To wonder (thinking about this awful French rape case) if humans are just rotten

[OptimismvsRealism]

It wasn't just the husband - at least 80 men went along with this. Guys with ordinary lives drawn out of nowhere.

I wonder if it would be better if we were to just wind things up as a species.

I get that. But if we don’t know why, then how can we intervene as a society? And potentially address things differently from a young age

Thanks for that link, @KateMiskin. Quite encouraging! Here's the full text, for non-clickers.

The scale of male violence against women in England and Wales is “an inconvenient truth” that goes way beyond the capacity of the criminal justice system to solve, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has told the London Policing Board.

Research carried out for the National Police Chief’s Council shows that one in 10 women in England and Wales are victims of male violence. With up to four million mainly male perpetrators, this means as many as one man in seven may be a risk to women and girls.

“I’ve spoken about needing a counter-terrorism approach,” Rowley said, as he described the “eye-watering numbers” of violent and sexual attacks against women and girls every year, crimes which he also said were “obviously under-reported.”

Figures he gave included:
• 800,000 sexual assaults recorded by police against women each year.
• Over a million reports of domestic violence annually.
• Three quarters of a million men with a sexual interest in children.

The panel was also told that domestic abuse accounts for:
• More than 10 per cent of all 999 calls nationally.
• More than 30 per cent of all violence with injury.
• More than half of all violent offences against women in a relationship.

Rowley said that “the threat that is male predatory violence against women and girls” will require a “whole step up in approach” and a partnership between police, local authorities and the third sector… to scale across prevention, protection and pursuit of offenders.”

Given what Louisa Rolfe, Met assistant commissioner, described as a “relatively inexperienced first responder workforce,” and the absence of any national strategy across all agencies to reduce offending, whichever party gets into government will need to push for a wholesale reform of resourcing and priorities across public services to stop male violence against half the country’s population.

(my bolding)

It’s men that did this

and it’s many men are like this, too many

If you’re a retired barrister, I’m the Queen of Sheba.

You probably don't think you're a misogynist but you have projected your reasons for feeling defensive onto women. Why didn't you ask a question? Why did you feel so comfortable making an assumption about why women are annoyed with the thread title?

Women experience the world quite differently to men in lots of ways and yet you speak for us as if you do not understand that.

I'm annoyed about the problem of male violence being obscured by language. I do not feel falsely accused and I do not feel the need to minimise the acts of violence carried out by women. The likes of Myra Hindley are nothing to do with me, why would I feel defensive? Her crimes were so appalling it feels like she's a different species. Why don't men feel like that?

Why, whenever the issue of male violence is discussed, do women have to acknowledge that NAMALT before any debate can take place? Why is it incumbent upon us to prove we aren't man haters before we can be taken seriously.

Men are statistically more likely to be victims of violent crime and yet they still prioritise establishing they're one of the good guys and women are violent too before they'll even consider a good faith discussion about the problem. Why?

It worries me because I wonder if men don't see the men who have committed this crime as an aberration but as men who are just on a different part of a spectrum of "normal" male behaviour.

@FOJN ,

Your post is somewhat contradictory.

‘The likes of Myra Hindley are nothing to do with me, why would I feel defensive? Her crimes were so appalling it feels like she's a different species. Why don't men feel like that? ‘

Men feel exactly like that! Which is why men get upset about being lumped in as a ‘class’ with maybe 0.01% of the male population (when this kind of truly abhorrent crime is discussed. They feel the people who commit them feel like a different species.

I kind of get the ‘NAMALT’ argument of using men as a class when discussing normal things that a lot of men do but shouldn’t like making sexist assumptions or dominating space. But, when it comes to appallingly rare crimes committed by a tiny minority, the argument doesn’t hold water because men, as a class, don’t commit them. A few rare sick individuals do.

There is a common misunderstanding (or deliberate misuses in some cases) about statistics. If 1% of men commit violent crime (and I think that is an overestimate) and 0.01% of women do (probably an underestimate), that does mean that men commit almost all violent crime. However it does NOT mean men are likely to be violent criminals. It is still a tiny minority of men and far fewer than commit their lives to helping humanity.

I’m sorry you’ve been through that. Tbh I think you’re right. It was one of the reasons I never wanted sons. I have daughters but then you’ve got the terrible fear because they’re out in the world with other people’s sons.

Whoever said this case is extreme, it really isn't. He just got caught.
I firmly believe these type of crimes are down to the horrifically violent porn on the internet. And the internet is how these crimes are organised.
This case reminds me of the young tourist who was gang raped in Majorca last year. Complete strangers, unknown to each other all joined in when invited.
I read only last week that there are 2 gang rapes a week recorded in Germany. These crimes against women are rife not rare or extreme. A lot of men see women as less than human, it's terrifying.

@EmpressOfTheThread @YellowphantGrey thankfully my husband is an amazing role model, probably does more than his fair share of household tasks and has never spoken to me with anything but love and respect in front of the boys but I still worry it’s not enough with external influences from peers/the internet/porn, thanks for the book recs and the tips, I’ll keep plugging away

@Threewheeler1 omg who was describing it as a sex scene? This is unacceptable.

@RedRidingGood the (male) Judge!! FFS!

‘The likes of Myra Hindley are nothing to do with me, why would I feel defensive? Her crimes were so appalling it feels like she's a different species. Why don't men feel like that? ‘

Men feel exactly like that! Which is why men get upset about being lumped in as a ‘class’ with maybe 0.01% of the male population (when this kind of truly abhorrent crime is discussed. They feel the people who commit them feel like a different species

Well men obviously don’t feel like that if they get defensive.

@Iforgotagain ,

‘Whoever said this case is extreme, it really isn't. He just got caught. ‘

It really is very extreme. The internet and self reinforcing algorithms make people believe that it is far more common than it is. It is vanishingly rare

‘I firmly believe these type of crimes are down to the horrifically violent porn on the internet. And the internet is how these crimes are organised. ‘

Totally agree. All violent porn should be banned, with harsh sanctions for those producing and (intentionally) watching it.

I don't think my post is contradictory.

"Not all women are like that", isn't a thing when the crimes of women are being discussed but NAMALT nearly always is when the crimes of men are being discussed.

Sadly male violence is not as rare as you claim but you use the rest of your post making the not all men point again anyway. Over 2 million violent crimes were reported to the police in England and Wales in 2022/2023. These reports resulted in approx 300,000 arrests, 50,000 or approx 16% of which were women, meaning 250,000 or 84% were men.

@Newbutoldfather

Man raping women is not rare. Most rapes are carried out by their partners. Gang rape is not rare. These crimes against women are extremely common.

It's so pointless having generic man hatred the way it is expressed on this thread. What are posters hoping to achieve with their "it's always men, men are evil" types of posts? We've got to work with them or humanity dies. Life would be dire without them (I say that as an extremely independent woman who never wanted to marry and didn't until my mid-fifties).

A few things are stunning about this case: the sheer number of men involved willing to collude and the strength of the woman involved. I have so much respect for her - she is carrying herself with such dignity and I sincerely hope she inspires others in similar situations, that awareness about date rate drugs is raised and that justice is served (clearly the husband will serve time but I'm anxious about some of the rapists and whether they will manage to walk free).
The debate about what switches the male sexual urge into something this toxic is something we need to have without all this generic man hatred, which is no different to uneducated hatred of any other group. You wouldn't get away with targeting a race or religion in that way.

Yep, the judge asking Gisele to refer to what happened to her as a 'sex scene' rather than 'rape' because the defendant deserves the presumption of innocence etc. She doesn't even have the right to use the appropriate terminology to describe how she has been brutalised.
It's just beyond comprehension that she is being asked to do this.

@Lostboys16 And when those of us who come along and say, you know what, most men are decent, my husband's a good man, my father's a good man, my sons are decent

And how many wives, brothers, mothers and sons of those 70s men were saying the same thing about them?

I agree with those saying this case is not about terrible human behaviour. It is about the terrible behaviour of men.

In contrast I am humbled by the behaviour of the woman, Gisele Pelicot. After more than a decade of victimisation by so many men (above all the one she married) she has waived her right to anonymity in the hope of helping other women.

Generic man hatred, or discussing the fact that of the 98% of violent and sexual crime that occurs, the perpetrator is male. It's not uneducated, it's very much educated backed up by statistics and lived experiences. And that's violent and sexual crime, there's the low level shit before we hit that.

Males - AS A SEX CLASS - are a problem.

Women can and should be allowed to discuss this and everything around this without people like you, and the others on this thread, trying to police and silence language.

It definitely needs to be tackled from the early years. Boys behaviour is excused or glossed over from an early age and that needs to stop.

Young boys hit someone else and it's "boys will be boys" rather than explaining why hitting isn't ok. Girls will be told immediately to stop and that it's not kind and we shouldn't do that.

Disruptive boys are sat next to quiet girls in school so again the responsibility falls to a girl. Teachers rarely sit them next to another boy

You see threads here daily where women are complaining that the men aren't pulling their weight and helping and doing their fair share and they come here to moan. Children are seeing this behaviour and begin replicating. Their male role model is opting out of doing what are the basics of a decent human because they pass the buck for a woman to pick up. Boys and girls see Mom do everything and Dad do very little so these roles continue when they start their own relationships. A man posted in here the other day and said he had cracked tidy teens and refused to listen to endless women and told us we were wrong, obsessed with him and hated men, just because it was pointed out to him that a man tidying so a woman can clean isn't the flex he thinks it is.

Unfair and unequal behaviour is rarely pointed out and this needs to happen more. Men rarely feel embarrassment because they've never had to because someone always does it on their part or excuses them.

The world is literally built and designed for the advantage of men.

As a younger man, you sleep around, you're a hero, a player and your applauded for it. Do it as a younger female and you're a slag.

Men get aggressive at work and shout and holler and they are passionate and dedicated to work, women are hysterical.

This isn't even touching the surface. Of the inequality. It's that ingrained that women now apologise and justify men's actions. We are expected to accept its not all men but you rarely hear the same defence of "well its not all women"

The same female names get thrown up, Rose West, Myra Hindley, Vanessa George etc. I would never go on a post started about them and say, "well it's not all women, men are worse" I would share what I thought about them and what they did, as do many. You also never see men rushing to say "it's not all women" like you see women rushing to say "it's not all men" men are happy to join in on the character assassination yet because they know they have the support and the confidence to do so.

I taught and teach my son that he is responsible for how society view men and he is responsible for calling out unfair behaviour amongst his peer group and ensuring that he has the confidence to speak up when he sees wrongdoing.

I explain to him that lads banter is also a problem because it reinforces the lack of respect. It's a work in progress but so far he's a good kid and extremely respectful.

While the power imbalance is there, men will always have the upper hand and the power imbalance will remain for as long men aren't confronted about their actions by society. Even the men that aren't bad aren't always speaking up and doing what they should so they also silently benefit from the power balance.

Reading that article is equally awful yet I'm not surprised. It's almost like I'm numb to the effects of men and what they do because of how often it's happening.

So glad to hear that male violence against women is very rare and it’s just us harpies extrapolating a few rare cases into an epidemic of epic proportions.
I hope someone sets the met task force set up to deal with it straight. Hopefully they can turn their attentions to making sure women are just nicer in general. That will keep everyone safe.

Also glad to know the answer to these rare, extreme cases is for WOMEN to do the work of understanding and fixing why the poor put upon men do bad things.

From this thread we already know that we must not be angry or use harsh words because that’s the same as calling for all men to die and hurts feelings.
Violence is fleeting, words are forever.

We must question the mothers about what they are doing to the poor men to make them bad.

The fathers should be left in peace. No one wants to listen to a woman nag about responsibility.

If the mothers don’t come good I’m sure we can look to the sisters (who, raised in the same environment, don’t seem to have the same capacity for violence, rape, family annihilation etc) because the cause HAS to be women.

We absolutely should look to the fact that the progress in feminism is awful because it has made men feel bad in the last few decades versus the millennia of patriarchy which women have been subjected to. Just no comparison in suffering.

Patriarchy is fine and when it makes women as misogynistic as men, those women are the ones we should listen to because they are right.

And most importantly - women should just BE NICE!

When you are in fear for your life, be nice. When you are being raped, be nice.
When you are being murdered, be nice.

When you are grieving your loved ones who have died at the hands of male violence what is most important is not to ask why he did it or seek justice, it is to point to the nearest woman, with a smile on your face, saying ‘you did it’.

As always the NAMALTS, MRAS, ‘You’re just a man hater’s and ‘not my DH/DS’ have shown us the error of our ways.

I look forward to a future where I can go about my daily business knowing that if, in the very rare instance I should be hassled or attacked by a man who feels entitled to my time, my belongings, my body, or my life, all I have to do is be nice and let him do what he wants because that is the way of a nice woman. And it’s my own fault if it hurts because I just wasn’t nice enough.

Do their fathers have no responsibility or influence on all those poor boys and young men, or is it always the fault of their mothers?

This.

I've just said that on a male violence thread, women quickly rush to declare not all men, that women are worse and men also have to come on and say its not all men, you all hate men.

None of that would happen on a thread about a female abuser, we can't be seen to be protecting women and their actions and making excuses.

We can however be expected to blame women and hold them accountable for the behaviour of men.