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

bloody hell mate, your very next post is "wah wah wah well women are horrible to other women too"

be better.

Wow!
Total respect to you.
Am 50 now so getting on your bandwagon! I've had enough! 😥😠

Huw Edwards family thought they knew him.

How do I know which man is evil?

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 effect 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.

Accusing all men of being worse then Hitler isn’t going to help

Neither is making a comment that misses the point

Who has done this?

Boomer55 You cannot know that. The two men I have known who went to prison for sex offences were both, in different ways, exemplary in the way they presented themselves publicly. The sort of honest dependable, pillar of the community type of men who nobody would have believed were perverts.

One committed rape, one had a computer full of Category A child pornography, caught in a sting.

The man who sexually abused me for years was a much loved father and grandfather, gentle and kindly. Which is why I and the other girl he molested were not believed.

Even if you got all good men onside, it still isn't going to work.
You would need to rebuilt entire religions and society as a whole
Every child would need to be brought up to understand what a good relationship looks like (from both perspectives).
You would need to redefine what a hero and celebrities are.
You would need to ensure that people didn't go out with arseholes and didn't get go back to them if they go out with the, in the first place.
You would need to stop all of the WAGS and "influencer" type stuff that lets people believe that they can get paid lots of money for for doing very little.
You would need to stop giving children smart phones so that they can access anything and everything.
And you would need both parents to be on the same page.

Even then it wouldn't have stopped those that want to rape and abuse others.

I have a couple of stories which are too long to go into here...but I've been SA'd, I've experienced domestic violence. My ex believed he was a feminist (ha!) and pro-equality but the way he spoke about women with his best friend was appalling. They encouraged each other, and justified their behaviour. Alongside that was racist and ableist chat. It all goes together.

I was in an airport recently and was waiting for my suitcases with my parents and daughter. A man nearby was being stood up to by a woman who said, "He's a child! He's just a child!" A boy was crying his eyes out, and a girl I assumed to be his older sister was too. The man was shouting and swearing and the woman, offering to beat her up. A woman whom I assumed was the kids mum, and man's partner, was trying to separate the man and the woman. She was apologising to the other woman and trying to calm the situation. I can only assume the man, red faced and angry, had done something to his son and this lady was standing up to him. It triggered bad memories for me, but also, I was full of admiration for the woman standing up to him. He probably had never experienced that before. He certainly didn't like it. But she stood her ground.

Unfortunately I didn't see the outcome of what happened. We moved on.

The thing is, no-one can truly say the men in their lives are safe, kind people. I just don't believe it. My ex seems like an alright bloke in public, but I know different. My daughter also knows different. Men are very good at saying one thing but thinking another.

What can we do about it? Challenge poor behaviour. Call them out. Lobby MPs for stronger sentences for VAWG. Getting the police to actually do their job! Our rape conviction rate is appalling, why aren't we doing something about that? Loads of things.

that didn't take long. But longer than i thought.

THIS conversation is about MVAWAG.

Want to talk about male violence against other groups? start a thread

He'll convince himself it isn't really a problem with 'normal people' ie middle class, until something happens to a woman close to him - dd or wife.
A lot of men are like that. An extraordinary ability to stick their heads in the sand and their fingers in their ears because it doesn't affect them.

Unfortunately, especially with DV, there's a fair few women like that too.

And before anyone accuses me of being a man, I'm a woman - and a mother. I know there's women like the above example because I have several friends who've experienced DV and they encountered women like that.

We can see examples on here too. I was on another thread where someone thought women didn't leave DV because they were "doormats" and "insecure about being single" whereas it's actually about lack of resources to safely leave and financially survive afterwards.

Also there's often loads of outrage - online, and protests, and in news reports - when a woman is killed or hurt by a stranger but much less when it's "a domestic". Because consciously or subconsciously people (falsely) think, when it's a stranger, "it could be me" whereas with DV victims "I'm not that type of woman".

As I said previously a major part of the problem is addressing it requires a holistic and societal approach - tackling the wider linked issues. The need for more social housing, a supportive benefits system, and better health, social care, and other support services.

I’m addressing the idea of men challenging violent men, which is the point of the thread, I think.

Look at the title: VAWAG

We are attending an open evening for potential secondary school for DD this week. DS already attends this school. It's such a small thing, but it really pissed me off when we went with him that in the prospectus, we had various written bits in the following order:
Chair of governors
Headteacher
Head boy
Head girl

If this time it's the same, I think I'm going to have to drop a note to the head teacher making the point that while it might be a small thing, this constant assumption of BOYS first is relentless and really, would it kill them to put the Head Girl's address first?

Also there's often loads of outrage - online, and protests, and in news reports - when a woman is killed or hurt by a stranger but much less when it's "a domestic". Because consciously or subconsciously people (falsely) think, when it's a stranger, "it could be me" whereas with DV victims "I'm not that type of woman".

sort of. I think it's because a) there's an instinctive victim blaming thing going on - "well, surely she knew he was terrible? Why didn't she leave him?" or "what did she do to provoke him?" b) if people acknowledge that this is common and happens a lot, they have to acknowledge that they are interacting with men who are like this. That it's in THEIR circle. That they didn't (and don't) spot it.

Also, when it's domestic violence, people liek to see it as an abberation. A mental health crisis. A man who reached the end of his tether. He deserves some sympathy - think of the pain he must be experiencing Vs the man who drags a woman into a bush on a saturday night - he's a purposeful predator.

It makes me sick.

Yet those predators are often abusers, sometimes they have a long history of abuse. It's why the police need to be better trained in patterns. Rapists often have a history of minor infractions as they build up to their more serious crimes.

I can't imagine being friends with men who spoke in that way, or in a relationship with a man who would be friends with men who spoke in that way, but I know it's difficult because so very, very many men do speak that way. :(

Good point. We need to confront this in schools. My son's new secondary school aired sexist crap on the new parents' evening: the head stated that boys find it hard to learn empathy.

Possibly correct, culturally speaking, but there's no bloody difference between male and female brains to cause that, so this head's responsibility is to teach the boys that, and teach them empathy, not to tell them it's hard for them because they're boys ffs!

I immediately asked my son to spot the sexism in the speech (he actually noticed a different bit of sexism, but not that one), then explained why it's wrong and damaging. I didn't contact the head about it, however, as I didn't want to be bolshy in the very first week.

This thread has made me rethink that policy: I'll be bolshy from today!

1 or 2 men challenging a mysoginistic joke isn't much, given that joke is probably amongst a friendship group but they are also reluctant to do it for strangers

In the Gisele Pelicon case where her husband posted the invite to rape her on a website, not only did 70 men turn up to rape her, 3 men walked away and said nothing.

Hundreds, maybe thousands, saw that advert and said nothing.

Men are very quick to announce they are on the side of women but won't put in the leg work, other than monitoring their close friendship group.

And women who do rock the boat and kick up the fuss are quickly attacked by men, because they are different and do tell their friends and other women who think their men are the exception

I've always been that parent. We went to the parents evening in year 7 which is held after they've started, to welcome everyone. They were speaking about after school clubs and they said, "for the boys we offer football, rugby - with the chance to try for the school team, coding and gaming and for the girls we offer yoga, mindfulment and aerobics.

Apparently they don't run football and rugby for girls as there no teams for them.

I absolutely hit the roof and followed it up with a email to the governors. There are now female rugby and football teams

People are too frightened to challenge because they don't want to appear "different" from what the "normal" is

Usually it comes down to pack mentality and men's problems becoming women's problems to solve

@YellowphantGrey Yes, I agree. Men on threads like this or in real life say that they don't allow th ebanter or whatever and that they don't think it happens aroudn them. Perhaps that's true, but also, I suspect their radar isn't so tuned in.

DH notices it all the time. Minor stuff, but relentless. We like to think it's big and flashy and obvious, "Ooh, cor gov, look at the tits on that one" but it's not, it's the small, constant, "minor" things, "Ok, I'll have one more drink. Wifey will be mad but go on then"

DH was a SAHD. Went out with a bunch of men of similar age and stage in terms of age of DC etc. They were all braying about how they had to give their wives their credit cards to get permission to go to the pub. DH said, "Right, let me get the next round in - I'll be paying with IdLikeToBeAFraser's money obviously".

It's easy to spot and challenge the obviously lewd, obnoxious comments. The small little ones are much harder.

I voted YABU because it is never going to happen.

Even if it could be made compulsory by law (and I don't see how) not all men would engage with it. Some would just "go through the motions" and others would simply refuse point blank to attend.

You are BU in suggesting a hypothetical solution that can never be put into operation.

For the record I'm a bloke and the father of daughters.

that's actually quite shocking in this day and age. Good job for hitting the roof! That's one thing I will say for our school - its not gendered on this stuff. They don't specifically offer a girls rugby group (and the boys rugby group is barely popular enough to fill a full team - the coach keeps cornering DS in the corridors to ask if he wants to come back! ) but they've made it clear girls are welcome and if there are some, they'll create one. And they do have loads of girls football teams (it's very popular and the school has a reputation for girls football). Similarly, they now have a boys dance group as the boys were enthusiastic so they created one.

On the downside, the entire senior leadership team is men... except for the pastoral roles - which drives me mad. I was pleased to see the latest new deputy head with specific responsibilities is a woman.

What do you think should be done to protect your daughter's from the high amounts of violence and sexual harassment in the UK?