How do we address men’s violence against women as an epidemic?

[AnnaQuayRules]

It's not all men but it's always men and I'm fucking sick of it.

Yet another woman murdered by her ex who blew her (and himself) up with an explosive device.

I don't know what my point is really, just that I feel so sick and angry about this. The poor woman phoned 999 and, to be fair, it seems the police were on site within 5 minutes but he'd already killed her by then.

This is an epidemic but how do we address it?

@PoeticEnding
Your post reminded me that our prison system is the #1 biggest violence factory in our society. Reacting to violence with violence (inherent in criminalization) only generates more and ever increasingly extreme violence.

@SpiritAdder What do you suggest instead?

Well then, why haven't you contributed anything 'geared towards problem solving' then?

Your first comment was that you know a couple of apparently abusive women. I'm not sure how that's supposed to be a valuable contribution to the topic at hand?

What on this thread, pray tell (particularly prior to your off-topic, unhelpful comment) would make a person not support feminism?

I think perhaps you should consider why a man blowing up his ex with an explosive device, as an example of the epidemic of male violence against women, made you want to immediately try to turn the conversation towards two (apparently) abusive women you know.

Shame on you.

I think we have to stop framing it as men’s violence against women but instead men’s violence against everyone (other men are statistically speaking the biggest victims of men’s violence). I personally don’t want to see male violence against anyone so only focusing on women feels incomplete to me. Just my opinion of course

It's common, I don't know that calling it an epidemic is actually all that helpful. It doesn't suggest a way forward or give any special insight.

Men will always be more violence prone than women. So how do we manage that?

I suspect the most low hanging fruit would actually be to address drinking culture, and to some extent drug culture. Impaired control of self is the catalyst of a large proportion of all types of violence.

This list is a good start. I would add severe restrictions on violent porn and being much, much stricter about boys’ access to porn generally.
Also, schools should actively address the issue with all pupils, not just boys.
Police need to act faster and be tougher on all crimes that have a male violence element.
Prison of course for those convicted of actual offences but that’s treating the symptom and not the cause.
Ultimately we need a complete societal shift. That is not going to happen quickly but nor will it happen organically. Active steps need to be taken if we want to see change. This is why I’m in favour of a minister for men. Men need to be central to this change.

(edited to correct typo)

Start by listening to Maggie Oliver and the victims and having robust prosecutions of the northern rape gangs that were covered up for years -also prosecute those who were covering up and facilitating.

Agree with much of what has been said, but surely it’s a cultural problem. The violent men are usually the ones that have been brought up in a violent household, have had violence normalised to them as a solution to issues and are likely (although not always) to be dissatisfied with how their life has turned out. They then punch down at the women who have ended up with them, especially if those women ever decide to leave or push back.

The “nice” not my Nigel men often haven’t been subjected to this normalisation of violence and often wouldn’t know what to do with it if they came across it. which makes it u likely that they are going to solve the problem.

Somehow, we need to change the culture and stop the normalisation of violence that exists for some men.

Banning violent porn and taking it seriously at school could help. Plus intervention when difficult attitudes are recognised, by the time it gets to custodial sentences it will be too late; and as has been said, no man comes out of prison less violent than they went in.

The problem with the solutions is that its really expensive and hard work to change attitudes and it’s a generational task that probably wouldn’t bear fruit for 20 years. and you’d also come up against daily mail types suggesting that the wokes are trying to feminise the manhood of England.

just depressing really.

You make a good point here. The government has rightly given £25m to support security at Jewish synagogues and schools in response to the antisemitism. And while there are some good initiatives for women's safety, it doesn't feel the same.

The dial hasn't shifted in decades. It's still two women a week killed by their current or former partner.

I agree that means violence is absolutely the issue.

But erasing the concept of MVAWG risks erasing important factors which are different between male and female victim crimes.

Physical strength disparities (it is women's lives primarily that change in response to threats of violence).

Structural differences - MVAWG is the result of a patriarchal culture which has historically objectified , opressed and enslaved women and assumed them to be the property of men. Women do not trust the police. It is reasonable to assume most male victims of violent crime report the crimes. Whereas DV and sexual crimes, where the majority of victims are women, are extremely underreported by the victims. DV might eventually get reported, but every incidence experienced by the victim will not always get recorded separately.

MWAWG has been found to follow patterns. Eg the link between DV and terrorism. Or the fact sexual offences often escalate (indecent exposure, rape, murder).

Gang crime accounts for a lot of male victims and is a hugely important issue, also requiring deep societal shifts, which risks being ignored.

The young woman in NI was the first item on woman's hour rn.

It's case in point. And utterly chilling.

Category of missed opportunities at scale to help her and get justice for her.

Her perpetrator - previous convicted for DV- history of coercive control, financial abuse and SA. Known by the police as a "philanderer". Since his death at his own hands, there's been dozens more victims of his found.

She's seen multiple times in A&E. At the time of the fatal, brutal assault (for the "crime" of having a boyfriend who actually loved her). The perpetrator was allowed into the ITU bed where she lay dying. No photos were taken. No crime scenes were examined. No swabs.

It's things that happen over and over again. The patriarchy, toxic male entitlement, and being repeatedly let down by services trained in DV.

It's the same errors. Over and over.

The statistics bear out the opposite.

Men are at more risk from men.

But women die at mens hands at a far greater scale.

A mans punch at 75 years old is at force stronger than a women's at 25.

If it's framed as violence against everyone it misses the key issue that this is a gendered crime.

That men target women.

That women at society level are ignored, demeaned and marginalised. We are uniquely vulnerable due to physical differences like pregnancy and others which means that this isn't mental against everyone. It's against us.

That's a really interesting perspective.

I expect most violent men were once nasty little boys. It's obvious to anyone in a school who the bad boys are but there's usually very little serious early intervention aimed at turning them around long term.

As for porn, it's not just a subset of "violent" stuff. Almost all of it demeans women in one way or another, and not just accidentally - for the people who make this stuff, demeaning women is the whole point.

Here is an incident I remember well and was committed in my county.

One of the things that could be done is more support and a much higher profile for men like this who have lost a mother and a sister at the hands of their father and are trying to do something about it.

I had to go digging for the information as I could not remember their names but I am fairly sure there are other men working at this, so why don't they get much publicity?

www.positive.news/society/how-two-survivors-of-domestic-violence-found-meaning-from-tragedy/

Try not to hijack a thread about violence against women. I agree violence against men happens too, but over a 10 year period 840 women were killed by male partners as opposed to 186 men killed by female partners.

So maybe a separate thread for your valid concerns would be better?

& of those 186 men killed by female partners-how many of those women had suffered abuse from the man they ended up killing? Women can suffer years of SA and violence before they fight back.

Agreed pp. Just building on your point and also to dig deeper behind that statistics

In more than three quarters of those cases where a female killed a male partner, there was previously reported DV where she was the victim.

In a radio 4 programme not long ago, they looked into the population of female inmates in the criminal justice system- some were black and blue from being so badly beaten, yet they were arrested and processed as the criminal.

I'm not diminishing that there is female violence, but the sheer scale of the power imbalance and the patriarchy in MVAWG is such that it's not a like with like comparison by any stretch.

No pile on please I'm not defending anyone. This is just statistically the case.

It would need to start with a society where the media, celebs, MPs, are all supportive and sensitive to the needs of women for single sex spaces and resources, with this being a supported, respected and understood need and choice.

Instead of, as at present, women sneered at and derided and expected to put themselves, their perceptions, their needs, their trauma, everything, aside for men, many of who wish to be in the women's spaces for sexual reasons.

To me that's the biggest thing on the barometre. There's no point trying to get men to stop feeling entitled to abuse women, or boys to believe they have a right to grow up and abuse women and girls, or to try and pretend that women are treated with equality of humanity and consideration to men - the narrative around toilets alone gives it all away in seconds. The culture is normal, accepted, and it's bloody virtuous at present. All the cool people are doing it.

How many of the 186 men killed by female partners were actually killed by men who claim to be women?

The stats (official stats, UK gov data) reports suggest that male born trans people retain a male pattern of homicide and assaults irrespective of their current identity, it's their natal state which determines the likelihood of offending/seriousness of the offence etc and seems to be in line with male offending overall.

No pile ons please. Not my words just the data.

The problem is that male offenders are being recorded as female because either before or after the crime they have claimed to be women. I don't think we can rely on the stats.

That's a very good point. We just don't know.

To be clearer: ministry of justice data-

"2019 Data:
76 out of 129 trans women (approx. 59%) had at least one conviction for a sexual offense.

2024 Data:
Of 245 transgender prisoners who reported their legal gender as male (representing transgender women/non-binary in male prisons), 151 were convicted of a sexual offence.

Comparison: This is considerably higher than the 16.8% of male prisoners and 3.3% of female prisoners convicted of sexual offences"

There is increasing amounts of data because the trans inmate population is itself increasing so it's becoming a measurable demographic from what I have been able to read so far.

They are starting to record legal sex at birth as well as chosen identity [I always get the terms and acronyms wrong so I won't use them in case I make a mistake]

The point I tried to make above, is that actual XY chromosomes in the trans inmates seem at least to follow a male offending pattern in offences overall (or increased rate of sexual offences compared to non trans).

It's not the construct of gender, it's biological sex