… to think that the world (and well-being of women and children) is in the hands of old men

[Mistressofpemberly]

Looking at the news with pictures of Netanyahu, Trump with his MAGA hat on, Putin and the Ayatollah. The world is in a precarious position and, as usual, it is the innocents that suffer.
We seem to be going down a rabbit hole led by mysogynistic old men. I find it galling that aggression and mysogyny seem to float to the top of the leadership heap. Aibu?

They can get involved in politics at a local level, be part of the change in parties that they want to see. I accept that it is much easier if you have money to become, for example, a party candidate at elections but by being involved locally you can influence who stands for your local party and make your view heard. MP's etc are 'ordinary people'. Our local Labour MP used to be a teacher in our local schools. He has no other source of money (unless he is keeping big secrets)

Protests and initiatives are tools too. I do not mean on street protests, in Stop Oil fashion. Those are useless. These days we can start online petitions and force Parliament to discuss a topic. It shows the government which way the electorate actually leans to. Initiatives like the school dinners in summer, started by the footballer.
I think the investigation into the grooming gangs has only happened due to public pressure indeed.
There are some ways.

Okay so what can people do RIGHT NOW to stop us being dragged into this war? Practically what can we do? This isn’t something anyone could really have foreseen and gone into local
politics years ago to stop 🙄 Few expected Israel to actually start an all-out war with Iran until it happened.

Realistically only labour, the tories and now reform are ever likely to run this country, and all three of those want to plough more and more money into weapons/defence at the expense of the services that actually matter. So how exactly do we make ourselves heard at the ballot box on this issue?

An online petition wont do anything. The leadership of many world superpowers have been agitating for war for years now. They want this.

thank you. I agree with so many of the comments here.

the fact that Trump and Netanyahu were democratically elected doesn’t exclude them being crazy megalomaniacs. Just question the thoughts of those who voted them in. Trump used religion,”othering” and fear to get voted in. Now he’s manipulating the rhetoric even more and it wouldn’t surprise me if he stays in. If we are all still around then.

I think the question is a mix of the individuals in question but also the structures that led them to the position they're in. The structures are varied and quite different in the case of the examples listed IMO.

Unfortunately there are a lot of women muppets who voted for Brexit, Johnson et al, or who will vote for Reform, Nigel Farage or the utterly vile and morally dubious Lee Anderson.

So, yes, they are older men. They are not all men, though.

So, next election you will have a choice. If you don't want women, the poor, or anyone of colour to be sh*t upon, then you shouldn't vote for Reform, Farage, Lee Anderson et al.

Go easy on the ageism, eh? If more male leaders were like David Attenborough, for example, the world would be a more pleasant place.

Well, the UK has Keir Starmer. I hope he keeps us out of it.

Not our circus, not our crazy, warmongering, right wing monkeys.🎪🦧

You’re not wrong OP.

I suspect t if if were women in these powerful positions the world would be a much nicer place.

Sadly women’s rights are abysmal in many countries and even in the US, some men think they can dictate to women about pregnancy choices so what hope is there?!

Look at the whole continent of Africa from top to bottom,It's run by a bunch of tribalist old men , busy filling their coffers and foreign bank accounts since the year dot.They are never taken to task and one dies the next one takes their place .Meanwhile the women and children suffer If it were not for the women the continent would be in an even worse state .Every single one of these dictators and their families should be called out , sanctioned and isolated but no they tolerate it in order to rob the continent of its natural minerals and so fill the pockets of these dictators and pseudo leaders even more .

Men are more dominant are more driven to seek status and they tend to push harder, that's part of why.
Very broadly speaking humans have a tendancy to unthinkingly align themselves with whoever has the most power, the less educated they are the more this will tend to be the case.

Exactly!
I am rather confident that the majority of UK residents do not wish to engage in this war. So we need to make it clear to the stablishment.
It is really the only thing we can do.

This reminds me of book I read a while ago called 'It’s a (wo)mans world', where women were in charge of the world. I think it was meant to be a dystopia, but I found I couldn’t really bring myself to care that much about how men were being treated…it had an interesting twist at the end (which I won’t spoil here in case anyone reads it!).

Yes, but awful things are still going on. It is naive in the extreme to think that we in the UK can influence what goes on in the rest of the world. We can't. We can to an extent influence what happens to us, and that's alll I have the bandwith to focus on anyway.

@ExercicenformedeZ yes, we cannot control the rest of the world, but surely we can at least have a say to whether we want some of those horrible things spreading to UK or we want UK getting involved.
Can the UK government now start the revision on abortion law that is going on in US, without it being part of their manifesto? They should not, UK citizens do not seem to have any appetite for a copy/ cut of what is going in US. Actually, UK is going in the opposite direction.
We cannot control everything a government does, but we can surely express what we think in a public way and then vote them out if needed.
Do you remember Boris and the bus with the 300 million for the NHS? Well, it took a while for him to be forced to face that it was a lie, but at the end it happened. If we stay silent, then he would still be PM.

There would be a massive argument every 28 days.

I was looking for the 😂 emoji but remembered it was removed

Man bashing is crass, really. Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher didn’t save the world and Kamala Harris was a half wit.
The ageism is crass too.

Men do still believe indeed that there would be an argument every 28 days! Or every 14, depending in how hormones work.....

You missed out Liz Truss.

Then we’d have ‘peri’ to contend with…

Try telling this to the women in Afghanistan.

Yup.

All old. All white. All misogynist.

Totally agree. Even worse it's men like Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and even worse Keir Starmer.
Imagine a world where women could lead. No dick swinging or measuring contests.

🙄