The "End Violence Against Women" Debate (and sexism in the 21st century)

[zehydra]

OP, it stems from this idea that our society has that women are a "minority" (which they aren't), and our society by its very nature is oppressive towards women (more so than men), such that they need special protection and consideration by everyone.

While I disagree with the whole idea of women needing special treatment, there is a point to be made about certain kinds of violence which overwhelmingly happen more to women than men in our society. Here I am referring to both sexual violence and domestic violence against women (e.g. rape and wife-beating). When people are trying to "End violence against women" I think they are more or less trying to raise awareness and have people crack down on rape and domestic-violence; that is, violence which has been overwhelmingly against females.

Ultimately though, they're focusing on the gender aspect, that is, violence against WOMEN, which is a bad approach. No one cares that it's against women; people care that it's happening to somebody. So my suggestion to all those "end violence against women" people is to just change the name of the awareness campaign to ending sexual and domestic violence (which will also encompass the minority violence against males too!)

 

[Phisi]

I agree with your point but that is because I am reasonable. To the unreasonable dude bros who go around punching and making sexist comments, violence is awesome but that sign says we shouldn't hit our womens because they're weak n shit bruh. I Think it has something to do with this. Whatever this is I am so confused with what I wrote there.

 

[Esotera]

Ending violence against women is more focused on domestic abuse, which affects a lot more women than men. Saying it the way you did implies that you don't care about ending abuse against women, even if you don't believe that.

Basically domestic abuse is far more an issue for women than men. It's important not to forget that men do suffer from it, but complaining that we shouldn't be aiming campaigns at those most likely to be affect by it is kind of silly. There's nothing stopping you from actually linking to a link to prevent male domestic abuse, whilst saying nothing negative about female domestic abuse, but did you?

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

If you want to address the problems of discrimination than in this case it's males that are being discriminated against, mostly unfairly. If a woman is getting beaten by his man than it is highly unlikely for most western countries to not sympathise with her. Such is not the case with men. It is very easy to come up with a scenario where a man is getting beaten by his wife and gets mocked for it in a lot of places, and this is a SEPERATE issue that needs to be dealt with. However the issues that create the problem of abuse are more or less the same for both men and women.

And how did you determine that the issues that cause the problem of abuse are more or less the same?

And generic sympathy seems like a poor standard to judge the severity of a problem by. What does sympathy on its own do to solve the problem? As far as I know people tend to do more than just try to generate sympathy. I would not think that success would be measured in terms of it.

How did I determine that the issues are more or less the same? Well I'm not a psychologist but if the problem is that people are being violent towards their partners and family, than the issues that create that problem are psychological. People for whatever reason think it's okay to beat their family, or feel a strong compulsion to beat their family. I don't think people being assholes is a problem very strongly related to gender, and I don't think you can solve males or females being violent seperately, or indeed at all.

Once you get to the solution, giving people shelter and therapy and such, the only gender that's being discriminated against in developed western countries are males. There's a disproportionate amount of shelters for women in most areas, and men are the only gender who are likely to be ridiculed for being abused.

And what do you mean sympathy is not a strong indicator, the people who organize these things are organizing them out of sympathy. There should never be a situation where people are mocked or turned away after being abused, and that problem is only halfway solved.

 

[zehydra]

Ending violence against women is more focused on domestic abuse, which affects a lot more women than men. Saying it the way you did implies that you don't care about ending abuse against women, even if you don't believe that.

Basically domestic abuse is far more an issue for women than men. It's important not to forget that men do suffer from it, but complaining that we shouldn't be aiming campaigns at those most likely to be affect by it is kind of silly. There's nothing stopping you from actually linking to a link to prevent male domestic abuse, whilst saying nothing negative about female domestic abuse, but did you?

I think it would be better to specifically say that you're fighting against Domestic abuse, rather than specify "domestic abuse against women". You know what I mean? It doesn't help the situation at all to limit the campaign to only women.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

If you want to address the problems of discrimination than in this case it's males that are being discriminated against, mostly unfairly. If a woman is getting beaten by his man than it is highly unlikely for most western countries to not sympathise with her. Such is not the case with men. It is very easy to come up with a scenario where a man is getting beaten by his wife and gets mocked for it in a lot of places, and this is a SEPERATE issue that needs to be dealt with. However the issues that create the problem of abuse are more or less the same for both men and women.

And how did you determine that the issues that cause the problem of abuse are more or less the same?

And generic sympathy seems like a poor standard to judge the severity of a problem by. What does sympathy on its own do to solve the problem? As far as I know people tend to do more than just try to generate sympathy. I would not think that success would be measured in terms of it.

How did I determine that the issues are more or less the same? Well I'm not a psychologist but if the problem is that people are being violent towards their partners and family, than the issues that create that problem are psychological. People for whatever reason think it's okay to beat their family, or feel a strong compulsion to beat their family. I don't think people being assholes is a problem very strongly related to gender, and I don't think you can solve males or females being violent seperately, or indeed at all.

Once you get to the solution, giving people shelter and therapy and such, the only gender that's being discriminated against in developed western countries are males. There's a disproportionate amount of shelters for women in most areas, and men are the only gender who are likely to be ridiculed for being abused.

Then I think you are clearly missing possibilities. For example, would you not agree that one reason there might be some violence against men would be the attitude that men can take it or things like "boys will be boys"? Wouldn't this be a different problem than what causes the violence women face? A small example, but I'm inclined to think there can be different social influences that push people to be violent towards women than towards men.

Is the solution just giving people therapy and shelter? I don't think so. There's the social attitudes to address. Shelter and therapy deal with the symptoms, they don't eliminate the violence.

It's hard to argue about something it's difficult to get exact statistics of considering that not a lot of abused people or abusers would be willing to discuss these things, but I don't think there's ever a case of abuse where the abuser is doing it purely out of a sexist attitude, there pretty much HAS to be some sort of psychological problem with the person for him to think it's okay, or to feel a compulsion towards it. To say sexist attitudes never CONTRIBUTE to abuse would be wrong but even if we eliminated sexist attitudes (which is a rather unrealistic goal unless you're given tons of time) entirely I don't believe the total number of abuse cases would diminish very notably at all.

 

[James Joseph Emerald]

Other than that I don't do the whole end violence thing, I even posted recently how I don't want world peace. Conflict and, as an extension, violence make for an interesting existence and I don't want life to be boring and peaceful.

Edgy as fuck y'all.

More like sheltered as fuck. You may find other people's suffering entertaining but I'm willing to bet if you ever directly experienced real violence your outlook would take a 180 degree turn.

 

[Lazier Than Thou]

Ending violence against women is more focused on domestic abuse, which affects a lot more women than men. Saying it the way you did implies that you don't care about ending abuse against women, even if you don't believe that.

Basically domestic abuse is far more an issue for women than men. It's important not to forget that men do suffer from it, but complaining that we shouldn't be aiming campaigns at those most likely to be affect by it is kind of silly. There's nothing stopping you from actually linking to a link to prevent male domestic abuse, whilst saying nothing negative about female domestic abuse, but did you?

I'm sorry, that's blatantly not true. I don't blame you for not knowing it's not true, but the point stands.

http://www.mediaradar.org/research.php#waj

Women are just as likely to initiate violence as men in relationships and for exactly the same reason: control. Violence is a great way to intimidate people, even if you are 110 pounds.

Any individual that resorts to violence to get their way is sick and needs help. If that help means bars and three squares a day, so be it. If that help means forced anger management, that's cool, too. But ignoring half of the victims of domestic violence just because they're men is sexist and that needs to stop now.

 

[Astoria]

While I agree with you in principle, last I checked women were much more likely to be the victims of such abuse and I am open to the idea that something in our culture may specifically encourage violence against women and needs to be specifically addressed. Shelters and such should provide services to both men and women, but I won't raise a fuss about activism focusing on the more pressing need.

Yeah I think this sums up my thoughts. The stigma definitely needs to be removed though that a guy who complains about domistic abuse is a wimp. Your friends are defintiely idiots though for saying your sexist for holding that view. I really wonder if people actually know what being sexist/rasict ect mean anymore. They get thrown around too much.

 

[Erana]

OP, it stems from this idea that our society has that women are a "minority" (which they aren't)

"Minority" in the context of social demographics refers to those who are not in the dominant group. The best example of this is how during colonial times, the Indians were technically minorities in India.
Pet peeve, sorry.

Still, I really am rubbed the wrong way by the attitude of "you should be doing it for everybody."
These sorts of movement are for a specific problem. Not every one problem can be solved by a blanket attitude, and no one organization can be superman. Hell, Superman can't even be the proverbial "superman" in this context. People involved in orchestrating these sorts of things have chosen to attempt to tackle, in this case, violence against women. This is probably because they've been there, (and thus have a level of comprehension on the matter that's kind of hard to get otherwise) or are just a humanitarian who found a niche doing good with that group.

Are they pro violence against men? Of course not. But right now, they're specializing in stopping a different issue. You wouldn't call a doctor anti-penis for being gynecologists, would you?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Firstly, there's the obvious point that women are massivley over-represented as victims of sexual violence and so on.

Secondly, there's a more insidious point. Saying you're against violence against everyone is all very well and good, but doesn't actually lead to any change. It's a broad generalisation which makes a good soundbite, but that's about it.

On the other hand, the end violence against women thing is an actual solution for an actual problem someone has worked out. Yes, it's not perfect, but it can actually help things in the real world.

Stopping a violence against women bill doesn't do anything at all to improve things for male victims of absue, it just stops things improving for female victims of abuse.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

If you want to address the problems of discrimination than in this case it's males that are being discriminated against, mostly unfairly. If a woman is getting beaten by his man than it is highly unlikely for most western countries to not sympathise with her. Such is not the case with men. It is very easy to come up with a scenario where a man is getting beaten by his wife and gets mocked for it in a lot of places, and this is a SEPERATE issue that needs to be dealt with. However the issues that create the problem of abuse are more or less the same for both men and women.

And how did you determine that the issues that cause the problem of abuse are more or less the same?

And generic sympathy seems like a poor standard to judge the severity of a problem by. What does sympathy on its own do to solve the problem? As far as I know people tend to do more than just try to generate sympathy. I would not think that success would be measured in terms of it.

How did I determine that the issues are more or less the same? Well I'm not a psychologist but if the problem is that people are being violent towards their partners and family, than the issues that create that problem are psychological. People for whatever reason think it's okay to beat their family, or feel a strong compulsion to beat their family. I don't think people being assholes is a problem very strongly related to gender, and I don't think you can solve males or females being violent seperately, or indeed at all.

Once you get to the solution, giving people shelter and therapy and such, the only gender that's being discriminated against in developed western countries are males. There's a disproportionate amount of shelters for women in most areas, and men are the only gender who are likely to be ridiculed for being abused.

Then I think you are clearly missing possibilities. For example, would you not agree that one reason there might be some violence against men would be the attitude that men can take it or things like "boys will be boys"? Wouldn't this be a different problem than what causes the violence women face? A small example, but I'm inclined to think there can be different social influences that push people to be violent towards women than towards men.

Is the solution just giving people therapy and shelter? I don't think so. There's the social attitudes to address. Shelter and therapy deal with the symptoms, they don't eliminate the violence.

It's hard to argue about something it's difficult to get exact statistics of considering that not a lot of abused people or abusers would be willing to discuss these things, but I don't think there's ever a case of abuse where the abuser is doing it purely out of a sexist attitude, there pretty much HAS to be some sort of psychological problem with the person for him to think it's okay, or to feel a compulsion towards it. To say sexist attitudes never CONTRIBUTE to abuse would be wrong but even if we eliminated sexist attitudes (which is a rather unrealistic goal unless you're given tons of time) entirely I don't believe the total number of abuse cases would diminish very notably at all.

I never said it was purely out of a sexist attitude. But they certainly facilitate things. And I can imagine they might facilitate them a lot, in particular in sexual violence.

As for psychological problems, eh. I never heard it was a necessity.

The phrase "agree to disagree" has become a bit cliche but it applies to this situation perfectly.

 

[Esotera]

I think it would be better to specifically say that you're fighting against Domestic abuse, rather than specify "domestic abuse against women". You know what I mean? It doesn't help the situation at all to limit the campaign to only women.

Not necessarily...campaigns aimed at only women may be more effective at helping female victims of abuse than a generic campaign. If you were running a breast cancer awareness campaign you'd aim it at women as the majority of cases occur in females, and some of the measures for prevention/early detection are gender specific. That doesn't mean we don't have campaigns aimed solely at males or any gender, you just hear less about them as males get less breast cancer. Both types of campaign are useful.

Ending violence against women is more focused on domestic abuse, which affects a lot more women than men. Saying it the way you did implies that you don't care about ending abuse against women, even if you don't believe that.

Basically domestic abuse is far more an issue for women than men. It's important not to forget that men do suffer from it, but complaining that we shouldn't be aiming campaigns at those most likely to be affect by it is kind of silly. There's nothing stopping you from actually linking to a link to prevent male domestic abuse, whilst saying nothing negative about female domestic abuse, but did you?

I'm sorry, that's blatantly not true. I don't blame you for not knowing it's not true, but the point stands.

http://www.mediaradar.org/research.php#waj

Women are just as likely to initiate violence as men in relationships and for exactly the same reason: control. Violence is a great way to intimidate people, even if you are 110 pounds.

Any individual that resorts to violence to get their way is sick and needs help. If that help means bars and three squares a day, so be it. If that help means forced anger management, that's cool, too. But ignoring half of the victims of domestic violence just because they're men is sexist and that needs to stop now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_abuse#Gender_aspects_of_abuse

The level of violence against female victims is higher than for males, which makes it more of a problem in my opinion. I'm quite surprised the estimated level of domestic abuse in men is near to the level against women though.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Feminism did it's job, it got women the rights they were being denied. It's over, the movement needs to die.

What we need now is an equalitism movement. Something that actively tries to address double standards on all sides of the gender line. Female, male and everything in-between and make no mistake, they are a problem for everybody.

So, you're saying that both men and women are being affected by double standards, but feminism, the movement for gaining equality for women, has been totally successful?

Feminism is still needed, and will be needed as long as women's rights need fighting for. This is going to be the case regardless of the need of other movements to protect other rights.

 

[Morti]

Personally, I think some positive discrimination is to be encouraged.

To use a metaphor:

If you want to stop a ship that is motion, you could just cut power to the engines and wait for it to coast to a stop, or you could reverse thrust so that it comes to a stop much sooner, then cut the engines.


Regarding the specific issue of violence: stopping all violence is a huge task, far better (imo) to take small steps, starting with pricks targeting people for *****ist reasons.