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Avoid men, German police association chief tells women (www.dw.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 6 months ago (7 children)

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.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago* (6 children)

    You can also generate a lot of false positives and shut yourself off from good people by assuming they are guilty into proven innocent.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (5 children)

    Can we agree that women put themselves at enhanced risk if they date men convicted of murdering past girlfriends?

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  • [–] 5 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    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'.

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