The older I get the more I think YANBU.
As a young adult I worked in a male dominated environment - the casual sexism and banter was disgusting, yet I put up with it and didn’t particularly see it because I was “one of the lads”.
Over the last few years I’ve seen many men in my life shirk their responsibilities as fathers and husbands, letting their wives/girlfriends shoulder the bulk of responsibility, even the so called good ones. In fact I don’t think I can name one man who equally co-parents his own children. I know one who has his children every other week, but his new wife does the majority of parenting during those days.
I’ve seen men I thought were good men behave like animals when they think there’s no one around to see.
I’ve seen so called decent men defend predators/rapists and suggest that women falsely reporting rape (which rarely happens) is far worse that a woman being raped.
I’ve seen far too many headlines describing killers as “misunderstood family man”, “respected part of the community” when he’s killed his wife and children. On the rare occasion that a woman commits a crime no one is in any doubt as to how awful she is, and it’s treated as far more serious as a man committing the same crime - with longer sentencing iirc.
I have 2 young adult sons, despite being brought up by decent parents with firm boundaries, strong parental controls, open and honest discussions about sexism, porn and other issues, both have had times of thinking misogynistic jokes are hilarious, behaving badly with friends. I’m under no illusions that despite strong controls they have both seen porn, and the strong message that these women are people’s daughters, sisters, mothers etc is easily ignored. The older son is growing up, and I’ve noticed an improved attitude. Secondary school was difficult, lots of awful behaviour from so many boys, accepted by so many girls, and ignored by so many teachers. I’m not sure any teenager could go through an environment like that and come out unscathed, but it’s very much behaviour from boys directed at girls, which girls are conditioned to accept.
Until there are strong decent male role models teaching boys from a young age, across different scenarios, because tackling from home alone isn’t going to cut it, it needs to be across the board - school, sports groups (all ages), work, in the gym, in the pub - men need to stand up to banter, locker room talk, whatever you want to call it. At the moment this doesn’t happen, so women are hurt by this male behaviour - dehumanising us, minimising our roles in society, but then women are hurt by other women shutting down this sort of discussion.
I think many mothers here are naive as to the power and influence the internet and friends have in the teenage years, and I’m afraid I view these decent respectful sons who have been brought up so well as the same as the skinny 6’2 sons that so many MNers have - largely embellished bordering on mythical.
I base my opinions on my own personal experiences. 20 years ago I didn’t know anything. I would have been here fighting on behalf of poor misunderstood men, now it’s like a big obvious slap in the face, and once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it.