To think it is actually mostly men?

[Nolpp]

Maybe I didn’t get the memo in the past but in the last year or so I’ve been so bitterly disappointed by make behaviour. I look back and wonder if it was always this way but I’m only just noticing. I think part of it is I recently became a single parent and so I’ve had more dealings with men than I would usually, as I’ve had to speak to insurance companies, take car for MOT etc. Obviously I did some of these things before and I know women also work in these places but overall I am having more interaction with men.

Examples…

Driving. Whenever a car is right up behind me it is ALWAYS a man driving. I drive at the speed limit, not under, so presumably they think speed limits don’t apply to them.

I recently donated to a sponsorship for cancer research, an old school friend, quite literally not spoken in over two decades. He then messaged me to thank me for the donation and followed it up with a question about sex and positions he can do after his surgery. Why would anyone think that’s ok?

A colleague, well respected in his industry, tells me when drunk on a night out that he wishes all women conformed to the way of the 50s and stayed at home. He wasn’t joking.

In Sainsbury’s a week ago, a man grabbed my arse in a queue, I was shocked and stepped to one side, didn’t know what to do and said get the fuck away from me. I was next up for the till and the man behind the till said he does it to everyone !!! What the actual fuck? He did follow up to say they had tried to ban him from the shop. I cried in the car afterwards, it was awful.

Waiting for the baby changing unit in Mc Donnalds. A man eventually emerges, mutters sorry but he couldn’t wait, and looked sheepish. He wasn’t unwell, he was downing a Mc flurry when I came out.

Around 7 years ago I used to date someone who had recently got a job as a Judge in the family courts. He was very young to have got this job and in part it was to do with his father being a judge in the same court. Anyway one day we were talking about how money is worked out in a divorce and he said ‘it’s disgusting, women expect to be paid out after staying at home doing nothing with kids for fifteen years, so rather than getting a job of their own they steal the x husband’s pension.’ I am ashamed to say I laughed and agreed with him. I had a good job with no interest in giving it up so I felt I was compatible with this man who I now see was a bit of a monster.

I honestly feel like men make up the bulk of shit behaviour. It probably sounds dramatic but I actually feel sad about it, genuinely sad. And embarrassed that it’s taken me until this late in life to see it.

Yes, I know it’s not all men.

Rant over.

I think you are. You thought you'd have a little bit of fun throwing in your racism parallel to ruffle up the bien-pensant feminists, it's fallen flat and now you're actually being asked to apply yourself to some thinking it's all got suddenly boring, am I right?

Please do not assume that your son will "turn" from being empathetic and lovely. There are many, many adult men who remain decent human beings, although there are far too many who are not.

I don't know the solution to there being too many unpleasant men in the world, but I'm sure that assuming lovely boys will grow into men who are lacking in empathy is not part of it. Have high expectations for your boy, and hold him to the same standards you would his sister.

some women gave me evils once in the office

Women are capable of a lot more than that. Some women can only take another woman down so they do this instead.

A PP shut me down by telling me I had a chip on my shoulder, sighing, quoting QED & telling me to jeez, get a grip. (I noticed I'm not the only woman she has posted this too). I'm sure this woman isn't pleasant in real life. I had a woman boss who was an absolute bitch. These woman may not be violent but they are doing their very best to bully other women.

True.
Someone on this thread also mentioned that it’s not only the violent acts some men commit that harm women, but also the everyday microaggressions, likening them to death by a thousand cuts.
If that’s the case, then it should surely also apply to microaggressions coming from women?

Nothing I said has fallen flat at all, though it is fun seeing people tie themselves in knots trying to justify their bigotry.

Take you for example. Your problem is that you think saying something makes it true.

As such, together we have learned that black=poor, and poor people disproportionately do rapey/stabby things because they're poor, and that women making a choice means that the system is at fault.

Tell me, can women/Poors/POC/etc. ever be accountable for anything in your world?

I had a female boss in one job who was, literally, a psychopath. She was a crazy, erratic bully and she psychologically abused her staff on a daily basis. She was awful and she harmed me.

I am well aware women are not all sunshine and roses. But the simple stats speak for themselves, men as a category are an existential threat to women as a category in a way that other women simply are not. I used to wake up anxious and weepy at the thought of going back to work every morning when I was in that job. But that feeling, over months and months, was NOTHING compared to the absolute terror I experienced when once on a night out a drunk man took against me and was up in my face threatening to 'fucking kill me'. He was huge, furious and out of control. I could do literally nothing to protect myself. If he had chosen to, he could have done exactly what he said. And given the rates of women dying at the hands of men, it was no idle threat.

I could leave the job and get another one; and I did. But there is no different world I can move to where I am not at risk of male violence.

I'm not in any knots. I'm talking statistics. Poverty correlates with violence, statistically. Race correlates to poverty, statistically. These are simple facts. They do not mean 'black people are rapey' or whatever bullshit you are trying to make out I've said. You are the one who seems completely unable to understand that a statistical likelihood is not the universal case, and a potential contributing cause/reason is not an excuse or a justification. You are the one who is struggling to see things empirically, with a view to learning, understanding, and improving the situation in general.

Of course women, poor people, and people of colour can be accountable for their actions. That doesn't mean it is not helpful for us to consider the potential underlying causes of their actions. It's a bit like if someone drops dead and your only response is 'oh well what does it matter, they're dead now'. Well yes obviously. But maybe if we can find out why - why them? why now? why like that? - we might be able to use that information so fewer people suddenly drop dead.

Are you just utterly incurious about why things are the way they are?

@herewegoroundthebastardbush I totally understand this. However, these women need to look at themselves and realise their behaviour is wrong too.

I long ago came to the conclusion that if my DH dies before me, there will never be another man in my life other than my DS and neighbours. Don't want to ever share my life with a male again and I say that even though my DH has been the most wonderful partner in life.

So there's a whole other conversation to be had about that surely. It doesn't need to happen in the conversation about male violence and rape.

The reason I spoke about it on here is because there are a few women on here who are quick to act like this. I will shut up now (as I've been told by yet another woman) and let you get on with your thread. I won't be starting a thread about it though as I'm older enough to just laugh at their ignorance in their behaviour.

As you were.

I'm not telling you to shut up. This kind of overreaction really isn't helpful at all. I'm just saying, you're talking apples and oranges here.

Just reading about the 15 year old stabbed by a 17 year old male after she rejected his advances.

Men are afraid women will laugh at them.
Women are afraid men will kill them.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush I think you're going to see the end of a rainbow, and pot of gold, in a field with a unicorn munching on an Elixir of Eternal Youth before you get a reasonable response from Glowie shrug

Driving. Whenever a car is right up behind me it is ALWAYS a man driving. I drive at the speed limit, not under, so presumably they think speed limits don’t apply to them. 🙄

Very likely. I just get irritated by this sort of superficially intelligent but fundamentally vacuous internet bloke, who swans onto a discussion and throws a few dead cats around but refuses to actually engage properly with anything. Classic pigeon on the chess board, they're ten a penny on the internet and I really don't know why I bother 😆. But it always gets my dander up and I feel the need to try and force them to actually think about the subject in hand instead of peacock all over the place... never works and I waste my time, but hey ho.

i would imagine she just had to listen to what men said about her in public for having the cheek of being a intelligent woman, with an opinion that didn't tow the line. And to make matters worse she dared to express all of this without even having the decency of making herself look overly pleasing or fuc*able to appease them in some way.

We all do it sometimes, I have a go myself occasionally. I'm an optimist, possibly border line delusional at times shrug

This is a thread about men being more likely to do certain bad things, and by extension, why it's reasonable for women to distrust/disassociate with them. Your comments imply that you are on the side of that, and nobody was offering any 'underlying causes'.

To quote you: "men as a category are an existential threat to women as a category"

Ignoring that men are far more likely to be assaulted/killed by a man than women are, I wanted to prod that reasoning and see if the same can be true for other groups who are more likely to do certain things than others.

It turns out that in the face of that prospect, reasons start appearing where they did not appear before.

I find this very interesting, and I did actually ask you why poors are more likely to commit sex crimes. I can buy theft and murder, but as you said, sex offences are a completely different crime.

The numbers imply (and this isn't me saying it btw) that on that score you're safer in a room with 2 white blokes than a room with 1 black bloke.

So, given that "statistical likelihood is not the universal case", is it reasonable for people to want to disassociate with other people based on probability?

Yep. I’d argue against NAMALT too. Almost every “decent” man I know well is actually “like that”. They’re outwardly supportive and thoughtful husbands and conscientious fathers with responsible, high-earning jobs, but every one of them has done something wrong in the pursuit of sex - cheated/paid for sex/had emotional affairs or whatever. And the rest probably have and have just avoided detection so far. Men disgust me.

Just so you know, that's what you call a straw man argument.

You're almost always safer in a room with two men than one, as social convention means that neither will assault you while the other man is present. Situation changes on context I suppose, especially if drink or drugs have been taken by any party, as there are circumstances where men will band together against a woman they perceive to be vulnerable in some way.

It's reasonable for anyone to disassociate themselves from anyone who is making them feel unsafe. What may not be reasonable is their reasons for feeling unsafe.

For me, as an individual woman, re sexual violence (or violence in general), what's dangerous to me about a white man or a black man is that he's a man. His skin colour isn't relevant to how he can hurt me. Any given black man may be, statistically, more likely to hurt me than any given white man, but not so significantly as to override the more significant danger of him being a man vs being a woman. A poor man may be more likely to hurt me than a rich man, but any man is more likely to hurt me than any woman is. So, for preference, I would prefer to be alone in the house with a female tradesperson (for example). I like my HCPs to be female, where I am given the choice. If I choose a childminder for my kids, I wouldn't consider having a male look after them, white or not.

Race is not a significant enough factor to really have a bearing on risk of violence, compared to sex. The differences are not significant enough, and can be confounded by other factors e.g. socioeconomic group.

Well no you weren't rude like other posters.

I think why these threads get people's back up is because there are posters that are genuinely discussing how there are are more violent men than woman etc but then you get the posters that say - I never talk to any men because every single man is scum and a potential rapist.

I should just walk away from these threads because I obviously know this isn't true.

The Nigel comeback is becoming very old and not funny. It's just another way for a woman to put down another woman.

Yes, how dare someone challenge the anti-male rhetoric of MN! Where I live there are many lanes with passing places and in 14 years the vast majority of problems where someone doesn't bother to use the passing places, demanding that everyone should give way to them, have been women, especially if the other driver is male!

Men disgust me

All of them?