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

Ha! This made me laugh. I was a lone parent too and for a while dated a guy who was also a lone parent. He joked about this- when he sent his baby daughter to nursery so he could go back to work full time he said all the nursery staff treated him like a hero. Women would bring him casseroles and offer to babysit. He fully got that a woman doing the same would likely be vilified.
He was a hero, I was a slag 😂

I've not seen any posters say all women are wonderful angels. That's not the discussion. Maybe another thread could be made to discuss women.

“Good men prefer the company of women who judge them for twho they are rather than biased generalisations.”

How trite. How naive. How subtly misogynistic, if you get into the weeds of this seemingly benign comment.

In my experience, bad men prefer the same exact company of women as the good men. In fact, they make sure they seek out the most trusting, loyal, unbiased women. Bad men absolutely insist they’re the good men.

I think we live in a society that fosters and rewards extreme forms of selfishness and isolationism. The onus is on parents to raise children to be emotionally intelligent and stable adults. That’s nobody else’s role but ours. And many of us can’t be bothered.

It always happens. Every time. "Women are shit, too!" The bar is in hell for men.

The definition of good is actually quite simple, does the person overall have a positive or negative effect on your life?

I find discussions about this are often covertly (or less covertly) about loyalty or monogamy. You could say for example that most men are kind, caring, helpful etc but are not naturally monogamous.

I should say though, that while I think 80% of men are rubbish, my own man has proved himself to me as someone with real character and integrity and seen me through some pretty rough times ( serious illness etc). But he was raised in tough circumstances with a really deep sense of right and wrong and duty, and I think that sense of duty is really lacking in a lot of modern men. There’s a sort of weakness now that I don’t think most of our grandfathers had.
My husband is like an old fashioned man. Yes he’s probably a bit sexist in superficial ways but he sees his role as being there for his family and to look after me no matter what, and to do the right thing, which he has, and then some. I’ve also noticed he sticks up for anyone vulnerable, and wouldn’t look the other way.
Obviously it goes both ways, and I also have a sense of duty to my family and my community but it’s an outlook that seems to be getting rarer.

Who knows. Everyone's experience is different. I think some women are better than others at spotting the bad guys early on, so they don't get sucked into a string of bad relationships. Whether you're good at the initial filtering or not might affect how you see things.

Yes, the majority of men (who I have come into contact with or know anyway)are good men/people/guys.

All of the close men in my life a fantastic people.

I only know of 2 men who have shown themselves to be absolute wankers.

Same here.

I have been with DH the thick end of 40 years. We have a very equal, very caring relationship and I trust him 1000%, I know he would be there for me if I needed him as I would be for him.

In our circle of family, friends and colleagues there have been a very small number of marriages that have failed, sometimes due to the man cheating and sometimes the woman. Even the ones who cheated were not all bad, they had some redeeming features. The majority have very stable, long lasting relationships.

I am retired now but, when I worked, I was in an industry that tended to have more men than women so over the years I have had many male colleagues who I got to know well. Some were arrogant arseholes or dickish in some ways, but the same could be said of female colleagues. The majority seemed to be good guys and I know many who have always seemed to be reliable, hands-on dads.

And what about all the threads from women bitching about other women, ghosting their friends, sending nasty messages to their MIL or DIL? The women who block their kids from seeing their dad or who move in random men after a couple of months and let them live with their small children?
Ecactly that 😁 It made me laugh out loud to read that some women truly believe that women are 'good' when compared to men!

There's at least one thread every week about 'people' collectively being selfish, entitled, rude wankers. People of both sexes are all of these things. Anyone who has worked in customer service or any public facing role can probably confirm that. There are some great long running threads here with crazy customer stories.

What really jars is when men bleat about NAMALT and 'good guys' as a way to silence women talking about being affected by predominantly male behaviour. You don't really see women piping up on incel/golddigger threads saying 'NOT ALL WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT'.

And whilst I consider myself to be delightful in public, I still don't feel the need to jump in to the customer service threads and say 'NOT EVERYONE IS LIKE THAT WE'RE NOT ALL RUDE WANKERS'. Because rude wankers are indeed everywhere, but it doesn't touch a nerve with me because obviously that generalisation doesn't apply to me

So why do men feel the need to jump in and defend all of mankind if they don't recognise the behaviour being spoken about in their own lives/circles? Why does it seem to touch a nerve that they simply must speak up about something that doesn't apply to them (apparently)?

It's exactly why society stays stuck or snail pace in many areas.

Some men are lovely, some aren’t.

Some women are lovely, some aren’t.

Reversing the question would be 'Are the majority of men good'

Whether the majority of women are good or bad has absolutely nothing to do with the question in hand. The majority of men and women could be good or they could be bad. Its not an either or as they are completely different questions.

The men in my life are all decent humans. And between a huge extended family and a career in male heavy sectors Ive met loads. They've been no more or less likely to cheat than the women. And the ones who ended up doing jail time were never a surprise.
The women in my world tend to be the ones who pick fights, leave their kids, and are generally more difficult humans. Although none have been to jail.
All humans can are capable of being bad guys.

I disagree because a lot of the people who behave badly also share the exact same views as those who don't behave badly about what the majority of people should do and how they want people to treat them etc, they just don't follow it themselves.

I've never met an awful man who didn't completely lose his shit if his partner did something that he considered to be disrespectful to him and not the way he thought she should act, often hugely hypocritical too, because he's often done far worse himself.

I think it's also often the case that people just get with people who are like them. A lot of women with shitty personalities will be telling the world how every man is awful, while women who are kinder, more respectful etc have kind and respectful partners and are scratching their heads at why some people hate men so much.

YABU. There are just as many crap women as crap men in general life (not talking about violence, although there are more violent women that a lot of people would like to admit. I personally have been sexually assaulted by a woman more than once)

Domestic violence is most likely in a relationship between two gay women iirc

I'm not sure this is fair when its actually women who do most of the work around men's mental health and hold the majority in the community and voluntary or caring sectors. It's usually women showing up or doing the organising for men's physical/mental health events or interventions, women who are the ones encouraging men in their lives to go to the gp or that it's safe to open up which is why men live longer when they have a female spouse and i think im correct in that women tend to live longer alone. Many women lead the work in that respect so those conversations are absolutely happening. Equally suicide is the leading cause of death of post partum women - I have yet to hear any man championing post natal mental health? Women are more likely to champion men's mental health and wellbeing than men are to champion their own. I think that speaks to a culture of a) it being difficult for men to address these issues and b) assuming that someone will do it for them rather than building that network themselves.

I don't think anyone (myself included) is under any delusion that women cannot be harmful or that women are incapable of treating a spouse/ their family badly. But in my personal experience I am surrounded by women who step up fully to their responsibilities and have often been let down by the men in their lives who have not done the same.

"Why do you believe women are fundamentally all that different to men in terms of how “good” they are, out of interest?"

I do think there is a discrepancy, it's not about any men or women being 'all good' because obviously perfection is not a thing and I don't believe men are "all bad" but I think there's a skewed bar and more is expected of women and that plays out in harmful ways in society. I guess the conversation I had made me wonder what that actual balance looks like and how much of my feeling is based on having been hurt and let down by men in my life who I had trusted to respect me.

Which in itself is fine - you don't want to be monogamous then that's OK - but be honest and upfront about it so you aren't misleading anyone?

It depends how you define a "good man"

There are are a very large number of behaviours/attributes that fall between the opposing labels of someone being either good or bad.

There are a lot of grey areas.....

Nobody can be 100% good.

Every human has faults.

In my opinion, and based on my experiences, overall, the majority of men are good men. Ok, the huge majority can be really annoying in lots of ways and piss us off in many, many ways, but doesn't make them bad people.

Projecting your individual experiences onto an entire population is nearly, if not always, a very bad thing to do and achieves nothing but fuel hate/anger/bitterness. We have too much of that in the world as it is. You can find bad examples out of any subset of the human population you could make up if you look hard enough, the conclusion being that you could write off the entire human population and the only good thing that can happen is a global mass extinction of humanity.🙄

Remember when trump came out with his vile “pussy grabbing” comments and it was dismissed as “locker room talk”. I asked a lot of men I knew if this was how they talked when women weren’t around. About 25% said yes it was. I was shocked.

I still think most people are decent and 99% of the men I know - family, friends, colleagues - are more than just decent. But I have no idea if that’s true in the male population as a whole. I suspect it isn’t.

No the world would be a different if there were more good men about, children and women would be much safer for one

If the majority were there wouldn't be so many men walking away from parenting responsibilities, men harming women in relationships, men being violent the list is endless

If there were more good men in the world they would be working towards the world being safer for children and woman