To get rid of men from my life altogether

[montecarlo7]

I know this sounds a bit barmy but I've been doing a lot of reflecting recently and I realised that men have overwhelmingly brought negative things into my life.

I made a list of the male friends and relationships I've had in the past and I realised there were only 5 who were good men who brought something positive and there were many who harmed me. I'm almost 40 and single.

I've been raped in what I thought were safe relationships. I've been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions, both by strangers and male friends. I've been harassed and catcalled a lot. Two male friends (both partnered) I made in the last few years ended up sexually harassing me. Not the first (or second) time either. My (male) neighbour in my last home harassed me to the point I had to go to the police.

I've had partnered and married men make passes at me over and over to the point that I don't make friends with couples anymore.

The men I've hired in a business or work context have not brought much positive either.

I do have one close male friend who I trust. But I'm thinking that I'm going to have a policy of no more male friends and stop looking for relationships...I'm going to be single and accept it.

At one point I thought this has to be my fault that the men that show up in my world are not that great. But now I'm getting to age 40 I'm starting to reconsider that it's actually them.

I plan to put my energy into female friendships only. I'm in a very female centred line of work and only work with women which is nice. I stopped hiring men for other jobs e.g. around the house if I can work with a woman instead.

I gave up a hobby I had that brings me into contact with a lot of men.

I know women are not all perfect either, but here's the thing. I've never been assaulted, sexually harmed, harassed, catcalled, verbally abused, or had an unwanted pass made at me by a woman.

It's clear that some men are unsafe to be around and that's reason enough to avoid the whole lot of them.

What do you think?

I'm sorry you've experienced this, too. :(

I am not sure if this is a male trait or just a human trait, but the thing I've noticed about men is that they really don't like taking responsibility. Many of them are positively allergic to it.

There have been a couple of experiences with tradesmen that have broken the camel's back and made me realise how much men suck.

I moved to a new country a few years ago. When I had my stuff delivered to my new home, and the removals crew who moved me in (a bunch of guys), one of them verbally abused me because they moved me in on Christmas eve and the person in their firm who organised the jobs for that day booked too many and they couldn't go home on time. They were angry and took it out on me. I am a 5ft woman who is slight and very soft spoken and I had this big, angry guy over 6ft towering over me and swearing at me; being hostile and nasty...in my home, over something that was not my fault.

When I reported him to his firm, the guy who spoke to me about it was incredulous and simply stated that this just doesn't tally with the man and employee he knows.

When I moved again recently, I paid a removals firm to pack and move everything. They ran out of room in their truck and didn't bring enough packaging, then when it became clear they would only be able to move 80% of my stuff and I'd have to move the remaining items myself, they lied to me and tried to gaslight me, claiming that I had agreed that I'd move the remaining items. I hadn't, because I had paid them to do it.

When I wrote a review on their site explaining what happened and awarding them 3/10 the men wrote a reply taking no responsibility...denied it and called me a liar.

This experience was the straw that broke the camel's back and when I said "no more men". I'm not hiring them unless I 100% have no alternative and can't do the job myself. I'm not interacting with them as acquaintances. I'm not getting into relationships with them.

If I had had an all female removals crew I don't believe I would have had the same experience.

More female tradies please.

Many of them do seem to be run by their dick.

They also seem to be more selfish and entitled on average.

They also always assume they're smarter than you, if you're a female, and esp if you're a conventionally attractive female. They all seem to assume that. On the occasions where I've had the opportunity to prove that in some way eg results in exams we both took; they were most definitely not. But they're just convinced they're smarter than females.

Why do some of us get attacked and assaulted multiple times and others never suffer the same?

I think most women have been affected by sexual harassment or assault. I don't know any who haven't, a wide sample too.

I completely understand.

My experience with men has been:

• angry, violent and immature father who bullied me and was inappropriate towards me
• being bullied by boys at school as a child/teen for not being pretty/for being 'weird', inappropriate/unwanted touching from some of the bullies
• unwanted attention/sexual comments from random men in the streets when I was in my 20s
• crappy dating life: men who who only wanted sex, were selfish, immature and obsessed by porn
• The final straw: dating a male ''friend'' briefly who almost immediately turned into an abuse and assaulted me.

After that last incident I removed myself from dating entirely and want nothing to do with straight men.

I have had some decent male colleagues and I know women who are in good relationships so I know full well that not all men are bad but I am no longer willing to take the risk.

I am polite and make superficial small talks with the men at work or who I meet in life situation (doctors, tradesmen) but I don't want any of them in my life.

Gay men make great friends though!

I think there is something very wrong with how prevalent toxic masculinity is in our society and how selfish and abusive they can be.

I don't think a real change and true equality will happen in my life time but I hope one day women and girls can truly be respected and live safer lives.

Yes, why is this?

I love my close male friend to pieces. He is honestly the best man I've ever met but there are occasions when I'm chatting to him where I get bored because he's holding forth on a topic that we're both interested in but I know more about (because it's related to feminism and I'm more invested in that). He's boring me with stuff I already know about and clearly very pleased with his own cleverness in the process.

I let it go because this is literally his one flaw but... why do men have to lecture us?

I think I read somewhere, I forget where: "God give me the confidence of a mediocre man."

I'm a male victim of DV from a female partner - so not sure that it's a sure-fire way to avoid any risk!

I hate to be a Samantha Brick but if you are very conventionally attractive you also get tons of attention and if you're up for it, you get more opportunities to come into contact with bad men.

He's probably just pleased he can actually contribute to the conversation - most men don't have a clue about feminism, so I wouldn't hate on him for trying to actually have a contribution to the chat.

Seems like he can't really win - if he was ignorant to the issues being discussed it'd be a problem, and it's a problem that he knows something about it and wants to share that too apparently!

I'm sorry to hear that. Unfortunately it seems to avoid all risk we'd have to become total hermits.

Well, she's not a man so she won't be at risk of being a male who has domestic violence perpetrated against him by a female. She also won't be at risk of being a female who has domestic violence perpetrated on them by a male if she avoids having men in her life.

Yanbu
Watch the Barbie movie ☺️

I think ALL women have experienced something at some point. Or will. Sadly.

My STBexH left me with two disabled kids (& I'm disabled myself) 2 years ago.

My previous partner, whom I re-connected with, died last year. No more men.

I would much prefer a female tradie having been lied to & made to feel unsafe in my own home a number of times now.

NAMALT (my son is a kind, gentle lovely man) but many are & society upholds it.
Additionally, the Police & judicial system are amongst the worst offenders.

It's always the same speech every time from him. I'd prefer he says nothing rather than have him mansplain feminism to me every couple of weeks.

I haven't.

I think that having a poor childhood also makes you more vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence.

There have been times when I've been going about my life minding my own business and someone harasses me but on the other hand there have been times (and I think this is more common) that I've let someone into my life but there were red flags from the start and I didn't see them because I grew up with nutters.

I finally feel I'm at the point where I can see the red flags, which is ironic because I no longer want to date.

@montecarlo7 i think this is what happened to me. I got into an abusive relationship at 17 and didn’t react properly to the red flags because I didn’t have a normal baseline for relationships

Can't say I blame you in the slightest!

I guess you can try and pretend men don’t exist.

Gay men are exceptions of course

Are they though? I made a gay friend and he kept referring to women as "bitches" and made nasty shaming comments about a woman's weight and body shape. I distanced myself from him after that.

It's the same with many crimes, especially burglary, which often recurs even when people move. Look up revictimisation. In the case of sexual violence or survivors of childhood abuse it makes total sense, predators are good at what they do. They don't strike indiscriminately.

This is not to place the burden of responsibility onto the victim or suggest they are weak but surviving somehow makes some people more vulnerable.

Clearly not all of them… I mean, I’ve never been around gay men and felt that I might need to be prepared with a no later and this is my main issue with men. Like rats to food, men are drawn to any potential sex…

That's interesting around the burglary thing. You'd expect it to be the opposite, as I would imagine ppl behave even more carefully after being burgled.