My husband says “notallmen”

[Lastchancesalonco]

NC for this! My teenage daughter and I were discussing the current outcry regarding violence against women and women living in fear, my husband entered the room, and immediately said it “wasn’t all men” and now men were “scared to do anything” wtf??? Scared to what exactly? Terrorise women? it’s very relevant I feel that my husband is a police sergeant! And although we do live in a very very low crime area so he doesn’t personally deal with many murders etc it’s mostly petty crime I KNOW he deals with domestic situations and has previously been very vocal about protecting people in domestic situations etc. This is very out of character for him, when pressed he said he felt people were “taking it too far” calling for a “6pm curfew” for men, when my daughter, who I’m ashamed to say was more vociferous than me because I was stunned, pointed out she effectively had an unofficial curfew for safety reasons, he seemed flustered like he hadnt thought of that, then he said “men are scared of attack too” and I said “who from? Who from? Not Denise on her way home pissed from her hen night is it? No it’s MEN you are scared of OTHER MEN” anyway he reflected a bit and was apologetic but I’m worried, he never used to be like this? Is he hearing some extremist narrative at work that poor white middle class men are under attack because the system that gives them every advantage is trying to be dismantled? He works with women and even a transsexual officer and has never shown any sign of prejudice or anything but acceptance for them and up till now never said anything concerning but he literally said “not all men” did we say it was??? I dunno it’s made me a bit sick, and I can’t help but wonder how a man who was previously totally on my wavelength about these things has changed to “but what about me”
Especially when we have a teenage daughter who will be going off to uni soon and won’t be in her safe little village! AIBU to take this so seriously or was he just being a giant selfish man baby and truly sees the error of his ways?

The curfew thing - No-one should have been thinking it was a practical proposal. It drew attention to men how women's lives are self-policed to manage fear of men's demonstrable actions.

People who focus on the practical curfew are being avoidant or deliberately opaque.

It's just defensiveness I think, it's hard to get past that when your demographic is being "attacked" it's hard not to take it personally I think

@Treaclepie19 you are trying to battle against nature here - the sheer physicality of male v female . That is like saying lions don't have to live in fear of being eaten as do antelopes. Humans have free will and then the problems start . You can never legislate against free will.

@tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz

I'm white. I believe I've lived my days so far treating everyone fairly and respecting and acknowledging other people haven't had the life I've had due to their skin colour.

I would be sickened to hear I'd acted in a racist way however I 100% accept many others are. This does not offended my feelings or make me feel in the slightest as a white woman I'm under attack personally.

Why do some men feel the need to centre their hurt feelings over the lived reality of the opposite sex?

I was thinking exactly the same.

I'm a white woman. During the BLM movement last year I saw on many occasions people make sweeping statements about white people and thought, privately, that of course I don't do or think many of those things. The difference is I would never have wasted anyone's time by actually saying that, because I recognised that them getting their point across was far more important, with far higher stakes, than me affirming the fact that I'm a nice person. I had no trouble recognising that those sweeping statements were necessary to explain the problem. It is very telling that so many men seem incapable of doing the same.

Interestingly enough, the vast majority of people I saw vocally pushing ALM were men. Anecdotal, I know, but not something I find overly surprising.

@Treaclepie19

A good way to get the point across is that post that's being shared saying "men who say Not All Men should be locked in a room full of snakes, not all venomous"

This is just ... silly.

We don’t have snakes as partners, fathers and sons. Yet, partners and family are most likely to kill.

I find there’s a strange fixation on Sarah’s case, but the real issues are more mundane and harder to fix. Stranger murder is rare, when a woman goes missing, the first person you should suspect is her boyfriend or husband.

Domestic violence is the elephant in the room. That’s why the curfew thing is so tone deaf.

I have always been a risk taker, in my late teens and early 20s it got ridiculous. The only man who did me serious harm was by ex boyfriend who gave me PTSD and abused me horribly.

Urm, we're not wild animals, we have restraint, we have empathy, men simply have no excuse.

I think the snake analogy works very well.

You should be proud of your daughter.

I don't care if this is controversial. Every single able bodied male beyond childhood is capable of male violence against women and girls. Women and girls don't know who's unsafe until they attack us so it might as well be all men. It might be "sad" for boys to grow up in a world where beig male is a bad thing but it's worse grow up in a world as a girl who can't make any journey without risk assessing it, who can't use single sex facilities, who can't make it through their lives without being a victim of some form of sexual harassement (unless you're in the 2% who hasn't but I'm dubious about that figure).
Obviously males can be harmed and sexually assaulted too. No one deserves that and I wouldn't wish it on anyone,. However, the perpetrators are almost always other men.
Men need to sort out their own issues with violence and misogyny. Women do not need to fix them or go out their own way to avoid setting them off. So frankly I'm short on sympathy for men and don't expect that to change any time soon.

I find there’s a strange fixation on Sarah’s case, but the real issues are more mundane and harder to fix. Stranger murder is rare, when a woman goes missing, the first person you should suspect is her boyfriend or husband.

Stranger murder might be rare BUT sexual harassment from strangers isn't. Pretty much every time I have been sexually harassed it was by a stranger. The Sarah Everard case has caused a lot of us to reflect on these experiences and say enough is enough....
Yes, women are more likely to be murdered by a partner - specifically a male partner which is why most of us are discussing violence against women not stranger violence against women.

Domestic violence is the elephant in the room. That’s why the curfew thing is so tone deaf.

Again, the curfew was not a serious suggestion.

I find there’s a strange fixation on Sarah’s case, but the real issues are more mundane and harder to fix. Stranger murder is rare, when a woman goes missing, the first person you should suspect is her boyfriend or husband

I agree with you @UsedUpUsername and was discussing this with a young woman of a similar age who lives in London . She said the reason it has raised so much media attention is because she was white and it was in an essentially well to do part of London where these things are not expected .

I think the "difficulty" (for want of a better term) with the NAMALT discussion is that for some people it's a long established trope/debate particularly of you've been involved in online discussions around the area of male violence and for others it's only come in to their sphere recently due to it becoming the focus of traditional media discussions.

So for many, rightly, someone trotting out NAMALT is an immediate red flag of the kind of person who will deliberately insert themselves on twitter threads to belittle and deny women's experience etc.

So you can quite often have people who are well versed and have had to put up with this shit their whole lives and the language that's been co-opted by the equally well versed assholes is also the natural jumping off point for people who are only entering the discussion and haven't explored it in any meaningful way yet. "I'm not racist/not all men"

Now there's also an argument that it's still a bit alarming that someone has happily floated through life not engaging with a difficult subject just because it hasn't affected them directly, but I think that's different to bring willfully obstructive to the conversation.

I know when I first encountered it on here about ten years or more ago on here my instinctive reaction was "I'm not like that" but I think the key is a willingness to engage with a subject rather than the initial instinctive reaction. I read the discussions and experiences of other posters and the explanations of how what might look like an objectively true statement "not all men are like that" was derailing, shifted the focus, took away from the point of the discussion on males as a class and the violence they perpetrate as a class rather than it being an attack on me individually and also how it could be deployed by those acting in bad faith.

I don't think it's fair to say that one instance where someone starts off on the wrong foot because of a surface level reaction, listens and actively engages in the conversation can be classed as part of the problem as it appears is the case with the DH here.

I think it's similar to when you learn the origins of etymology of a certain word or term and are told of why it has offensive or racist or homophobic connotations. (Angry black man tropes/that's bent/some of the tropes around the williams sisters/throwing a paddy)
Decent people are willing to listen and try to understand why something that was an unconscious part of their vocabulary or traditions are actually adding to the marginalisation of others.
Assholes dig in and just exclaim "nah this has all gone too far, I've always called it the paki shop it's just descriptive, I don't get offended when people shorten british to brits"

... see the error of his ways by holding an opinion ?.

It's just defensiveness I think, it's hard to get past that when your demographic is being "attacked" it's hard not to take it personally I think

One of the reasons that I think this particular conversation is a stumbling block for many is because from my generation (40s) of "right on" people the focus was very much based on the removal of stereotypes. So this feels counterintuitive to many people who see themselves as being progressive

People talk like men can walk around without any worries or concerns for their wellbing at all.
I have lived in some serioulsy ropey areas and was constantly on edge if I did walk around late at night.

Where is the outrage at the dispropriante amount of young BAME males who are stabbed to death in inner city estates? Where were their Vigils and social posturing?

@fromdownwest

People talk like men can walk around without any worries or concerns for their wellbing at all. I have lived in some serioulsy ropey areas and was constantly on edge if I did walk around late at night.

Where is the outrage at the dispropriante amount of young BAME males who are stabbed to death in inner city estates? Where were their Vigils and social posturing?

And who are these men at risk from?

Other men.

*Just tell him he's right, not all men. But the point is - how does a woman know whether this man in front of her is one of the ones who will abuse, assault, harass, stalk or rape her, until it happens?

^This. My DH is lovely, and so are my BILs and I have lovely male friends.

But outwardly, how would anyone know by looking at them the difference between them and my abusive F, especially as at times they could all have been in the same church/workplace etc?

@Chanjer

It's just defensiveness I think, it's hard to get past that when your demographic is being "attacked" it's hard not to take it personally I think

One of the reasons that I think this particular conversation is a stumbling block for many is because from my generation (40s) of "right on" people the focus was very much based on the removal of stereotypes. So this feels counterintuitive to many people who see themselves as being progressive

You may be right, stereotypes are very much the 'in thing' just now. Everyone needs to be associated with a group.

But there's more time spent on this specific NAMALT conversation than there is any suggestion of solution and it's frequently used to derail any conversation about violence against women
Exactly this. It's a fairly standard tactic to take the attention away from the very real issues, and then after women have to spend pages wading through the same old NAMALT arguments those pushing the NAMALT arguments usually say "but nowhere have you solved the problem... why don't you find solutions... maybe men would help you solve the problem if you were nicer/smiled more/put men's feelings first/stopped being so angry/had a happier tone/weren't so negative".

Where is the outrage at the dispropriante amount of young BAME males who are stabbed to death in inner city estates? Where were their Vigils and social posturing?

I mean, did you miss the whole of last year? As whataboutery goes, this is a new one.

@fromdownwest

People talk like men can walk around without any worries or concerns for their wellbing at all. I have lived in some serioulsy ropey areas and was constantly on edge if I did walk around late at night.

Where is the outrage at the dispropriante amount of young BAME males who are stabbed to death in inner city estates? Where were their Vigils and social posturing?

This is a different issue. It doesn’t need to be discussed when women are talking about their experiences of feeling unsafe and being assaulted.

I think people totally missed the point about many younger teens/men feeling shitty about simply being male. People replied saying that women/girls safety is more important than men’s feelings. Yes - but that really isn’t the point I was making. The point was how do you engage people who you have tarred simply because they are men - that’s the point I was making - not moaning because of hurt feelings!
If you are demonised simply for being male, it’s easier to just stay away from the issue - guaranteed not to be bollocked for being male/saying the wrong thing. And that isn’t how we’re going to solve this. We are not warring factions. It isn’t men v women. How awful.

Great point. The prejudice in our heads is strong.

@fromdownwest

People talk like men can walk around without any worries or concerns for their wellbing at all. I have lived in some serioulsy ropey areas and was constantly on edge if I did walk around late at night.

Where is the outrage at the dispropriante amount of young BAME males who are stabbed to death in inner city estates? Where were their Vigils and social posturing?

And are women the perpetrators of these crimes? No, it's other men.

Who do you think is organising vigils in relation to violence against women? Do you think there is some vigil organizing committee and they've deliberately not acknowledged men???

I am this close to leaving mine over his staunch defence of NOTALLMEN, and his “Goodblokeism” 🤮