Please help me respond to this idiot

[avat]

I have been seeing someone (a man).

We got into a text conversation about the "not all men" rhetoric. I was explaining the statistics surrounding rape, domestic violence, trafficking etc. etc. And that no, it isn't all men, but it is all women who are at risk.

Talked about the gender pay gap etc.

He said he accepts what I'm saying but think the way I say it, means that men will reject the argument. That I'm seen as too radical.

I said, how do you think the suffragettes got the vote? By asking nicely?

He also said that I've stated the facts in a way that is posed to sway opinion.

He said that I have been patronising and made him feel like a dickhead. And not showed him any compassion, when he was just trying to help (?).

I said I can't believe I had expressed that women live in constant fear of being raped, killed etc. and somehow the conversation has ended up being about a man.

@ThrowawayUserName1 Thank you.
If you were to read MN, you would think that women would thrown themselves at an average fairly selfless and hard working man. Of course, that is not true and there is good reason why.
Just leaing to stop listening to the words being said and also listen to what is the feeling and the motive for saying them and it helps. I think. What they are told is "just be yourself" which is such worthless advice that any man given it should be flogged and forced to admit they just got lucky :D

Yes, nobody likes being lectured to tbf. I don't think most feminists would take kindly to being patronisingly informed by their partner that the vast majority of studies in the past 30 years show women committing more DV against their partners than men.

And most historians don't think the suffragettes won the vote. It was women's contribution to the war effort and them proving they could do traditionally male jobs. Other countries had already given women the vote at this point. In fact, I believe Sylvia Pankhurst and the Women's Suffrage Federation actually opposed the war, so possibly they weren't even amongst the women driving change.

It sounds like it was actually solidarity with men rather than separatist attitudes that won us the vote!

Except for those times when the only thing that created change was loud, in-your-face protest. See; suffrage movement, civil rights movement, among many others.
You don't get change by asking for it. You get it by unequivocally demanding it.

I mean, imagine giving a lecture on male violence to somebody that's FAR more likely to experience it than yourself. 🤣 It's a bit tonedeaf tbh.

We're talking about violence against women. You think men will stop doing that because women ask them to in a genteel way? If so, I've got some swampland in Florida to sell you.

An idiot. I hope you have better friends than her.

I don't know how anybody can idolise a group that attempted to detonate bombs in churches and theatres filled with the general public (including women and children) and blinded/disfigured innocent postal workers with their letter bombs.

If you do however think that Manchester Arena style bombing tactics are fair game then there's a group called ISIS that you may be able to share some strategies with.

There's probably little point in providing a counter perspective as people on here generally seem very resistant to challenging their perceptions, but I think lecturing the majority of decent men is counterproductive.

It's true that many more women are killed by men than the reverse, which is unsurprising given that a man can kill a woman with one punch with the reverse not being true. But it's also true that over 99.99% of men don't kill women and that non-fatal partner violence is committed more frequently by women than men - this fact is always ignored/contested on here but dozens of studies prove otherwise, with only police data contradicting this (likely due to the well documented fact that men are significantly less likely to officially report DV than women).

What's the point of lecturing somebody who doesn't kill women and is statistically less likely to commit DV than yourself?

@XChrome

Except for those times when the only thing that created change was loud, in-your-face protest. See; suffrage movement, civil rights movement, among many others. You don't get change by asking for it. You get it by unequivocally demanding it.

Yes, there are definitely those times. Also many times where that hasn't worked. Equal marriage for gay people, for example, in the UK, was passed by a conservative government because it came to be seen as a conservative position (individual liberty, family rights), where more radical campaigns had failed. My point is not that one approach is always best, but that it's not straightforward and that having a different views on that is legitimate.

@XChrome

We're talking about violence against women. You think men will stop doing that because women ask them to in a genteel way? If so, I've got some swampland in Florida to sell you.

No, they won't. It's clear that cultures change and stigmas strengthen and weaken. I think there's a lot that persuasion can do to increase stigmatisation of male violence against women (just as racism is now heavily stigmatised in most circles, and overt accepted racist violence of the 1970s/80s type has also reduced). I can't see any downside to wanting that or working for that. Conveying the message that yes, not all men are like that, but any man may be like that and women can't easily tell the difference, is an important message to get across (for example. That's obviously not the only message). From that point, it's just back to basic human psychology about how to win people over to a point of view. Nothing specific to this subject about that. That's different from 'asking genteely'.

That's clearly not sufficient though. We also need strong legal penalties, properly resourced interventions (e.g. police, domestic violence, addiction, rape crisis) etc. And in my view we need to be quicker to accept that some men are not going to ever be reformed, and lock them up for much longer periods.

I think pulling on both levers is going to be better than pulling on one.

I have had a similar conversation, incidentally, with my little sister.
This is more in relationship dynamics where sees more wives being indifferent to their husbands well being than vice versa. As a man, it is hard to argue (I am embarrassed here), though I reflected I found it less demanding on me being a man in a relationship in Scandinavia than the UK.

Excuse me, but I also experience the same in terms of violence from women. In the UK, being hit or having something thrown at you, not so much because of something you did as much as the bad day they were having, was not that unusual. In Scandinavia, it would be massively frowned on. I think this is patriarchy: where men are the ones able to suppress their emotions and women portrayed as helpless victims to them. It also means there is not comparison, a man using violence on a woman is not letting off steam, but has lost control or being malicious.

I am sorry that you have experienced DV, I do think may males don't report due to feeling a stigma around this subject.
However the main crux of the conversation was around gender pay gap, pension deficit and caring responsibilities, mainly women looking after children on their own. We didn't even get onto crime against women!

"The major points of this review are as follows: (a) women’s violence usually occurs in the context of violence against them by their male partners; (b) in general, women and men perpetrate equivalent levels of physical and psychological aggression, but evidence suggests that men perpetrate sexual abuse, coercive control, and stalking more frequently than women and that women also are much more frequently injured during domestic violence incidents; (c) women and men are equally likely to initiate physical violence in relationships involving less serious “situational couple violence,” and in relationships in which serious and very violent “intimate terrorism” occurs, men are much more likely to be perpetrators and women victims; (d) women’s physical violence is more likely than men’s violence to be motivated by self-defense and fear, whereas men’s physical violence is more likely than women’s to be driven by control motives; (e) studies of couples in mutually violent relationships find more negative effects for women than for men; and (f ) because of the many differences in behaviors and motivations between women’s and men’s violence, interventions based on male models of partner violence are likely not effective for many women."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2968709/

This is a meta-analysis, not some telephone survey. You can find a "study" somewhere which allegedly proves any given hypothesis. Many of them are bogus. The methodology is flawed and sometimes they are even published in journals which are out and put scam publications.
Can you provide the studies you speak of?

I must say I find it rather manipulative to start out your post assuring readers that if they disagree, it's because they are "resistant to challenging their perceptions." That a set up so you can make that claim about anyone who challenges yours. It's poor sportsmanship.

Since the fundamental premise of your argument is (according to the facts I have presented) flawed, it is not useful for me to respond to any points which arise from that premise.

yeh, it's like a form of narcissism. Women aren't allowed a subjective general experience of men.

I don't disagree. Both approaches have their place.

Let's not forget that the original context here is one woman speaking to one man who is admonishing her about her tone. In circumstances like that, where you're talking about very real fears you have about your safety and freedom and some douchebag is tone policing you, do you really think her being "less extreme" (whatever that means) would have helped him to get it?

He said that I have been patronising and made him feel like a dickhead. And not showed him any compassion, when he was just trying to help (?).

Women get their own stereotypes. Golddigger is one that springs to mind, or in the same vein, if more specific, that they 'trap' men into pregnancy.

I always find it amusing that I never feel the need to scream NAWALT. Broad 'women do xyz' comments don't touch a nerve with me if they don't apply to me. Although I wouldn't bother to engage with the particular man in your OP, I would be quietly questioning why he feels so attacked by something that shouldn't apply directly to him. Why does he feel like a dickhead in need of compassion? Hm?

What started the conversation? Seems like a very weird way to bond with somebody you're just getting to know.

@XChrome While acknowledging I wasn't there, my answer took the OP at own word, which is that this was a conversation "about the 'not all men' rhetoric", i.e. the defensiveness that men often proffer, and the art of persuasion. If it was about something else then my response may be off-base.

The 'less extreme' (if that was a quote from me) was about Suffragettes, which the OP referenced seemingly to prove this guy wrong in his views on how best to land the message with men. Suffragettes didn't ask nicely, they won, case closed. I think it's more complex than that.

Maybe he shouldn't have talked about OP's tone, or how it personally made him feel. But in a conversation about that very topic, it seems totally relevant.

Also, maybe he is a monster. Maybe he's an enabler or a condoner. Men need to be persuaded because it's men who need to change their behaviour. In fact, the worse he is, the more important it is to reach him. That not for his benefit.

I wasn't describing OP as extreme, but in answer to your question about whether a different approach would have helped him 'get it', my guess would be yes. He's saying so himself. At that point, there's a decision about whether it's more important to help him 'get it' or to win an argument. It's not my argument, and it's not my place to tell OP which she should prioritise. But until more men do 'get it', the culture is not going to change.

Here's a link to the biggest metastudy of DV ever conducted, covering 1700 peer reviewed studies. I've pinched it from another thread but all the links check out.

From 2010 to 2012, scholars of domestic violence from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. assembled The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge, a research database covering 1700 peer-reviewed studies, the largest of its kind. Among its findings:[63]"

• Studies comparing men and women in the power/control motive have mixed results overall.
• Rates of female-perpetrated violence are higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%).
• Male and female IPV are perpetrated from similar motives.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#:~:text=The%20theory%20that%20women%20perpetrate,Straus%20and%20Richard%20J.

The theory that women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly similar rates as men has been termed "gender symmetry". The earliest empirical evidence of gender symmetry was presented in the 1975 U.S. National Family Violence Survey carried out by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles on a nationally representative sample of 2,146 "intact families". The survey found 11.6% of women and 12% of men had experienced some kind of intimate partner violence in the last twelve months, also 4.6% of men and 3.8% of women had experienced "severe" intimate partner violence.

Since 1975, numerous other empirical studies have found evidence of gender symmetry in intimate partner violence. For example, in the United States, the National Comorbidity Study of 1990-1992 found 18.4% of men and 17.4% of women had experienced minor intimate partner violence, and 5.5% of men and 6.5% of women had experienced severe intimate partner violence.[48][49]

In England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191" found that in the twelve months prior to the survey, 4.2% of both men and woman between the ages of 16 and 59 had been assaulted by an intimate.[50]

The Canadian General Social Survey of 2000 found that from 1994 to 1999, 4% of men and 4% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 22% of men and 28% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 7% of men and 8% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[35]

The 2005 Canadian General Social Survey, looking at the years 1999–2004 found similar data; 4% of men and 3% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship in which they were still involved, 16% of men and 21% of women had experienced intimate partner violence in a relationship which had now ended, and 6% of men and 7% of women had experienced intimate partner violence across all relationships, past and present.[36]

The 1975 National Family Violence Survey found that 27.7% of intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by men alone, 22.7% by women alone and 49.5% were bidirectional. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, resulting in almost identical data.[52]

The 1985 National Family Violence Survey found 25.9% of IPV cases perpetrated by men alone, 25.5% by women alone, and 48.6% were bidirectional.[53]

A study conducted in 2007 by Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesse Haileyesus, Monica Swahn, and Linda S. Saltzman, of 11,370 heterosexual U.S. adults aged 18 to 28 found that 24% of all relationships had some violence. Of those relationships, 49.7% of them had reciprocal violence. In relationships without reciprocal violence, women committed 70% of all violence.

In 1997, Philip W. Cook conducted a study of 55,000 members of the United States Armed Forces, finding bidirectionality in 60-64% of intimate partner violence cases, as reported by both men and women.[55]

The 2001 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that 49.7% of intimate partner violence cases were reciprocal and 50.3% were non-reciprocal. When data provided by men only was analyzed, 46.9% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 53.1% as non-reciprocal. When data provided by women only was analyzed, 51.3% of cases were reported as reciprocal and 49.7% as non-reciprocal. The overall data showed 70.7% of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence cases were perpetrated by women only (74.9% when reported by men; 67.7% when reported by women) and 29.3% were perpetrated by men only (25.1% when reported by men; 32.3% when reported by women).[56]

The 2006 thirty-two nation International Dating Violence Study "revealed an overwhelming body of evidence that bidirectional violence is the predominant pattern of perpetration; and this ... indicates that the etiology of ipv is mostly parallel for men and women". The survey found for "any physical violence", a rate of 31.2%, of which 68.6% was bidirectional, 9.9% was perpetrated by men only, and 21.4% by women only. For severe assault, a rate of 10.8% was found, of which 54.8% was bidirectional, 15.7% perpetrated by men only, and 29.4% by women only.[57]

In 2000, John Archer conducted a meta-analysis of eighty-two IPV studies. He found that "women were slightly more likely than men to use one or more acts of physical aggression and to use such acts more frequently. Men were more likely to inflict an injury, and overall, 62% of those injured by a partner were women."[58] By contrast, the U.S. Department of Justice finds that women make up 84% of spouse abuse victims and 86% of victims of abuse by a boyfriend or girlfriend.[59]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men#:~:text=The%20theory%20that%20women%20perpetrate,Straus%20and%20Richard%20J.

I’d say you can help women by believing them, and then send him the ‘rules of misogyny’.

The question is why have feminists been ignoring this huge amount of data for 50 years?

I am a grown man.
A woman hitting me or even throwing something, particularly when it is not provoked by me, is a massive red flag and something that makes me lose respect quickly. I would stop short of calling it DV or abuse.

Then you're arguably part of the problem, because it absolutely is DV and men not reporting it is part of the reason it's minimised. Stop making excuses for abusive women, because if you threw something at a woman nobody would be dismissing it.

I have a male friend who was repeatedly given black eyes and kneed in the testicles etc. He turned up at my house one day (I lived 10 mins walk away) after she'd grabbed a hot frying pan off the stove and thrown it at his head. He'd thankfully raised his hand in defence but it had seared it badly and covered it in hot oil.

It took some persuading to get him to hospital - I think because he was worried she'd get even angrier if he disappeared.

'Winning' on this matter seems more inportant to you than any other aspect of the relationship.