To have lost faith in men

[nondrinker1985]

As a result of all the Epstein stuff. Having been a victim of a sexual assault as a young child then in my teens and twenties I had a sense of what men were like but my DH is a good man.

Literally everyone is involved in this Epstein stuff- anyone with power. So this makes them exploit young women? It’s sickening - it’s heartbreaking for the young girls who are victims of these men.

Yes, apart from their own daughters, they seem to forget. They only remember when something happens to their daughters. It's really inexplicable. You'd think men would know and understand their own sex. That they take such a thread so intensely personally says that maybe they have a guilty conscience, like maybe something long buried that they did a long time and and have now changed or something.

I think it's easier to feel yourself part of a group that is being talked about as victims or good people. Even if you aren't suffering the specific crime, you can empathise/be aware of your own potential vulnerability. Along with the moral outrage you feel.

But if you are a man not doing awful things, why would you group yourself in with those? Same way if you said people from London all stab people I wouldn't group myself in mentally even though I'm from London.

Exactly. Not all men but fucking loads of them, from rape and murder to casual sexism and all the misogynistic toe rags in between.

They are myriad.

Hello! Sorry I haven’t been back. Had a netball tournament yesterday an incident which proved my point - some random fucker decided to stand outside one of the courts and film our girls playing netball so we had to tell him to fuck off!! They are 13/13 fgs.

Your argument makes some sense except that nobody said 'all men do x.'
Do people really not understand this or is there a certain amount of disingenuousness going on?

I love the men in my family, including my wonderful, gentle son. And some of my male friends. But yes, the Epstein files are prompting exactly that question in me : would ALL men behave like this given enough power and money? The extent of who was involved just blows my mind. Not in a good way.

But you've said that NAMALT by saying that you have a lovely partner and nice men in your life!

Lost faith? You mean you had some?? I do trust men, I trust them to be sex-mad arseholes and think with their dicks and their testosterone. Always found it ‘funny’ that it was women labelled as ruled by hormones, when testosterone is out there.

The Epstein files aren’t showing me anything particularly, I’m more concerned about the case in France of men drugging and inviting strangers to rape their wives for years - ordinary men with families doing this to their wives - and a couple of similar cases I’ve seen that have not grabbed the media’s attention, probably because ‘it’s boring now’. Also the number of videos flooding the internet made of women on a night out in cities or just walking around living their lives, and the amount of misogynistic comments they attract.

Crone Island is the old name of the collective fantasy for women to live alone without men, what we actually need is Sheri Tepper’s Women’s Country. Men despise us and always will. Historically men as a species are very capable of throwing kids back into burning buildings and laughing.

The only thing the Epstein files are surprising me with is why oh why Mandelson was brought out of retirement when he was always dodgy as fuck. Some of us remember New Labour. They were traitors to the working classes.

I don't think so. It takes a certain type of man to actually want lots of money and power in the first place.

That said, the majority will cheat if they think they can get away with it. I know because I used to be an attention seeker...I didn't sleep with them - I just liked prancing around in short skirts. I'd estimate 70 percent.

Exactly 🙄. I said men as a sex class. I even put it in bold.

On all of these threads it seems to be taken that it’s LITERALLY all men when no one has ever said it’s every single man on the planet. The fact that VAWG can’t be discussed without a NAMALT being stated is what’s ridiculous.

Yes and I’m not about NAMALT, but I will point out many of the significant players with Epstein are female - and not shrinking violets with no power of their own, but powerful women choosing to engage with him. Ghislaine Maxwell, Sarah Ferguson, Mette Marit to name a few.

I've thought a lot about what it would be like to live in Sheri Tepper’s 'Women’s Country' and I'd be happy to give it a go. The good men in that story are lovely.

I have to agree. Not least because my DH IS one who does. And it's cost him the closeness he had with men he's known for 40+ years. None of them are sex offenders (I don't think) or "bad" people, but a few low level incidents where DH called things out - jokes about being at the pub and having to let the "wifey" have their credit card so they'd be "allowed out of the house", "nagging", or the one who was outraged his wife wanted the house in the divorce even though he "paid for it" (he didn't. Plus she gave up her career to travel around the world with him. And then he got fired....). DH pointed it out. Got ribbed, teased etc.

Then there was the big blow up. I won't bore you with the details but needless to say, it was a bunch of professional white men sitting around basically agreeing that penalising women for being able to have children at work was totally 100% legit. It got heated. And it took a few years for the friendship to come back and, to be quite honest, there are still cracks there. None of them fully "trust" DH and frankly, DH feels the same. It tainted things.

But these other men - I 100% guarantee their wives all think they are 100% not in the slightest bit sexist and definitely are NOT part of the problem.

The only thing I have issue with it is that I think the young lads are too young.

We certainly need more womens representation - a womens council, parliament and law maybe to balance what is essentially a man’s system built for men specifically to exclude women.

I agree with all of that @WaryCrow. A women's council would be quite something.

There’s no such thing as “men as a sex class”, most men are just shit. Individually.

Lumping them all together as a ‘class’ as if all men are exactly the same and just can’t help their little manly selves is an absolute nonsense.

Yep like the women and girls brutally raped during every conflict. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus, the Hamas attacks in Israel, the Russian soldiers entering Berlin, the young girls in Ukraine brutalised in the current conflict and on and on and on and on.

Not all men, but let's be fair it's a massive percentage of them, otherwise these things couldn't happen.

There is. What sex is the worst. Statistically men. This does not equate to saying ‘all men are the same’.

Misogyny is a systemic behemoth. This should be of no surprise and yet, I am truly overwhelmed by Epstein's blast radius.
This exposure is the toppling of something enormous. And it will hurt, economically, politically/geopolitically, diplomatically... I think the shock will be seismic and we will feel it. And my fucking god, it's this lot that's been running the planet for eons now. They won't go away easily.
Everything needs a reset.
Several years ago, I had to sit at the sentencing hearing of my ex-husband who went to prison for sexually abusing a minor. He was an NHS GP. And I've been reflecting so much lately on institutions that perpetuate and uphold misogyny and male violence against females and the men who are drawn to those systems in order to exploit and utilise them for their own needs.

Whether on a local or grand scale, the fact of the matter is, we live in a world that is ruled by sociopathic males. Those are the men who are drawn to power. Good guys don't want to lead nations, generally speaking. Billionaires don't make their money doing nice things. And any charitable noises they make come from the same place as their earnings: The exploitation of others. I have thought, for a long time, that this sociopathic breed of powerful men is trying to drag humanity into a state of global serfdom. AI perpetuates this reality. The data centres alone undermine our existence.
I thought I was being a bit nutty and conspiratorial. But I really don't think so now.
I think we're facing a tug-o-war between humankind's righteous many and the extremely, dangerously powerful few. We're at a real crossroads in our existence. The Epstein files are more than just 'Eww what a gross pack of abusive men" and that in itself is abhorrent enough. These files show us who we, the collective, are up against. The Minnesotans are us down the road. We're going to have to fight for this world. "There's some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for."
I love that Epstein is dead. That's a win, for sure. I love the deluge of their own shit coming back to drown these rats.

I think 'anyone with power' is key. Men who seek power to that degree are often narcissistic, Machiavellian etc

It's not a representative group of men. I get feeling shaken though, it's vile how many turned a blind eye, let alone abused. .

It's icky to me personally but it's not by definition abusive ...

the NAMALT is strong here.

I have a fab dad and DH and several other men i know.

I am still adult enough to recognise that men as a sex class can be dangerous predators and need other men to call them out on every possible occasion because the bad ones just don't listen to women.

oh yes yes yes.

If one woman does something wrong, bad, evil, stupid: that is a reason women shouldn't be, say, allowed to be pilots.

But if a man does the same thing? screeches of NAMALT...

Women on average have more empathy, for one. For another, men on average have higher sex drives so bad men are more likely to sexually offend compared to bad women.

oh mate.
Sometimes you need to know when to shut up and listen.

This was that time.