To think it is actually mostly men?

[Nolpp]

Maybe I didn’t get the memo in the past but in the last year or so I’ve been so bitterly disappointed by make behaviour. I look back and wonder if it was always this way but I’m only just noticing. I think part of it is I recently became a single parent and so I’ve had more dealings with men than I would usually, as I’ve had to speak to insurance companies, take car for MOT etc. Obviously I did some of these things before and I know women also work in these places but overall I am having more interaction with men.

Examples…

Driving. Whenever a car is right up behind me it is ALWAYS a man driving. I drive at the speed limit, not under, so presumably they think speed limits don’t apply to them.

I recently donated to a sponsorship for cancer research, an old school friend, quite literally not spoken in over two decades. He then messaged me to thank me for the donation and followed it up with a question about sex and positions he can do after his surgery. Why would anyone think that’s ok?

A colleague, well respected in his industry, tells me when drunk on a night out that he wishes all women conformed to the way of the 50s and stayed at home. He wasn’t joking.

In Sainsbury’s a week ago, a man grabbed my arse in a queue, I was shocked and stepped to one side, didn’t know what to do and said get the fuck away from me. I was next up for the till and the man behind the till said he does it to everyone !!! What the actual fuck? He did follow up to say they had tried to ban him from the shop. I cried in the car afterwards, it was awful.

Waiting for the baby changing unit in Mc Donnalds. A man eventually emerges, mutters sorry but he couldn’t wait, and looked sheepish. He wasn’t unwell, he was downing a Mc flurry when I came out.

Around 7 years ago I used to date someone who had recently got a job as a Judge in the family courts. He was very young to have got this job and in part it was to do with his father being a judge in the same court. Anyway one day we were talking about how money is worked out in a divorce and he said ‘it’s disgusting, women expect to be paid out after staying at home doing nothing with kids for fifteen years, so rather than getting a job of their own they steal the x husband’s pension.’ I am ashamed to say I laughed and agreed with him. I had a good job with no interest in giving it up so I felt I was compatible with this man who I now see was a bit of a monster.

I honestly feel like men make up the bulk of shit behaviour. It probably sounds dramatic but I actually feel sad about it, genuinely sad. And embarrassed that it’s taken me until this late in life to see it.

Yes, I know it’s not all men.

Rant over.

@Southoftheriver32 if you believe this and others do here, I pity you all.

http://feministing.com/2015/01/12/study-finds-a-third-of-college-men-would-rape-if-they-could-get-away-with-it/

Not a majority in this article, but 31% is pretty damn scarey! A sample of 86 people though, that should be pointed out as well

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-third-of-male-university-students-say-they-would-rape-a-woman-if-there-no-were-no-consequences-9978052.html

Yes not a huge study but still…pretty bloody scary.

I can understand why some women on here are angry at me for pointing this out, it is a frightening fact to acknowledge.

The only answer is for some of you is to retreat to an all woman island.

I'm not angry. I'm tired and will probably wake up tomorrow enjoying my life having healthy relationships with males.

Fascinating difference of self report when you change the wording. They clearly have very smart people in their university...
It's a pity we cannot read the full study without a login.

I would be interested to know how many women would force someone to sex if there were no consequences. I'd be surprised if the numbers were not comparable.

Something similar was done a while ago on the basis of The Purge (i.e. all crime legal for a day), and it was about 18% (about the same for men/women) who said they would do serious crimes like murders etc. if it was legal.

That's people for you.

And it's generally known in online dating circles that firemen and servicemen are to be avoided.

I honestly think finances play a massive part in why some women live with men. They just cannot run a house on one salary.

The women aren’t racist no. But the patriarchal legal system is. And sexist.

Lmfao OP your post is the reason I've been single for twelve years after i left my husband who was obsessed with beer football and porn! Men are idiots i used to get the bus to work on Saturday and I'd see them waiting at the bus stop in their silly striped rugby hats waiting to squander their money on the rugby and swilling beer all day. I could hear them singing in the stadium from the hospital I work at.....whilst the government and local council shaft us all they care about is watching men play with a ball!then getting pissed all day. Then it's back out on Sunday for more lunchtime drinking before the lounge around waiting to watch men drive around and around a track. They're aggressive on Monday mornings in the work vans and BMW's if you dare to travel at the correct speed and still expect you to treat them as a son in the day and bedroom service at night. They think watching other men and women having sex is a birth right and think that washing their shit of the toilet is another. Never a thank you when their pants and paired Sox magically appear back in their drawers. Na I'm done they've allowed this country to fall down, from the prices of petrol to the council tax imagine the people power we'd have if men stopped idolising other men playing ball and used that energy to keep government in check? They want their women to revert back to the 50s....pretty sure the men of the 50s weren't out all day wat hung sport n getting pissed. They weren't lay around watching porn, they were in the garden building, growing food and spending the weekend with the wife and children whilst saving up for the future not wasting it all on booze.They took women out on dates picked them up, paid for everything whilst opening the doors etc. They married them and provided homes for them, they fixed things and showed their sons how to do the same. Men want it all ànd most now treat women like shit. Nope I'll be single for the rest of my life. Back in the 50s women respected their men because men were respectable.

Completely agree with you. My opinion of men has gradually got lower and lower over the past few years,thanks to being on the receiving end of experiences similar to yours OP.

So in your simplistic view, you want to go back to a time when women were mainly housewives, men went out to work and played for everything?
Women also like sports as well, it's not just a male interest you know.

I think she’s trying to make a different point: she’s saying that if men want the idealised 50s woman then they have to live up to being the idealised 50s man. I think it’s called irony.

@Natalya123 you can do what you like.

Me? I think men, almost the entirety of them, are pretty awful.

@Emz6103 YES.

Wait wait wait.

The women aren't racist and would never lie, but they're getting [unnamed group] disproportionately locked up for sex crimes they didn't commit, and the patriarchal legal system is allowing it because they're sexist against the women and racist against [unnamed group]?

Is that about right?

YANBU
Once you see it you can’t unsee it.

I worked in a male dominated environment for years. I was the only woman there for about 5-6 years and was treated as one of the lads, occasionally socialising after work. I met partners/wives at Christmas parties.

The way they’d talk about women was disgusting. About half would openly discuss their sex lives - like intimate details (this was before smart phones - I have no doubt they’d be sharing images if they existed then!). They’d discuss prostitutes - would you - if your wife wouldn’t find out? If you were guaranteed to not get aids? What would you do?

Their wives/girlfriends (I met all of them, but became good friends with 2 when we had babies fairly close together) had no idea, would be relieved that their husbands were the good ones.

There were some who didn’t join in as such, but they would keep their heads down and laugh occasionally. I’d say things to try to change the subject, or to say this was too much, but I was ignored. Depravity was the topic of conversation at least 50% of the time.

I complained, but this was the 90s, the ladette culture. I was told that I could leave if I wasn’t happy. (With hindsight I could have taken it further, but at the time I didn’t know this, I still don’t know if taking it further would have been feasible - this was banter, just a laugh - because joking about rape, rating women, and discussing how far they’d go is hilarious 🙄).

I’d happily live in an all female environment. My marriage broke up years ago, I will not have a relationship with a man again, it’s not worth the bother.

Women can be toxic to each other (MN being a case in point), but I wonder how much of this is due to being part of a patriarchal society that values competitiveness and doesn’t typically support women. Women who make it big tend to do so by being part of the societal system that is such a problem for women.

It would be interesting to see what would change if we became a matriarchal, more egalitarian society.

A baboon troop in the 1980s was culturally changed when the most aggressive males all ate contaminated food and (iirc) died of tuberculosis. Following their deaths the troop became much more peaceful, and the new males born to the group remained more peaceful.

Maybe this is the problem in society - there is an imbalance, society is geared up for men, who show great discomfort when any kind of equality is reached by women.
It reminds me of this quote:
"Patriarchy is like a man, having his boot on a woman's neck.
Feminism is a woman complaining about the boot.
Conservatives insist there wasn't a problem with the boot being on the neck until the woman started talking about it. If she would just be quiet about the boot, there wouldn't be a problem.
Male allies think there's a way to talk about the boot being on the neck that appeals to everyone and doesn't "alienate" those that would help remove the boot.
"Good Guys" insist that not all men wear boots.
Women with internalized misogyny insist they have a boot on their neck by choice and they love it! They insist something is wrong with women complaining about the boot.
The boot is never removed from the neck."
~ LeAudra Lee Baker”

Interesting to see typical MRA arguments crop up.

A male colleague once explained their point of view and it kind of makes sense. The gist was:

Men know they're terrible but also know women are terrible too.
Women know men are terrible but don't realise women are terrible too.

So you‘re putting a woman down because her experience with men is different to yours?

you are probably too busy sucking up to them
Either that or they perceive you to not be a threat - which from your posts, makes complete sense.

How condescending! So there’s no way that PP might actually be well respected by her male colleagues, because that’s not what you‘ve experienced?

I now honestly think an awful lot of men would rape and abuse women if they could get away with it.
I wouldn’t go that far (after all they CAN usually get away it’s it to all intents and purposes)
They tend to be more entitled as a rule, no denying that.

I think your armed forces one is not making the point you'd like it to tbh.

Yes. How you describe men, you see this in other areas too, moderate activists who say they want change but whom want to maintain their privileges and not sacrifice any of it. In term of finance, status/respect and other ways. Every kind of change seems to require it tho.

When equality is talked about these losses, or in some cases just perceived losses which aren't actually, are rarely mentioned. The drive and talk to get women into high paying jobs Vs the drive to get more men into low paying female dominated jobs, for example. Doing so might force a rethink about the importance and value of those jobs, existing values and attitudes is a part of what makes such a drive to get men into those jobs i.e money/status/respect. Jobs is just one example, you can examine any examples of stereotypes I come up with a talking point I'm sure

But it was men though.

I am afraid I have to agree...

I was assaulted by a supposed 'friend' of several years and that destroyed whatever trust I had left in men.

I think the easy access to increasingly violent porn has a lot to answer for in the way men see women, sex and relationships these days.

I also think that although it is fantastic that we gained more rights and freedom the flip side is that men are now able to get away more easily with not stepping up in life.

They can just go on line and date without commitment and women are told that it is the feminist and 'liberated' thing to sleep with a man they have just met and to be careful to keep things ''light' as not to scare the poor dears...

Basically I think no matter how society evolves men always get the better deal: there is less pressure on them to commit, marry and keep their families together and women are picking up the pieces but not the benefits.

Women are left to care for the children and have to work while the guys can just keep being eternal teenagers fleeting from relationship to relationship. And society no longer criticises them for it.

Also rape and sexual assault has such low conviction rates that men also know that they can get away with treating women poorly and that there will be no consequences.