AlterEgo
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Why would women want privacy from men? It is a mystery.
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Male violence against women in the UK
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Although some places do have non-segregated toilets, the ones by the amusements in Lyme Regis are just cubicles and both men and women can use them.
OT But I suppose one of the reasons why we have segregated toilets is men can use urinals, and women generally can't as such it makes sense to have man and women's toilets where the toilets for men have urinals. Though personal I think the unisex cubicles only approach is more sensible as it makes a better use of the space.
OT But I suppose one of the reasons why we have segregated toilets is men can use urinals, and women generally can't as such it makes sense to have man and women's toilets where the toilets for men have urinals. Though personal I think the unisex cubicles only approach is more sensible as it makes a better use of the space.
Backontrack. Your post is outstanding and the best I have seen across various forums. Thank you for taking the time to write this. I have a daughter and I’m in a predominantly female family and I’m sick of all this toxic masculinity that’s prevalent in our society.
The Met Police behaviour was appalling and if anyone backs their action you are part of the problem.
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AlterEgo
Veteran Member
Let’s keep the thread on the actual focus - women’s reports of being assaulted, harassed and spooked by men, and how many women feel unsafe in public.
I know this is a very male-dominated forum but not everything has to be about men and our feelings all the time.
Ashley Hill
Established Member
If it was a man murdered by a female police officer would this have provoked the same level of protest and political outpourings?
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
It would have, if there was a general theme in society of women stalking, harassing, abducting or murdering men. You know, if that’s the way the power went. But it doesn’t.
so it’s ok for you to bring up separate toilets and make a claim it’s just about women’s safety but it’s not ok for me to offer other reasons why separate toilets are warranted?
...and lets not devalue men’s opinions just because they are men.
deltic
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Many of the responses to this thread seem to be missing the point - you might want to go back and look at DBB's quote at post 23.
It is the continuous low level hassle that women face in public spaces that erodes confidence as you never know if it will escalate into something else. I am sure we have all done or known men who have said something or done something which made a women feel uncomfortable in a public space. From an appalling chat up line to cat calling to saying "cheer up love it may never happen". You dont have to be a rapist or murderer to be part of the problem - by treating women with respect you can be part of the solution.
It is the continuous low level hassle that women face in public spaces that erodes confidence as you never know if it will escalate into something else. I am sure we have all done or known men who have said something or done something which made a women feel uncomfortable in a public space. From an appalling chat up line to cat calling to saying "cheer up love it may never happen". You dont have to be a rapist or murderer to be part of the problem - by treating women with respect you can be part of the solution.
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
Perhaps if we hadn't upended the moral order in the 1960s and promoted the right to self indulgence and following your feelings while mocking restraint and self control as repressive we might not have ended up here?
I think Mary Whitehouse, were she still aiive, would mainly be saying "I told you so, I told you so."
birchesgreen
Established Member
Aha the moral order when everyone knew their place, which was fine as long as your place was a good one. For most people it was not. There were also plenty of violent crime, murder and rapes despite the rose tinted glasses some people wear.
But mostly you are victim shaming, which is very poor form.
deltic
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Women were being hassled on the streets a long time before the 1960s while domestic violence was rampant in Victorian England.
Er no I'm not. I'm saying if we hadn't had 50 years of the values of Meghan Markle being promoted and the values of Her Majesty the Queen derided, there would be rather less victims because self restraint wouid have stopped many of the perpetrators from doing it. Instead they have grown up being told to follow their feelings. So they do.
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
Indeed. One of the things which the “modern social order” has brought us too, is increased participation of women in society (which is GOOD!) which is another reason more low level harassment is reported.
Ashley Hill
Established Member
While all woman feel like potential victims and all men seen as b'stards there will never be equality!
AlterEgo
Veteran Member
Are you ok?
No-one, regardless of their gender, sexual orientation, age, race, social class, disability etc. is not entitled to be able to go out and feel safe. Some women are actually more comfortable going out by themselves late at night than some men, it's not the case that all men feel safer than all women. (If you don't know men who have suffered mental health issues or anxiety, it's possibly because you haven't spoken to your mates about mental health, not because you don't know a man affected by these issues.) While the majority of women who are attacked are attacked by men, there are also instances of women attacking other women and women attacking men. There have been stories from some women that it's women of another race who are the ones that are preventing them from feeling safe when they go out, meaning only addressing incidents of men making women feel unsafe isn't addressing their concerns. All instances of people being attacked, threatened or discriminated against are instances which need addressing, not just some of them.
Yesterday I saw on a lengthy post on a man's (private) Facebook page which included a couple of sentences saying he doesn't personally know any men who have either said they have assaulted or threatened a woman or implied they would do it. However, he does know some men who have been mentally, physically or sexually abused by women and are afraid to speak up about it.
What is a man in that situation supposed to do? Start becoming mates with people who are more likely to assault women, so he can has suitable candidates to educate? Personally I think it would be easier for him to ensure the men he's knows (who have previously been abused) are empowered to speak up, while the men who know their mates have been abusing women should stop being cowards and to be willing to grass on their mates in the interests of the safety of others.
Not sure I agree with this post and your post preceding this one.
Things were a lot worse for women before the ‘moral order was upended’.
Abused by your husband? That’s your problem, and you’re clearly not supporting him enough. Don’t want to get married? Clearly you are mad. That bloke who put his hand up your skirt? He’s just a harmless ‘Peeping Tom’ who fancies you. These arnt exactly exaggerated examples, and are common to what women experienced in the past. It was almost impossible for people being abused to speak up. I’m including men in that too.
I’m not quite sure what Meghan and the Queen has to do with it. I have respect for the Queen, but it’s the ‘stuff upper lip’ mentality which enables toxic behaviours - with that stereotypically British mentality, you are expected to just ‘get on with it’ if you’re harassed, abused and so on. Thankfully that has changed a lot from the 1960s onwards, though far from completely.
I will say that I find some of the extreme anti-male comments elsewhere rather disturbing. Especially with the huge male suicide rate which few people talk about (but it is being talked about more in recent years). It isn’t healthy for boys growing up to have the message that they are naturally stupid, dangerous, sex-obsessed and so on. But I think those extreme views are in the minority from the vocal few - I hope so anyway.
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Ive read that a lot of issues within Buck House reside around newer “servants” not being onboard with the Royals being the most important family in Britain. Older servants have complained that newer generations are questioning whether their life is less important than that of the Monarchy. The Monarchy have been beyond the reach of scrutiny for years. Like a particular little princess throwing her toys out the pram because she wanted a horse drawn carriage for her wedding and Andrew demanding it. So it hardly like the Queen has instituted values in her family.
Were things a lot worse for women before the 'moral order was upended'? I don't think so. The issues have just moved from one area of life to another.
There seem to be a few fundamental issues that need to be resolved before women can feel able to go out and be safe in exactly the same circumstances as men:
(a) Males are generally physically stronger than females. So either some genetic modification, (or mechanical assistance) is required to reduce male strength or increase that of women.
(b) Both males and females have an inbuilt urge for sexual relations and reproduction (just like every other living creature on this Earth). However, the human social conditioning is such that this takes place on a mutual basis, which leaves some (of either sex) without the urge being fulfilled. For males, issue (a) can assist when the mutual basis is unavailable, which is not so readily available to females. So either a genetic modification to control these urges and/or a mechanical modification would be required to ensure that these relations are on a mutual basis.
If either of these genetic modifications or mechanical assistances are not possible or practicable the options are much more limited and effective:
1. Men could be physically restrained so they are only allowed out under supervision.
2. Men could be chipped and have bodycams, so that their actions and whereabouts are constantly recorded and monitored, although this would only assist in capture after an event, rather than prevention. Men could be severely punished after capture to act as a further deterrent. However this would still not prevent every incident.
3. Men could be mentally conditioned to not act spookily or use appalling chat up lines or cat call etc but there would be no guarantee (without real sci fi methods) of it working on everyone and at all times. This is what our Social Order attempts to do, with mixed results, so would be unlikely to allay female fears. I am unsure who would police chat up lines as to which are appalling! Without females closely controlling the thoughts and actions of men, there is always likely to be some allegation of sexual harrassment as different people have different views.
Many creatures in the animal kingdom are surely in fear of predators, and have to take sensible evasive/protective action every time they venture outside for fear of becoming dinner. Only elimination, or physical control, of the predators is going to take away that fear. The fox can never be fully trusted with the goose, no matter how much conditioning.
Unfortunately, for women, this means that this fear is unlikely to ever go away. No-one (including me) has yet come up with any kind of credible plan to eliminate it.
nlogax
Established Member
Thank you for posting that. Much of what your FB quote contained are things my female friends have to contend with on a regular basis, whether that's during lockdowns or more normal times. The texting each other to confirm that my friend is home ok thing, or taking note of a cab / Uber license plate that they step into before heading home - that's real, we do these things and it feels necessary to do them because the risks of doing otherwise are very, very real.
One positive thing that may result from this week's events is that men in general remove their heads from the sand, stop pretending this stuff doesn't happen and actively try to do something about it (educating male friends, pointing out the realities of their privilege in case it's not dawned on them how easy they..we..have it). But I despair at how many times these things have been said before and then roundly forgotten about.
I’m not sure I’m an expert enough to respond to the main part of your post, but in response to your first bit here :
Yes, things were worse for women, generally, before the 1960s. They were expected to be at home looking after the children and cleaning the house (nothing wrong with that, if that’s what a woman wants to do, but they were stigmatised if they didn’t want to do that).
With children, society expected women to want children. Not every woman wants a child, which is something which only now is being commonly discussed.
Women were very rarely in a managerial position at work, or head of a company.
Women in work were expected to put up with groping, harassment, unwanted flirting and so on. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with flirting at work if both people are acting consensually, but that’s a moral minefield.
If women were sexually assaulted, it was something never ever discussed, and little ever done by the police if they were willing to take it seriously in the first place. I’ve also heard from older female members of my family, as well as online comments that any sexual assaults committed by someone in the family were often just brushed under the carpet, and you just didn’t go and visit Uncle anymore...
So, yes, things were worse for women before the 1960s, and are still not completely great but now much closer to equality. There are equalities with men too, but that is a different topic to what we are talking about here.
I think you are mistaken and that such behaviour in the workplace became far worse in the '60s and '70s with young women coming under huge new pressure to aquiesce due to the newly available pill.
As to sexual assault being ignored in those days, that was by no means the case universally. Try sexually assaulting a respectable middle or upper class lady in those days and your feet would not have touched the ground; the experiences you relate are almost certainly a class based experience with little concern by the authorities about the "lower orders" when such things occured, as nothing better was to be expected from them.
Sadly little has changed. Do you really think there would be all this attention if a 33 year old single mother had been attacked while walking home in her council estate,rather than a 33 year old marketing executive at the higher end of the middle class scale.
Class is the real issue and a lot of what we see is chaff thrown up to maintain the real privilige which was and is class privilige where equality has long gone into reverse with a sball minority at the top taking an ever larger slice of the cake and increasingly seeing it as their rigbt to impose their norms on the rest of us.
birchesgreen
Established Member
I don't know about this unfortunate lady but "marketing executive" can be quite a lowly position. One of my colleagues is a "Marketing & content executive", she updates the website.
I was referring to the subject of the thread 'Male violence against women UK' rather than the lot of women in general, 60s to today.
TheBigD
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Off topic but job titles are just bull**** a lot of the time. For instance, the Subway near me is recruiting "sandwich artists".
Perhaps the subject should be a whole new thread!
Ok apologies for misunderstanding.
But some of my points are relevant to that though. Domestic violence was much more acceptable, and hitting your wife was sometimes seen as acceptable to ‘keep them in line’. It was also brushed under the carpet a lot of the time as well.
Violence towards women in the street was brushed under the carpet too. Perverts spying in the bushes were brushed off as a Peeping Tom, sexual assaults were taboo to discuss and a source of shame for the woman involved. Blame often given to them for walking alone, not wearing ‘appropriate’ clothing and so on. Some of that blame still exists today.
Marketing Executive as a job title usually means a marketing assistant who helps execute the marketing plan for the business, not the senior manager responsible for setting the marketing plan. Someone holding that position would typically be earning £20-£25k and generally an appropriate qualification and 2 years relevant experience would make you a good candidate for that role.
A few businesses use the term executive for entry level positions or positions requiring more experience so you could have someone on £17k or £28k with executive in their job title. In some businesses everyone who is not a manager is an executive!
Someone at the higher end of the middle class scale in a marketing role would have a job title like Head of Marketing, Marketing Director or Business Development Manager.
If someone is a freelancer or self employed they can call themselves whatever they want a la Homer Simpson calling himself the Junior Vice President, when he set up his own company.
However, there were less issues at workplaces because fewer women were at work, and those that were more likely to be in a single sex environment, more men (and women) with mental health issues were kept in institutions rather than 'care in the community' and the social norm later at night was for women to walk/travel with a male escort of some description.
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