But What About The Men says the Labour Candidate

[octopusdweller]

Aaargh! This is just a rant!

Had my two actual Labour party candidates at the door (one man, one woman) . Asked them about single sex provision for women and how they would support this as councillors, e.g. ensuring in commissioned sexual/domestic violence services that there were single sex services for women. The response from the man was brilliant - he spoke clearly and in detail about why this was important, what he would do, and how he was prepared to make himself unpopular to support it. So I had a conversation with him, and then the women candidate came in with ' but what about the men, men suffer terrible violence from women and they get hardly any services.'
So I raised the issue of women not being centred, but being deprioritised in favour of males, and in her response she chose to centre and prioritise men. Not women, whose services are being eroded, nope her focus was on men.

Now I agree that men need sexual violence/ DV services, but I was talking about women's issues and women's rights being eroded, and I object to this 'whataboutery' where she cannot hold her focus on women. And the fact that she chose to centre men in her answer shows me she does not understand the this issue of sex-based rights at all or its significance for women's rights.

It turned into quite the argument! Despite me saying I support men's single sex services she rolled her eyes and countered with how little men get compared to women. So I said women have greater spending as women have organised and campaigned hard for those single sex services and they are not being destroyed, as which she eye-rolled again and went on about men again.

I hope one can vote separately for the candidates as I would absolutely vote for him but not for her.

But men don't suffer terrible violence from women. Where was she getting her evidence from?

Well I hope you won't vote for labour. No party that can't unequivocally stand up for women (including defining what a woman actually is) will ever get my vote.

Some men suffer violence from women. Those men should have services (for men) in proportion to how often that happens.

Not exactly the issue, Labour. Showing your priorities again.

Well, yes, there are some cases of men suffering violence from women, but it is rare. Men and women suffer violence from men. Everyone needs safe spaces. Violence perpetrated by men needs addressing. The rare incidence of violence by women towards men is not a reason to remove protection and services from women.

Exactly the kind of talk that puts me off Labour

It's only rights that whilst providing services for men, the larger proportion of funding in these areas should go to women's services because they are the largest proportion of victims due to their sex.

Well I hope you won't vote for labour. No party that can't unequivocally stand up for women (including defining what a woman actually is) will ever get my vote.

In fairness the male candidate understood the issues and us willing to stand up to the party- that's who we want. The Tories are a bit better (on this one issue) overall but you wouldn't vote for Crispin Blunt, would you?

She claimed, repeatedly, that for every two women who suffer domestic violence, one man does. Which I find hard to believe.

But even if that were true, that's not the point! The point is that I was raising the issue of women's needs being decentred in their own services in favour of people of the male sex, and her reply was to centre to needs of men!

I'm genuinely disgusted by her. And to have responded like that she clearly has not understanding of the issue of the destruction of women as a class based on their sex, and of single sex services.

30 women dead from male violence so far this year according to Karen Ingala Smith. According to this article: www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/27/femicide-census-theres-a-disturbing-reason-for-the-falling-number-of-murders

the number went down during lockdown and is rising again now.

Women need urgent action. I'm pro men getting domestic violence support and have had a close family member suffer from it. What I really hate is the attitude that political and financial support is like pie. There's no finite amount we can only do for some and not others, or fear that someone will feel left out.

Yes I vote by individual now, not party. The guy was great. The woman actually ended up storming off down the road. The man stayed and apologised for her going off topic. Which she had and I was glad he was able to recognise that.

People are all forgetting that there are men in same sex relationships.

Many men who suffer from domestic violence need specific resources for those in same sex relationships.

Women do abuse male partners, but it rarely get's physical - emotional and coercive abuse is much more likely.

There is no 'one size fits all' policy which would cover all possible scenarios.

Women AND men need single sex facilities, gay and lesbian friendly facilities and counselling for physical, sexual and non-contact abuse.

I completely agree with that.

But when I am raising the issue of their views on the erosion of women's sex-based rights, it tells me something significant about the importance she placed on the maintenance of women's rights that she chose to talk about men's needs, And furthermore kept her focus there and refused to return to talking about women.

Domestic violence is not just intimate partner violence.

Some domestic violence is against the children and some against elderly parents. The perpetrator can be of either sex here, and there are women who abuse their children, for instance, but many in this category are male.

It may have changed since the last time I looked at this, but men had/have 20 refuges for them alone, and women/people with a gender have almost one in every city.
To me that's about the right amount proportion wise. Well it would be if it was solely women. Maybe those with a gender should fund some for themselves too.

But still I think men do not suffer violence from women, if they did then it would be on the news every night, when normally it's a dead woman every night on the news, it's so often its normalised.

Absolutely, @Terfydactyl . The average man is approximately twice as strong as the average woman. Punching strength, even more.

A woman, hitting a man, does no damage.

Even bringing gay relationships (ie 2 men) into the discussion is another irrelevance. That would be 2 men, roughly equally able to damage each other. Not comparable with the circumstance of a man being violent against a woman.

‘But still I think men do not suffer violence from women, if they did then it would be on the news every night, when normally it's a dead woman every night on the news, it's so often its normalised.’

They do. I’ve known violent women. Usually the violence is different, ie not as physically coercive. The man often ‘puts up with it’ for reasons of psychological dependency, substance problems, financial issues, or shame.

But in general the problem is many many times smaller than its opposite. There’s a horrible sort of glee that some people express in their reactions to female violence against men (like - “see! Women are just as violent!” They’re not. But some women are violent.)

Well they can. Ive worked for 20 years in a domestic violence unit and of course men suffer some terrible domestic violence and abuse. However the majority of victims are women and the majority of perpetrators are men.

Let them build their own DV support away from women. I'd contribute to that. Happy to. Just don't pull resource away from women and stop colonising women's spaces.

I'm still angry about it!

Its exactly that sort of thinking that labour candidate exposed that has got us into this mess in the first place. The unconscious inability to hold a conversation on women's rights and safeguarding but instead to move it onto centring men. Its that centring of males that we see in this gender ideology despite the compromising of safeguarding and rights of women.

I agreed with her over and over that there needed to be services for men, but I kept saying, 'but that is not the issue I am talking about, what I want to talk about is your position to women's sex based rights' But she just wouldn't go back to women, but kept going on about men. She genuinely seemed annoyed and irritated that I kept insisting on talking about women, not men. And in the end she stormed off saying she didn't have time to talk about it anymore. And her colleague then apologised for her.

Even the responses here ' well men do suffer too'. I know! I know that! I agreed with that! But why can't we hold a conversation centring women? . See how even on this thread it leads to a derailing of the attention from women to men. Why was is so impossible in 2022 for a Labour candidate to focus for five minutes exclusively on women's rights?

The women seem to be almost worse tbh. Lots of men just haven't thought about it because it doesn't affect them. The women should know better but they are handmaidens.

“That’s an interesting point you raise, but it’s a separate point, which I’m happy to discuss so let’s come on to that once we have finished talking about women”

I had a really similar conversation with a male friend of 30 years last night. (Similar to that which the woman was saying). When I raised Sarah's crowdfunder.
He was gobsmacked that I wasn't talking about men's needs. I explained over and over that they were already being met.
Very sad but I've now blocked him, I don't want to speak to him ever again.

Firstly, the stats are misleading as the first thing a lot of abusive men do when confronted by the police is claim their victimhood, citing one time she threw something at him, for example. The scale is in no way equivalent, it is purely a power play.

We don't have refuges and domestic abuse services just to comfort people and make them feel better. Women need these services because often the abuse leaves them unable to set up on their own - having children leaves them emotionally and financially isolated. They are unable to work and they have cannot easily access money to put a deposit down on a new house, for example. There is literally nowhere for them to go, especially with children in tow.

I'd also be amazed if the form domestic abuse takes is as long reaching, do these men really need to be hidden away to save their lives, the murder rates do not suggest so.

The services you would design for men would be different, perhaps a first month deposit for a flat, support in separating belongings and lives without them being in a vulnerable situation, support groups - but you don't need secret places for them to heal and hide while bringing up their families. There is no good argument for shoe-horning them into the women's support services.