Why don't men care..?

[AWholeLottaNosy]

Why do men care so much about football ( and other sports), Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, computer games etc but not give a fuck about violence against women? ( which is real and life destroying) Why do they want to be heroes in a virtual life but not the real one? I know this may be a bit controversial but it genuinely puzzles me.,,

...about the ordinary violence levels anyway... sexual crimes are nearly always perpetrated against women by men.

Not sure about that one either lightening! Just before our friend weighs back in. Both male and female children are at risk of sexual abuse, although female children get an extra additional amount when they get bigger as most street type sexual stuff seems to be against females and commencing around puberty.

Also male on male (adult) sexual violence is not exactly unheard of.

It's all just horribly toxic isn't it and the problem is men who are violent causing such a lot of harm and grief in society, often the men who are engaging in a fight down the pub are the same ones as going home and beating up their children & partner, sexual violence as an expression of power is going to be in there as well. Basically there are just quite a lot of nasty fuckers about.

Then you've got the blokes who think they are "nice" and yet are committing sex offences and I don't even know what to do with that, education I guess is the only way forward and changing society so that certain things are not seen as acceptable or desirable behaviour.

Opining that men are responsible for male violence against other men, is not being dismissive of that violence.

It is putting the responsibility for dealing with it, where it belongs - with men.

That's not dismissing it.

HTH

No Bobby, I understand - it's women's responsibility to stop it.

Not men's.

Apparently we're dismissing it when we don't take responsibility for changing it, but when men like you don't take responsibility for changing it, that's not you being dismissive, that's you being erm... I don't know. A man? A good guy?

Not enough eyeroll emoticons for this.

But it's stuff like working to ensure that the police take reports of DV and sex offences seriously, investigate them appropriately etc which is still not happening and is a women's issue as the victims are primarily women (and children - when children are victims it's seen as a women's issue for some reason rather than a society issue - anyway improving this will also improve the situation for male victims of DV and sexual violence who also face many difficulties in reporting & getting crimes taken seriously.

So it's a win all round but when you look at who is talking about / in the news pushing for reform / etc it's all "women's issues" and women agitating for change. And so this is why women sometimes ask, where are the men? Men still hold most of the institutional power in the UK and without their support or interest - which will come if enough "man on the street" are interested - it makes it 100x harder for change to be wrought.

This is why people get annoyed. These are women's issues but surely all of society should care when things go wrong but all too often it seems that because it's issues that predominantly affect women way too many people get all "not my problem" about it.

Atrocities against women around the world shouldn't be buried in the specialist interests sections of the media as they too often are - this is 50% of the population, it should be mainstream interest.

Is it because things like rape as a weapon of war, and child slavery, and female circumcision are kind of really horribly upsetting, and emotive, and so must be women's work? Because they are the ones who "do emotion"?

There must be some reason for it.

None of us are responsible for the behaviour of violent men.

But we are responsible for creating or maintaining the environment which either permits or excuses or minimises or underpins their violence. Or not as the case may be.

It is the responsibility of all of us, to not make it easy for violent men a) to exert their violence and b) to get away with it when they do.

Just as it is our responsibility to not create a climate where racists or homophobes or any other bigots, can give free reign to their appalling views.

The OP's question IMO is tapping into women's confusion about why men as a group are so unwilling to stand up and be counted and show some solidarity with women, by not tolerating casual sexism and misogyny which create the environment for the most violent men to flourish.

I'm not omnipotent, I can't stop white people attacking black people at bus stops, or discriminating against them in the workplace or doing any of the other appalling thing that racists do. But what I can do, is not go along with racist jokes, not repost racist memes on FB, challenge racist shit when I hear it, make it clear that you'll lose my respect if you express racist views etc. and no it's not just because I'm politically correct, it's because I'm a bloody human being. Nobody thinks that's at all strange or way out or omnipotent, it's just the absolute minimum of what any white person can do when faced with racism. But when many men are asked why they're not doing this vis a vis sexism, they get all defensive, tell us they're not omnipotent and not responsible for other men's behaviour and talk as if we're asking them to regularly risk their lives and deconstruct patriarchy all by themselves. We're not. We're just asking for the bare minimum of decent behaviour. But even that's too much for some of them.

For the record almost every woman I know who has been hurt by a violent man has not reported it, therefore they won't be in the official figures. The victim blaming culture we live in stops women from coming forward as they feel shame, something adult male victims do not. I wonder what the true figure would be if all victims of violence came forward.

Since I keep getting challenged on this lets try some numbers.

www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_298904.pdf

This is from 2011/12 and apparently mostly from CSEW survey. I can find more stats if people wish but this is a busy time of year for all of us. BobbyBingoo will immediately pick up on the front page that men are indeed very much more likely to be victims and will jump around for joy.

You can then turn to the bottom of page 19 where it states that 86% of offenders are male. Now you can quibble about my descriptive terms of 'nearly always' if you like but for me that does mean men are more of a problem in violent crime than women (and, again imo, that women have every right to be a bit pissed off about that).

What really bothers me time and time again, bringing us back a little closer to the topic, that no one in power really seems to think that this is important. It is not listed as one of the key facts on the front page, you have to read through the whole report and find it buried at the bottom of the page and never referred to again.

Why is the fact that men are more vulnerable to violence a key fact, but the fact that men perpetrate most violence not? Do you think the nature of the offenders would be considered more important if they were, eg female, black or islamic, 'cos I do.

You can't address a problem without understanding its causes: that's why these reports are produced. So why is this key fact never really addressed?

2 reasons, imo: 1) no one really knows what to do about it; 2) no one wants to do anything about it, i.e. they don't care. For most people as long as they are not affected they don't care about anything or anyone else.

This is why I am a feminist btw, albeit one not particularly versed in theory. Because we alone seem to actually care about this problem, and, well, the theorists alone seem to have some ideas about how to address it. It requires long-term strategy, partly because it does and partly because we're not in power and so have no influence in the short-term day-to-day running of affairs.

Denial helps no one, BobbyBingooo is right there and so I am sorry for that initial smudge over a key fact. Now are you going to admit that the other fact is equally true and equally key?

I think the other reason for it being glossed over, is simply that it's taken for granted and not questioned. The powers that be don't even notice that the sex of the perpetrators is a major issue. When women are violent, there are workshops, studies, serious attempts to address the violence. When men are, it's just not even perceived as something which needs to be addressed.

Yes violence is a problem, yes perpetrators are overwhelmingly male, yes victims are more likely to be male. However I think a key point is that the level of fear women live under just going about their day to day lives.

In short an average male does get to by and large go about freely at any time of day or night, start relationships with a reasonable expectation of not bieng physically abused. Can the average female say the same? If no I'd say we have a problem irrespective what some numbers say on a sheet of paper somewhere.

Finally though I do think people care about this, violence is increasingly seen as socially unnacceptable, and century on century deaths from violence have steadily gone down, and continue to do so. We are getting less violent as a species as time goes on.

Sorry but the concept that men can get away with expecting to not be abused in a relationship has been knocked on the head according to recent research daily fail here

Men and especially young men are terrified of being judged weak or unable to defend themselves against women so like the under reporting of other crimes this is an area where social stigma comes into play. Young men will not want to report a physical assault by their female partner as they will be laughed at, ignored or accused of starting it even if they haven't. Going by the comments surrounding the attack on DS by his GF the stock assumption is he must have done something to deserve it and a lot of people wont even listen to the other side. So I can definitely see why men don't care.

What really bothers me time and time again, bringing us back a little closer to the topic, that no one in power really seems to think that this is important. It is not listed as one of the key facts on the front page, you have to read through the whole report and find it buried at the bottom of the page and never referred to again.

This is also what bothers me. Not in this specific context, but when looking at the problem of violence as a whole.

86% of offenders are male.

This figure isn't disputed, because it's never mentioned. It's much easier for the type of person who wants to make violence look ungendered to state the percentages of victims. Look! They cry... Look! Men are victims of violence too! As if the fact that the vast majority of perpetrators of violence are men doesn't matter.

Naming the problem would mean having to take some kind of action.

Oh dear Sausageeggbacon, one study with dodgy sample and methodology does not knock all the other studies on the head, even if it is in the Daily Mail.

Who is DS?

I wouldn't be surprised TBH if within relationships violence (physcial not to mention emotional etc) was similarly committed by males and by females.

There are differences however in the severity of the consequences, and of the ability to escape the violence. So there's a context and an endgame, right?

Plus of course that is again excluding sexual violence which is a component committed almost entirely by men. Which often gets excluded.

Why is sexual violence or even sexual assault etc not seen as violence. If I'm in a pub and a man slaps my face, it's an assault. If he slaps my arse, it's a bit of fun. Well things are getting better but YKWIM?

All of that is on average obviously.

There will be cases where in a heterosexual relationship the woman will be a. bigger and more powerful and b. have more experience of fighting but that's not going to be the norm.

So really we need to ensure that men, women and children who are victims of DV have access to support and so on (ha!) while not taking an eye off the different issues faced by the different victim groups.

Sudden thought (and one that assumes men in general are good eggs)

Perhaps men act like they don't care out of a feeling of impotence? So much toxic masculinity and male violence that they aren't personally responsible for, so they do nothing in the face of it?

Is that making any sense?