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.

No and it's not just the men.

@Natalya123
Do you have links saved close by titled ”women do it too” and ”actually men are the one’s suffering because…” just for occasions and threads like these?

Because wow, do you have a lot of them, for every concern anyone has.
You seem unusual fixated on the wrong doings of women.
And to use to excuse horrible male behaviour is even more odd.

I’m going to test it actually:
I’m going to say that many women have breast cancer, are you now gonna say ”actually, men can have it too and here’s why that is worse and you are mean to men”?

I like Jimmy Carr.

Ok, this will probs be my last post on this topic as I've pretty much said everything I have to say and I don't really enjoy endless tit for tat.

My main views are as follows.

• I don't think you can tar a whole demographic on the actions of a minority of them. And people are often very inconsistent on it. For example, whilst slightly more men commit DA, and the ones that do tend to cause more physical harm, there are undoubtedly many more women perpetrating general domestic abuse than there are men killing women. So why isn't this seen as a massive issue or discussed at all by feminists? The fact that 'men do it more' is no excuse.
• I don't think it'd be deemed acceptable to speak the same way about any other demographic. You could argue that you hate black people for committing more crime, or Muslims and asylum seekers for misogyny and sexual abuse but neither would be deemed acceptable. Posters sometimes say 'but it's still the men' but we're not obliged to only split statistics by sex, we can choose race instead. And even if we stick to men, imagine if somebody had written an article titled 'I hate black men' rather than just 'I hate men'. It'd have been deemed unacceptable.
• I also just think that there are a lot of toxic people out there that like spitting venom. To me, it's like the people that bang on about 'Jonny Forriner taking all the jobs'. They're not really interested in the job market or finding a solution so much as having a rant. One look in AIBU will show how many women love being nasty so is it really a controversial concept to suggest that there are plenty of sexists amongst the racists/classists and that sexism sometimes works both ways?
• I think women are much more violent than feminists like to admit and there are reams of studies showing this. Studies covering dozens of nations and tens of thousands of participants. However, people usually only use government/police statistics which are potentially skewed as men are known to underreport and because a woman that, punches a man will often get away with it - look at all the social studies where people step in to help the women but laugh and film it on their phones when men get abused. I'll post some studies from the last thread if I can find them as they were quite interesting.

The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly similar rates as men has been termed "gender symmetry". The earliest empirical evidence of gender symmetry was presented in the 1975 U.S. National Family Violence Survey carried out by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles on a nationally representative sample of 2,146 "intact families". The survey found 11.6% of women and 12% of men had experienced some kind of intimate partner violence in the last twelve months, also 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" intimate partner violence.

Since 1975, numerous other empirical studies have found evidence of gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. For example, in the United States, the National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 found 18.4% of men and 17.4% of women had experienced minor intimate partner violence, and 5.5% of men and 6.5% of women had experienced severe intimate partner violence.[48][49]

In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" found that in the twelve months prior to the survey, 4.2% of both men and woman between the ages of 16 and 59 had been assaulted by an intimate.[50]

The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 found that from 1994 to 1999, 4% of men and 4% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 22% of men and 28% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 7% of men and 8% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[35]

The 2005 Canadian General Social Survey, looking at the years 1999–2004 found similar data; 4% of men and 3% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 16% of men and 21% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 6% of men and 7% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[36]

The 1975 National Family Violence Survey found that 27.7% of intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by men alone, 22.7% by women alone and 49.5% were bidirectional. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, resulting in almost identical data.[52]

The 1985 National Family Violence Survey found 25.9% of IPV cases perpetrated by men alone, 25.5% by women alone, and 48.6% were bidirectional.[53]

A study conducted in 2007 by Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesse Haileyesus, Monica Swahn, and Linda S. Saltzman, of 11,370 heterosexual U.S. adults aged 18 to 28 found that 24% of all relationships had some violence. Of those relationships, 49.7% of them had reciprocal violence. In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

In 1997, Philip W. Cook conducted a study of 55,000 members of the United States Armed Forces, finding bidirectionality in 60-64% of intimate partner violence cases, as reported by both men and women.[55]

The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 49.7% of intimate partner violence cases were reciprocal and 50.3% were non-reciprocal. When data provided by men only was analyzed, 46.9% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 53.1% as non-reciprocal. When data provided by women only was analyzed, 51.3% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 49.7% as non-reciprocal. The overall data showed 70.7% of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by women only (74.9% when reported by men; 67.7% when reported by women) and 29.3% were perpetrated by men only (25.1% when reported by men; 32.3% when reported by women).[56]

The 2006 thirty-two nation International Dating Violence Study "revealed an overwhelming body of evidence that bidirectional violence is the predominant pattern of perpetration; and this ... indicates that the etiology of ipv is mostly parallel for men and women". The survey found for "any physical violence", a rate of 31.2%, of which 68.6% was bidirectional, 9.9% was perpetrated by men only, and 21.4% by women only. For severe assault, a rate of 10.8% was found, of which 54.8% was bidirectional, 15.7% perpetrated by men only, and 29.4% by women only.[57]

In 2000, John Archer conducted a meta-analysis of eighty-two IPV studies. He found that "women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women."[58] By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice finds that women make up 84% of spouse abuse victims and 86% of victims of abuse by a boyfriend or girlfriend.[59]

From 2010 to 2012, scholars of domestic violence from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. assembled The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge, a research database covering 1700 peer-reviewed studies, the largest of its kind. Among its findings:[63]

• More women (23%) than men (19.3%) have been assaulted at least once in their lifetime.
• Rates of female-perpetrated violence are higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%).
• Male and female IPV are perpetrated from similar motives.
• Studies comparing men and women in the power/control motive have mixed results overall.

I also feel that 'not all men' has become a similar pretext to 'I'm not racist but...'

I feel like you've said "This will be my last post" to avoid dealing with the steaming pile of horse poo you have just written:

1. domestic abuse is a gendered crime - the vast majority of offenders are men, the vast majority of victims are women.
   I can't be arsed to type out the stats but here is some analysis.
   https://www.womensaid.org.uk/information-support/what-is-domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-is-a-gendered-crime/
   https://kareningalasmith.com/2013/04/29/this-thing-about-male-victims/

2. No one has said they hate men. Pointing out that men are the perpetrators of most crime etc is factual, not "hate". Women have every right to choose who they engage with, if they choose not to engage with men, it doesn't mean they hate them

3. in my opinion, the only people on this thread who are not engaging with solving the problem and "spitting venom" are posters like you who are refusing to acknowledge that male behaviour towards women needs to change, and calling people haters.

4,) see point 2. There is no evidence women are violent in any way to the scale men are. You might want to feel that violence isn't a gendered problem - doesn't make it true.

No one has said they hate men.

You may want to reread the thread.

I've just posted loads of studies with findings that women perpetrate nearly as much DV as men, and that when only one partner is violent it's usually the woman.

They were largely ignored in the thread I pinched them from and it seems it will be the same in this thread. The question is why are people so quick to overlook the high levels of female perpetrated violence and ignore that in the majority of cases the violence is bi-directional?

I think it's also fairly obvious why the significantly weaker person is more likely to get injured when two people go at it, which is what the stats show. The problem is that it gets to that stage in the first place.

It's also unsurprising that a charity that prioritises women will prioritise women. Karen Ingala Smith just proves my point as she mentions the huge discrepancy between independent studies and crime stats.

When the body of evidence is so large I don't think it can be dismissed, and on another note are we suddenly trusting the police? It didn't seem that way a few pages back.

Men don't tend to report violence as much as women and I certainly remember that when my mate was getting beaten up regularly the police didn't do much. Well, not until he finally fought back and pushed her over after she came at him with a frying pan. Suddenly they were very interested in taking a statement.

Recent studies have found that if you ask women whether they've ever hit their partner you get a much higher figure than if you ask the men. This would suggest that either men are underreporting or that, the women are lying (but why would they lie and deliberately make themselves look bad?).

The difference in figures is just too great to be explained away by your examples. Why does the truth bother you so much? It’s plain as day.

You haven't posted the links, but in general, studies of "IPV" include at verbal abuse and self reports. Digging deeper usually shows that men usually report IPV when the police are called out to deal with them for violence, or when they are in family court proceedings and may lose access to their children because of their violence.

The undeniable statistics are how many people of each gender are

There are some consistent hallmarks of MRAs/anti-feminists:

1. assuming women talking about male violence are engaged in "competitive victimhood"
2. claiming misandry and that people are mam haters
3. cherry picking obscure statistics that support their arguments

Women don't need to engage in any of this to demonstrate male violence is a huge issue for society.

I should have thought it is obvious that gangs are a working-class problem. Middle-class people rarely get involved with gangs. Some people might want to say that there is an ethnic dimension to it too but I don't want to go there.

If you decide that gangs are a problem of poverty then you can do something about it. Better housing, better benefits, better access to good quality jobs and better mental health care will reduce gang related violence.

Many women and teenage girls carry dangerous weapons for men and teenage boys.

Every place I’ve ever worked every female friend I’ve ever had. We’ve all experienced sexual assault on some level, be it low level groping to being raped.

when I worked in an office of three women all of our first sexual encounter had been of rape.

no none of reported it.

I once read a female police officer saying in an interview she wouldn’t report it if she was raped as the process of reporting it and going through court if utterly horrific.

I’m wary of all men.

@ElonGates666

I agree. Gang related violence and belonging to gangs is a working class problem. These days it has also taken on an ethnic dimension but there were gangs in the 1960's notably in deprived areas of London and Glasgow which were exclusively white and overwhelmingly male which terrorised local communities. There was a very famous gun and knife amnesty during that time fronted by a well known singer. Poverty leads to crime and until the root issues are addressed then things won't improve, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

However since this thread was set up to discuss male violence in all its forms rather than sociology, I thought it worth noting that gang violence is mostly attributable to men and boys. There are daily stabbings in the capital and they are all perpetrated by males and it is men in the main part that turn to violence when faced with poverty and deprivation. I think that's a valid contribution to a discussion about male violence.

Was your DH a nice man?

All these arguments omit something that law looks at when violence is inflicted.

That is harm, actual or intended. The strength disparity between men and women is huge. It is this disparity that is important. Not only are men more violent than women but the harm they do, and their knowledge that they are much stronger is what society had to consider. Parity of violent conduct does not exist between men and women. And the harm inflicted, which is done from strength is greater. Men are well aware of this difference, and so when they use their strength against s biologically weaker party, women or child, they receive greater punishment.

@PaulaZackMayo

We were married for 27 years and I thought he was my best friend. We were so comfortable in each other's company, we talked a lot and laughed at lot. We shared the same politics and (more or less) the same views on life in general. We even worked together running our own business. We had each other's backs. He was more interested in growing cabbages than eyeing up women and he was definitely not "the sort" to watch porn. Besides, we were together almost all the time. He was the absolute, 22 carat, all singing all dancing epitome of "not my Dave". He was a solid, lovely, down to earth bloke. Then one day he had a rare day off because of a nasty cold and I came home unexpectedly early. He didn't hear me open the front door because he was talking (I thought) on the phone. He was in fact talking on his computer to a woman in a chat room. I stood silently and listened for a while and heard what he was saying to her and she to him. I felt physically sick. My knees gave way, my head spun and at that moment everything I thought was real about my life and the world as a whole imploded.

How terribly heartbreaking for you.

Explains why you would not trust any man again.

@PaulaZackMayo

Thank you for your kind words, I really do appreciate them. If you had known my husband and had seen our happy and normal life together, you would not in a million years think he would do such a thing. Honestly, I now believe that if he could, anyone could.

The evidence you posted is eye opening, and fascinating and comprehensive. However it doesn't really surprise me, as it's what I notice anecdotally in my life, amongst stories from friends family and what I've witnessed. Most violence in relationships is two way, and actually men are far less likely in my experience to hit out in a relationship as it's considered completely unacceptable, practically social suicide, whereas it's not unacceptable in reverse.
I recognise there is huge variation across cultures but it fits with my experience.
People will never acknowledge this evidence though as it's not what they want to hear.

This is heartbreaking, I am so sorry this happened to you.

@Datanerd

Thank you so much. It was 8 years ago now. It affected my son deeply too but we have rebuilt. I thought we'd be together until the end but I've read so much online now that I realise my situation is sadly far from uncommon.

If you posted links to the original studies so people could read them themselves then it might hold more water.

Yep you're right... you only need to look at the percentage of male serial killers vs female serial killers to know that on the whole, men are more predisposed to violence. The same goes for rape, sexual assault, burglary, grand theft auto, arson, terrorism etc...

@Natalya123

Two women a week are killed by their current or former partners. The latter two words are important here, because if they are former partners they are not living under the same roof as the woman and not being subjected to violence within a shared household.