Overheard in the office, what men really think

[josephinebonaparted]

A post from earlier thread got me thinking - the poster said she overheard men in the office saying that they DO hear the baby crying, but are only pretending to be asleep, even the ‘nice’ men. Another one from a few days ago was a poster being shocked at the things a group of ‘nice’ men where saying in a pub once their wives left.

It reminded me of when I was younger (and a lot less wise), I saw men in their 40/50s flirting with female clients at work (client facing role) and taking them out for cocktails and dinners, and literally stepping out of the bar to tell their wives that they were busy at work and can’t come home for bedtime. I was gobsmacked - one of them had a 2 week old baby!

Is this normal? If you work in a male dominated environment, is it really the case that guys don’t respect their partners like this?

I work in a very male dominated industry (construction). I’ve never seen men disrespect their wives, mostly the opposite. Jokes about the wive’s having them wrapped around their fingers etc and keeping wives happy buying them new kitchens….I’ve witnessed lots of general ingrained sexism, but letchy men usually get shut down by the rest. No one wants a creepy pervert at work.

I used to work in a jewellers and you'd have men come in with their wives and then a couple of weeks later would come in with the OW.
It was a common occurrence.

I'm sure no women in offices ever make jokes about their husbands...

I'm fed up with all these nasty hating threads!

No group is homogenous.

I challenge you to find widespread evidence of blacks/jews/disabled people disrespecting and gleefully abusing the trust of any single demographic.

Take your time. I can easily provide evidence of men doing it to women.

Perhaps you need reminding that pointing out actual failings in your demographic isn't prejudice, whether or not you share those failings.

It would be more constructive of you to stop doing these things (if you do) and to start criticising other men doing them. I realise this may be too much to ask.

Are you fucking serious? Are you not aware of the stereotypes, generalisations and hate speech often directed against the groups in other forms of media?

Christ if you're that sensitive I don't think MN is for you. I hear netmums is still going, maybe try the huns?

I don’t recall asking for your advice. Do you often give out unsolicited advice?

No one is forcing you to read them. It's quite easy to just scroll on past, I do it all the time. Yet you felt compelled to post on this "nasty hating thread".

And no one asked for your whining either yet we had to endure it.

You need to read your own post, mate.
You said:
i wonder how long a thread entitled “overheard at the office, what blacks/jews/disabled people really think” would last.

No-one was talking about prejudice directed against those groups.

What a strange comment.

Tough shit, I guess.

Well yes, you whine I give advice. Poor you.

There there.

Don't you have some men whose egos you need soothe?

Which of the women got the better jewellery?!

Yeah, your comment was a bit strange. You tried to frame men as a group being oppressed by women, much as dark-skinned people can be oppressed by whites. You didn't even do it right 🤣

The idea becomes even more preposterous when you realise the 'oppression' consists of women describing unpleasant attitudes displayed by many men. This could only be seen as oppression by someone who believes men have an unassailable right to be unpleasant to & about women, and women must never question it.

.

The "misandry" square on my male-supremacist bingo card's still unchecked: would you like to do that now?

Men commit over 90% of violent crimes and 99% of sexual crimes. It's not misandry to acknowledge this. I suspect that you have (possibly wilfully) misinterpreted comments about this imbalance in violent offending.

The ones who talk about "the missus" are the worst. Building sites are full of them, along with men who will openly and graphically discuss what they want to do to the female admin workers in the site offices and will write their intentions on walls yet to be painted. There's a reason that I don't work on the sites any more.

Tbh many years ago I knew many men like his but also knew their wives and gfs who were also having their own lives on the side and weren’t exactly running back from work in any hurry every single night and did their fair share of stopping off at the pub for a drink or 3.

@Yalta, presumably they were childfree or had nannies? If neither partner was pulling a fast one on the other, they were both entitled to their pub time, surely.

I think sometimes when people ask if all men are really like this, what they're getting at is is it really the case that any man can be like this behind our backs, even the ones who seem nice?

You don't actually need to meet many men like this to be unsettled by the idea that you won't be able to tell, and that any man might have this sort of attitude and behaviour when out of sight of their spouse and family. Once you realise it's not that rare, even if it's a minority, it's a bit depressing. I'm sure there are examples the other way round, too, where men find themselves speculating if all women are like something or other, but really they know it's not all, but what they're wondering is "could any woman be secretly like this, even my wife/gf/best friend who seems lovely?".