Police association chief Dirk Peglow has stirred debate with his advice to women to avoid relationships with men for safety's sake. But his provocative tip is not without reason, as statistics show.
There is no way to predict the future. A lot of violence in relationship takes months/years to appear. Plenty of violent and abusive people have no criminal record or red flags. And the ones who are really good at it… know how to manipulate people and tend to be very charming and attractive. There is no ‘standard profile’ of an abuser.
Further lots of bad partners only drop their good person act once they have reached a level of security in the relationship. I had one girlfriend who only started physically attacking me once we had reached the stage of moving in. Because she finally felt she ‘had’ me and she could be her ‘real self’, and that ‘real self’ was a terrible person and her fake self had been wonderful. Her ‘feeling safe’ with me was what allowed her to slap, punch, and kick me. She was totally shocked and BETRAYED that I left her for her physical abuse, because I was a stupid man who didn’t understand that “I had made her really angry and she couldn’t help herself because she loves me so much!”
There’s plenty of men in similar situations. I have heard men basically describing that they have been sexually assaulted without them even understanding that they are victims. I got friends who would be considered victims of domestic violence if they were women
Hey stop listening to my conversations, that was in private!
Seriously though that happened to me lol. Had an ex ask “what were your worst sexual encounters” and she literally had to tell me those were all sexual assault (on me not by me).
One of them would legally be rape if she was a guy (maybe two actually) but in my state women can’t be charged with rape and even if they could good luck convincing a jury that I wasn’t actually “lucky” or I’m not “secretly gay” and she was hot so I “must have enjoyed it” anyway.
yes, because our society basically thinks female on male sexual assault is ‘getting lucky’. even when it’s female on male underage rape, the media portrays it as no big deal and the majority of the commentary is ‘that boy was so lucky’. but if it’s male on female, the male assaulter is the scum of the earth and people fantasize about killing him.
I wouldn’t be shocked at all if female to male partner violence was roughly on par with male on female violence, in reality. some studies show the rates are much higher than anyone suspects. but there is so much bias that female on male assault is not assault, sexual, physical, emotional, etc. our gender norms basically permit women to be violent without shame or consequence, meanwhile we are eternally vigilant about male on female violence.
One of my biggest take away from therapy was learning it’s NOT OK for a woman to scream, hit, threaten, or use other abusive/manipulative tactics on me. It’s also why I’ve basically been almost perpetual single since therapy, because the vast majority of women I have ever dated do these things and it’s considered completely normal for a man to tolerate it, and totally unacceptable for a man to do these things to a woman. The double standards are completely insane.
But hey, clearly I’m a closeted homosexual if I don’t enjoy being screamed at, threatened with violence, or physically/sexually assaulted by a woman!
I think it’s fair to say histories and red flags are not enough. But they are something. You will have false negatives (the guy hid it or his personality has changed for the worse) and false positives (the guy has changed for the better or the red flag wasn’t a good indicator).
You can’t predict behavior with certainty, but you can improve your odds.
I guess? You realize that for some women, that would be a turn-on though, right?
Plenty of women are attracted to violent and dangerous men, because they are violent and dangerous to be around. And there is also a smaller subset who are seeking to re-enact past traumas with future partners, so they are seeking out abusive situations.
You can’t police other people’s attractions or personal choices, if that’s what you think we should do. For some reason that’s a weirdly common belief on this platform.
What a bizarre direction this conversation has meandered!
Let’s go back to where we started. It was figuring out if there is any advice to help women recognize men who were more likely to be dangerous to them.
You said there’s no way to predict the future. My argument is that we can’t know for certain, but we can improve the odds of a better outcome. We do that with information.
There’s a difference between making information available for better decisions and policing / dictating those decisions. The police chief who got this started used hyperbole to make people think about the danger that comes from domestic partners. He’s the literal police, but he wasn’t proposing to ban all heterosexual relationships.
I used the example of a known murderer as hyperbole to try to get you to recognize that information about past partners, while not dictating outcomes, can still help us navigate the odds and make us safer.
It’s a pragmatic skill that you can’t teach. It’s something you learn from experience.
Because that how I know how to detect violent and abusive women.
But there is no way for me to transmit that ‘skill’ via language, anymore than I can instruct you how to hit a baseball well by talking you through it. You have to learn it for yourself. Or like welding. You can read up on welding, but that won’t make you good at welding. Only experience and practice can.
Information about past partners is also generally hearsay. My violent and abusive exes would tell you that it was me that was the problem in the relationship, not them. They would tell you how awful i was neglectful, stubborn, and ‘didn’t listen’ and there violence a necessity to get me to ‘understand’. And my most violent abusive partner would have told you it was because I was mentally ill and she was just trying to ‘help’ me though her scream, physical assault, and threats.
Not to mention the same factors that I see as red flags… would for other people, be attractive and see as positives. Where I see emotional instability, they see ‘expressiveness and passion’. Where I see cruelty and hostility, they see ‘strength’.
This might be going too far. I mean anyone could murder their girlfriend in the right circumstances. I think it’s far more reasonable to suggest a red flag after they’ve murdered perhaps three girlfriends. Certainly four.
There is no way to predict the future. A lot of violence in relationship takes months/years to appear. Plenty of violent and abusive people have no criminal record or red flags. And the ones who are really good at it… know how to manipulate people and tend to be very charming and attractive. There is no ‘standard profile’ of an abuser.
Further lots of bad partners only drop their good person act once they have reached a level of security in the relationship. I had one girlfriend who only started physically attacking me once we had reached the stage of moving in. Because she finally felt she ‘had’ me and she could be her ‘real self’, and that ‘real self’ was a terrible person and her fake self had been wonderful. Her ‘feeling safe’ with me was what allowed her to slap, punch, and kick me. She was totally shocked and BETRAYED that I left her for her physical abuse, because I was a stupid man who didn’t understand that “I had made her really angry and she couldn’t help herself because she loves me so much!”
There’s plenty of men in similar situations. I have heard men basically describing that they have been sexually assaulted without them even understanding that they are victims. I got friends who would be considered victims of domestic violence if they were women
Hey stop listening to my conversations, that was in private!
Seriously though that happened to me lol. Had an ex ask “what were your worst sexual encounters” and she literally had to tell me those were all sexual assault (on me not by me).
One of them would legally be rape if she was a guy (maybe two actually) but in my state women can’t be charged with rape and even if they could good luck convincing a jury that I wasn’t actually “lucky” or I’m not “secretly gay” and she was hot so I “must have enjoyed it” anyway.
yes, because our society basically thinks female on male sexual assault is ‘getting lucky’. even when it’s female on male underage rape, the media portrays it as no big deal and the majority of the commentary is ‘that boy was so lucky’. but if it’s male on female, the male assaulter is the scum of the earth and people fantasize about killing him.
I wouldn’t be shocked at all if female to male partner violence was roughly on par with male on female violence, in reality. some studies show the rates are much higher than anyone suspects. but there is so much bias that female on male assault is not assault, sexual, physical, emotional, etc. our gender norms basically permit women to be violent without shame or consequence, meanwhile we are eternally vigilant about male on female violence.
One of my biggest take away from therapy was learning it’s NOT OK for a woman to scream, hit, threaten, or use other abusive/manipulative tactics on me. It’s also why I’ve basically been almost perpetual single since therapy, because the vast majority of women I have ever dated do these things and it’s considered completely normal for a man to tolerate it, and totally unacceptable for a man to do these things to a woman. The double standards are completely insane.
But hey, clearly I’m a closeted homosexual if I don’t enjoy being screamed at, threatened with violence, or physically/sexually assaulted by a woman!
I think it’s fair to say histories and red flags are not enough. But they are something. You will have false negatives (the guy hid it or his personality has changed for the worse) and false positives (the guy has changed for the better or the red flag wasn’t a good indicator).
You can’t predict behavior with certainty, but you can improve your odds.
You can also generate a lot of false positives and shut yourself off from good people by assuming they are guilty into proven innocent.
Can we agree that women put themselves at enhanced risk if they date men convicted of murdering past girlfriends?
I guess? You realize that for some women, that would be a turn-on though, right?
Plenty of women are attracted to violent and dangerous men, because they are violent and dangerous to be around. And there is also a smaller subset who are seeking to re-enact past traumas with future partners, so they are seeking out abusive situations.
You can’t police other people’s attractions or personal choices, if that’s what you think we should do. For some reason that’s a weirdly common belief on this platform.
What a bizarre direction this conversation has meandered!
Let’s go back to where we started. It was figuring out if there is any advice to help women recognize men who were more likely to be dangerous to them.
You said there’s no way to predict the future. My argument is that we can’t know for certain, but we can improve the odds of a better outcome. We do that with information.
There’s a difference between making information available for better decisions and policing / dictating those decisions. The police chief who got this started used hyperbole to make people think about the danger that comes from domestic partners. He’s the literal police, but he wasn’t proposing to ban all heterosexual relationships.
I used the example of a known murderer as hyperbole to try to get you to recognize that information about past partners, while not dictating outcomes, can still help us navigate the odds and make us safer.
There is no generalized advice to recognize this.
It’s a pragmatic skill that you can’t teach. It’s something you learn from experience.
Because that how I know how to detect violent and abusive women.
But there is no way for me to transmit that ‘skill’ via language, anymore than I can instruct you how to hit a baseball well by talking you through it. You have to learn it for yourself. Or like welding. You can read up on welding, but that won’t make you good at welding. Only experience and practice can.
Information about past partners is also generally hearsay. My violent and abusive exes would tell you that it was me that was the problem in the relationship, not them. They would tell you how awful i was neglectful, stubborn, and ‘didn’t listen’ and there violence a necessity to get me to ‘understand’. And my most violent abusive partner would have told you it was because I was mentally ill and she was just trying to ‘help’ me though her scream, physical assault, and threats.
Not to mention the same factors that I see as red flags… would for other people, be attractive and see as positives. Where I see emotional instability, they see ‘expressiveness and passion’. Where I see cruelty and hostility, they see ‘strength’.
This might be going too far. I mean anyone could murder their girlfriend in the right circumstances. I think it’s far more reasonable to suggest a red flag after they’ve murdered perhaps three girlfriends. Certainly four.
You’re right. There’s just no way to be certain. Without certainty, we know nothing.