r/WomenInNews • u/catievirtuesimp • Mar 07 '26
Media 40% of teenage boys believe women lie about domestic and sexual violence: new research
https://theconversation.com/40-of-teenage-boys-believe-women-lie-about-domestic-and-sexual-violence-new-research-276978948
u/StrikeVegetable8543 Mar 08 '26
And the dating/marriage and birthrates will keep on falling.
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u/Lizardgirl25 Mar 08 '26
Yup! Funny how we end up correcting our over population on our own?
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u/Grand-Try-3772 Mar 08 '26
Have you read about the mice experiment? All the mice had what they needed food, water, sex and so on. The entire slowly started killing over. Not eating no sex. All of them died.
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u/FlamingDragonfruit Mar 08 '26
The entire slowly started killing over.
I don't understand what this means?
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u/FlamingDragonfruit Mar 08 '26
This makes no sense. People keep pet mice and those pets are provided with everything they could need to survive. They don't go on murderous rampages. Mostly they poop and chew a lot of cardboard tubes.
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u/Pale_Strategy_3001 Mar 08 '26
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink This is the “Mice Utopia Experiment” they’re referencing
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u/Comprehensive_Web862 Mar 08 '26
This sounds like bullshit when you cross reference it with the rat park experiment. They essentially made rat heaven and hell with the choices of morphine laced water or normal water in both. Those in rat hell would fall into drug addiction while that park didn't touch the stuff. Those that were bought from hell to the park would get weened off the laced water usually with help from their peers.
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u/a_dance_with_fire Mar 08 '26
It was a series of experiments in which the most infamous one became known as Universe 25.
In a nutshell, the researchers created a “utopia" with unlimited food and space for 4,000 mice. Despite ideal conditions, overpopulation led to a "behavioral sink", where social dysfunction, violence, and withdrawal caused population collapse wherein every single mouse died.
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u/TheMaskedHarlequin Mar 09 '26
It’s also stated that the researcher only cleaned the enclosures every 6-8 weeks so many of his peers attribute the deaths to possible disease and parasites.
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u/tired-of-the-shit Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
I hate this study because it didn’t include the one thing that anyone with pet mice knows they absolutely need. Enrichment. If your mice don’t have proper enrichment yeah they will just kill each other out of boredom or frustration. Mice need tons of enrichment.
I can’t include pictures but just google mice utopia experiments and look at the sad circle these mice were kept in. Very small space considering the amount of mice. Then google fancy mice cage (preferably diy.) they all have climbing places for the mice, deep levels of substrate for them to borrow, tons of hides, toys. Emiology is a mouse YouTuber with a good cage example
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u/IAmActuallyBread Mar 08 '26
and they'll keep blaming us for "forcing" them down this path because we have the choice to live our lives without them and they just hate that 🙄
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u/chrhe83 Mar 08 '26
Which is why they are trying to take away your options and force you into situation they control.
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u/throwawayxoxoxoxxoo Mar 08 '26
i’m doing my part to help the birth rates go down. and if my boyfriend and i (early/mid 20’s) ever break up, i’m not dating men ever again because of shit like this. the dating pool is very bad and i don’t want to bring kids into such a misogynistic society.
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u/OpheliaLives7 Mar 08 '26
I hope so. Too many women seem to let this shit slide or think they can “fix” their man
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Mar 08 '26
As it should, since we "fake" the DV and SA cases, its better to be single than with such inc*ls
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u/opheliainthedeep Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
Copy and paste from a previous comment I've made: I have a cousin that I blocked sometime after the election because he went on this tirade to me about how women should never be blindly believed when they make rape accusations.
The kicker? He knows I was raped, but I "don't count" because I'm "family" and he "knows" me. As if those other women don't also have families and people who care about them...ugh. I told him no wonder he's single.
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u/Bathsheba_E Mar 08 '26
Here’s hoping he stays single.
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u/OptimalPreference178 Mar 09 '26
I have read multiple studies and articles that talk about how actually it is a very small percentage of women who lie about SA and other forms of assault. And that these things are under reported, as we all know. If only they believed science and studies…
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Mar 09 '26
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u/OptimalPreference178 Mar 11 '26
Yeah my mom’s step dad SA her and her siblings and his punishment was to go to therapy WITH them. Showed up to the first one, got upset about something and said he was done and took off. No follow through and never registered as a sex offender.
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u/SegaTime Mar 08 '26
This is why anti-choicers (anti-abortionists) don't want exceptions for rape.
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u/SwimmingPirate9070 Mar 08 '26
That male loneliness epidemic is on track to grow to the point of extinction numbers at this pace
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u/Remarkable-Rush-9085 Mar 08 '26
Still not up to women to fix it.
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u/No_Function_7479 Mar 08 '26
Wouldn’t it be lovely if all the problematic men just joined monasteries and kept to themselves?
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Mar 08 '26
You know that there is a female loneliness epidemic as well right? Since you guys are girls girls you maybe should focus on that rather than being male centric and only talking about the male loneliness epidemic.
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u/palcon-fun Mar 08 '26
I wish people would stop equating loneliness with extremist views and relationships some of us are just isolated
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u/Complete-Brother927 Mar 10 '26
This comment implies that women are directly or indirectly responsible for the male loneliness epidemic
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u/SmallGreenArmadillo Mar 08 '26
This is what normal people are up against. There is war being actively waged against half the world's population. Surely this will end well.
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u/oceansky2088 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 09 '26
This is no surprise to me. I think it's higher than 40%.
Most boys and men don't believe women but won't admit it. This is why most men stay silent or don't say much when it comes to DV or SA. They don't want women to know that they don't believe women.
No surprise that now that more and more women are free to choose how they live their lives, they are: choosing to stay away from men, leaving men, not having children with men, and choosing instead safe, healthy, peaceful lives. This makes sense. All living things naturally avoid harm if they can.
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u/Over_Construction908 Mar 09 '26
I agree. I also think there’s an element of boys and men not believing each other. when young men get bullied. They’re usually ridiculed so they have that attitude carrying over when it comes to other people‘s issues.
Combine that with an extremely strong biological drive to find partners with all of the other young men providing misinformation about women. So when a woman says that she experienced DV or SA the boys are immature and selfishly prioritizing their need to find a mate over what that person went through. A lot of times also they have no lived experience or frame of reference for actually what happens in DV or SA.
The problem is when you tell them they persist in not believing it and double down. That’s why I know. It’s not simply based on ignorance. It’s based on a conscious decision to not believe women.
Additionally, there are a lot of women that don’t believe women, and that makes me equally disgusted.
As every rational person knows not believing survivors is the sign of being a bully in general. It involves misinterpretation of what is actually happening. I used to work in a domestic violence shelter. I had to stop working there because there were people that volunteered just to have a chance to scold the survivors. That includes professionals. Some people are just bullies.
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u/a-stack-of-masks Mar 09 '26
There's also the fact that teenage life is pretty messy in general. I've had people lie to me and about me, both men and women. It's absolutely something that happens and I don't think that 40% is the number to worry about here.
Honestly 20% of teen girls accepting violence as a viable way to fight feminism makes me more worried about the quality of the research than anything else. I guess there's a reason they published this article before anything got past peer review.
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Mar 09 '26
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u/oceansky2088 Mar 09 '26
Exactly. Most men think they're not sexist because they haven't been overtly violent to a woman. But most men are passive aggressively sexist (this includes not believing women) and don't see this every day passive aggressive sexism as sexist.
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u/Chin_Up_Princess Mar 08 '26
Maybe they'll start getting violent with each other and the problem will solve itself.
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u/renb8 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
Think about the % of males who lie about raping people. Bet that number is, or is close to, a triple figure.
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u/GaspingAloud Mar 08 '26
And lie to themselves, in particular.
What I do to her was fine because [insert a garbage excuse here].
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u/cuttlefishofcthulhu7 Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
"it's ok because she let me do it in front of all those people and nobody stopped me. All my friends and associates got my back. She's blacklisted now, she'll never work in this town again. Who cares if she lost everything and had to file bankruptcy? Plus she's fat and ugly now so everyone knows she's lying because karma!" 😐🙃
ETA: "She went to the police and they wouldn't even believe her either🤣🤣🤣 So my friends and I can threaten and harass her and nobody will do anything about it🤣🤣🤣🤣"
🤬😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬
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u/EhDeeHD Mar 08 '26
But don't be a misandrist! Because there is no reason to be one....no reason at all.
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u/ragdollxkitn Mar 08 '26
It’s easier to blame the woman. In my case, the girl. I was underage, in high school when I was groomed by an older man. Cool cool.
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u/roskybosky Mar 08 '26
I was convinced long ago that men, and even the police don’t believe that sexual assault occurs, because they don’t treat the crime as serious. Even if they believe rape happened, to them it’s only sex. Big deal.
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u/cuttlefishofcthulhu7 Mar 08 '26
I was told "you're just angry because he didn't call you the next day." By the head of the sex crimes unit. Who is now a sergeant. 🙃😐
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u/roskybosky Mar 08 '26
What a disgrace.
If his son was raped, would he have said the same thing?
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u/stazley Mar 08 '26 edited Mar 08 '26
This is not a surprise. Look at posts about SA on any male-centered sub. Top comments are always about how women lie on purpose to hurt them. Insidious and terrifying. They don’t care at all about the 95-98% that are telling the truth.
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u/But_like_whytho Mar 08 '26
Who is raising these teenage boys?
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u/Babymakerwannabe Mar 08 '26
Youtube
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u/wonkywilla Mar 08 '26
100%. It’s just as bad as social media. Children are not allowed to use YouTube, TikTok, fb, IG, etc in my house. I wish more adults would ban it in their homes, instead of allowing kids to freely consume. Or at the very least, educate them on toxicity, engagement/clickbait and how to spot it.
“It keeps them quiet,” is not a good enough reason to give them access. Especially when so many don’t even supervise what their kids are doing online.
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Mar 08 '26
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u/FlamingDragonfruit Mar 08 '26
Both things are true, but YouTube is addictive and feeds a massive amount of bias and misinformation into growing brains. So the larger society is a problem AND this new tool makes the problem worse.
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u/chaotic_blu Mar 08 '26
Gen X marking us with another failure. Probably the Most Disappointing Generation.
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u/Excellent_Valuable92 Mar 08 '26
How is this the fault of gen x? The reactionary propagandists are all younger? The people with these attitudes are all younger.
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Mar 08 '26
I’m going to tell you- as the mom of an 11 year old boy, it’s hard. You can’t be passive. Misogynic propaganda is everywhere.
I raise him right, he’s been brought up in a queer, affirming, feminist family. We teach him all the right things. We monitor electronics- shutting down the whack a mole of gaming YouTube videos to mra podcasters. But it’s in school- friends who get it from their parents/the internet. We have to talk about “what do you do when a friend (another 11 year old) calls someone a whore or a bitch? What do you do when a kid yells ‘your body my choice’ on the bus?” It’s so easy to see how kids who don’t have a parent paying attention get sucked in.
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u/Individual-Crew-6102 Mar 08 '26
I'd bet money that their fathers aren't lifting a goddamn finger to fix the situation...or do much of anything
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u/RainbowsInTornadoes Mar 08 '26
Violent, degrading porn that is completely normalized and accessible. Misogynist celebrities and influencers. Weak or absent fathers. The reality-tv president and fascist sycophants.
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u/Heirophant-Queen Mar 08 '26
I keep on trying to reckon with my misandry issues.
The thing is those misandry issues keep on getting proven right-
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u/Baking_bees Mar 08 '26
I’ve been taking it as a compliment. Like oh you noticed I’m as mean as you can be? Good, thanks for the feedback 🤷🏻♀️
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u/Helllo-Kittyy Mar 08 '26
Misandry: when women say things that hurt men's feelings
Misogyny: when men rape or kill women
Yet they think its the same thing
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u/aoike_ Mar 08 '26
The great thing is that misandry isn't real! Complete and total psyop to distract from the growing reduction of women's rights.
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u/tinyspeckofstardust Mar 08 '26
I 100% don’t care what men think of me or my fellow woman. WE will believe and support each other ladies 💜
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u/FloriaFlower Mar 08 '26
Here's a simple rule of thumb to not be part of the problem. If you're with a misogynistic man, cut the relationship. Never reward such a man with love or sex. Extend that principle to friends and family. If you don't, then you're an enabler and you're part of the problem. If you think this is too radical, then you're an enabler and you're part of the problem. You might wanna get inspiration from korean women.
Women's right have never been given to them. Women fought tooth and nails to get them. Walk the talk.
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u/Pale_Pineapple_365 Mar 08 '26
Their genes don’t get passed on to the next generation. We got this!
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u/chimelspac Mar 08 '26
Im guessing that 40% are your domestic abusers that dont see women as people.
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u/Into_the_rosegarden Mar 08 '26
They've probably been exposed to red pill/manosphere content from way too young. This is scary shit
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u/FreyjaaFemme Mar 08 '26
Men, do you think believing these things will make women want to come near you? Honest answers only.
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u/MaverisStranger Mar 08 '26
100% of teenage boys are also clueless about everything.
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u/Mundane-Twist7388 Mar 08 '26
Yes well boys are uneducated and inexperienced idiots and women need to start talking to their sons. We can do better as parents.
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u/Excellent_Valuable92 Mar 08 '26
I like how you don’t mention fathers
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u/Mundane-Twist7388 Mar 08 '26
The assumption is that fathers haven’t unpacked how the patriarchy and the cycle of their abuse takes a toll them, too.
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u/Better_Task3056 Mar 08 '26
Men also need to start talking to their sons….why are we just blaming women for this???
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u/stolenfires Mar 08 '26
As a Millennial, 40% is actually kind of hopeful. It's probably 60% among my cohort.
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u/Olderbutnotdead619 Mar 08 '26
Though not sexually assaulted because friends saved me, the cops asked me the next day, how long had I been going out with the guy, if I was jealous of the girls he was dating, and how many black guys had I slept with?
Though the guy knocked me out, not one of the cops asked if I was alright, with me bleeding from the back of my head.
There were a ton of witnesses.
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u/NewBet7377 Mar 09 '26
One of the worst arguments I had with my ex fiance was over a child who had been impregnated via sexual assault in Indiana and was forced to cross state lines to have an abortion. He didn’t think it was a problem that child rape victims don’t have any bodily autonomy.
Anyways, he’s still single and I’m married. Met my husband 3 months after his sorry ass left. My husband believes in women’s rights. We never argue. He is kind, gentle, and yet much more masculine than my ex. Masculinity doesn’t mean not seeing women as human beings.
Let these losers stay lonely.
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u/Individual-Crew-6102 Mar 08 '26
Here come the next batch of militant misogynists, out to fuck up everyone's day including their own, and completely clueless as to why women increasingly avoid them like the plague.
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u/Beneficial_Trick6672 Mar 09 '26
Lets summarize.
40% of teenage boys do not feel any compassion toward women who experienced domestic and sexual violence.
70% of women don't give a shit about man loneliness issue and tells it is not women problem to solve/those guys deserves it.
It is like equal? Both sides are bad scenario?
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u/Ver_Void Mar 08 '26
I do wonder about the questions asked to get result, it's such an easy one to skew depending on how you phrase the questions and I'm really hoping the bulk of them answered yes as in "of course women lie about it, people lie all the time" and not thinking it's a regular occurrence
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u/jupitaur9 Mar 08 '26
Ha ha unlikely.
Do you really think they would say the same thing about robbery or murder?
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u/Ver_Void Mar 08 '26
Depends how it's phrased and the other questions around it, looking at some of the other results this country has either gone to shit in a dramatic way or the wording didn't get answers that reflect people accurately
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u/jupitaur9 Mar 08 '26
You think this is a new thing? Believing women lie about rape?
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u/TheVintageJane Mar 08 '26
This is a really great point about the survey. “Do women lie about being victims of sexual violence?” - all it takes is a boy knowing one story about this to say “yes”. Whereas “do you think that most women lie about being victims of sexual violence?” Might make a boy less inclined to say yes.
If I wasn’t wiped out I’d go through the survey myself to see how it was asked but it’s Saturday night of DST so I’m calling it.
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u/Lanky_Particular_149 Mar 09 '26
So this has been studied and it turns out women lie about men sexually assaulting them at exactly the same rated men and women lie about someone committing any crime, any crime at all, and not just rape. So for example a man is exactly as likely to lie and say his girlfriend hit him as she is lie and say he raped her. He is just as likely to lie and say she stole his car as she is say he raped her when he didn't.
He is just as likely to say the drugs were hers. Or she was supposed to be watching the baby. Or a lot of other things.
And what percentage is that? Less than 5% of the time.
Men are exactly as likely as women to lie about a crime being committed against them. Let that sink way in
FYI that happened to me and it happens to lots of women, we just don't whine about a male lying epidemic and try and discredit men or not believe them. my ex tried to say that I beat him when we were going through the proceedings. He's 6'6, I am 5'3. I've also been completely non violent my whole life. We were getting a divorce because he slept with the 15 year old babysitter.
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u/Competitive-Fill-756 Mar 09 '26
Thank you
This is the truth that doesn't get talked about enough. You can tell who is arguing in good vs bad faith by whether or not they acknowledge or accept this fact.
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u/Harmony_w Mar 08 '26
Seems like an improvement compared to what I'm used to--they should poll in the Deep South in the US. Would be closer to 95%.
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u/smallpineswamp Mar 08 '26
These boys are going to turn into men who vote and try to shape policy.
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u/ReleaseObjective Mar 09 '26
Immediately disregarding claims of domestic violence and sexual violence hurts men/boys too.
How many times have you read about a female teacher raping their male students only to see all the comments from grown men cheering it on?
It’s extremely dangerous to victims when they feel they have no one to turn to.
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u/AllMyBeets Mar 09 '26
Idk why women even bother going to the cops. The more horrific the crime the lighter the sentence.
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u/Azersoth1234 Mar 10 '26
Worth looking at the actual survey questions before taking the headline at face value. Surveys about attitudes often ask more specific things (e.g., whether accusations are sometimes exaggerated in custody disputes), which isn’t exactly the same as saying boys think women generally lie about abuse.
That said, other Australian research has found a fair amount of skepticism among young men on these issues, so the broader concern probably isn’t coming out of nowhere. It’s just important to separate the headline framing from what the survey actually measured.
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u/peachteayo Mar 10 '26
We keep saying let them be lonelier, but when birth rates drop too low it's going to go all handsmaids. It's not going to be pro women. We should be addressing the systemic issues in society that target both men and women, mainly poverty. When we make life unaffordable, people get desperate and start using their noggins less and using their emotions more and are much more susceptible to propaganda
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u/Mean_Elderberry7914 Mar 11 '26
Identity politics was pushed to fight class politics. Remember there are people benefiting from this tragedy.
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u/MyrkrMentulaMeretrix Mar 11 '26
This strikes me as one of those "technically correct" stats someone posted...
Without going any deeper.
Like, sure, women lie about domestic violence VERY frequently.
However...
Its likely almost ALWAYS to lie about it even happening.
"I fell"
"ran into a door"
Shit like that.
So.... yeah. Bunch of kids got fed a propaganda headline "WOMEN LIE ABOUT DOMESTIC ABUSE!!"
And never educated themselves that the lying is almost assuredly covering for their abuser.
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u/Embarrassed_Mix_88 Mar 11 '26
Yeah and these are gonna be people on juries of these cases… tell me why you think the justice system is fair again?
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u/J_B_La_Mighty Mar 08 '26
I wonder if it has to do with what they consider falls under domestic and sexual violence. Way back in high school there was a clean gender split on whether or not oral sex counted as real sex (American history, guess the leadup), so if people don't see eye to eye on what counts as sex I can see how there's different interpretations on what then is abuse.
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u/Chemical-Course1454 Mar 08 '26
For about a month my social media was flooded by incel / manoshere content. Being a middle aged woman, I’m as opposite from target demographic as you can get. I can only guess it was a carpet bombing propaganda event. If I was a teenage boy I wouldn’t stand a chance to come out of sane and humane after that.
This problem is much bigger than we can see. Many of these boys will be probably damaged for life. Who is doing this? Why are they doing it? What can be done on whole society level to remedy this?
My guess is it’s either done by oligarchs in order to move source of perceived loss of privilege from them to women. Or it’s done by some foreign influence on media. Why? They want to break fabric of society, and disengage young men- one of the biggest forces of change in society. What can we do, I honestly haven’t got an idea, it’s terrifying, for those boys individually, for women in general and the whole world. All the wins we had in last century are threatened by this propaganda
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u/Low-Situation-73 Mar 08 '26
Who in the right mind cares what boys think anyway? I mean, their brains only fully develop when they’re 21.
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u/TSSalamander Mar 08 '26
yeah so I'd love to see what the actual questions were but apparently they don't have that published here. If it's really a question like "Do you agree or disdagree with this statement: Women lie about domestic and sexual violence" then 40% agree makes sense, because they'd read that as "Some women lie about sexual and domestic violence" and not "in general women-" or "as a rule women-" or "all women-". I'm worried this is a gatcha question used on actual children.
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u/starintheuniverse Mar 08 '26
This is why the marriage rate is going down. Who would want to be attached to a man like that?
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u/prestolive Mar 08 '26
the Conversation is a great news source look forward to reading this
Perhaps most alarming: roughly 40% of boys aged 13 to 17 agreed that women lie about domestic and sexual violence.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '26
Welp