Why do so many men turn bad...?

[Destinysdaughter]

Was just thinking about this, May be simplistic but was wondering why so many men end up being rapists, paedophiles, DV abusers, stalkers etc?

Is it something in their family background, being a victim of abuse themselves, conditioning, or something else?

I think its because men are able to do whatever they want and get away with everything, while society goes around making excuses for their bad behavior. This happens in childhood and even more so in adulthood.

Men never have to learn a lesson. Most people think they're great (or at worst a loveable rogue) no matter what they do. They don't have to care for anyone, they have more money, more freedom, more rewards. Men are spoilt and behave like spoilt children as a result.

I would say all children are trained (socialised), but male and female children are socialised to different norms and have different material to work with.

So badly socialised girl babies grow up differently from badly socialised male babies.

Nature and nurture.

The nurture part is the only bit we can work on, but recognising the nature part helps.

As a society we tend train girls into victim hood, and men into abusers. I have found it easier to train my DSs into decent young men, than to train my DD into self assurance, body confidence, independence.

Oh, sorry, I thought that was a direct quote. Elephants didn't use the word psychopath. She also said some men cannot be trained.

FYI, I disagree with her post. I just think your characterisation of it was unrecognisable.

That was to moomin.

Xenophile - you may be interested in a documentary called 'Are You Good or Evil?' This article discusses it www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-neuroscientist-who-discovered-he-was-a-psychopath-180947814/.

I'm not making any claims re it one way or another, other than that I found it interesting.

By nature I would say that I am definitely not violent. I hunt my own meat but don't enjoy shooting the deer.

I am not a particularly emotional person, I am pretty relaxed and laid back

There are two types of psychopath, active and passive. Active is the murdery kind. Passive is your hard nose businessman.

Racing drivers are often very high on that scale too. Zooming around a corner at 100 miles an hour you can't fully care about yourself, your fellow drivers or have proper risk assessment... psychopath.

Another Socialisation in our patriarchal society can have a very negative impact on some groups of men. White working class men suffer particularly badly and this in turn leads to the women in their lives suffering substantially more.

I'm not sure about this. For a start, I don't think white men are encouraged to take things out on women any more than BME men. In fact possibly the opposite (as an average). And more well-off men have a greater sense of entitlement (again on average) so I don't think that helps either, in term of how they treat women. Although I suppose it makes a difference to general feelings of frustration and anger which would in turn be taken out on women...

The reason you missed it is Helen is because no one said it. Moonin is just mix and matching different posts and adding some words in of her own.

That she chooses to ignore AskBasil's post saying how nice men just shows what she chooses to focus on.

Who cares what feminists really think when you can just make it up eh?

Psychopathic traits are pretty useful for soldiers on active service I'd have thought. Although they need to be tempered with the ability to work with the rest of the squadron.

Interestingly I once read that heart surgeons score relatively highly on psychopathy. I suppose to do that kind of high-risk work you need to be somewhat, er, detached from strong emotion.

I recently read The Power, a book whereby women suddenly have the power of being able to give electric shocks from their fingertips, thereby being able to defend themselves, injure or kill men. As a result, the balance of power in the world shifts towards women as men are powerless to defend themselves. It's an excellent novel and exhilarating to see oppressed women in Saudi Arabia, or sex slaves in Eastern Europe totally turn tables on their oppressors. However, it does answer the question as to why men oppress women, which is simply because they can...

Just to throw in that society / societal norms play a huge part. The position of women in society, and men. What their roles are. Whether women are seen more as people or chattel. How much violence of all types there is in the society. Whether society takes a heavily victim blaming view or not. etc

It is wider than how any 1 person is brought up, or their life experiences.

Different countries have enormously different levels of and tolerance for DV, violence against women generally, sexual violence. Many societies that have a higher incidence for violence generally have higher levels of sexual violence - thinking South Africa / Jamaica. Also, in times of war, or unrest, when society breaks down and the usual rules are lifted, rates of sexual violence go up.

So it's complex. The fact that different countries have different levels of crime generally, and sexual violence / DV for this FWR viewpoint, is positive in that it proves that if society and institutions say NO this is bad, then it reduces.

However it seems that in many ways after a lot of progress, things are starting to go into reverse in this respect a bit.

I think that some boys aren't necessarily taught boundaries and consequences in the same way as girls are. Anecdotally, my partner said "oh well, he's a boy" the first time our son tried to tear one of his books. I went slightly apeshit and asked how it would be the different if he was a girl.

Just RTFT NameChanger22 Sat 28-Jan-17 11:30:24 blunt but fair. This is Trump, giant toddler. The ones who, when they're caught, say "why are you being so mean to me! it wasn't my fault! you're so unfair".

Here's a link to the book I mentioned. Well worth a read!

About 1% of the male population are estimated to be psychopaths (not just having psychopathic traits). Another 1% narcissistic personality disorder. Another 3-% "antisocial" where there is debate about whether this can be viewed as a personality disorder or not, although it strongly affects their behaviour. That's 5%, or not far off from the 1 in 16 men admit to be rapists figure quoted earlier. While male entitlement, sex drive, socialisation etc undoubtedly do play a part, I think we need to be aware that underlying that in many cases there's likely to be this kind of "abnormal" psychology involved as well.

Also the "because they can" thing.

When it come to violence in general, I think that the difference in the levels between men and women is due to a combination of things, size being one of them. Women can and do wallop children, abuse vulnerable people they are caring for etc.

What you don't see is the sexual violence or even the lower levels of abusive / harrassing type behaviours. This does seem to be a "man thing" and it would be great to really try and dig down and understand what can be done. If there is something very different between this male sexual drive then women are going to struggle to understand and therefore address it as it's out of our experience. This "couldn't help myself" thing - what does that actually mean? How does it feel / manifest? I mean, lots of men don't feel that way but they must have at least a little more insight. Or they wouldn't have been letting each other get away with it / making excuses for it / saying it's a fact of life and what can you do etc etc for millenia.

Sorry reread and want to correct.

The lower levels of abusive / harrassing type SEXUAL behaviours.

1 in 16, sorry! 16% would be horrifying.

1 in 16 is still 6%...sure not as bad as 16% but it's still 6%. That's not little.

Yetanother has linked exactly whom I was thinking of... the neuroscientist who discovered he was a psychopath.

That's not little. As soon as I posted it I got really angry that I thought 1 in 16 wasn't horrifying.

It's a mix of everything really. Culture,upbringing,socialisation, childhood abuse.
The kid that sees all the females in his families treated like servants and there to satisfy the man's needs(sexual and otherwise).
The kid raised in an abusive environment,whether they are abused themselves or not.
The kid that is taught that men don't cry,hit them harder,girls are delicate flowers that should fit in this box ,that boys will be boys, and certain behaviours show exactly how male they are.
The kid without a lot of parental guidance that gets all his "teachings" from the media,porn and "banter talk".
The (super) kid, that can do no wrong,is never told no,everyone should bow to their needs and wishes and any wrongdoing is excused and minimised.
Add in mental health issues that boys/men were actively discouraged to look for help for (shame,weakness,damage to their ability to be a good provider etc) and you end up with a complete clusterfuck.

That being said,nothing excuses abuse,rape,murder etc. It is not a defence. It does not negate the harm done to their victims. But looking at possible causes to try and avoid the bad outcome for future generations can only be a good thing.

BBCNews I was thinking about education. White working class boys fail disproportionately in our education system. As do boys of Pakistani and Caribbean backgrounds.

Anecdotally, from personal experiences, these boys suffer from patriarchal influences but also take out their suffering on the women in their lives. Also the boys I work with are ill equipped emotionally to cope with the conflicting emotions they are faced with. They have all the negatives of patriarchy but few of the benefits.

Meanwhile white middle class men, benefit from the patriarchy, and enjoy it. Middle class men mansplain their circumstances.

Lessthanballpark many thanks for explaining my confusing post. I did read what Askbasil said and I agreed with it. I was just a bit shocked that comments like "it's in their nature" passed with no comment.

A comment like - "Women like looking after children "it's in their nature" would have been, rightly condemned. The men in my personal life are neither violent or psychopathic and I don't want them radomly insulted.

Precisely 4 posters wrote something after Elephants and before you, moomin, and the first of those, Basil, replied to Elephants and disagreed with her.

Then the next post was more generally about psychopaths and brain scans and Xeno's reply was directly to that, in a sceptical fashion.

So how does that equate to what Elephants said passing without comment?