whenever I see people mention that adult men are the most likely demographic to be assaulted, robbed, or murdered, it’s met with pushback because “men are also the perpetrators.” Am I simply the dumbest person alive for thinking this response means nothing and doesn’t address anything?

26 comments

  1. It’s how people exculpate themselves from responsibility

    “Not my problem, not my responsibility”

  3. You’re right. It is a deflection from the issue. Basically a “Not my problem lol”. These people are not worth debating with.

  4. That seems like a form of a thought terminating cliche. Like, just some semantic bullshit that people bleat out when they want to sound right but without putting any actual thought into it. The internet is full of ’em since people like to argue and people like to feel smug, and that’s basically all people do on social media sites.

  5. It’s basically a form of victim-blaming.

    It’s especially annoying because as a man, if I choose to be a non-violent peaceful guy instead of Mr.Macho and then get attacked: saying “well a man was the perpetrator” makes me think I have little choice but to just beat him at his own game and become a thug – because whatever I do, it’s my fault, because I’m a man.

  6. They’re the same type of people who will say, “What about black on black crime?” when you talk about the treatment of black people by the police in the U.S. It contributes exactly nothing to the discussion.

    Unfortunately, there are stupid people in the world, and it’s illegal to muzzle them.

  7. It’s usually a response as a deflection in the first place, though, when the conversation is about women being assaulted by men. It’s almost always the “tat” in “tit for tat.” The response you’re decrying almost always goes like this:

    Woman: It feels unsafe to walk by myself as a woman because of the attention I get from men.
    Man: Men are more likely to physically assault men.
    Woman: Men are also the perpetrators.

    And they’re right. It would be nice if we could have some honest conversations as men about male violence that didn’t revolve around how they compare to women like it’s a contest.

  8. This is simple tribalism. Your tribe is hurting you, that’s not my fault.

    Many people can’t get beyond tribalism.

  9. It depends on the context you’re bringing it up in. If you’re just discussing it as an issue and someone responds with that, it’s likely disingenuous.

    However, I have most often seen men being assaulted when the conversation is about women being raped, as a way to downplay women’s suffering. In that case, the reason the response is as you say is to show that the primary perpetrators of both is men

  10. Why men are more likely to commit crimes against men is an interesting question. Ideally, if you want to reduce crime you should work on finding criminals and then understanding why they do what they do. You can’t just use a statistic like this to claim some kind of victimhood if you aren’t actually interested in reducing the numbers.

    And no the answer is not, “Who cares about the perpetrators”. They are men too, and their rights and needs should be important to anyone who cares about the rights of men. IMO the prison industrial complex in America is the biggest threat to the lives of men in my country, than the actions of random criminals.

  11. Men as a demographic being accountable =/= men as individual being accountable

    If men are the main perpetrators in crimes against men and women, then that’s something that needs to be addressed.

  12. It depends on what the context is, as other people have said. Sometimes, people bring up the fact that men are victimized as it’s own deflection away from discussing gender based violence against women.

    Men are the main perpetrators of interpersonal violence against everyone else: other men, women, children etc. There is some bias for sure (violence perpetrated by women is undercounted for a number of reasons), but the gendered nature of most violence is what alot of people are really getting at when there is pushback.

  13. >Am I simply the dumbest person alive for thinking this response means nothing and doesn’t address anything?

    I think it adds as much as the original statement does. Men are the most likely victims; yes. Men are the most likely perpetrators; yes.

    Anyways, let’s have a discussion on how to reduce violence regardless of gender (and acknowledge that some of the solutions we come up with will likely be gender-specific and that’s okay). Like, what point is the original statement trying to make?

  14. As people have said in this thread, it’s victim blaming, but it’s also other thing that’s getting on my nerves with post-modern thinking. Why generalize so much? Why ignore the fact that we are individuals?

    Most of perpetrators are men? Whatever. I’m a man, but I’m not responsible for what my neighbour did. Also, does it matter that I am a man? Not really. We are people. That’s it. Humans. All different. There are female perpetrators, male perpetrators, who cares.

    I’m not okay with reductive thinking. And I hate that it’s getting so much support from people because it’s making us dumb AF.

  15. When trying to solve a problem, looking at the victims doesn’t really solve anything. I’ve been assaulted before, the situation would have been better if the guy who assaulted me didn’t do it in the first place.

  16. >whenever I see people mention that adult men are the most likely demographic to be assaulted, robbed, or murdered, it’s met with pushback because “men are also the perpetrators.” Am I simply the dumbest person alive for thinking this response means nothing and doesn’t address anything?

    It really depends on what the conversation up until then has been about.

    If the conversation was about women’s vulnerability to gendered violence, then mentioning that men are even more likely to be the victims of violence than women are doesn’t really challenge the point that women are vulnerable to violence committed by men. Going “but men are the bigger victims” would constitute whataboutism.

    If the conversation wasn’t about that, but was instead about violence against men, or violence in general, then it *doesn’t* make sense to dismiss violence against men simply because it’s committed by other men.

  17. You are not dumb. Probably not too popular with the frightened morons out there but not dumb.

  19. Because it’s almost always uttered as a response to women getting assaulted. It’s never done in a vacuum.

  20. Because most of the time when this comes up it’s to try to pretend women shouldn’t be afraid of men because “men are victimized more often.” Men are also victimized by men primarily, so if anything everyone should be afraid of men.

  21. >whenever I see people mention that adult men are the most likely demographic to be assaulted, robbed, or murdered, it’s met with pushback because “men are also the perpetrators.”

    I mean, what can the average man even do about this? We live a society that has both criminalized and stigmatized these things. Every man knows this stuff is wrong.

    The only men who engage in this shit are those from broken homes or who inhabit broken minds. Beyond that, the average, individual man simply is not responsible for the harm men conduct on a societal level. He is only responsible for his own behaviour, because that is the extent of his control.

  22. It’s because the meaning of masculinity is actually warped in modern culture. People will cling to negatives to have a target.

    The opposite of being masculine isn’t feminine like everyone tends to believe. No, the opposite of masculinity is childishness.

    Often people mistake power for control, when in reality it’s respect that true power comes from.

    In today’s culture we see a man crying as a sign he’s weak. A body builder that’s 300 lbs. Getting abused by a woman he loves that’s 99 lbs soaking wet is somehow funny to them, when in reality he loves her so much he internalizes the pain in hopes to get back what he once had with her. It’s sad, not funny.

    The preconceived notion that men are meant to be meat puppets of testosterone and aggression while also being completely emotionless is utterly inconceivable and yet it’s true.

    You’ll hear women quote “teach boys not to rape” when in reality every man knows how wrong it is, it’s worse than murder because the victim lives on. The thought only women can get raped is revolting, and the thought that it’s treated like comedy and replied with “at least you got laid” just makes it that much worse.

    True equality is making the statement true regardless of what gender is where. (LGBTQ+ I know there’s asexual and non binary beings, but I’m simplifying my points by a large degree.)

    Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had a warped view between how the sex’s “should be”, but like anything in time things will be brought through trial and error. We keep what works and drop what doesn’t.

    Fun history fact: it used to be illegal for men to go shirtless, that’s why we had tshirts. We fought for it and won and it’s perfectly normalized now to see some farmer working shirtless. Now a days it’s the women’s turn with free the nipple.

    But to get to the point; humans are social creatures and as social creatures we want a place to belong. But to belong means to conform to said group, religion, ideology, movement, political, race and so on. Sadly we’re also known for turning a blind eye to horrors in order to advance our personal objectives. And often it’s the loudest guy in the room that gets the most attention, and that’s where they get their followers.

    Long as there’s an enemy, there’s a focus for that group to keep it from fighting itself or in some cases instigate a fight within.

    The notion that just because you got a dick, means you should be able to handle anything thrown at you like a Spartan trained at birth is braindead and should be rectified quickly.

  23. ITT:

    OP: Men have a problem.

    Reddit: How do we make this about women’s problems, so men are still bad?

  24. Its usually used in a way as pushback against the narrative that women are uniquely under attack in our societies.

  25. Women do not give the sympathy they so crave. Sympathy only runs in one directions with women. They horde sympathy, constantly looking for more while giving none in return. Women hate the idea of some other group threatening their supply.

    Women have also been raised in a culture of hatred toward men. The last thing they want is to feel sympathy for the people they see as their enemy.

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