A gray area in my eyes. As a father, I think it's good that my daughter uses the app.
You only need to look at the statistics to see how many women are killed by their male partners every year.
It's harmful to spread this kind of fear. Statistically it's less than 0.05% of women die because they are killed by their partner. This puts a stigma on men in general as some sort of dangerous savages.
As a man, I find it absurd and even dangerous to not attach some stigma to men. That you feel the need to invoke "dangerous savages" is maybe your own prerogative, but by any sober and fact-based analysis it is indisputable that women are justified in acting cautiously when dealing with strange men.
Most violence is perpetrated by men. If you're only response to that hard, cold fact is some stat about infanticide, maybe you're not honestly grappling with the issue.
And yet domestic violence is equally done by men and women, except that most men don't report the abuse because of people like you who act like it doesn't happen. It's disappointing.
You bring up fact based analyses. Let's see what they have to say.
> Over two hundred studies found that men and women perpetrate intimate partner violence at roughly equivalent rates, depending on where the samples are drawn from, and what level of violence is identified. (Dutton and Nicholls, 2005).
I'm justified in acting cautiously when dealing with strange pit bulls, too. That isn't the same as saying pit bulls deserve to be stigmatized. Or I don't think it is.
I think the problem is not the statement, but the conclusion.
Do we have more physical violence from men towards women than the opposite? I think I saw that the reality is yes. Does it mean that men are biologically coded to be violent, or is it a question of education and culture?
If you conclude the second one, it is not "sexist" (on the contrary, it may even be that the culture that creates the problem is itself rooted in sexism and that acknowledging some reality about its existence may help changing this culture), and does not imply prejudice against men, just acknowledging that we need to be careful in case of bad apples.
It still means that talking about this requires to be very careful.
To react on your example, I think it is a good think to notice if some population have a bigger problem at this subject than others, and we can then identify more easily the places where this problem forms and target these places. But people who concludes "look at violence divided by race, so I can generalise and be prejudicial to everyone in some race and not other" are idiots.
The statistics is a bit more complex and nuanced than giving straight answers. Studies looking at any form of violence in partner relationships shows both women and men having equal amount. When looking at physical violence, especially those that lead to people being charged with a crime, men are over-represented in heterosexual relationships.
However, homosexual relationships has equal rate of partner violence as heterosexual ones. A bisexual woman that has a relationship with an other woman will double her rate of physical violence compare to relationship with a man (statically). A man who has a relationship with an other man will half his rate of violence. This makes no sense at all (unless we believe that sexual orientation is an factor for violent behavior), unless we add a additional factor of sexual dimorphism. Men are on average larger and more muscular, and there seems to be a correlation between being the larger/stronger and using physical strength/fists during a fight. The smaller person is in return more likely to use tools or other means of violence. Statistically, fist also has a higher probability to do damage than improvised weapons, since people are more proficient in using their fists.
Does it mean men are biologically coded to be violent? No. Is it a question about education and culture. Maybe in some countries/cultures, and it wouldn't hurt to use the education system to teach people conflict resolution. Getting people who are physically larger to not exploit that fact during a heated fight is likely a hard problem to solve on a population level.
I think "any form of violence" is not a constructive direction. First, this ends up being very subjective: between 2 forms of psychological violence, which one is the most violent? Secondly, if indeed it is cultural, it implies that different sub-culture may have different ways of acting, so we can always play the subgroups to make it says whatever we want. But most importantly, it is not very relevant for our context: in the case of the first interactions during heterosexual dating, pretending that men risk as much as women seems a very unconvincing claim, for several reasons (even if under-represented it should be under-represented to an unrealistic level to reach an equal level, and it also does not fit with plenty of cultural tropes (I can find a video explaining explicitly that manly men need to dominate their female partner. I'm sure it exists, but the simple fact that I cannot easily find a video explaining explicitly that womenly women need to dominate their male partner shows it's not that of a trope. On the other hand, I can also easily find videos about "trad wife" that will explain that a womenly woman must be with a dominating man))
For the rest, I think we say the same thing: talking about the visible issues is not a problem in itself, but people instrumentalising these issues to be racist or sexist are the problem.
The technical term of "any form of violence" seems to be Partner Abuse, and the definition is: "violence refers to behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours."
The primary motives are to get back at a partner for emotionally hurting them, because of stress or jealousy, to express anger and other feelings that they could not put into words or communicate, and to get their partner’s attention.
The idea that women are unable of violent behavior, or immune to wanting to take revenge for being emotional hurt or stressed, seems utterly unlikely. Especially young adults who might lack the tools and experience to avoid falling into violent responses.
To quote a different finding: Eight studies directly compared men and women in the power/control motive and subjected their findings to statistical analyses. Three reported no significant gender differences and one had mixed findings. One paper found that women were more motivated to perpetrate violence as a result of power/control than were men, and three found that men were more motivated; however, gender differences were weak
Asking if "men risk as much as women" is a very different question however. If a woman throws a knife at a man, and a man hits a woman in the face, who carry the highest risk? Statically, the fist is going to do significant more damage on average than the knife, as throwing a knife (especially a non-throwing knife), hitting the target, and creating damage is fairly unlikely for a non-proficient attacker. If the attacks was recorded on camera/witnessed, one would be an attack with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill, and the other would be physical assault.
The point is that partner violence is a complex problem, which only simple aspect being that both women and men are humans.
If it's almost all about the size of the specific two people in a relationship, it's a terrible terrible idea to aggregate that by gender, leading to completely misplaced wariness and judgement.
It feels a bit like saying "there is a bug in software X, but there is also a bug in software Y, so let's not fix the bug in software X".
Of course, men also suffer from problems.
It even feels that it is usually also due to machismo or something similar.
Sometimes, it feels like the majority of men's problem is in fact self-inflicted by the manosphere. They both complain of suicide rate, army draft, violence against men, but they also promote a culture of not-showing-emotion-otherwise-you-are-not-manly, a-man-is-worthless-if-they-dont-succeed, army-is-manly-and-women-are-weak, a-man-should-show-dominence-and-other-men-are-a-threath, ...
People likes to see things in black or white, but the reality is more complicated, and there is no advantages that does not bring also some disadvantages.
Calling it "extremely idiosyncratic" is not indicative of reality:
> Black people are the most likely to experience domestic violence—either male-to-female or female-to-male—followed by Hispanic people and White people.2
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national intimate partner and sexual violence survey: 2010-2012 state report.
> Asian people are the least likely to experience intimate partner violence.[1]
You misunderstood my comment and instead gave examples that further support the idea that race relations in America are unique and particular to our history and geography. That's why race statistics in the US are not well-suited for cross-cultural comparison, let alone for drawing gargantuan conclusions about inherent racial traits (as racists are often looking to do).
The risk of females being murdered by an intimate partner is five times higher than for males. And murder is just the very end of the spectrum.
And by definition, calling out men, is not racism.
Are there other groups that are 5x more likely to commit murder? Even if there are, IMO we shouldn't judge every member of that group for the actions of a small minority
It's better to think in terms of overall life damage and "quality of life years lost". I think it's very debatable which side loses more from getting involved in relationships.
In my opinion, it's dangerous to consider absolute numbers alone in this context. Saying something like, "Less than 0.02% of paragliders die because of the sport," can be misleading. When nn reality, the chance of dying from paragliding is 1000 times higher than in football. When I choose my next hobby, this information is very useful.
Statistically that is a rather small number. But if we take the number of women in say, America, a web search says 334.9 million. 0.05% of that is 167,450. That is quite a lot of women being killed by their partner.
According to the UNODC[1], in 2023, the rate of all murders of women in the US was 0.00205%. (2.05 per 100,000) Partner violence appears to account for ~34% of violence against women[2] (but vs. 6% for men), so that would be 0.697 per 100k or ~0.0007%, or ~1190 women/yr in the US[3]. Assuming I've done the math right… the risk is more than two orders of magnitude smaller than what you came up with.
> Partner violence appears to account for ~34% of violence against women[2] (but vs. 6% for men)
And this is sort of the point of the comment higher up: when you cut the stat this way, it seems like men are wildly dangerous creeps. But it is a statistic comparing one group to another group. We need to instead look at the absolute rate of partner violence to decide if men are on the whole violent murders or so, and there, the overall risk is low.
> when you cut the stat this way, it seems like men are wildly dangerous creeps.
Not exactly. The statistics didn't specify the gender identity of the perpetuator, just the relationship to the victim and the gender identity of the victim.
I don't know were you have this numbers from, but in 2021 34% of women were killed by partner and 76% of women where killed by a known person (family, friends, colleges, partner) [1].
Your wording here is clumsy. You're saying that 34% of the adult female population was murdered by their partner. I'm assuming you meant female murder victims and not women in general?
I agree with you that in the context, your stats maybe make more sense. But if you're going to correct someone, you generally should recognize what they were trying to communicate in the first place.
I don't want to imply that someone tried to find the smallest possible number in order to deliberately misunderstand my comment, but we are still in the context of the dating app.
I keep seeing the defense for Tea as an app for women’s safety, which is of course a valid concern. Wouldn’t it make more sense for a service to exist, like some kind of enforcement service provided by the government, where others can report safety concerns and that service goes and does something about it legally?
If such a service exists and isn’t being too effective, shouldn’t that be worked on?
My guess is that there’s more to the reasons for why Tea is popular but the safety argument is largely being used to defend it
> Wouldn’t it make more sense for a service to exist, like some kind of enforcement service provided by the government, where others can report safety concerns and that service goes and does something about it legally?
Online men-dominated forums often dislike and feel personally attacked by people talking about sexual abuse/harassment done by other men. I guess they immediately imagine themselves being falsely accused of such acts, rather than being a woman that is attacked.
I think groups in general feel personally attacked by things that attack people on the basis of their immutable group characteristics. Notably women dislike and feel attacked by unqualified statements like "women are crazy" or calling someone a "karen". Black people dislike and feel attacked when people talk about "ghetto trash" or "welfare queens".
Sure any individual discussion about an individual might justifiably refer to that person as "crazy" or "ghetto trash". But the nature of online spaces, and the nature of the public discourse that tends to bring these phrases and discussions into the public eye very quickly starts painting people with broad brushes.
People also feel attacked because often times discussions tend to confuse useful rhetorical devices for conveying a point with justification for a behavior that has harmful impacts on the broader group. For example, it was pretty common to here the "bowl of M&Ms where one M&M is poisoned" analogy in the height of the "Me Too" movement. It's a useful rhetorical device for explaining why someone would fell cautious about a strange man, and why they wouldn't start from a position of trust. But it's also a terrible way of generally treating men in your life, and a terrible broad philosophy for organizations and governments to follow.
And we know this rhetorical device makes bad policy and at large is harmful to innocent people because another time in recent history when that analogy was really popular was immediately after the Sept 11 attacks when talking about Muslims in general and immigrants from Muslim countries. Surely no one would find it strange that Muslims might dislike and feel personally attacked by "people talking about crimes and terrorism done by other Muslims" in the same way that many online spaces talk about "sexual abuse/harassment done by other men". Surely we wouldn't be surprised if people felt attacked or disliked an app for sharing anonymous and private information about suspicious Muslims right? Or let's say someone noticed that black people are statistically 2x as likely relative to their population to be the offender of a violent crime[1]. You'd reasonably expect people to be bothered by an app that excluded black people from signing up and was entirely about strangers providing un-verified experiences with black people under the premise of keeping people safe.
Ultimately, people are bad at statistics and really bad at understanding the degree to which a small minority of individuals can affect a large majority of people by virtue of repeat offending. So it can be true both that lots of people have completely valid awful experiences with members of a given broad group, and that members of that group feel unfairly maligned when discussion about those experiences paints with broad, unqualified strokes.
Women talking about their history sexual violence do not attack you or group you are a part of. Bringing some of these normalised actions to light do not attack you unless you’re a rapist yourself.
With a statement like: “men have caused countless wars in the world and created an incredible amount of suffering and injustice as a result.” No “normal” man would feel addressed and say “But women ...”
You are probably unaware of unintended consequences enabled by this app - many women use it to find bad boys they feel attracted to due to some brokenness in female psyche. So you'll get public outrage on one hand and private DMs on the other from them, based on how bad you are described/vetted by other women on the app.
If you had a son, would you think it's good spiteful women from his past were labeling him some kind of abuser on TEA when he has no way to know these allegations even exist?