To think there’s a real crisis in men being able to express how they truly feel about life and society?

[TheGentleSwan]

It feels like, in the West, men are struggling to be honest about their emotions, their frustrations, and how they view the world. Whether it’s societal pressure, fear of judgement, or just a lack of spaces to talk openly, it seems like many men keep things bottled up. AIBU to think this is a real issue?

Well according to Louise Perry we didnt gain much.

https://www.thefp.com/p/loveless-sex-is-not-empowering

I don’t know if this has been mentioned upthread but the success of Andy’s Man Club shows stuff is changing

If you don't believe white male privilege exists, why are white men so disproportionately represented at the top of our society? The power holders, the decision makers, the highest earners? Do you think that white men are disproportionately more intelligent and competent than women and people of colour?

Ok, so uk is a predominantly white country by a very large majority - therefore far more white people will be in power. Same way if you went to the African continent, most of their leaders , if not all will be black.

Why more men ? Traditionally the majority of women have children, this will impact their career to some degree logistically. Men are more likely to take no career breaks and be able to steam ahead.

There are many, many, many female politicians, CEOs etc. have you not looked around lately ? We're not in the 1930s anymore.

I think that covers why the majority of "high up" people are white males. I'd argue there are a fair few women in high up places though in 2025.

Look a bit closer...is there anything else those people (including the women in those positions) have in common?

Could it be...money, as @SquashedMallow said?

Yes and no- there are many men’s mental health podcasts out now- and they (many of them) seem to be toxic as fuck under the guise of this is how men are/ think/ act.

When they are not raping and murdering us ,you mean ..
I think mens violence towards women is a far bigger problem.
Why can't they control themselves

Women attempt suicide more than men. Men just choose more violent methods which are in line with their general nature, so they are more successful.

If we use those stats to say there is a men's mental health crisis, then equally (if not more so) there is a women's one.

It is laughable PPs saying "women hold all the power" in dating.
Women are told they have an expiration date. You have successful vivacious women being passed over by substandard men who are going for women 20 years younger than them. And when those younger women don't want them, they don't look inward, they just rage against women as a whole.

Men aren't sending photos of their date to a friend for safety in case they get raped or murdered.

And I'm sorry, but when 1 in 6 girls stop being sexually abused and 1 in 4 women sexually assaulted or raped and two women every week being killed by men... Maybe then, I will be open to a conversation about how tough men have it.

But if I am being honest, I will probably tell them to get out and make the change that they want to see happen. Just like women have had to. We have had to fight for everything we have been given, whereas men are used to being handed things in a society shaped for them.

Just to add:
It is not the responsibility of the oppressed to help the oppressor.

When men begin to actively change society in favor of equality, then a conversation can happen.

But what motivation do men have for society to change, when it benefits them far more than it harms them.

I have no inclination to discuss mens mental health, until their violence towards women is discussed and stopped.
Maybe if they stop battering women ,they may find more people to talk to them .
Could you imagine a life where we were safe to go running at night ,or safe to walk home from the pub a few blocks ,or safe in our homes from the man we married,or safe from sexual abuse by our male relatives .or safe from our boss and his wandering hands ...it would be amazing

Who is telling you anger is an acceptable emotion? Not women I'll bet, I for one want to be nowhere near an angry man. Anger is an undesirable emotion to have, even more so for men. So why is it always the default emotion out of all the other "undesirable" emotions? You don't think women would far rather a man show vulnerability than anger? Male anger and violence (which it often leads to) is ALWAYS spoken about as a huge issue, why do men always ignore this and pretend they've been told it's the only acceptable emotion they can have?

Have you seen the rates of domestic violence in lesbian relationships?

Staggering.

Are you expecting lesbian women to STFU about their problems till they stop battering each other?

Thought not.

Misandry is just as unacceptable as misogyny.

Maybe start a thread about that ,sounds awful,no I'd not realized the rates of violence were so high in lesbian relationships.
But this is a thread about men ,so I was replying about men

Hugely misses the point.

If lesbian relationships are as violent as you claim, with no evidence whatsoever, they'd still be women in the society outlined by @Bulldogdreams bar the marital violence, i.e. Could you imagine a life where we were safe to go running at night ,or safe to walk home from the pub a few blocks ,or safe in our homes from the man we married,or safe from sexual abuse by our male relatives .or safe from our boss and his wandering hands ...it would be amazing

Funny they seem more than willing to open up about all sorts of topics they know fuck all about, offering opinions willynilly when not asked.

If men can't talk about sensitive stuff, because other men are dicks to them over it... I'd say thats a man problem, they need to sort themselves out.

SO far though the loudest group seem to be the ones who want to sit in their mommys basements bitching about how its all womens fault. They probably aren't really the majority but until sensible men put these incel twerps back in their boxes, they're sure sounding like they're a majority.

@FluentLilacPombear

Do you know how many lesbians murdered their partners last year? Zero.

Do you know how many women were murdered in heterosexual relationships by their male partners? 140.

Misandry is a women’s anger against their oppressors. Misogyny is a hatred again women and a leading cause of death for women globally.

They are not the same. They are not comparable. Men do not, nor ever have, had to navigate life with fear from displays of misandry.

Men are not the logical unemotional ones. They simply channel all their spite, rage, jealousy, embarrassment, sadness, shame and frustration into anger and attack everyone around them including themselves.

They literally build entire online communities, podcasts and demigods around their displays of hate and misogyny.

Women pointing their shit out is incomparable.

A lot of the issues you raise are not solely about the war of the sexes, but about economics and thereby politics. Of course, an awful lot of the war of the sexes is e
ntirely about that. And that is in the hands of men. It’s men that tend to like right wing politics based on might is right. That’s connected to their being the dominant and domineering species. If they have not yet figured out even now that most people, including men, do not tend to live well under ‘might is right’ economics, what can women do to mend their stupidity? They control violence as part of the state. Women were written out of control in the modern state 400 years ago.

Always men expect this and expect that and get angry at the nearest female when they are cut out by the political economics they support, instead of taking responsibility or blaming other men. Go look in any of Britains abandoned towns op. Who’s running the drugs trades and the armed gangs? For that matter who runs Parliament? Who will always run Parliament, no matter how many ‘ooh look there’s some women there’? Who creates the social rules?

She's very infantalising.

I'm so fed up of people saying that.

The study that statistic was based off used the sexuality of the women at the time they responded.

If you look deeper into it over 70% of the women who are lesbians or bisexual had only suffered male violence in relationships they had before they were in relationships with women.

It's still based off male violence. Nice try though.

Too many men don’t want to change.
Society and culture have been in their favour since records began, men wrote the narrative of history after all.

They don’t want the backbreaking, thankless, endless, unpaid caring roles needed in a caring society.

Women have made much more progress in becoming equal in terms of financial independence and men’s reaction? Well look at the mess now, extreme porn, and utter dislike and contempt rather than thinking of an alternative.

When was the last time you know a man who read a book that is character led, even a book by a female author?

They, on the whole, don’t fucking try.

So fuck women trying to solve it, they still have plenty to continually preserve now because fucking men are trying to strip away rights over women left right and centre now in the western world because that’s more optimal than them evolving into something better.

So men can go screw themselves.

Re. online dating - Yes! A lot of men - irrespective of their own looks, age and size - get angry even at the idea of a fat and/or over 35 woman existing online. Even if they have a bunch of kids you lose points for being a single mother too. And this attitude seems to be worse with the older men . Plenty of women 50 + say they barely get any interactions as so many men their age are trying to date at least 10-15 years younger.

Men can also be abusive to slim conventionally attractive young women on dating apps for slightly different reasons too.
Mainly because that’s the women they want and they get angry if the woman has standards they don’t meet.

Across the board they’re often lewd and disgusting to a range of women whether they find them attractive or not. I’m starting to think it’s a power play because surely they can’t think this will get them a date?

When women are rejected they turn inwards and wonder how can they improve their appearance , their lives, their online profiles. There was a thread last week about a late 30s woman with a skin condition who really struggled with Online dating and getting men to reply to her let alone date her. She was so dejected and sad. She’d never been touched sexually in her life.

While many men who get rejected are far more likely than women to send abusive messages on dating apps or leave hateful misogynistic messages on social media or start angry podcasts .

In my first week of OD a guy asked me to add him to WhatsApp and sent his number in his second message which is crazy. I had said thanks for the compliments (he had said nice things) but I didn’t share my number with men without getting to know them a bit more. He flipped out and said no wonder I was online dating as I had a terrible attitude and that’s why someone as attractive as me was still single blah blah and I would never find a man etc as looks will fade but I’m still going to be awful etc 🙄

I just blocked him and didn’t reply but I was quite shaken up by the vitriol in his rant. No wonder so many can’t get dates or even replies to messages. And it’s not all to do with looks or money as the red pillers will have you believe.

Thankfully majority of my bad OD stories stop at online interactions as I’ve only ever met 3 men in person from OD (and they ended up being decent tbf) and it’s because I vet the heck out of them. Seriously, it often takes a maximum of 2 weeks for them to show themselves up. Most times the mask slips within a few messages!

A guy had on his profile “ready for a relationship” as did I. By the third or fourth message he said he would show me around this new city, if I would show him my “nooks and crannies”. I even naively asked him to clarify just in case he meant something else and what he said next confirmed yeah he was being disgusting. Had to unmatch immediately.

It’s also laughable that he thought it would entice me lol. I’m happy to explore a new city myself so why would I agree to sleep with a man I’ve just met online who has barely said two words to me and open myself up to STDs/unwanted pregnancy and the risk of aggressive pornified sex with a stranger just to get a personal tour? Like really what’s in it for me as a woman who clearly stated I was looking for a relationship? I suspect because they conceal their intentions they think women do too - so maybe they assume I too was just after sex 🤦🏽‍♀️

It’s almost like they refuse to understand most women are not like (many of) them in their animalistic quest for sex. He didn’t even offer to wine and dine me ffs. It’s like they want escorts they don’t have to pay for. Cheap misogynists!

And another issue is many of the men online are not single . I have a theory that the ones that are the most vile are also more likely to be married/partnered and probably hate their wives.

A significant amount of them are complaining about not getting dates but ignoring the tiny issue that they are not even single and are on there to cheat on their partners 😆😆 you really couldn’t make it up.

An older survey showed almost 50% of tinder users are not single, which is WILD ! I mean sure that could include women as well, but really I can’t see many women in relationships voluntarily going on Tinder - even a lot of single women don’t want to be on 😂

I used the word disproportionately. You need to rethink your argument with that in mind.

I think you need to look at common sense. If a country is say 96% white, it doesn't take a statistician to calculate most of your senior members of the cabinet are going to be white. You can analyse and dissect things (as Is the modern way ) all you like : but what I've said stands.

There was an English teacher on LBC the other day discussing the English Literature curriculum saying how much of it had to be altered to please boys. Very few texts with female leads as boys wouldn't engage with the lesson and would act out otherwise and how one whole-book reading for studying and discussion purposes is now a thing of the past as (I know its a problem with both sexes) disproportionally way more boys simply refuse to read whole books anymore and so only short text excerpts can now be used.

You’re quite right: any form of so called positive discrimination has very limited impact on mitigating the impact of widespread bias against people from marginalised groups. Overall the UK job market is not slanted against white British males and any attempt to claim so is absurd.

On average, 24% of applicants of white British origin received a positive response from employers, compared with 15% of minority ethnic applicants applying with identical CVs and cover letters. All of the minority applications clearly stated that they were either British-born or had arrived in the country by the age of six and had obtained all their education and training in Britain.
Minority ethnic applicants, including white minorities, had to send 60% more applications to get a positive response from an employer than a white person of British origin. While applicants originating from western Europe and the US were treated almost as well as the majority group, people of Pakistani origin had to make 70% more applications. The figures were even higher for those of Nigerian, Middle Eastern and north African (MENA) origin, at 80% and 90% respectively. (from the linked article)

One of the most startling points to me was that even a White American or (white) Western European non-British person has far better chances than a Black /Asian British or born/raised person in seeking work.

A friend of mine was sat on a train on her way to meet me incidentally. She said two men in business suits were sitting in front of her talking about the interview process. They were guffawing about the fact they were going to hire the less able white man over the black man who had performed better at interview and was more qualified because “of course”. They made very clear it was a racial bias thing and nothing to do with personality/ability/interview competence. She was someone who had been a bit doubtful about how prevalent racism was but seeing that gave her a shock and made her rethink everything.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/17/minority-ethnic-britons-face-shocking-job-discrimination