“Men have to fight in wars and do the protecting and heavy lifting”

[DogEar]

So says a male colleague as he monologues about female privilege.
I’m rather sick of it. I’ve moved offices over this but can still hear him droning on about women - the lazy entitled part of humanity.

I’ve argued - men fight in wars, do the protecting, do the heavy lifting, because this is the patriarchy - this is literally what has been created by men. He argues back harder, so I, and others in the office, have given up, yet he still drones on.

Apparently women can do nothing without men. Totally ignoring the many women who have had their inventions and discoveries stolen by men and not had any credit, including writers, composers, artists, scientists, astronomers, etc.

I recently read a convincing theory that Einstein’s work was largely carried out by his first wife, Mileva Einstein-Maric, who was his intellectual superior. I guess this is something we’ll never know, but at the very least she supported his work heavily, but very few know her name or her involvement in Einstein’s work.

If women need protecting it’s from men. If we go to war it’s men behind it (or a tiny number of women within a patriarchal society). Heavy lifting? If it’s so heavy I can’t lift it I can involve a friend, job sorted.

YABU - women owe men a debt of gratitude, we are so privileged (if you choose this option please explain why) and couldn’t manage without them.

YANBU - men fighting in wars, men protecting women (from men) are not female privileges.

I wouldn’t really engage the tedious bore, but I’m also struggling to understand has reasoning when he’s basically working in an office, presumably amongst other women doing the same or similar job as him. Has someone asked him to lift the copier paper, or has he had a paper cut recently ?

He probably believes he is dominating the women with his facts and logic that they have no answer for!

I didn't mean it as an example to use against him, not much point, the man is clearly a bellend and immune to reason.

The only answer to “men made civilisation” is “but women made all the men”

Military wife here. The type of men who actually "go off to fight in wars" DON'T say this kind of shit. All the ones I've met, anyway. Tell him to come back when he's got five confirmed kills in the air, or fuck off.

What did I just read?

An incel?

Maybe OP's colleague 😁

I agree with those who have said that you can complain about this and insist your bosses put a stop to the behaviour. This is likely harassment based on sex (a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010) which is specifically illegal. So it's just not good enough for your managers to tell you to ignore it.

Harassment is according to Acas 'any unwanted behaviour that violates an individual's dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for an individual'.

You could put in a formal grievance which refers to this, either on your own or collectively with other colleagues. If your bosses have any sense at all they will deal with it, otherwise they could well face a constructive dismissal claim.

I think the point is your husband and his colleagues have signed up voluntarily to take that risk (and all credit to them and their female colleagues) but the idea that all men have to accept the risk and no women do is not the same.

Obviously the guy should shut up and get on with his work but along with lots of advantages this is one disadvantage men can face. Personally I don't feel that acknowledging that takes anything away from the fact that women face many disadvantages and as someone who was fighting for equality in the 70s I don't see it is a problem.

I think if someone just said yes that's true but it isn't really relevant right here right now and carried on with their work it would be shut down in seconds.

No mate, it was our brains that got us out of caves, not strength (were a pretty weak species physically), that’s why bears aren’t living in houses.

This is such tedious bollocks. I can’t believe we still have to address it.

One of the main reasons men went to fight wars historically, was not just their relatively greater physical strength and stamina, it was because of the horrendous maternal mortality rate. Women “fought” and frequently lost, giving birth to the next generation of humans (still do in many parts of the world). Prior to the 1950s and the advent of antibiotics and modern surgical techniques, getting pregnant and giving birth was the most dangerous thing a woman could do. It was the reason women in medieval times wrote their wills as soon as they realised they were pregnant! Caesareans were only performed on dead or dying women (there was no way a woman was surviving major abdominal surgery prior to the 20th century).

It only takes a handful of men to impregnate multiple women and continue the tribe. However if you have one woman and 30 men you are only having one baby per year (unless multiples but seems unlikely) and if she dies in childbirth then you are stuffed! Send those women away to fight and be killed and the same thing happens. Your tribe/society ends very quickly. It is basic biology - women bear a far greater burden when it comes to reproduction, men have the unfairness of being required to go to war. Neither is particularly “fair” imo.

@Reality25
However, physical strength certainly has played a big role in humanity's development.

How do you think pygmy tribes survived? We select prey relative to out size, we use traps and hunt in groups. We design tools to fit the hand.

“Oh Barry give over” and repeat forever!

Depends OP, humans are mammals, the only thing separating us from cows is brain power and opposable thumbs. The intellectual arguments about humans being capable of peaceful coexistence are largely flawed. Like all mammals, humans have the capacity (some would even say the compulsion) for extreme violence. Humans ARE inherently violent, no amount of debate or logical thought will change that. Men are generally (let's leave female serial killers, child abusers and terrorists aside) more aggressive and violent. Always have, always will be.

Our veneer of civilisation is paper thin. Neither males nor females are particularly moral or incapable of harm. But our pastiche of civilisation has created a society where we can easily fool ourselves into believing the narrative that men are bad, women are good. It's easy to say, as a women who will never be expected to fight on the front lines, that war is all the fault of those silly, aggressive, misogynistic men. However, agreeable people WILL always be taken advantage of, no matter the sex. And I'm not talking about a one-sided, men oppressing women situation. You only have to have experienced office politics to know how ruthless women can be towards each other.

Any woman who walks down the street with a man, and expects that man to step up and protect them in the event of an attack is actually complicit in the "patriarchy" they say they oppose. They want and expect men to protect them, but also criticise them for doing so. We can't have it both ways.

If we, as women, were so concerned with being equal, having parity, we would be queueing up to clean sewers, build (not design) infrastructure, harvest crops, fight wars, and we would be encouraging men to get on the lifeboats first.

We don't do any of that because it's too difficult and messy, we would prefer men did it instead. So yeah, I think we do owe men something.

We wave the "misogyny" placards when it suits us. But the reality is we need men, we want them to do all the dirty, nasty, little jobs that are required to keep our society civilised. It's way more comfortable to be able to take a shit and flush the toilet after, than it is to get a spade and find somewhere to dig a hole first.

I used to harvest crops and all of my co workers were women. The job ended for political reasons, not sex based ones. Women worldwide are the backbone of agriculture.
Where women are excluded from jobs, its often because of the culture in the workplace - its still built around what men expect and want, not what women need.
Women get on the lifeboats because generally, you put the mothers with the children, not random men.