I ask this as a woman and hardcore feminist myself (not a man-hater by any means, but I subscribe to this philosophy. We aren’t all blue-haired, men suck type people). I know intimately nearly all the struggles of women – I am curious if men experience anything similar.

30 comments

  2. The perception that men are supposed to be okay with biting there tongue and experiencing hardships.

  3. Have you considered asking this at a mens right group, I’m pretty sure they could tell you loads.

  5. There are some societal pressures seemingly put on us to succeed, be the provider. Many of us were brought up with expectations of not being soft, not being emotional. I see some pitfalls with the dating scene as well, but the younger single guys can speak to that way better than I can. Subject change: Not trying to be a creep, but I clicked on your profile and wishing you the best.

  7. Nothing special..im not an Action figure. Its just your every day life,nothing happens,you do your jobs,do some drugs of your choice and go to sleep. Rinse repeat.

  8. I remember asking my family once (I’m the only surviving male in my family),

    “How come I was the only one homeless? The only one without an education? The only one who wasn’t bought a car, or a phone, or was kept on the health insurance?”

    They looked at me and said point blankly, “Because you’re a man. Life is easier for you. Can you imagine a woman in that situation? It would have been much rougher.”

    I ended up being much more successful than my cousins and sisters, obviously because “You’re a man”, but in the end it didn’t matter, because they got to marry dudes who will work *for* them while they sit around watching Disney with the kids all day.

  9. I lost my job/career in November in a pretty devastating way. A great paying job and a career I had devoted 25+ years to, but luckily, the family’s insurance is on my wife’s just as well paying and very stable job, but if she did lose it tomorrow, we have about 2 years liquid at our current budget. The first words out of her mouth were “What are you going to do for work?” Not always, but often I feel like I am just a source of income and my feelings are usually not a consideration.

  10. MGM being normalised in even 1st world countries.

    Forced military service.

    Sentencing disparity.

    Child custody heavily favouring the mother.

    Not having the option to be a stay at home father.

    Sexual assault not taken seriously.

    Domestic abuse by women not taken seriously.

    Body shaming of men is normalised.

    Looked down on for crying even at a family member’s funeral

  11. I talk to about 4 coworkers a week and my wife. I got a phone call from my mom about 2 months ago, and that’s the whole of my human interaction.

    I work 60 hours a week, and I’m pretty much always broke. That’s my value in the world.

    That’s basically what it’s like to be me in a nutshell.

  13. People react much more harshly when the see any discrimination against women compared to when to see any discrimination against men.

  14. I have a horrible problem when dealing with the Gym Bulge. Unfortunately my dick isn’t huge by any account but no matter what I wear at the gym, just by my anatomy and I guess the location of it and the size of my thighs, I tend to protrude out more. It’s a shitty feeling because I absolutely know that people see it, it’s impossible not to and I feel weird walking around with it popping out.

    I don’t want to make people uncomfortable but it’s extremely embarrassing. I hate baggy clothes at the gym because I’m a decently lanky guy so I wear clothes that fit. Also compression underwear doesn’t help at all. It’s horrible and annoying.

  15. I hate living in a world where being kind, soft and sensitive will be construed as weakness.

    I am 1.87cm tall, weigh 94kg and lift 5-6 times a week. I work a complex and high-stress job in healthcare. I am no stranger to physical or moral strength, courage, resilience or drive.

    But I yearn for companionship and emotional support. For a space where I can drop the façade and be sincere, vulnerable and afraid.

    Yet when you open up emotionally to women you look weak, and desire dies down.

    For those of us seeking a sincere and loving LTR… it’s a bitch.

  16. You have to be careful to sit on the bus with your work clothes close to girls or women.

    They might report you for harassing though you Just sit there doing nothing

    You have to work and never complain

    Its hard to feel a deep connection with a guy friend, and tell all your problems to him. Much easier to do the same with a girlfriend, but hard to find a girl to be with

    Its hard to understand girls mind. I had this very shy girl looking at me and sending mixed signals, and never really understood that It was cause she liked me

    Girls can be more emotional and vulnerable, while we have Just to accept things and move on

  17. I divide this stuff into “patriarchy’s fault” and “issues I have with feminists.”

    Here’s an example of the first.

    My wife is a nurse. She works the night shift, and it’s a *shift*. She cannot be late, she cannot just jet out for an extra hour for lunch. By contrast, I am a software engineer with a boss who could not care less what hours I work as long as I’m there for meetings. With this in mind, whenever our daughter needs to go to a doctor’s appointment or whatever, I’m the parent who takes off of work.

    This dynamic is totally unfathomable to the army of secretaries / receptionists / daycare folks / whatever. Despite it being *I* who has taken the kiddo to the appointment, the receptionist will ask for my wife’s number. They get annoyed when I don’t give it, (I don’t want you calling her at her equivalent of 2AM) and will indirectly try again and again until I rudely call it out. In the past, when I was dumber, I’d fall for it the third time and carefully emphasize that I’m the point of contact. LOL no, my wife still gets the calls. It isn’t just assumed, it is *axiomatic* that my wife is a doting 1950s homemaker and I carefully scrubbed off all of the coal dust for the one time in a decade that I could make my daughter’s doctor’s appointment.

    —

    I’m more tactful with the feminist stuff because in many cases, they *do* have a point. The far bigger issue is that the folks who invented the microaggression are microaggressive as heck while insisting that

    * they’re not doing it
    * calling it out is, of course, aggression, micro or otherwise

  18. Zero government support (the majority of homeless are men. My city’s solution to homelessness? Open more women’s only shelters…)

    Mandatory military service/draft

    Zero reproductive rights (women can decide whether to abort, give up for adoption, or keep the child. Men can decide whether they want to see their kid once a week or not…)

    Sentencing disparities (white men serve harsher a sentences than black women in the US)

    Free body shaming targets (hurr durr small penis, men being forcibly excluded from the fat acceptance movement, height, etc…)

    Treated as a threat/monster/villain/pedophile by society

    Treated like expendable, worthless lives by society (“women are the real casualties of war”, “100 people were killed including three women… three women? That’s terrible.”, “11% of journalists killed are women. Stop targeting women journalists!”)

    Impossible to safely navigate dating environment (men have to approach but only if the woman is interested but they won’t tell you if they’re interested so you have to guess but get it wrong one way and you’re a creep and a misogynist harrasser and get it wrong the other way and you’re a lonely oblivious loser…)

    Free target for abuse and hate and supposed to take it and take it without complaint or pointing out the sexist hypocrisy.

    Taken even less seriously than women when it comes to abusive relationships, sexual assault, physical abuse, etc, especially at the hands of women (the Duluth model is still the most prevalent doctrine, if a woman hits you you’re not allowed to defend yourself, “emotional manipulation is just how women are”…)

    There’s more but I tire of typing on my phone.

  19. I’m a woman but several men I know have had their vulnerabilities used against them by the women they love.

    They were shared in confidence and initially the confidence was appreciated and valued but later thrown in their face during hard times.

    It’s made them unwilling to be open.

    I’ve always wondered how widespread this kind of thing is.

  20. I have experienced that my life is about people telling me how life should be, telling me what I should accept as normal or be satisfied with. My role is what others expect me to do or be, and I get to like what others think I should like.

    I eschew a lot of that and people think I’m weird as fuck for it. After living that way my whole life, I find that nothing I do or say will change it. Other people are going to be what other people are, it’s *me* who needs to adapt to everybody else.

    I don’t resent women specifically, but I think a lot of attitude between the sexes comes from one another being ignorant (wilfully so sometimes) to what the other’s experience is.

  21. Men are generally less likely to receive or be deserving of help and empathy, and both men and women are more likely to agree that women are inherently good, at least when compared to men, and are more likely to agree with statements that describe the goodness of women and their hardships, while being suspicious of the same for men. When men do good things and put their lives on the line, it’ll maybe be celebration of that individual at most, but when a man does something bad it’s something inherent to all of us as a group and that we have collective blame for. You can see this with war when are forced to conscript where they’re at best only heroes when they died and left a wife and child behind, but otherwise it’s expected.

    When I was a kid the rules were much harsher for boys than girls in school. Boys would go to the office for wearing hats and having phones but a girl could punch someone and get nothing but a slap on the wrist. One girl in particular on multiple occasions kicked a guy so hard in the nuts he’d spend the whole day in the office recovering, but she’d get to just come back to class. She did worse than that but for paranoia about privacy reasons I’ll keep it at that

  22. To be a responsible man you kinda need to have a baseline level of paranoia about everything you do so you don’t come off as threat. It sucks but the bad ones literally ruin having a normal life for the rest of us. I’d love to help people in everyday life but I can’t approach plenty of situations because of how it would look.

  23. In no apparent order:

    1. Its harder to break into management jobs in lots of fields. A lot of fields have quotas (or implied, invisible quotas) for gender, but women refuse to do the line jobs, so they end up in low level management to make quota. Yes the folks at the top are usually men, but the vast majority of people are nowhere near the top, so you end up with a glass cieling at the bottom.
    2. no one gives an actual shit about you. Women don’t really experience this unless they remain childless and unmarried into their 50’s, but its the normal experience for men, especially younger men, who haven’t yet developed usefulness to others. Women who transition to men experience this and it is the cause of a lot of de-transitions. What’s worse is for ugly, low-status men… then women don’t even consider you a man, its like you don’t exist.
    3. If you are accused by a woman, everyone assumes you are in the wrong… unless you are a very high status male, then you might have recourse.
    4. Your natural fear is muted, which puts you in dangerous situations. One reason why men are much more likely to be murdered than women.
    5. Men are more likely to be discriminated against in court, by juries. Women are much more likely to have the jury on their side. Note: this is not true for *extremely* physically attractive men, but is true for most men.
    6. High levels of testosterone shorten your lifespan, but if your testosterone drops then you will get listless and depressed and run out of desire to live (if it gets low enough). Furthermore, losing arguments or fights or even just contests will slowly erode away your testosterone level, and thus your zest for life.
    7. When women are interested in you, its all at once. The only times a woman has initiated towards me, its been times when bunches of women have all at once. So its no interest in me for years, then suddenly 5 or 6 women all want to start something on the same weekend. It messes with your head. (Thankfully I am old and married now).
    8. Divorce court is heavily stacked against you in most jurisdictions, unless the judge personally hates your soon-to-be ex-wife (the only case I have seen where the woman got shafted instead of the man, was because the judge literally hated the woman).
    9. Lower oxytocin levels means that its harder to bond to people.
    10. Higher vasopressin levels mean that when you get angry, or stressed, you become more insular, grumpy and want to be left alone… but it also means that you get hornier. This ends with fristration.
    11. Male beauty standards are insane. When women tell you that Chris Hemsworth, who was on tons of steroids and working out many hours a day for the Thor role is what they mean by “dad bod” then you know that the standards are absurd. (And they meant the Thor Hemsworth, not the “fat Thor” Hemsworth).
    12. Cops will assume you are the bad guy.
    13. Your risk of being shot is way higher.
    14. Your risk of being struck by lighting is about 400% higher than women.
    15. Much more likely to be imprisoned.
    16. More men are raped than women (this just applies to the US because of the extremely high incarceration rate of men here.)
    17. As a man, if you do get raped in prison you basically have zero recourse.
    18. When feminist women compare themselves to men, they tend to compare themselves to men who are at the top of the hierarchy, and yes those men do well, but the average man does worse than the average woman.

  24. Well every morning is hard, if you catch my drift. Every time you walk your balls awing along with your dick. You get hard at random times and you have no control over that.

    You can’t say anything to anybody because you don’t want to be seen as weak. You take shit from everybody, the world tells you that you are a bad guy even if you have done nothing wrong. If you aren’t fit, then you get mocked for it. If you get mad then guess what? You’re a bad person. If you have depression, nobody gives a shit about you because you’re a man and you’re supposed to be strong at all times.

    If you aren’t working because you are putting your time into something like school, you are seen as lazy. The world doesn’t care about you at all and even if you die alone chances are that people will forget that you ever existed.

  25. Overall, I think guys received less empathy. This isn’t to say I think people always empathize with women. I just feel the cases of a guy getting the benefit of the doubt is somewhat less. Like, if I said something like “ the woman I’m talking to is boring”, the assumption is that I’m making things boring or that I’m not reading the social cues that shows her disinterest in me. When many women (at least on several relationship subreddit. I don’t know if it’s true in real life) says “the guy I’m talking to his boring” the assumption is the guy is boring or not not reading her disinterest through social cues. I would just like people to not assume it’s my fault a conversation between two people isn’t working out.

    I know a few guys talked about being seen as a predator or a pedophile when they are near kids. I have a first hand story of this. I use to work at a preschool. The kids loved me, the teachers loved me, my site director loved me. I was literally the only man in the building and they were so glad to just have a male figure for the children. But you know who didn’t love me? The parents. I was told I couldn’t walk one of the student to the bathroom (literally walk them to the bathroom because she was potty trained) after I told her grandma she was in the bathroom when the grandma came to pick her up. I was not near the bathroom. I saw her go into the bathroom (because watching where the children are was literally my job) and told the grandma where she was. There was not a moment I was out of the sight of the grandma, but I was told the next day that I would have to get a female staff member to take that student to the bathroom from now on after the student’s dad called my site director. I was honestly terrified of losing my job. I can’t stand people who say “there needs to be more male teachers” while acting like any man working with children is a pedophile in the making.

    I remember telling people about this and they would just say “well, you never know.” What do you mean “you never know?” It felt like they were suggesting that maybe I would rape a kid if I was given the chance. What really upset me was that I just accepted it. I thought it was okay for someone to accuse me of molesting children if given the chance. I don’t like talking about it in person anymore because the whole thing makes me so upset.

  26. I feel the same level of general fear and worry on a day to day basis and yet also have the expectation of stuffing it down and never talking about it so that I can keep those around me from feeling afraid.

    I wish I could be more honest in polite company about how I feel.

  27. Life is regularly solitary and you’ll fight your battles alone. As a victim of childhood sexual assault and the lifelong depression stemming from it, there’s no support for me as a man. I’ve also never been in a relationship longer than a year because if I talk about any of this then the relationship is guaranteed to be over

  28. My experience as a man has been truly miserable and infuriating. Everyone expects me to just work my ass off and be ok with everything that happens to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost every romantic partner I’ve ever had because life got ridiculously difficult for me and I made the mistake of letting them see me in moments of weakness. Fairly certain my current relationship is dying from this as well. I could never imagine women being forced to do the things I do at work, then being punished for standing up against it. I like the physical strength I have, but that could be built up as a woman.

    Basically, I am expected to work myself to death, as long as my body can physically handle it, and pretend to be ok with it, or risk being outcast. It’s a miserable existence. I don’t see myself ever having the option of just marrying a rich spouse and never having to worry about survival. I personally hate it. Getting into programming as to get out of physical labor and get away from other men.

  30. No one cares.

    You’re suffering? Suck it up. No one cares.

    You’re an emotional wreck? Suck it up, no one cares.

    Your partner physically abused you? Suck it up. No one cares.

    You’ve been raped? Suck it up. No one cares. In some states in the US, it isn’t even illegal unless you stuck something up his butt.

    You are valued only for what you can provide. Else, No One Cares.

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