Why are we all scared? Statistically we are safer than we have ever been. Pinker wrote the book “the better angels of our nature”, in it he claims that research has shown that this era is less violent, less cruel, and more peaceful than any period in history.

Walking with my fiancé we discussed the news of the day, the subject is violence toward women. I ask, as I often do of course, what she thinks of the story. “Are women more in danger now than they were when we were in our 20s”? Her answer is no surprise, she thinks it has ever been this way, that a lone woman making her way home at night has always felt that they are potentially in danger from sexually aggressive lads that have drunken away all idea of a woman’s right to traverse the scene unmolested. I push on “have you ever felt unsafe”? She says she has, “many times”. “Have you ever been attacked or threatened”? “Never” she replies. Now, bear this in mind before going any further, I am not going to make light of such a serious issue, I just want to ask one thing if I may.

If a person feels threatened, but is never harmed, and this happens repeatedly, and if a person perceives danger many times, yet there is never danger, and if this feeling happens to every woman in every perceptually dangerous situation, yet, the occurrence of actual harm is almost immeasurably low so as to be negligible, then how does the very infrequent happening become the fundamental criteria for calling for a change in the fabric of a society? How can it be that something so rarely encountered can drive public outcry and cause the call forth of a mass rally of persons into the streets to wave banners and shout for something to be done, when the real problem, according to statistics, is much more likely to come from a familial relationship than from a stranger? (And maybe the inclusion of a genetic male into woman’s fighting sports for the sake of a skewed idea of fairness?)

Most cases where a woman is in actual danger occur in their own domestic setting, with their partner or another male member of their family, that’s just a fact. Many women are in danger for sure, it is likely from a man they know, a current partner or an ex. So why is the TV focussing on strangers this time as ever, is this a mistake? No not really, all danger to women is to be highlighted, it’s all serious. I’m just curious as to why there is not more said about domestic violence?

I suppose that the problem is with men, specifically when we think we might have a right to the attentions, great or small, of the women we happen to find attractive. I’m a fan of the idea that for all persons there should be an inalienable right, recognised, assimilated, taught from childhood, and reinforced as much as necessary, that any person at the very least owns the physical entity that they are, and that nothing should happen to it that is not clearly consented to by a person who is able to.

There are some issues with that position I will grant you, if unencumbered, it enables abortion, it means that a person cannot be conscripted in a time of war, it means that suicide is a legitimate action, it opens the door to the violation of the self in piercing and tattooing and removal of parts without restraint, etc etc.. but it’s as good as I can do.

And maybe, recognising something that religion always has (though their answer to it is an oppressive measure against women in covering them up or keeping them from sight, so not a real help), that men are overwhelmed and driven by urges, we need to instil the idea of what is not allowed or reasonable in them at an early age. Nobody with any sense is going to deny the fundamental urge or try to quell it, but we could work on the actions that follow yes?

We already use schooling and parenting to enforce societal norms, why not focus on this right and focus hard on it, why wait for the manifestation of the behaviour that does harm and then punish it after the fact? Could we as a society not get in front of it and prevent most of the misjudgement and misunderstanding that causes the problem? For me it is not the lust that is the issue, the lust will always be there. The church has tried to curb it over many centuries, punish it out of the young man, teach it out of him, make him feel bad about it, teach him to loath his evolutionary imperatives. But that doesn’t work, if anything it makes the desire more amplified and the act more erotic if it is linked to something forbidden. Lust will win against rhetoric, but it will not win against a secondary argument or preference that comes from within, that it is not your right to violate another person’s rights.

We live as we believe, and if we believe in our own rights sufficiently then we believe in them for others also, if we see those others as equals. In a society of gender equals, I must believe that women have the right to reject me if I think I have the right to reject them. Believing this means that no matter how much I might want them, and I do desire just like any other guy does many of the ones I see, I cannot have them by any other means than their own volition.

The reason why most of the women that are in danger from men are in domestic settings is that the men involved take the domestic setting to be the enabling factor for their ownership of, and consent from, the female partner they share it with. It is assumed falsely that consent to the body is a one time deal, like it is given and then it is forever, we see this when a man stalks his ex lover and eventually does her harm because he cannot let go of the idea that she is somehow his possession and he has a right to her.

This is different from a hatred or a jealousy, it is different from the emotional turmoil of simply not being wanted any longer, it is a step beyond what is reasonable. Disney movies, chart music, and other romantic nonsense have us believing that we can have what we want if we just want it hard enough, if we are willing to commit to wanting it. This happens with relationships too. In a reasonable relationship each partner is not a prisoner, a slave to the desires of the other.

The misogyny that people like Andrew Tate espouse posts the female as some daft animal that does not know its own mind, whose lust must be unlocked by the aggression of a man, an alpha. He captures something in his nonsense I think, there are some women who will naturally want that protective and overbearing type, but in modernity many women are much more interested in determining their own lives and pursuing their own opportunities, if enabled, than being kept on a leash by a neanderthal type dude. Some even want to be the alpha if there is such a thing.

I don’t know, this is speculation as always, I suppose it would be enhanced if a few women commented on it to put me right where I might be wrong and I welcome that. I am sure though that the suppression of lust can do nothing compared with the understanding of rights, rights is where it is at, rights are what should be taught.

Paul S Wilson