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?

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@Deathgrip,

Men need to listen to women but women also need to listen to men. It is ok to respectfully disagree about some things. Too often these days, disagreeing is termed ‘not listening’.

The whole concept of ‘lived experience’, especially when used as a silencing tool, is contrary to the idea of being able to intelligently analyse and assimilate facts and opinions and come to an intelligent conclusion.

In some areas, the sexes will never share the same experiences but, unless you actually want Saudi-style sex segregation, we will continue to live together and need to be able to discuss these issues with everyone having a say and listening to one another.[/quote]
I think you should really look to men as the biggest culprit of not succeeding at listening to one another. You don't listen to people by hearing what they say and immediately responding with "what about me though." Especially when the issue you are describing- feeling judged by women - is quite clearly not as immediate a problem as the one you have just completely ignored to talk about yourself - women feeling/actually being threatened by men.

I completely agree that there is a general tendency within society to only be interested in one side of the story, but men who think this is the time (and it began pretty much immediately after the protesting began) to turn people's attention to how it affects them, are just being tone deaf and self absorbed. What they are experiencing is not on a par, yet they would prefer it dominated the discussion. If they were trying to assimilate facts, they would have listened to a lot more before turning the conversation to themselves.

Ps. You cannot "disagree" about what women have experienced, it isn't a matter of opinion, certainly not men's. All they can do is disagree that they personally would do those things, but it is self indulgence to the max to think that the right response to "98% of women have experienced sexual harrassment" is "but it's ok though because Dave from Halifax didn't do any of it!"

@TheReluctantPhoenix oh the old 'but you're not being rational and listening to my facts' trope. Only slightly less sexist than calling women hysterical.

The #notallmen argument is deliberately not listening to women who are saying that unless they treat all men as possibly dangerous until proven otherwise, they may be assaulted or killed, will unlikely get any support from law enforcement, and are very likely to be blamed by the public (all three elements of this are backed by abundant statistics, such as the appallingly low rate of rape convictions).

Sure, not all men do that, but the only way for women to buy a modicum of safety is for us to treat them/you as if you do. Who isn't listening here? It's not the women! And TBH, when 1/20 men is a rapist, I actually don't think men get a say in how women should feel about violence against women. Too much conflict of interest.

@aSofaNearYou,

‘Tone deaf’ is another silencing tool-there are so many of them these days.

The pattern is:

A bad event caused by a bad person happens.

The public is outraged.

It is decided that this is symptomatic of a broader problem.

Anyone who has ever experienced anything bad of a similar ilk, no matter how small, joins the voice.

Anyone who has any comment to do with context or interpretation, no matter how small, is told to ‘shut up’, ‘they don’t share the lived experience’ or that they are ‘tone deaf’.

This whole thing is relentlessly amplified by social media which is actually, rather scarily, controlled by a few men with little interest in anything but money.

You cannot hope to win any argument with anyone, or do anything but polarise, by othering people and assuming they are ‘bad’ until proved otherwise.

[quote TheReluctantPhoenix]@aSofaNearYou,

‘Tone deaf’ is another silencing tool-there are so many of them these days.

The pattern is:

A bad event caused by a bad person happens.

The public is outraged.

It is decided that this is symptomatic of a broader problem.

Anyone who has ever experienced anything bad of a similar ilk, no matter how small, joins the voice.

Anyone who has any comment to do with context or interpretation, no matter how small, is told to ‘shut up’, ‘they don’t share the lived experience’ or that they are ‘tone deaf’.

This whole thing is relentlessly amplified by social media which is actually, rather scarily, controlled by a few men with little interest in anything but money.

You cannot hope to win any argument with anyone, or do anything but polarise, by othering people and assuming they are ‘bad’ until proved otherwise.[/quote]
Yes tone deaf is overused, in the context I used it it was appropriate. Why didn't you respond to anything else I said?

As I said, men are not being silenced, they are being respectfully asked to not immediately completely divert the conversation to be about themselves. Like a child who hasn't learnt to listen and not butt in. There is space for them in the discussion but straight away and without first addressing the more pressing issue is not it.

I'm not "assuming men are bad" I'm asking them to listen to the fact that so many of them behave badly towards women it is causing enormous issues they do not consider. They (or the one's more interested in discussing the NAM issue) are showing they have no interest in listening to that.

I explained it all in my previous comment, not a lot of point repeating myself.

It is decided that this is symptomatic of a broader problem.

Are you seriously suggesting that there isn’t a broader problem of the treatment of women in society? All those “small” things make a huge difference to whether you feel safe or not.

You cannot hope to win any argument with anyone, or do anything but polarise, by othering people and assuming they are ‘bad’ until proved otherwise.

You’re totally missing the point about why women act as if a man is not safe to be around. That has not come from nowhere. That is where the discussion should be starting from.

@Coffeeandcocopops

I think a lot of men are thinking about their behaviour from when they were young men going out for drinks, boys schools, holidays in Ibiza, stag nights etc. If it makes men and boys think about their behaviour And pick their mates up on it then that will be great.

This. And depressingly for many in continues as regular visits to Pornhub, lap dancing clubs (the cognitive dissonance of men who visit these places who have wife's/daughters/sisters) and forums like UK Punting.

@Samedaysameshit

As a man I agree that it is all men. Or at least it’s potentially All men, therefore from a female point of view it effectively is all men. I also believe that this will also always be true. How do we stop it happening? I don’t think it’s possible.

Same that's refreshing to hear.

There is actually another thread on Dadsnet running now discussing thoughts, it's been a good read.

But stuck around here too ... it's good to talk to other men about their perspective.

Out of interest some posters up thread have suggested things men can do ... I'd be interested in your thoughts on these?

@CallItLoneliness

People keep asking how many men is it: I posted a study earlier that shows that 6.4% of nonincarcerated men, i.e. slightly more than 1/20, will admit to rape if it is not called rape. Of those, 2/3 have committed more than one rape. Rape is a pretty serious crime; if we add in all the other shitty, violent things men do to women, I think we might be up to as many as one in three. Not all men, but far, far, far too many.

To the posters complaining that women treating 'any' man like that is treating every man like that: these issues are high stakes for women. If we are wrong and you're actually a good guy, you're offended. If we wrongly give you the benefit of the doubt, we die. How many of you would treat all women as safe if there was a reasonable chance they might rape or kill you, and if you had been anything other than ultra-cautious, you would be blamed for it?

Call sorry I missed that study but shit, that's quite frightening

men generally aren't even on the same page as us about what assault and aggression actually is.

///

I think there's definitely something in this.

@Whenthesunshines

This whole debate has become so toxic to both sexes, with zero interest in context or actually improving the relationship between the sexes.

This.
I wasn’t going to post but finally - a sensible comment.

I'll be honest my primary interest is my DD grows up without being cat called, groped, assaulted, up skirted or raped. That's the most important thing. Anything else positive is a bonus.

Anyone who has ever experienced anything bad of a similar ilk, no matter how small, joins the voice.

Maybe this is the crux of why you're struggling to see many people's viewpoint re the statistics. I strongly suspect the things you think of as 'small' are often things that make some women feel harassed, scared, frightened and vulnerable.

Men are being cancelled

*You cannot hope to win any argument with anyone, or do anything but polarise, by othering people and assuming they are ‘bad’ until proved otherwise.**

We’re not saying that any man is ‘bad’ until proved otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t say that to an individual man on here, that he’s ‘bad’ until he proves otherwise to me.

But how do we identify those men that really are ‘bad’? Genuine question. There clearly are a lot of men that are. They don’t have a tattoo on their forehead telling us that they were in prison for rape/child sexual abuse/DA in the past. Hence the need for Clare’s Law/Sarah’s Law.

And that’s just those who have been convicted, an awful a lot never are (my F never was).

Also, you have to understand that for a lot of women, their lived experience is that the majority of men are potentially going to hurt them or their children. So if they sound negative about men, and even suggest that men can’t be trusted, that’s scarcely to be wondered at, is it?

For me, I think men need to listen to what women are saying rather than just lecturing us that it’s ’not all men’. No it isn’t all men (we keep agreeing with you there), but it’s far too many for women to feel safe.

@tellmewhentheLangshiplandscoz

Exactly. My DD1 will be 12 this week and I hate to think of her going through all that now that she’s going through puberty.

What I notice in many of the posts by men who acknowledge the problem, is a resolute sense of defeatism and passivity (if one can be resolutely passive. One can certainly be resolutely defeatist and fatalistic). Samedaysameshit 's post, quoted just above, exemplifies this but is not the only example on the thread.

This reminds me of a common pattern of rhetoric about climate change; another problem that is bigger than any of us individually, yet which multiple individual actions can help address, through culture change that supports political change, more than through the tiny actions themselves.

The rhetoric is so familiar: 'It's happening but it's too big for my tiny contribution to mean anything'. Or, 'I don't believe it's real / caused by humans... oh, ok it is but it's already too far progressed for my tiny actions to make any difference.'

In reality, when cultural change happens, it usually happens fast. Things that were intractable elements of everybody's background normality, as outside our control as the weather, suddenly flip and go from normal to socially unacceptable within a generation. For example; drink driving, seatbelts, handguns (in the UK), smoking in public places, plastic bags, open homophobia.

Culture change happens when one of those unremarkable background elements suddenly comes to the fore, has a spotlight thrown upon it and everyone says 'how did we not notice that before?' I think Malcolm Gladwell has written about this phenomenon.

That's actually a very cheering perspective. It demonstrates that change can happen and that when it does, it's self-perpetuating.

Perhaps this is that spotlight moment for women's safety and freedom.

This does challenge the attitude of entrenched defeatism though. It says that actually, what you (men especially), do now, makes all the difference.

The first thing to do is to identify what the problem actually is. It isn't just sociopathic serial rapists. It is all the actions that make women feel unsafe and wary of men. Find out what those are, from the women who are perpetually attuned to noticing them, and you have a starting point.

@lottiegarbanzo

You’re so right. It’s been like that with regards to parents smacking children. I see this in debates on parenting forums. Even ten years ago, posters would defend the practice under it being ‘none of our business’ how other parents disciplined their children.

Now, anyone who dares to put forward this argument is shot down quickly, quite rightly.

It’s an extraordinary turnaround when you additionally think about the fact that in the 70s teachers used to regularly smack children in some schools and the cane was still in use.

Or to turn the last part of that around, how can you possibly know how many men are doing something (contributing to making women feel unsafe, curtailing their freedom), when you don't know what that something is ?

What I've noticed on discussions amongst men e.g. the Dadsnet one one here, when I read it a few days ago, is that posters are mostly thinking about the things other men do that make them feel unsafe and assuming it is the same for women. It isn't though.

Yes, smacking is another good example.

I'd like to think that, in ten years' time, all the men who are prevaricating now, will be falling over themselves to distance themselves from the archaic, skanky behaviour of 'those other men', and claiming that they never tolerated any of it, nor ever turned a blind eye.

The whole concept of ‘lived experience’, especially when used as a silencing tool, is contrary to the idea of being able to intelligently analyse and assimilate facts and opinions and come to an intelligent conclusion.

And yet in these discussions, so many men seem incapable of understanding what it feels like to grow to distrust half of the population because men repeatedly prove themselves to you to be untrustworthy. They seem incapable of understanding what it’s like to be exposed to constant low level sexual harassment and how wearing this is, or to understand the fear and damage caused by being assaulted by men you trusted previously.

So it seems that “lived experience” is pretty important here, because it seems those who haven’t experienced it simply do not understand. Just like white people shouldn’t talk over Black people about what racism is and say “not all white people are racist”.

It really pisses me off to see the blame for this situation passed off yet again to women. Ooh, those awful man-haters. I wasn’t born distrusting men. I learnt through bitter experience that I have no idea which men I can trust and which I can’t until they are in a situation to use their size and strength and my female socialisation against me.

If you’re angry that some women feel they can’t trust men, be angry with the men who made us feel this way.

We’re not saying that any man is ‘bad’ until proved otherwise. I certainly wouldn’t say that to an individual man on here, that he’s ‘bad’ until he proves otherwise to me.

Indeed not all men are bad but we will continue to regard them as such. How do they prove they aren't? They can't. How many here have been in abusive relationships? Were they abusive initially and yet you continued on?

Indeed not all men are bad but we will continue to regard them as such. How do they prove they aren't? They can't.

But more importantly, why is this the issue that concerns you most?

How many here have been in abusive relationships? Were they abusive initially and yet you continued on?

This looks very much like victim blaming.

Q: How can 'lived experience' be transformed into 'facts' so that incontrovertible evidence can be analysed rigorously?

A: By the police identifying misogyny as a hate crime and actively, busily encouraging women to report every little experience that leads to them feeling unsafe, to curtailing their own freedom, through fear as well as direct experience of male aggression. (Plus academic studies).

Is that a good use of police resources? If you think this is a real, life-limiting problem for millions of people, then perhaps yes. If you're not already aware that it is or might well be, then no. How very circular.

Change comes when people recognise a problem and say 'enough'.

It does not come about when people, intent on preserving the status quo, say 'where is the statistically rigorous evidence for this thing, that nobody charged with collecting rigorous statistics has been looking for?'

@PurpleDaisies

How many here have been in abusive relationships? Were they abusive initially and yet you continued on?

This looks very much like victim blaming.

Not really just pointing out that you may be in a good relationship with a good man but that can change. A reference to how do you know he's a good man, he may be but may not always be.

I doubt many would enter a relationship knowing he was abusive, why would you.