There are probably several reasons for this but I think we have to consider the possibility that one of those reasons is that PAS doesn't "do" feminist stuff as well as it might, but is concomitantly pretty unwilling to accept that it isn't a totally reasonable and enlightened community.

I've been reading for well over a year, probably even eighteen months by now, and the reason why it's taken me this long to feel inclined to get an account is because so many conversations about things that interest me seem like an exercise in pushing shit uphill.

as did all of us. #village

Yes, and some of us are trying to change things for the better, and some of us are sitting back on our heels and making out like it's all some mysterious external force at work.

That's a bit glib. I'm not sure "I blame the parents" is a very good explanation.

Where do young men learn to act like this towards women?

Where do young men learn that women's voices aren't relevant or worthwhile?

Young men learn to behave this way. They aren't born inherently shitty. They grow up in an environment where being able to commit violence against women and get away with it is at best tolerated and excused, and at worst encouraged.

They learn this from men who are their role models, whether it's at home, at school, on the football pitch, in the media. They see the men they look up to behave this way and get away with it, and they see other men scramble to justify it or explain it away or minimise it.

They see men point to incidents like this and say "no real man would do this" or "this isn't part of my culture" or "well back in my day I never saw it ergo it never happened" and what they learn from this is that it certainly isn't their problem. They see the voices of women who speak up being dismissed as irrelevant and they see men patting each other on the back for it.

They see this behaviour modeled all around them every day and that's how they learn that it is okay. Some of this is parenting. Quite a lot of it isn't. None of it came from nowhere.

You raised them.

It could be seen as such, yes.But I guess it feels different depending on your perspective.

Well yeah, my perspective was that this was a conversation about men who abuse women at festivals, right here in the comment section of a story asking 'young men' to 'fix up' in re women's treatment at festivals. But wait! We can't possibly have that conversation without a nice little detour into What About The Mens. Of course not.

Except that post is clearly whataboutism.

Something bad/different/whatever may well have happened, but the way that men treat women at shows isn't the thing that's new or changed.

Well, I'm kind of annoyed that men minimise our very real experiences on the regular but we can't always get what we want can we Rusty?

You are wrong. You can genuinely think what you like but you are wrong. It's not an opinion thing. Women's experiences are not some subjective matter of opinion. Women have been harassed and assaulted in the scene for years. When I started going to shows, riot grrrl was a thing. That's a whole movement that sprung up around women and girls making a safe culture and space for us and it is in direct response to the shitty treatment that women got at shows and in music culture. It happened, whether you noticed or not, whether you genuinely feel it or not. It's by no means the only manifestation of women fighting back against this stuff but it's a real good place to start reading up on it.

Educate yourselves on how long this has been a problem.

Don't say 'they' like your generation hasn't done its share of misogyny and idiocy.

I don't see how you can have a real conversation about this without acknowledging that there is a long and troublesome past of women being assaulted at gigs.