Men as protectors

[SoftDriftedSnow]

Is it ever really true, except in their own minds?

A new study shows that marriage (or rather, the expectations of marriage) is detrimental to women. www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/04/22/wives-become-less-stressed-after-their-husbands-die-study-finds/

When you add in the rates of violence against women by men, why does this myth of men being protectors prevail?

And if it doesn't (not convinced) why is it still perceived by a significant proportion of people that women without a man are lacking? Maybe that's simply still function of perceived worth being determined by the man you get?

Rambling, but thinking. (and I am pretty much convinced the answer is "patriarchy", to nail my colours to the mast. And, yes, I know that many of you don't know men who think like that).

Or another methodology is for people who are not violent to stand up against the other people who are violent. Might that be possible ?

So what would you say to separatist feminists?

Cadno - women have stood up against violent men, at great cost to themselves. Men haven't done the same thing though, so that's why I asked if it was possible.

The men as protectors thing. There's a lot of symbolism around it still at key events:

• A traditional marriage ceremony has a bride with her father taking her arm down the aisle. The groom needs no such protection - he can manage the short walk by himself. Men making speeches at wedding receptions while the women sit there silently.

• The male hand in the small of the female back at funerals. Steering the women out of the church. Men managing to get out by themselves.

And yes, not every bride, not everyone has a hand in the back...

In Islam, aren't men described as protectors and maintainers of women?

TheSparrowhawk Men often stand up to other violent men - certainly in my experience. I've done it often.

I'm not talking about seeing violence on the street and stopping it cadno. I'm talking about changing the law to ensure violence is properly punished, campaigning against cuts that mean women are trapped in violent relationships, setting up refuges so that women have a safe space to escape to. All things that women have done with little or no help (or in some cases, active obstruction) from men. Why can't men as a group stand up and say 'we recognise that our fellow men are violent, and we will not allow it to be ignored any longer'?

Every single change that has been brought about to protect women from male violence has been brought about, sometimes after huge struggle, by women, while men stand around and do nothing.

Up until 1991, it was entirely and totally legal for a man to rape a woman, as long as that woman was his wife. Men were completely happy with that law and women had to actually campaign - bed, plead and argue - to get it changed. Men stood by a law that made violence against women legal. That's what we've been up against.

that should obviously say beg, plead...

We still have a male-led justice system persecuting women who report rape. Women being told my male judges that they were raped because they were 'tempting' or because a man 'couldn't help himself.' Where are all the men raging against these injustices? Where are all the men getting out there and saying 'this is not acceptable'?

The constant response from men on these boards is 'what can we do'? or 'we are all responsible' (ie women have to do the work too.) What men don't seem to see, right in front of their fucking noses, is the women already working, day in and day out, for little or no pay or recognition to solve the problems caused by men, while men sit back and say 'what can we do?' I think actually that's the biggest insult of all - the idea women can and do do absolutely incredible work to right the wrongs done by men and men can genuinely and honestly not notice one fucking bit of it.

And it's not just the charity workers and the refuge staffers - it's the many millions of single mothers who soldier on, day in and day out, raising children that men have abandoned, being told they're the scourge of society, while men pay nothing, do nothing and get no criticism. It's the women who can't leave violent relationships but do everything they can to protect their children from violent men. It's the women who pick up the pieces when their best friend has been hit -again - and needs to be taken to A and E. It's the women like Laura Bates who highlight the ongoing, insidious, drip drip drip of micro aggressions that happen a billion times a day.

What can men do? They can get off their fucking arses and do something, anything at all.

This idea of man as family protector is odd as well really when you think about it.

Men are much more likely to abandon their children completely than women are. here

And family annihilators are predominantly male also. here

And yet they get protector status? When they are the parent statistically less likely to protect their family?

'Protector' in this context means 'owner.'

The 'delicate' woman thing is such a fucking insult - tell it to a woman who's shoving an 8lb baby out of her fucking vagina!

I'm not talking about seeing violence on the street and stopping it cadno. I'm talking about changing the law to ensure violence is properly punished, campaigning against cuts that mean women are trapped in violent relationships, setting up refuges so that women have a safe space to escape to. All things that women have done with little or no help (or in some cases, active obstruction) from men. Why can't men as a group stand up and say 'we recognise that our fellow men are violent, and we will not allow it to be ignored any longer'?

Because they can much better play the hero individually when the police does nothing because the crime is not actually recognized as illegal?

Because the woman-hating laws benefit men so much?

There was this guy in Germany who opposed the law that made marital rape illegal in 1997. He is, I recently heard still in politics.

I hope his wife is okay.

And he was not the only one, by far. Many, many, many men just loved marital rape, so much that they went out of their way to protect their lawful right to rape.

Men can oppose male violence. Many men just don't want to.