Expecting husband to be sole protector is unfair to both genders?

[AliasGrace47]

I've been reading a lot on issues of masculinity, gender relations etc and the notion keeps coming up that men have lost their role of protector & this is partly why there is a crisis of masculinity.

Articles are generally vague over what this means. Surely most men in the UK, Europe or even quite a lot of the US have not had to physically protect their wife very often, if at all, over the last halfcentury,at least, unless they lived in a particularly dangerous area?
If the notion is something broader - financial protection, emotional protection, then I can understand better...but they seem to generally mean physical protection.

The idea, floated by quite a lot of what I read, that we should keep this standard up, seems unfair to both sexes.

If a couple are walking and the man is the one physically attacked (which is much more likely to happen to men), should the wife not try to protect him? Obviously she'll probs be weaker than the assailant, but she could protect by fetching help.

In the US, where this protection discourse often seems to emanate from, women are more likely than here to have a gun which they could certainly use to protect others if need be.

If the family were in danger then I could understand (say in a burglary) the man being the one to fend off a burglary if the wife needed to protect kids. But if it's just a couple, I don't see why a man should be expected to handle an assailant alone & have the burden of protection fall solely on his shoulders

The depressing truth is that in situations where there is widespread danger, the ability of men to protect can often be limited, through no fault of their own. Eg.in postwar Italy, Germany, Poland & others, countless women were raped by conquering or even liberating armies. Most of their men had been called up, and the few left were normally unable, through no fault of their own, to stop their wives & daughters being raped. I'm studying history & have read a lot on the use of sexual violence as a weapon. Often the 'man as protector' archetype is a fuel for it, since it is designed to show the helplessness of the men & therefore lower morale.

And for women, the expectation that men should be to only ones to protect also seems to have significant downsides. You see the ugliest side of that in extreme corners of incel forums or forums which predict imminent societal collapse, where users wish for a breakdown of society so women will have to have relationships with them to get protection.

This is ofc extreme. But the inference is there, and this sentiment recurs in varied ways. Some right-wing authors (disclaimer: not all, obvs they are diverse & varied) mourn the days when a woman had to rely on a man to 'protect and provide' so there were no incels or birth rate crisis (obvs these things are v bad, but this kind of talk is hardly the way to solve it).

Douglas Wilson, the VERY conservative Reformed Christian who has worrying influence on evangelical US circles & politicians like Pete Hegseth (many evangelicals are probs unaware of his nastiest views), has said that women who claim they don't need male protection do so at their own risk, and that the only way a woman can be safe is by outsourcing her need for protection to male police officers. (He's the one who was in the ne

The late James Dobson of Focus On The Family described marriage as an arrangement where a woman exchanges sex for protection and economic support.

Obvs again these are fairly far-out figures, but their sentiments are to some extent implicit in the whole 'men must protect' idea. If men must protect, then it follows that any woman without a man is unsafe. The single mother is unsafe. The widow is unsafe. The woman who's single by choice is unsafe. Nuns are unsafe. The lesbian couple is unsafe (when Colette was imagining in a book the life of the Ladies of Llangollen, the 18th century Welsh probably lesbian couple, she included a scene where they fear the consequences if someone broke in, noting, 'Everything is permitted to two women except a certain kind of solitude.')etc

So what's the general opinion?

Note : I'm not saying that men should not protect, I'm saying it shouldn't be seen as only their duty. Obviously if a woman's pregnant or w a young child a male partner would probably take the protective role more. Obvs a man might be less able to protect for some other reason, likewise.

Sorry, the question mark at the top was an error!

Men in general absolutely have a part to play in protecting women and girls, Including single sex spaces.

Many are fine with the idea of men in pink t-shirt sharing womens spaces until its their mother, wife, daughter whos space is being invaded.

The only parts of the environment we need protection from is men and toxic masculinity. If only men would truly protect women - by speaking out loudly, clearly, and consistently against me who see us as meat...

But they won't do that because all they care about is their status in the eyes of other men, not the safety or welfare of women, and men who 'take the side of women' are seen as weak. Deep down, they value being seen as predators and staying in the good books of men who are predators.

Then they whine about loneliness.

So what's the general opinion?

Ironic. In the States a woman is attacked every 9 seconds, approximately 10m women a year are abused by men, the vast, vast majority by men they know. Domestic abuse is undereported as is sexual abuse, and the actual figures will be a lot higher.

In the UK at least 50% of reported sexual attacks are by a partner or former partner. The rest are largely made up of family, colleagues, friends and acquaintances.

We're currently seeing the rise of the far right. Their angle is protecting our women and children. Yet many of these men have criminal convictions for violence against women. Trump kept promising to protect women from 'illegals' yet has a history of alleged sexual offences and has been found guilty of sexual assault.

Misogynists tend to have very rigid ideas about gender roles, the man is the provider, the head of the family, the protector and these are the men who abuse women. There's also been a rise in 'intellectual' men such as Jordan Peterson who have exactly the same message about women understanding their place.

The Tradwife movement, heavily influenced by Christianity, looks back in faux nostalgia at a simpler society that didn't exist. Gender roles are very strictly defined in these families, despite the education and upbringing of the parents.

I see it more as letting men have a role, there are things I could do but let my DH do and things he does that I don't really want to do although I could. If there is a pushy salesman at the door it is quite nice to have a man to face up to him, particularly if the guy is twice your size. It's really being a team.

If it's heavy I may let DH lift it, if it's really heavy we lift it between us.

I have always regarded my DH rather like another child, inferior (though loveable) in most ways except strength. I would certainly turn to him to help in a practical emergency. However he seems less resilient than me health-wise, more prone to getting stressed, less logical. Basically he's a sort of much valued labourer/security guard paid in affection and praise and being fed and clothed etc. He did provide the money in our relationship, but that was by chance in our choice of careers.
But the need for man as protector is surely only necessary because of the threat of man as aggressor? Hmm... now thinking of my school days at an all-girls convent school, a totally female environment. It could be pretty scary if you were unpopular and bullied.
I suppose it's very tempting to offload any intimidation onto a male partner. 🤔

No, it isn’t unfair. We know we are expendable, and because of our size and greater strength, it’s us who, in the end, go to the front to fight for our community. Just look at Ukraine. We’re taught this as children when we’re told that boys don’t cry — so that we’ll be ready when the time comes. I’m not glorifying it, I’m just pointing out biological realities, which also play out in less dramatic circumstances.

It seems a strange polarised way of thinking.

mothers will protect their children like tigers. Good fathers will too, of course.

DH and I would protect each other in any way we could. We had a nasty situation a couple of years ago when someone he had to deal with physically threatened him. DH is on blood thinners so being punched could seriously injure him. So after that I always went with him; just my presence was a protection but I’d have shielded him if I’d had to.

Anyone should protect anyone else who needs protection who they can protect.

I don't think it means physically protecting. I think it's more linked to the loss of 'male' industries like mining and manufacturing which were the domain of working class men. And men no longer being 'the provider' as typically both partners work nowadays for financial reasons.

In terms of physical protection though, many people seem worried about the impact of immigration on sex crimes in the light of recent statistics and also well publicised events from the past decade like the 1200 sexual assaults that happened on that one NYE in Germany.

There seems to be a real divide in opinions on this with a lot of people vehemently denouncing any discussion of it as xenophobic. Rightly or wrongly, I think this leaves some European men feeling powerless to act in 'protecting their women.'

To me, whether it’s ‘needed’ or not isn’t the issue, it’s ’why would it harm male mental health to have this idea removed’

Personally I think it’s because it gave men a sense of purpose, a clarity of their ‘role’ (whether it’s needed, whether it’s fulfilled, the morality of it is irrelevant). It’s been a feature of ‘the concept of the man in society’ for thousands of years and will take some unpicking. It’s in literature, films, all the culture we consume and the idea men aren’t ‘supposed’ to be a physical protector is fairly new.

Exactly.
Douglas Wilson himself was in the news recently for saying women shouldn't have the vote. Tip of the iceberg, as the podcast Sons of Patriarchy have revealed, the Idaho church community he heads apparently encourages women to stay with abuse husbands and turns a blind eye to marital rape & the sexual abuse of girls. His charming wife Nancy wrote a book, The Fruit of her Hands, where she compared a woman's body to a garden & said 'a husband is never trespassing in his own garden' : ie.There's no such thing as marital rape. For more info, I'd recommend Sarah Stankorb's expose Disobedient Women, which digs into the cover-ups and Wilson's wider influence (he's quite influential among many US evangelicals, many probs unaware of how horrible he is, and over Trump politicians like Pete Hegseth, worryingly)

It's extremely common for Christian leaders to advise women to stay in abusive relationships, especially the more fundamentalist denominations. Christianity is as misogynist as any of the Abrahamic faiths and I don't believe Europeans are aware of how powerful the Christian lobby is in the States.

I suspect there may be a significant number of men claiming to want to ‘protect their women’ who are the men ‘their’ women most need protection from. That’s not an observation restricted to white men of course, it’s men who see a woman as in any way their property.

I think it's built on nothing more than a) notions of ownership and b) the fact they're larger and generally stronger and sometimes want to butt heads with each other over that ownership. In reality all the laws and customs where men could do whatever they wanted to their wives and children without recourse were and are reinforced by men in all areas of society and power where they deliberately and consciously separate/d the public and private spheres.

I don't actually undertand what you're asking or what you believe.

When it comes to me and DH and "protecting" - he is physially bigger and stronger than me. He would instinctively aim to protect me should I be in physical danger. I would do the same for him. But realistically, he is more likely to be able to protect me eg by pulling someone off me than I could by pulling someone off him.

If we hear a noise and are concerned that, for eample, someone is breaking in, he would most likely go first but I would follow behind, ready to back him up. For the same reason as above.

This does not mean I need a protector. Nor does it in any way define how DH sees himself or that his only, or key, value to me is as a protector.
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But the need for man as protector is surely only necessary because of the threat of man as aggressor?
I agree, essentially it is a protection racket.
My preference has always been 'strong in the arm and thick in the 'ead', ie looks intimidating enough to deter other men from attacking me but lacks the brains to outwitt me.

I agree with this, the protectiveness is really themprotecting what they consider to be a useful asset.
Men compete with each other to own and control women because women are useful in facilitating men's lives.
(Although possibly not quite as useful these days now that we are catching on a bit and have better opportunities to earn our own money)

Whoever I read this excuse for male violence being due to recent loss of their paternalistic protective role, I feel a surge of rage. In the past when they had the legally enshrined guardianship of wives and daughters having them under their ‘protection’ (when all women were infantilised and had no legal personhood), they did not protect, they assaulted. They were more violent then. Marital rape was legal. Beating your wife and children also legal andsocially encouraged as necessary correction! (To keep uppity women in their place.)

It’s all propaganda.

I agree with @SummerFeverVenice
Part of the reason men were given the ownership of women and children is to stop them taking out their rage on wider society and thereby threatening existing power structures.

It's interesting you should say this. Jordan Peterson argues that having a wife makes men less aggressive and he talks of incels getting married to reduce the risk.

Yes to this.

The entire 'male protector' trope is yet another example of male vanity and posturing. Those with more human property to protect have more status in the male hierarchy than those who don't.

It's a dynamic that is played out very visibly in traditional polygamous societies like fundamentalist Mormons where only a select few men will be able to marry and support a household of several women and multiple children, and the rest are simply discarded into the outside world with limited education and prospects, but it's also playing out in societies where more males reach adulthood than females due to infanticide/ abortion of females.

Men as a whole, or should I say the entire patriarchal system, are not at all concerned about women or children or their welfare per se. The focus for each individual man is his own status, with different models of masculinity determining what tribe in the world of men each individual man will try to achieve status in.

Men not being the protectors of women seems completely feasible for any men and women who never leave the house at all and expect this to be the same for others.

Sad if there's a burglary, but maybe we'll be lucky and escape with self defence using the frying pans we don't have or cook with, because women cooking means patriarchy and misogyny.

Maybe we can use our supreme, feminist intellect and reasoning against a 14 stone burglar while we protect our 8 stone husband, cowering in the closet, so we can proclaim, "EQUALITY," and then we can tout our prowess on Facebook, with an affirmative selfie, for our feminist friends assuming we make it through the encounter.

Might write a book.

Hyperbolic exaggeration… the title is ‘sole’ protector.
The idea of men being the sole protector logically leads to a society where women are effectively in purdah, chaperoned if they want to go out etc.

Any woman who thinks they are equal to the physical strength of a man, and do not need a man for protection against another man, has lived in a sheltered fantasy land and has never been in a violent situation or punched in the face by a man or a very tough woman.

The feminist movement is a mockery. It started out as supporting equal opportunity and rights for women and now it's denying biological differences and trying to exclude men, at every turn, in favour of fantasy.

Good luck with that! A loud mouth, and dreams do not equal reality. Naïve and dangerous.

Did I say anything which remotely implied I don’t understand the physical differences between men and women?

So what’s your solution then? Should a woman never be allowed to, for example, go on a business trip alone without a ‘protector’? What should she do if she’s home alone?
I’ve actually no idea what point you’re really trying to make.