To be terrified by the Australian rugby coach setting his family on fire?

[SeasonallySnowyPeasant]

In brief: earlier today an Australian ex-rugby player was in the car with his wife and their three children, poured petrol over her and set her alight. She, he and the children all died. The parents were ending their marriage and disputing custody over the children.

It’s absolutely horrific and I just wonder why there seem to be no depths to which some men - and it almost always is men - will sink when it comes to asserting their dominance over women and children. Throwing acid over them seems to be the newest ‘thing’ over the past 3 years. Assault, rape, stalking, harassment, murder are so common as to be un-newsworthy.

It scares me. My exH was abusive and I have a non-molestation order to prevent him from continuing the abuse. At the back of my mind I worry about him taking something I do/say as pushing him too far and being seriously hurt or killed. What if he decides one day to kill our DC?

Why won’t men sort their lives out and put an end to this horrific violence?

99.999% of whom feel the same way as you about it.

no, they don't.

That's the problem.

NAMALT?

AQALOMALT (Actually Quite A Lot Of Men Are Like That).

When you have sons, what do you do? Believe they are evil from birth and need to be medicated or locked up from birth to protect their sisters?

Of course not! You need to instead stop taking it personally. No one here has suggested all men are rapists or violent. Saying that most violent crime is committed by men is a fact, and that’s all it means.

Men hold the power in the world. Run the courts, the police, make the laws. Even in countries where there are more women in these roles, they are working within structures that were out in place over centuries by men, to address the things that are important to men.

Men could change this if they wanted. government priorities on DV and protocols around how men who commit DV are treated by the authorities. Lots of men who commit terrorist attacks have history of DV but are free to get on with things as VAW is not seen as anything to get too excited about.

It's seen as a 'women's issue' that we must somehow solve, and not a thing that is important to society as a whole.

It stinks tbh. So many stories in the news recently of women murdered after reporting men multiple times for violence, threats etc. Then they get killed and it's all hand wring, lessons learned bullshit.

AQALOMALT (Actually Quite A Lot Of Men Are Like That).
on the verge of setting their own family on fire? Really?

The difference is that I judge individuals, and wouldn't say that ALL men are this and ALL women are that.

No one said that.

Are you really denying that men as a class are a risk to women?

Are you really denying that men as a class are a risk to women?

you really do believe that, don't you. Blimey.

you really do believe that, don't you. Blimey

Again, look up the crime stats, educate yourself before you make such naive comments.

you really do believe that, don't you. Blimey.

You really don't believe that, do you. Blimey.

Why do you think we have certain sex segregated spaces for women and men? Why do you think that prisons aren't just mixed sex? Refuges?

My husband is a lovely guy, I know he is not a risk to anyone - should he be allowed into female changing rooms? If not, why not?

If you were walking home late at night on your own, who would you honestly prefer to bump into - a woman or a man? Who would you honestly feel safer with?

The thing is, JosefKeller, most rational people tend to draw their conclusions from statistical evidence rather than taking things personally because we have sons. And statistical evidence shows that as a sex class men are more prone to violence than women. The position that violence is not gendered/ sexed is a deeply ideological one spouted most often by men’s rights activists. Or by women who can’t bear the idea that their darling sons are somehow implicitly being criticised by statistics.

One thing that men who are genuinely keen to help could do is to be good role models for their children. Talk about the unfairness, make them see that they are living in a world where things are not equal yet, but show them that they have the power to change that. Help them to stand up for their friends, to shut down conversations about 'girls/boys are x,y or z', encourage them to think a bit more about what the world would be like if everyone were judged on their merits rather than their genital. Show them that being scared or sad is ok, but that violence or lashing out is not. Raise a generation that will do things differently. I'm under no illusion that having sons means that I am more likely to be raising someone who is a perpetrator or a victim of violence, but being conscious of that enables me to take steps to minimise the risks and encourage them to change the world whenever they can.

Just want to put a gentle warning out there: the description of the crime in many of the papers, including (but not limited to) the Daily Mail is very graphic, beyond the bounds of what is usually posted.

While I think it is right to clearly delineate the horrors of the crime (which is not why the DM is doing it, of course), I do want to give a heads up for anyone who's vulnerable and thinking about reading it. There isn't much more substantive information than what's in the OP, and the descriptions are vivid and graphic.

The folk jumping up and down about the NAMALT posts, and claiming that these threads inevitably attract them, might want to acknowledge that it took all of 6 replies in this thread before an utterly ridiculous AMALT post appeared, before the first NAMALT response.

If people are going to post nonsense, they should expect to be called out on it, even if it happens every time there's a similar thread. Yes it's infuriating, but perhaps the AMALT'ers might like to also engage their brains before they post?

@MNersAreBatshit how about starting a petition to have all the abusive arseholes humanely detroyed? Surely the logical end point of your 'argument'. And so much quicker and more effective than having to rely on all the silly women to phase them out, using only the power of their wombs.

In mixed company, twice recently we were talking about domestic violence. 1st time all men agreed it was wrong but also said they just never discuss it with other men. So take a reactive approach, not a proactive one about raising their negative opinions on it.

The second time, my boyfriend was talking about it with a younger group saying that he could never do it and didn't understand it and one guy said, well some women are mental and fight.. It was in a restaurant and embarrassingly the chat just kind of got pushed aside by other drunken chat.

My observation is that talking about it actively and negatively, should be more normalised..

My friends husband is a "nice guy" . All his friends would say so. Even her family would say so. Sometimes, even she will say so. But I won't say that, because I know that in private he calls her a cunt, that he's raped her, that he won't let her work or have a bank account, that he's threatened her when she's tried to leave.

If all the men that you know are "nice guys", probably some of them aren't.

It was worth the deletion.

It's not just the fact that he killed them. It's the way they were killed

Agreed, he killed them is possibly the most agonising way imaginable. Women do kill their children too of course but it’s much more common for men to. I don’t think anybody is saying all men are potential murderers and rapists, just that the majority of murderers and rapists happen to be male.

I feel like this is very intimately related to misogyny, which is absolutely ingrained in pretty much everyone in our society. Even myself, a proud feminist, catch myself having to proactively challenge my own assumptions and thoughts.

I feel like we need to address this not just at the worst level (violence against women), but also all the way through to the more subtle sexism that exists. If we can achieve equality in the minds of society, then I believe it will help with reducing the violence.

I have not met a guy (nor a woman) who isn’t misogynistic in one way or another. For example, I wanted to have a girls night out with a reasonably new friend. She responded that she wasn’t sure, she would have to check with her husband if it would be ok. A couple of weeks later my dh told me that he had discussed with this woman’s dh and had pencilled in to go watch the rugby on the weekend (by themselves, no kids). It pissed me off, that her husband obviously felt that it was fine for him to make tentative plans to do something without his family/kids, yet she couldn’t even tentatively agree in principle to the idea of a few hours out having dinner. She had to discuss with him first if it was even ok to entertain the idea. This was so unfair. And yet, her dh is a very decent guy. Very nice, considerate, tries to share the load with parenting. But he couldn’t see the inequality. And neither could my DH. Again, my dh would say that he is a feminist if asked (ie he believes in female equality). Yet this was an incident that he couldn’t initially see was problematic.

To me, even small incidents like this paint a clear picture of ingrained misogyny and sexism. It’s SO ingrained that people don’t even realise that the way they think and behave is sexist.

Anyway, I’ll also add that i have had several instances in my life where I have been intimidated/scared by a man. I am just a regular person. I would say that almost all of my female friends would have similar stories. I’m not saying ALL MEN are intimidating. But I’ve never felt intimidated by or scared of a woman in the same way (scared of physical violence). So, there is an issue here.

I can remember one very clear incident where I was heavily pregnant and on a plane. After we had taken off, I received my seat as I was having trouble breathing due to the seats being very scooped. The man sitting behind me punched my seat, I turned around and his face was full of rage. I was genuinely scared. I don’t think he would describe himself as a misogynist if asked.

There is a problem. We can’t solve the problem by just repeating “not all men!” “There’s nothing I can do about it as it’s not me. I don’t know anyone that is violent against women”. I am sure that there is a lot you can do to adjust your own attitude to women. And that’s for both men and women. And it’s something I work on constantly as well for myself.

A similar incident happened in my town where the father murdered his two children over a divorce. It is horrendous.

It is fact that the perpetrators of homicides in domestic cases are mostly male, nobody can argue with that.

*received should say reclined.

People always tell me NAMALT. But when I was 12 and in an abusive situation and that person forced me into a type of prostitution where he traded me for money and drugs, no man ever said no, they didn’t call the police, they didn’t help me. When we got taxis somewhere and he offered to trade me for the cab fare, when he offered me to delivery drivers in exchange for not paying the pizza, when he offered me to the men working in corner shops in exchange for not paying or to the men in petrol stations in exchange for free petrol or to men he was friends with no man said no, no man asked wtf he was thinking, no man rescued me, no man called the police. They all said yes and raped me.

I genuinely can’t believe NAMALT when a 12 year old girl is accepted as payment for some snacks in a corner shops. Repeatedly. But not one ever turned down the offer or called the police.