Party Vibe

@Angel 557846 wrote:

I do think women in Denmark take less crap or maybe we just have better support groups anf places for the women to go.
I do believe we are less dependent on men in Denmark compared to UK, but maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.

DK and nearby nations do have more assertive women who will challenge gender stereotypes and stand up for themselves, but this is not much different from the part of England I currently live in, and many parts of London and SE England Every 3 weeks the local Police put out a news report encouraging victims and wider communities to report domestic violence, and they make it clear that any gender, age group or sexuality could be either aggressor or victim. I have read similar press releases from Police Scotland and the Dutch Police, and they also acknowledge that its underreported where the aggressor is female or when it occurs within LGBT relationships.

The UK news reports are concentrating on a small section of a much larger report and make more mention of violence occuring within relationships.

The full report is broken down into tables of reported crime against women from all sources, and counts any incident of violence, not just sexual violence. Coincidentally I’ve just had a look at 112nederland and watched two videos from two major incidents in Groningen, NL. (NL comes second in the list if its sorted in descending order of violence outside relationships). One was a raid on a cannabis growing warehouse, which involved the use of dogs and soldiers! The other was where someone opened up all the gas taps at a housing co-operative and they had to evacuate the whole place and send in cops wearing body armour before the fire brigade.

both incidents had youtube videos linked where female police officers who were clearly of a senior rank and leading these operations were prominently featured.

I had previously watched a number of Dutch Government videos on youtube, and noticed that they always showed attractive blonde women working at traditionally male dominated environments such as the Kustwacht (Coastguard) and Agentschap Telecom (Communications Ministry). The AT one also had an Asian chap who was doing some complex technical stuff to track down the source of radio interference. I had assumed that this was just “political correctness” and had been done to attract “minority applicants” as some “EU initiative” – for difficult, unpleasant and unpopular jobs. I also spent a lot of time in the 1990s (illegally) listening in to the UK Emergency Services communications, as well as mobile and cordless phones and all sorts else which was then relatively easy to do) as well as watching the TV shows of police operations (so I could work out what was reported and what was hidden, including such things as gender tension amongst the cops/fire brigade etc or for that matter anyone else who used a mobile or cordless phone in the local area!)

NL has stronger laws about privacy than the UK, but more openness about allowing independent people to film authorities in action. There genuinely do seem to be a lot of strong women in these jobs. People are also very stubborn in their opinions (similar to this part of England) and if forced to do something by an authority figure tend to fight back.

If the same situation exists in DK these figures are always going to be high up, as emergency service workers, teachers, healthcare staff, and social workers etc who get attacked in the course of their jobs are more likely to report them than other sections of the community as they tend to be in environments where although conflict is inevitable it much is easier to get hard evidence against an offender.

They can also become victims of domestic violence as well, even the very intelligent middle class folk (similar to what happens amongst professionals in the high tech industries). So high figures do not necessarily mean any nation has a particular problem with diversity, it can often be completely the opposite. I think the UK has got a lot better in my lifetime at least amongst those in their 30s to those in their 70s, but there are some older people who have never accepted equality and diveisity and
a problem with younger people going back to old gender stereotypes and behaving even worse to each other than the days before “political correctness”.

@flinflinflin 557863 wrote:

Whilst we’re on the subject, Ide like to know what peoples views on catcalling (whistling when you find someone sexy) are??
The guardian (a very pro femminst paper) recently posted an article about it sayng it was a form of aggresion.
I sort of agree. Whilst I dont want to live in a world where we all keep our heads down so as not to offend someone, I do find it rude and it objectifies me. Now typically animals stare at one another to provoke aggesion – which is why its generally custom not to stare at people in public. Whena man catcalls a female – its no suprise she finds it uncomfortable.

But do men truly know this? Is it just an innocent mistake for something they intend to be nice at the time?

when I grew up in the 1980s it was seen as poor behaviour even by our Dads generation – doing it made you look even more uncool than your Dad and like a stereotypical 1970s comedy character of a low intelligence manual worker, so young lads didn’t! It must have resurfaced in the 1990s at some point, although real builders today rarely do it as they can often be disciplined on many sites (it has a bad impact on the reputation of the building companies, and often its women who are in charge of the company employing them!)

the new tech industries in liberal Europe and the USA especially startups are a lot worse than they were in the days when the industry was dominated by bigger companies made more “bad” things like surveillance kit and defence systems (and at least they were honest about it!)

@flinflinflin 557904 wrote:

I dont think these stats and figures are much to go by considering that some places have high levels of abuse, but low levels of it being reported.
Sweeden actually comes out really high for rape statistics, yet they have some of the best womens rights. – probably because they are more likely to report it. Also different countries have different laws on what is considered abuse.

The data gatherers themselves acknowledge that there is widespread underreporting, especially in Southern European countries, as well as the laws, many offences which in UK would be a sexual assault crime but not rape would be classed as rape under SE law.

Another factor in the increase may be that many public areas across Europe are heavily monitored by CCTV, cops, private security staff etc – an aggressive person who would previously have just got into a fight in town or vandalised some property to make themselves feel better now only gets arrested and banned from the night time economy venues and decides to stay at home and ends up attacking their partner or housemate.