MEN

[Bleakhouse1879]

I have been reading alot on here these past few days about many posters unfortunate experiences with their partners. I read stories of wives & girlfriends being raped or sexually assaulted by their partners, being beaten up, treated like dirt, robbed and belittled.

As a man, I am disgusted to hear that this sort of childish almost psychotic behaviour is so wide-spread with so many supposed 'men'. It has genuinely opened my mind to what is happening in my country. These sorts of behaviours were common place but still wrong during the 1950's. No person in Britain in 2015 should be subjected to this sort of disgusting behaviour.

No proper man would hit a woman or force himself on her or want her to feel anything less than tip-top, especially if his partner was the mother of his child. I don't think these people have the right to call themselves men and it doesn't do justice to the men out there who do want to treat their partner as a princess.

I hope any women who have been ill-treated in the past, don't tar all men with the same brush. We aren't all violent, misogynistic bullies. There are genuinely decent people out there and I hope the majority of my fellow men feel the same and it is just a case of a few bad apples

Great post OP -
but please understand that the word psychotic should not be used in this context .... Psychotic does not mean violent, or like a psychopath ....
Psychotic literally means "detached from reality" as in somebody who is very mentally unwell ... Either through delusions or through hallucinations or both , and they might also be a gentle kind soul .

Otherwise agree.

Violence as a whole is highly gendered. Yet we don't draw much attention to that as a society. It's so normal that men commit 90+ % of violent crime, we barely even notice it and hardly ever discuss it as in issue in itself, which I find astonishing.

In the case of DV and sexual harassment and sexual assault, where women are the most common victims, women have brought this agenda to the fore and want it discussed and dealt with – because society as a whole hasn't. Things like the everyday sexism project, sites like this where well-informed women advise those in abusive relationships that that is what they are. Organisations like Women's Aid.

To say "but women can be terribly abusive" is true, but the same issue isn't there. The issue is why is it so predominantly men, why are men allowed to get away with it in such huge numbers, what's wrong with society that allows this?

There's a massive correlation between smoking and lung cancer. Saying "but my friend has lung cancer and she's never smoked!!!" may be true and it may be important to find out what caused it. BUT if we want to address lung cancer as a problem in general and most effectively reduce the number of cases, we look at what appears to be the chief cause.

With domestic abuse, violence, sexual assault and sexual harassment, the chief cause is being male.

That doesn't mean there aren't nice men. But the fact that there are nice men, and there are abusive women, doesn't mean the general trend isn't important and something that should be addressed.

I don't think the word should be seen as powerful. It's a descriptive word - seeing it as a powerful word creates high standards for it's application which is what I often see on here - 'that can't be abuse, abuse is a strong word'.

But yes, if something is a common problem in society and the victims are overwhelmingly from one group then it is stupid and damaging to ignore that fact. You can't treat it as an individual problem.

And my favourite 'you devalue the word if you apply it to this'

The word abuse is a description, what is being devalued is people's view that society is generally fair and people are generally nice. That simply isn't true in the case of gender inequality and abuse. We need to face reality.

Bloody well said, SylvanianCaracal.