of discussions to be had...

Still very rare occurrences, fortunately.

I find statements made like yours far more frightening for the scaremongering.

Why the constant posts by manhaterd if you hate men so much? Lot’s of posters obsessed by their hatred for men but a weird and constant desire to write about it.

Tell me how is posting the same old statistics and fear mongering about men on MN actually going to help?

And tell me why, if you REALLY care don’t you get out into your communities and help raise young men. I do; I’m a Scout Leader.

The vast majority of men want to and would help you. I’m extremely grateful for them.

Well maybe the respect classes that the governments are introducing into schools this year will improve that to a certain extent. The classes are going to focus on teaching boys to respect girls.

They are trying to get boys to now respect girls from a young age. They are doing this from a young age before teenagers get radicalised to be misogynists by the likes of Andrew Tate etc

A man may be less likely to rape a woman, if he has been taught to see her with respect from a young age

I actually can’t believe the ‘this is MN nonsense’ crowd. There is somewhere to start. The women (if they are women) that deny there is a problem. How can we educate men if women can’t see how oppressed we still are?

But I think the main issue is that we have completely normalised as a culture, the commodification of women and their bodies. Porn, prostitution, sex trafficking, surrogacy. We need a revolution that seeks to ban all of these. We are not for sale, theft or exploitation.

Absolutely disagree, the change does NOT only need to come from women!

the “protect are women and girls” narrative from a certain sector of society is not helping.

i certainly don’t need protecting, definitely not by balaclava’d racist twats.

It’s painting women and girls as some sort of sub sector of humanity, weak, needy, vulnerable. Men as the big strong heroes, stopping bad things happening to the delicate little flowers.

it’s equality in reverse. What’s next, women, make sure you protect yourselves by covering up, or I know, don’t leave the house and I, the big provider, will go out and bring you all you need. Then you’re not at risk in the big bad world.

then we have the pro lifers who just see women as incubators.

fuck off.

I get that, and I agree women supporting each other and influencing change is important. I just think there’s a difference between women supporting and advocating for each other and women being responsible for fixing the problem.
I’m genuinely interested in what you mean by women “fighting back” though, because that’s the bit I’m curious about. What do you think women could actually do collectively that would make a difference? Because obviously we can speak up, support each other, campaign etc, but I’m interested in what you think that looks like in practice.

These statistics have been posted many times here before. What do you think endlessly posting about it here is going to change, exactly?

I fear your scaremongering more than I fear men!

They are not rare occurrences at all.

Check your statistics

Male Violence against women is very high in the U.K.

it’s Rape.

you can say it. You don’t need to hide the word and make it more acceptable.

Rape.

If we sat back and waited for men to change things for us, women would still not have the vote.

I disagree that trying to improve women's rights, and decrease crime against women is 'scaremonegering'

You are the only poster to write that word