Problems that men have to deal with

[Erttheking]

Threads like these are the symptoms of a dying society

I don't understand this statement. Are you saying men are obsolete, or that their problems are?

I'm saying psychologically and physically weak men, such as those posting "man problems" are obsolete. A man problem is not making enough money to support his wife and children, not "Oh my gosh! I just hate these sports! I'm no meathead!"

In the 1950s maybe. But not all of us want to fall into line with stereotypes because "society says so"

But it's not society. It is biology. And even if it were purely society, the strong male is something almost every society across the globe throughout history has encouraged. Strong men have been protecting homes and nations for hundreds of thousands of years. They always have and always will be relevant. "Boys do sports" isn't some asinine rule Europeans came up with one day.

Always relevant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiJVJ5QRRUE

Yeah. Encouraged. Because it's an artificial role created by society. In a day where you can bomb ten thousand people to death by pushing a button? And where women are entering the service, earning more money, and society as a whole is moving away from war? Yeah, I don't think they're as relevant as they used to be. It's an asinine rule that they came up with in the same way that "Boys DO do sports" was an asinine rule people just came up with. You know what else people just came up with? That boys like blue and girls like pink. Less than a hundred years ago it was the other way around, and then people just flipped it on its head.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cracked.com%2Farticle_19780_5-gender-stereotypes-that-used-to-be-exact-opposite.html&ei=A1cvVNLEAdTrasvhgiA&usg=AFQjCNEnynemEK83vi7BmRnWYtPbqfrAsA&sig2=yPYmQB9-Ay1bZqUBhqfdpg&bvm=bv.76802529,d.d2s

Look. You do not just post a forty minute video and then have people wade through it so that they can reply to a paragraph long comment. I find this video to be an absolute chore to get through. I am still watching it, but frankly I'm finding it hard to care how this guy is going to "skillfully" undermine everything that the sociologists establish at the begining. But since they're trained professionals and he's a random youtuber I've never heard of who has yet to break 300 subscribers, I know who I'm listening to.

 

[Westaway]

Yeah. Encouraged. Because it's an artificial role created by society. In a day where you can bomb ten thousand people to death by pushing a button? And where women are entering the service, earning more money, and society as a whole is moving away from war? Yeah, I don't think they're as relevant as they used to be. It's an asinine rule that they came up with in the same way that "Boys DO do sports" was an asinine rule people just came up with. You know what else people just came up with? That boys like blue and girls like pink. Less than a hundred years ago it was the other way around, and then people just flipped it on its head.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cracked.com%2Farticle_19780_5-gender-stereotypes-that-used-to-be-exact-opposite.html&ei=A1cvVNLEAdTrasvhgiA&usg=AFQjCNEnynemEK83vi7BmRnWYtPbqfrAsA&sig2=yPYmQB9-Ay1bZqUBhqfdpg&bvm=bv.76802529,d.d2s

Look. You do not just post a forty minute video and then have people wade through it so that they can reply to a paragraph long comment. I find this video to be an absolute chore to get through. I am still watching it, but frankly I'm finding it hard to care how this guy is going to "skillfully" undermine everything that the sociologists establish at the begining. But since they're trained professionals and he's a random youtuber I've never heard of who has yet to break 300 subscribers, I know who I'm listening to.

HE doesn't refute what the sociologists are saying. Scientists he speaks to do. The sociologists are proven completely false and reveal they have no scientific data to back up their hypotheses. It's not my fault you can't sit through a short film, and I don't see at all how that is some sort of argument.
As for the Cracked article, it's about as useful as a wikipedia page. I don't even disagree with it inherently. Society does shape our world view. But the fact that men being strong is the pillar of any strong society is not one of them.

 

[Leonardo Huizar]

Zipping up too fast
Uncontrollable erections
Combination of the two [...and better bloody believe the agony]
Shorter life span
Tend to be injured by own or other men's stupidity
Living with Women
Some medical conditions not exclusive to gender tend to be worse
Divorces tend to favor the woman
Gotta be a shit talker & a shit talk taker
Sports, guns, and being seen trolling for women are for real manly mens
video games, comics, and geekery are for "not men"
Woman acts shallow-Society says ok
Man acts shallow-Chauvinist CIS-scum Pig rapest

Being portrayed as expendable in most action video games outside of aliens, robots, & zombies but im pretty sure those are male as well

Also being told a number of times earlier in life by someone i knew was beating his wife to quote:"Be a real Man"

 

[Erttheking]

Yeah. Encouraged. Because it's an artificial role created by society. In a day where you can bomb ten thousand people to death by pushing a button? And where women are entering the service, earning more money, and society as a whole is moving away from war? Yeah, I don't think they're as relevant as they used to be. It's an asinine rule that they came up with in the same way that "Boys DO do sports" was an asinine rule people just came up with. You know what else people just came up with? That boys like blue and girls like pink. Less than a hundred years ago it was the other way around, and then people just flipped it on its head.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cracked.com%2Farticle_19780_5-gender-stereotypes-that-used-to-be-exact-opposite.html&ei=A1cvVNLEAdTrasvhgiA&usg=AFQjCNEnynemEK83vi7BmRnWYtPbqfrAsA&sig2=yPYmQB9-Ay1bZqUBhqfdpg&bvm=bv.76802529,d.d2s

Look. You do not just post a forty minute video and then have people wade through it so that they can reply to a paragraph long comment. I find this video to be an absolute chore to get through. I am still watching it, but frankly I'm finding it hard to care how this guy is going to "skillfully" undermine everything that the sociologists establish at the begining. But since they're trained professionals and he's a random youtuber I've never heard of who has yet to break 300 subscribers, I know who I'm listening to.

HE doesn't refute what the sociologists are saying. Scientists he speaks to do. The sociologists are proven completely false and reveal they have no scientific data to back up their hypotheses. It's not my fault you can't sit through a short film, and I don't see at all how that is some sort of argument.
As for the Cracked article, it's about as useful as a wikipedia page. I don't even disagree with it inherently. Society does shape our world view. But the fact that men being strong is the pillar of any strong society is not one of them.

If you can shove a random 40 minute youtube video into my face about some random dude running around with no established holdings in the fields of science and have his word be the Gospel, I can put up a cracked article. But if it'll make you happy, here's an article from the Smithsonian

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wearing-pink-1370097/?no-ist

Men being strong is the pillar of a strong society? Citation needed. Because that sounds as sound of an argument as "Society will collapse if traditional marriage is destroyed" And in an easily digestible way please. Someone else besides this guy. Because I can find sources that say that they are not biology.

http://social.jrank.org/pages/272/Gender-Role-Development.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3131694/

https://www.boundless.com/psychology/textbooks/boundless-psychology-textbook/gender-and-sexuality-15/introduction-to-gender-and-sexuality-75/gender-roles-and-differences-296-12831/

And while we're at it, can you please tell me the "Ingrained" nature of not showing emotion? How does that tie into biology. And what's the benefit of it?

EDIT: For the record, I am of the view that human behavior is a mix of nurture and nature. I don't believe that one can massively override the other, it's a balance. It's quite possible that a lot of the ways that men and society acts is because of biology. But I refuse to believe that things like "strong men are a pillar of society" are a part of it. I also refuse to believe men that don't want to play sports are obsolete.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Testicular cancer, doing more push-ups in physical ed and being the last to evacuate a sinking ship.

You should be much more worried about prostate cancer. While the five year survival rates for both are very similar (~95%) the incidence rate for prostate cancer is many (xN) times higher than testicular cancer.

On the topic of cancer in general I would argue that the amount of funding being thrown at breast cancer has reached a point of diminishing returns. According to the National Cancer Institute breast cancer gets around twice the funding as any other cancer (2nd is lung, 3rd is prostate). There are a few other types of cancer (notably lung and colorectal) that receive significantly less funding than breast cancer but that have incidence rates ranging between significant to similar who wish that they had the five year outlook that breast cancer currently has. Breast cancer's five year survival rate is ~90% while lung cancer is at ~17% and colorectal is about 65%. When funding is viewed as a pie with a limited number of slices, to me it makes more sense to put the money towards issues where it will make more of a difference. It's not (or at least it shouldn't) like the survival rate on breast cancer is going to backslide if some of the excessive funding it receives is put towards more dire conditions.

Hypothetically if you had a $100 million and you could put it towards breast cancer to raise the survival rate from 90% to 91% or you could put it towards lung cancer and raise the survival rate from 17% to 40% which one of those is going to save more people? The answer to that is 'duh'. The reason that doesn't happen is that lung cancer is viewed as (largely) being a self-inflicted disease whereas we have an entire month devoted to breast cancer awareness (i.e. it's a very public cause).

Difficult to sexualise prostate cancer, though. We aren't going to have a "save the tatas" or "I like it on the table" type of bullshit campaign for it, for example.

I was told me strong for my mom and other relatives.

Oh yeah, when the father of the house isn't there, the male kid gets told to look after mum. As opposed to the other way around.

Good point. I actually didn't think of that until you mentioned it. Any thoughts if that's a uniquely American thing, a Western thing in general, or a globalized culture thing?

Can't speak for it being global, but definitely more than just the US, yeah.

 

[tippy2k2]

Difficult to sexualise prostate cancer, though. We aren't going to have a "save the tatas" or "I like it on the table" type of bullshit campaign for it, for example.

Bah! Take it away Tom Green!


OT: As a dude, I don't feel we have that many issues that the other gender gets to avoid (like how we have beards but ladies have legs). I suppose getting kicked in the ding-dong is a male only hazard but I find it doesn't really happen often enough to be called a problem...

I suppose if I had to answer, it'd be the girly drinks. I don't like alcohol and therefore the only stuff I'm willing to drink is the stuff your grandma would kick my ass and call me a pussy for drinking...

 

[Thaluikhain]

I suppose getting kicked in the ding-dong is a male only hazard but I find it doesn't really happen often enough to be called a problem...

That has a strange place in our culture, between "really bad" and "hilarious".

Also, there's this strange idea that a set of female genitals are armoured or something, and it won't really hurt if they get hit.

...

[small]May or may not have just thought of a weird variant of the chainmail bikini[/small]

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

OT: As a dude, I don't feel we have that many issues that the other gender gets to avoid (like shaving). I suppose getting kicked in the ding-dong is a male only hazard but I find it doesn't really happen often enough to be called a problem...

Women are expected to shave, too- underarms, legs and "bikini area" (because we're too squeamish to say "crotch" or "groin"). And yes, taking a kick between the legs will hurt women- maybe not quite as much as us men, but it's not like they have nothing sensitive down there.

It's just that somewhere along the line, this culture decided that men taking a possibly-dangerous impact to an extremely sensitive and fragile area was hilarious. I blame America's Funniest Videos.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm an emotional person, but people don't give me crap about it, because are YOU going to chastise the upset 300 pound bear?

Really, the only thing that I've directly been annoyed by in terms of how people treat me because I'm male is "Girls can hit guys, but guys can't hit girls".

1. In everyday life, why is anyone hitting anyone? D:
2. If a lady pulls a knife on me, I am going to punch her in the face.

 

[Autumnflame]

According to popular current social media, men are undeserving of any rights, privileges or basic decency.

we all know that to be a fallacy though. as we all deserve basic dignity, respect

 

[Thaluikhain]

According to popular current social media, men are undeserving of any rights, privileges or basic decency.

we all know that to be a fallacy though.

Agreed, just not in the way that you meant it.

 

[Wan Shi Tong]

As a man, I am sworn to protect my family from any ferocious beasts. So it's my job to deal with them when they wander into our home and threaten my wife by simply existing.

Problem is I'm a Buddhist. So rolled up newspapers, flyswatters and sandals are not a viable solution for me.

This means I must find a way to non-violently evict the intruders from our home so we can establish peace. And spiders can sometimes be...stubborn.

Oh jeez, I was just lurking but this... man I hate this.

She's so terrified of anything that crawls, slithers or flies and I just can't kill them. So I end up faffing around for half an hour trying to catch some dumb lizard. I actually feel joy when one of the buggers turns around and bites my finger, because at that point I can actually catch it and go take it outside.

 

[Zen Bard]

As a man, I am sworn to protect my family from any ferocious beasts. So it's my job to deal with them when they wander into our home and threaten my wife by simply existing.

Problem is I'm a Buddhist. So rolled up newspapers, flyswatters and sandals are not a viable solution for me.

This means I must find a way to non-violently evict the intruders from our home so we can establish peace. And spiders can sometimes be...stubborn.

Would getting them in a cup, and taking them outside be too much? It's what I used to do. Now I just kinda accept them as they get rid of more pests than not. Especially if they'r smaller than a dime.

That's pretty much what I do. I have a special Tupperware container I use to transport all wayward spiders, snakes, waterbugs and scorpions to the great outdoors where they can resume protecting our property from more annoying pests.

Oh, and we live in Texas. None of our unintentional guests are smaller than a dime.

 

[Vault101]

But being psychologically strong is the polar opposite of being brain dead and emotionally broken. Being strong is always relevant, from performance in sports, to having a physical presence when you walk into a room, to getting girls. Being strong will always garner respect, just as being intelligent does. Being physically strong shows dedication to working on yourself and will always be attractive.

and why does being strong have to be gendered?

 

[DementedSheep]

A lot of the stuff is stupid and pointless and men face very real issues but considering I don't think women should be acting like "women" I certainly don't want men to start. Everyone should be pressured to be a competent, worthwhile human being who can handle their own shit however not the the point that some men I know take it where you get shamed if anyone else actually dose something without your help and lie about not being sick until you start puking blood (my dad dose stuff like this) or decide you need to prove you're a real man by lifting heavy things a few days after having a hernia operation and being told by doctors not to lift heavy things. If guys think they can't even ask for help then there is a problem.

 

[manic_depressive13]

When we were little kids my dad would hit my brother, but not me, because he was a boy and I was a girl. I mean really? You're going to hit a little kid because he's a boy? You, a grown ass ****, hands the size of a fucking frying pan, thinks hitting a tiny fucking child is okay because he happens to have a dick? How can I even express how fucked up that is?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Women?

Seriously though, living at home with your parents. Even if my situation is not as clear cut, I'm still living at home with my parents.

...

Yeah, that sensation just now was your inner you instinctively scoffing at the idea of a nearly 32-year old man still living with his mommy and daddy.

Hey, it happens. In this economy, we're lucky we're not all living with your parents. Seriously. *blink* Can we move in?

Hey man, I was living with my parents before the collapsed economy made it cool -- I can't have some fakers cramping my style.

Me too, and then the economy went to shit and I said to hell with this, I'm gonna do the opposite. So now I live with my father-in-law... lol, is that like a trope inversion or something? I'm not always sure how that works.

OT: Well things I have to deal with as a man?
Note: this may get a bit personal

1. Sitting down and not harming two very precious parts of the anatomy. I'll leave it at that, but yes that is a problem for me sometimes.

2. I hate to shave my face, not because I'm lazy but because I always tend to get bad razor burn. Damn sensitive skin that no lotion available can soothe.

3. Never being able to understand women. I live in a house with my daughter and wife, it can drive me absolutely batshit crazy. Being a whole different configuration of hormones makes for some odd things, and its maddening. But hey I accept that as a guy I'll never understand a woman completely and I'm fine with that. I wish my wife would grasp that part though...

 

[mysecondlife]

I know Korean males have to enlist in military for 20 months because technically Korean War didn't end.

Oh you Korean ladies have it soooooo easy.

 

[Vault101]

A lot of the stupid is stupid and pointless and face very real issues but considering I don't think women should be acting like "women" I certainly don't want men to start.

define "acting like women"