Here are two letters in The Guardian which demonstrate discrimination against men:
Firstly gender crimes:
Secondly anorexia:
Note that the author here is complaining about two articles written by a man, and he links to a third article which says:
These seem to me to be examples of the unthinking discrimination of which women justly complain so much. Turnabout may be fair play but two wrongs don’t make a right.
I’m not interested in debating the issues, but I thought in the light of some recent threads this might be of interest.
You might benefit from looking beyond simplistic conceptions of oppression and power. (Admittedly, so might some of the people you’re implicitly if not explicitly complaining about).
Even when an entrenched and institutionalized system of inequality specifically disempowers Group B in ways that put Group A hierarchically above them, it does not follow that individual members of Group A benefit from that situation. Power is not a zero-sum equation. If I tackle you, grab your wrists and ankles and immobilize you, you’ve been disempowered and your autonomy assaulted, you’ve been invaded. I am not, however, intrinsically inheriting your former forward motion or your freedom and in fact I’m sort of tied up by my endeavors. That should earn me no sympathy whatsoever, as far as the other person’s right to complain, but it’s nevertheless true.
Oppression is not an individual behavior, but rather a collective group phenomenon.
It is often said that Group A “benefits” from their oppression of Group B but I’m not sure anyone’s very clear on what it means for a collectivity to “benefit” from something. Zero-sum linear notions of oppression are popular but not correct. All individual members of any group that can be said to be the oppressors are themselves, as individuals, not as well off as they would be if the oppression did not take place — just nowhere near as much so as is the case for the individuals in the oppressed group. And some of the ways in which the individuals of the oppressor-group are less well off than if the oppression did not exist are less tangible and more complex than simple things such as material wealth and other materialist concerns. Quality-of-life things like emotional condition and related suffering and pain and so on.
Anyway… the fact that you identify as part of a group that, in turn, has been collectively identified as an oppressor group, and that nevertheless the oppression-situation causes individuals within your group to experience pain, doesn’t mean the oppression isn’t real. And it doesn’t negate the complaints of the oppressed.
I should also point out that since, indeed, power is not a zero-sum arrangement, the behaviors of oppressed people, both as a group and as individuals, includes some elements of “payback” / “getting even” and, guiess what? That doesn’t mean the oppression isn’t real and the power differential as originally described either. (If I kick your teeth out while you’re immobilizing me you’re still the aggressor who attacked me and I’m still immobilized by you)
No one should have to face domestic violence. It may not happen as often for men but how does that make it any less worse for the ones who are victims?
So, more tan 8% of the cases involve men and it doesn’t ping your radar? Even if they were reported as crimes against women?
It’s safe to asume to domestic violence agaisnt men is even more underreported tan against women.
It’s, as it is said in many other cases, making a real problem invisible.
What number would’ve been high enough?
Domestic violence and rape are horrible awful things, whether they happen to men or women, and anyone who belittles a survivor of these things on the grounds of their sex is part of the problem.
Having said that - it’s not unreasonable for there to be a report specifically regarding violence against women and girls, since the pattern of violence that women experience is generally quite different to the pattern that men experience. If some of the stats used in that report mistakenly roll up crimes not directed against women in the final total, that’s not really discrimination as such, but it’s definitely sloppy accounting.
Dismissing an anorexia sufferer on the grounds of their sex is a behaviour for which I can give no defence.
107,000 violent crimes. 13,000 of the victims were male. That is 12.14 %
As I recall 13% of the US population is black and we have a lot of concern about discrimination to that group.
There is a lot of concern of discrimination against illegal aliens in the US. A portion of the population certainly way lower than 10%.
For the gay community it is roughly 5% of the US population, per what I read in Wiki. Lots of concern there and in fact major recent supreme court ruling for that group.
So why would you not have concern for a group of 12.14% facing discrimination?
The problem with the first is one of nomenclature; we are now placing both “sexual attacks” and “domestic violence” into a single umbrella labeled “gender violence” whose label simply doesn’t fit. Call them “against women”, it doesn’t fit either.
The second, I don’t like the quote about “it hurts as much if you have a dick”, because I don’t think that’s the point, but it is indeed important to keep in mind that only because something happens mostly to group X, that doesn’t mean the same as “exclusively to group X”.
As regards to the report, it is not a mistake, it’s intentional. As an effort to combat violence against women and girls they’ve selected the types of crimes typically committed against women and girls and started programs against them under the “Violence against women and girls” umbrella.
The statistics are also released with that label, and the summary doesn’t appear to mention that male victims and female perpetrators are included, but if you read the full report the break down by gender and ethnicity, where available, is given. For instance for Domestic abuse where 92% of offenders are male, and 84% of victims are female.
I have to agree with the letter writers that the naming and presentation is poorly thought out and does represent discrimination against men. You could say that the journalist didn’t do his or her job, but I expect they worked off the summary, and I certainly wouldn’t have thought it included male victims based on the title and the content.
Sounds like some guys need to man up and stop bellyaching.
In all seriousness though, one thing that’s pretty messed up is America’s cultural attitude toward widespread prison rape. It’s seen as normal, even just. Like a form of extra-judicial punishment. Even among so called progressives it’s usually talked about in a jokey wink wink don’t drop the soap sorta way. How fucked up is that? If the genders were reversed they’d be tarred and feathered. You could roll this up into the larger cultural issue of prisoners as unpersons. Or maybe it’s just that rape is more psychologically damaging to a woman than a man. Don’t see male victims making as big a deal about it, in general, maybe because of the “man up” attitude, stiff upper lip, that sorta thing. Would rather just forget it, probably.
Another case of discrimination is the assumption that dudes are pedophiles, especially any guy who wants to work with children. Or that a male teacher shouldn’t be left alone in a room with a female student. That’s 100% warranted given how messed up guys are and given the crime stats, but still, it is discrimination. Or maybe it’s more of a halo effect around women being seen as natural care givers. People always seem shocked, just shocked when it turns out a woman is a sexual abuser/predator.
Start a thread about work-related injuries and/or death suffered by women, and I’ll let you know my feelings on the subject(s), so you won’t have to presume my stance(s).
This thread was addressing discrimination against men; the post I addressed was discussing the “8%” of domestic violence incidents in which the victims are male. I’m too preoccupied with not ignoring the “92%” of victims who aren’t male, but as soon as we get a handle on that, I’ll move on to the “8%” over which you’re more concerned.
The Crown published a study about domestic and sexual violence, and titled it “Violence against Women and Girls.” It did this in recognition of the fact that the vast majority of the crimes reported in the study were in fact against women and girls, and because it has targeted the widespread nature of violence against women and girls as a problem to be addressed, which was the impetus for the collection of the data in the first place.
In the motherfucking intro to that report, which one person in this thread has read, the Crown said
The next thing that happened is that somebody whined in the newspaper about the title of the study. The next thing that happened was that Quartz decided to take up some time out of his life to highlight this as an example of discrimination against men.
It’s a joke, and no amount of strawman attacks at me (somebody, who, incidentally, will be representing a male victim of domestic violence in a domestic violence proceeding in court in about three days) will make it not a joke. Nobody is saying violence against men is OK. Nobody, the CPS included, ever suggested that every single one of the cases they found was of violence against a woman. Nobody suggested violence against men doesn’t occur, or that it is less serious when it does occur. All of that is made up, as is the discrimination that is the subject matter of this joke.