What are some double standards in society for men ?
What are some double standards in society for men ?
For example workplace harrasment by women towards males like touching or groping being ignored because the victim is male but if it where to happen to a woman by a male the male would be fired
As a guy who's trying dating again, there's something that keeps coming up that kinda bugs me: talking to women who just put in the bare minimum of effort, expect me to carry the conversation and make all the first moves.
I don't give two shits about traditional gender roles and I'm all about subverting them. However, I think if you're in the same boat but still wanna call yourself a "passenger princess" and expect the guy to do everything, you're kind of a hypocrite.
One that constantly comes up between me and my partner is fashion related. She is very liberal but when it comes to our relationship is the exact opposite. She buys everything from lacy thongs and g-strings to boy shorts underwear. She hates that I as a man wear thong and bikini underwear, too. I’m athletic, lift and workout 5 days a week, and get hot very easily. I like the support and minimalism of thongs for that, but she always buys me boxers which are uncomfortable and bunch up and all the extra fabric and cotton makes me hot and sweaty and chafe. When I bring up she wears thongs just do she doesn’t have panty lines and I wear them for comfort and support she doesn’t understand. She also mentioned she thinks guys wearing thongs is weird but then says it’s so “brave” when gay guys do it during pride. I once called her out and homophobic for assuming it’s a fetishized gay guys only thing and she got mad, but am I wrong?
Domestic violence against men is usually ignored or blamed on the victim.
Here's another thing that I was just reminded of in this very thread, lmfao:
Men are expected to accept unsolicited advice at face value when they want to vent, because we're supposed to be the ones with all the answers, and if a man is complaining about a problem, then he's obviously just missing the answer.
This actually blew up my last relationship, right at the beginning of the pandemic, when my girlfriend at the time was stressed from being laid off and we weren't able to see each other due to the isolation orders.
She would try to vent to me about her problems, looking for support in a time of emotional vulnerability, and I, an inexperienced idiot just trying to be helpful, would suggest solutions that I thought she hadn't considered. If you can't guess exactly how that went, you've almost certainly never been in a serious relationship.
What made it worse is she would then say to stop mansplaining, which made me defensive because I thought she was tacitly accusing me of being intentionally misogynistic when I was honestly just trying to be helpful. At the time, I figured I just needed to adjust my approach a little bit, not completely change course. Unsurprisingly, that didn't work.
It was only in hindsight, some time after she had dumped my dumb ass, and I had blocked and deleted her number, that I was complaining to my friends and getting the exact same kind of thing back that I realized, "oh wow, I get it now, that is actually really fucking annoying and invalidating."
It was also around this time, while discussing my experiences with friends who have been diagnosed, that I realized that I might have ADHD. So that definitely hadn't helped.
In the extremely unlikely event you're reading this, K, I'm sorry. I figured out what I did wrong, just a little too late.
This comes from my own observations, and might not be a popular take, but men are often encouraged or celebrated for having multiple partners and not using protection.
This attitude puts men(especially young men) at risk for STI's, some of which can affect fertility even if a course of antibiotics will take care of it. Others don't have cures yet, or are not as easy to treat like herpes, the different hepatitis strains, HIV, genital warts ect.
This attitude towards sex for men puts their health at risk and their partners.
The amount of times I've seen dudes encourage each other to not use condoms is kinda distressing. I don't think guys are being educated on how a condom should fit and how to find the right size. They shouldn't be uncomfortable. If they are try a different kind.
Women often have to try different birth control pills until they find one with minimal side effects. Try different condoms until you find the right ones for you. It's to protect your dick from diseases, not just to stop pregnancy.
Take care of yourselves guys. Your health is important.
Everyone says to talk about your problems but the second you do, you're told that women either have it worse or how they have some worse problem. I've largely stopped talking about my problems because I'm never heard, just talked past or worse, made out to be the problem. The older I get the more reinforced my silence is because evey time I open up it's used against me and this is just normal.
Meanwhile I'm expected to play therapist when someone else talks about their problems and I have to stop my autistic ass from telling them I really don't want to hear about you. I can't even get the silence I give returned to me.
"For example workplace harassment by women towards males like touching or groping being ignored"
This is absolutely not a double standard in society in most workplaces. I've never encountered an HR department that wouldn't take this extremely seriously. I'm not saying those HR depts don't exist, but they're certainly not the norm
Some good examples:
-
Fat acceptance and body positivity. Obesity is glorified (even fetishized) when it's a woman, whereas obese men are shunned. Have you noticed that nobody in the fat acceptance movement is vouching for the 300lb basement dwellers?
-
Older ladies who date younger guys are called cougars, whereas if you flip the gender roles, an older man dating a younger lady half his age is going to be labelled a pedophile, even if she's of-age. Just look at at the anger surrounding Tobey Maguire (48 years old) dating a 20 year old actress. There are people who legitimately think men like him should be hunted for sport.
-
The amount of effort you have to put into your dating profile. Women have the opposite problem of being inundated with matches even with minimal effort.
-
So one thing I noticed is that women betraying their partner has become extremely normalized
- Every "ethical non monogamous" relationship I've seen IRL is just a woman pressuring their long term monogamous partner into a situation where she has multiple partners and she's struggling
- "Monkey Branching", where a woman starts dropping hints at one guy while still seeing another in hopes of making a seamless transition, is pretty accepted. Emotional affairs are only a thing for men apparently
- While it's always been acceptable to leave a guy if he can't "provide" for you, it's really fucking stupid in the context of modern feminism
- Women who use OLD are often encouraged to have a "roster" of men, who they form a well beyond casual connection to.
- There's a large number of 30+ year old women breaking up with their long term partners to "find themselves". I put that in quotations because this usually just involves a ton of casual sex. It's basically the modern day equivalent of a guy leaving his wife for the secretary
- There are a million different love triangles on TV. They are almost all two guys and a woman who is disrespectful of both. The guys get mad at each other and the women's behavior is not portrayed as toxic.
- Like 80 percent of holiday movies involve a woman leaving her fiance for a man she just met. This is always seen as romantic, instead of psychotic.
In addition to all that, women are extremely reluctant to criticize other women. This stands even when another woman is behaving in an almost objectively toxic way. I moved post covid. The first year I witnessed a fuckton of toxic behavior, but when I tried to point it out I would get dirty glances from women. The second year there I ended up getting close to other women in those conversations who took it upon themselves to tell me in a smaller setting that they actually agreed with me, but they didn't want to appear unsupportive.
Whatever the intention there, the mentality enabled a subset of women to be shitty and probably convinced a lot of men that such behavior was something most women were okay with.
It's fairly broadly believed that strong male influences benefit a child greatly, but males are looked at with huge skepticism if they attempt to enter most forms of childcare as a profession.
This isn't a blanket statement, but I have, in the past, been introduced to women in my friend group, and talked to them like I would anybody else. But for whatever reason, they get the idea that I'm hitting on them. I can see it in their body language, the way they bring up their significant other (Like, really? I was just introduced to both of you 5 minutes ago?), among others. They make it out like "how could you be hitting on me?" and I'm like, asking about a band she brought up? I wasn't even remotely attracted to her, I was just trying to be friendly, but her demeanor made it seem like she thought I was some insensitive asshole, and it hurt. I excused myself and just fuckin left. I had only gotten there like 20 minutes beforehand.
Another time I was introduced to a woman while we were helping a friend move. This girl I was into (she ranted about recycling <3), and I was planning on asking her out once we were done for the day, but as we were talking, she mentioned her significant other, so I didn't. After we'd finished loading something into the moving truck, I said "hey so, thanks for mentioning your significant other back there, saved me a bit of awkwardness haha." To this, she took offense, and challenged me, "what do you mean? what are you talking about?" like, hands on hips, wide eyes, "how dare you" attitude... and I was dumbfounded. Here I was, thanking her for stopping me from embarrassing myself by asking out a girl that was in a relationship, and I was getting the third degree from it! At this point I didn't know whether it would make the matter worse if I confessed I had almost asked her out, so I just blankly stared, mouth agape (dumbfounded, like I said). I eventually excused myself and went back to loading the truck. Avoided her like the plague since then.
These were just two myopic incidents, probably lasted 5 minutes in total each, but it affected me in such a way that I basically cut myself out from the entire social circle, and only ever hang out with a guy friend that's kind.
However, I feel the need to add a disclaimer so you don't get me wrong.
I've also gone through a lot of personal growth recently, and in the endeavor to understand myself and my sexuality (Go Fightin' Bi's!), I've encountered scenarios that help me understand women better. I've had guy friends who only acted like my friend because they wanted to sleep with me. That hurts, and it makes me feel cheap. Once I tell them definitely "No," or they realize I'm not interested, they stop interacting with me. It's like, is that all I was in your eyes? Some thing to fuck? And even getting to the point where I'd tell these guys "No," was excruciating! I don't want to lose a friendship, or hurt them by saying "No," I'm just not interested! Makes it hard to engage with my fellow LGBT peeps, when I feel like I'm just going to be pushed into hurting someones feelings. This led me to ghost some guys, and I'm not proud of it. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate it when someone is flirty or compliments me, that's nice and can be a real ego boost! But when I'm using all my body language to say "thanks but no thanks," and you are still uncomfortably close? or touching the small of my back like it's nonchalant or something? fucking GROSS.
Additionally, I have an elderly, disabled, female neighbor that I used to help out a lot. Whenever she needed something done around the house, she'd come over and I'd take care of it for her. She is an old pot head, so she'd even smoke me up! We'd pass a joint while watching Amos and Andy or whatever was on TV, it was a nice relationship. Then, once I became single, it got worse. Before, after I fixed her fridge, she wanted to give me a kiss on the cheek, and it came uncomfortably close to my lips. Then she started standing in the doorway while I came inside, so I'd have to press past her to get in. Then she'd touch my arm, leg, small of my back when I was doing chores for her. It got to the point where she would wait till I was high, and then ask how big my dick was, and if I'd let her go down on me. Just repulsive behavior. I've since stopped helping her, and always decline her offers to smoke, despite missing how we used to be.
All of this to say, guys get sexually harassed, Guys get sexually abused, and Guys get unfairly depicted as predators in hurtful ways. But also, girls get sexually harassed, Girls get sexually abused, and Girls get unfairly depicted as cold honey pots in hurtful ways.
What we should all do is try to be more kind.
Last time I checked, women were overwhelmingly likely to be granted custody over men, even when the man is a better parent.
I’m kind of prude before I get to know someone. I can recall at least 5 times my friends tried to push a girl from the bar into my cab because they thought it was funny I didn’t want to take them home.
Just imagine the reverse situation. It’s the same as women calling other women sluts. Sometimes it’s the most vocal men that make the stereotypes worse.
I work in a company that seems to have mostly women in management roles and the area I work in has mostly women in our area as well. The things I've heard women say about men though would get any guy shit-canned within a day if he were to say anything like that about women. Women can straight-up say things like, "I hate men" or "Men are such assholes" or "What is wrong with men?" or "Guys are so stupid!" or "My husband is such a fucking idiot" or saying blatantly sexual shit about men that they have crushes on or find attractive. It's just a joke to them, like whatever. Meanwhile, if a guy were to say anything even remotely approaching to what I've heard in our office, they would be gone like nothing, there's just no tolerance for that.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not offended by women saying sexist things like that or talking sexually about guys, I don't give a shit, I've heard worse from other guys. That doesn't bother me and I'm not looking to get anybody in trouble over it, I just want tolerance from both sides. What bothers me is that men aren't afforded that same courtesy and aren't allowed to talk the same way. Women can talk shit at work all they want about men because "Fuck the patriarchy, old white men are ruining everything, etc", but whooo, if a guy says anything remotely out of line about women, they will be reported like that 🫰.
I don't know any specific cases, but one thing I've heard that police (at least in Brazil) will just laugh at and ignore, is when a man is the victim of an abusive partner.
Of course, it's nowhere as common as men being the violent/abusive partner, but it happens, yet "society" will effectively say "grow a pair"
Basically everything women cry about men doing to them. If it is done to a man by women it is ignored or considered not real or never happened or okay and normalized as you put it.
Depends very much on the country
The shit older women said (and did) to me when I drove a cab in my twenties.
Also, not wanting to fuck someone, even if they're somewhat attractive.
