To find it hard to care about men's issues

[Parsleyforme]

Men's cancer, diseases and suicide I do care about, but I am really struggling to care about the other modern problems of modern men.

My brother says that the modern men of today are very confused about who they should be and how they should act and that is giving them all identity crises and/or midlife crises, depending on their ages. Things like they get told that men as a whole are bad, they don't know who they are as a man anymore, they don't know how much they should show their feelings, they feel guilt even if they're a good man, they don't know what they're supposed to bring to relationships anymore etc. etc.

I'm finding it quite hard work enough to be a woman without having to worry about or really hear about men's issues as well. And I'm actually quite frustrated that I'm being expected to provide a understanding and sympathetic ear. I went to a girl's school and when I left Barbieland I had to pretty quickly catch on that lotss of men are creeps and women aren't actually at the top of any industry or even their own relationships. It actually angers me a bit that I'm expected to feel something for the men who are feeling unsettled when all we've really managed is to get them to stop wolf-whistling at us or sacking us if we get pregnant.

AIBU to feel like this? WIBU to say I don't really have the bandwidth (read:patience) for this and maybe he should talk to some men who can empathise rather than a woman?

Where to begin.
Women that are afraid to go out after dark don’t go out after dark therefore jobs that provide opportunities to go into unsafe situations created by other men are only available to those not afraid of the perceived risk.
When you see very attractive women married to ugly short poor men, something has happened to that woman in her past that has made her choose a safe option rather than her equal.
When women see other women trapped in terrible marriages who leave and escape and are then tortured by the Misogynistic Legal system as the courts are weaponised against her and her children that act as a deterrent to other women to leave poor situations.
Again, when an educated intelligent woman climbs the corporate ladder. And doesn’t conform to society’s versions of success by marrying and having children that’s used by men to deter other females from following the same path.
I actually heard a female police officer being called a lesbian and a man hater and then one of them said nobody will marry her To teach her a lesson that she should end up alone for her success.
Absolutely pathetic beings some of them

Angry at once again, having another 'to do' on our list. Not angry like the men during the upcoming football, who'll use it as a reason to be violent towards their partners and children. We are allowed to be angry, they can't put us in asylums, anymore, for speaking too often.
I don't understand why men don't understand were they fit in. The mines, our agricultural society, building your own house, tending to your horse, fighting battles for his lordship, even the merchant navy (as it was) ended quite a while ago. I understand people saying that during my childhood of the 70's, but not now. Want to not be loney? Stop being a selfish twat and engage with your family and community. The key to good mental health is connection and belonging.

Because they get to look good by comparison. The high profile appalling behaviour of some of them means that any who aren't that bad get their mediocrity elevated to excellence, so they don't have to try nearly as hard as women to earn the accolade of 'good'.
Also, at a personal level, the fear created by the threat of bad men keeps women overly dependent on good ones and restricts our participation in the world in general leaving the way clearer for them.
Example if women are reluctant to work in a particular industry because bad men treat them in a sexist way, there is less competition in that space for 'good men' to rise.

I voted YABU. Men and women need to get on together in the world. It is in our best interests to care about men. Our sons matter. Our husbands and fathers and brothers matter.

I read a really eye opening article the other day by a teenage boy who said if you put the world 'masculinity' into Google, the first few search links are all coupled with the word 'toxic'. As if the words go naturally together. There is no other word that is so readily coupled with masculinity. That is a massive problem for us all. How do young men find their identity in a world where what they are - masculine - is immediately twinned with toxic? And where the loudest voices on how a man should be come from the manosphere?

We need noisy, healthy discussions on healthy masculinity on heroic masculinity, on responsibility and maturity and the confidence to be gentle or quiet or skinny or artistic - all as iterations of very normal masculinity.

And we need to be aware that amoral techbros are forcefeeding young men very unhealthy narratives and images about sex and women via endless porn. This affects us all. It has to stop.

Well on the face of it, if you appear to be a man, you will benefit from male privilege. You can compromise your male privilege by not fulfilling the stereotypes of a man. So, for instance, if you like ballet and hete football, you will lose some unless you can regain it with other manly attributes ("but look at the ballet dancer's chiseled abs").

and yet the same applies to men.
Every single one of them came out of a woman.

And yet and yet - they have all the power and make so many women's lives miserable.

When they start working on themselves - seriously - i will start to give a tiny shiny shit.

what are the statistics on male suicide? do we know? 1 a week? 10? 50?

I voted YANBU because I don’t think the things your brother mentioned are actually problems - they are things men are raising to try to maintain their privilege.

All the things you’ve said you do care about- men’s mental health / suicide, prostrate cancer etc - those are actual issues and I also do care about those!

I work with violent men. I have spoken to them for years so no direct experience of being a man but many years of unpicking their behaviour.

Violence is a response, not an emotion. Anger is a feeling as a response to another feeling, I.e they get angry because they feel another emotion they don’t acknowledge in the moment. You are correct that it seems instant, because it is. That does not mean it comes from nowhere. People become angry because they dislike another feeling behind it.

Blimey An attractive man married to a short ugly poor woman? How would that sound to you? 🙄People thankfully don’t always choose their partners for looks or money you know.

Men need to figure this out fast or there's a backlash and it gets worse for women again. So YABU for self interested reasons

I can believe there’s evidence that for the small minority of women in our society who have a strong gender preference before their child is born, more of them want girls than boys. Quite likely the opposite for dads.
I don’t believe there’s any evidence at all that this translates into less love or poor parenting when the baby’s born. In fact, as someone pointed out already, the opposite can be true and that mothers and fathers who want a ‘mini-me’ can be less accommodating of their same-sex child’s actual personality and desires.
Also aren’t women who are concerned about the patriarchy, male violence etc. actually less likely to bring up men who struggle to cope with women’s equality and feel they have to hide their feelings? And therefore their sons are less likely to have these problems.
They’re certainly not telling their sons “I wished you were a girl, but you’re a boy, you loser, so you’re inherently violent and untrustworthy”!

It doesn't matter how much I as a woman may or may not care about issues that affect men, I can't and won't fix them for them

only solutions developed by and for men will work long term and I assume long term sustainable change is the goal here

so eg male violence which affects men and women needs to be solved by men. They need to propose the solutions and persuade society/politicians/media that these will work

How would it sound to me? In 50 years on this planet, I’ve never come across such a scenario. I’d probably capture it alive preserve it And put it in a zoo.

You can bet that if women had the kind of political power that men do we'd have better gynae and maternity care.

Yes Thatcher did an amazing amount for women.

You keep posting this and then claiming that there will be research evidence published 'in two years'. Sounds a bit like 'Trust me mate, I've got the evidence, I just can't show it to you yet'. Colour me sceptical.

The bar for male behaviour really isn't that high. Talk more. Pull your weight at home, including the scut work. Looking after your own children isn't 'helping'. Accept that you are a team when both of you are working and earning and that there are no such things as 'women's jobs' in the home. When you feel unwell, see a doctor. It shouldn't be rocket science, and I feel no sympathy for anyone, male or female, who cannot manage these absolute basics.

I have two sons, by the way.

Hitchens' razor: that which is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It is therefore on you as the person making the claim to bring the evidence supporting it. Let's have it.

I don't think we can use the example of one woman who deliberately aped many of the more toxic traits associated with masculinity in order to gain and keep personal power as reflective of what a world would look like if women had greater or equal power to men.
Thatcher held power because she pursued a certain political objective that many thought was desirable at the time. Had she diverted from this to focus on womens issues she'd have been out on her ear pretty quickly.
One female figurehead in a male dominated society isn't the same as women holding power in every institution and at every level of society.

When I had PND which was triggered by severe sleep deprivation due to a sickly child who never slept - (never more than 1 hour unbroken sleep for 8 years - rarely more than 3 hours sleep in 24 for a couple of years) I had a temper - not physical, thank goodness - but I would find myself wailing like a banshee. And I do mean find myself. It was already happening before I was aware of it. I had zero desire to be a shouty parent and read a lot of books on good parenting to overcome this tendency. I remember one book (Biddulph) saying: just take a breath and step away, put that buffer in before you raise your voice.

That line made me burst into tears because there was no moment in which to take a breath. That was the crux of the problem. He totally misunderstood the nature of an angry reaction. It's out before you know it is there. That is why anger is so hard to manage. Only non-angry people - people without anger issues, are able to take a breath first. If you can, then you don't have an issue! By the time I was aware the noise was coming from me, it was already out in the world.

What I learned was how to manage myself all the time, so that there was never a point at which I could be triggered. This meant self care, which was very hard to achieve with endless hospital visits and a baby that screamed for 16 hours of every day, in agony which no one could soothe, whose cries triggered rocketing cortisol in my system. It was hellish. But I learned to do what I could and became the calmest mother around. It took real hard work. It is one of the things I am most proud of achieving though no one else would even classify it as an achievement.

Just as no parent should take seriously advice on childrearing from a non parent, we should be careful not to take advice on how to manage anger issues from people who have never had them.

Sidestepping the question there…

Then the right question would be ‘is it true?’. I’m comfortable to defend the assertion that the worst people are overwhelmingly men.

What metrics would you pick if you wanted to select really damaging, harmful members of society? I think I’d look for things like crime, violence, dark triad traits. All overwhelmingly men when looking at the extreme end.

Wtf? No mother ‘detests’ their child for any reason unless they have serious mental health issues.

Exactly would it be true? I’m not saying it’s not true I just think it’s a sweeping statement without giving actual figures to back it up and specifying what we are talking about
What points are we judging?what do we include in violence ? Physical only? Mental manipulation? Bullying? Not sure what dark triad traits are 😊 crime statistics are out there for sure and easy to prove.
Would things be different if woman had been historically powerful ? the ones that have been don’t seem to be that different from powerful men.

I have a dad, two brothers, husband and two sons and male friends. Of course I care about things that are hard for them. You can do that whilst also being aware that centuries of male dominance continue to have adverse effects on women.

I've just finished reading a book called BoyMum, which has some interesting things to say about the difficulties faced by men in forming emotionally close friendships. My friendships are enormously important to me and I have always been grateful that emotional intimacy amongst women is encouraged rather than viewed with suspicion.

Christ could you be any more patronising 🙄

Are you not capable of a simple Google search? You can answer your own questions in half the time if you look for information instead of waiting for someone to spoon feed it to you.

If I see something I think is bullshit, I simply do some research for 10 minutes and get my answer, along with a load of interesting information which broadens my view. But hey, maybe I should try just mithering MN posters and waste double that amount of time not getting anywhere, because it must be fulfilling. You must be getting something out of it so maybe it's a valid waste of time!