Male Entitlement - Dittany, SGB, AF, BOF and all others please explain to me.....

[shimmerysilverglitter]

in simple terms why a man who has:

Shagged around on his wife throughout their marriage
Used prostitutes during the marriage
Controlled his wife/partner by making her fear his verbal and physical tirades
Kept his wife short of money causing her to claim benefits fraudulently just to live while he kept all his wages to himself
Pawned all their stuff to go out on the piss
Done not a jot of housework
Made his wife feel worthless by ignoring her dreams, ambitions and opinions

This is all stuff I have read on MN recently.

Still thinks he should be living in the family home with his wife and children.

I really want to understand, I really do.

I know some of you have done degrees in Women's Studies and subjects like that and some of you just have the life experience so I would like to hear how your knowledge relates to a man like this.

shimmery - if you can manage it, do get some counselling. I felt crap after my encounter - partly due to residual feelings that I had caused this situation and partly because I felt so stupid which did nothing for my self esteem either. Anyway - the counselling did help me to realise that it was NOT ME.

Your H has feelings of protectiveness to his DD (probably his "little princess"; chances are he wouldn't allow any other man to abuse her at all, as she is his) However - he has no such feelings of protectiveness to you - if he did, he would feel remorse for his treatment of you. Doesn't make you worthless at all - just means he has no respect for you. That in turn does not mean that you are not worthy of respect - just that he has been brought up to understand that the "woman's place in the home is under the feet of the man".

As a matter of interest, does he have any sisters?

Yes three. Apparently his Dad used to encourage them to get jobs in launderettes, seriously. They are now, all three professional people, exh is not though he does pretty well at work.

Your last post, the second paragraph, was very helpful to me, thank you.

Surprised nobody has said, so far, that most of us start life totally self-centred, as babies/toddlers who are only aware of our own needs, and gradually learn socialisation, empathy, two-way communication etc. We learn that the world does not revolve around us. Some of us learn it too much, so that we barely feel we deserve our place in it. But some never learn it at all, or reject the message, either through poor upbringing or some inherent fault. So when we ask "why do some people become like this", the question is perhaps more "why do some people not grow out of this", or "why do they revert to it in later life".

Applying this attitude to the OP's scenario, this charmer of an ex-partner does not regard the wife as a human being with the same rights and feelings as himself, but more in the light of a piece of furniture, something which is there for his convenience. You would take a dim view if the sofa started grouching about being sat on, wouldn't you? That's what it's for. Now the sofa tells you to get out of its house! You bought that house and you bought that bloody sofa, what does it think it is? You don't even need to think about why you are entitled, you just accept that you are the human being, it is the inanimate object, and any other way of looking at things would totally turn your world upside-down. You have to hold on to your view of reality, else next thing you'd be afraid to walk on the floor or eat food or anything. Wouldn't that be silly?

In his opinion I am as much use as the sofa? I think you have finally managed to sum it up in a way I can understand and made me laugh about too .

I am sure you are a very nice sofa, Shimmery! Comfortable and elegantly upholstered!

I think it all comes down from Roman times when a man was Pater Familias and had the power of life and death over his wife, kids, servants and slaves. This was enshrined in law. The ROMAN Catholic church basically carried this tradition through once the ROman empire fell.

The idea of male dominance for no other reason than being male is very old and very ingrained.

Roman's idea of a man running his household:

Women were children in the eyes of the law and could not take place in any form of civic businesss
She could not conduct legal affairs without a man to speak for her
A man could put all his slaves to death if he suspected one of theft
A woman had to lay her new born child at the man's feet, if he picked it up and acknowledged it as his, the child was his. If he did not acknowledge it, it was declared a bastard with no rights in law. The child would be abandoned or killed, legally, by the father
A man could have sex with any female slave at any time
Any children born to female slaves belonged to the man of the house. If he did not want any more slaves, he could throw the baby to the household dogs for them to eat. Yes, all perfectly legal.

And don't forget al those medieval homilies and stories about how women should have patience and forgive their man no matter how shit he was. Dear God...they make you want to throw up.

Loving Annie's post. An abusive man is very strongly defended against seeing things through his victim's eyes. If you are hanging on that grimly to control - imagine the complete and utter terror of loss of control over their own lives that must be lurking,unacknowledged, inside. It would be a pretty unbearable psychic upheaval for them to really open themselves up to it.

I was just thinking last night that if my ex had behaved towards me in the first month the way he behaved in our last month together - well, there wouldn't have been a first month. As is often said here, your perspective gets completely skewed over time. And that's what mumsnet does best - posters say no, actually that's not normal at all. You see it time and again, how that comes as a eye-opening revelation to a woman posting here.

What kept me in the relationship? Love, hope, pity, self-doubt, pride, fear, convenience, and above all, wanting the best for my DD. And that last element is what got me out of it too.

Sorry, new to the post and have been reading with interest this morning.

I have no experience of DV or abuse or having a relationship which involved any of the factors outlined on here. Perhaps that makes me wholly unqualified to comment so I accept that you might want to ignore me

However, I do strongly believe that the reason I have never had a meaningful relationship with anyone who displays these traits is down to a few key things:

1. My dad is a feminist and would proudly define himself as such
2. As is my mum and my stepmum
3. I have always been told from as early as I can remember that I can achieve whatever I want in life, and that the only difference between and man and a woman is that a woman can give birth.

These things were very important in my upbringing, we used to have long heated conversations round the dinner table about feminism, I was a very 'angry young woman' at one stage, very politically aware.

I don't think 'blame' can be apportioned to abused women at all so I don't want to imply that. However, I do think that bullies can spot a victim a mile off. I think I've never really had to deal with these men because I don't have 'victim' written on my head.

I believe that women who grow up where the family model is an abusive controlling dad and a submissive mother naturally end up seeing this as the 'normal' way of conducting relationships and therefore replicate it for themselves. I have certainly chosen a DH who in many many ways is like my dad (and who incidentally was raised in a household where - unusually for the 70s - the woman was the main breadwinner).

To try to be positive - the way forward has to be trying to model 'good' relationships for our children so they can see what a happy non-abusive family looks like and can re-create it for themselves.

It's my responsibility to my DD to do this so she grows up knowing she can be whatever she wants to be and take no shit from anyone. That's a big motivator, and although I think we mainly worry for our daughters being caught in a cycle of abuse, more concerning actually is the message these relationships give to our sons. The crisis is a male one - how do we raise the next generation of men to not do this?

novicemama - I would just like to say in response to your post that my Dad is a bit of a feminist too and that my Mum was never a downtrodden woman (far from it!) - no abuse in my home, I was brought up to be a strong independent woman.

BUT - I had a lack of self-esteem, partly due to being dumped by my fiancé of 11y 3m prior to the wedding. Maybe that was the tag that my ex-prick picked up on - I don't think I had "victim" stamped on my forehead.

So, while I think you might have some valid points, I think you're making too much of a sweeping generalisation there about women who get caught up in these situations.

But novice, your points 1-3 all apply to me, and I ended up in one of those relationships. Some abusive men look out for they see as "weak" women, some look for "strong" ones. I quite literally saved my ex's life, always earned much more money than him, supported him in so many ways. He was partly really attracted by my perceived "power" because of what I could do for him, and partly threatened by it and determined to destroy it.

Sorry for all the quotation marks, but weak/strong/power are all quite loaded concepts.

I agree with a lot of your post but I was a bit jarred by the sentence "I think I've never really had to deal with these men because I don't have 'victim' written on my head." It's not written on my forehead, and my confidence in my own strength had the paradoxical effect of blinding me to what was happening.

sorry thumbwitch I do agree with you that all sorts of people end up in these situations and it could be for many many reasons. Upbringing doesn't solve everything by any means (btw, I hear what you're saying about low self-esteem, having been there myself to some extent, but nothing as serious as what happened to you, I think anyone would feel very very low after something like that ).

I was trying to address the original OP and the question 'why do men do things like this?' - and I do think we can try to do something about it as parents, by raising a generation of men who don't expect women to be submissive. I really want to find a positive way of contributing to making it better. I don't want my DD to be on mumsnet in 30 years time (or whatever the mn equalivalent will be!), and for it still to be full of terrible depressing threads on the 'relationships' board. Most of the threads there leave me utterly and that this shit still goes on in this day and age.

thumbwitch, I disagree that women are just as capable of violence towards weaker members i.e children.
In A Boy Called It, the mother was obviously mentally ill, but when you consider how much more time women spend with children compared to men; and how much more child-care responsibilities women have compared to men; and then look at how many men abuse children even though they don't really have much to do with children compared to women, it makes you realise that women aren't just as capable as men: men are far more capable of abuse when you put it in this context.
Women are def abusive too, not saying they are saints, but look at it in context.
Then if you factor in that not only are women responsible for most children but that women have less money than men and have to do the double shift and all that, you realise that compared to men, women are bloody saints when it comes to how they treat children.

Agree totally with your concept of teaching men to respect women. As the mum of a DS, I will be teaching him as hard as I can to respect women, to understand that they are his equals in every respect and that any form of violence and abuse is intolerable and unacceptable. I am hoping that his genes will help preclude this sort of behaviour being in his nature, and I will do my best to ensure that the nurture side backs it up.

I believe it will take a few more generations to sort it out though - still too many unenlightened people out there.

What's exactly the point in trying to get inside his head? That's the job of a psychotherapist.

All that matters surely is that you or any woman does not reinfoce this behaviour by giving the message that it is okay- not by arguing about it but by voting with your feet and getting out.

Trying to understand is futile really and a waste of energy.

Sakura - I don't quite follow your logic there - are you saying that men are more capable of abuse because they spend less time with children? But that has nothing to do with the innate capacity to abuse a child! It only relates to opportunity.

It is a while since I read A Boy Called It but I'm not sure it is obvious that the mother was mentally ill - I do remember that it turned out that she had been similarly abused by her own mother and was carrying on the cycle of abuse, but I don't remember her being mentally ill, apologies if I've got that wrong.

Sorry Nicknametaken as well, I did not set out to annoy anyone, and I know I am not really in a position to make any judgements here. I guess it's just that IME I have not come across these men, and I think thatt's because of the factors I mentioned. But it's different for everyone and I had not considered a situation like yours which is more complicated than the 'usual' scenario you hear about IYSWIM.

It's interesting to me what goes on in the minds of these men. Somewhere earlier someone said about toddlers being inherently selfish, and how we are then socialised and grow out of it, but some men do not.

What I find confusing is that if I were to look selfishly at my own happiness, and what I would need to be utterly happy, it would never ever involve the subjugation of another person. Having someone doing my laundry / cooking / cleaning / childcare for me would not make me happy. Treating someone like shit on a daily basis wouldn't make me happy either. What makes me happy is sharing the chores and the childrearing and being a team with someone, so I don't understand the mindset. Is it genuinely a 'men are from mars...' thing that some men are wired differently? I'm genuinely asking, I feel completely at a loss to understand the motivation of these men.

No sorry for being unclear.
I mean that considering how much more time women spend with children compared to men, and how little money they have compared to men, (resulting in higher stress levels and more depression for women) the instances of child-abuse from women should be much much higher. Why isn't it?
I think its because women aren't as capable on the whole. You get the odd woman who sexually abuses a child, but you get loads of men, fathers, uncles, step-brothers who sexually and physically abuse children all the time. WOmen do it, but men do it more. WHich is strange, because women spend a lot more time with children, and have a lot more child-care responsibilities.

There are two things that I think (well, more than two in total but two as far as this goes!).

Firstly - it seems to me that this generation has it worse than ever before. It didn't used to be the case that men did nothing in their time off. They did (and were good at) maintaining the house, gardening, minor building work, washing / fixing the car etc. These days almost all of traditionally male jobs are farmed out. Those skills are lost in the general population. Sadly, women still spend a lot of time beating themselves up (and their mothers / MIL will aid and abet this) if they get help with traditionally female tasks such as cleaning, shopping and ironing.

Secondly - and this is a difficult one, probably easier if I explain where I got it from. On my hen night, two people bought me one of those "instruction manuals" for wives. One was written around 1912, the other in the 50s. The thing is, the 50s woman was quite obviously more oppressed than the 1912 woman. The 1912 manual was saying - this is your department, this is what you should do but on no account should you let him treat you like a doormat - the 50s one basically said, do whatever he wants and never complain or he'll leave you for - and I quote - "that neat little secretary in the office".

I'd never be anything other than a champion for divorce. Some people need to get out of bad relationships quickly. But it seemed to me (provided you chose a good man in the first place) that marriage being definitely for life did given women a lot more freedom than the paranoia that there's someone better / more malleable out there that you saw by the 1950s.

I mean if you follow the logic that women are just as capable as men of abusing children, then it would mean the instances of child abuse from women would be much much higher than for men because women spend more time with kids.

Shit, I'm losing the ability to speak English

Sakura I agree with you there, and about the sexual abuse and incest which IME is shockingly common, much more so than is reported, and 99.9% of the time perpetrated by men.

So IS it simply that (some? most? all, if given the opportunity?) men are hardwired differently, that they do feel 'happiest' when they are abusing someone to some extent as it proves to them that they are the one with the power? I don't WANT to believe that this is true, and the vast majority of men I know in RL are just wonderful. But some of the stuff I read on mn makes my hair stand on end.

Longtalljosie- great point re. men and leisure time/ loss of "fixing stuff" skills. I hadn't really thought about that before. You just dont see men under cars like you did when I was growing up.

I do also think most of the criticism for women getting "help" comes from other women. Most men say "get a cleaner if you can afford it". Sometimes we really dont help ourselves.

It's nice of you to say sorry, novice! I'm not really annoyed by your comment, just keen to point out that the dynamic can be rather more complicated than dominant-man-controlling-weak-woman, at least in the initial stages. After a few more years, that's maybe how my relationship would have ended up.

OK, I see where you're coming from now.

A much higher proportion of men will sexually abuse than women - yes. Probably because men supposedly think about sex a lot more than women.

Probably more men than women physically abuse (as in violence), probably because they are stronger and they may have been brought up to believe that fighting is "normal" and "just what boys do" (things I still hear now), so some are less able to manage their physical tendencies to lash out when angry. Or they use it as a control mechanism because they are bigger/stronger.

Emotional abuse though - I think, I don't know statistics, is probably more the province of the woman. The put-downs, the undermining, the withdrawal of love, emotional vacuum etc. - usually this comes from the mother. How many threads have we seen on here where there is a toxic mother involved? Sure, I have seen toxic father ones too, but mostly they have been toxic mothers.

And now I realise I have wandered off the point somewhat - as I have gone into a different area from this thread - and my original point was that women are just as capable of violence. I do think some are - but that most of them don't use violence because they are less physical generally - but that more women will use more subtle methods. The dehumanisation is much more about emotional abuse than physical, IMO.

novicemama- keep the faith. Mumsnet is like Trip Advisor- most people only log on to complain (it's human nature)so whilst there are lots of horror stories on here, it doesnt mean it's representative of the whole population. "My DH is an entirely reasonable person who drinks 21 units a week and always attends parents evening" doesnt make a very interesting thread title.

There are lots of decent men out there. I'm happily married to one of them

True, THeBride - but occasionally we do have nice "tell us how lovely your bloke is" threads