Looking at men differently now I know too much?

[clingfilmed]

In recent years I've seen so much in the news and online about men's abuse and violence towards women. A man who looks totally normal and pleasant and is perhaps in many ways a good man might still be going home and creating fake AI nudes of women he knows or watching extreme porn or abusing his wife or kids or using prostitutes or cam girls or has a fetish that degrades and dehumanises women or is a complete misogynist.

There is a post on the relationships board now where a married man is hoping that just because a mum of his sons friend has been friendly towards him she might fancy him and be up for it.

Then looking at many of the men I know day to day how they talk to and interact with their wives and families is depressing to see, almost like they don't care at all.

I know its not every man, I know some men who I do think are good. I do look back to the rose tinted days of my teens when I would idealise boys and think they were so amazing and now knowing what I do about general trends and some men in particular its quite a disappointment.

Don't try and turn this into a race thing. POC don't generally like it when white feminists/the woke use them as pawns in their arguments. I work with loads of Muslims, British Jamaicans, Eastern Europeans, and a fair few Africans as construction is a good sector for skilled/ambitious people who don't have the written English skills required to earn well in most office jobs. I was working for a Sikh business until fairly recently.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the most persecuted demographic was white middle class women. And despite them always moaning about men, they're the ones that marry these men and benefit from their privilege and earning power.

No, but that isn't relevant. What happens to a woman's body on T is going to be whack. The previous poster said that they had these thoughts despite previously being attracted to men. By that logic, if we extrapolated that the elevated T levels in a female body corresponded to an everyday male body, then no men would ever be gay! Do you not see how silly that sounds?

You'd be forgiven for thinking that the most persecuted demographic was white middle class women. And despite them always moaning about men, they're the ones that marry these men and benefit from their privilege and earning power.

I don't think so, GaIadriel.
Any kind of woman is currently waaaaay down the list of persecuted demographics!

Hear bloody hear. I am middle class but not white, and I am sick to death of White Feminists. Also, a lot of the people on this site who whine about men being allowed to post here don't self censor when it comes to the Black Mumsnetters section. The difference in behaviour between wealthy white men and wealthy white women is miniscule.

Here is another story of a woman drugged and raped repeatedly by her own husband. We have no idea how frequently this kind of thing is happening to women and girls behind closed doors.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jan/23/philip-young-former-tory-councillor-pleads-guilty-drugging-raping-wife

horrible man with a respectable front. Hidden in plain sight. His ex wife is so brave.

I refer to my point above:

What I do know, from years of experience and reflection, is that women can NEVER understand what's it's like to be a man, sexually.

We can only tell you how it is for us. It's up to you what you do with that information, and you can of course "refuse to believe" the reports of personal experience from people different from yourself if dealing with the extent of their difference would be too challenging for you.

So when women describe their experience of being women and generalise it to their sex, pointing out that they understand what it's "like to be a woman" in a way that men don't, do they have a right to do that?

Or are women, like men, just completely isolated individuals who have no more authority about their sex than someone of the opposite sex does?

You appear to be speaking for everyone.

Being literal fucking royalty didn't protect Mary Queen of Scots from abduction, rape, and pregnancy. Rapists, and the risk of forced pregnancy that they weaponise against women, are a hazard to all women regardless of race.

Every single man who catcalls or gropes or writes pornographic descriptions of what qhe'd like to do to a female colleagie on the inside of a lift is reminding the women who see and experience that that we are the rapeable class.

There is nothing wrong with resorting to an analogy to get that point across when the person you are replying to is refusing to recognise that men as a sex class oppress women as a sex class through rape and the fear of rape, and that sexual harassment, which is what that pornographic graffiti was, is part of maintaining that fear of rape.

What you mean is that no one person can know what it's like to be any other person. There may be generalities and similarities, but you cannot claim to speak for all men.

How so?

None of those points contradict what @GaIadriel was saying.

I refer to my point above! 😀

So when women describe their experience of being women and generalise it to their sex, pointing out that they understand what it's "like to be a woman" in a way that men don't, do they have a right to do that?
Or are women, like men, just completely isolated individuals who have no more authority about their sex than someone of the opposite sex does?

To which I would add that the whole premise of this thread is a generalisation about "men". Is the idea that it's valid to make such generalisations about the opposite sex, who you have no subjective experience in common with, but not valid to make them about your own, based on the subjective experience you do share?

My point is that it isn't valid to make generalities about anyone!

Speaking of our negative experiences with men is not claiming to be the most persecuted minority. First, it's not a contest. Women, POC, disabled people, LGB, etc all have their own experiences of discrimination or negative treatment. One does not cancel out or diminish the others.

Second, not all of us are white or middle class.

This seems to be another strawman some here are using to shut women up. Oh no! How dare we say anything negative about men, even when we are talking about our own experiences.

Why did you join the thread then, when its entire premise is invalid?

I saw that article @clingfilmed and it made me think of this thread. Absolutely sick. The men who are supposed to be the partners are the rapists and enable others to rape too. Absolutely sick.

Galadriel was telling someone not to compare sexist graffiti to racist graffiti. The person doing the comparison was setting up an analogy. Using analogies is OK.

Maybe to say that its premise is (largely) invalid!!

I'm not sure you really grasp how statistics relate to everyday life. As per my earlier example, dogs kill 30,000 people a year whilst I'm not sure cats kill any. You could use your logic to argue that dog ownership should be banned. But really it's a non issue, aside from occasional spikes in dangerous breeds like the XL bully, which still don't prevent women from going about their lives.

If one man and six women are killed annually by a falling coconut, women are 600% more likely to be killed by coconuts. Does this mean coconuts are a grievous threat to our existence?

Yes, men commit the majority of violent offences (mostly against other men) and the vast majority of sexual offences. This doesn't mean you can't live your life without worrying about men daily. In fact, if male violence is such an issue then how do men manage to live such a privileged life? We're told that femicide is one of society's biggest issues, yet 70% of murder victims are male and men are twice as likely to be attacked by a stranger.

How do ordinary men manage to function given that they suffer much more of this male violence that seems to be the scourge of female existence? We need to study them and learn their secrets!

Strictly speaking I think it's better to try and not let any hateful rhetoric affect you negatively, although of course that's easier said than done sometimes. I'm a woman working in the sector usually considered the most sexist and yet I'm able to do what you claim you couldn't. So I speak from experience.

I don't have any experience of being a WOC so I'm not going to pretend to be an authority on that or dismiss people's lived experience, like posters who've never worked in construction seem to be dismissing my lived experience.

But to play the game, why don't I ever hear the woke/feminists saying that ordinary Muslims are part of the problem if they don't challenge the radical ones? Why aren't female Muslims considered complicit in FGM? Would you consider it OK to voice the opinion that not all Jews are bigots but the majority are?

If not, why is it OK to apply these principles to sex but not race/religion?

My general feelings towards men aren't based on online reports, rather personal experiences. The frequent stories out there only confirm that I'm not some rare case. I've experienced abuse and rapes. By people known to me and strangers. I shared a flat with a lovely man who turned out to be a serial rapist and murderer in his spare time. I never saw that coming. More recently, I've discovered that multiple male friends and acquaintances have rather shitty attitudes towards women and frequently use prostitutes. This has changed the way I see them and I've distanced myself.
Of course there will be many wonderful men out there but I have no idea which ones they are, and I'm not prepared to risk meeting any more seemingly lovely violent creeps.

Are one third of men subjected to sexual assault during their lives? Because one third of women are subjected to sexual assault. One seventh will be subjected to DV. Does marriage pose a one in seven risk of violent assault to men? That's the kind of statistics I'm looking at: a very substantial minority of women being hurt by men, usually men that we know. Women put at elevated risk of male violence by doing completely normal everyday things like getting married, dating a man, or living with a man

My number one strategy for staying safe from male violence is to basically adopt a South Korean 4B lifestyle: no dating; no sex; no marriage; no children. I'd have spared myself two rapes and an abusive relationship if I'd done this a lot lot sooner. But that wouldn't have kept Train Man's hand off my arse, nor two older boys hands off my vulva at primary school.

If you had actual statistics showing that Muslims are nine times more likely to be religious extremists than, say, Christians, then your arguments would make sense.

When we are talking about the sexed difference in prevalence between male violence and female violence, we aren't talking a couple of percentage points, we are talking vast differences.

better to try and not let any hateful rhetoric affect you negatively

When my line manager pulled me from the site and wouldn't let me return, that wasn't at my request. It was because:

• he had no authority to have the sexually-explicit graffiti removed and its authors reprimanded, because we were employed by the client directly, not by the construction company;
• he had a legal duty towards me to take all reasonable steps to protect me from sexual harassment, and "sexual harassment" includes seeing sexually-explicit graffiti;
• the authors of the graffiti were probably still working on-site and had demonstrated, by writing the graffiti, that they could not be trusted not to sexually harass (or worse) an unaccompanied woman, which meant that I could not be allowed to walk out to the portaloo without an escort from my own team;
• there was a risk that any complaint he made about the graffiti would provoke victimisation, either against me as the underlying reason for his complaint, or against him for having made the complaint.

Pretending I couldn't see the graphic descriptions of how a tradie wanted to bend an admin worker over her desk wasn't going to help me here. My line manager could not allow me to get in a lift with that written on the wall every day, nor allow me to walk unescorted through a half-finished building where its authors worked.

And more to the point, women shouldn't have to pretend they haven't seen that kind of thing just to do their jobs.