To find this outrageous? TW: DV, violence against girls/women

[MolyHolyGuacamole]

Just seen this bit on the news about Ellie Gould, a teenager who was murdered by her boyfriend of 3 months after she told him she no longer wanted to be with him. Now her mother and friends are campaigning for self-defence lessons to be taught at schools. I have no doubt that they are still grieving the loss of a life cut too short, and this is a way to help them heal.

But AIBU to think that, once again, campaigns like this put the responsibility of protection on women? What about investing in a program that starts from primary school that teaches boys that it’s totally unacceptable to harm another human being? One that checks up on their mental well-being and makes it normal to talk through feelings and not bottle them up or express them through violence?

Saying that self-defence should be taught in schools as a result of this tragedy is essentially saying that this young woman could have avoided death if SHE’D done more. And it once again reinforces the idea that women are responsible for any harm that comes their way.
[[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-wiltshire-51354775?_twitter_impression=true
www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-england-wiltshire-51354775?]]twitterrimpression=true

I think both would be good. Yes, educating boys on this would be brilliant, but it's never going to disappear is it? So it's good for girls to also learn self defence skills.

Sometimes defending yourself physically put you in more danger as a woman.

There used to be an education style popular in Iceland which separated girls and boys into different classes (within the same school) and the background focus of each class was to teach boys to be gentle and girls to be assertive. It fell out of fashion (may have been stopped altogether now) with the rise of indignation at the very idea that boys needed to be taught how to be gentle. Because misogyny, male violence, and a culture that normalises rape and male supremacy, are just a few bad apples and most men aren't like that, especially my Nigel etc etc.

I wonder how such an idea would be received in the UK? With bucket loads of froth and outrage I should imagine. I can just picture Piers Morgan making his empassioned plea to "let boys be boys" and all the shit fathers suddenly taking an interest in the Christmas shopping in order to buy their sons something extra manly to undo the damage of the hateful feminazis.

You have to remember that we live in a society that took centuries to get its head around women having any rights at all, and which is prepared to believe that humans can change sex rather than accept that some men are feminine and some women are masculine. We live in a society where the violent rape of a 14 year old girl can be filmed and uploaded to a porn site, with basically no sanctions. Where despite video evidence of her being raped whilst unconscious and beaten half to death, she was still asked was she sure it wasn't consensual?
Where courts of law find it more plausible that women would consent to sex so violent that it ended in their death, rather than believe that they were raped and murdered. And the fact that women are hardly well known for their love of sexual violence, whilst men murder women at a rate of 3 a week and rape us at a rate of 10 an hour, doesn't seem to occur to anyone. And yet despite all this we still have women - women - showing up in FWR to say they don't believe we have a problem with misogyny in this county. And every single Labour candidate, especially the female ones, has publically stated that a fear of male violence and the weakening of what few safeguards we have is based on nothing but ignorance and bigotry.

So, I don't see a program of education for boys taking off any time soon unfortunately, and I will most definitely be sending my daughter to self defense classes!

Bloody app! I used paragraphs I swear!

Well said @ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

@Bygrab sorry my tag function isn't working on the app...no matter; your points are beautifully put, paragraphs or not

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings 👏🏻

The lack of outrage at violence towards women is very telling.
Unfortunately I think you are right ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings
What a sad place we're in that other women refuse to see it too.

I don’t think self defence classes are telling women they are responsible for preventing attacks on them. It is giving them skills that can save their life. Yes, these skills may be useless but even for the few lives they will save, it is worth it.

I owe my life to taking self defence courses. I was attacked by a man with a knife at a festival for refusing his advances. He was waiting between the tents as I came back from using the portable toilets. He jumped out and stabbed me. Because I’d had self defence classes, I was able to get my right arm up, so he stabbed my arm instead of my chest/shoulder. I then was able to shift sideways and grab him with my left hand and pull him hard past me and into a tent which he fell on. I then ran for my life and got away. They never caught him.

The reality is that women today can’t wait for a new generation of boys to be taught to behave. There are men out there today that attack and kill women. To refuse women access to skills that will save them today or tomorrow is to make them an easy target and even more vulnerable.

What about investing in a program that starts from primary school that teaches boys that it’s totally unacceptable to harm another human being? One that checks up on their mental well-being and makes it normal to talk through feelings and not bottle them up or express them through violence?

I think this would be a good class to be taught to both boys and girls (although it is fewer, some women do abuse their partners and/or children). But it would take twenty years before you’d even know if such an approach had any effect on DV at all. In the meantime, are women especially supposed to just take the violence? Self defence is not about preventing attacks. It starts with you are being attacked so here are tools that you can use that just might save your life.

I also am tired of Hollywood showing women fighting men toe to toe. First it makes it seem acceptable to watch a man and woman beating the shit out of each other. Second, it shows men punching women full in the face and her just bouncing back, shaking it off, and punching back. That is just not reality. But boys are watching these movies and being shown that you can punch a woman full in the face and barely faze her. They are being shown and brainwashed into thinking that male violence isn’t that harmful or strong. When the reality is the opposite.

What about investing in a program that starts from primary school...?
The latest statistics from the ONS show the number of murdered women and girls is the highest its been for 14 years.
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2019

Anti rape and violence campaigns have been running programs worldwide with good results. There's no reason why it wouldn't work in the UK except we seem to lack the political will to tackle violence against women and girls.

''Safety and security don’t just happen: they are the result of collective consensus and public investment.''
www.ungei.org/Learn_Without_Fear_English.pdf

Teaching boys not to rape;
"If we, as boys and men, are part of the problem, then we can be part of the solution," says Mr Njangiru. "We can be the first people to change."
www.bbc.com/news/education-43466365

There was an inquiry into sexual violence against girls in UK schools, and the end result was the proposal of new, statutory lessons that taught about respect and consent.

''Every child at primary and secondary school must have access to high quality, age-appropriate relationships and sex education delivered by well-trained individuals. This can only be achieved by making sex and relationships education (SRE) a statutory subject''
www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/inquiries/parliament-2015/inquiry1/

I don't feel that the SRE lessons that focus on inclusiveness fit this brief.

All this teach boys not to rape etc doesn’t really work. We all know it is illegal to rape, murder, assault but people do it because that is who they are. We all know it is illegal to break into someone’s house and steal things, but we still take precautions around that.

It is absolutely not a woman’s fault if she is attacked but you cannot stop some men from doing this so teaching people things that might help them should they be in this position is surely a good thing.

I lock my front doors so I don’t get burgled, I don’t leave valuables in my car so they don’t get stolen, I have a secure bag for when out and about so it isn’t easy to steal my purse. I also wouldn’t walk somewhere secluded on my own. If I did and was attacked it wouldn’t be my fault but I will take precautions in all areas of my life to make sure I am safe and my belongings are protected.

While it is true that the absolute number of femicides in the U.K. have gone up the past two years to “the highest level in 14 yrs”, they are still lower than they were in 2003 and earlier.

In fact, the absolute number of femicides has bounced back and forth between 200 and 250 women per year since the 1960s.

Obviously the femicide rate has gone down. A femicide rate is measured as number of murders per capita (# usually per million women) instead of measuring the total number of murders without accounting for population growth.

Females are at half the risk of being murdered than males. Although men far and away commit the most murders.

Comparing U.K. to say the US, it is obvious that the US lack of gun control is causing much higher numbers and rates of femicide and homicide than in the U.K. So by that alone, control of murder weapons is a proven way to reduce the number of murders.

The biggest factor behind the increase in femicides in the U.K. according to the ONS was an increase in elderly women:

“The largest volume increase was for homicide victims aged 65 years and over, from 76 to 92. This was due to an increase in female victims in this age category, which rose by 25 homicides (33 to 58). Within this category the largest increase was seen in the number of victims killed by “negligence or neglect” (from 6 to 16).”

Also
“As in previous years, children under the age of 1 had the highest rate of homicide (45 per million population), followed by those aged 16 to 24 years (18 per million population).”
So child abuse seems to be the biggest cause of femicides.

Based on the risk/rates, political focus should be on child abuse and elder abuse. This makes a strange kind of sense because children and the elderly are the most defenceless and vulnerable.