Letter to Men

[Passtheknitting]

Someone else posted something from him a few weeks ago and I posted one a while ago.

This looks an interesting read too.

An open letter to men ....

lonelyts.blog/2019/07/20/dear-men/

Well I thought it was interesting

Very interesting, someone listening to women and taking our points on board.

As a man I agreed with most of it in spite of it being a little patronising and possibly virtue signalling.

I don't agreed with 'take responsibility for the male sex' though. We're a unfathomably diverse bunch and there are no doubt men who I share less with than I do with women from a similar background to my own.

I really don't know how to stop the small minority of violent men and have no influence on them nor any culpability for their chosen actions.

Yeah, it's generally not useful to tell people to take responsibility for their sex. It's not like most of us have some kind of line to a men's or women's network where we can even just talk to all of our sex. Most of us can change what we do ourselves and talk with our friends.

But I think you can ask people to advocate to other men or women to do something about a problem. I can talk to other women and say, look, women, I think this is a problem we have as a group and we need to do something about it, and I won't come off the same way as if I said it as a man.

Or, I've occasionally seen women try and tell men's groups that they should be doing x, y, or z, and it can seem rather patronising, when they have their own issues they are concerned about.

Although in both cases the problem can be that it's not done as part of a dialogue.

I also wonder sometimes whether shifting the responsibility onto a class actually serves to remove it from the individual. Actually isn't that exactly what RAINN said?

Slightly different discussion but still somewhat relevant in terms of the 'individual vs the class' element.

In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming “rape culture” for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campus. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important not to lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.

Strange how so many of us have been sexually assaulted when it's such a small proportion of men who do it, they must be awfully busy.

Not all snakes are poisonous, only a small minority.

Strange how so many of us have been sexually assaulted when it's such a small proportion of men who do it, they must be awfully busy

This.

Strange how so many of us have been sexually assaulted when it's such a small proportion of men who do it, they must be awfully busy.

That is perfectly possible because they tend to be repeat offenders. So 10% of men could be responsible for assaults on 60% of women.

It should be titled "Dear Woke Men". Most men don't even know there is anything going on.

I really don't know how to stop the small minority of violent men and have no influence on them nor any culpability for their chosen actions.

You can start by accepting it's not a small minority.

In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming “rape culture” for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campus. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important not to lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.

"Rape culture" is a good example, it's used the same way terms like systemic racism or patriarchy are. There are these undefined explanations that don't really tell us anything about what's going on, what causes it, or what could be done about it. A word you assign for a description of certain phenomena that may or may not be related.

As an explanation it has certain advantages though. It avoids putting the onus on any individual, but is excellent for keeping it from your group and placing responsibility somewhere else. It resists real solutions, so you can talk about it without being obligated to do anything, which is ideal for political types. You can, at the same time, use it to justify all kinds of things that you might like to do.

They aren't terms that reveal the material causes of problems, instead they actually obscure them.

Didn't have to wait long for the NAMALT brigade....

Sure cuz we wouldn't want to explore the nature of the problem. That's a lot less fun.

You can start by accepting it's not a small minority.

Absolutely this.

My best mate (lets call him Pete) was appalled by the things his female friends have started telling him since #MeToo. He just genuinely thought 'that kind of thing' was all in the past. Lots of men do.

Me and him have been talking about this stuff for a few years now, and he's started calling out this behaviour in his very male workplace.

Paraphased example: Steve the wagon driver makes a leery comment about a girl in the street to Pete.
Pete says "Fuck's sake mate, she's about the same age as your niece, what is she, about 15 - what's that all about?"

Dan "Well, er..."

Pete "Seriously, what would you think if you heard some random say that about your kid though?"

This led to quite a long conversation about how girls get this shit all the time, why they're not valued for their intelligence or skills, maybe it might be why there aren't many female drivers on the HGV circuit or driving taxis, is this how we want our sons to think etc.

He's done it at the pub as well, with bar acquaintances.

Toxic masculinity is shit for all of us. Women have been doing the heavy lifting for far too long for us to be thrilled by the odd bloke bringing a brew out to the trench once in a while.

Have a look at this thread - this is what it's like for girls and women from a very young age. It might give you some food for thought about 'minorities'.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3628364-To-wonder-honestly-what-must-go-on-in-the-minds-of-some-men?pg=5&order=

You can start by accepting it's not a small minority.

Absolutely. Three attempted rapes by men I knew, multiple sexual assaults by men I didn't know, two frightening physical assaults (one by a partner, one a stranger) and numerous incidents of groping or verbal assault. These were all different men and my list is short compared to some. So yeah small minority my arse.

The #MeToo campaign ran to 11 million posts in under 24 hours. And that's just Twitter.

All of it enabled by rape culture.

It starts so young.

I was in the garden, two teenage lads walking past, talking about ‘her fucking tits were.. ’.

I’d hate my DD to be spoken about like this. One of them caught my eye and saw me glaring at him. He stopped for a second but then smirked and carried on. I was caught by surprise and wish I’d said something.

He stopped for a second but then smirked and carried on

Part of the problem is that everything they have learnt told them that your reaction was just bitterness on your part because no one is talking about your tits like that anymore.

I sit in the sauna at the gym and hear how young men talk about women. I'm clearly invisible in my middle age. Not one of them is like Pete and says hang on a minute, that's a bit disrespectful. They egg each other on. And it's not just one group, it's lots of different men.

You can start by accepting it's not a small minority

We all have the tendency to extrapolate from our own experiences and then shape a world view around that.

I think it is unhelpful to generalise in this way - either about men, or about women. It just creates polarities which are inimical to each other.

Look at the actual data for assaults and murders, and for suicide attempts women make after an assault. Then realise there is a huge problem that you are ignoring.

When you dismiss women's lived experience and the official statistics, you add insult to injury.

Weezol I like Pete. In my 40+ years I have met one Pete...