Are the majority of men good guys?

[Musings32]

(nc incase outing)

There was a discussion in my place of work today which has really got me thinking. Some of the men in work were talking about how the vast majority of men are really good men, treat women well, step up properly as fathers and husbands and are completely dedicated to their families and kids etc and it's only a small minority of men who aren't or who justify abuse/ cheating/ not parenting presently enough or act in otherwise disrespectful ways towards their spouse/ family/ women.

I was actually really surprised at how many of the women in work agreed with them because I would have said the majority of men tend to let women and children down in lots of ways and can be really harmful or unreliable.

Personally I haven't had good experiences with a lot of men throughout my life and my marriage taught me that you can think you really know and trust someone and still not know what they are actually capable of- that someone can love you but still be profoundly selfish and justify anything to themselves. I also work in a field where I see the worst of people in general a lot of the time, and it's noticeable that male violence and abuse tends to be more prevalent. I then thought maybe my own experiences and line of work are skewing the picture so I thought I'd poll it to see what others think, maybe to either (hopefully) give myself a reality check or to know I'm not crazy!

So:
YABU I believe the majority of men are "good" men
YANBU I believe "good" men exist but are in the minority

Yes, generally speaking I would argue that a functional society requires the majority of people to be not awful (or "morally good", as I'll use here)

I think there are two ways to look at it.

If you take morality as subjective -

Then morals are defined by the society itself though, e.g. a moral man in the 1920s might not be a moral man today. This makes it nearly impossible to have a society where the majority of men are 'awful', because the majority defines morality, so what is 'morally' would shift to mean that the majority of people are always "good", because the majority of people define what good is

If you take morality as more objective -

Then, I would argue that all the most successful societies are those with the highest degree of morally acceptable behaviors. Societies rife with law-less men, violence, incidentally, crime, murder, rape etc. don't function as well. It is cyclical of course, so poor function - leads to immorality, which leads to poor function, but the point remains that a society in which the majority of men were awful, would be expected to perform worse and be outcompeted (and out survived) than a society in which the majority of men were able to follow moral standards.

Either way, you end up with the societies that survive and maintain themselves, consisting of a majority of decent people.

98% of men are failures for women.

When I broke up with my exes they always said 'it's not like I hit you or cheat on you'. One was very psychologically/emotionally abusive and no he didn't hit me except for one slap and he punched many holes in walls too.

And they also like to compare themselves to the worst man they know and say at least I'm not like him, and seem to think that you should be then grateful that you're not with the worst man you know and should therefore have to stay with him forever because he's not as bad as Steve from down the road.

A friend of mine broke up with her husband and he told her he hoped her next man beat her so she'd know how good she had it with him. Her husband never physically harmed her but was extremely controlling.

I don't think men are bad but they are different to women and I think more and more women have raised their boundaries and just can't be bothered with dealing with them anymore.i think what I have realised about men is that they can be very selfish and want things their way. I don't think they listen very well until the partner has said something until she is at breaking point.

I say this as someone who works with families, who is divorced, has many single mum friends as well as friends still married. I have a lot of married friends colleagues who have said to me they'd love to live alone with their kids as I do. I think as women get older and strengthen their boundaries they just can't be bothered with dealing with elements of selfishness that men can often bring, such as endless hobbies, money going outside of the family, woman being left to bring up the kids as if she is alone. Women get tired of that. I've seen often too women walking away from marriage when kids are in a more independent stage around teen. I wonder if this is because after the initial hard work of babies and small kids women realise, I've done this virtually alone and done an amazing job with not a huge amount of support and so their confidence in parenting alone increases.

I'm not saying all men but I'd say a lot are not that great. I was married for 15 years have dated a little hear and there and have the same issue with a partner I've been with for three years. Just always an element of selfishness that women seem to have less in glad I don't live with my current partner as don't think, because of his selfishness, it's every going to really work for me. I'm pretty happy on my own!

Yes, lots of men are good guys.

And lots of women are awful. MN just doesn't like to acknowledge either fact, despite women being utterly vile to each other on here day after day. I bet they are nightmares at home and at work.

YANBU, but I don’t think it’s just men, I think, on a good day, most people are selfish and lack self awareness. On a bad day? People can be vile.

Agree with a lot of comments - a perfect storm of circumstances can change a good man bad or seemingly reveal his true colours. Lots of couples are childfree by choice too these days and I think that masks a lot of behaviour that might otherwise go unchallenged. Children change everything in a relationship

Does a night out mean a man isn't a good guy? That's a strange take.

In all honesty, I think most men, as for most women, are broadly speaking “nice” well-intentioned people. They fuck up from time to
time but aren’t evil or deliberately malevolent.

Some people aren’t “nice” but I’ve met as many female dicks as male dicks in my life.

In my experience, pretty much all the men we know are really good guys. Kind, honest, great husbands, fathers and sons.

We have a large circle of close friends and virtually all of us are very happily married and have been for at least 20 years.

I understand what you mean. I don't know many who acknowledge how toxic men can be. In fact I would go as far as to say that looking at the statistics of the number of abusive men, either there really is a small minority of men who behave this way, who spread their misery about at quite a rate, or the men who believe all of their male friends/colleagues/family members are good are possibly part of the problem.

Even when confronted with evidence of abuse, so many males deny the issue, "X would not do that".

Looking at the women in my life, men are shits. Looking at the world, it’s the men who are the main cause of the major issues. I do know a few ‘good’ men, but if I was single again I would be quite happy not bothering with them.

When the going gets tough…… you can see the true mettle of a decent man. Most men bale out of a family when there is a disabled child. They leave a sinking ship in search of greener pastures where their needs are paramount.

Based on my experience - men and women are equally good. I have lovely friends and family members of both sexes. My car broke down twice and both times men had gone out of their way to help. My DH and FIL do more of the housework and cooking.

No ,I think the majority of men have the ability to bad people when it suits them . The likelihood of a man committing a crime/ leaving their family / starting an affair / domestic violence is far higher than that of a woman.
You only have to look at mens behaviour in times of war to see that mens morals are often incredibly low.

I’ve said you’re being unreasonable as my personal experience is that most of the men in my life are good people. And sometimes they make mistakes as people do, but that just means they’re human.

I do think though we need to do more to teach the good ones to speak up if they hear a friend or colleague being inappropriate. While I don’t think many would do harm themselves I think If more men made a culture of objectifying and belittling women unacceptable we’d move further faster.

See the Daniel Sloss clip of him talking about how he didn’t do anything as a friend behaved inappropriately and how the friend went on to rape.

I’ve been cheated on by someone who is in other ways ‘a good guy’. He certainly would seem like a really good guy to the outside world and would think of himself as one.

I also am very close to db who I love dearly and would say was a ‘good guy’ if anyone asked me. However, and I feel bad saying this, there is also a level of selfishness and entitlement to his behaviour on occasion that I just wouldn’t have. His ex wife doesn’t speak to him and the narrative is that she’s difficult, which she is, but I’m fairly sure if I went and asked her she would tell me some things I wouldn’t like to hear.

So while I think most people are generally good I think the patriarchy and how men are socialised creates inherent problems.

I've not got one example of a truly good man, or at least equally good as the women, out of all the men in my family. Not saying I don't love them, or that they're not part of the family, but they've all left pregnant partners/got kids they don't see and they all think housework is women's work. We've got a long line of women from my great great great grandmother to my youngest teen relative who were left during pregnancy despite promises of marriage. My DH is good now he's sober but he didn't lift a finger when the kids were little and turned to alcohol instead, I did absolutely everything at home and with our babies, as well as work. People would say these are good men if they met them though, friendly, sociable, easy going, would certainly always help a (pretty) women out.

There's a video doing the rounds on SM where a man was playing a game to disprove the myth that men don't know anything about their friends. It backfired because none of them knew anything about each other. Any basic details at all (innocuous like, 'What's my cat's name?') there was just nothing.

The bit that went viral was he had an ex that he'd moved state to be with when they were together, they'd been engaged afaik and he'd well and truly had his heart broken. It sounded like a huge deal in his life when they broke up. He asked them what her name was.

They were like, 'Oh, I didn't even realise she was the reason you moved?' And not one being able to recall the name of someone who had clearly been an important part of their friends' life.

https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewlaffertyy/video/7557741546200763678

I wouldn't listen to any man's claim about the majority of men being 'good guys'. If they can't be bothered to get to know their friends to learn even the basics, they're hardly the authority on the majority of men. They're not actually interested in getting to know anyone, even those closest to them.

I think most British men are decent, pretty mild mannered, good in a crisis, and funny.

If my car broke down, I'd approach any man and assume he would help if he had the time.

This can be said for my husband, dad, uncles, friends, workmates and neighbours.

I think the previous poster who said the bar for men is very low, hit the nail on the head.
A man is considered a good guy if he doesn't abuse (emotionally or financially) or cheat, but this is societal. It's all that is expected of a man.
Men used to provide and women used to care for the home and all those in it.
Over the last 50 years, women have raised themselves up educationally, financially, and with that came self esteem and understanding that, yes they can do it.. what ever "it" may be.
More and more, women are asking themselves about their relationship "what's in this for me". Her partner comes home from work and slumps on the sofa, whilst she comes home from work, laden with groceries for tonight's dinner (because thinking about what they have and what they need is her job), puts it away, chats to the children, feeds everyone, sorts a load of washing whilst the children are in the bath and she's doing their spellings with them, puts them in their clean pyjamas, and then, if her partner is a good dad he will read them a story and kiss them goodnight.
It's the BBQ scenario.. she cleans the house, Plans the menu, shops for the food, prepares the food, lays the table. Her partner places the meat on flame and everyone applauds him for throwing such a great BBQ.
The disconnect is very real.

Some men are better than this, but it's generational and a very slow moving tide.

I'm going to be controversial here but what you are defining as good/ moral is based on your own perception of what society thinks the majority of people should do .

What was a Lord's ordained right in medieval times eg sleeping with one of his serfs on their wedding night , killing poachers on his land would be not only immoral but crimes now .

Morality evolves I believe inline with humans evolving both as a society and genetically .

As a result there will always be outliers both in terms of people slightly behind or ahead of the majority and divergence ( ie neuro diversity ) who will have different opinions what is "good".

I have to accept myself a lot of things that don't worry me upset other people and try and amend my words or actions . This takes work frankly but I do this because I care about the people I would upset .

I think when most people say good they really mean what comes naturally to them to do and there is no acknowledgement that for some people this is at lot harder to do then others .

I think the bar that men set for themselves is very low, so by their measure, most men are 'good'. Most men seem to think that they are very easy going, many women seem to think that too, but ime, they are easy going only as long as things are going their way.

I think there are decent men out there, but patriarchy still essentially rules.

It also does depend on what you would call "decent". For me it's a man who knows how to balance his priorities. If straight, he treats his female partner as an equal, not just a source of childcare and housework, including the right to her own life and career. Sees running and financing a home and family as a team effort. A good man doesn't have main character syndrome and is considerate of others' needs in general. Polite to cleaners, waiting staff, etc, and isn't a snob or entitled. Doesn’t objectify women, sleaze or cheat. Can apologise if he fucks up, because even good people aren't perfect. But my definition might not be everyone's. I find on MN the bar is dreadfully low in some places (he's a good guy, he washed a few dishes in 2020) and unrealistically high in others - a man who dares to want a weeknight off to play a sport or wants the occasional night out with friends or work is betraying his family and definitely having an affair!

DH and his DB are both decent. I don't know how, as his mother is a classic Jewish mama who dotes on her sons, did everything for them, and frequently wails to the high heavens that they married a) non Jews (I'm the worst due to being from a Catholic family, despite one side having Jewish ancestry, and my parents weren't born in the UK) and b) career women who were never SAHMs. Witches, we are. Ruined our children's lives!

No
80% are shits on a sliding scale from simply selfish to rapists, pedophiles and murderers.
20% are ok.