Problems that men have to deal with

[Phasmal]

I've never really liked the idea that masculinity is supposed to be about being `strong`, but in itself is really frail. Like, `Oh no I cannot let you carry the heavier shopping bag! It's not manly!`, `Oh damn, I lost a hand at poker to a girl, better go outside and brood for a while`, `NO I WON'T HOLD HANDBAG FOR A SECOND, IT GIRL THING!`.

I mean, it's like some people think the Secret Man Police are gonna jump out of the bushes and stick you in a pink dress.
It just strikes me as insecure to believe in `emasculation`, and just further confuses me that there's pretty much no `other side` to it, women don't worry about being `effeminated`.

I like a man who can rock some pink.

Other than that, reading this thread has been educational.

 

[Ikasury]

suppose i have a strange take on this, as a girl...

i grew up in a matriarchy, so when i went out into the 'real world' AKA 'MAN'S WORLD!! RAWR!!' and did all the stuff the 'guys do' i was looked at as if i were an alien species... i liked playing soccar, i played a better defense in our class football skirmishes then all the whimpy 'dudes' twice my size, and wiped off a bloody nose like it was no problem... my cheif loved me calling me more of a 'man' with 'bigger balls' then all the other dudes in my class...

personally i think all gender sterotypes are bullshit... i have no idea how to wear makeup, i burn magazines (unless they're video game ones), the concept of 'weak' makes no sense to me or why its expected of my gender when in my experience i find guys to cry more often then girls... the day guys deal with a bout of legitimate debilitating cramps from PMS is the day i'll stop calling them pussies for whining about a broken nose when i punch them for hitting on me and not taking 'no' the first three times...

i get irritated when i have a guy friend who gets upset when other 'dude-bros' call him not manly enough for not liking the same inane bullshit they like, i've had to learn to not punch these guys in the face and stand up for them as apparently that's even worse... luckily my husband is all for me doing this, so any time a guy calls him 'unmanly' for liking to cook and clean so i beat the offending 'dude's' ass hubby can just walk away grinning saying 'yes, i get to tap that'... suppose that's a win-win for gender equality...

suppose i have a reversal of this, my mother essentially raised me in the same mentality you guys did so to me that's all the same stuff i feel compelled to do as well, because you're not 'woman enough' if you can't do everything better then the boys, in my mother's opinion at least... sigh, suppose i could just say our parents fuck us all over no matter what .-.

 

[Vault101]

i get irritated when i have a guy friend who gets upset when other 'dude-bros' call him not manly enough for not liking the same inane bullshit they like, i've had to learn to not punch these guys in the face and stand up for them as apparently that's even worse... luckily my husband is all for me doing this, so any time a guy calls him 'unmanly' for liking to cook and clean so i beat the offending 'dude's' ass hubby can just walk away grinning saying 'yes, i get to tap that'... suppose that's a win-win for gender equality...
.

I found it funny that "feminine" is charachterised as being petty, weak, and prone to cracking a sad at the slightest provocation...yet if anything dude-bro culure seems the very definition of petty bullshit

[i/]waaah! somone might think I'm "teh gay" its not faaaaaaiir[/i] <-GOD

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Eh, there's plenty of stuff. Not even just the expectations of liking sports or knowing about cars or whatever. I'm more troubled by the fact men in abusive relationships are either treated as though it's their fault, or are summarily ignored. Men have higher suicide rates, make up a larger percentage of the homeless population, have virtually no reproductive rights in many countries, are acceptable targets for violence, etc.

I'm not an MRA, it's obvious that women have plenty of shit to deal with too. It's just not as one-sided as is popularly believed. Obviously this varies a lot by culture and country. Women definitely have it far worse than men in say, Saudi Arabia, for example.

As for what has affected me personally, it's only minor stuff. Yes there are the people who look at me like I'm mad when I say I don't follow football (soccer) or support a team, and yes people attack me occasionally for liking novels and poetry and art and music over anything 'manly', and yes people assume that the best way for me to deal with depression is exactly that; 'deal with it', and yes women assume that if I turn them down it's either because a) I don't find them attractive, or b) I'm gay or something, and not because sometimes men actually aren't in the mood, who'd have thought?

Overall though, apart from the depression thing I've had it pretty good. I know plenty of guys who've been in the abusive relationship scenario I mentioned earlier, or things of that ilk, but for me personally it's not so bad. I think the fact that I look like some kind of cross between a skinhead and a bear might let me get away with far more 'feminine' shit without criticism than I otherwise would.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Well, speaking purely from personal experiences, about the only thing I've had to put up with that's been gender related is being told by a few people to cut my hair. As if having long hair is something that should be exclusive to women.

And to be completely honest, if that's the worst I've gotten, I'm doing pretty damn okay.

 

[Pinkamena]

Reading this thread makes me feel very lucky! I have not had to deal with any of the stuff you're talking about, with the exception of "What, you don't like sports, particularly football?" questions. Other from that, most people here are really not going to give a shit about you having to act "manly".

Of course, I'm talking about how it was from high shool and up. In high school I had a few friends and we were not exactly super manly. We played games, didn't really enjoy sports, one was fucking amazing at drawing, and we were all generally pretty "unmanly" in the oldy timey sense. Nobody really gave a shit.

Nowadays I live in a very, very multicultural environment where we're all pretty much nerds in some regard, and that means that being non-normal is in fact the norm. It feels great! I don't feel like I have to be someone else than myself. If someone asks me what I did during the sunny weekend, I can tell them I watched cartoons without hesitation.

 

[Lieju]

Well the guys I know have mostly suffered from being judged of being 'not real men'.

The latest instance I can remember was people making jokes about how a guy I know is henpecked for not having a say on how their house is decorated. Because he has no interest in interior decoration. But of course if he did, that'd be totally gay, bro.

So I guess the only real manly way is to exclaim how you don't care and tell your wife to do it, while making grumpy faces when shopping for furniture, but making sure the wife asks for you for permission for everything.

 

[MetalDooley]

At our school we had similar and it was usually a choice of football (soccer) or trampolining. It was clearly intended to divide the boys and the girls. I like football but some days (if it was particularly cold/wet trampolining sounded like a better option. You would get called gay for not doing football. Being a relatively smart kid my retort was usually "So you are telling me that being in a room surrounded by girls jumping up and down is gay. Yet taking part in an (almost) exclusively male activity isnt?" Needless to say they shut up

Saw a routine by a comedian(think it might have been Steve Hughes)about growing up in Australia which is a very macho sports orientated culture.He had no interest in sports so chose to do home economics in school instead and as a result was called gay/fag etc.His response was something similar to yours "I'm in a room surrounded by women meanwhile you're showering naked with 30 other blokes but yeah I'm the gay one"

OP: Female on Male violence is pretty much ignored or made a joke of and is something men are just supposed to shut up and deal with.I dated a girl years back who thought nothing of hitting me.Now it wasn't major like she was kicking the shit out of me but if we had an argument or I said something that annoyed her she had no problem punching me on the arm.If I complained I was basically told "man up".That shit would never fly if the roles were reversed.I can pretty much guarantee that if I had ever hit her I would have had her father and 2 brothers kicking in my front door and curbstomping me

On a less serious note - Weird hair growth as you get older.This is something most men will have to deal with where as you get older the hair on your head gets thinner while hair on other parts of your body gets thicker.I have way more hair on my back and in my ears now than I did in my 20's

 

[Lilani]

While I am a female, I have witnessed a few problems that I really pity men for having to deal with. I worked in a retail store for a while that had two floors, and you could get to the second floor by escalator or elevator. Obviously most people take the escalator, and one day I was working in one of the departments near the entrance to the up escalator when a man toting THREE very young children decided to brave the climb. There were a girl and boy who were probably 6 and 5 respectively swarming around him, then he had another tiny boy by the hand who was no more than a toddler and very wobbly on his feet. The toddler wasn't afraid of the escalator, so the guy chose to let the boy stand rather than pick him up.

Well, when escalator stairs form, they pop up and then scoot back a little. When the steps in front of the boy scooted back, he was just a little too close to the front of the step he was standing on, and the metal step scraped his knee. The boy started crying halfway up, and then the dad picked him up and started cooing to him when they got to the top. Myself and another coworker watched them get to the top just to make sure he wasn't seriously hurt, and that nobody fell in the bedlam.

When we saw everything was okay and turned to walk away, an older woman who was behind us and apparently just got there looked alarmed and asked us, "Are you sure those are his children?!" Apparently to this woman, a man carting three children around alone in public is more likely to be a kidnapper than a father babysitting the kids while mom shops, and if a child is crying with a man alone that obviously means they're being kidnapped. Never mind that he was going UP to the second floor, which is a dead end with no exits and connects to no other stores.

I also have a couple of male friends who have gone into elementary education, and they're both having to deal with 5-9 year old girls flirting with them and giving them special gifts and keepsakes. I'm sure female teachers have to deal with boys flirting with them, but male teachers receiving such attention is much more worried about than female teachers. Just this week someone on my Facebook shared a news story about two female teachers who had a threesome with a male junior high student with the comment, "Atta boy!" It's this sort of hyper-retaliation to male pedophilia and statutory rape combined with a trivialization of female pedophilia and statutory rape that really grinds my gears as far as problems I see men having to deal with.

 

[Lokis Maliki]

My personal grip is media. The way men are portrayed in media as incapable of taking care of themselves and being stupid/pig headed pisses me off.

 

[lord.jeff]

I've gotten crap for my long hair even to the point of being turned down for a few jobs, once by a women with hair not much shorter then mine. Also I get some shit for having a somewhat submission personality and when things do bug me I'd rather walk away then fight in most cases, I get told to man up a lot and for liking fruity drinks over beer but I stopped drinking at bars.

 

[Thaluikhain]

My personal grip is media. The way men are portrayed in media as incapable of taking care of themselves and being stupid/pig headed pisses me off.

Also very annoying, is the assumption that the male audience members identify with that, or aspire to be like that. When Britney Spears has a meltdown, she's setting a bad example, when Charlie Sheen has a meltdown, he's living the dream, or somesuch.

 

[the December King]

suppose i have a strange take on this, as a girl...

i grew up in a matriarchy, so when i went out into the 'real world' AKA 'MAN'S WORLD!! RAWR!!' and did all the stuff the 'guys do' i was looked at as if i were an alien species... i liked playing soccar, i played a better defense in our class football skirmishes then all the whimpy 'dudes' twice my size, and wiped off a bloody nose like it was no problem... my cheif loved me calling me more of a 'man' with 'bigger balls' then all the other dudes in my class...

personally i think all gender sterotypes are bullshit... i have no idea how to wear makeup, i burn magazines (unless they're video game ones), the concept of 'weak' makes no sense to me or why its expected of my gender when in my experience i find guys to cry more often then girls... the day guys deal with a bout of legitimate debilitating cramps from PMS is the day i'll stop calling them pussies for whining about a broken nose when i punch them for hitting on me and not taking 'no' the first three times...

i get irritated when i have a guy friend who gets upset when other 'dude-bros' call him not manly enough for not liking the same inane bullshit they like, i've had to learn to not punch these guys in the face and stand up for them as apparently that's even worse... luckily my husband is all for me doing this, so any time a guy calls him 'unmanly' for liking to cook and clean so i beat the offending 'dude's' ass hubby can just walk away grinning saying 'yes, i get to tap that'... suppose that's a win-win for gender equality...

suppose i have a reversal of this, my mother essentially raised me in the same mentality you guys did so to me that's all the same stuff i feel compelled to do as well, because you're not 'woman enough' if you can't do everything better then the boys, in my mother's opinion at least... sigh, suppose i could just say our parents fuck us all over no matter what .-.

So a 'Problems Men have to Deal With' thread and we have a girl-thug, a bully who uses violence as an answer, and who unironically calls men 'pussies'. Huh.

I guess when women want to discuss feminism, and men show up screaming 'what about the men?' that this is what it's like?

 

[giles]

So a 'Problems Men have to Deal With' thread and we have a girl-thug, a bully who uses violence as an answer, and who unironically calls men 'pussies'. Huh.

I guess when women want to discuss feminism, and men show up screaming 'what about the men?' that this is what it's like?

I thought it was more like the equivalent of "make me a sandwich".
But honestly, after someone else started denying widely reported facts like "The average man has a higher pain threshhold than the average woman" with "child-birth...nuff said" this was just taking it to the next level. Also note the same person commented on the post you quoted not by replying to the criminal assault, but by making fun of "dude-bro culture". Also note the very same person gave us a wonderful thread about how to approach gender debates on this forum.

Now we have shit posting from both sides in gender issues threads. At least equally shit is still equality.

 

[Danny Dowling]

at 22 years of age and with, what i believe to be, a fairly decent head on my shoulders (most of the time) I live in an environment where 16-26 year olds pretty much gauge their place and almost live their social life by how many and what girls they can "bang". In fact a few of the guys that live in a house actually had a physical score board up in their house for tracking points (repeats don't count).

Personally, I'm not really attracted to girls that are willing to do that sort of stuff and am also not really the type of person that is going to go looking for that either. although generally i'd go for girls younger than me, apparently my mindset is more suited to going out with older girls (25+).

soooo yeah as a guy I have to deal with the peer pressure and living environments of the modern womanising misogynist. lovely.

 

[Thaluikhain]

at 22 years of age and with, what i believe to be, a fairly decent head on my shoulders (most of the time) I live in an environment where 16-26 year olds pretty much gauge their place and almost live their social life by how many and what girls they can "bang". In fact a few of the guys that live in a house actually had a physical score board up in their house for tracking points (repeats don't count).

Personally, I'm not really attracted to girls that are willing to do that sort of stuff and am also not really the type of person that is going to go looking for that either. although generally i'd go for girls younger than me, apparently my mindset is more suited to going out with older girls (25+).

soooo yeah as a guy I have to deal with the peer pressure and living environments of the modern womanising misogynist. lovely.

Oh, that reminds me...didn't Chris Brown say that he first had sex when he was really, really underage (with a significantly older girl), and how that set him up for later life or something?

Being brought up to believe that you have to have sex, as much as possible, and as early as possible...that's not healthy.

 

[Erttheking]

i get irritated when i have a guy friend who gets upset when other 'dude-bros' call him not manly enough for not liking the same inane bullshit they like, i've had to learn to not punch these guys in the face and stand up for them as apparently that's even worse... luckily my husband is all for me doing this, so any time a guy calls him 'unmanly' for liking to cook and clean so i beat the offending 'dude's' ass hubby can just walk away grinning saying 'yes, i get to tap that'... suppose that's a win-win for gender equality...
.

I found it funny that "feminine" is charachterised as being petty, weak, and prone to cracking a sad at the slightest provocation...yet if anything dude-bro culure seems the very definition of petty bullshit

[i/]waaah! somone might think I'm "teh gay" its not faaaaaaiir[/i] <-GOD

Look Vault. I think that the whole dude-bro thing is a pain in the ass. I had to spend a good chunk of my teenage years surrounded by douchebags who did things like talk to me about "You ever get a blowjob while playing Halo? It's awesome" I personally want nothing more than to beat the shit out of half of these people...and that scares me. I get angry sometimes. So angry that I'm worried I'm seriously going to hurt someone someday. I've got so much pent up frustration that I sometimes I want someone to take a shot at me just so I can have an excuse to wail on them. I feel like all the crap I had to go through as I kid is why I have all this frustration and I hate that I feel this way. I don't want to be that kind of person. No one should be that kind of person where you can just attack someone, it doesn't matter how much of a pain in the ass they are. You just shouldn't do stuff like that.

So please. I'm begging you. As someone who considers you a dear friend and has nothing but the utmost respect for you. Don't encourage behavior like that. We're supposed to live in a civilized age. Violence should only be used when all other options have failed and only when absolutely necessary.

Please. Be better than I am.

 

[PsychicTaco115]

Well, I did get this e-mail from my WGS professor...

Spoiler

I'm not sure how to feel about this but whatever. It's something I have to deal with so I think it counts ;P

 

[ForumSafari]

i find guys to cry more often then girls... the day guys deal with a bout of legitimate debilitating cramps from PMS is the day i'll stop calling them pussies for whining about a broken nose when i punch them for hitting on me and not taking 'no' the first three times...

i get irritated when i have a guy friend who gets upset when other 'dude-bros' call him not manly enough for not liking the same inane bullshit they like, i've had to learn to not punch these guys in the face and stand up for them as apparently that's even worse... luckily my husband is all for me doing this, so any time a guy calls him 'unmanly' for liking to cook and clean so i beat the offending 'dude's' ass hubby can just walk away grinning saying 'yes, i get to tap that'... suppose that's a win-win for gender equality...

Let me make something clear here.

You are weak, You are only allowed to get away with hitting guys because you are weak and because they aren't allowed to hit you back. You are protected by your weakness and by their pity for you. Taking advantage of that to hurt them and then mocking them for being hurt is the act of a true idiot, the only reason you haven't been bent in half by now is because they've been taught from a young age not to hit the weaker and you are using that against them.

You aren't big or tough, you're using the fact that no one's going to fight back against you to use disproportionate violence. One day you'll meet that handful of guys that truly treat women the way they treat men, then trying to fight them is going to get you seriously hurt.

Oh and I have IBS, I get random stomach cramps that double me over for days at a time, easily predictable menstrual cramps are nothing. They're just symptoms, ignore them.