When I talk about DV against women to some men.....

[Fireirons]

They immediately turn the conversation around to women being violent towards men. Yep. Women are also violent. I agree.

Yes there is no way violence is acceptable either way

But I cannot even begin to articulate my arguments about how women are often helpless, abused to an extent to being too terrified to leave, have no financial independence, no where to go, threatened, raped etc

I was shaking with anger the other day by a guy who just shouted me down...........that proved my point to a way. He asked for stats and then didn't believe them and tried for 45 minutes to Google stats for male DV.

Are there rescue centres for victims of male domestic violence seeking sanctuary?

I have nc for this.

Yep I have experienced DV.

Well, I'm no analyst either, but I really like "society is currently set up in such a way that women are systematically disadvantaged. So when bad people do bad things, this often plays out in a gendered way."

"on the whole i think society is very sympathetic to female victims"

Ihatelego I think a read of the Everyday Victim Blaming website would do you some good.

If you don't think feminists should censor themselves why are you saying pointing out gendered violence should be merely said as bad people do bad things? How can you understand that class is an issue for people but not sex?

I know that victim blaming happens but i just don't agree that that is a socetal norm, i think the vast majority of men and women are sympathetic to victims and do not seek to oppress or harm women, the minority that do obviously need to be tackled but it was the point of it being a societal norm that i disagree with.

I don't think anyone should censor themselves i just find the tone of opinions expressed by feminists online push me and others away from associating with feminism as a group. I've stated numerous times that gender inequality is an issue, but the fundamental thing i disagree with is when it is painted as men, *men do x", large numbers of men are abusers etc or don't want women to be equal that's what i disagree with.

no it's fine i'm happy to discuss it because good chances are I am wrong, I want to connect with feminism i'm just struggling.

No I don't believe it's the social norm from my experience. I think it's a problem that needs addressing, for example some of the police notices they have put out in the past which were heavily criticised and pulled. But in cases like Ched Evans I think it was a minority of both men and women that were acting in an abhorrent way about it. It was 100% men and women in that case, and I never spoke to a single person I knew personally who thought what he did was ok or he should return to his career, that includes my DP who said if a rapist turned up at his site to work he'd be chased out of there.

When I had to report a historic sexual abuse last year, I received great support from the vast majority of services, and male and female friends/family. All except for my aunt, who due to religious involvement was not supportive at all. "it wasn't that bad, it wasn't rape, there's no need to involve police" even though the nspcc were the ones who convinced me to report it.

Then recently in the news a feminist comedian produces that guide for men on how not to rape, and suggested people share it with every man they know! to me that's unbelievable to imply that every man we know needs a guide on how not to rape!

Do you see where my problem is? I'm not in any way arguing that there are gender inequalities need to be addressed, or that sexual violence is a largely gendered problem! I just feel incredibly frustrated by some of the whitewashing that's going on.

I can't quite articulate why he's at least partly wrong in his approach (and I am a blood articulate person), but he is.

Ask him about children, so did Baby P ever hit his mother? Did Daniel Pelka?

It's wrong because it is the power in the relationship that allows the abuse, regardless of who is doing the abusing it is the power that makes it abuse.

There are cases where children hit their parents, but if you were talking about preventing child abuse would you include stopping a 5 year old from hitting mum or dad?

I'm sure if you did a straw poll on MN you would get a long list of people hurt by their children, mostly accidental, you tickle a child they roll on the floor and kick you in the face type of thing.

There will be others where it is a teenager deliberately hurting a parent, which is a different thing.

But when the power is all on one side then the responsibility is on the powerful person not to abuse the other.

ihatelego wrote - "that guide for men on how not to rape, and suggested people share it with every man they know! to me that's unbelievable to imply that every man we know needs a guide on how not to rape!"

A problem with the rape culture in which we live is that it allows rapists to hide in plain sight. Rapists deliberately hide among the men who aren't rapists. If rapists did advertise the fact that they are rapists, then guides on how not to rape could be targeted at rapists. This could then spare decent men from the allegedly unfair and allegedly outrageous trauma of receiving a social media message or email about rape. It would also prevent alleged humiliation and alleged stigma that receiving such a message seems to imply to some people. It would also spare these decent men from making the allegedly superhuman effort of pressing the delete button to end their alleged nightmare. Do feminists really have to subject decent men to such allegedly callous treatment in the fight against rapists? Perhaps they do.

Ihatelego, things like anti drink driving ads are on mainstream TV. The majority of people don't drink and drive.

Here are some official posters, do they bother you?

www.theviolencestopshere.ca/dbtg.php

What do you think of Emma Watson's speech, lego, and schoolboy Ed Holtom's excellent response?
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/28/emma-watson-feminism-spee_n_5895682.html

Funnily enough when i saw the news that clarksons petition had 1million signatures I also immediately thought of the ched evans petitions! But the point is he wasn't allowed to return to his career, a number of people did speak out, condemn clubs men and women and put a stop to it.

It was disgusting what his supporters did, but on the whole they were a minority, a vocal minority due to twitter and the media but still a twisted minority consisting of men and women. I think it is wrong that more people signed clarkson's petition, i also think it's wrong when people may recognise or be stirred by cases like that more than when over 500 children are killed in a bombing campaign, but in the end people are spurred into action and take notice of causes that personally mean something to them.

I guess that makes sense on the posters but i still don't agree with the way it was done personally when they say to share with every man you know it just feels very wrong to me I'd be pretty horrified if someone shared (in the social media sense) that poster to my DF, DP, DS etc.

It would also spare these decent men from making the allegedly superhuman effort of pressing the delete button to end their alleged nightmare. Do feminists really have to subject decent men to such allegedly callous treatment in the fight against rapists? Perhaps they do.

what percentage of men are rapists?! perhaps we should go the whole hog and just send a moral code or a list of what's illegal to the population.

No i don't have an issue with those posters, i thought sex without consent was rape though not sexual assault. Emma Watson's speech was good, the letter as well but as i mentioned before i just find a portion of feminists dissasociate themselves from a lot of people.

I don't, for example, drink and drive

the repeated and high profile campaigns against it do not offend me even though they make an assumption that I might

why would they...I don't drink and drive

oops, missed yonic's post

what percentage of men are rapists?!

Several different studies have come up with a figure of about 6%, or 1 in 17.

The majority of these had committed more than one rape or serious sexual assault: an average of six each, although the studies were mostly done on men under 30. Over a lifetime, this figure could rise significantly.

The very big point about asking men to be rape-aware is that nobody knows which man out of 17 is a rapist. When sexual objectification and rapey jokes are allowed to pass with a bit of back-slapping, the rapist takes it as a sign of normality. Many rapists don't consider themselves rapists. Popular cultural acceptance leads them to assume all the other men do the same kind of thing.

i did a bit of research and it depends whether you take reported rape or going to court etc but say round up reports to 16000, and there's something like 35million men in the uk, plus we don't know all of those reports are against men.

But my point is as I said i would be pretty horrified if that was shared directly to my son or my partner as was being suggested, and again i just don't believe the majority of men make light of rape, we'll have to agree to disagree! I just personally feel disassociated with feminism when some feminists paint all or the majority of men to be abusers and rapists. We'll have to disagree on that maybe my perception/experiences will change and I'm open to that as the principle cause is one i support.

"some feminists paint all or the majority of men to be abusers and rapists. "

I really think there is a difference between "share this with every man you know" and "I think the majority of men you know are rapists" - just as with the drink driving campaigns.

"Around one in twenty females (aged 16 to 59) reported being a victim of a most serious sexual offence since the age of 16. Extending this to include other sexual offences such as sexual threats, unwanted touching or indecent exposure, this increased to one in five females reporting being a victim since the age of 16.
Around 90 per cent of victims of the most serious sexual offences in the previous year knew the perpetrator, compared with less than half for other sexual offences.
Females who had reported being victims of the most serious sexual offences in the last year were asked, regarding the most recent incident, whether or not they had reported the incident to the police. Only 15 per cent of victims of such offences said that they had done so. Frequently cited reasons for not reporting the crime were that it was ‘embarrassing’, they ‘didn’t think the police could do much to help’, that the incident was ‘too trivial or not worth reporting’, or that they saw it as a ‘private/family matter and not police business’"
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/an-overview-of-sexual-offending-in-england-and-wales

"Based on aggregated data from the ‘Crime Survey for England and Wales’ in 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2011/12, on average, 2.5 per cent of females and 0.4 per cent of males said that they had been a victim of a sexual offence (including attempts) in the previous 12 months. This represents around 473,000 adults being victims of sexual offences (around 404,000 females and 72,000 males) on average per year. These experiences span the full spectrum of sexual offences, ranging from the most serious offences of rape and sexual assault, to other sexual offences like indecent exposure and unwanted touching. The vast majority of incidents reported by respondents to the survey fell into the other sexual offences category.
It is estimated that 0.5 per cent of females report being a victim of the most serious offences of rape or sexual assault by penetration in the previous 12 months, equivalent to around 85,000 victims on average per year. Among males, less than 0.1 per cent (around 12,000) report being a victim of the same types of offences in the previous 12 months."

So if we link the two together and say that the 85,000 reported rapes were 15% of actual rapes in the last year, that would mean over half a million rapes per year had been committed.

To put it in context, annual homicide rates are typically 500-1000 reported homicides pa (obviously some are undetected and unreported)

ihatelego Im glad you got support when you reported what happened to you and im sorry you went through a traumatic experience

Can i ask though why its not ok to treat all men as if they are the same but it is ok to treat women as if they are the same.

Because you are on another thread saying that size 14 is obese for most women.

So if women are treated as if they are all the same even though they are individual body shapes then why are you objecting when people assume that all men are the same!

helena huh? on the weight thread i quoted op saying that she wasn't overweight and saying that skin and bones was unattractive.. and then added my own comment to say i thought it sounded like she had low self esteem, as her measurements indicated she was overweight which she was denying and she seemed to be looking to blame other women for her own feelings about her weight.. what's the relevance i havn't made any comments about one clothes size meaning you're overweight, i used the bmi calculator which indicated that

*if you mean where i said i don't think 14-16 is a healthy size i was referring to her own comment where she gave her weight and height which was used to calculate bmi, BUT in general no i don't think 14 - 16 clothes size is usually healthy unless you're very tall, big breasted or muscular, same goes for men.. struggling to see the relevance at all!