My feelings about men

[BoxyLoxy]

Name changed, obviously.

Im a regular on here although mostly lurking.

I was wondering how other people reconcile their feelings about how fucking awful the patriarchy is, how men as a group are basically toxic and even the 'good ones' have an incredibly low bar for being decent humans.

Im married, and seriously reconsidering it because I feel this ongoing utter despair at the myriad injustices I put up with. I would NEVER EVER pursue a relationship with a man if I did leave.

Anyone else feel the same? Is this normal?!

Aggression and violence can escalate quickly and a man can find himself in a dangerous situation with no one else to back him up.
Men have to individually make their own risk assessments in such situations, but it certainly helps when creeps and arseholes know there are other men who might intervene or call them out on their behaviour.

Which is the situation women face tenfold. Believe it or not, a lot of us get it. I don't want women anywhere, any time, facing this shit. I just don't think telling men they can't be part of any discussion is the way forward. And I don't think we can do it in isolation, without women's input, because that may lead us to fucking it up more. And that isn't aimed at you, Nonny.

In short, Gronky, yes. We need to own it, and fix the problem. I've no problem telling someone if they are being an arsehole, but it will not fix everything. But as I just said to Nonny, if we do it in isolation, with no dialogue, we may get stuff wrong, and you are still left with the problem.

Someone i know got the shit kicked out of him for remonstrating with a group of teenagers, they had been yelling at a women who was ignoring them...no idea whether she knew they were yelling at her

The family of the man concerned seemed to be blaming her for not helping...although i think she rang the police

JurgenKloppsCat I really appreciate your attitude.

I think the biggest difficulty is how easy it is to inflame just about everyone involved. For example, if I approached a majority male cultural group and directly demanded they change, I'd be likely treated as an interloper and even re-enforce negative behaviour out of spite. At the same time, taking a more nuanced approach would likely upset some of the more radical, action-oriented feminists as I'd be acting in a way that could be perceived as subservient. Some desiring segregation would curse me for even interacting with men, at the very least for making any concessions to them.

This isn't a personal moan about my circumstances, just acknowledgement of how difficult the whole issue is to tackle. I wholeheartedly agree that discussion, frustrating as it can be, is a lot more productive than demands (and I also acknowledge that some of those demands can feel and, in my opinion, are very easily justified).

I agree that there are likely societal reason behind black violence.

There is no such thing as "Black violence". There is no such thing as white violence.
There is 97% Black male and white male violence. 3% Black female and white female violence.
Conflating the female victims with the male perps is disingenuous, to say the very least.

If certain male posters on this thread don't want to give up and condemn their precious porn because that would be a tiny bit too inconvenient, then all their pontificating about how to help is meaningless.

You're being told what would help. You dismiss it.

Hence why we mothers now have to discuss with our poor children issues such as anal sex, choking, hair-pulling, facials, slapping and namecalling and how these acts never used to be a standard part of loving sex. Thanks for that.

But hey, porn is just a derail by a silly woman. You chaps get back to deciding and discussing what's important.

If certain male posters on this thread don't want to give up and condemn their precious porn because that would be a tiny bit too inconvenient, then all their pontificating about how to help is meaningless.

You're being told what would help. You dismiss it.

Hence why we mothers now have to discuss with our poor children issues such as anal sex, choking, hair-pulling, facials, slapping and namecalling and how these acts never used to be a standard part of loving sex. Thanks for that.

But hey, porn is just a derail by a silly woman. You chaps get back to deciding and discussing what's important.

Have you read the rest of the thread?

Loads of women watch porn, it frequently gets discussed on the AIBU section. According to the study posted earlier in this thread, the Pornhub data survey found that the majority of viewers watching the sort of porn you mention (i.e. violent porn) are female.

There is no such thing as "Black violence". There is no such thing as white violence.

I'm not sure what this post is replying to, but 'black on black' violence does get discussed a lot from what I've read. It's the biggest cause of death of young men in the US I think.

"70% of men aged 18 to 24 visit a porn site at least once per month
The largest consumer group of online porn is men between the ages of 35 and 49
One-third of all internet porn users are women"

UrbanJellyfish
Male violence is the greatest human rights crisis the world has ever known.
10th rule of misogyny: The worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad.
Which explains why there is an ongoing effort to conflate the female victims with the male perps.
Further it explains why racists prefer to talk and write about "Black on Black" violence when in reality the majority of crimes in the US are committed by white males, and certainly not Black women..

I thought that the statistics showed that most crime was committed by white men, but black men had a proportionately higher rate of offending according to ONS data - but I'm only relaying what I've read on here before and haven't actually fact checked it. Undoubtedly it has roots in socio economic issues though.

I was more just making the point that violence isn't just split by gender though. I think there are many other contributing factors like poverty (as above) and hence it makes sense to compare different economic groups/ages/ethnicities etc to better understand the cause. It's not 60 year old men committing most of the knife crime that's for sure.

And a third of all porn viewing is by women? I'm surprised at that even having known that quite a few do. I'd have thought it was like 90% men.

Violence is split by sex. Males are responsible for 97% of violent crime. Females 3%. That is a dramatic split.
In the US Black people are incarcerated at a much higher rate than white people. We even have what we call the school to prison pipeline for Black children.

Men and women inhabit different worlds, but it seems only women notice. Women talk about violence and sexual violence a lot, because it’s demonstrably dangerous, but also because it’s big enough and traumatic enough for men to, maybe, pay attention.

But the world women live in is full of everyday, small examples of male aggression and entitlement which are one end of the continuum which leads to violence.

It’s women being the ones to get out of the way so men don’t bowl into them. It’s women responding politely when some man interrupts what she’s doing, “watcha reading”? It’s women biting their tongues when some man tells her how to do something, “you’ve parked too far out there”, he says importantly. It’s my neighbour putting his bull into my paddock because, “you’re not using it”. It’s the man who made some quip behind my back when I was putting my groceries into car, and when I ignored him, called me a bitch because, “I was only being friendly”. It’s the man who moved me out of the way so he could be in the space I was in, in a shop. It’s my anxiety when I was the only person in the gym, but for four, young male cleaners”. It’s the urge to be nice, to placate men, even when they’re being intrusive and annoying, because every woman knows how quickly a man being “nice”, can transform into anger and aggression when women don’t respond appropriately. It’s the total stranger who punched me in the head in a busy street one night and walked away.

As women get older and their sexual and reproductive utility to men disappears, the constant lack of respect becomes so much clearer.

So to those men who don’t believe they are responsible for male violence, here’s your challenge. Develop your self-awareness and situational awareness. Feel the urge to interrupt a woman by “just being nice”; keeping quiet. In the street, or on the bus or the train or the supermarket, pay attention to who is around you and get out of everyone’s way. Learn to decipher that smile women have which means, “I don’t want to talk to you but I’m worried what might happen if I tell you to go away”.

You don’t have to take a pay cut, do your fair share of housework or give up your seat on the board. Just pay some attention. You don’t even have to report back because women already know the answer.

DancelikeEmmaGoldman

Excellent post.

I mangled that though, didn’t I? I meant when the urge to interrupt women for no reason comes upon you, resist it and stay quiet.

Violence is split by sex. Males are responsible for 97% of violent crime. Females 3%. That is a dramatic split.

What type of violent crime does this apply to and what is the scope? ONS puts the split at 78%/22% for all types of violent crime in a 2017 report.

Is the issue your relationship with your DP/H and his behaviours, the share of work between you etc?

My OH fits the 'middle aged white bloke with no kids' profile, and has zero interest in or patience with my concerns about self ID, women's right to separate space, etc.

Even though his bestest friend has two little girls, teaches young children and is himself anxious about school policies (mixed loos, etc).

Re female porn use:

Slash fiction (usually male/male porn written by fans of TV series, films, books etc) is - apparently - overwhelmingly written and consumed by women.

Archive of Our Own is a huge site archiveofourown.org/

The thing is of course, they are words.

No one is being filmed, no-one is actually having to DO anything to produce this content.

Re the issue of male vs female viewers of porn: I'm puzzling a bit over Pornhub's statistics. They don't seem to show the total number of individual users (as opposed to repeat visits) over the course of a year. But that's what you would actually need to determine the percentage of the population actually using them - in other words, how far their reach actually goes (This despite supposedly being able to identify users as male or female from cookies etc. )

I'm also interested in that percentage, because it would be very relevant to the question of what proportion of the "female" visitors are actually female, as opposed to identifying as female. Obviously that proportion would be constrained by the total percentage of autogynephiles in the population; but you would have to know the total number of visitors to see how many of the female users might potentially be trans, I think????

They also claim to have 67,000 NEW users every second. But surely that's not possible? Or am I getting my calculations wrong here?

Umm are we going to get a lovely PA PSA about how the last umpteem posts aren’t relevant to the OP?

Or is it ok to go off piste if it’s the ‘in crowd’ chatting.

I mean, where’s all the posts asking “OP, is there anything else you need from us?“

And you wonder why no one wants to come talk

Come again Public?

No need to "come again"

If you aren't part of the MN in-crowd, you'll get told to shut up.

This thread is instructive, and the usual police who can talk.

Go see a while back, who's told to butt out and who's allowed to talk.

Hi everyone, I would just like to apologise OP and everyone else for my comments earlier in the thread. It was a while back but I do regret what I said. I would really like to become a part of the MN community. I appreciate how you are feeling OP and I hope this thread is helping you

Well I'm not part of a so called in crowd and I've yet to be told to shut up.

On the whole discussion on this thread has been quality and respectful. FWR board is where mainly women post about things which are important and sometimes people snap. Reasons for this have been posted.
From what I can see this is your first contribution so I'm wondering what's upset you?