To be so fucking angry. How many more women and children must die?

[Kianai]

I'd almost become numb to it, with all the news so far this year.

Murder after murder of women and their children. Noone ever seeming to link the common denominator. NAMALT.

This latest one today, I feel like something is beginning to snap inside me. Three babies and a young woman dead, because of a fucking man. Again. And again.

news.sky.com/story/police-launch-murder-investigation-after-woman-and-three-children-die-in-house-fire-in-bradford-13200678

Two reasons.

1. Because people (incels?) come on here and say NAMALT
2. Because certain other mumsnetters can't ignore this - they have to argue, run their mouths and try and have the last word. This keeps going throughout the whole thread, just derailing it.

Bit harsh!

But I do feel that some women become so focused on it that they lose perspective. I don't know anyone that's been murdered and it's quite rare that I read about it because I don't go out my way looking for it.

You'd probably find ten stories about men doing good things for every bad one - not that this makes the bad stories any less horrific. You generally find what you look for in most cases.

I'll probs get flamed for this but I actually think it's unhealthy living your life in fear of being murdered, and it's mostly unnecessary.

i ALWAYS try to employ a woman rather than a man. For anything.

Disgusting apologists on this thread should go start a sympathy thread for Andrew Tate, he's very upset today. There is something very wrong with you. I can't adequately express my contempt for anyone even hinting that this latest incident - one of many - is the responsibility of anyone other than the male currently on a murder charge. Shame on all of you.

Women who are murdered are overwhelmingly murdered by men. Those men are often partners or ex partners

Men who are murdered are overwhelmingly murdered by men. This is for a variety of reasons like a pub fight, drugs or gangs.

What is the one common factor?

Sorry I hadn't been back to the thread, I needed to step back for a little.

I am so angry about it because I was one of the lucky ones who survived it. I moved to the UK to escape it. And we haven't gotten any better since then. It seems to be getting worse.

I remember the despair of having any abuse or actions minimised, the priority given to his reputation. His livelihood and life. Having to wait helplessly until the attack, which everyone knew was coming, until the law would help me. In the end the extra vigilance, locks and big dog weren't enough, he got me when I was getting out home from food shopping.

In answer to what I am doing now. I used to work to help abused women before my disability worsened. I write a letter to my mp every time something like this happens. But I'm not stupid, I know it doesn't really help. It never does.

I look at dd, who is stunning and fast approaching puberty, and feel genuine terror for what could be ahead, that some cretin could snuff out her future over a perceived slight, rejection or disobedience.

I'm sure some would call it neurotic but I actually put together a pp presentation on red and green flags for both dc when they started middle school. I'm trying my best, but am painfully aware that it is potentially not enough.

Yet all the evidence shows that men who kill their partners and families don’t just “snap”. It’s a long, pre-meditated process that culminates in them killing their partner after a history of abuse.

The most common pattern is actually bidirectional violence.

I said above that it doesn't happen out the blue. It can be a big long culmination of mutual hostility and violence before the man snaps. Obviously not all murders are like that. Some are indeed preceded by one way abuse even if the majority is bidirectional.

Most murders are partners /husbands ex partners and an escalation of stalking / DV. Police need to take any reports of DV much more seriously. In general though I don’t have any fear of men, I’ve never felt threatened by a man and I also have a son and I think the chances of being harmed by a man is slim unless you are in a DV situation. Do any of you have sons? I don’t like this talk that all men are potential murderers it’s crazy. I actually worry more for my son than my daughter. He is more likely to get stabbed and killed on a night out.

They always report that the men are loving husbands and fathers

Do they? I'm not seeing that.

When these cases are first reported it's usually just the basic facts "woman and three children found dead in a fire. One man suspected of murder". Later we find out a bit more, but it nearly always comes out that the man has a history of violence against the woman.

The issue here is that you are lumping all men together when the male victims are likely just as much a victim as the female victims.

To say a man is somehow culpable for his own murder just for sharing the sex of his attacker is surely victim blaming? It's like saying "well, it was her own husband that killed her wasn't it".

Also, there are many other dynamics aside from male/female. A gay man isn't responsible for a homophobic assault on his person. A black man isn't responsible for a racist assault on him just because he's also male.

I know some want a pile on/witch hunt, but really this is a problem society needs to solve. The good men and women working together against the criminal minority. To say it's solely men's issue to solve is doing a disservice to all the brave women already helping in the justice/police/etc systems.

Add to this an interesting fact: the judiciary treats women more harshly than men when they commit crimes that are perceived as masculine (ABH, GBH, fighting, etc)

>> Women mustn’t be violent. Men are allowed to show aggression much more so and then it‘s often excused.

revolving-doors.org.uk/women-criminal-justice-double-standards/

I know it's very hard, but just ignore them, I do. Don't give them the attention they crave. They're lapping it up, and enjoying the fact that some posters are getting wound up and upset. Don't let them live rent free in your head. Don't let them upset you. It's what they want.

The most common pattern is actually bidirectional violence.

This isn't true. Perpetrators often accuse their victims of abuse and it gets recorded by the police as abuse.

I can't believe you actually think that a homicidal man would put up with years of violence before he 'snaps'. Does that sound likely?

But men are generally treated MUCH more harshly than women. Much longer sentences for the same crime and much more likely to face jail time. And female judges are less lenient on women than male judges.

I'm about to hit the sack but can post various studies on this tomorrow from a previous thread if I can find it.

Read the link I posted. Study after study confirms the bidirectional bit. And homicidal men don't take years of abuse. They become homicidal. Obv this isn't always the case and some men are just arseholes, but many murders are preceded by years of toxicity.

One thing seems apparent. That a lot of people form opinions without really looking at the data.

Yes you’re right

These are our sons.
It won't stop.

I’m not lumping them all together, what I’m saying is that male violence is the problem. In the majority of cases it’s men doing the killing, for whatever reason.

The older I get (I’m early 50s) the more convinced I am that many (most?) men actually hate women and there is a mere veil over their simmering anger towards us. I have an overtly angry husband, dad, FIL and BILs. I have many male friends who I am very fond of but I don’t think I know a single man who is 100% ‘good’ in his attitude towards women. Misogyny is a default setting; some are just better at masking it than others. I think they secretly (or not so much) still want a 1950s marriage, with a side order of pornalike action. I don’t think many men genuinely see women as whole other valid human beings. VAWG is at epidemic levels. Maybe they just cannot stand the idea of women being independent and happy without them, so they double down on control. And some of us end up dead. Every week.

Well…yeah, of course there’s a phrase for it. People who study crime weren’t going to just call it “those murders where a guy kills his whole family.”

It’s neither a brand-new term nor a recent phenomenon, unfortunately.

Many DV killers do however have a history of violence and stalking with others preceding the relationships where they commit homicide (see the BBC link earlier in the thread). That’s why Clara’s law exists.

It’s not surprising in an environment of coercive control, emotional abuse and physical violence that the whole family get toxic, especially if the female partner feels she cannot leave, whether that’s for economic reasons, having small children, or perhaps growing up in a similar family environment etc. All this is likely to contribute to a situation where there is reactivity on her side. It’s simply not realistically possible to have victims in long term relationships who demonstrate no stress based behaviour or reactivity whatsoever.

Also the reality is that a common time for a DV murder to be committed is just after the female partner has made the decision to leave the relationship. So it remains dangerous even after a female partner makes the right decision to end a toxic relationship.

OK, fair enough.

These kind of discussions are difficult really. Partly I guess because they attract the sort of people (men?) who want to 'put women in their place' or just cause arguments/stir it up. If you disagree with the common view people often assume you have ill intentions.

Also, the feminist section (despite containing many individuals with differing views) does tend to have different attitudes in general to other more general forums - more wary of men in general. And obviously women that have had bad experiences with men will have their views shaped by that and this forum (alongside the relationships forum) is probs the most obvious place to vent.

But I think the majority of women aren't as negative about men as a lot of feminists are (bearing in mind most women don't identify as feminists nowadays). I see a lot of toxic behaviour from men, but I also see a lot of general shitty behaviour from both sexes. I feel like there are just a lot of not particularly nice people out there regardless of sex. Like the women mentioned in the other thread who snaked out the OP after she drunkenly confided in them that she'd been badly trested by a man well known in the industry - they went straight to him and told him what she'd said.

Honestly, I don't really like the constant man bashing we often see and the conflating of individual men's actions with men as a whole - by contrast, nobody is saying Lucy Letsby is representative of all women.

We need to work with men because, like it or not, we won't ever overthrow them in some feminist coup. We don't have the physical strength or military prowess that men have used to overthrow institutions for many millennia past. And they hold all the power structures. Any victory we've ever had is by convincing men they should listen, but a lot of feminists are accomplishing exactly the opposite IMO.

So, all the tough talk is pointless to me. It may be gratifying but it's ultimately toothless and just pushing young impressionable men into the hands of people like Andrew Tate. Thankfully, there are enough good men out there, but many are just obliviously living their lives and focusing on their own families. I feel like lecturing them on stuff they aren't personally responsible for and expecting them to take some kind of collective responsibility just makes many switch off tbh which is bad for us.

The whole human journey needs to be improved.

A huge amount of children are abused emotionally and treated neglectfully .

Thats what they learn. They then grow up to be cruel and nasty to others. It's learned behaviour from a young age

What the poster who is claiming women abuse men more is conveniently not telling you;

"The major points of this review are as follows: (a) women’s violence usually occurs in the context of violence against them by their male partners; (b) in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression, but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents; (c) women and men are equally likely to initiate physical violence in relationships involving less serious “situational couple violence,” and in relationships in which serious and very violent “intimate terrorism” occurs, men are much more likely to be perpetrators and women victims; (d) women’s physical violence is more likely than men’s violence to be motivated by self-defense and fear, whereas men’s physical violence is more likely than women’s to be driven by control motives; (e) studies of couples in mutually violent relationships find more negative effects for women than for men"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968709/