How to approach Dh minimising male issues

[buckeejit]

Not sure how to phrase it but I think dh feels personally attacked/responsible when I discuss male violence & turns it to whatabouttery.

Examples are last week he was reading something & said people being killed by a member of their family is x number or has gone up by x%. I said I wasn't surprised given how much male violence against women happens at home, also, sure your man in south of Ireland killed his wife & 3 sons & then there was a man in England drove his family off a cliff or something, (these were cases I remember-peri menopause means I'm not great at remembering lately). He immediately jumped in to say and a women went to prison for killing her child recently & went to google to find an example.

Then last night Michael Buble was on & I said I didn't have good feelings about him & ds-13 asked why & I was showing him the video of MB & his wife. Dh couldn't see the video but still voiced 'but you don't know what happened before that & what the situation is & can't condemn him just for that'. I disagreed & said you absolutely could condemn him for the bad behaviour that you see & why was he defending him when he can't even see his actions. He said 'but I can hear..' they were speaking Spanish & that was irrelevant anyway as the visuals were key.

It has really annoyed me as I feel he minimised that behaviour in front of ds. We don't argue much & I didn't want it to escalate in front of dc but feel that dh thinks I'm a man hater or give them a bad press or something. I am gender critical & call out when women are unfairly treated & I get the feeling that he thinks I'm over the top with it. I don't feel the need to say women sometimes perpetrate these crimes too. Recently he said that Jordan whatshisname talked a lot of sense from what he's read.

Usual disclaimer of he's very lovely for the most part etc.

Not sure what I'm looking for but I guess wondering if anyone else is in a similar situation and/or any advice, apart from LTB

Bump, cos this is common I think. Defensiveness and 'not all men's etc.

My DP is prone to this. We have rowed over CMS, violence towards women, work gap, glass ceiling e5c. When ever I say something, it is immediately "what about women who leave" etc etc

He now catches himself and has made an effort to improve. We sometimes laugh about his immediate "what about" response and I look forward to the day he doesn't do it automatically. Amd he tells me he is working on it.

One great turning point was being told by someone who worked at the CMS, that yes it was indeed mostly men who needed chasing and he had to demur.

Oh god, I just read that he likes Jordan the Canadian twat. OP I feel for you, I think that some men really internalise how great/ superior men are and just cannot fathom that they can be seen as lacking both in realti9nships and braoder point of view. It really did come as a shock to DP, that I was a) a feminist and b) pretty pissed off with men in general. Literally no women in his circle had ever voiced it. Men are revered.

I couldn't believe it either but was more incredulous that his sisters etc had internalised misogyny that much too.

I work in the rail industry, there's a FB site with a lot of discussion re the strike action which descended into comments about "it's not all men" (comments posted by men) the comments started when a woman posted that she'd been stranded at night on a deserted platform and how vulnerable she felt.
Men will never get it and the few who do are not loud enough to be heard.
Otoh my oh, whilst waiting for the footy to start last night said he's sick of listening to the women presenters / commentary because "what do women know about football"
The woman speaking was the Lioness Jill Scott!
I had him Google misogyny, told him he's a complete tool, he wasn't too happy

Oh Lordy, this is just more depressing than I'd hoped.

Just saw a t shirt on another thread that I might passive aggressively ask him to get me for Christmas saying 'I'm too clumsy to be around your fragile masculinity'

I think it disappoints me that he's not more enlightened & progressive. His attitude has always been a little oppositional with me in a gentle debating way on things. I think he has changed his views on allowing transwomen access to whatever but can't help himself be offended on behalf of all men?

DH can be a bit like this. Yesterday I told him that sexual harassment in public was going to be a crime and he was horrified! Said that lots of men could end up in jail etc for accidentally brushing up against someone
Firstly I explained the definition of Harassment and then I asked him if he was worried about being falsely accused of murder, or robbery or drink driving. He said no and I asked why not
“because I wouldn’t do any of those things”
Exactly

Substitute the word “male” into “any group identity” and you’d be called and ‘ist’ and i wouldn’t be surprised if the person you were talking who was a member of said group, to got upset and defensive.

By all means show people examples of individual behaviour, discuss individual examples, but characterising that individuals behaviour as typical of any group will offend said group.

Funny how he gets jumped on for listening to Jordan Peterson, who frequently discusses the importance of control for men, given their usually superior physical strength and lack of agreeableness and capability for violence. I guess people take what they want from any author who is regarded as on their wing of politics. JP talks very much about individual respnsibility, and on mumsnet we see constantly men not stepping up to their family duties. Not everything he espouses makes sense but he is one of the few men who actually speaks to men about what it means to be a good man. Shut him down and you get the likes of Andrew Tate filling earholes. I know which i prefer.

Talk to you DH, don’t generalise…. How would you feel if he came out with some rubbish about all women. Ask him what he gets from JP? You might find he very much has the same values as you and just needs to learn more about your perspective on things, based on your experiences.

Now i know some people will start with the ‘he needs to do this’ and ‘it’s not for the woman to educate him’. People don’t know what they don’t know. Isn’t a relationship about moving forward together…. I’m sure you can learn from each other…. And accept you wont always agree on everything.

Men have a lot to say about DV, but im not sure they understand how it permeates nearly every aspect of a woman’s life, but they also know how common it is for men to be abused too, whilst being inundated with messaging about women’s experiences. So you might learn something too. But What would he see as the red flags for a daughter? (don’t know if you have one sorry) How would he expect her to behave? What are his views on clothing? Does he cling to the idea that how one dresses informs how one is treated? Does he understand that looking vulnerable is just as dangerous as looking promiscuous?

He sounds like one of the better partners on MN, so hope you make some progress on an issue which is clearly very important to you. But ultimately, you might have to accept, he just doesn’t care about it as much as you do if you only have a DS, even if he does have the same values about right and wrong.

Thanks @Bard6817 I appreciate your pov & I hear what you're saying & can understand. But him defending behaviour when the actions are there on view-that's the point that has really pissed me off, especially in front of ds. I wasn't doing any generalising at the time or highlighting the percentage difference between abuse perpetrated between the sexes.

He's not mad into JP or anything afaik just saw some bits that he agreed with. I don't know much of him other than snippets on here, there doesn't seem a summary of his views. Will have a bit of a look so I understand more

We have a ds & a dd & fwiw I feel it's a bit
More important for ds to be fully educated than dd as it's him & his peers who we're looking to to break the cycle

Dh is a good partner & I guess a traditional 'gentleman' & would mostly let dd/ds wear what they want & wouldn't want either of them to be left in a vulnerable position

No, it's not all men, but it is almost always men.

I'm not sure why these men get defensive anyway. If someone says to me 'women do x', if it doesn't apply to me I just forget it. I don't feel the need to bleat about it.

It's always useful when thinking about interpersonal relationships to consider how you react in a parallel kind of situation. If your husband makes a comment about how women behave in relationships, how do you tend to think about that, or feel about it?

A lot of the time the natural tendency is to do exactly what he is doing and that isn't, in my experience, a particularly male thing.

It's also not bad for kids to see their parents have differernt perspectives.

I’ve tried to explain about the why - it’s just a natural reaction for many to your group identity being attacked. Credit to you for not behaving that way in a similar situation but i don’t believe that’s the norm.

But the ‘almost always’ statement about men and DV is actually incorrect.

www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/mental-health-statistics/domestic-violence-statistics

According to this 1 in 3 DV victims is male. 2 in 3 is female. From this we can deduce the female group has a larger issue, and i don’t have to hand the death rates in DV, but i’d guess it’s a 99.9% to 0.1% gender split. . But,

However, i do question the legitimacy of any stat, when we have a recognised issue of stigma preventing males reporting, and issues of women simply not reporting for much wider and deeper reasons. So i do accept there could be issues with the data, but clearly it is not ‘almost always’ men.

Thats a strange interpretation of the data. The perpetrators of all violence and crime, not just domestic violence, are majority male. So overwhelmingly male across crime and violence as a whole, that the stats can't suddenly swing back to majority female because of some conspiracy about not reporting female violence and female crime.

According to this 1 in 3 DV victims is male. 2 in 3 is female. From this we can deduce the female group has a larger issue, and i don’t have to hand the death rates in DV, but i’d guess it’s a 99.9% to 0.1% gender split.

Why are you assuming that the men are all being abused by women? Gay men experience DV by their very male partners.

Do you mean like parking?

And before anybody has a go.

I don't personally believe that women in general are worse drivers than men, in fact most evidence points the exact opposite way. It was trying to make a point that being lumped in to a generalisation, when you're not personally to blame does and can sting a bit.

However, I do notice that neither my wife nor daughter can reverse into a bay first time, and my sister in law crashes her car at least twice a year...

I'm on a group called deadbeat dad's suck the amount of women that dive onto posts shared IN THIS GROUP screaming NAMALT and OMG soooo untrue my neighbours sisters husbands best friend is raising his own children all by himself! She only has those kids every other week! so you can't say that because it's completely UNTRUE! today we had a man on there saying how he isnt a deadbeat dad he raises his kids (with his mums help) because his wife left him.....just why are they in the group?

And I would call him out every single time yes that might be true but that's not what I'm talking about or yes you can hear someone speaking but you can't see what I'm talking about unless your looking etc etc

Cars are designed around the male form for the most part and we are not the same form

Also my mom can park on a penny she does however have form for speeding like a teenage boy she is over 70 😬

Yes, I'm a much better driver than dh & do most of the driving. I might struggle to drive into a space forwards as always reverse.

We have a dog. Last week I walked him up a nearby road. We live in a nice area & I was agog at how much dog poo there was on the footpath. I wouldn't take it personally if a non dog owner was complaining about the amount of dog poo. I'd wholeheartedly agree at how disgusting it is & what can be done.

How can we tackle a problem if we're pretending it's not there.

Agree completely.

And I guess the point is, is that it's a fine line, and how it's put across, as to whether or not someone takes a generalised statement as a call to arms or a personal criticism....

I think in the OPs case it comes across as blaming all men, and then the in appropriate / automatic defensive response...

So many men I know are like this, and several women.

Any discussion about feminism and their hackles rise, even a very generalised “I saw this in the news not long ago” type discussion.

My 17 yr old son is dreadful for this. Dd and I will have conversations about dv, rape and lack of convictions, things like this, if ds overhears he ends up angry and raging at how anti men we are, how much we hate men. Which isn’t true. Ds is generally thoughtful and respectful, but literally cannot hear anything that makes men look bad (I’ve shown him the rules of misogyny, he was not impressed, showed them to dd at the same time and she was blown away by the accuracy).
I wonder where he’s got this from. ExH never had an opinion on anything, just passively let everything wash over him, so maybe this has allowed ds to form stronger opinions as exH never had these sorts of conversations at all, to the point where ds didn’t really have a male role model in H at all.

I think that men are not used to not automatically being at the top and many are struggling, without even realising it. Dh finds issues around all women short lists hard for example. He will say, "but what if the man really IS better for the job". And I eill remind him that even if one man, who is better, gets penalised by being a man, that's a drop in the bucket of what women have experienced for years. I also remind him that if a man is on the list, he might be perceived as better, even though actually he's not.

I do think when talking about dv or similar, it is helpful to ensure you aren't framing it as "all men". We often talk about "some.men" or "many men" or "it's so much easier to be bad as a man".

Its interesting he reacts like this, that he takes it as a personal attack. The dog poo example by a PP is a very good one - if you know it doesn't apply to you as a dog owner, there's no need to take it personally.

I like the parking one too though tbf, as a non driver from the passenger seat I can see shit drivers/parkers of either sex perfectly

Is it 1/3 is male or 1/3 is adult men? I think the 1/3 figure includes children - I have heard similar figures that do. Its easy to imagine how. e.g. a man abuses a woman in front of their children - a boy and a girl. Maybe also hits them. That's 3 victims of DV - 2 female, 1 male.
However - I think the figures for adult victims of dv are as high as 20% men (it varies according to source and people argue about it). And the majority of those are heterosexual relationships. DV is a problem for men and should be taken seriously. However, the vast majority of DV murders which make the news will be women at the hands of men (possibly reflecting the physical disparity as well as the disparity in perpetrator v victim). So its completely normal to worry about male victims of DV but it is a bit hmmmm when someone only ever brings it up as a response to someone talking about female victims.

I don't think there is anything wrong with listening to Jordan Peterson though. I don't think there's anything wrong with listening to anyone. In my opinion he's right on somethings wrong on others. Like most people really.

In my experience, a lot of decent men jump to the NAMALT response because they feel like all men are being tarred with the same brush and they personally are being lumped in with the arseholes when they know they’re not like that.

I can sort of understand it, after all, we get pissed off as women at being uniformly treated as vacuous gold-diggers (or whatever pejorative term men come up with to describe all women).

I’ve had similar conversations with with DH, who is genuinely one of the good ones, and he does understand the statistics behind it.

"Unbelievable" on Netflix is really interesting to watch with a man. I watched it with my son - mid-twenties, lovely, would never deliberately hurt anyone etc etc. He was still saying "But.. but..." at the beginning. Halfway through of course when the police officers changed and it was a female pair of detectives, I could see the light dawning in his eyes.

I think that's part of the problem, really. We need to see good practice everywhere.