I've realised that I just don't like men very much...

[SandAndSnow]

And I wanted to talk through it a bit, if that's ok. I hope this is the right place.

I'm sitting on a train next to a terrible man spreader so I'm feeling a bit raged at the moment, but it's also made me realise that I increasingly tend to treat men with caution and, if I'm honest, dislike.

I'm in my early thirties, have been sexually assaulted by 3 different boys/men, had a truly awful experience with a bullying (male) obstetrician, my father is an emotionally and at times physically abusive bully and I've been passed over for promotion in favour of a younger and less well qualified colleague by a male boss. As well as all the regular crap like street harassment, manspreading etc. I'm happily married, and I have a couple of male friends, but I'm generally much more comfortable and happy in the company of other women.

Now, perhaps I've been unlucky, and I need to just get over all of this. I'm entirely happy to be told this! And I'm happy to be told that this isn't normal, and I should seek help for this too.

But I wonder if other women feel the same, and that this is actually a rational response to the experiences which I've had?

“And maybe you need to look more closely at the company that you keep if you think that so few men follow your list.”
If the majority of men follow my list, why is there still so much male violence? Why is there so much easily available porn? Why is there still structural equality? Why is there a pay gap? Why do so many men not pay child maintainance or share parenting?

Interesting how the language has been escalated. I don't hate men or believe them to be inherently evil.

I believe the way our society works means one group remains self serving while the other group works to enable that.

When I was twenty I used to believe that men were better company and bosses, they were simpler to understand etc. Worth noting that I was attractive and I believed that also to be a power.

As I have got older I understand the flaws in my thinking. I can see how much I needed the approval of these men to hold a worth and how hard I worked to be attractive and kind blah blah.

Also grew up in a house where kindness and putting others before yourself was the most important thing. Be careful with teaching your girls this lesson, society will hammer it home anyway and I spent twenty years being kinder to others than myself at great, great cost.

I don't believe men to be inherently evil I just believe power corrupts.

I choose to not seek out male company anymore, I don't see why that is unacceptable?

I read recently about a holiday island that only allows people of colour. I have no issue with this and can totally sympathise with the need for a bloody break from a gaze that hurts you.

That is all, I choose to live the rest of my life taking a bloody break from centering men.

Maybe have a look at Joanne Dennehy ' s crimes TwitterLovesMAPs and then come back and tell us that all women murderers do it to escape their abusers.

I don't believe men to be inherently evil I just believe power corrupts

yes, I agree with this

men (and plenty of women) will argue and argue that most men don't have power etc, while disregarding the fact that men in each class do have power over women in the same class as them

Scopio your earlier post resonated with me. I went to an all girls school and although I have a DB, largely feel more comfortable around women. I’m also not very attractive and like you don’t change myself around men - don’t pretend to be less intelligent, can be quite caustic at times so don’t have much interest from men. The males in my life tend to be friends partners or from a hobby group where it’s the activity that joins us rather than anything else.

Manspreading? Is this post a joke?

*Women rarely kill at all, unless it’s to escape years of intolerable abuse. tosh.

I think you need to educate yourself*

I’ve signposted to lots of evidence to back up my arguments.

You can’t just dismiss them as ‘tosh’. Unless you have similar evidence to counter?

If the majority of men follow my list, why is there still so much male violence? Why is there so much easily available porn? Why is there still structural equality? Why is there a pay gap? Why do so many men not pay child maintainance or share parenting?

Because none of these things happening prove that it is the majority of men doing them.

Pay gaps, structural inequality are not solely down to men and they definitely aren't within the realms of most men to change. That proves nothing about "most" men.

Child maintenance and shared parenting - what studies are you referring to that say that most men aren't doing what they should?

Male violence and porn - most men are not violent. They just aren't. Men might commit more violence. Many more men are violent than women - that doesn't equal most men.

The same with porn. The existence of porn doesn't prove how many people watch it. The fact that more men watch it than women doesn't equate to most men. Or as you said a vanishingly small number of men haven't watched it.

These generalisations just weaken any argument.

There are more male sex criminals in prison than there are women in prison for all crimes.
Considering the low conviction rate for rape/assault/abuse in the first place, that should be a shocking wake up call for every person who rushes to men’s defence because women do it too.

“Women rarely kill at all, unless it’s to escape years of intolerable abuse. tosh.”
You did notice that “rarely”, didn’t you? An example of one that didn’t does not disprove the premise.

You can’t just dismiss them as ‘tosh’. Unless you have similar evidence to counter?

I gave you a name of a woman who went on a killing spree. She didn't kill men to escape. Her existence proves that your assertion that "all women who kill men do so to escape" is not true.

So you have a name of a woman who went on a killing spree.
In comparison how many men can be named who have done similar?

Murder however it’s done and whoever it’s done by is horrific, however it is a predominantly male crime.

You did notice that “rarely”, didn’t you?

Yes. Rarely kill.

Women rarely kill at all, unless it’s to escape years of intolerable abuse. tosh.”

The meaning of the sentence is that women rarely kill and when they do it's to escape years of intolerable abuse.

That is not true.

Women rarely kill - true.

When they do it is to escape intolerable abuse - not true.

Woker - being caustic is definitely a good way of weeding out the men who will be a waste of time!

ArchbishopOfCunterbury

Because that 1 proves that "all" is not true.

And that was 1 that I happen to know off the top of my head. There may well be others, I haven't looked.

But 1 certainly proves that it isn't all.

''The number of women globally who have committed violent crimes is very small. Women are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators. However, when women have been convicted of murder or manslaughter, in a significant number of cases the victim is a male partner or male family member and there is a history of domestic violence.''

www.penalreform.org/resource/women-who-kill-in-response-to-domestic-violence/

userschmoozer

I don't disagree with that statement at all.

I disagree with a PP statement that any murder of a man committed by a woman is done to escape abuse. That is just not true.

Weetabix. Something like 96% of violent crime is committed by men. Why are you so keen to make it look as if that’s not the case? I don’t understand your motivation at all.

But that is not what was said, Weetabix - ‘unless’ means ‘except if’, so surely the sentence means women rarely kill, except in the case of domestic abuse - then they kill more than they do in other situations. Even then it’s still ‘rarely’ compared with men.

Bertrand, your list is great, and I think if all men followed it, we would be in Utopia.
When you (or anybody) "men could stop this if they wanted to, but they don't", surely it requires all men.
Plenty of men are doing these things. I can go look on twitter now and find men calling out other men for misogyny, for defending the pay gap, for joking about rape, for excusing domestic violence, , for watching porn, etc. And these are just strangers on the internet.
(Of course, I can't know what they are like in private real life, but they are still acting to call other men out).
Maybe it needs 100% of men on board before things actively change?

There is a lot of "men do this because they are awful, women do this because of men" in this thread.
I hate it, it's like feminists don't think women have any agency, only men do.

Personally I can't resonate with the OP. My father aside, almost all of the negative experiences I've had in my life have been at the hands of women. That doesn't make me dislike all women, or like all men.
Most men I don't like, most women I don't like. For different reasons maybe.

Weetabix seems to be taking it all very personally.

When we say 'women' and 'men' in these discussions we are talking about classes, not absolutes.
I don't think people really struggle with the concept of classes as much as they pretend, especially since this is explained at least once every discussion.

Lyndsey McCool

A very quick Google gives this name too who bludgeoned a man to death with a dumb bell.

Another 3 girls in New Zealand killed a man whilst trying to steal his car.

As an aside, and a point about porn, my son’s school had an incident where a 12 year old girl sent a boy an intimate picture of herself and the boy circulated it around the male population of the school.
When it died down there was a parent’s evening with a community police officer advising on keeping teens safe online. One of the things he said really stuck with me was that access to porn is widespread and easy, even with strict internet filters.
To test this out I tried to find porn even with strict filters.
I was shocked how easy it was to find it, and more shocked that in one page of gifs on reddit (I led a sheltered life, I don’t like porn at all and had no idea what to expect) the majority of clips showed unacceptable levels of violence and control towards the women. I’m not going to list them as I’m sure you all know the sorts of things I mean.
These are apparently considered mainstream, normal porn.
It may not be easy to protect our children from seeing this, but at least knowing it’s there gives the opportunity to discuss it and point out how very disturbing it all is.
If more and more violent videos are what men are wanting, and if this level of abuse is what turns men on, how can people sit there dismissing it all as ok? I don’t get it.

Bertrand, I suspect that the only way to find a partner who ticks off everything on your list would be to find a woman.