to think that ALL men must engage with male VAWAG

[StellaGreen]

These last weeks the papers are full of horrific stories of men's violence towards women. I have always believed it is a tiny minority of men who commit these crimes but I'm not so sure any more.

1. Gisele Pelicot case where at least 80 men were involved in rape and now an associate of the husband (Dominique Pelicot) has admitted to similar abuse.
2. Puffy daddy accused of sex trafficking I believe, I've not fully read this one.
3. The Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei allegedly killed by her partner after he doused her in petrol and set her on fire. It's not as though this was unique Olympian murder, Agnes Tirop was fatally stabbed by her husband in 2021 and Demaris Mutua (a runner) also killed within six months of Agnes.
4. Kristina Joksimovic from Switzerland where the press crudely wrote about her being strangled and her body being pureed in a blender.
5. Moumita Bebnath, the trainee doctor brutally raped and murdered in Kolkata in August.
6. Steven Van de Velde competing in the Olympics for Netherlands after he was convict of rape I believe.
7. Huw Edwards
8. And three weeks ago it was reported that women have been banned by the Taliban from speaking or showing their faces outside the house.

AIBU that, as well as women speaking up, all men must engage with this problem. It is not women's responsibility to solve the problem of male VAWAG

I go to ordinary WC pubs, the type to show gootball/boxing.
""What should an individual man do, aside from being a decent person, being willing to help people he may happen to see in urgent need, voting for the lesser of the evils on the ballot, and not associating with violent or disgusting people of either sex?""
Not laugh along with the everyday sexism and reduce every woman presenter of the sports being shown, to how she looks. Not all of of the men do, but not one of them openly backs when the women object that it's going too far.

If I was in charge of the news bulletins I'd make sure that every murder of a woman was mentioned on the news, not just the unusual ones that are deemed "newsworthy".

I think that, during the pandemic, it made a difference to have the number of cases and deaths reported every day. We should see the news do the same for the numbers of reports of rape and rape convictions.

Good question @Floorfiller
by engage I mean really think about why men do this. If all men could start to think about the motivation and psychology behind other men’s actions they would understand that mostly it’s about power, control and sometimes sexual gratification. They would understand the daily affect this has on women. And how we have to adjust our behavior to accommodate the actions of many men.
Porn for example is becoming increasingly violent towards women, maybe men could engage by stopping watching porn or using prostitutes, many of whom are trafficked.
All these things objectify women and support the idea women are commodities not fully human or at least equal.
Many men justify their actions around these examples. Prostitution is a choice they say. Porn will be made whether I watch it or not etc.
I believe all these things are related.

There are so many people who shrug and say you can't interfere it makes me want to spit. @Meadowfinch 100% agree. 😡

Identifying people who are likely to commit violent crime and persuading them to mend their ways is an extremely specialised and skilled job. One which people spend decades learning to do, and one where I suspect an amateur getting involved, how ever well-intentioned, might be counterproductive.

This is more an explanation than a justification. I suppose my answer to "this is your mess, clean it up" would be "yes, I can see this is my mess, but to my shame I do not have the skills to clean it up".

It's small mysoginistic behaviours that allow the bigger ones to gain traction.

I went to see a band and had a band t shirt on, other men did, other women did. The bloke came upto me and asked me to name 5 b sides of their songs. He never asked a man. His mates thought it was hilarious

I was stood at the front of another gig and two drunk men came careering down the front and grabbed the hair of a woman from behind and pulled her to the floor amd dragged her back to her space. Not one man intervened but 3 females did. Apparently it's because we wanted equality so that's we've got.

I did do something like that once, albeit was to help a man being assaulted by a racist.

My wife was furious with me for the risk I'd taken, bearing in mind the beating my Dad was once subjected to for looking in the wrong direction on a train. I can understand people's reluctance to get involved in a physical altercation.

No, I don't think every man has to sign up to all this.

I've been married twice, have an adult son, and 5 adult grandons.

None of them are any sort of threat or problem to women.🙄

How do you know that?

This is a cop out. No one is asking men to try to spot and prevent that man over there from attacking a bunch of women tomorrow. But as a society, we let these men build up to this too often because we don't challenge them when it starts small. Do we really think the man who killed the Hunt women had never done anything questionable before? There's an element of the "broken window" doctrine to this. If we can stamp on all the little things, then the medium things, then the bigger things are less likely to happen. Its not likely they'll stop completely, but they'll be less.

Let me ask you this: do you think it's just in a man's nature to n urder women? And that's why WOMEN don't murder people at anywhere NEAR the rate men do?

No, it's because on some deep instinctive level we tell men that their rage and their shittiness is okay so that when it escalates, they don't have the internal switch to say "no".

I came close to being date raped once. the man involved was, at heart, a good guy. I was at uni - I was 19. I knew this man and he knew me. We had a few drinks and started some drunken snogging. I somehow let him talk me into going back to his place even though I had no intention of sleeping with him. He knew that, I think. But he kept pushing and pushing. But I kept saying no and eventually I realised this was getting out of hand. I got scared. I managed to stop things and managed to get home.

But for many years after, I knew that the ONLY reason I managed to do that was because I had been 100% clear from the start. If I'd been wishy washy. If I'd let him take off my shirt or my pants, I am 100% certain that he woudln't have stopped. He knows it too - he apologised to me.

I tell this story not because I think women should have to say no from the start in order to prevent being raped but because we need to say no to men from the start in many many other situations so that they learn to accept no, as SOON AS IT IS SAID.

The Pelicot case has horrified me the most recently. So many men. Was it 2 or 3 that refused once they realised the scenario? Out of dozens. It makes me feel defeated and depressed.

I feel that the more rights we have gained, the more men hate us. Not all, granted but a significant amount. Too many.

We're let down by the institutions that should be protecting us. I feel bleak about it all.

Well, they’re not any sort of problem in your opinion, to the extent of your knowledge, yet.

That’s quite different from not being a problem.

What would you like us to do @StellaGreen ?

And that's a genuine question, I'm not being arsey or anything.

I already intervene if I think something is going on. (Admittedly it's fairly easy for me. I'm 6 ft 10 and built like a brick shithouse, so often just looming over someone will encourage them to fuck off). I vote for MPs who claim they'll be tough on this stuff. I am outspoken when I hear someone make a rape joke in the pub. I've campaigned for single sex bathrooms in my daughters school, and pretty much got barred from a pub last week for complaining about their gender neutral toilets.

What else should I be doing? (Again, genuine question)

The fact is I don't hang around men who are likely to be responsible for violence against women, because they're not people I'd want to be friends with. I'd hope that no men I know would do any of the things you've posted about above, but I don't actually know, because if they are hitting their wife, they're not exactly going to be mentioning it to me. And I'm probably wrong about some of them, because I've been wrong before and not even been able to see the signs retrospectively.

@knittingdad I understand that. But it must have been obvious to his party that he was legless and aggressive. Why didn't his friends step in and take him home? Why didn't his friends intervene with coffee & fresh air? Separate him from his girl friend? Put him in a cab.

I was raised in a pub, I can spot that sort of trouble at 30 paces, and there are laws on not continuing to serve someone who is already drunk. A professional pub manager or event manager will stop things getting that far.

There are lots of things people can do. But it takes the will to intervene effectively, NOT look the other way.

@VimesandhisCardboardBoots I'll say what I said to @knittingdad : you're on the right track, you're doing the right things. But surely you can see that lots of men are NOT doing this? Have you honestly never sat in a pub with a group of men who are making misogynist comments? Never had a male colleague or boss who was notorious for being a bit handsy? Never been at a pub and seen a much older man hitting on a much younger women and making her uncomfortable? Never listened to men complain that a woman only got her job because she's a woman?

I suspect the men on threads like this are the ones who are already part of the solution! it's the ones who don't think about it and who think women are making a fuss when we complain about the man who tells us to "smile" or the old geezer in the pub that are the problem.

Every single woman has multiple ‘me too’ experiences. All of us. One in four is raped. Is it really a minority? Or do apparently good and decent men do awful things when they think they can get away with it.

How do you encourage people to do what is right and not what is easy?

I don't know. We're straying into serious philosophical questions with that one.

Yeah. One of the things that infuriated me when the harvey weinstein thing came out was I think it was George Clooney who made some comment along the lines, "oh yes, we always thought Harvey was a bit ridiculous in his relentless chasing of young hot actresses" all wide eyed shock. I found myself screaming at the news, "Did it not occur to you, fo even ONE second, that maybe these actresses didn't feel they had a choice/ That they didn't welcome these attentions?"

Good and decent men are just that.

The rapists and wife beaters are the truly evil, and also the weak, inept, drunk, cowardly, stupid, selfish, immature and inadequate.

I'd say that means the good & decent make up 20% of the male population.

We have a long way to go !

@IdLikeToBeAFraser

But surely you can see that lots of men are NOT doing this?

Of course I do.

Have you honestly never sat in a pub with a group of men who are making misogynist comments? Never had a male colleague or boss who was notorious for being a bit handsy? Never been at a pub and seen a much older man hitting on a much younger women and making her uncomfortable? Never listened to men complain that a woman only got her job because she's a woman?

Again, of course I do, but generally not more than once, because of the aforementioned looming.

That's why I'm asking what more can I do. I can and do try and deal with this stuff when I see it happening, but then it doesn't happen in front of me any more. So what else can I do then? I'm not saying that I'm doing everything I can, because I'm probably not. But I'm just fighting fires, putting one out isn't going to stop another one starting. How do we help in a more long term way?

My wife dislikes a lot of the trashy romantic comedies that I sometimes watch. A lot of them present men being pushy and manipulative as being romantic, and successful in winning the object of their desire.

A lot of men are going to do wrong without thinking that they are doing wrong. So they won't think they're doing anything they need to get away with.

Sorry, again, you're puttint it on women to encourage MEn to do what's right. The whole point we're making is that MEN need to do this. MEN who are horrified about what's happened in France, or to the Hunts, or to a bunch of girls at a Taylor Swift themed dance class need to step up. When their friend gets legless and behaves badly toward women, step in.

Again, why is this so hard/ Every women has stepped in to stop a female friend from doing something dumb when drunk at some point. We've looked out for each other to keep each other safe (or just to ensure we don't go home with Dave from accounts because we know we'll regret that in the morning!). Why can't men do this? Why must we, as women, try to encourage these men.

YOU do it. And maybe your actions will make Pete realise that he shoudl do it too, or give him the confidence to do it if he was to scared before. And perhaps your 13 year old son will see it and it might start him down a road that's less misogynist as well.

What I'm saying to you is that you're doign the right things. How much more can you do? Probalby not a lot. Make sure you're teaching your sons these lessons. Continue to highlight the problem when it comes up. As I said upthread, eventually, when there are enough of you, you'll be in the majority and you'll be the "lads".

If your wife has pointed this out to you, have you stopped watching these movies? Do you see her point? Have you changed your opinion? Are you no longer supporting movies like this that propogate this sort of thinking and group think?

Sorry if my post wasn't clear. The "you" was not intended to be the singular you, as in the woman I was replying to, but a plural you, as in society as a whole, including men who recognise it as a problem.