Men harass women for fun.

[DJBaggySmalls]

Apologies if this has already been posted.
''Research from Promundo and UN Women looked into street harassment in Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, and Palestine, surveying 4,830 men in total.''
metro.co.uk/2017/06/17/study-may-shed-some-light-on-why-men-harass-women-in-the-street-6715863/

These young men "have high aspirations for themselves and aren't able to meet them," he says. "So they [harass women] to put them in their place. They feel like the world owes them."
www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/06/15/532977361/why-do-men-harass-women-new-study-sheds-light-on-motivations

Will this research be applied to men the world over, or will people dismiss it as only applying to men from those countries?

Neither nor. My bet is on: No one except feminists wil ever read those research results.

I think they'll dismiss it all.

Although it sounds to me like they're talking about 'kick the cat', which is hardly now or unknown.

I don't remember ever having read anything trying to get insight into why men do this before, it's always been focussing on prevalence, victim impact / whether it's really a problem or women should just lighted up, what women should do when it happens etc.

So from that perspective turning the spotlight from victims to perpetrators is a positive step.

It rarely seems to ask why men do all these awful things to women from the "minor" to the major stuff and certainly it's rarely linked into a cohesive picture about how men (namalt) view women in different societies and how while the extremeness (sp) and prevlancemay differ these things are universal.

Thinking about it I can think of a few other things where they turn the spotlight - some pieces looking into USA campus sexual assault/rape and how it is often a "male bonding" thing, study in SA asking men if they had raped anyone and follow up questions, one in scotland with men who paid for sex. It doesn't happen that often - not nearly as much as questions are asked that obscure the perpetrator - but it's good when it does. If we don't understand the dynamics then we can't improve / tackle it.

I have always suspected this. Really great that they are looking into why men are abusive instead of focusing on women.

It's an interesting study. I don't think any of it will come as a surprise to feminists, though. But the more that this stuff is in the mainstream, the better.

There were a couple of bits that stood out to me. The first is the assumption that men who are more educated have better attitudes towards women. The study doesn't bear this out, which I thought was interesting. It's something I've long suspected. Certainly, better educated men can be more subtle about their attitudes towards women, and perhaps they move in circles where overt misogyny is less acceptable. But it makes me think of your lefty dudebro "feminist", who displays a surface enthusiasm for women's rights, but who has never analysed his male privilege, and who ditches the egalitarianism as soon as his position is threatened or questioned. I don't think sexism divides neatly along class, income, education or race lines at all.

The second is the assumption that not being married makes men behave worse. I find this quite worrying. Do men behave better because they have a woman at home to channel their disaffection onto? What are we saying here? That seems quite a disturbing message.