To this day, she remembers the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on her legs, the sweaty palms. She had shared a photograph of herself in her underwear with a boy she trusted and, very soon, it had been sent around the school and across her small home town, Aberystwyth, Wales. She became a local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Younger kids would approach her laughing and ask for a hug. Members of the men’s football team saw it – and one showed someone who knew Davies’s nan, so that’s how her family found out.
Her book, No One Wants to See Your D*ck, takes a deep dive into the negatives. It covers Davies’s experiences in the digital world – that includes cyberflashing such as all those unsolicited dick pics – as well as the widespread use of her images on pornography sites, escort services, dating apps, sex chats (“Ready for Rape? Role play now!” with her picture alongside it). However, the book also shines a light on the dark online men’s spaces, what they’re saying, the “games” they’re playing. “I wanted to show the reality of what men are doing,” says Davies. “People will say: ‘It’s not all men’ and no, it isn’t, but it also isn’t a small number of weirdos on the dark web in their mum’s basements. These are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites such as Reddit, Discord and 4chan. These are men writing about their wives, their mums, their mate’s daughter, exchanging images, sharing women’s names, socials and contact details, and no one – not one man – is calling them out. They’re patting each other on the back.”
I agree, and in my opinion, women and partners in general need to get better at leaving piece of shit men (or shitty partners in general). Many of them keep acting like this cause they get away with it after some small talk and a nice dinner just to be a piece of shit again next week. I’ve known girls who date men who genuinely claim that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote and all i can think is “why is this girl staying with someone who hates them?”
I agree, and in my opinion, women and partners in general need to get better at leaving piece of shit men (or shitty partners in general)
I understand you’re being well-intentioned but this is such a great example of how society has failed to recognize these partners as victims as it continues to put the onus on the victim to deal with the abuser.
- We don’t tell addicts “just say no” anymore because we (largely) understand it’s ineffective against a health issue.
- We don’t tell people with depression “stop being sad.”
- We understand people can be brainwashed/emotionally and mentally manipulated to unbelievable extremes - watch any of the hundreds of cult documentaries that have come out over the last decade.
- You don’t tell someone who was robbed “you should’ve had better security/lived somewhere else.”
TL;DR: Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance. The abuser needs to be dealt with. You are putting too much of the onus on the victims (and in some ways the blame as well though I highly doubt that’s your intention) when you say “they need to take responsibility and leave.”
The fact that you know someone who stays with someone who thinks she shouldn’t vote should tell you how seriously difficult this all is.
I don’t understand your argument and you haven’t addressed the issue at hand.
Please spell out for me why a woman in a relationship with a man who believes that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, can’t exit that relationship?
Victims of abuse are victims
Note that the person you responded to didn’t mention abuse, you introduced the term “abuse”. We’re talking about women in relationships with assholes, not abused women.
Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance.
You may better understand what someone is saying if you respond to their whole sentence and not just the part you wanted to attack.
Abuse is abuse regardless of how small you as an outsider perceive it. Women in relationships with assholes who believe they should have no rights are always being abused by the aforementioned asshole.
Have you forgotten the entire context of this thread? Did you even glance at the article? They also talked about women “not leaving piece of shit men” and a man who doesn’t want his partner to vote. Can you really not infer anything from that?
Victims of abuse are victims who need external assistance.
Agreed. Assistance, implementation of which requires understanding of why they’re not leaving those assholes, worse, returning to them, or fall into the same pattern with a different asshole, all on their ostensibly free will.
The question is “how can the capability to leave the abuser be built”. It involves, in one way or the other, a change in the victim. Getting better at leaving pieces of shit.
Seriously I have difficulty, and this might be male perspective, to equate “need to get better at” with the frame “you’re at fault”. At some point, I needed to get good at cooking. Was it my fault that I couldn’t cook? Nope. It’s not like I didn’t show interest as a kid, it’s that noone ever bothered to actually teach me anything, so I didn’t know anything. Still had to get good at it. It’s a problem so you solve it. Why would I care wasting my breath blaming my upbringing it only distracts from learning. It can provide an excuse, but excuses don’t make dinner.
Ah, fuck it, let’s risk it. My edgetake on why some women end up again and again with assholes: Because noone told them (early enough?) that they can go to a kind guy, start a tickle fight, and get all the thrill they’ll ever want. It’s a function of attraction to the capability to throw down.
Unfortunately this is a very gendered/male take, I agree with that. You’re falling into the same pits I described above. You’re essentially saying “just nut up and do it.” Comparing it to overcoming the inertia of not cooking for yourself is, frankly, bizarre to me. That isn’t the same situation at all. Your kitchen isn’t some force conspiring against you. Your cookware isn’t changing tactics and emotionally manipulating you or taking away your phone.
We understand people can be brainwashed/emotionally and mentally manipulated to unbelievable extremes - watch any of the hundreds of cult documentaries that have come out over the last decade.
Steven Hassan’s BITE model is a good start for that kind of information, the interesting thing being that a lot of those cult-manipulation techniques are visible in anything from individual relationships (not just romantic ones either, parent/child in either direction, “friends”,…) over cults and religions to workplaces and political movements.
We should have social systems to help people over come those fears and protect them from threats, both physical and financial. No one should be forced to be with someone they fear because of finances, childcare, safety, or loneliness.
Not all shitty partners induce fear. I’ve known some girls who are just head over heels due to how attractive, wealthy, or mostly sweet a guy is. The good times outshine the bad times and they get into the “i can fix him” mentality. My brother is like that where he has gotten away with cheating with nearly every partner he has had. It usually takes the girl months to finally leave him and say its been enough. Hes the chad gym type and genuinely doesn’t have to try to pull women. Any time they threaten to leave he gets all sweet, shows up with gifts and acts romantic and sexy just to get caught cheating again next week.
We need to be hard on ourselves sometimes and push manipulative people out of our lives. I think an erosion of IRL friendships has influenced this trend as well. I used to know girls who would band together to help a girl get rid of a shitty guy they were infatuated with but that is much harder to do online than in person.
We should have social systems to help people over come those fears and protect them from threats, both physical and financial. No one should be forced to be with someone they fear because of finances, childcare, safety, or loneliness.
I don’t disagree with that. I would support that in a heartbeat if I had the funds to do so.
Not all shitty partners induce fear. I’ve known some girls who are just head over heels due to how attractive, wealthy, or mostly sweet a guy is. The good times outshine the bad times and they get into the “i can fix him” mentality.
Sure, not all shitty partners, but there is often more going on behind closed doors than many people realize.
My brother is like that where he has gotten away with cheating with nearly every partner he has had. It usually takes the girl months to finally leave him and say its been enough. Hes the chad gym type and genuinely doesn’t have to try to pull women. Any time they threaten to leave he gets all sweet, shows up with gifts and acts romantic and sexy just to get caught cheating again next week.
That’s called “love bombing” and is a common part of the cycle of abuse.
We need to be hard on ourselves sometimes and push manipulative people out of our lives. I think an erosion of IRL friendships has influenced this trend as well. I used to know girls who would band together to help a girl get rid of a shitty guy they were infatuated with but that is much harder to do online than in person.
I don’t disagree with that, however, people like this tend to worm their way into positions of authority like a parasite that you can’t get rid of. The fact that they often have zero issues lying through their teeth to get you on “their side” is a massive issue that many of the general public simply cannot grasp (“why would my wife/husband/preacher/friend/etc lie to me?” etc…).
It gets even worse when someone like that gets their hands on the very methods used to build those organizations and tears them all down. See the current state of the USA for example. I lived with an abusive partner for 11 years, and there is an unbelievable amount of parallels between them and the current US administration. What they are doing right now is incredibly triggering, knowing that I essentially have no escape from it.
These women don’t leave because these men are narcissistic assholes who have destroyed their self-esteem and made them think they are worthless and won’t find anything better and can’t live on their own.
