Sexism and Men's Issues

http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf

Keep in mind that they refused to classify an act which is almost identical to what they restrict themselve to call rape, with the only difference being who penetrates who. Which should give you an idea as to why other studies never found this.

I'm not saying that you can't work towards both men's and women's rights but from my experience groups who do this are very unlikely to actually help men in any meaningful way. They will flat out say that men are a second priority to them but with their actions they don't even show that much.

No, I wouldn't be that suspicious of them but that's because I've never seen something like that, so I would be more curious than anything else. Although restricting this to homosexual men makes it a bit less revolutionary.

You'll have to forgive me - the study is huge. Can you point to a specific page. Sorry.

Page 17 (27 on the viewer) for defintions, the next two pages for yearly victimization. You'll note that rape and made to penetrate have an equal number of victims of women and men respectively. Life-time figures are somewhat different but they are less reliable and could be explained by the decreasing likelihood of men to report this (makes sense for the demographic less likely to report to begin with).

I recommend you read the home page with the mission statement all over again, especially the part that starts with: Not Just a Women's Issue and on down where they explain further.

Or even look at their partner's page which is a myriad of gendered and nongendered charities and nonprofits.

Here is where I think extremists have the potential to shoot themselves in the foot and frankly why more progress hasnt been made in gender issues in general: people make what should be a tangle of ropes with various groups working on various knots but all trying to get the rope straight into a crab bucket where no one wins.

Just because one group wishes to tackle a very specific problem based on their experiences, talents, resources, and strengths doesnt mean that they are inherently hurting or inhibiting the ability for the rest of those willing to tackle their specific knots.

My son told me he wanted to fight bad guys when he grew up. I told him there were many ways he could do this from being a police or judicial officer to being a doctor and help cure problems or social worker to even being a teacher or minister and stopping them from being made in the first place. Common goal, a different expression for every individual to reach it.

You mean where they specify that men can only be indirectly harmed by sexualized violence by knowing female victims of it?

Yep, totally not supporting the cultural narrative preventing men from reporting at all.

You can't make social progress by supporting people who oppose it. Opposing sexist organizations is what social movements should do, not avoid it.

I've read that report before, and I'm reading it again now. It says nothing of the sort.

18.3% of women have been raped, with 44.6% suffering other forms of sexual violence.

1.4% of men have been raped, with 22.2% suffering sexual violence. Sure, you can say that more men have had sexual violence committed against them versus women who have been raped, but that's still overwhelmed by the number of women who have had sexual violence committed against them. Men are still the minority of victims here.

Not only is this report constantly used to try and "prove" the idea that half of all rapes are men, but that claim is still a lie based on the report itself being used to prove it.

edited 18th Feb '14 2:53:39 PM by TobiasDrake

Did you just ignore the fact that "made to penetrate" has almost the exact same definition as rape and almost the exact same number of victims?

It says "1.4% of men have been raped" because it defines "rape" as something that requires penetration, and thus women cannot do to men.

They considering a man being "forced to penetrate" a woman "other sexual violence", despite it being the exact same act when the genders are reversed.

While they count the "forced to penetrate" number, they put them in the other category, leaving it out of the summary and the public eye, enforcing the perception that Female on Male rape is just an anomaly.

Many other popularly touted sexual assault statistics, such as those by RAINN or the FBI use similarly limited definitions of rape and erase male victims from the occasion. (Unless they're raped by other men.)

When asked about this discrepancy, the CDC responded basically saying "You're interpreting it wrong! Also made to penetrate is different somehow because shut up!"

This shit needs to stop.

So if we take the 4.8% of men who are made to penetrate and add them to the 1.4% of direct rapes, we come to 6.2% of men raped versus 18.3% of women.

And that 44.6% Women v. 22.2% Men statistic on sexual violence is still there, only now it's 44.6% v. 17.4% because we moved that 4.8% to the other category. Men are still not 50% of rape victims. It'd be more accurate to say that approximately 1/3 as many men are raped as women.

Are you using the lifetime statistics? Because the numbers for rape and made to penetrate are the same for the year and those are the more reliable numbers. It stands to reason that if we have very little data regarding this, we use what we have which has the highest accuracy. Other sexual violence does indeed seem to be higher for women but that's not what we were talking about.

Male suicide rate in the UK is three times the female one.

Sometimes I wonder if the idea of the Stiff Upper Lip has something to do with this.

In general, they've found that women are more likely to attempt suicide, but men are far more likely to succeed. Men have a tendency to use far more lethal means. It's an interesting dichotomy.

The women are more likely to attempt suicide claim is slightly misleading, since it implies more suicidal women than men. The actual statistic is for number of suicide attempts commited by men and women, which is at least partially explained by the lower lethality of women's suicide attempts (suicidal women on average live to make more attempts than their male counter parts)

Nope - a greater percentage of women exhibit suicidal behaviour as well. This article provides a really interesting rundown in how suicide is gendered by various cultures - it's long, but I recommend it.

It's not about dismissing the problem of male suicide attempts, it's about determining the reason. A lower rate of suicidal behaviour but higher lethality suggests the problem is with methodology (men using more violent, spectacular, and effective means than women), which may suggest a link to the toxic-masculinity problem (the cultural fetishisation of male violence).

We can also analylize motives for suicide in men. With a smaller percentage who chose this option hopefully we can narrow down trends in stressors and contributors so we can help start effective prevention measures.

(Breaking down social stigma against mental health screenings and assistance.)

To change the subject, I've always wondered why youth-aimed media does not really seem to encourage "differentiation" in boys like it does in girls. To go with two shows i've been watching recently: Futari Wa Pretty Cure and My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic both seem to focus very positively on the diverse ways in which girls can be girls, without rendering any negative judgement that condemns any particular route as abnormal (while still poking fun at the different girls' shortcomings, like Twilight Sparkle's social awkwardness or Nagisa Misumi being a terrible cook). With boy-focused media, while shows don't tend to really exist to empower male choice, they do seem to condemn alternate choices in a lot of cases (mostly by showing nerds as losers to some degree, even when they're the protagonist of the show, like Dexter of Dexters Laboratory or Jimmy Neutron in Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius).

Why aren't there more "male empowerment" shows? Is it just too hard a sell to TV execs who think such a message isn't needed, or is it because there's less encouragement for boys to be boys in different-but-equal ways, just as media encourages girls to think differently?

Because boys are the default in TV. You don't need to have a show explicitly say "there are different types of boys " when you can watch Phineas And Ferb or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There is and episode of Gravity Falls that tackled the issue of manliness ".

You should be thinking less about comedies (which are very often focused around poking fun at terrible people, with empowerment being way down the list) and more about those shows' true opposite numbers, male-focused action shows. Shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Naruto, for instance, include a diverse cast of male characters who all have something to contribute - in TMNT, for instance, Leonardo brings direction, Donatello brings brains, Raphael brings muscle, and Michaelangelo brings heart.

Frankly, we have so many of those that it actually seems kind of weird for someone to complain about their absence.

It could just be that i failed to see those shows as empowerment-focused. Action cartoons tend to be, well, actiony, though i suppose you're correct.

A New Jersey Judge Rules That Women Can Keep Fathers Out Of The Delivery Room.

If a relationship is at the point the mother doesn't want him in the room he probably shouldn't be there anyway. give him a video of it afterwards.

As I understand it this is more about her being allowed to have privacy. That doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is in trouble.

That and if a father is freaking out and panicking it could end up hurting the mother and their relationship, even if their relationship is normally healthy. Labour is a pain and it's dangerous and stressful and sometimes a woman might just need space to help her through it.