Pointing out double standards does NOT make you sexist!

[Brown_Coat117]

Find me one statistic that says otherwise. One. Fucking one.

This is why I find "male rights advocates", or "double standard pointer-outers" or whatever you want to be called, to be such a silly joke. So desperate to find a double standard to point out that you have to start making them up.

Lastly, yes, I'm aware of gay and lesbian couples. Thing is, they're a tiny minority. Less than one percent in Australia [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/2071.0main+features852012-2013]. Not large enough to have any significant impact on the numbers.

So your argument is essentially because more men are abusive to women than the other way around, double standards in how we view any domestic or sexual violence is ok.

Well I think that's retarded. Stats about who victimizes how most often is irreverent when it comes to how such victimization should be viewed by society. The "silly jokes' are those who dismiss any victim regardless of gender or what gender the perpetrator was.

 

[Nurb]

You're in for an uphill battle in this thread man.

 

[lacktheknack]

...

BUNNY!

Let us celebrate not having to be grunty unfeeling men by looking at this bunny.

What a pretty bunny.

What a wonderful little bunny. I think I'll name him Dandy and feed him dandelions for his whole life.

 

[You Can't Take the Sky From Me]

I hope that's not a male bunny, if it is, it's my duty as a feminist to hurt it.

Wait. I thought that, as a feminist, it was you're duty to hurt all bunnies equally. That's what I do and I don't even call my self a feminist. I just like hurting bunnies.

On topic: Yes there are double standards, this is, or should be, undeniable. Many where mentioned by the OP but I feel he missed a big one Child Custody. I can state as a fact that, where I live at least, it doesn't matter if the mother is certifiably insane, she will still get custody of the kids. One of my teachers back in grade school had to fight for seven frikin' years just to get his children away from his insane ex-wife. Pointing this out does not mean one hates women, hating women means one hates women.

 

[Brown_Coat117]

There seems to be a trend online at the moment to jump up and down on anyone pointing out double standards against 'white straight males' automatically is a racist or a sexist. No white straight men are not a discriminated group, they (we) still hold a massive amount of power in the western world, but there are double standards that need to be addressed if we want true equality and pointing them out does not mean you hate women.

Sure that alone doesn't suggest sexism. When people only bother to bring it up in topics about women being discriminated against, well then there seems to be a bit of an agenda. I don't see people blasted as sexist just for bringing it up on its own, its usually why they seem to bring it up,

In my general experience when the violence against men is brought up in threads about women it is usually in the context of "hey this is important as well," not to say that what is being said about women as unimportant, there are some extreme exception to this of course. When there is a thread about male victims there is almost always some who comes over to let every one know that violence against men is unimportant because there is more violence against women, so there is more that one agenda at play.

Personally I view all victims as deserving of support.

 

[San Martin]

I don't believe it's the act of pointing out the double standard which is frowned upon. I think it's how, and by whom.

The OP, for example, has started their own thread and explained their position rationally. That is fine, and a good way to begin an intelligent debate.

What is not fine, and what IS frowned upon, is when someone insists on bringing up the spectre of "misandry" in almost any discussion about the problems faced by women, and accuses people of trying the persecute men because, apparently, you're not allowed to talk about female discrimination without giving exactly the same treatment to male discrimination at all times. It is a clear indicator of someone having an agenda which, at best, has its priorities wrong, and at worst is flat-out misogynist.

 

[Belaam]

there are double standards that need to be addressed if we want true equality

True, but it's also pretty easy to slip into that absurdity wherein the empowered majority calls a loss of special privilege an attack. See churches railing against DOMA ending.

A few years ago there was a massive advertising campaign in Australia ... focused excursively on physical abuse, which while devastating is far from the only form of domestic abuse. It also made the problem appear to be exclusively a 'male against female' problem, which is is most definitely not. Domestic abuse can be male against female, male against male, female against male, female against female, etc.

And the vast majority is physical male against female. Male against female violence also being the type of domestic abuse that most often results in death.

But when I attempted to point that out online that perhaps a better tag line would have been "Domestic Abuse, Australia says no!", I was howled down as a misogynist.

So to reiterate, your post today is to complain about online responses you got "a few years ago"?

how often have we seen a 'comedy' where the female in a relationship strikes the male in anger and it's played for laughs when the male winces in real pain?

This is indeed a double standard. A single slap (which in the comedic setting you describe are usually triggered by misogynistic behavior) is not equivalent to the kinds of abuse that hospitalize many women.

And woe to anyone who attempts to point out the funding disparity between ... health programs, like the government funding of things like breast cancer and prostate cancer (which thankfully has gotten much closer to parity).

You mean like Viagra being in health care plans, but not abortions?

For example imagine a 33 year old male teacher having an affair with a 16 year old female student. ... Yet switching the genders, a 33 year old female teacher having an affair with a 16 year old male student will get a different reaction completely,

As a 37 year old teacher, I think both should go to jail.

Hell, there are people online who discount the existence of female against male rape. I remember a few years ago a news story from a respected site that played for laughs the story of a man who was grabbed by three women, held down, and sexually assaulted. Most of the comments were people laughing about it... Again switch the genders.

That's appalling. I wonder how many years I'd have to go back to find someone joking about female rape... I'd guess about 1/365th of one.

pointing out the existence of these double standards does not make anyone a sexist.

Of course not. Thinking that the two are anywhere near comparable problems in society does.

Of course there are some men out there that genuinely do hate woman, and wish to wind back the clock, but there are also women out there that hate men, both groups are a tiny tiny minority.

Again, statistics don't seem to back up your claims that male vs. female abuse and female vs. male abuse are similar and tiny. I believe rape statistics are something like 1 in 3 women. A quick US Bureau of Justice google says that in 1993, 1,100,000 women were the victims of a violent crime at the hands of someone they had been intimate with vs. 160,000 men as victims.

I do think there are issues that need to be addressed.

I do too, but I think it's a smaller issue at hand. General anti-domestic violence programs with a massive focus on protecting women should be the goal of programs with limited funds. You might slow some of the violence against the 160,000 while trying to stop the violence against the 1.1 million. But granting them comparable weight is just dumb. And quite frankly, yeah, asserting that they are equal problems is sexist. For the simple reason that you are implying that the pain of 1.1 million women is equivalent to the pain of only 160,000 men. i.e. that it's more important to protect less men than more women.

 

[Ryotknife]

The only thing I'm willing to add to this thread is that the anti-domestic violence campaigns focus on male-on-female violence because that accounts for the vast, vast, vaaaaaast majority of it.

Actually it only counts for the vast majority of reported, recorded domestic abuse there is a pretty big freaking difference. Domestic violence is massively unreported crime as is, add in gender issues and you've got very skewed and useless statistics.

No, it's the vast majority of all domestic violence.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a joke, a liar or severely lacking in understanding of how the world works.

Okay so you've got a magic crystal ball that tells you accurate statistics on crimes that are known to be under-reported. Good to know.

And you have one that tells you otherwise?

You want stats? Here, have some bloody stats [http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/DVAustralia#_Toc309798375]. (Here's the same ones [http://www.domesticviolence.com.au/pages/domestic-violence-statistics.php] in a much shorter and easier to read version.)

Well, whaddaya know? Mostly male-of-female by some fucking huge margins. What a surprise! It's almost as if it's common sense that stronger people are more likely to beat up weaker people than the other way around.

Find me one statistic that says otherwise. One. Fucking one.

This is why I find "male rights advocates", or "double standard pointer-outers" or whatever you want to be called, to be such a silly joke. So desperate to find a double standard to point out that you have to start making them up.

Lastly, yes, I'm aware of gay and lesbian couples. Thing is, they're a tiny minority. Less than one percent in Australia [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/2071.0main+features852012-2013]. Not large enough to have any significant impact on the numbers.

Not that I want to take sides for or against anything in this topic but:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence_against_men

Spoiler

"Straus and Gelles found that in couples reporting spousal violence, 27% of the time the man struck the first blow; in 24% of cases, the woman initiated the violence. The rest of the time, the violence was mutual, with both partners brawling. The results were the same even when the most severe episodes of violence were analyzed. In order to counteract claims that the reporting data was skewed, female-only surveys were conducted, asking females to self-report, and the data was the same.[15] The simple tally of physical acts is typically found to be similar in those studies that examine both directions, but some studies show that male violence may be more serious. Male violence may do more damage than female violence;[16] women are more likely to be injured and/or hospitalized. Wives are more likely to be killed by their husbands than the reverse (59% to 41% per Department of Justice study), and women in general are more likely to be killed by their spouses than by all other types of assailants combined.[17] From a data set of 6,200 cases of spousal abuse in the Detroit area of USA in 1978-79 found that men used weapons 25% of the time while female assailants used weapons 86% of the time, 74% of men sustained injury and of these 84% required medical care.[18]

In the United Kingdom, an article in The Guardian reported that statistical bulletins from the Home Office and the British Crime Survey found that men made up approximately 40% of domestic violence victims each year between 2004-05 and 2008-09.[19]

Martin S. Fiebert of the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, has compiled an annotated bibliography of research relating to spousal abuse by women on men. This bibliography examines 275 scholarly investigations: 214 empirical studies and 61 reviews and/or analyses that appear to demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 365,000.[20] In a Los Angeles Times article about male victims of domestic violence, Fiebert suggests that "...consensus in the field is that women are as likely as men to strike their partner but that?as expected?women are more likely to be injured than men."[21] However, he noted, men are seriously injured in 38% of the cases in which "extreme aggression" is used. Fiebert additionally noted that his work was not meant to minimize the serious effects of men who abuse women."

Your assertion that the vast, vast, vaaast majority is male-on-female is debatable. Majority to be sure, but a slim majority rather than a vast one.

That said, weeee another gender thread! At least this one has bunnies. And im outta here because I believe this thread reached its high point already.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Wow, you know? I never thought about any of that before, and those are some excellent points. That's why I'm glad we keep having useful discussions like these in every other thread. Because you never know when an insightful tidbit is going to come along and enrich your day. Most excellent!

 

[BNguyen]

The only thing I'm willing to add to this thread is that the anti-domestic violence campaigns focus on male-on-female violence because that accounts for the vast, vast, vaaaaaast majority of it.

Actually it only counts for the vast majority of reported, recorded domestic abuse there is a pretty big freaking difference. Domestic violence is massively unreported crime as is, add in gender issues and you've got very skewed and useless statistics.

No, it's the vast majority of all domestic violence.

Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is a joke, a liar or severely lacking in understanding of how the world works.

Okay so you've got a magic crystal ball that tells you accurate statistics on crimes that are known to be under-reported. Good to know.

And you have one that tells you otherwise?

You want stats? Here, have some bloody stats [http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/DVAustralia#_Toc309798375]. (Here's the same ones [http://www.domesticviolence.com.au/pages/domestic-violence-statistics.php] in a much shorter and easier to read version.)

Well, whaddaya know? Mostly male-of-female by some fucking huge margins. What a surprise! It's almost as if it's common sense that stronger people are more likely to beat up weaker people than the other way around.

Find me one statistic that says otherwise. One. Fucking one.

This is why I find "male rights advocates", or "double standard pointer-outers" or whatever you want to be called, to be such a silly joke. So desperate to find a double standard to point out that you have to start making them up.

Lastly, yes, I'm aware of gay and lesbian couples. Thing is, they're a tiny minority. Less than one percent in Australia [http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/2071.0main+features852012-2013]. Not large enough to have any significant impact on the numbers.

You do realize you can be physically strong and yet be intimidated don't you?
Men who do not report abuse against them do so because society tells men to suck up the pain put on them, and if they do get the nerve to tell, society looks down upon them as weak.
And why is it such a joke that both sides can equally be victims and people want to point this out?
Why is it so funny for a man to be a victim but when it's a woman, we have to get out our torches and pitchforks and do a perverbial witch hunt on the abuser when they happen to be male?
And just because a group happens to be a minority does not mean that they should get looked over.
Think about it, if you were in that minority, and were abused, would you want the people to just overlook you because "oh you just happen to be 1% of the population so fuck you"?
I wouldn't think so, if the numbers for abuse are anything above 0% then I think they need to be looked at, dealt with, and crushed underfoot.

EDIT:
For clairifcation, I don't mean that the numbers of victims are equal but that both sides have an equal chance of becoming victims - aggression knows no boundaries and those who use it for petty reasons need to be punished.

 

[tkioz]

I do too, but I think it's a smaller issue at hand. General anti-domestic violence programs with a massive focus on protecting women should be the goal of programs with limited funds. You might slow some of the violence against the 160,000 while trying to stop the violence against the 1.1 million. But granting them comparable weight is just dumb. And quite frankly, yeah, asserting that they are equal problems is sexist. For the simple reason that you are implying that the pain of 1.1 million women is equivalent to the pain of only 160,000 men. i.e. that it's more important to protect less men than more women.

Okay fine, perfectly rational argument. Let's close down all research into 'rare' genetic illnesses, after all, waste of money isn't it? There are far more people suffering from more common maladies.

Let's stop government funding to legal advocacy groups catering to refugees and other minorities, far better to spend the money on the general community.

Let's stop funding Aboriginal schools and services, after all they can make down with the general services offered to people.

Oh wait that would be bad...

Honestly that's basically what your argument amounts too you know.

 

[knight steel]

I agree with what the OP is saying 100%
I disagree with those that say male sexism and abuse is not as Important as Female sexism and abuse.
Now here are bunnies:

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

A discussion? On feminism?

Here's my wall of text: we're all equal in rights, and we should treat each other with respect. What is this, rocket science?

 

[Amir Kondori]

"For example imagine a 33 year old male teacher having an affair with a 16 year old female student. You intellectually want to string the creep up by his toes don't you? Good, that's the way it's suppose to be...Yet switching the genders, a 33 year old female teacher having an affair with a 16 year old male student will get a different reaction completely..."

Only from idiots.

 

[asinann]

I had a female roommate pull a knife on me because I "talked too loudly" and it "frightened her." When I called the police to haul her off for pulling a knife they threatened to take ME to jail and charge me because I prompted the knife by raising my voice. Meanwhile she was in the cops face yelling like there was no tomorrow when they didn't haul me off and they did nothing about her.

 

[asinann]

"For example imagine a 33 year old male teacher having an affair with a 16 year old female student. You intellectually want to string the creep up by his toes don't you? Good, that's the way it's suppose to be...Yet switching the genders, a 33 year old female teacher having an affair with a 16 year old male student will get a different reaction completely..."

Only from idiots.

Except that it's the damn truth. Mary Kay Letourneau had sex with her student (a 6th grader) and had his baby. Punishment: She was sentenced to six months in the county jail and three years of sex offender treatment. At that time she was not required to register as a sex offender. As part of her plea bargain, Letourneau agreed to avoid any further contact with Fualaau (the boy.)
On February 3, 1998,[20] police found Letourneau having sexual relations with Fualaau in her car: Punishment Letourneau was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in state prison (probation violation and attempting to flee the country.) She also had to register as a level 2 sex offender.

A male teacher gets ACCUSED of touching a 17 year old girl he sits in jail with no possibility of bail until trial and then gets the maximum sentence because he is presumed guilty (5 years plus registering as a level 3 for the rest of his life.)

 

[Hawkeye21]

The only thing I'm willing to add to this thread is that the anti-domestic violence campaigns focus on male-on-female violence because that accounts for the vast, vast, vaaaaaast majority of it.

lolwut?

Spoiler

Martin S. Fiebert of the Department of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach, has compiled an annotated bibliography of research relating to spousal abuse by women on men. This bibliography examines 275 scholarly investigations: 214 empirical studies and 61 reviews and/or analyses that appear to demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 365,000.

Erin Pizzey who opened one of the first women?s refuges in 1971, has said that almost as many men as women are victims of domestic violence and found that over half (62%)[36] of the women she admitted were as violent as their partners. She also stated that men were in need of a different kind of help than is currently available to them.

I've never hit a girl before, but I have to say I was tempted after my ex slagged me in the head with a frying pan after I told her almost politely to GTFO of my apartment. Mild concussions do wonders for the mood.