Feminism and violence again women

[Red Cat]

I'd be interested to hear your ideas on the causes.

Yes I think the word patriarchy just names the system, it doesnt explain it.

I don't have any big theories, I was just saying that without theories we don't get very far. Talking about personal experiences is important, but it doesn't get us much beyond the descriptive.

 

[muscovyduck]

Absolutely. It's awful but it's a story that happens over and over.

A friend of mine was subjected to a horrific attack by her ex bf in a hotel room in london. She came to surrounded by paramedics, the police in the room pressured her repeatedly to answer questions while the perp was in handcuffs in the room.

A few days later when he was released, he went missing and west mids police hammered on her door at 4am looking for him, barged their way in, were really aggressive and unpleasant. She rang me crying so hard she couldn't even get her words out, just gasping for breath.

Unsurprisingly she has no interest now in helping the cops charge him with attempted murder. They had enough at the scene for gbh and she just wants to wash her hands of the whole thing.

Yep I have my own version of this story. Phoned West Mids police in desperation to help get me out a house. Waited 40 mins locked in a room until some right cunts showed up. Difficult to talk about tbh.

 

[friendofdorothy]

We need to stop saying 'a woman was raped' and start saying 'a man raped a woman,' and find out why.

Yes good point. Lets see if we can start that change of langauge here on urban, or at least on this thread.

Proper big project. Lots of funding. Go back and find out what caused them to be like this. Collate information. Figure out how we can stop young men from turning out that way. I mean, it won't happen, because how could it? Look how many rapes end in a conviction. It's seriously pathetic. If it was an illness you'd want to find out what was causing it and tackle it, but somehow people are concentrating on the victims rather than the great glaring problem.

yes its is amazing that there has been so little political will to solve this.

Yes they're all linked. And they didn't just arrive out of thin air. Like baldrick said.

agree

 

[friendofdorothy]

5 live was talking about this today.
A female victim of rape and domestic abuse was saying that she felt the reasons for the low rate of convictions and her experience was that all efforts were concerned with the victims character and history including medical history, school reports etc, rather than researching the alleged perpetrator- WTF!
The message being sent is that it is the woman/ victims fault. If a woman is judged as having a bad character (whatever that means?) then she has no recourse to justice....

This is apparently designed to weed out the cases that will not result in a prosecution and test the nerve of the victim to stay with the process.

This particular victims perpetrator was found guilty of domestic abuse but not rape. After this there was a further incident and the woman did not come forward again because she could not face going through her character being ripped apart again.

So yes the attitude and methods regarding prosecution needs to be turned on its head.

Not that different from the attitudes in the 70s then, when the police ideas of 'respectible' and 'loose women' blinded them in catching the so called 'Yorkshire Ripper' (a name that glorified violence against women.) Shocking how little this has changed.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Yes I agree they are all connected and the only sensible way to look at it all on this thread is as a systemic issue. (As opposed to there being a large number of individual men who do bad things because of some kind of unexplained moral failing on their part).

I'd also say that the acts you've quite rightly named are at the extreme end of the scale, but to address this we might need to explore the less extreme end of it too.

yes I've named extreme violence but I think we explored the less extreme end of the scale in other threads and I would like us to link the two. No one starts out as a murderer - I am asking men what leads upto that?

The fear of extreme violence is how many men control women and how ultimately the behaviour of all women in public spaces is affected.

Perhaps this starts with the idea that men are naturally dominant, physical and not emotional, can't control themselves, should be the main breadwinner, head of the household etc.

If it's just cultural then we can change peoples ideas with education? I used to think so, but so little has changed over the past 40 years and I am questioning this. What little change to law and social acceptabily that has happened, has been archieved by mostly women working hard for change.

 

[friendofdorothy]

I'd be interested in what people think of the "ring ring" campaign against domestic violence in India. I think it's interesting because it puts pressure on men to confront violent men, rather than the usual "don't do this, it's bad" approach? But it's hard to know how successful it's been. It's not like one campaign can fix this.

The videos below all include brief audio-only staged re-enactments of women being hit by men, so people might not want to watch them for that reason.

Asking men to police the behaviour of other men at least seems like a start.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Part of my own barriers to this discussion including men, is that - while I know it’s essential to include men for lots of reasons, I also get really antsy at the prospect of blokes saying “it’s simple: any man who hits a woman isn’t a real man.” or whatever. That none of their mates would do it. Etc.

And it comes down to two things. Firstly, that stuff feels diminishing and minimising the problem. It is real men. It is some of your friends, colleagues, family. Men who are violent to women and girls aren’t rare. And then secondly, some of the men saying that easy platitudinous stuff will be men who are or have been violent. It sounds the same whether the man is sincere or not.

And so, while I know violent men are a minority, and I know we need to include men as allies, and I know it’s unreasonable… I end up with this mistrust.

yes - he's a beast idea is popular cry from the tabloids. Also so many murders are described by friends and neighbours as really nice guys or 'good to his mother'.

Violent men are ordinary and presumably before they kill / attack / rape ,a woman they must have displayed behaviour and attitudes that seemed ordinary and acceptible.

 

[friendofdorothy]

new campaign just launching btw


longer video

Thank you for posting. I didn't realise how often NDA were beinging used in the this way. Shocking.

 

[friendofdorothy]

Non-violent men also benefit from the general prevalence of violence against women. Women are less likely to challenge you, more likely to be obliging or conciliatory, because the threat of violence is always there

good point. I think the culture of violence it is how women are taught to be passive, submissive or to take care of mens fragile egos.

 

[spanglechick]

So, this exists specifically for sexual violence, but as well as rape culture we have an “male violence culture” too:

and I think a lot of the bottom of the pyramid stuff includes (as well as the more obvious IPV red flag stuff) all that performative masculine bollocks like Will Smith at the Oscars, and the conversations that defended his role in fighting her battles. Men feel obliged to express dominance, and that’s tied up in masculine conformity. I see it all the time, year after year, at school - in fact, that’s totally the bottom of the pyramid: “mum cussing being a lazy provocation for a fight”.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

If it's just cultural then we can change peoples ideas with education? I used to think so, but so little has changed over the past 40 years and I am questioning this. What little change to law and social acceptabily that has happened, has been archieved by mostly women working hard for change.

Well sure. I think the only sensible position for men to take is that it is cultural and something must be done about it.

 

[smokedout]

yes I've named extreme violence but I think we explored the less extreme end of the scale in other threads and I would like us to link the two. No one starts out as a murderer - I am asking men what leads upto that?

The fear of extreme violence is how many men control women and how ultimately the behaviour of all women in public spaces is affected.


If it's just cultural then we can change peoples ideas with education? I used to think so, but so little has changed over the past 40 years and I am questioning this. What little change to law and social acceptabily that has happened, has been archieved by mostly women working hard for change.

I think it's more than cultural but structural and culture reflects that. The way society is currently organised is saturated in violence, and needs violent men to maintain it. Boys are taught from a very early age that heroic men use violence to get what they want, even if what they want is 'good' in the case of the most benign figures like Superman and boys being taught that is necessary to maintain and justify violent structures like the military, police, prisons etc. And these institutions need toxic masculinity to function, and as such are misogynistic to their core - see the London Met for details. In addition to that the objectification and sexualisation of women is hugely profitable and that is locked in place by social inequality, whether that's 'aspirational' role models turned into human dolls to be endlessly photographed and lusted over and then discarded when they no longer meet the approval of the male gaze or at the other end of the scale women doing sex work or setting up an onlyfans to feed their kids or get an education. Culture serves the purpose of propagating this and normalising it, but it's really just reflecting the reality of how society is structured.

It's why ultimately I don't think carceral approaches - as in more cops, more prisons, can ever truly work. Male violence will not be solved with more (institutional) violence and I think it's understandable that a lot of Feminists are now realising this and calling for things like defunding the police and prison abolition - but that has to come with a radically transformed society. That doesn't mean abandoning working within the system as it is now to do everything possible to raise conviction rates for rapes etc, the crisis is too great to reject existing structures and wait for the downfall of capitalism, but it does mean recognising that ultimately the change has to be structural. Patriarchy and capitalism are glued together, and male violence is necessary for the maintenance of both.

 

[Spandex]

So, this exists specifically for sexual violence, but as well as rape culture we have an “male violence culture” too:
View attachment 318319
and I think a lot of the bottom of the pyramid stuff includes (as well as the more obvious IPV red flag stuff) all that performative masculine bollocks like Will Smith at the Oscars, and the conversations that defended his role in fighting her battles. Men feel obliged to express dominance, and that’s tied up in masculine conformity. I see it all the time, year after year, at school - in fact, that’s totally the bottom of the pyramid: “mum cussing being a lazy provocation for a fight”.

I think the bottom of that pyramid goes way below sexist attitudes, rape jokes and banter. Way below Will Smith slapping someone who insulted his wife.

At the base is the social construction of what it means to be a man: strength, pride, not showing emotion. Things that are drummed into boys from birth and throughout nursery and school - don't be a baby, need to toughen up, boys will be boys, don't act like a girl. As children and teenagers form into who they are they suck this stuff up and internalise it and it becomes who we are and without actively trying to untangle it, it's just there. Even if we do try to untangle it, it's still there, whole aspects of who we are and what we do and why we do it is just out of our view until its pointed out to us and we reflect on it and we understand what it is and why it needs to change and maybe, just maybe, we do something about changing it. As if there's many men do that.

The pride that is part of being a man works against that. Being wrong is a sign of weakness and men aren't weak. You only have to look at people being wrong on the internet and how they'll double down and argue and argue their corner rather than say "you're right, I'm wrong". It's hard to overcome that pride, not to write off criticism with 'but I'm nice, that can't apply to me', to just flat out deny it. To accept the embarrassment of being wrong and embrace change in ourselves.

But embarrassment is not a nice feeling and feelings are another thing men aren't supposed to do. Men are strong and feelings are for the weak. This is one of the causes of male violence. Bottling up emotions and feelings is bad for anyone. They eventually find a way out. One of the indicators for violence as an adult is negative experiences as a child - abuse, neglect - and those feelings are there, locked up trying to escape until they errupt.

Ive done it myself. After my dad died I was busy caring for my baby daughter and being strong for my mum and did nothing to process all those feelings and they stayed buried until some idiot drove their car onto the pavement and clipped the pushchair with my daughter in, then got out of their car and said they hadn't driven on the pavement even though their car was right there on the pavement. That was the moment all those feelings, all that pent up emotion erupted, and I shouted blue murder at the woman who'd driven into the pushchair and kicked the shit out of her car. To anyone watching it was an example of male violence - a man shouting at a woman and being aggressive. It was an example of male violence. If I'd been able to talk about all those feelings, to process those emotions they probably wouldn't have erupted in the way they did.

But men aren't equipped to talk about feelings, to explore our emotions. Get a group of men together and it's all banter, one upmanship, pissing contests. Talking about feelings, except maybe one to one with a most trusted best friend if the moment ever comes, is not a thing men do. In a group its likely to be met with humour, laughter, derision, more embarrassment, more feelings to bury. Men don't learn the language to talk about this stuff and many men walk around being time bombs ready to go off when their pride is dented, when they feel slighted.

How to change that? It's a massive task. It's easy to say men should embrace their emotions, talk about feelings, but that's fighting against the whole internalised basis of being a man. It's something I do think about and I'm a long, long way from perfect. Most men I know aren't ready to go there. It takes enormous trust to open up to another man and mostly it would be met with glib comments and attempts to shut down this feelings conversation and redirect talk back to films or music or sport or this cool thing I saw or did.

It needs to go beyond thinking about it, beyond encouraging a critical mass of men - men who don't even see what they're doing wrong - to change how they are, it needs a new generation to grow up in this culture and experience and internalise this new normal.

And that's only one aspect of male violence.

 

[existentialist]

Asking men to police the behaviour of other men at least seems like a start.

TBF, we shouldn't have to be asked.

 

[izz]

I'm probably going to get flamed or pedantically corrected for this, but what the hell.

Pornography has been mentioned upthread as a factor in male-on-female violence and I also believe it helps to support the belief or supposition that female bodies are, or should be, readily available. (Yes I know, not all men etc.). Now here's a thing, I think it was an article I read or something I heard on the radio but it was a doctor from A&E saying that she could make a connection between trends in pornography and the injuries women were turning up to A&E with. When anal sex became popular in porn to the extent it was normalised/commonly available, women started turning up with anal fissures and now semi-strangulation appears to be popular in porn, women are turning up with neck bruising and related injuries. I can see there could be a connection, people trying this stuff out because they've seen it in films, maybe finding they like it and doing it a lot, or thinking it's the 'done thing' nowadays, whatever.

So how do we address it ? We could try and censor porn to prevent anything which could physically harm the actors but we all know that's not going to work, because if there's any kind of demand out there. someone will supply it. So how about, any consumers of porn reading this thread just not watching videos of women being harmed, or seemingly harmed ?

I hope this doesn't generate a rash of "Well I watch violent pornography and it doesn't make me rape anyone" complaints because frankly, I don't care, if there are consumers of violent porn out there then it will also be available for people who can't tell the difference between porn and real life. I also hope this doesn't generate a rash of "Well I use porn but it's always very nice porn" because, again, I don't much care, all I'm asking is that if you do consume porn, be picky, please don't fuel the demand for the rough stuff.

 

[kabbes]

Just to return to what was previously being discussed: I would say there is no such thing as “just” culture. Culture is the set of practices and shared meanings through which we learn what the world is. It is the very means through which we understand everything. Culture isn’t some kind of set of clothes that we wear or settles on us like snow. We don’t just shrug it off in favour of a different one. In a very real way, culture is us and we are culture.

This may sound trivial or sophistry but it is actually fundamental. Some of the posts I’ve read don’t really make any logical sense if you reflect on culture as being the social practices through which meanings are constructed, rather than just being “stuff you do”

 

[dessiato]

I'm thoroughly enjoying (is this the right word?) this thread. It's making me think a little more about my own behaviour and attitudes. I've been badly flamed before for saying this but here we go:

I've behaved badly towards women in the past, I've been to sex shows, and watched porn. I wouldn't do it now. These discussions have made me aware of how wrong my behaviour was. It's more shameful because I have four sisters, was brought up in an area in which I was the only boy. I should have known better.

I try to change, I try to learn. Discussions such as these all help. Maybe, hopefully, others reading this will also change. Every little bit must help the situation improve. And this is why men need to be included. If we are not how will we know what, and how, to change?

 

[spanglechick]

I think the bottom of that pyramid goes way below sexist attitudes, rape jokes and banter. Way below Will Smith slapping someone who insulted his wife.

At the base is the social construction of what it means to be a man: strength, pride, not showing emotion. Things that are drummed into boys from birth and throughout nursery and school - don't be a baby, need to toughen up, boys will be boys, don't act like a girl. As children and teenagers form into who they are they suck this stuff up and internalise it and it becomes who we are and without actively trying to untangle it, it's just there. Even if we do try to untangle it, it's still there, whole aspects of who we are and what we do and why we do it is just out of our view until its pointed out to us and we reflect on it and we understand what it is and why it needs to change and maybe, just maybe, we do something about changing it. As if there's many men do that.

The pride that is part of being a man works against that. Being wrong is a sign of weakness and men aren't weak. You only have to look at people being wrong on the internet and how they'll double down and argue and argue their corner rather than say "you're right, I'm wrong". It's hard to overcome that pride, not to write off criticism with 'but I'm nice, that can't apply to me', to just flat out deny it. To accept the embarrassment of being wrong and embrace change in ourselves.

But embarrassment is not a nice feeling and feelings are another thing men aren't supposed to do. Men are strong and feelings are for the weak. This is one of the causes of male violence. Bottling up emotions and feelings is bad for anyone. They eventually find a way out. One of the indicators for violence as an adult is negative experiences as a child - abuse, neglect - and those feelings are there, locked up trying to escape until they errupt.

Ive done it myself. After my dad died I was busy caring for my baby daughter and being strong for my mum and did nothing to process all those feelings and they stayed buried until some idiot drove their car onto the pavement and clipped the pushchair with my daughter in, then got out of their car and said they hadn't driven on the pavement even though their car was right there on the pavement. That was the moment all those feelings, all that pent up emotion erupted, and I shouted blue murder at the woman who'd driven into the pushchair and kicked the shit out of her car. To anyone watching it was an example of male violence - a man shouting at a woman and being aggressive. It was an example of male violence. If I'd been able to talk about all those feelings, to process those emotions they probably wouldn't have erupted in the way they did.

But men aren't equipped to talk about feelings, to explore our emotions. Get a group of men together and it's all banter, one upmanship, pissing contests. Talking about feelings, except maybe one to one with a most trusted best friend if the moment ever comes, is not a thing men do. In a group its likely to be met with humour, laughter, derision, more embarrassment, more feelings to bury. Men don't learn the language to talk about this stuff and many men walk around being time bombs ready to go off when their pride is dented, when they feel slighted.

How to change that? It's a massive task. It's easy to say men should embrace their emotions, talk about feelings, but that's fighting against the whole internalised basis of being a man. It's something I do think about and I'm a long, long way from perfect. Most men I know aren't ready to go there. It takes enormous trust to open up to another man and mostly it would be met with glib comments and attempts to shut down this feelings conversation and redirect talk back to films or music or sport or this cool thing I saw or did.

It needs to go beyond thinking about it, beyond encouraging a critical mass of men - men who don't even see what they're doing wrong - to change how they are, it needs a new generation to grow up in this culture and experience and internalise this new normal.

And that's only one aspect of male violence.

Thanks for sharing that. What’s interesting to me, is that - because I knew you when we were kids, knew your male friends etc, and that you seemed very different and non-toxic-macho - that you nevertheless didn’t get the kinds of opportunities in those friendships to talk about feelings etc. Because if you guys didn’t, I guess it’s more widespread than I thought.

How sad, though. If such lovely, clever, socially functional boys aren’t talking feelings, what hope for the teenagers who are fully into the whole performative masculinity roles?

 

[kabbes]

It’s also worth noting that emotions themselves are socially determined. To have an emotion, you have to create meaning from the sensations and events you are experiencing. Emotions don’t exist separate from this meaning-making. The feeling in a stomach might be interpreted as fear, love, cringe or excitement (or just gas) depending on how a situation is determined and the ideas that are culturally available to determine it. These repertoires vary quite heavily — there are emotions whose existence we take for granted that have not existed in other cultures and other cultures have emotions completely unfamiliar to us. I would suggest that it is not a case of men “burying” their emotions so much as those emotions being culturally unavailable to them in the first place, because how they understand what it means to “be a man” does not include that interpretation of those sensations and experiences.

 

[Spandex]

Thanks for sharing that. What’s interesting to me, is that - because I knew you when we were kids, knew your male friends etc, and that you seemed very different and non-toxic-macho - that you nevertheless didn’t get the kinds of opportunities in those friendships to talk about feelings etc. Because if you guys didn’t, I guess it’s more widespread than I thought.

How sad, though. If such lovely, clever, socially functional boys aren’t talking feelings, what hope for the teenagers who are fully into the whole performative masculinity roles?

Yeah, I guess that's my point. Because we didn't go round doing the things in that pyramid, we were 'nice', non-sexist blokes and that's how I saw us until I was in my thirties and reflected on it more. Then it hit me that while we may be non-toxic men, we are all still men, with many typical male behaviours, products of growing up as boys in the 70s & 80s, marinaded in all the attitudes of the times. We're none of us perfect.

The worst male behaviours are leaves on the tree of masculinity, with the roots being deep and out of sight.

 

[Winot]

One of the problems is gender stereotypes/expectations leading to unhealthy male behaviour. I think society as a whole would be improved if more fathers did more childcare, and I think we should do everything we can in structural terms to encourage them to do so.

 

[dessiato]

One of the problems is gender stereotypes/expectations leading to unhealthy male behaviour. I think society as a whole would be improved if more fathers did more childcare, and I think we should do everything we can in structural terms to encourage them to do so.

I think this us an issue. For strange historical reasons men seem to have too little input on childcare. It's "women's work."

 

[cesare]

Disabled and senior care as well.

 

[frogwoman]

Disabled and senior care as well.

Nice to see you here BTW

 

[cesare]

Nice to see you here BTW

Thanks X

 

[Knotted]

It’s also worth noting that emotions themselves are socially determined. To have an emotion, you have to create meaning from the sensations and events you are experiencing. Emotions don’t exist separate from this meaning-making. The feeling in a stomach might be interpreted as fear, love, cringe or excitement (or just gas) depending on how a situation is determined and the ideas that are culturally available to determine it. These repertoires vary quite heavily — there are emotions whose existence we take for granted that have not existed in other cultures and other cultures have emotions completely unfamiliar to us. I would suggest that it is not a case of men “burying” their emotions so much as those emotions being culturally unavailable to them in the first place, because how they understand what it means to “be a man” does not include that interpretation of those sensations and experiences.

I don't want to distract from the thread. But I've no idea how you would go about empirically testing these claims. Surely in any empirical scenario, emotion=articulation of emotion and then the thesis is near tautology.

 

[8ball]

One of the problems is gender stereotypes/expectations leading to unhealthy male behaviour. I think society as a whole would be improved if more fathers did more childcare, and I think we should do everything we can in structural terms to encourage them to do so.

My mate’s Dad once said to him he kind of envied young Dads “these days” (this would have been about 15 years ago), because if he had been seen pushing a pram through Middlesbrough in the 1960’s he would have had the piss ripped out of him something proper.

 

[kabbes]

I don't want to distract from the thread. But I've no idea how you would go about empirically testing these claims. Surely in any empirical scenario, emotion=articulation of emotion and then the thesis is near tautology.

Plenty of studies referenced in this book if you are interested

Emotions and Social Relations

uk.sagepub.com

 

[Oula]

This thread is really interesting. I have lots of thoughts, especially relating to porn, but not enough time at the moment to put them into a form that makes sense. I hope it's still going when I do.

 

[Knotted]

Plenty of studies referenced in this book if you are interested

Emotions and Social Relations

uk.sagepub.com

Hmmm. I'm not sure I'm going to fork out £32.99 for that.

To cut to the chase, I think talking about things being socially and culturally determined towards being both overly optimistic and overly pessimistic.

Overly pessimistic, because it's a form of determinism just as biological determinism is. Individuals can change for the better.

Overly optimistic because I think this pyramid of rape culture is a product of creative self serving interpretation. Men have the capacity to be so much worse than their cultural conditioning. Look at these start up quasi political movements such as MRA's, incels, men going their own way, these are ways of theorising that rely on cultural norms but deliberately push beyond them. And I think similarly individuals push beyond cultural norms even while taking advantage of them to rationalise their actions.

I think a rapist maybe a product of their culture but they're also in absolute terms evil cunts and I think we can make that judgement about them.