Not all men, but always men

[Amodernhistory]

Driving home from work tonight to the main news stories on the radio being 1) man tortures adopted baby to death and 2) man arrested after child ends up in crocodile enclosure at zoo.

I am absolutely sick of the daily onslaught of problematic men, monsters, committing outrages. That’s all, no suggestions, just AIBU to be sickened by this constant stream of beasts who live amongst us (Gisele Pelicot’s husband, recent terrorist attacks, daily murders of women by men) combined with personal experiences of men who ‘you wouldn’t have thought it to look at him’ turning out to be sex pests and paedophiles is putting me right off them as a sex class. Not your man, not your son, not my (lovely) Dad, but all the other men… how do we know which ones?

Its hard not to conclude it’s a man problem.

Another thing: I don't really get why men have such an issue with their masculinity. I have never, ever felt not feminine enough, and I've never heard my friends say anything like that, either. Maybe it's because most of us have periods, get pregnant, give birth, and maybe breastfeed, and so our female-ness is kind of in our faces?

But what I've come to realise is that men define much of their masculinity in relation to us. I think that's why they want to dominate us, and that's why many men like to dominate women in the bedroom especially. I find it totally weird why their masculinity would depend on us so much. But I guess that's why we have the verb "emasculate" but we don't have a female equivalent. I've never heard a woman say "He effeminated me."

It seems that men give women control over their sense of themselves as men, whereas women don't depend on male validation of our innate womanhood.

Maybe they should develop their sense of masculinity in ways that don't depend on putting women down or attempting to slot them into a subordinate role.

For the men who have answered: Why does your sense of masculinity depend to some extent on women? I just don't get it.

Women do bad things all the time are other women made to stand up to that?

What do you think women have been doing since the 70s in particular? We've been standing up and creating rape crisis centres and women's shelters since the 70s, providing help for women in DV situations, publicising the horrible statistics in our countries of the number of women murdered by a partner every bloody week, every bloody year.

Why don't you do something, apart from lecturing women on a thread about male violence in a largely women's forum on how they should feel, express themselves, discuss, and act.

Yes

Men murder each other more often than they murder women. In the UK, around 400 men are murdered each year (second link) compared to 100-160 women. All, or almost all, of the culprits are men. And overwhelmingly, it's a current or former partner. So men murdering random women is quite rare, actually.

I'm not saying any of it's OK, I'm saying that interestingly, male violence is far from limited to women. It makes me feel slightly better that the main targets seem to be other men.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-pledges-to-protect-more-women-from-violence

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/homicideinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2025

This nails it. I don’t know why so many women seem to be trying to suggest otherwise

This is a really interesting perspective and I imagine the sort of discourse of gender studies courses.

There’s a post recently called ‘the behaviour of most men’ on a similar theme. The vast majority were in agreement that most men have dreadful traits/behaviours. I think maybe 70% agreed with that. Obviously that thread was also immediately monopolised by people keen to say women are bad too. Those people clearly don’t understand numbers, maths and statistics generally. YADNBU. Men are terrible. Not all, but most.

No, I've just read a lot on here about how useless CAMHS is and how long the waits are.

Unfortunately when I (amongst others) raised the question of whether totally defenceless babies should be adopted by two men I was told I was homophobic and narrow minded because lots of men are nice

I just don't get it. People keep crying out for change to happen when almost a child a week is murdered but when faced with the stats they don't like the measures that are the natural conclusion.

But the fact they were 2 men had nothing to do with it, a baby can be adopted by 2 women or a man and a woman and still come to harm the sex of the couple did not cause this

I don't know if I'm missing something here

97% of violent crime is committed by men. A child is most likely to be harmed by a man they aren't related to.

So the natural conclusion here is that leaving a defenseless baby with two such men raises the probability of harm.

I was about to say the same.

The statistics are unequivocal. The risks slant heavily one way.

It’s not that it’s impossible for a child to come to harm with a woman, or that it never happens. It’s that the vast majority of violent offending is carried out by men.

A child being adopted by two men is therefore statistically at significantly greater risk of being harmed than if it were adopted by a mixed sex couple or two women.

This is clear. Unless you are very very determined not to see it.

If I was asked whether murder or suicide was more common, I would answer suicide- I think that’s quite obvious! Purely on an anecdotal level- most people I know have experience of suicide within their family/friendship group/acquaintances whereas knowing a murder victim is much rarer.

So yes, murder is rare, thankfully. But murder is the peak of violent behaviour- as you acknowledge, there is a whole load of other violent behaviour which doesn’t result in death but still results in injury and psychological harm. Unsurprisingly, it is men behind most of this violence. So whilst you’re right that MNers are statistically unlikely to be murder victims, many have or will have experience of violence from men, and women are justified in being worried and/or angry about it. It’s not the case that we can just say ‘Oh well, I’m unlikely to be murdered so I don’t need to worry about violent men at all’.

I agree that the overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by men and have long said that it's an epidemic.

Locally though, the man in question regarding the Crocodile enclosure is known to have extremely limited mental capacity, and was accompanied by two carers apparently. The questions likely to be asked will be in relation to risk assessments when taking unpredictable people with severe learning disabilities and almost zero mental capacity into public places. And indeed, what those carers were doing at the time of the incident. I doubt there was any premeditation involved, or that the man had any real concept of what he was doing.

I was at that zoo with my 9yo dd on Sunday and have chosen to shield her from the news because she's autistic and recovering from a lengthy bout of agoraphobia. If she links the incident and the place, we won't be able to visit again and she desperately wants to show her big brother the baby goats over the summer. A tragic incident and I hope that poor little boy recovers and is able to forget what happened.

@DimwittedSkater Posted before I’d finished- aside from murder and physical assault, there is the small matter of sexual offences which are absolutely rife and which a great many women have experienced. I don’t think you can reassure women that those sorts of crimes are rare because they aren’t.

True. Just trying to find a silver lining, otherwise despair can overcome you. Also I was responding to the thread topic, which led with murder and attempted murder.

@PollyBell ‘women do bad things all the time’.

This sounds like an attempt at debate from a ten year old. Can’t you do any better than this? Use some statistics/facts/reason? On a thread about male violence, popping in to say ‘Women do bad things all the time’ just adds absolutely nothing to the discussion. It’s also untrue.

I can’t imagine what it is like if you are going through life thinking men are lovely apart from a few monsters. Most men are selfish and self centred and lack any empathy for anyone who isn’t like them. Most men think women are there to support them and get angry when they feel they aren’t getting the deference and respect they deserve. All men benefit from a subsection of violent men walking around who mean that most women and other men will be pleasant and accommodating to men in case they kick off. All cultures to a varying degree seem to have very fragile men who need constant propping up and reassurance in order for them not to meltdown.

The quickest way to find out if you feel safe enough, is to gently take the piss out of a man and observe his reaction - any man that has no capacity for making fun of himself, however superficially pleasant he seems, will turn out to be a wrong un.

People can beleive what they want women harm children and other people all the time there is more to harm than violence I dont have to prove anything people dont have to beleive me, people can get any statistics or report or any other information and put it on here all they like the internet can say whatever people want it to say, the government tries it all the time on the public it means nothing

Good Lord

I'm actually speechless.

Fair point @DimwittedSkater, and I appreciate what you say about not letting despair overcome us.

In another post you pointed out that male on male violence is even more common than male on female violence (sexual offences are a different matter). I believe that is the case, but as the mother of a lovely son, wife to a lovely husband and sister to a decent brother, I’m not hugely reassured by that either. When my 18 year-old son goes to the pub on a Saturday night with his mates, I always say ‘Have fun, stay safe. If someone starts a fight, get yourself away from it’, because male violence is so common and a drunk bloke being punched by another drunk bloke is an extremely common event.

Again, you don’t seem to have the capacity to join in with a debate, nor the ability to assess sources of evidence. But I don’t think you actually want to have a grown up discussion; you just want to keep interrupting women every time they point out the problems with men. Your attempts to silence or divert this discussion just won’t work, I’m afraid. We can all see how desperately you don’t want the truth to be discussed.

@PollyBell Maybe you could start a thread entitled ‘Women do bad things all the time’. You could present some evidence and then have the discussion you want to have. (Do expect quite a lot of ‘not all women’ in the replies though).

This can’t be for real.

It’s not a question of belief.

It’s a matter of evidence, statistics and fact.

If you are either incapable of comprehending that, or are refusing to do so, that’s a you issue.