'what about the men' -any tips for how to respond?

[Interestedwoman]

I hope I'm posting this in the right place. Either way, please be gentle with me :)

I have a male friend, and often if I say stuff about women's experience or feminism, he'll say 'women can be controlling to men, too' or 'that happens to men as well' etc lines.

In part of a discussion of whether there were any political outcomes it was worth losing friends for, and whether we cared about any goal enough that if we knew it would lose us all our friends we would still rub the lamp and have a genie make it come true (this was at my instigation as friends are very important to me, I have a complex about it.) I said :-

'I suppose if it was 'end all violence against women on this earth' I'd probably still go for it.'

He said (yep you guessed it) 'End all violence against people on this earth, surely?'

Any tips on how to respond to stuff like this? (I still want to keep him as a friend.)

It strikes me as being a bit like when in response to 'Black Lives Matter,' someone says 'All lives matter.'

They insist it does nothing because if they accepted they can make a difference then they'd be expected to do it. And they don't want to or don't want to lose their standing in the group.

The cynic in me also realises that there are also a lot of men that say all the right things but secretly agree and laugh at the jokes,banter,violence etc.

WhiskeyLullaby

You may not have done the things on your list but many women do at least some of them

Watch porn
Shout,leer, whistle etc at another person.
Touch or harass another person.
Engage in "banter".
Use phrases like "throw like a girl", "you're such a pussy" etc.
Assume people can or can't do things based on their sex.
Laugh at or promote sexist ,mysoginistic or rape jokes.
Minimise another woman's worry or fear about behaviours,situations etc.

I think women engage in these behaviours very frequently.

Everyone, male or female, has personal responsibility for how they behave and for how they bring their children up. They should also call out their friends if they act in a way that's detrimental to anyone else but I cannot see how individuals can be in anyway responsible for how others behave.

Good insight from Denzel Washington relevant bit at 2:58:

I think it’s a fair cop personally to hold men who are fathers who abandon their kids to account for contributing to the problem of Male violence. So there that’s a thing men can do.

I agree but then I also hold women who introduce multiple boyfriends into their children's lives responsible too.

@ Hearhoovesthinkzebras Men don’t really need you to stick up for them, you know!

Women can't even get a 24 hour truce in which there is no rape.
Mothers are held responsible for the way men behave because we act as their servants when they are children and they grow up expecting all women to be their servants. Why all women, because children see adult men treating women like servants in a society that presents it as normal.

Ah I see we've swapped from NAMALT and what about the men to "women do it too" and what do they do about it.Quite predictable...

Thanks for posting that article about whataboutery very informative!

Re the "I agree with him. ''End all violence against people on this earth'' and 'All lives matter'" statements, I think this is mainly a sort of wilful ignoring of the fact which should be obvious; by stating "black lives matter" or similar, supporters are in no way saying that no other lives other than black people or women or whatever the oppressed group is, matter.
They don't need to say Male lives or rights matter or people who aren't part of an ethnic minority group matter, as the dominant classes in society have never questioned that these lives or rights matter!
However evidence abounds at how little importance is put on the oppressed groups' lives, or safety, or equal rights, THAT'S WHY it NEEDS to be said!

My response in this type of situation is "Yes, if the world reset every night and every morning we all start from exactly the same place I would 100% agree with you that everyone should be treated equally. But the reality is some people start with huge advantages and others are suffering from the hangover of hundreds of years of unfair treatment, and if you ignore all that and just say "from today I will treat you equally" you are still massively disadvantaging the people who are starting from way behind."

Another way to make the same point: "In the long term I agree with you. I think most of the differences we believe exist between men and women are socially constructed and I want to be in a world where those fake myths have gone away so we don't need to make these distinctions. But in the current world men and women are socialised differently and get treated differently, and because of that we need to recognise that right now, women are disadvantaged in ways men aren't (and vice versa) and we need to tackle that before we can "just treat everyone equally"

@Interestedwoman just read your whataboutery article link and found it hugely illuminating, thank you.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras

Do you ever tire of your misogyny?

@Whatwouldbigfatfannydo

In regards to?

In the ‘genie’ situation i actually think your friend is right - why would you ask the genie to end violence against women whe you could simply ask it to end all violence?

This is my thought exactly. The scenario was one of wishes, not one of discussing priority or activism based on who is most at risk.

"The scenario was one of wishes"

I've never seen a man chastised for not wishing for World Peas given the chance to make a wish.

It's a long-running gag that beauty pageant contestants who say they want World Peas are mocked for being airheaded ninnies.

Why might that be?

If I were a member of a class that committed the overwhelming majority of violent crimes, I would, I hope, feel a bit ashamed, and want to do something about it. At the very least, I would want to think about whether the way I live my life and raise my children did anything to contribute to a society where this happened. At the very least

Careful with that argument because it’s been used repeatedly in the USA to racially shame African Americans about violent crime and the statistics showing that despite being only 19% of the population, they do over 50% of the murders.
A person’s race or sex does not cause violence or crime. If we want to answer to male violence, it is not going to be because of their biological sex. It will be other reasons.

If we want to answer to male violence, it is not going to be because of their biological sex. It will be other reasons

Such as?

It's a long-running gag that beauty pageant contestants who say they want World Peas are mocked for being airheaded ninnies. Why might that be?

In my view, misogyny dictates that smart women are ugly and beautiful women are stupid. So anything a beauty pageant contests would say will be mocked as airheaded and stupid no matter what they say.

Such as?

TBD as soon as we stop with recycling the same disproved biological essentialist arguments that were used against other classes of people for the same behaviours and start actually researching why violence occurs and why mostly men resort to it and are victims of it.

TBD as soon as we stop with recycling the same disproved biological essentialist arguments that were used against other classes of people for the same behaviours and start actually researching why violence occurs and why mostly men resort to it and are victims of it.

Why does violence occur and why do mostly men resort to it?

You don't think it is lined in any way to them being men? It's just a coincidence that they are mostly men? I don't get your point.

You don't think it is lined in any way to them being men? It's just a coincidence that they are mostly men? I don't get your point.

Men don't just appear though do they? They start as little boys so maybe it's something to do with how we raise and socialise boys that leads to some of them growing into violent men?

How many men in prison are illiterate for example? How does that happen?

This white paper summarises howvlittle we really know about the root causes of violence.
publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Causes-of-Violence.pdf

Key points
childhood trauma affects brain development and increases risks a child will be predisposed to violence in adulthood

violent behaviour is learned with children imitating violence and aggression they see, even in movies. This endures into adulthood

demographic factors such as authoritarian cultures, through to over-crowding increase violence

poverty and inequality increase violence

lack of protective factors- mental health care, social cohesion, community, etc

You don't think it is lined in any way to them being men? It's just a coincidence that they are mostly men? I don't get your point.

Violence is not linked to being XY instead of XX. Violent men are made, not born.

Violence is not linked to being XY instead of XX. Violent men are made, not born.

Do you have any evidence supporting that assertion?
More likely it's a mix of nature and nurture.

Among non-human mammals, the XYs are very often significantly more aggressive (as opposed to defensive) than XX. It's arguable that it's non-violent men who are made, thanks to human civilisation.

But men aren't mocked for wishing for (or not wishing for) world peace the way women are wrong whether they say make that wish or don't, why might that be?

But men aren't mocked for wishing for (or not wishing for) world peace the way women are wrong whether they say make that wish or don't, why might that be?

Do you have any evidence of this special mocking of women but not men on a general level? I have looked up many peace activists and all are mocked, many are even murdered.