To think most men wouldn’t survive a year living the life of an average woman?

[ThatRealLimeBee]

The daily grind of sexism, safety worries, juggling expectations, emotional labour… Most men have no idea. AIBU to think they’d crumble under the load if they had to swap lives with us for a year?

no I wouldn’t

Hmm, I'm not so sure about that. 'Men' hold the power as group but in reality it's a small proportion of men.

That homeless person freezing half to death in the winter is almost certainly a man. The individuals called up to war are mostly men. Sewage workers, binmen, manual labourers, etc. Admittedly women do most care jobs but the vast majority of dangerous and dirty jobs are done by men.

And despite the fact that it's frowned to 'live off a man', plenty still do. Men can't do that. They almost certainly have to work full time until their 70s. No going part time after you've had kids and then never returning to a proper career. And also being the vast majority of victims of violence etc and having to be 'competitive' in a different way to us to be taken seriously.

I think both sexes have their individual hardships but having to write the xmas cards every year is pretty low down the list IMHO.

Oil rig: no.
Manual job: yes.
Builder/bricklayer: yes if I’d had the training. Plenty of female bricklayers nowadays.

I see this argument with increasing frequency and it’s never from anyone who actually works at an oil rig.

Why just men? I never got very painful periods and now my cramps are practically non-existent. The worst thing is the breast pain, but still perfectly manageable. I'd hate those simulators too. It's almost like you resent men not suffering enough, when it's far from the norm anyway.

Plenty of female bricklayers nowadays.

I've yet to see one in the 4-5 years I've been on construction sites daily. Two of those years I was delivering mortar directly to the brickies.

A 'weak' man will generally get trampled on in life. A lot of women don't really comprehend that.

I wonder given that so many women on here can't cope without the DC for more than a couple of days, how they would survive being a long distance lorry driver and only seeing their kids for 1.5 - 2 days every week?

Clearly you've never met a working single mum then? Where do you live?

Ive always wondered what jobs there are on an oil rig? Are they all big physical jobs, or is there data jobs , ones where the equipment does the heavy work, cooks, medics etc out there too. Is it the being away that makes it hard, or weather or risk. I genuinely dont know.

I wouldn't like being away from my family, but then I know women who do care work (which is physical in its own way) and they are from the Philippines and send money home to thier children, who live with gran. They might not see them for a year or two. The often live over crowded and even hot bed to reduce costs, so one sleeps whilst another is on shift.

Of course they'd cope. What martyr bullshit. Stop creating work for yourself and start having proper boundaries.

oil rig worker
7 days 7 nights 2 weeks off. (12hr shifts)
normally good food, not so good accommodation, decent tv. well paid if you can deal with the mental stress of being out in the middle of nowhere and being away from family and friends for that long.
High pressure, high risk job.
I have seen it destroy many marriages.

There are lots of non physical jobs. I almost took an engineering safety manager type job on a rig but decided it wouldn't be a great environment.

Its hard because the hours are very long and trying. Being away from home for long spells is shit. The shifts can be tedious too.

What planet did you come from? You think the woman doesn't ask herself these questions as a SAHM? Do you realise that every working person not in a partnership asks themselves this?

And likewise for the most successful women I know. They all are either single, childless and are very invested in their careers. Or they have a spouse who has stepped back and essentially supports their career moves.

Depends on the man.

I couldn’t spend a year doing what DH does. His job is hugely stressful and all consuming. I don’t know he shoulders it for a week, never mind the last 20 years.

And no, the reason he copes isn’t because I pick up everything for him. I have a full time job and career too and broadly share household tasks and childcare.

Everyone is different and men are as varied as women.

What utter and total garbage. These sorts of posts absolutely baffle me. The constant need for competition and proving one or other is “better” is so counter productive.

I absolutely couldn’t do it all myself but I’d just do it differently if I had to, I’m sure DH would be the same. I’d definitely cook far inferior food to our daily meals now, clothes would be ironed in a rush in the morning and it would be a huge struggle to manage the kids activities how he does it. Equally he’d probably end up having to do emergency clothes washes or would clean in one big blitz. Christmas and birthdays would be stressful for me, I’d get it done but he takes sorting those things in his stride.
etc etc etc etc, blah, blah, blah, blah.

To be fair, I don't do birthday or Christmas cards either.
This is the kind of optional extra that women often opt to do adding to what they call 'life admin'. All these little things add up and start to cause stress resulting in posts like these.

Certainly a lot of single men seem to be able to manage it all and still be extremely successful.

I've refused to do all "life work" in my partnership and my husband does the majority of the life admin, childcare, cooking and housework for our family.

I've still dealt with crippling periods, been left bedbound in pain in pregnancy, had childbirth with cuts/interventions etc without pain relief and doctors held me down to do these things without my consent, which have left me physically scarred etc. I've also experienced sex discrimination at work (which I fought back against at the time).

Even without taking on any of the mental load (which I admit is quite unusual as most women do) my life has still been quite a bit harder than my brothers and my husbands just because of my sex. I think this is probably true for a lot of women.

From some of the debates I've watched the average American feminist seems to have no idea that all American men need to sign up to the draft to get the state benefits women get for free. It's actually an offence not to.

Yeah, there hasn't been a draft in years. But if there is a lot of men will find they've signed on the dotted line. It's the principle of this that would annoy me as a man. Even if this system was driven by men you can bet that a lot of men wouldn't want to be conscripted.

And look at Ukraine. There must be loads of former IT professionals, businessmen etc now out there on the frontline with a rifle in their hands. That's the stuff of nightmares. Being captured by the Russians and tortured to death etc.

To think the endless martyring gets boring, no women are not saints just because they exist but it seems being a woman is becoming like being a vegan, how do you know someone is a woman? You dont need too they tell you all about it

Men would manage perfectly fine like women there are 'normal' men and women who just get on witj things and dont spend their whole lives complaining about how hard done by they are

Woman constantly whinge about men and how they cant live with them then get hysterical when the man wants to leave and then moves the next one in because they cant live without one but still enjoy complaining about them

To think there will be another man hating one tomorrow though

Slight derailment, but if conscription ever happened again in this country surely fifty percent of the people conscripted and sent to the front line in the infantry would be women?

YABU. I actually wouldn’t swap lives with my DH in a million years. I adore all aspects of caring for my own beloved children at home and home-making (cleaning, gardening, organising, admin, Christmas- I absolutely adore all aspects of occasion planning and delivering!). I’m living my dream life!

I'm not going to deny that lots of women have to face stuff that men don't, but if I answer for myself, YABU tbh. I only carried more of the load when I was a SAHM or very part time. Dh's job was far, far harder than my life at that point. If we'd swapped roles, he'd have been fine. I'd have seriously struggled.

No chance if you're talking infantry roles. Very few women would have the strength to slog for miles carrying heavy backpacks etc. But ultimately it'd never happen because they'd kick up such a stink the men would absolve them of the responsibility. You only have to look to the reactions when it was proposed in the US.