We need to talk about men needing to be partners, not 'providers and protectors'

[Echobelly]

I see a lot of messaging, especially in the 'manosphere' but some outside it too that men's role in relationships is to 'provide and protect'. In this day and age, though, that's an outdated model. Marriage has for a very long time not been the only way for women to get money to pat for anything, so we're not going to swoon over a guy just for earning money. For most couples, both need to work, plenty of women now outearn men and men can't expect to be forgiven having to give any help at home because they are out 'providing' (this was never a particularly fair deal anyway given women's unpaid labour). And we're not going off to war every 5 minutes these days, so the 'protect' part seems a bit redundant, especially when we know that intimate partners are the biggest risk to women.

But too many people still talk about things as that's all women want or need and - a man with a job who might be able to shout threateningly if you happened to have a break in at your house. And it sets men up to fail because the parameters are so different from the world this idea was based on.

I think a key source of disappointment and disillusionment for women is men just not being real partners in a relationship and as parents. And it seems they need to be told this - to know that their wives/partners are working (whether earning or not) and you don't just get to come home and say you're too tired from 'working hard' to help. Or that if you don't have kids, female partners aren't there to run your life with you or do all the management of your family and social life. Men need to be full participants in relationships, not virtual bystanders whose only job is to bring in money - and the way we talk to men and boys and bring up our kids should reflect this.

If you are right OP, why when relationships hit trouble does the man fails to step up but neither does the women (which you are advocating?) She becomes the stereotypical helpless women and wants the tax payer to bail her out. Or am I imagining countless threads?

Sad to say in many cases, we now have neither sex willing to step up. I fail to see how that is an improvement from the male provider stereotype?

@Badmintonteaparty That's on the woman. If a relationship fails then she should have the ability to stand on her own two feet financially.

Taking into account that most female murders are comitted by a male partner or ex parter I find it quite laughable the idea of men being "protectors".

I need protection against these "protectors".

Yeah, but men committing the vast majority of homicides isn't the same as the majority of men being violent.

There were 83 women murdered by their partner in the UK in 2024. With 33,105,000 men in the country that's 0.0002% of men. It's probably more logical to worry about driving to work.

How many men do you think are firefighters, police officers, soldiers, surgeons, etc? A lot more than 83! So you're actually much more likely to have your life saved by a man than taken by one.

If a nutter starts trying to break down your door at 3am it'll probably be men that turn up to arrest him. If you need cut out of your car after a nasty crash it'll probably be men again. Rescued from a burning building? Men.

What if you get held hostage when terrorists take over the theatre you're in? Will the special forces/armed police be primarily female? Doubt it somehow lol.

In fact why is it always men that come to the rescue?

Why do you think I think that?

Yes yes that’s lovely. Women would still rather meet a bear in the woods. Why do you think that might be?

I'm not sure what 'stepping up' you mean, and how divorces mean that a woman expects tax payers to bail her out? Do you mean women who don't work and you're assuming they just want to go on benefits when their relationship breaks down? Not something that I've seen on 'loads of threads'.

I've seen a few women worried when they split up because they have been out of the workforce for a long time bringing up kids? But they're hardly going 'Hurray, I can be on benefits', I've only ever seen women in such a position wondering how they are going to afford to work and wanting advice, not being 'helpless'

Can we stop thinking of protection as purely physical.

How many times in their lifetime do people get held hostage by terrorists in a theatre, or need to be rescued from a burning building?

There are everyday acts of heroism that genuinely save people's lives on a daily basis but aren't recognised as such in comparison to those big dramatic male-coded jobs. I'm thinking about therapists, counsellors, social workers and plenty more. People need emotional protection, and protection from systems that keep them down, as well.

Not going to be patronising and say those professions are female-coded as plenty of men do them as well. But then plenty of women are surgeons, firefighters, police officers and so on so even your reductive premise doesn't hold up.

@gannett I agree. My DH is a social worker - adult MH. He is one of only 1/2 males most of the time in a large office of women. He earns nowhere near enough to be a 'provider' (not that I want or need him to be) but he has an incredible amount of emotional intelligence which makes him not only good at his job, but also a great husband and Dad/Stepdad.

And that's what I call the kind of protection that matters - both to society and to his family from the sounds of it.

@gannett Absolutely - I chose an emotional "provider" over a financial one (the absolute polar opposite to my ex-husband) and it was by far the best decision I ever made.

Lots of issues with this - you've counted male babies in your reasoning. You also omitted all violent crime and only looked at partner murders. If you narrow that down to 20yo+ and add in all of the violent crimes and sexual assaults, stalking and peodophilia cases you'd have a far higher %.

If we didn't have the men around do you think there would still be terrorists or idiot BMW drivers doing 90 on the motorways? Truck drivers falling asleep at the wheel or watching porn while driving?

It's men who start wars. Remove men from the picture, and there wouldn't be wars to fight, let alone soldiers to fight them. Men are the ones who don't care to destroy lives as long as they can prove a point, get a quick fuck or accumulate money. Remove men from the picture, and there would be nothing women would need "protection" from. I refuse to have to respond for fuckups in this world which were caused overwhelmingly by men's violence and impulsivity. They can fight and kill each other if that makes them feel "manly". I just want a happy, peaceful life.

Men who choose to take dating, family and childrearing advice from single, never-married, childless, undateable men who only get sex when they force a vulnerable women to have it (like Andrew Tate and their ilk) deserve to be lonely. Let them rage online as much as they want, and may they all die alone and frustrated. I couldn't give less of a shit about them.

People, both men and women, are all different, and want different things. I have no doubt plenty of women want a "protector& provider" type of man. But some others, like myself, don't care about that. I am happy to be by myself, I work because I love the purpose working brings to my life, and I take pride in being independent and having paid for my home, my hobbies, my clothes and the lifestyle I want. If any man wants to share this life, they will have to go through my standards, which are sky-high simply because I can, because I don't need them, and because "being alone" for me is a source of happiness. A man in my life has to offer way more than the happiness and satisfaction I get from all the things I can do by myself. I actually didn't think there would be one, and then I found one without looking. If the relationship did not work, I doubt I would bother looking for another. And I'd enjoy my life equally.

Yes, all of this was made easier by the fact I never wanted children. Children make women vulnerable in a way nothing else does, because most men are too happy to abandon their responsibility towards them, and sometimes literally abandonig them altogether, while few women can give up their responsibility as mothers the same way. Children give men a power they would otherwise never have, because let's be honest, without children men have to prove themselves much more. If they are not fathers and providers, men have to be equals, and that's way harder and more difficult than being a provider and protector. because, let's be honest, women have the intelligence, equanimity, skills, resistance, longevity, health and stamina to do absolutely anything a man can do. Yes, men are physically stronger in general, but in our modern world there is nothing where brute force is absolutely needed, we have machines to do that in a much safer, much better way than any person can.

Let them play their war games. And if a man uses their physicality to try to enslave me... I know where all the kitchen knives are. There is a limit to how much force men can use to enslave an unwilling partner they live with. The majority of women stay in abusive relationships not because they are physically weaker, but because they love the man and are trauma-bonded to them. Try to do that to an independent modern woman. Just try.

Because the ones that say that are a little hard of thinking or have never actually seen a bear in the wild?

I frequently say good morning to male dog walkers and it would never occur to me that I'd be safer saying good morning to a grizzly bear. 🤣

It's men who start wars. Remove men from the picture, and there wouldn't be wars to fight, let alone soldiers to fight them.

Women would just start wars with each other. The only reason we can't dominate men is because they're naturally a lot stronger and more aggressive.

Despite men killing their partner more often (unsurprising due to the strength disparity) women are actually more likely to assault their partner and....well, have you not seen all the MIL threads on here lol. We fall out with each other much more often than men do and often over silly things.

Are you a man? Women don't want to "dominate" men, that's a very masculine notion. Women, in general, want to live a quiet life, and tend to respect life far more than men.

Men are responsible for over 80% of violent crime in the World. About 98% of sexual abuse. Why on earth are you even trying to excuse that? Are you really wanting to imply that women are more violent than men? Have you ever looked out the window at the real world?

By dominate I meant men have the power because they're stronger and more aggressive. Do you really think men would still kill as many women if women were bigger, stronger and more aggressive than men?

Well yes it does, so the old fashioned notion of not hiring women incase they took maternity leave. Even if you never had children or wanted them you could still be discriminated against because of your sex when you aren’t offered a job “just in case”.

Sandra Newmans book 'The Men' explores the concept of a world with no men (they literally all vanish one day). Its interesting insofar challenging the notion that a post men society would be some kind of peaceful utopia. She presents the idea that physical violence, war and cruelty wont simply go away in the absence of men, rather than relocate to another (female) host. Hierarchical structures would still present themselves in the absence of men and plenty of women would still be willing to be misuse that power for their own advantage.

Anyway, its an interesting book.

But she has to do that, because it’s fiction, and if a world without men was in fact a strikingly egalitarian, peaceful society, there’d be no plot. Like Naomi Alderman’s The Power, where women develop electrical powers and use them to disempower men and restrict their civil rights. If they went ‘Oh, that’s interesting’ and continued as usual, there’s no conflict, therefore no novel.

Infertile women also have female bodies with a particular reproductive role, they are the last people that are unaware of that.

No one is trying to help them get their sperm count up, are they?

I agree but unfortunately so many women are willing to tolerate it (often begrudgingly) because they want a relationship or children. Or both.

Ive never wanted children and likely wont have a relationship with a man anytime soon because the standard on offer is so poor.

Until women start saying no on a mass scale men will continue to behave as they do - because they can.

Do you believe that a world without men will also be without violence, war or cruelty?

I think what you are suggesting is also quite a tiny snapshot.

At one time, work for men and women was primarily within the home. Growing food, the hard work of managing a household, growing food or practising a trade, raising kids. Many shared tasks but also some differentiated. Some money (selling products or services within the houusehold) usually happened as well as directly providing for the family.

The thing about this is, working for yourself is in some ways the most real and lucrative work, all of the the labour all contributes directly to the well being of your own estate, whatever that is.

When going out to work for employers became a thing, it was to supplement working for the household directly. The household work had to continue. It tended to be men who went out, because they could do hard work like going into a mine, and because women were more likely to be tied down to children. And someone had to continue the work of the household.

Working outside in that way could bring in good money, but the labour of the worker also went to a large extent to the employer, and his estate.

As people moved more into cities the possibility for work in the household itself became lesser, women and children found themselves working at quite unpleasant things to bring in cash, and often their labour did not really make their own estate any better off, because they had no ability to really improve it. This was true whether they were doing thing slike cleaning, making matchboxes at home, or were in the factory.

The desire in the 20th century to get women and children out of that kind of work was aspirational. It looked at keeping the home and caring for children as real and valuable work vital to the family and socoety, and that women shouldn't have to give it up to also bring in income, or work at two full jobs - the father's income should be enough to allow her to have one job. Hence the move to things like mother's allowances. It's part of the larger labour movement of that period.

This will never be something I experience due to the nature of companies I work for.

Whenever I have had issues it’s always been women that come to assist me (especially when I am being haassed by a creepy man.)

I am not talking about police or fire officers simply doing a job they are paid to do.

But when I have ever needed assistance in public it’s mainly women who come to help. The few times a man has done so he has taken the opportunity to try and hit on me