I'm fucking sick of male violence

[QuentinSummers]

This poor little boy, saying sorry and still getting beaten to death
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-40522224
And we will have to all act like this is a random piece of bad luck as opposed to some absolute evil fucking man who's been taught by society that it's ok to use your physical strength to assert dominance over others.
Stop the world, I want to get off.

The thing most men don't seem to realise is everything is on the same spectrum. Ok no maybe you don't beat up your partners or children.

But it is a very very rare man of whom it can be said holds no misogynistic views whatsoever.

And it ALL contributes.

As well as teaching girls and boys at school to spot signs of aggression and to stay safe, should boys also be taught that aggression is wrong?

Would this help the stigma of dv move away from the victim and towards the perpetrator?

I'm male and I don't believe I'm guilty through association or that I should be rounded on for having the same anatomy as this monster.

Yep.

Read anything else on this thread, cad?

The thing most men don't seem to realise is everything is on the same spectrum. Ok no maybe you don't beat up your partners or children.

Yes, this is what I was just thinking. I accept that murdering a little child is very far along that spectrum, but there are other things that harm us as a society and are largely perpetrated by men. The financial crisis -largely, it wasn't women running those banks. Speeding -men are far more likely to speed and drive recklessly. They're far more likely to cause a crash which results in death or serious injury. I wonder which sex is more likely to issue death threats online or call women whores on twitter.
Our socialisation of boys has to change, but the powers that be don't want to admit there's an issue because generally their socialisation worked out pretty well for them. If some of these differences in behaviour are down to biology/testosterone, that's still a very good reason to socialise little boys more like we do girls. To give them dolls, to buy them toy kitchens, to have films for them which focus on relationships and not violence or heroic quests.

I have banned the news from our house and don't read articles like this anymore, not because I don't care, I do passionately of course, but because it makes me so anxious, so angry and so sad...and there is nothing at all we can do to bring that little boy back or deliver justice to that hideous excuse of a man....

Sometimes we all need to turn it all off and just listen to silence and peace otherwise it can drive us insane, and in the long term it can lead to mental health issues.

Read anything else on this thread, cad?

Fur No, I'm in work and just flicked through it - I agree with that statement though

Naturally you do since it absolves men of any responsibility whatsoever.

I suggest you RTFT.

In due course

I'm male and I don't believe I'm guilty through association or that I should be rounded on for having the same anatomy as this monster.

I'm female and I do. I feel that I have been part of a society that hasn't recognised the problem. I have been part of a society that hasn't acted to save this child, and many others. I haven't educated myself, or others, sufficiently.

Isn't this nice guy rhetoric part of the problem? Look it: some men are violent towards women and children, others gain credit by being protective. It's a component of society that benefits even the nice men. In a way patriarchy is sold to men on the basis that we are supposed to be protectors, and it's up to women to choose the right man to protect her and her children.

Broadly speaking as a man I've always been taught to never hit women, and that was often taught by men as I was growing up, but living in a world where it does and can happen always hands me something of an advantage in my dealings with women.

It creates an imbalance that makes truly equal interactions incrementally harder to achieve. I think for most men they think as long as I'm taking steps to protect the women in my life I'm alright. Those attitudes are precisely why we leave the issue unexamined. We like that view of ourselves too much.

Excellently put Dervel and what you said about how male violence benefits all men in some way is something I've thought and said for a while.

think if all women showed men that it was not acceptable then it would happen a lot less but unfortunately, women let it happen, police let it happen, so why would men stop when they get away with it so easily?

I'm sorry but this is victim blaming. My mother was attacked by her partner. She didn't "let" him get away with it, she left him and the result was he stalked and harassed her and attacked her again because he was an entitled violent arsehole.

I'm very sorry for what happened to you as a child. But you are living in a fool's paradise if you think if only women stood up to these men it wouldn't happen.

I have seen many many women over the years who didn't "let" these men "get away with it". A lot of these women ended up in hospital or dead anyway.

Behaviours, beliefs, thoughts and logic are driven by emotion. We think and act out how we feel. If we find aggression rewarding, we are more likely to be aggressive.
We need to teach about conflict management, thinking strategies and emotional intelligence in school.

'Isn't this nice guy rhetoric part of the problem? Look it: some men are violent towards women and children, others gain credit by being protective. It's a component of society that benefits even the nice men. In a way patriarchy is sold to men on the basis that we are supposed to be protectors, and it's up to women to choose the right man to protect her and her children.'

Yes. Also, society seems to have incredibly low standards for men's behaviour. Just take a look at the number of women who say their partner is great, despite the fact that he is selfish and lazy. But because some men beat their partners, he's 'great' because he is just lazy and not violent.

Men don't seem to realise how much of a threat women perceive them to be. Perhaps they don't want to realise it.

There was an EU study done 3 years ago that revealed shocking levels of violence, even in 3 countries praised for their gender equality.

www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/05/violence-against-women-eu

think if all women showed men that it was not acceptable then it would happen a lot less but unfortunately, women let it happen, police let it happen, so why would men stop when they get away with it so easily? Why is it the victim getting the blame here and the police are added as some kind of afterthought? It's as much the responsibility of men to 'show men that it was not acceptable' but really it's against the law and immoral to beat other people and ordinary civilised men have no desire to do it so what do we have to 'show'? If we pretend that violence is some kind of ordinary default state for men we feed into the problem. The incentive to stop is being a civilised, respectful person in a civilised society.

Can I add that I'm tired of my neighbourhood being paralysed by lairy drunken football crowds and swarming with police like this is a normal state of affairs? Why is it tolerated? In the 18th c lairy drunken women in the street were thought to indicate total social breakdown but here blokes do it every weekend. I like the football ground being nearby, I like the noise and bustle of it all but the everydayness of the threat of violence (taken seriously by the police) seems so unnecessary. We don't need hoards of police to control the crowds at the Sunday market, why do we need them at the football?

Men don't seem to realise how much of a threat women perceive them to be. Perhaps they don't want to realise it.

They don't. I was speaking to a friend's DH the other week and he was saying how once he was walking home from the station late at night and there was a woman just in front of him. Said woman turned round to look at him and then crossed the road.

Friends DH was grossly offended by this, why would she automatically assume he's a threat just because he's a man....bla bla bla. Most have no idea.

I think we do realise it, but then feel entitled for seeing ourselves in this protector role. Which is really a bit of a farce as we're increasingly getting out of shape, and if we were so marvellous it wouldn't have been possible for a 5 year old to get beaten to death in a park in broad bloody daylight!

Friends DH was grossly offended by this

What a self-centred, arrogant and obnoxious individual he sounds. My 15 year old brother manages to grasp this.

user - football crowds are an interesting example. Even well behaved groups of men contain the threat of menace. DH is a big, strong bloke who has gone to football matches all his life, and feels very at home in that environment. I've walked along in a crowd of 15,000 people (probably 10,000 of them adult men) leaving a stadium feeling very vulnerable when I wasn't with him. He doesn't really understand why I feel like this, because "they're alright, nothing would happen to you there".

But I do think that men do understand the threat that men can pose: remember the "backs against the wall, boys!" jibes that men used to make if a gay man was amongst them? That's men right there recognising that other men can pose a threat (along with a goodly dose of homophobia)

I think we (society generally) don't look at male violence as we feel powerless to stop it. We don't like feeling powerless so we look at what we feel we can do something about, like women's behaviour and then we can feel like we have some semblance of control.

I don't know if I could stop a man intent on murdering a child, it's one of the many things that terrifies me as a parent.

hordes of police even ffs...

OlennasWimple yes, and yet for men anal rape is treated like a joke, whereas women wouldn't treat it as such among themselves and I don't think you'd hear a ('normal') bloke making a joke about a woman being anally raped. (I know awful rape jokes are made, but I mean not in the same context as blokey 'prison rape' jokes).