Surely one of the problems is that few men are prepared to go to the assistance of those being attacked. That is why so many violent criminals are so brazen. It is impossible to have a police officers at the end of each street. It is up to all of us to help those being attacked. An attack on one person is an attack on the whole of society. The reality is that violent criminals are rapidly terrorising honest society into submission. How often is domestic violence or child abuse allowed to continue because neighbours are to scared to intervene? People are too scared even to telephone the Police of Social Services.

Mike Tyson.

If one has ever met veterans of WW2 who were in the Commandos, Parachute Regiment, SAS/SBS or SOE though these people were trained to kill and had done so, invariably they were not violent or aggressive people in civilian life- they had experienced the horrors of war. Having survived the horors of war they wanted a quiet life. One former member of the SOE when asked about his war experience he said it was unpleasant and changed the subject. Even to his closest friends he did not mention that he had won the DCM and endured torture at the hands of the Gestapo. He was a modest and chivalrous warrior.

As boxing and rugby has declined boys and men have become more feeble but more vicious and cowardly. Invariably , it is the cowardly runt who is a vicious bully.Boys and men who are genuinely tough do not attack as a pack an individual, or those who are weaker than them or attack others with weapons. Brendan Ingle, the Sheffield trainer and Sir Henry Cooper are correct in saying that boys and young men should take up boxing – let them demonstrate their toughness in the ring. As a start stop buying any records which glorify violence and denigrate women. The problem is that many weak and insecure boys and men think that violent and yobbish behaviour makes them tough. If these oiks took up boxing they would probably become better behaved as the discipline of training would force them to become more modest and respectful of others.

Laurie, I disagree and I think you’re missing the point of the march. The march is, as Cath said, about challenging he idea that women should moderate their behaviour to accommodate violence people.

I went on the march last year (with my Mum) and never heard anything like chants of ‘Men off the streets’ and I do think you are confusing the factional issues you referred to with the Million Women Rise march in 2008.

And the thing is, nobody is suggesting that men aren’t victims of violence, or that they don’t get raped but that women do and we’re fed up with being told to dress differently and keep inside.

And what’s the ‘like a good little feminist’ jibes about?

Agreed completely with Cath’s response to you.

Could it be the same Martin from above who critcises the use of the term gender as being “PC”?

Do people think that the process would be improved if, like complex fraud trials, juries were done away with in rape cases?

Improved for who?

Three words: Don’t. Go. There. Julie Bindel once argued for precisely this strategy in reply to comments on one of her articles over at CiF, with the added proviso that the judges had to be trained by herself and her feminist colleagues (nice work if you can get it) – another example of the ‘gatekeeping’ that also occurred over prostitution law reform. The current government have already shown a repeated disregard for little legal niceties like due process, so giving them an opportunity to do away with pesky juries to get more convictions in the name of feminism isn’t particularly clever.

If the dictionary was my friend, nights out down the pub would be rather boring. I’d rather spend an afternoon in the library.

Except, of course, that in this context ‘sex’ would be entirely inappropriate. ‘Sex’ is a biological term; ‘gender’ pertains to sexual self-conception. The dictionary is your friend.

In many ways, one might interpret the small number of youngsters that have ended up joining gangs and engaging in apparently absurd conflicts with other groups over post codes is simply man returning to rather embarrassing form. The cause of some of this violence is not anything that has positively happened to these individuals, just something lacking that wasn’t given proper appreciation before.

If we wish to break the cycle of brutality we must realise that, for men as much as for women, gender is culture not nature, that masculinity can mean something else. And if we want to instil in our young men the realisation that there is nothing ‘unmanly’ about gentility then we must do what we can to dispel the belief (held by some who should know better) that men are, by nature, violent.

I hope your article goes some way towards reaching such an understanding.

(Pedantry Corner: That is a picture of a Metropolitan Line train (at Baker Street, I think), not a Northern or Piccadilly)

Yes, that was exactly what I was doing.

It’s entirely possible that our decision disgusted everyone involved – the man because he genuinely believes he didn’t do it, and the girls because they might well conclude that they weren’t believed.

We had some discussion in the jury room (I know, I shouldn’t share this but I’m going to anyway) about what “beyond reasonable doubt” meant in terms of percentage likelihood – we varied between 90% and 99.9%. My problem I suppose is that if, God forbid, my daughter is raped I’d want the jury to go with the former figure but if my son were accused I’d want them to use the latter one.

Do people think that the process would be improved if, like complex fraud trials, juries were done away with in rape cases? Victims arguably might be more willing to go through with it if they only had to face legal professionals – I can see problems with this approach, but I thought I’d throw it into the mix.

Having myself served on a jury in a “sex case” (admittedly indecent assault, not rape) I don’t know how to deal with the central problem – that on a jury you focus on the accused, not the witnesses.

The report does point to the importance of victim support

The research conducted for A gap or a chasm? found that those victims
who were supported throughout did not regret pursuing the case,
regardless of the outcome. Conversely, those victims who felt they had
received inadequate support said not only that they would not report an
allegation of rape again, but that they would advise others not to make
such a report

and I can only repeat my earlier suggestion, that surely the quality of such support could only be improved if the Witness Care Officer has links with local women’s groups.

Fun fact: There is a sandwich shop in Barnsley called ‘Tuscany’s’. Not sure whether that makes me part of the liberal intelligentsia or not, but their baguettes are pretty good.

I haven’t read anyone insist that a broken family can’t ever be a cause of crime. Of course it can. But Madonna’s got a broken family at the moment, too, and I rather doubt her kids are going to grow up to start mugging people outside her yoga class. There are many, many reasons why social problems exist in this country, they’ve festered over many decades and will require just as long to solve them. But ranting about family breakdowns as the primary cause – and thereby suggesting that forcing families to stay together is the primary solution – is the kind of thinking which suggests you’re not truly serious about solving those problems.

Anyway, I was led to believe that crime is going down and the fear of crime is all the fault of the bogeymen at the Daily Mail.