CMV: “Men are violent” is an overused and often terrible excuse for shitty behavior from women and is misandry

Most violence comes from men is a true statement. Often it’s read and spoken as if to imply the converse - most men are are violent - which is rather not true.

From my experience, stating that "most violence comes from men" is used almost exclusively as a way to dismiss male victims and violence from women. It's done to explicitly frame issues like domestic violence as "women's issues" when actual data suggests that men are victims nearly half the time and women are perpetrators nearly half the time. It does a disservice to male victims while obfuscating female wrongdoing.

At the end of the day, so what if the language is imperfect? It would be better if their language was less divisive… but I don’t think you truly get anywhere by retorting misandry.

Using language accurately matters. It also matters how important issues are framed and contextualized using language, especially when that framing is explicitly designed to ignore a large portion of victims and perpetrators. This creates the false impression that men are almost always perpetrators of violence and women are almost always victims of violence. Our cultural understanding of these issues has an effect on law, policy, and public discourse.

/r/changemyview Thread Parent