At least three women have been murdered by men this week in the U.K.

[HoldingTheDoor]

There's also been an attempted murder of another woman and three children.

I am so fucking tired of reading about male violence against women and children.

Johanita Dogbey www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65483270

Suzanne Henry www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-65491816

Maya Devi www.essexlive.news/news/essex-news/elderly-woman-found-dead-elm-8414418

Attempted murder of a woman and three children, currently unnamed www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cw5kpkpwylpo

I may have missed another victim . Apologies if so but I'm scared to look for fear that I'll read of another.

I am beyond done with this shit. I don't even have anything meaningful to say. I'm just way past disgusted.

I am truly frightened by the world my DD will be entering when she leaves home and her girls school. I am also frustrated by women protecting the perpetrators.
Report, report, report.
Educate other men and particularly boys.

shit - but thanks for the update

Perhaps a better comparison would be number of men per year, so about half the birth rate, which has been somewhere between 700,000 and 800,000 since the 1970s.

So let's say 350,000 out of whom 100 are murderers, that's 1 in 3,500 or more like 0.03%

It's not a majority, but nobody is saying it is, and it doesn't need to be. 1 in 3,500 is a lot of people. Think about all the people you meet in your life, the other people in all your school classes, colleagues at every job, parents of other children in your DC's class. Family members, in laws, exes' families, friendship groups, family friends etc. We don't have close relationships with 3500 people, but we probably meet about that many to speak to.

Many women murder their kids. You’re a woman. Are you a murderer?

Don't want to provide too many outing details but I have spent the better part of two decades immersed in this work. By my estimate, approximately 70%+ of femicides are totally foreseeable and thus preventable. The biggest - and thus far insurmountable - barrier to overcome is the cultural assumption that women routinely lie about their experiences.

Many women murder their kids.

• *In the UK at least this is rarely true. Women do kill babies (defined as under one year) and this is mostly linked to post partum psychosis. After that, it's pretty rare.

I don't see how that makes sense at all. Given that the vast majority of men have the ability to kill a woman it makes much more sense to base it on the male population figures.

The only possible reason for doing it your way seems to be the conclusion whereby you can say 'one in 350k' instead of 'one in 33 million'. I mean we could equally do it by all the men ever born if we were just going to choose random male population figures.

Surely the best way is to work out a rough approximation of the % of men in our society that murder women.

The problem is that (to apply the logic used against men) we don't which women are the dangerous ones. For that reason we have to accept that all women are potential baby killers and shouldn't be supervised with their children until past the stage where they're more likely to kill their child than the father or other relatives.

'should be supervised'

You said

"Well, if there are approx 33m men in the UK and around 100 murder a woman each year then that means that 0.0003% of men are murderers. "

I can see a pp already said this but the logical flaw here is using the number of women murdered by men, in a year, with the broader claim "that means that x% of men are murderers"
.
A man who murdered a woman 8 years ago would still be a murderer even if he hadn't killed a woman in the past 12 months. @BertieBotts was attempting to fix this error be using a proxy for the number of new men per year and the number of new men murdering women (it would still be an approximation but certainly a more accurate one).

The broader point of NAMALT - sure. That it is a non trivial endeavour to figure out which men are most dangerous, certainly.

I fall into the group of people who firmly believe that the men who do go on to murder women have often (but not always) exhibited patterns of behaviour which should cause concern. I would like police forces to be trained and prepared to recognise these (and some forces now are)

OK, I see the logic now.

That said, if those men who had murdered eight years ago reoffended then the figures would still be in the stats for the current year, so I feel like the best way to have a running statistic of 'male likelihood of murderer status' is still to look at the number of homicides each year in proportion to the male population - this also makes it easier to track trends.

Alternatively, we could look at total recorded murders to date against total male population at a given point in time.

However, I tend to have what you could probably call a more 'holistic' than feminist view of the matter. I'd place equal importance on things like encouraging women not to smoke or improving road safety as these would ultimately save more lives, even though the cynical part of me feels that these are less attractive options to many as they don't offer a clear human antagonist to wage battle with.

The problem is that (to apply the logic used against men) we don't which women are the dangerous ones.

Actually we do which is why maternity teams have special provisionsfor those deemed vulnerable.

I know this probs won't go down well but I frequently find myself frustrated by the myopic nature of much feminist theory (and feminists themselves). To me it often seems to focus on sex and the male/female dichotomy to the neglect of other important aspects and can draw conclusions in a somewhat one sided way.

For example, if we look at male violence I just feel like there's just not enough nuance applied in many cases. A common view is that men need to take collective responsibility and act together to end systemic male violence. A sentiment not unlike that expressed by the previous poster who said 'Why are men and women alike not saying, Enough?'

The problem is what does this actually look like in real life? It's easy to point to the common factor of men being violent. However, can we ask that Jewish men take collective responsibility for the holocaust? Can we ask that black men share responsibility for police violence against BME males? What about gay men and homophobic violence? It's all getting a bit too close to victim blaming for me at this stage (and I say that as somebody who isn't really fond of the term tbh).

If we start from the accepted premise of men committing most violent acts, we still have to reconcile the fact that things like religion/political ideology/etc are generally far greater catalysts for violence. Nobody has yet committed a genocide of women in the same way as there have for Jews, falun gong, and many other groups. However, feminism often tries to tackle the issue of male violence without taking any of these issues into account, which for me actually means it serves as more of a hindrance than a help in some cases.

And on a slightly more personal note I also just hate this victim mentality thing tbh. Men make up something like 3/4 of homicide victims but you rarely ever hear them saying things like they 'can barely watch the news'.

Of course, when somebody points out that men are actually by far the greatest victims of violence then the response is usually "oh, but who's perpetrating the violence?" The answer to that is....well, not the same men that are on the receiving end. That's the problem - you can lump all men together into some homegenous group but you can't simultaneously conflate victim and perpetrator without employing some weird manner of victim blaming whereby the gay male becomes collectively responsible for the violence being visited on his person.

I've voiced this view before and never really got a proper response (usually gets sidestepped) so I'd be interested to hear how this all fits in from a feminist perspective. I'd love to think I'm being overly cynical but tbh I've not read much yet to affirm it (and I am genuinely open to taking other views onboard).

Yes because you're taking the amount of women murdered in 1 year. But women get murdered every year, and men live longer than a year. So you're not comparing the same figures.

What you're saying is that 0.0003% of men murder their female partner or ex-partner each year. That is not the same as saying that 0.0003% of men are murderers. Actually the number of murderers is much higher than this because around 600 people are killed every year. It's a sixth of those who are women killed by their male partner.

Of course it's only a rough idea, but I was attempting to divide the population by some metric which makes sense if you're calculating murders over a year.

Yes, looking at recorded crime figures of all time compared with the average population over that time span would be more accurate I suppose.

It is also probably a bit overestimated assuming murder is like other crimes - the same person is likely to commit it multiple times. I don't know if male domestic femicide does follow this pattern.

Talking about reducing smoking rates - whatever, do that if you like - but it has absolutely no relevance to the problem of male violence. This isn't about women's death rates overall - homicide isn't a high ranking cause of death. It's about male violence and a culture that excuses it. For every death there are probably hundreds of women suffering physical and sexual assault. For every assault there are probably dozens living in fear and under control. For every abusive relationship there are social and cultural waves permeating every aspect of daily life, feeding back into the cycle. Nobody thinks that men killing female partners is OK, but a lot of people think everyday sexism is.

Every one of these incidents is always reported as "an isolated incident". I know that is because they mean this person isn't a danger to the general public (no, just his next partner when he gets out). But it always makes it sound like it's not part of a wider pattern, and it absolutely is.

and another today charged with death on Sunday https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-65541999

What you're saying is that 0.0003% of men murder their female partner or ex-partner each year. That is not the same as saying that 0.0003% of men are murderers. Actually the number of murderers is much higher than this because around 600 people are killed every year. It's a sixth of those who are women killed by their male partner.

Well, no. What it's saying is that 0.0003% of all UK men commit murder in that year.

Yes because you're taking the amount of women murdered in 1 year. But women get murdered every year, and men live longer than a year. So you're not comparing the same figures.

Well, you wouldn't be comparing the same figures year on year as they'd be updated to reflect the % of men killing women in that particular year. It wouldn't show all men who pose a potential threat for the reasons mentioned earlier (i.e. men who murdered in the past) but it would still show how many of all those men were actively killing women and what the likelihood of being killed in a particular year is (I'd imagine this could be forecast quite accurately into the next year).

What about the 30+ males that have been murdered this week.

Is it Any surprise why a lot of men feel they don’t count any more. It doesn’t make headlines.

I guess my view is ultimately that male violence is intrinsically linked to being male, but isn't really anything to do with women or influenced by women, as shown by the vast majority of victims being male. That's why I feel that feminism (which primarily explores the relationship between the sexes) isn't really a very relevant toolkit.

What is? I don't know tbh. Probably some kind of sociology or behavioural science.

I think a large part is the reason I mentioned earlier - that men are all lumped together so it's just seen as 'men killing men'. A bit like saying "oh, it's all human violence".

@CuriouslyDifferent "What about the 30+ males that have been murdered this week. Is it Any surprise why a lot of men feel they don’t count any more. It doesn’t make headlines."

yup I feel your frustration though your focus and mine aren't the same. Feel free to make a thread about it somewhere. I think one of the reasons you might not get the reaction you're looking for is if you wait until women are talking about the women who've been killed to start saying 'yes but what about the men who were murdered' it can give off sea-lion energy.

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

I think one of the reasons you might not get the reaction you're looking for is if you wait until women are talking about the women who've been killed to start saying 'yes but what about the men who were murdered' it can give off sea-lion energy.

I don't think the two are unrelated though. You can be sure that people would mention women if a bloke started talking about how he felt unsafe walking home at night (even considering that men are 4x more likely to be assaulted by a stranger). I imagine it would also be similar if people started talking about police violence against white males. Somebody would very quickly start talking about BME males.

Male on male violence is a very different crime, at a statistical level, than male on female violence.

The latter is almost always dv. The former tends to be fights, including gang fights.

Very different dynamics, different issues, different causes, effects and implications.

Not really looking for a reaction.

But if i was to be more clear on my point - I think that you’re focussing on the wrong thing - in effect rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. Male violence is definitely a problem, and if anything, with female violence on the increase, things are getting worse.

And tbf if somebody mentions the male suicide rate the first response is always that women attempt it more.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4643362/

This paper is quite interesting, gives some broad stats (men commit 95% of all homicides worldwide - female violence just isn't comparable to men's), it posits 'masculine norms' as a potential reason for violence, which I'm not sure it makes the case for all that convincincly, but here are some of the stats mentioned:

'Men are overwhelmingly more likely than women to be both perpetrators and victims of interpersonal violence. In 2012, over half a million individuals worldwide died as a result of injuries from interpersonal violence (WHO, 2013b). Of these deaths, males were disproportionately impacted: 81% of interpersonal violence deaths were men (WHO, 2013b).
In addition to being more likely to die as a result of violence, men, as a group, perpetrate more physical violence than women and perpetrate more harmful types of physical violence than women. In 2012, there were approximately 437,000 intentional homicide deaths worldwide and 95% of persons convicted of homicide were males (UNODC, 2011). In a study of youth in 27 countries worldwide, males were both more likely than females to be in any fights and more likely to engage in ‘frequent fighting’ (12 or more times in a year)'