Ways middle aged men have told us off this week

[Siblingsadness]

I've got 2 today and it's not even midday yet
I swim every day at 6am . There's normally about 6 of us, today I had the pool all to myself. I swam in one of the lanes as i am working on staying straight during certain strokes. After about 20 minutes a man got in the pool. I've seen him before, he always goes in the unlaned bit and does physio walking up and down.
Today he came over to the lane and said I shouldn't be in there as its the fast lane and I wasn't fast. I thought he was joking so I laughed. He then said he wasn't joking and I needed to move. Of course I told him not to be ridiculous, no one else was in here and if someone fast wanted it, I'd move. He called me a silly batch.
Then just now in tescos, I was in the pasta aisle and a man picked up a jar of pasta sauce and said "is this any good" I said I wasn't sure sorry, I normally just get the passata and put onion and garlic in it. He sort of mocked me and said "ooh good cook are you" I said yes, I'm OK and I enjoy it too. He then said "well at least I can parallel park you silly cow"
Now I know I just encountered 2 nutters (maybe a third is on the way) but I'm a bit cheeky and a cow before lunch today despite just going for a swim and buying cheaper pasta ingredients. 🤣🤣

Most MEN in Scotland should be afraid 😨 😂 we're a scary lot us Scottish women.

But, based on what I think you've said here, these drivers WERE being dicks. OP is pointing out how often men seem to think it's okay to comment, tell women off, or make aggressive suggestions for just doing perfectly normal things.

As a middle aged woman myself there is NO doubt that I am much more likely to vocally and strongly say what I think and stand up for myself. But that means that when someone pushes me, I'll say something. It dpesn't mean I storm up to men in stores and tell them the green shirt they're wearing doesn't suit them and they should buy a new one so that their wife will be proud to be seen in public with them.

@Starlia
i had this just last week! However now I’m a bit older I always bite back

Oh I have no time for that. The 2nd guy would have got ‘I can too! so looks like I’m better than you at stuff! Anyway can’t stand chitchatting with losers!’

I'd be very surprised if your son was parking ready to walk at a nature reserve and had a man say "You don't want to be out walking in this rain love, you'll get soaked" as happened to me yesterday. Like I needed him to tell me that not only was it raining, but also that rain is wet.
Its not the outright aggression and threats, which I agree men do tend to direct to each other. Its the everyday patronising and interfering they do with women that they don't do to other men.

I did this once...well I didn't say 'cunt' but 'twat' instead.

Mine was a car situation (I drive an old original Mini so pretty small car) and I was navigating down a narrow road with cars parked on both sides and I pull into a gap to allow an approaching car through and this bloke in this massive 'warrior' truck thing, stopped and started swearing and telling me off about how I should have stayed at the beginning of the line of parked cars to allow his highness him through. There was another bloke sat in the passenger seat with him who said nothing.

I wound my window down, just sat and stared at him and said (in my best Margot Leadbetter voice) 'fuck off you twat', continued staring at him whilst I wound the window up and managed to squeeze through the gap he'd left whilst he remonstrated me and drove merrily on my way. The passenger was laughing his head off whilst the driver nearly blew a gasket. hehe.. 😂dick.

These men who think it is acceptable to behave towards women like this deserve a bashing.

I went out to the supermarket at lunchtime and was walking back to my car after returning my trolley. A very irate man was standing by his car and started shouting and swearing at me as I walked towards him. Apparently I’d parked my car far too close to his and he wasn’t happy. But it wasn’t my car, I was further down with free spaces either side of me.

Then the owner of the badly parked car returned and just happened to be a man. I turned round to shouty, angry man and asked him if he wanted to say the same to the actual car owner as he did to me. Strangely he went very quiet.,

I'm struggling to understand the second one. Do you know the man? Is there some missing context? Did you park badly outside the shop and he followed you in, maybe? That's the only thing I could imagine happening but it's still bizarre.

Nope. Just a stranger in the pasta aisle. He was saying I might be good at cooking, but as I'm a woman I cant park, so don't get too up myself

I had come on my own all the way from Dijon by train (via the horrible Gare du Nord) to Vauxhall, where I had to get one more train and then a bus home.
I paused at the bottom of a long flight of steps at Vauxhall station, thinking ‘Oh shit’ since I had a heavy suitcase, when a lovely man, bless him, just picked up my case without a word, and carried it up for me.

I hope I’m allowed to say that my dh would almost certainly do the same in such circs.

Omg I would go off at that prick in the supermarket.

Swimming I would be too out of breath lol

If people haven't experienced this why can't they say that? Has anyone said it hasn't happened to me so it can't have happened to you? If they have I missed that post.

I agree, I had a work situation like this, the man in question is only slightly older than me and had visited me in my office to explain 'the parameters' to me, like I didn't already know🙄. He was standing up and I was sitting down so he was kind of telling me rather than it being a discussion, he then smiled at me in a condescending way and said, 'ok?' as in this is not up for discussion. I actually thought he was going to pat me on the head like I was a child.

Would you not help a stranger who was struggling? I know I would. Just base line human decency surely, not something that stands out as 'lovely'? I do think the bar for men seems quite low in this regard. A two minute act of kindness seems to elevate them to hero status.

I've had the same happen and help with GC and his buggy. Almost always young men, sometimes middle-aged men. I can't think of one woman offering to help but I know it happens because I've done it.

Men and swimming lanes is one of my bugbears. I swim a couple of times a week, and am very much a middle lane speed swimmer - not fast, but not slow.

Very often there’s a man swimming slowly in the middle lane who is obviously deluded about his speed and/or doesn’t want to face the fact he should be in the slow lane. Or there’s a man in the middle lane who should clearly be in the fast lane, who swims up and down the middle of the middle lane doing a fast and splashy front crawl who everyone then needs to move out the way for.

On the other hand I find women are pretty good at identifying what lane they should be in.

As I said when I agreed with that poster in my experience it is always men who offer to help me. Where is the bar set for women who push past you?

A man shouted to me from the window of his van in the supermarket car park once that I was a stupid bitch. Can’t remember why, he either had an issue with my parking or had just decided that he wanted to be a twat to a random woman that day. Unfortunately I have an awful temper so I drove round the car park until I found him getting into his van, blocked him, got out of my car, stood toe to toe with him and asked him to explain his rationale for me being a stupid bitch. He didn’t seem to be able to give an answer so I suggested he went back to his mum’s box room for a pot noodle and a wank.

I remain surprised and a bit dismayed to see that OP essentially posted "two men were unnecessarily rude to me about something that really did not warrant rudeness", and yet there are some respondants whose contribution is "but you must have done something!!!!".

Comments about "but you were in the EMPTY fast lane" or "adding onions to passata is oneupmanship" or "maybe he saw you park"... it drives me insane. Could it not just be that some men are fucking rude?

A few years back, I - a 30+ woman - was groped by a man at a halloween party in a bar owned by a family member. I was wearing a hospital gown with shorts underneath as part of a costume, handing out drinks. I went straight to my mum and said "a man just put their hand inside my gown and squeezed my bum" AND SHE REPLIED "Well sometimes, darling, women are just as bad as men".

If anyone can explain to me why that is an appropriate response to bad male behaviour, I'll buy you a jam doughnut.

The second man sounds like he had MH problems. If a woman said something like that you would assume she had MH problems.

I find it so ironic, these constant threads about how awful men are, the constant hate directed at them, then the criticism that they don't like us enough. Ffs hold a mirror up to yourselves. If a man spent his day posting anecdotes of negative experiences he had with random women in public situations you would think he is a loser.

If I ever feel like men are judgemental or narrow minded I just click into AIBU to remind myself that these type of people exist in balance across both genders.

I think your mother might be the best person to ask as I can't imagine anyone else will be able to explain it.

When women assault men in the same numbers that men assault women, or indeed other men, then I will start worrying about men's negative experinces of women.

Looking concerned and saying "are you alright? Do you have anyone helping you today? " is what I have up my sleeve in case of this nonsense.

Most strangers I encounter are polite though. I did get called a dozy cow by a woman at a Tube station for not guessing which direction she was about to move in.

OK, so he wasn’t ‘lovely’ he was just a bog-standard bloke. Happy now?

FFS!!

And I wasn’t ‘struggling’ - I was just standing there.

Why do some MNers have to pick holes in so many posts?