Fintan O’Toole jumping on the bandwagon to score points against Irish men and boys.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Whenever there is a preemptive attempt to educate, it’s seem as an attack on all men and boys as it’s treating them as if they’re guilty, they just haven’t committed the crime YET. That’s the way it tends to be perceived by the locals in these threads anyway.

I’d imagine it would be quite sensible. I’d also imagine that lots of people do things when they’re young they they’d never dream of doing later in life. People change their opinions much more than they ever acknowledge to themselves without consciously thinking about it.

I remember when Trinity were bringing in consent classes. The usual dead sure predictions that it would treat all men as aggressors and women as victims, what about male victims, God love young men in college these days.

The video came out. Very deliberately non gendered language, male victims, female aggressors. You would think that the people predicting the fempocalypse would have been heartened by that but nope, there was just deafening silence. People would rather be right than be happy.

tritium

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I tend to agree. I don’t feel any shame as a man when another man is called out for bad behaviour. Nor do i feel the need to downplay his bad behaviour.

I don’t think women as a group need to take responsibility for encouraging bad boy behaviour either. We hold the transgressors responsible which is quite right.

I don’t think you can educate women to make bad boys less attractive to them as was originally implied.

This puts yourself and titrium in opposition to each other as titrium said they think there should be education campaigns etc.

Personally I think there are some areas which could gebefit from education. Domestic violence is one, casual harassment like grabbing strangers is another one -hen groups are gross when they have grabby women.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion that most of the objections to a campaign against grabbing men’s genitals would come from men, but that’s another story.

Im not sure why the bolded bit matters to be honest. Are we expected to form a hive mind on here? For the record though what i actually gave you was a series of possible steps based on your question of what might the education look like. It wasnt to make 'bad boys' less attractive, it was about understanding the positives and negatives of that trope (im sure another poster will be along shortly to tell me thats a made up movie concept...sigh...). It was to educate people of both genders from an early age about the danger signs in an abusive relationship (i actually found the following later that on first look at least is a pretty decent attempt at speaking to everyone. .

http://spunout.ie/health/article/emotional-abuse?gclid=Cj0KCQiAi7XQBRDnARIsANeLIes_jSKgoUtIEIvlKSmlv5qJX4kwQbZRoylcY6hEufIditsPYsSEdyMaAoXcEALw_wcB#


my initial thoughts are its flipping brilliant)

Im still waiting on a full reaponse from you to the same question.

For full clarity what i wrote was:

tritium wrote: »

Yes educate the transgressors. Given they have to have transgressed why not build that into the justice system?

Educate everyone- precisely what i said. A good start would be to educate young boys and girls about how to spot and deal with danger signs in their earliest relationships (not just an ad campaign about controlling boyfriends for teen girls as weve seen in the past)


Then perhaps we could look at why this bad boy and related social type imagery is appealing. My own take is if you take common images through time (james Dean, james bond, richard harris) they represent either an image if success or rebellion both of which represent important aspirational concepts. Theres the cheezy old line "women want him, men want to be him" line. Its appealing ro both men and women, its meant to be. Whats positive about that imagery? Whats negative?

Let's broaden it- the classic female protagonist. Often submissive to a degree but also a hint of danger and a desire to be impulsive, even acceptably violent to men. Whats positive and negative about that imagery?

You can and should take it further though. Why is the golddigger/WAG aspiration acceptable to an extent for women. Why do women still feel they should marry up rather than down - this is not driven by men btw, there would be no logical sense to that. You perhaps could balance that with the more recent failed idea that women can/ should have it all.

You could teach men about the differences in how women communicate, but equally teach women about the differences in how men communicate. You could teach that theres no right or better in gender, just different (a bad word?) And often complimentary.

Dunno maybe thats a good start of the top of my head. What are your ideas?

Pat Mustard

Attempting to instruct innocent, law abiding people on how not to commit crime is a nonsensical idea.

People resent being forced to receive instruction on how they should think.

When Ireland was ruled by Britain, children were forced to recite poetry containing the line "I am a happy English child". This was not only untrue, it was at best incorrect and condescending and at worst, offensive and oppressive. It was something which was remembered as being abhorrent, long after the foundation of the State.

People may form their own views on how they should think. Restraints on behaviour come from laws, usually the criminal law, as enforced by the courts. We already have laws to proscribe undesirable behaviour. If there is an issue, it lies with enforcement of those laws.

People who think that they can tell other people how to think have an idealogy which is not so different from communist indoctrination.

For an otherwise democratic country, we have had quite a history of external influence from the Church, in the past. Looking to the future, it is not the mark of a free country where its citizens should have to report for indoctrination in any way, whatsoever.

Preemptive attempts to educate, my arse.

leggo

Why do people struggle with this? You'd be teaching people that everyone (men and women included) has agency over their own body and person, that if you're giving someone unwanted attention it counts as harassment and that you must have enthusiastic consent to escalate any situation sexually. What about that is difficult to understand or revolutionary exactly? They already teach teenagers about consent in school, all anyone is suggesting is that they go in-depth on what exactly that and harassment means and what qualifies.

tritium

Julie Fat Socialism wrote: »

I remember when Trinity were bringing in consent classes. The usual dead sure predictions that it would treat all men as aggressors and women as victims, what about male victims, God love young men in college these days.

The video came out. Very deliberately non gendered language, male victims, female aggressors. You would think that the people predicting the fempocalypse would have been heartened by that but nope, there was just deafening silence. People would rather be right than be happy.

To be fair, and also touch on a point el_d has made elsewhere about men whinging rather than making change happen, a lot of the resistance came about because early flavours of this were very much through a single lens. Its similar to DV in that men complaining about not been included has slowly caused a situation where they are included -many early DV studies either excluded males or reclassified their experience and buried them into the appendices. The spunout.ie link i gave in an earlier post is honestly one I dont think I'd have seen 7 or 8 years ago

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

tritium wrote: »

To be fair, and also touch on a point el_d has made elsewhere about men whinging rather than making change happen, a lot of the resistance came about because early flavours of this were very much through a single lens. Its similar to DV in that men complaining about not been included has slowly caused a situation where they are included -many early DV studies either excluded males or reclassified their experience and buried them into the appendices. The spunout.ie link i gave in an earlier post is honestly one I dont think I'd have seen 7 or 8 years ago

But then why not react to positive developments positively? Not you personally like.

Anything that doesn't fit the narrative just doesn't seem to even register, when surely highlughting those examplesis a tool against what's being complained about.

I'm a woman and I'm a feminist, I care about men's rights. Offline I'm involved in a suicide prevention charity which is primarily a men's issue, I also volunteer with a rape crisis centre and see the effort they put into supporting male survivors. I speak up against sexism against men when I see it.

And then I come on here. Those goddamn women and those goddamn feminists are out to get men. There's no point trying to do anything because those feminists won't let us. If x happened then the feminists would do y, I know that for certain. International women's day, booooo feminists. International men's day, boooo feminists. At least half of the threads on here are basically identical.

I would like to get more involved in advocacy for men's rights, and I'm a feminist. And then I come on here and there's not one positive or proactive thing, there's just post after post about how (to follow the logic of this thread and its clones) I personally am the problem.

Julie Fat Socialism

Julie Fat Socialism wrote: »

But then why not react to positive developments positively? Not you personally like.

Anything that doesn't fit the narrative just doesn't seem to even register, when surely highlughting those examplesis a tool against what's being complained about.

I'm a woman and I'm a feminist, I care about men's rights. Offline I'm involved in a suicide prevention charity which is primarily a men's issue, I also volunteer with a rape crisis centre and see the effort they put into supporting male survivors. I speak up against sexism against men when I see it.

And then I come on here. Those goddamn women and those goddamn feminists are out to get men. There's no point trying to do anything because those feminists won't let us. If x happened then the feminists would do y, I know that for certain. International women's day, booooo feminists. International men's day, boooo feminists. At least half of the threads on here are basically identical.

I would like to get more involved in advocacy for men's rights, and I'm a feminist. And then I come on here and there's not one positive or proactive thing, there's just post after post about how (to follow the logic of this thread and its clones) I personally am the problem.

A large chunk of my work is dedicated to improving the lives of the poorest and most marginalized men in parts of the world nobody cares about, and I volunteer twenty full working days a year worth of professional services to a particular charity, concentrating on harm reduction and healthcare provision for male victims of prison sexual assault, but the prevailing feel of this forum is that I'm the enemy.

tritium

Candie wrote: »

A large chunk of my work is dedicated to improving the lives of the poorest and most marginalized men in parts of the world nobody cares about, and I volunteer twenty full working days a year worth of professional services to a particular charity, concentrating on harm reduction and healthcare provision for male victims of prison sexual assault, but the prevailing feel of this forum is that I'm the enemy.

Candie, i absolutely salute the work you and EB do. I think sometimes the distinction between individual feminists and feminism can be lost on both sides. This is TGC however and I'd be surprised if in this forum you didn't have an amplified view of the issues men face, including with feminism. One of the things I like about this forum compared to other similar forums is it tends to let debate develop rayher than shutting down contrary views, but the downside is it can be more stark because of that (maybe someone like Wibbs has a view here given their experience).

An (unfortunate perhaps) analogy might be the catholic church. They've done considerable good. Individuals associated with it have positively impacted millions of lives, both through religious and non religious activity. But they also a have a negative side that they often ignore or deny. Do i understand why individual catholics are upset at what they see as attacks on something thats part of them? Absolutely. Do i appreciate thats its possible to be a catholic and disavow the bad stuff, even if you dont feel you can say anything? Absolutely does the narrative against them sometimes go way over the top? Sure it does. Does that mean we should pretend everythings rosy and let the good balance the bad? Not really

leggo

The Catholic Church have a history of corruption and sexual abuse across the globe. Do you realise how offensive it is to compare its unfavourable elements to feminism constantly?

johnnyskeleton

leggo wrote: »

So your argument, long-winded as it is, essentially boils down to, "there are times when men do not sexually harass women, therefore there is no sexual harassment problem"? Dress it up as much as you like...that's the essence of what you're saying?

That's not even remotely close to what I said and is another logical fallacy. Because I don't believe you that all women have been sexual assaulted, then I must believe that no women are sexually assaulted. Your logic is deeply flawed.

If you want a summary of what I said, your personal anecdotes do not represent empirical research into the experience of every woman on earth. Therefore you can't back up the claims that you have made.

johnnyskeleton

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

I tend to agree. I don’t feel any shame as a man when another man is called out for bad behaviour. Nor do i feel the need to downplay his bad behaviour.

Exactly. In fact, if one were to believe that up until the women's liberation movement of the 1960s the world was ruled by men for men i.e. the patriarchy theory, then it was men who first started punishing other men for rape and sexual assault in the form of the criminal justice system.

I don’t think women as a group need to take responsibility for encouraging bad boy behaviour either. We hold the transgressors responsible which is quite right.

Nor do I. But I simply make the point that society is complicated and people's behaviour is based on their past experiences both positive and negative and how other people react to those behaviours.

I don’t think you can educate women to make bad boys less attractive to them as was originally implied.

Well just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that you should. I think that all this feminist social engineering is unrealistic. But I was simply pointing out that men's behaviour doesn't happen in a vaccuum and that if feminists want to stop X behaviour then any solution must not just encourage negative reactions to X behaviour but also should discourage positive reactions to that behaviour.

This puts yourself and titrium in opposition to each other as titrium said they think there should be education campaigns etc.

That is true. I don't agree with everything he has said. We are only united in disagreeing with leggo who paints anyone who disagrees with him as a misogynist.

Personally I think there are some areas which could gebefit from education. Domestic violence is one, casual harassment like grabbing strangers is another one -hen groups are gross when they have grabby women.

I am not, as you have pointed out, a big fan of this type of campaign because I don't necessarily think it reaches the right people, or perhaps that the people that transgress know that they are doing wrong but do it anyway so more education is not really the solution.

But if one is to have such campaigns, I don't find anything offensive in gender neutral campaigns. The problem is that these aren't gender neutral campaigns, they are ideologically charged to be against men and boys.

I’ve a sneaking suspicion that most of the objections to a campaign against grabbing men’s genitals would come from men, but that’s another story.

Yes and it's interesting that this statement is not a controversial one. A lot of men would react positively to such behaviour and if they do so they are in effect encouraging women on hen parties to do so. Is it wrong to say that? I don't think so. If all men objected to such behaviour, I don't believe that women would engage in it.

leggo

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

That's not even remotely close to what I said and is another logical fallacy. Because I don't believe you that all women have been sexual assaulted, then I must believe that no women are sexually assaulted. Your logic is deeply flawed.

If you want a summary of what I said, your personal anecdotes do not represent empirical research into the experience of every woman on earth. Therefore you can't back up the claims that you have made.

Did I say all women were sexually assaulted? Sexual assault is a crime, the behaviour I'm discussing and the examples I gave in my initial post (while there are definite elements of sexual assault) refer to elements of harassment and general creepy behaviour/beliefs as well. My point being that this is a wider, cultural issue.

But look, you don't want to believe it, so you'll refuse to. If every woman in the world hasn't experienced it, according to you, it's not an issue. If other posters and I speak about things we personally saw and experienced, you'll demand sources, if someone supplies studies (which will follow, this is a hot topic and you better believe people are putting work into it as we speak), you'll question their legitimacy. You've no interest in getting to the truth of it, listening to people's experiences or perspectives, just proving your own set of beliefs so you don't have to listen to or accept change.

This is discourse in post-truth 2017, people with dated views ignoring what's going on outside their windows for the sake of protecting said views. I'm not even trying to convince you anymore, that's just not going to happen because you're not open to be convinced and don't care about truth. But I can call you out on it in public. Once again, you said that women "encourage" harassment on themselves. Congrats, you've put it into writing and made it searchable and time will only serve to make your beliefs and comments even more disgusting.

johnnyskeleton

leggo wrote: »

That doesn't mean that all men are guilty or 'sinners', but it does mean that there is a societal problem in how men are educated about what is and isn't okay when dealing with women.

leggo wrote: »

You'd be teaching people that everyone (men and women included) has agency over their own body and person, that if you're giving someone unwanted attention it counts as harassment and that you must have enthusiastic consent to escalate any situation sexually. What about that is difficult to understand or revolutionary exactly? They already teach teenagers about consent in school, all anyone is suggesting is that they go in-depth on what exactly that and harassment means and what qualifies.

That seems to be quite the Damascene Conversion. You have now dropped the "men must be educated" stance in favour of "everybody must be educated".

Ok, in an ideal world I'd like you to see my point that these social enginnering projects must be administered judiciously, but the fact that you at least see the point that any such campaigns should not target one gender exclusively is a step in the right direction.

johnnyskeleton

leggo wrote: »

But look, you don't want to believe it, so you'll refuse to. If every woman in the world hasn't experienced it, according to you, it's not an issue. If other posters and I speak about things we personally saw and experienced, you'll demand sources, if someone supplies studies (which will follow, this is a hot topic and you better believe people are putting work into it as we speak), you'll question their legitimacy. You've no interest in getting to the truth of it, listening to people's experiences or perspectives, just proving your own set of beliefs so you don't have to listen to or accept change.

I'm not going to respond to the other points, because I have already dealt with your arguments at length and it is becoming repetitive. But I just want to pick up on this point.

So basically, in your view, anyone who questions assertions has no interest in getting to the truth? That seems backwards to me. Anyone who simply accepts things at face value has no interest in the truth, and anyone who probes or tests the assertions wants to find out the truth or otherwise of it.

This is discourse in post-truth 2017, people with dated views ignoring what's going on outside their windows for the sake of protecting said views. I'm not even trying to convince you anymore, that's just not going to happen because you're not open to be convinced and don't care about truth. But I can call you out on it in public. Once again, you said that women "encourage" harassment on themselves. Congrats, you've put it into writing and made it searchable and time will only serve to make your beliefs and comments even more disgusting.

I think you are the one who is not open to be convinced and doesn't care about truth. Yes, people can search this forum, but they will see that you set out the scenario whereby you complain about how by acting respectfully women didn't kiss you. I don't know if that is true or not, but your anecdote demonstrates that women encourage the bad behaviour you describe. I did nothing more than extrapolate your own narrative to demonstrate the flaws in your logic.

I'm beginning to think you wanted people to take you up on it so that you could pounce on them and say "look how horrible this guy is". You haven't once commented on the logical fallacy criticisms of your position, instead resorting to personal attacks.

That's what people will see if they search this tread. As for what I will see, I guess the take home message is don't even try to debate gender issues with a died in the wool feminist because I am automatically wrong.

leggo

Ugh. This is the problem with gender debates, you make one point, everyone shouts "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER SIDE?!" and you have to then double-back.

There's no conversion. This is a topic about an article concerning men's actions to women. If you'd like to discuss women's actions towards men, by all means start a thread and I may join you. I'm throwing you a bone by including that part and you throw it back at me like, "AHA! YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND!" Yet I'm the one who's not open to discussion or seeing the other person's side...

My point about you not accepting truth is that, no matter what evidence people bring to the table that doesn't suit your beliefs (such as stuff they have witnessed and experienced), you try to undermine that and demand further evidence until the conversation just dies. How very Trump of you.

RDM_83 again

Julie Fat Socialism wrote: »

But then why not react to positive developments positively? Not you personally like.

Anything that doesn't fit the narrative just doesn't seem to even register, when surely highlughting those examplesis a tool against what's being complained about.

I'm a woman and I'm a feminist, I care about men's rights. Offline I'm involved in a suicide prevention charity which is primarily a men's issue, I also volunteer with a rape crisis centre and see the effort they put into supporting male survivors. I speak up against sexism against men when I see it.

And then I come on here. Those goddamn women and those goddamn feminists are out to get men. There's no point trying to do anything because those feminists won't let us. If x happened then the feminists would do y, I know that for certain. International women's day, booooo feminists. International men's day, boooo feminists. At least half of the threads on here are basically identical.

I would like to get more involved in advocacy for men's rights, and I'm a feminist. And then I come on here and there's not one positive or proactive thing, there's just post after post about how (to follow the logic of this thread and its clones) I personally am the problem.

Candie wrote: »

A large chunk of my work is dedicated to improving the lives of the poorest and most marginalized men in parts of the world nobody cares about, and I volunteer twenty full working days a year worth of professional services to a particular charity, concentrating on harm reduction and healthcare provision for male victims of prison sexual assault, but the prevailing feel of this forum is that I'm the enemy.

Both of you should realize the irony of you making your complaints about this on a mens forum right?

If you don't, reverse the genders and go read this article and go discuss it on one of your private forums (you see the irony right of seagulling on the one mens issue forum of the site while having multiple safe spaces of your own)

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaminah-khan/10-ways-to-be-a-better-male-feminist_b_4227969.html

Quick question does your definition of Feminism hold that woman (and queer and minority people) are overall comparatively and inherently disadvantaged in modern 1st world western society.

To me this is the issue, everybody probably has friends that self identify as feminists, similarly most people probably know somebody that self identifies as strictly religious, communist anarchist or libertarians, it doesn't stop them being "good" individuals however broadly speaking the ideology they seek to emplace on the real world would have harmful results.

Its like a Soviet Party member helping out a small business man or Kulak with agricultural machinery, as an individual they help on the micro-level but the theoretical framework that the party member subscribes to on the macro-level is built on a foundation that is harmful or at a minimum not capable of recognizing their needs without imposing change of the Kulak group on the macro level.

pq0n1ct4ve8zf5

I've said before that I would bow out of discussions on here out of respect for the nature of the forum, at which points moderators specified that this forum explicitly encourages diversity of input and perpspective, so you can take that up with them. I browse this forum regularly and rarely post, this week I got fcuked off.

We could trade weird feminist and MRA articles back and forth all day and argue about who's more odious. I've glanced through that one and no idea why you included it, other than a not particularly elegant way to get a strange comment about private forums in?

Absolutely I believe that women are at a disadvantage in a lot of ways in the Western world, ditto ethnic minorities and lgbt people, and ditto men. It's not a competition.

Wibbs

Julie Fat Socialism wrote: »

I would like to get more involved in advocacy for men's rights, and I'm a feminist. And then I come on here and there's not one positive or proactive thing, there's just post after post about how (to follow the logic of this thread and its clones) I personally am the problem.

You are not EB. Not by a long shot. However it would be my view that current, modern and yes mainstream feminism is a problem. Current, modern, mainstream feminism espouses the pay gap, which is provable more complex than it makes out(and as is in the case in Ireland before kids women earn more on average, which the Irish women's council hid in doublespeak.), the 1 in 4(3/6[delete as applicable], which is and continues to be based on extremely dubious "studies", promotes women's issues above men's, which I would fully and happily expect it to, the clue being in the name, comes out with buzz terms like "toxic masculinity" and blames every ill on men/patriarchy) and then some have the gall/naiveity to suggest that young men in particular would be better served in their emotional and mental health by embracing a political philosophy that demonises their gender at every hands turn.

As I've said before I would have happily self described as a "feminist" 20 years ago, because like you EB I see equality as the goal of a civilised society and bought into the idea that feminism was part of that, but increasingly I began to see less and less equality in play and more and more word and thought policing and especially polarisation. These days that polarisation is beyond daft. The red pill/MGTOW eejits I see as the yin to feminism's yang that came out of that polarisation. And TBH I can see why some more easily influenced men went that way, as too many feminist "truths" clearly held far less water than was publicly accepted and promoted.

I've said before that I would bow out of discussions on here out of respect for the nature of the forum, at which points moderators specified that this forum explicitly encourages diversity of input and perpspective, so you can take that up with them

Well my personal belief has always been to let people talk, even if I disagree with them, often especially if I disagree with them. I figure if any position can't take measured criticism, it's not such a good position to take, or at least requires more questioning. Basically I don't like overly controlled "censorship", unless someone is being a troll/dick/abusive.

leggo

There is no "feminism polarises" though. Gender polarises, in much the same way race does in certain parts of the world. And what happens in discussions about social ideology once extreme views kick in? People get defensive, pack lunch for the week and get ready to sit in because they're not moving from their stance.

The problem in that regard isn't with feminism, it's not with toxic masculinity, it's with discourse in general in 2017. It's about point-scoring and 'winning' the debate, not about reaching a civil, amicable agreement in the middle. In this very thread, I ceded one inch by saying men and women should be better educated (which didn't affect my main point, which I hadn't argued against at all in the thread) and it was seized upon like a concession of defeat, as if we aren't all losing when we can't get on the same page about this.

El_Duderino 09

tritium wrote: »

To be fair, and also touch on a point el_d has made elsewhere about men whinging rather than making change happen, a lot of the resistance came about because early flavours of this were very much through a single lens.

The thing is though, I can’t remember any male support from men among these threads for those classes. How would there be any male input if men scoff at the idea of the class?

In principle I gave no problem with education classes. If you identify a problem, education is always one way to tackle it. If men refuse to get involved in the education material, then who will do the work?

EB claims the material was pointedly gende neutral so I have to say I think that sounds fine to me.

El_Duderino 09

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Exactly. In fact, if one were to believe that up until the women's liberation movement of the 1960s the world was ruled by men for men i.e. the patriarchy theory, then it was men who first started punishing other men for rape and sexual assault in the form of the criminal justice system.
[/quote]

Well I’d say those things are true to an extent. It’s not really relevant to the point that we both don’t feel under attack when a man is punished for bad behaviour.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Well just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that you should. I think that all this feminist social engineering is unrealistic. But I was simply pointing out that men's behaviour doesn't happen in a vaccuum and that if feminists want to stop X behaviour then any solution must not just encourage negative reactions to X behaviour but also should discourage positive reactions to that behaviour

Isn’t this post saying that social engineering is unrealistic, but they should be trying to do the social engineering anyway just to be consistent? Education etc. is good but ultimately everyone is responsible for their own behaviour. If a man behaves badly, it’s no excuse to say that some women like bad behaviour. -likewise with grabby women. See later paragraph.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

That is true. I don't agree with everything he has said. We are only united in disagreeing with leggo who paints anyone who disagrees with him as a misogynist.

That’s fair enough you don’t have to agree with each other. It’s just difficult for me to chat with you both and explore the ideas, when you when you disagree with me when actually you’re disagreement is with each other.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

I am not, as you have pointed out, a big fan of this type of campaign because I don't necessarily think it reaches the right people, or perhaps that the people that transgress know that they are doing wrong but do it anyway so more education is not really the solution.

But if one is to have such campaigns, I don't find anything offensive in gender neutral campaigns. The problem is that these aren't gender neutral campaigns, they are ideologically charged to be against men and boys.

I think it helps to have realistic expectations for an education campaign. The point is to reach lots of people including the people who it affects and those it doesn’t. The information gets into the public and changes social perceptions of the the subject. You might be surprised how much soap operas can affect public perceptions of issues.

In any case, I think there’s a belief that any gender campaign is anti men. In a lot of cases the campaign are pro women and ignore men but they are perceived as anti men. The domestic violence campaign mentioned earlier is a good example. The focus of the campaign was to encourage victims to get help and abusers to see the consequences of the abuse, and for the public to see domestic abusers in a negative light.

The campaign wasn’t anti men, it just focused on one scenario. I didn’t feel under attack because the abuser was a man. He was representative of abusers, not men. So I didn’t identify with that character.

Likewise the consent course in Trinity was roundly regarded as anti man but EB reports that it was gender neutral. So I think that some men are too willing to dismiss these events as anti men.

johnnyskeleton wrote: »

Yes and it's interesting that this statement is not a controversial one. A lot of men would react positively to such behaviour and if they do so they are in effect encouraging women on hen parties to do so. Is it wrong to say that? I don't think so. If all men objected to such behaviour, I don't believe that women would engage in it.

It’s not wrong to say so if it’s true. I think the thread about men being grabbed by women was really illuminating. The vast majority of posters who had been groped weren’t happy about it. They didn’t like it and wished it didn’t happen but they didn’t feel they could really complain about it. I didn’t read every single story, but I don’t think I saw any stories where one of the men said ‘don’t do that again ‘ or anything to that effect.

So while some men might actively encourage women to grope men, the behaviour is ultimately the individual women’s responsibility. And as a side measure I think it would be good to educate around the fact that men can be assertive and tell a grabby woman she’s out of order.

I think there’s a perception that men should like having their bits grabbed but the reality is that most men actively dislike it.

iptba

I think all the campaigns highlighting only domestic violence on women by men have caused some problems. For example, I have heard cases where men called the police as they were being attacked and not getting support from the police or even being treated as the aggressor.

El_Duderino 09

iptba wrote: »

I think all the campaigns highlighting only domestic violence on women by men have caused some problems. For example, I have heard cases where men called the police as they were being attacked and not getting support from the police or even being treated as the aggressor.

I think you’re being a bit liberal to suggest domestic violence campaigns have made the police less likely to take female on male domestic violence, seriously.

The police should have specific training in handling domestic situations of all kinds. A public information campaign is a 30second snippet to introduce the topic to the public.

Did I misunderstand your point or were you suggesting the recent campaigns turned the police against male victims? I think you’d need to bring some evidence to the table if it’s the latter.