Women are telling you there effectively is. On what basis are you arguing with their lived experience? Are you just pedantically nitpicking their precise wording?
In my experience, the only person who really worried about my personal safety or vigilance in public was my parents when I was going into a city. Which I normally (and still do) roll my eyes at and just do what I want.
Pre-Covid, I’d quite constantly walk the mile to my local bar by myself and walk back home after being sloshed, close to midnight or 1am, by myself without really worrying about my safety even if someone was walking on the sidewalk in the other direction. I was far more worried about whether I’d get hit by a car. I also ride public transportation late at night more than a few times (especially if I knew I’d be drinking - I live in walking distance to a train station here in Atlanta) and not be all that worried.
I think most males are similar. My wife, OTOH, would be far far more wary about doing the same things.
That’s a slight exaggeration. But we’re being handed that advice in this very thread. I quoted some of it.
If the victim in this case had been male, no-one would have ever heard of this case. Statistically, several men have been murdered by strangers in the UK since the disappearance of Sarah Everard. I can’t be sure, because no one would report such a thing in the press. It’s a dog bites man story. The man bites dog story is Sarah Everard.
She was female, and female victims of violent crime are rare. She was blonde and photogenic. She was a rich marketing executive. She was murdered by a stranger. All this makes an extreme statistical outlier.
In addition there is actual concern for female victims. In this very thread we have people assuming male victims must have provoked violence against them, we have people assuming female victims must be more underreported than male victims, and we have massive concern for women who are afraid of becoming victims. That is the way society works. Female fear is more important than male victims.
Yup. As noted above, the proposed curfew for men would have the effect of protecting men from victimization too.
But nobody is ever going to seriously consider such a thing, because the idea of applying across-the-board restrictions to male behavior, even if it would increase the safety of both women and men, is not only politically but socially unthinkable.
I think the reality is that male autonomy is perceived as more important than male victims. If it were mostly women who were violently victimizing men, I think there would be a lot of societal support for the idea that women as a group needed to be more severely controlled, because female autonomy isn’t a huge societal priority.
But the victimizers of men are mostly other men, and masculine identity is very closely tied to notions of male autonomy and a man being able to do what he wants and handle whatever life throws at him. So male victims of primarily-male violence are going to go on being treated as unremarkable collateral damage in the prioritization of male autonomy.
Female victims of primarily-male violence, on the other hand, are an excellent opportunity to renew societal pressure and intimidation towards women: don’t take risks, follow “advice”, “protect” yourself, you are vulnerable, it’s irresponsible of you to prioritize your autonomy over maximizing your safety in every possible way.
The sad part is, all of those rules apply to men as well. However, if a man decides he doesn’t want to follow those rules and gets hurt, it’s not a tragedy or anything worth being concerned over. It’s usually treated as a joke.
People care at all about the humanity of women enough to make those suggestions. Not so with men.
Well like I said, I don’t think at bottom it’s so much about emotional “caring” or “not caring” as about the relative prioritization of security and autonomy.
In a traditionally sexist patriarchal society, it’s expected that the autonomy of men will be prioritized over their physical safety, and vice-versa for women. Deprioritizing women’s autonomy isn’t really a sign of “caring about their humanity”, any more than deprioritizing men’s safety is a sign of caring about their humanity.
But many men would get highly insulted at being expected to abide by such rules. They would feel that they were being treated like a child, or a woman, or a weakling or coward who can’t or won’t cope with risk.
The reality for men, especially teenagers is that you cannot go into certain postcodes or you risk serious injury or death from knife crime. @Kimstu, have you ever considered that when you make a shopping list of specific concerns for female victims?
There is also the additional pressure upon males not to appear to be worried or frightened for their safety - so when confronted by thugs there is that invisible and pointless masculinity role play that will put men in more danger - machismo can be extremely costly - but this still does not transfer blame to the victim, it’s just a social pressure that is subtle and not easily identified in the heat of the moment.
How much violence on men is not reported? Again because of societal pressures and expectations, men are more likely to remain silent about being victims of violence, and thats apart from the so-called ‘code of honour’ not to ‘grass’ to the police.
@Kimstu, you rightly infer that women under report for a variety of reasons, the fact is that men also under report violence against them.
Many is the club or pub that it is not advisable for a man to enter if they are not from the locale, and when walking down the path if there is a group of males with the drink or the attitude, then it’s best to cross the road, even selecting a seat on a bus or a train can be fatal.
These are issues that face males every bit as much as females - but somehow its the shock of the ‘blameless’ female victim that sells the newspapers rather than the ‘blameless’ male.
I hate it when I go into any place where potentially violent, possible drug or alchohol fuelled idiots are making a noisy, intimidating spectacle of themselves, I would love it for the police to go in and smash the f**k out of their nasty brutish mouths through their teeth - its not going to happen so, like most men in such a situation, it’s just better to shut up and move on - and not make eye contact with the knobheads.
Stupid headline generating stories by marginal political parties trying to gain some sort of attention is never going to deal with the issue of vio9lence in society, nor is failing to cover the ground fully, men are every bit as much at risk of physical violence, and when young are also at great risk of sexual exploitation - because - after all that sort of thing doesn’t happen to men and boys - except that it does, and men are supposed to be strong and able to move on.
@Kimstu, you seem to be making assumptions about the effects of violence upon men, by largely concentrating on women.
The driving forces might be differant, but the perpetrators are the same, the reasons might vary but the pain is the same, its not fashionable for men to admit to being victims or vulnerable - fact is that men are more likely to die due to violence, and yet in this very thread we have men seemingly provoking violence upon themselves - if we changed the gender in this argument then the person pushing this view would be rightly and roundly condemned.
Do you work in the legal system? Because what is officially said is not necessarily what the people think or say outside of official records - and it was just today that I heard a female officer say that a DV complaint was just a case of a woman getting mad at her ex-con, ex-boyfriend for talking to another woman. I guarantee you she isn’t writing that anywhere, though.
I grew up in NYC as well (although in the more dangerous 70s) , and do you know what was impressed on me? Not that I was constantly at risk of street violence and not that I needed to be constantly aware of things. What was impressed on me was that I shouldn’t be out after dark unless I was either in a large group ( that included males) or was with a male protector. Even being with my younger brother was better than being on the street alone - and nobody really considered that the males in the group or the single “male protector” might have been the biggest source of danger to me.
I’m going to repeat myself again:
@casdave, it reads to me that you’re living in a genuinely hazardous place. That’s bad, and work should be done to make such places less hazardous. But women get these warnings even if living in places that haven’t had a murder for 20 years.
Society puts more men than women in powerful political positions. Society pays men more than women. Society respects male voices over female voices. Society most definitely does not treat women as more important than men.
The concern for “protecting” women by shutting them up at home – which, as has been pointed out, doesn’t provide protection – has IMO far less to do with protection than with considering everywhere outside of private homes, and maybe the grocery store and “beauty” salon, to be properly a male domain, that women don’t really belong in. But even to the extent to which the concern genuinely is protection: that doesn’t require thinking that women are more important than men. People living in cities, and many elsewhere, shut house cats up inside to protect them. That doesn’t mean that they think the cats are more important than the humans. And it certainly doesn’t mean that they care about their “humanity”.
@Kimstu, I think you’ve got a good and interesting point there.
This ubiquitous advice is bad. Here’s one of many cites I found:
I was taught instead to form a “bird’s head” with your fingers extended and fingertips pressing together, then make a direct strike at the eyes. I’ve searched and can’t find that, so it may have since been shown not so effective. There’s some good advice here, but I especially like the top right pic:
I think curfews for men is too restricting. I’d be okay with men being out after dark if they were accompanied by an older woman, say, their mom or aunt.
It never ceases to amaze me how openly incendiary sexism is considered absolutely acceptable… even funny - just so long as it’s bashing men.
Its my take that a similar restriction should be put on U.S. gun ownership. We have one for mental health, but the true indicator for gun violence is gender. not mental health. Women should get all the guns. Men should get no guns.
It never ceases to amaze me how openly incendiary sexism is considered absolutely acceptable… even funny - just so long as it’s limiting the freedom and personal safety of women.
Quote someone in this thread casually joking about women’s safety. Or about women at all. I’ll wait.
Lamentably true, but AFAICT, all the localities that are considered dangerous for men are considered at least equally dangerous for women. On top of that, women are told that they should consider themselves in danger even in many situations where men don’t have to.
The point is not that violence against men isn’t a serious problem or doesn’t matter. The point is, as I said, that the conventions of a traditionally sexist and patriarchal society generate a lot of useless and counterproductive responses to the problem of violence, for both women and men.
This is just the kind of remark that I wish could have the power to amaze me.