To feel hopeless about male violence

[brujarosada]

Everywhere I turn I see news stories where it's implicitly understood that a man harmed a woman. An obvious family annhilator? Definitely the husband. Woman disappears while out? Obviously a man.

I know that this is nothing new, but it feels so inevitable and hopeless. Women getting angry gets some attention sometimes (like with Sarah Everard). But there's no real change and toxic masculinity seems to be ever more celebrated - for example, there's currently a story in The Guardian about an influencer who is capturing the imagination of secondary school boys everywhere.

Am I wrong to feel so hopeless? Is there some sort of inspiring change that I am missing?

And it's also about time women took responsibility for bringing up boys that don't think violence is natural - rough play , gun play ... just a boys thing

That's parenting which falls as a whole to women

First rule of misogyny: women are responsible for what men do.

Ahh, so it’s all women’s fault men are violent?! Where has anyone said it’s ALL men by the way, can you point that out? And if women are so shit at parenting boys, why aren’t their fathers stepping up? Let me guess, that’s women’s fault too?

By the way, I notice you’re blaming ALL women because you didn’t carefully say SOME women. Tut tut hypocrite.

@midgetastic so men have no role to play in parenting?

It's just us women who let boys play violent games. No dads anywhere to lead by example of what a man should do / be?

I'd better go and tell my DH that... he didn't know he wasn't allowed to ban toy guns or violent games from our kids

Aren’t men also responsible for raising their sons then ??

I think women (and girls) have to stop accommodating men. Stop standing aside. Stop making ourselves smaller. Stop cooking for them and washing their fucking socks. Stop facilitating their lives.

If all women went on strike - stopped doing all the things that men expect us to do - maybe then at least a few more would listen.

Of course men ahve a role
But truthfully women have a greater role in average

And I don't care about blame

I care about fixing the problem

So explain why you’re blaming all women (because you didn’t say SOME women) and being an absolute hypocrite. How is that helpful in fixing this problem?

Absolutely. I've told my DH to never get involved now in these kinds of things. Not worth it. And I do know two men who were stabbed. One died and the other nearly died.

The idea that men who get harmed all are drug dealers or in fights is offensive. There's been loads of stories recently about men who were doing nothing wrong being murdered - there was the guy who got murdered over the electric scooter, or the banker who was killed with a punch while out and the guy who did it was just convicted of manslaughter while the judge went on about his 'good character'. I can remember another one where the guy was just in a supermarket queue and was attacked.

I have a friend who was stabbed for his phone and nearly died. He was just walking home after a night out.
I would feel just as nervous for my son when he's a teenager wandering about at night in town as for my daughter.

Ummm …. Hate to break it to you, but it’s actually generally worse outside of the UK. I guess maybe it’s better in Scandinavia, for now.

And to be clear

Im not saying it "womens" fault any more than mens

I am saying we all have a role and a part to play and just foisting the problem onto men is a sure fire way not to solve it

I've found having daughters has really opened my eyes to just how repulsive so many men are. My daughters are in their 20's and it's opened my eyes to how shite so many men are. It's made me look back on my life and realise how much shite Ive put up with by men.
I'll call people out on it now where I might have overlooked it in the past.

I've worked in traditionally male workplaces and liked the people I worked with but looking back there was still a lot of sexism and unacceptable behaviour.

I think my sons are ok. I've never ever heard them speak in a derogatory or sexist way about a women. My husband is in his 60's and would never be creepy or aggressive but can be 'accidentally' sexist - he's a work in progress. He tries though 🫤

Didn’t say that effect was unique to women. But 70% of missing persons were found within 24 hours (dead or alive I guess), so that figure is really misleading.

Tbh it seems that family violence is underplayed while stranger violence overplayed.

But then, I guess the rest of us feel safer as long as the violence is ‘isolated’ to the family (ie rest of us will be personally unaffected)

I've lived elsewhere and I grew up in a different country too. So I disagree with it based on my personal experience. It depends which country you are comparing with. Certainly some are worse, but THIS is not the norm.

Men do need to start calling out other men, and the adverts on the TV recently are a step in the right direction.

Also, there is a huge percentage of boys being brought up in single parent households by predominantly mothers. These mothers will be influencing their sons. The levels should start to go down naturally.

Back in the real world, we know realistically it won't happen. These boys, without good male role models, will become angry young men. Mental health, as often discussed here, is through the floor for many.
People do not have personality transplants. Every young man I've known who ended up in court for offences you could predict from adolescence and earlier.

I get that, but genuine question here, if they never show that side to me (presumably because they know I’d object) then I don’t know they do that. There’s nothing to call out. I don’t know what I can do about those people.

To the poster who said that it’s probably better than it used to be, I don’t think it is. There was always domestic violence and it was harder to get out of that but street harassment seems to be worse if anything.

I have lived abroad as well and in developing countries so I guess my personal experience clashes with yours. Although in a few, it’s technically safer but more misogynistic, iyswim

YANBU. I've just been listening to a Woman's Hour discussion on Radio 4, about the banning of the song Delilah by the Welsh Rugby Union, and the fact that some pubs chose to play it on a loop on Saturday as a reaction against the ban. They had a young female journalist minimising the entire issue of violence against women, saying that the more women protest about things like this the sillier it makes us look. 'Women need to prove they're just as rough and tough as men to be equal' she said, or something similarly dangerous and misguided, and mentioned an old Irish folk song about killing a baby as being on a par. Totally failing to understand the difference between a folk ballad sung by a lone voice and a song gleefully belted out by 50 000 lairy men in a volatile, drink-fuelled environment which is already hostile to women.

I share your despair and fear that while porn is so endemic we won't be able to solve the problem of male violence, because porn dehumanises women.

There’s isn’t one.
I know that. It’s awful, I know.

what should I, specifically, do about “male behaviour “? I don’t do it, I don’t see it (I know full well it happens though), I don’t have friends or family who do it.

im vocally against it but I find so is everyone I know. I bring up my son with the same beliefs. I’m an ally here.

the only but I’m a bit uncomfortable with is being told I need to deal with this. It’s not me doing it, it’s men I have connection with, or influence over, much as I could try

What an idiot - so her solution is that we start murdering men in similar numbers to show we’re just as tough then!

*NOT men I have a connection with!

Or the vast majority of domestic violence
I've always doubted those stats. It sounds like clear nonsense to me.

Certainly from my observations you generally don't get friendship groups where there is a massive divergence in acceptable and unacceptable behaviours. The blokes who make sexists jokes, shout at women joggers from car windows or think it is acceptable to be controlling abusive shits generally hang out with similar minded men. I don't have to 'police' my male friends behaviour because I don't hang out with arseholes who abuse or belittle women.

Sadly, as has been alluded to already, a man having a polite quiet word or stepping in to police the behaviour or some dickhead they don't know rarely results in positive outcomes as the situation invariably escalates via the 'what the fuck are you going to do about it' routine.

Where are you thinking of going? Saudi? Brazil? Australia ?

Depends which part of ‘Scandinavia’.