To think why are men still shit?

[Momsitter]

Off the back of another thread I just read...

still thread after thread of abusive men. Calling their wives "fat fucks". Seeing hookers. Cheating. Cocklodging. Financial, physical, emotional abuse.
Still women raising them, marrying them, having 3 kids with them.

We've got better rhetoric and "feminism" in the media and arts, better representation in the workplace and social awareness but really fuck all is changing in relationships, is it? Why is that? What are we missing?

I’ve heard women say this. Both on here and in real life.

The short version is that most women would rather be with a shit man than be alone.

Jesus, victim blaming by stealth. I'm amazed this comment even got accolades!

CALLI0PE Preach! I am so sick of the narrative by women about women, "She married the shit and stayed with him and that's why there are so many bad men." I'm actually gobsmacked that women even think this way. I really hope that mentality belongs to a much older generation because at least then it can be reasoned that they come from a time when women were blamed for everything. Oh wait... we still are? Seems to be the case. Goddammit, we have MILES to go.

Are we our brothers' keepers?

Exactly this 👏👏👏

Yes this. I have several friends in awful awful marriages. One in particular springs to mind, she is retired now but had an excellent career in the city in London, earnt a small fortune and is a formidable person. Has no worries financially and could easily leave, sell the house and buy a decent detached property for herself.

Her husband is a waste of space alcoholic, has nearly burnt their house down (amongst other horrific instances), they have screaming rows, totally toxic behaviour, whenever I say to leave her answer is simple "I don't want to be on my own".

So she would prefer an evening of screaming abuse at each other with him stumbling around pissed out of his head than being alone. Each to their own I suppose!

So she would prefer an evening of screaming abuse at each other with him stumbling around pissed out of his head than being alone.

I wonder if some women like this have a degree of the sunk costs fallacy going on. They might also not want to admit what a terrible relationship it is, and possibly how much time they wasted and what a huge mistake it was, by ending it.

I guess if whatever you get out of the relationship makes it worth it to you then that's your business but God I hate it when it gets inflicted on children.

Lets remember abuse is not always physical. Abuse is not always overt. You have no idea what is happening behind closed doors. I can also guarantee you that some of the men you know or have known who you think are 'good men', when they get home and they are alone with their wives are not good men at all.

Of course we don't know what happens behind closed doors. It is annoying though when women say that you don't know you're own DH & DS properly when you've lived with them for 20 years as if you're some naive unintelligent person.

My first boyfriend was abusive and the second one showed signs of male chauvinism which is why it didn't last with either of them. My DH is none of these things.

I don't think it is healthy for a woman to decide all men are not nice people.

Badburyrings Yeah but this is being said in response to 'this is why men are still shit'. So by saying The short version is that most women would rather be with a shit man than be alone, the woman is being blamed for men's shit behaviour. And that's wholly unfair and a totally inaccurate reason.

Your friend's husband is an abusive alcoholic bastard. His wife has stayed with him. She doesn't want to be alone. I think her choice is a bad one. It very obviously is because she's only harming herself. So, judge her choice to stay, but she is not why he's a waste of space. Even if she's what a person might call an enabler, her staying with him is not the reason he's a total assclown. If he were all alone tomorrow, without her in his life, guess what he would still be? A total assclown. Because that is what he is, not what she made him.

Ladies, give your heads a collective wobble!

Nobody is saying his behaviour is her fault. He is what he is. It’s her choice to stay with him that is being judged.

That is textbook co-dependency. I wonder if she unconsciously sought out a useless person, some people (both men and women) have a saviour complex. If she was used to a very challenging environment, she possibly would always gravitate towards a challenge. Who knows?

Exactly. Plus some of these women then go on to another bad relationship!

Exactly. What I was trying to say is that there is someone financially secure, a strong and I thought independent woman. She does everything and is well in control of her finances etc. Her treatment of him is as equally toxic as his. She screams at him and call him all sorts of things when he is drinking, it sounds absolutely awful and has been going on for years.

I struggle to discuss it with her anymore because if it were me I would have left years ago, but she will sit opposite me and when I challenge her to why she won't leave literally her answer is "I don't want to be alone". Obviously, there must be an awful lot more going on behind the scenes but personally, I could not live like that, I would rather be on my own.

When they met he was far from useless. He is a highly intelligent person. Without saying his job there a few who can do it and he would have been paid upwards of £250k easily..

It transpires though that the jolly lunchtime drinking club that was so prevalent back in the 90's and early 2000's in the city perhaps hid the fact he had a drinking problem. It has been since they retired he started drinking from dawn to dusk and doing things that have put both their lives at risk. His behaviour has gone from bad to worse, even when he doesn't drink (he took a year off) the relationship is toxic. I cannot understand why she stays.

It would be sexism if women were murdering their male partners at 3 every week, just like men do. But women don't, so no it's not sexist!

Some men are shit, some aren’t. The very worst are worse than anyone.

I think the qualities of toxic men can sometimes overlap with the qualities of men who are good protectors and providers. Women are more likely to be attracted to a bastard than to a wet blanket.

I'm sorry you're in such an awful situation. But is it really worth say 18 years or more of crap from twat of a man? Wouldn't not seeing your kids for a day or two every fortnight be worth it? If he's really that much of a shit would he even keep up contact anyway?

I see what you mean- I used to say I dressed for other women. Often you get as many comments on your outfit from women and I love fashion.

dont get me wrong, I didn’t think I’d had a bad day if I didn’t get male attention.

its more of a general cultural thing that all of society ( men and women) pay attention to how women look. And I think that’s because a bigger proportion of our ‘value’ is linked to our attractiveness. And that’s a patriarchal society causing it.

the result is that women tend to place more value ( probably unconsciously) on how we look than men do. Just look at how better dressed women are in general.

A lot of couples enjoy the toxicity, they don't want a healthy relationship.

@DetOliviaBenson "
It would be sexism if women were murdering their male partners at 3 every week, just like men do. But women don't, so no it's not sexist!"

Yep. This.

On a thread where we are supposed to be discussing the reasons for male bad behaviour you need to jump at the opportunity to judge a woman's choices instead? Why is it so uncomfortable to discuss male abusers that we can't have one thread where we focus on their behaviour, without using women's behaviour as a smokescreen and diversion?

5128gap I understand your point but if women didn't put up with/weren't conditioned to put up with - shit behaviour from men, then men's behaviour would be entirely irrelevant as would the reasons for it. It would just cease to matter.

Are you interested in being right, or in stopping abuse? If the latter, then it is surely more important to empower women to spot bad signals and not enable bad behaviour, than it is to wonder why some men are abusive. Who cares why? Just leave them to it, if nobody was in a relationship with them they would have nobody to abuse.

It all links though. In the most traditionally sex8st countries, women are the most sexist to their daughters. Mothers train their daughters to be pleasing and bend with the wind so that they will survive in an older patriarchy than the one we're in now. Women used to need to be chosen. They could scare off husbands by being assertive. And half of this is unconscious.
I think women with low self esteem want their daughters to survive in patriarchy by being to trouble and having no needs.

I care about stopping abuse, not being right, but luckily they're not mutually exclusive.

Its important to empower women. Your comments won't achieve that though. There's a lot of information on empowering women if you're genuinely interested in that. You won't find shaming them for their poor choices and telling them how much better your life is to be considered helpful though.
I do also think its important to understand abuse as the more we understand the greater our ability to protect not only ourselves but more vulnerable women, young women, women with disabilities or disadvantage that make them easier targets, and less able to escape. Because its not actually true that when women leave their abusers they have no one to abuse. It just means they move on to abuse another more vulnerable woman.

I once watched Camilla Paglia talking about how she got flack for saying young women shouldn’t go out and get shitfaced (I think, this was years ago) because they put themselves at risk. And I felt really uncomfortable with it because it felt like it was putting the burden of responsibility on women. But then I thought yeah, the world is an unsafe place for women, you can’t trust men to not harm women so you have to teach women how to avoid harm.

Yes there is other work to do but that is the work of generations. We can as a society strengthen legislation around domestic abuse we can insist on wider sanctions on abusers, we can campaign about family courts that ignore abuse of mothers to the detriment of children etc etc. But in the here and now what helps women with shit men from the low level shitness to the actually dangerous shitness is to be told “you don’t have to put up with that it”. No idea what to do about people who are addicted to dysfunction.

Your first paragraph is exactly what I meant earlier when I said that it is more important to be safe than right. Yes, obviously, nobody should abuse a drunk woman. However, the sad fact is that there are unsafe people out there (mostly men, although some women also commit assault as well as mugging etc) so it is smart to be aware of your surroundings (advice I would give to everybody, not just women)