NAMALT. Really? Dig deep and be honest with yourself. AMALT

[NoEggs]

I love my DH. He’s a great guy and we’ve been happy for many years.

But
He’s not perfect. Doesn’t do the laundry. Defaults to letting me make stuff happen etc. etc.

Now even if your partner is a paragon I would argue that the species ‘men’ will generally default to slightly bloody useless.

AIBU?

When you say 'things designed for women' that people complain about, what kinds of things are you talking about?

I agree with you mainly on this, but historically I would argue that since life was more violent, there was less law enforcement & women had less power often, it's more understandable that women did that. Plus, in a lot of history, women (and men too often) didn't have much choice in who they married, it was arranged by family.

All big statistics and historical relevancies aside, I wonder why personal experiences and anecdotes count in these types of arguments only when it supports one's own views... That is just such logical fallacy that makes it hard to look past.

"Well, my experience is that my girlfriends are amazing, and their husbands are not". - Yes, that is what men are like.
"And my experience is that both my husband and my best friend (M) pull their weight at home, are attentive dads and pretty great partners". - Irrelevant when it comes to the general truth.

Make it make sense, either take both, or disregard both.

More than 100 for sure.

I said women murdered by their partner. Which was 75 for the year ending March 2025.

Funny how those that moan about unequal representation are usually the first with the excuses. 😆

In England and Wales, women now make up about 36% of police officers- so if a knife-wielding maniac did turn up, women might well be among the officers sent to help.

Now, onto the wider point:

I understand that you work in construction yourself, no? So I can understand why you value that kind of physical courage the most. And I share your frustration with posts on this thread that dismiss the good qualities of men in such a blanket way.

But remember that women have and do often risk their lives too, just often. in different ways. You focus only on a very specific kind of bravery — dramatic, confrontational situations like fighting attackers or running into burning buildings. Those are obviously courageous, and many men do those jobs.

But there are other situations where women risk their lives for others :
For example:
• Historically, childbirth was one of the most dangerous things many women ever did. Before modern obstetrics, maternal mortality was significant, and in many parts of the world it still is.
• Humanitarian and aid workers operating in war zones or unstable regions. Many of these workers are women, and they face real risks from violence, disease, and kidnapping.
• Healthcare workers during COVID-19 — a large proportion of the frontline workforce (especially nurses and carers) were women who continued working despite significant personal risk.
• Women involved in resistance movements or intelligence work in wartime. Many served as couriers, organizers, or spies and faced torture or execution if captured.

None of this means men aren’t brave — clearly many are. But it suggests that risk and courage show up in different forms, and sometimes the less visible ones don’t get counted.

Yes, absolutely. Women have displayed admirable courage in many situations too. I'm only mentioning the above because this thread has turned into a typical mumsnet man bashing fest.

No bloke who valued his life would dare try and minimise the ordeal of childbirth but there are plenty of women who opine about how great a female-run world would be whilst taking for granted all the things the current system had provided them. That's not to say that things can't be improved but for all their shortcomings and the violent minority of males, men are pretty good at getting on with it. They seem to get far less caught up in petty tiffs etc like we see in all the threads on here whinging about MILs/SILs/mean school mums etc.

How many?

What about women who weren't killed by a partner? Women killed by their sons, colleagues, carers, strangers?

And the ones permanently physically disabled and scarred by men? The victims of trauma because of rape and domestic violence? Do they not count?

Is your bar so low that men meet it by not having murdered their Ex?

Google says that the estimated figure is 38,000 people rescued annually by the fire service.

So a lot of women. 😉

Nice attempt at changing the subject.

You could increase the figure tenfold and it would still be far lower than the number of women saved by men.

It's worrying that you're so annoyed by that fact. More women being saved than killed is a good thing, right? Surely scoring points isn't more important than female lives.

Something tells me you've never eavesdropped on building site chat!

It's 90% slagging their colleagues off behind their backs 😆

but how would you say patriarchy manifests?

In terms of what is deemed important and what is not - patriarchal attitudes run through everything. For example - what is more important than raising the next generation? So why are early years teachers and child carers not among the highest paid people in society?

There is an excellent post earlier about types of bravery that are lauded. I made a point earlier about where information is presented and to whom. And lets not forget the default person is a man - so for example every time you get into your car, you are less safe than a man because you are wearing a seat belt designed for male anatomy. I went to the theatre over the weekend - good production, but more male roles than female, which is pretty common. Why is that? Why are male led or dominated stories the default? Why is the Bechdel test still a thing? Why will men and women not be earning equally until after 2050?

I dont think patriarchy is about men supporting men. It is a system that devalues women so that men retain privilege. Does that mean that all women struggle or dont do well? Of course not. But it is harder.

I was wondering about something this morning - what the explanation or opinion is to the following according to those who are dead-set on one entire group of people being inferior to them.. Throughout the comments, we have seen it multiple times that the argument is that women are more selfless, more empathetic, etc.

As I was sitting in the car with my children at drop-off, waiting for the school to open with other families, we were listening to music and talking, while I was looking at other parents arriving and parking. And as per usual (4 out of 5 times on average, so we could say IN GENERAL) mums (multiple, not just one or two) tend to park in a way that their cars take up 2 spaces. The specific space where I park (as I arrive early to avoid queuing) can comfortably fit 5 cars. But it generally houses 3, because mums (never seen a dad do it, so i can comfortably say that), who arrive there before others just park however it lands, no matter if there's half a car's worth of room to their left and to their right, they don't care. Then they sit there with the others, looking at a queue forming that makes it hard for ongoing traffic to get past of all the cars waiting. With all their empathy and selflessness that they were naturally born with, somehow they don't seem to care about others - heck, fellow parents (mostly mums, so fellow women, sisters-in-arms) will be able to park their cars and drop their children. I am amongst the first ones to arrive, because I can't stand queues, I want to avoid them. And with all that empty space at my disposal, do you know where I park? right at the edge, so there is just enough space on my right to open the car door, and everyone else has the opportunity to park in a civilised fashion, without taking up multiple cars' worth of space with just one.

My kids are year 6, so we have been doing this routine for a good while. I am the only one doing school pickups and drop-offs in our family, so I have seen it a few times. And not ONCE have I seen a dad do the above.

Disclaimers: Let's see... This is not an argument against women, this is not an argument about women vs male drivers, this is not an argument for how awesome I am, this is not an argument saying all women park like this, this is not an argument saying all men park better than women..Hope I covered everything.

I am just wondering about your answer - why does this happen? Could it be that my personal experience with this does not represent the entirety of women drivers and mums? Dare I say... Not All Women Are Like That?

(Before anyone throws it in my face that NAMALT is used in more serious contexts, like violence, OP's original angle was just simple every-day things, husbands being not as great as their wives. I just want people to think about being prejudiced against an entire group of people.)

I live next to a school.

There are ample parking spaces round the corner, but instead parents like to park either on the double yellow lines at the junction, straddling the pavement outside my house or right on top of our wildflower verge. I have only ever seen men do the latter two. Why do men hate pedestrians and nature so much?

(FWIW, I also have a very low opinion of both people who don't park considerately leaving space for others (there's a 3 car parking space outside my window usually occupied by the 2 cars of 1 male and 1 female neighbour sprawled across it) and the idiots who waste their time arriving early just to snag a desirable parking space outside school when they could just as easily park sensibly 5 minutes walk away and avoid the crush if they have that time to kill)

Laziness? being inconsiderate arses? Rushing? A combination of them, even?
I totally am on your side - What you experience is shit. What I experience is shit. But neither are a conclusive representation of any group, is my point. So yours is another example to what I am preaching, alongside mine.

(The note about the wildflowers hurts just reading about it... how disgusting)

What you are deliberately choosing to ignore is that what we are identifying is an overarching pattern to male behaviour. Yes there are exceptions, yes there are individuals who buck the trend, but there are very few men out there who do not benefit from their entrenched privilege in some way or another.

ExhaustDAD if you have ever thought "But that's not me- I'm one of the good guys!" then yes, you too have benefited from that privilege. Because, to be a "good guy", there need to be the bad guys beside which you look good, don't there? And are you objectively all that good, or just comparatively?

See, that's the thing, @crackofdoom . I would never say 'I'm a good guy', because I have the brain cells to realise that it's not up to me to decide. Whether I am a good husband, a dad, coworker, friend, and by extension a 'good man', or not - that is a question for those who know me, interact with me, etc. So I don't engage in "BUT THAT'S NOT HOW I AM" - level of conversations. It helps no one.

And no, no, I was very clear with what I asked about - why the moms, multiple female parents of children throughout years, consistently do the above at our school's drop-off. If women in general are better and more empathetic, less selfish than men in general, then what is the reason? I just want to see if people end up with "well it's just those specific mums, but we are not like that", or not. Parents parking in a shit way where you live is by no means an answer to that. In any shape or form. Do you hear how "well you are talking about an overarching pattern of male behaviour" sounds, and the offenders in this case are all women? Isn't that a little bit absurd to just straight jump to that? I am talking about this specific example, I made it clear that it is what I am asking about. I would like to see how the "all women are better than men by virtue of being women" side would try to explain it.

Also - I'd just also mention, that it's funny how this is my experience pretty consistently for years, and somehow I have the objectivity to not consider it a big, general truth for everyone, and somehow, god knows why, I don't think men are better at all, by any metric.

I am amazed by "...to be a "good guy", there need to be the bad guys beside which you look good, don't there?"
So. Men are bad. Which is bad. We don't like that. But there are good men. Which is also bad because there needs to be bad men to look good next to them. So bad is bad, but good is bad, also.

Isn't just really weird to be acting like it's some kind of balancing scale?

Oh, the fire service saved x amount of women last year vs x amount of women dying at the hands of intimate partners & make relatives. If there are fewer women killed than rescued, men are great and there's no pattern of male violence - is that really your argument?

You're comparing men's actions in a job with pay & status vs men's , I guess, leisure(?) activities 😂 🙄

And again, one of the reasons there aren't as many women working in the fire service & other emergency services is because of hostile work environments. In 2002, the Equalities Commission made recommendations to reduce obstacles to women and minorities joining, which took us up a few percent, but it's still an ongoing process. After all the London Fire Brigade was found to be “institutionally misogynist and racist” only in 2022.

It's like having a boys club and then going round saying "neeneerneer girls don't do the things we do in our boys club!".

Way up thread I made a jocular quip about women bring ‘more perfect’ than men. Not one particular man being inferior to one particular women but as a type. I stand by it although I don’t think we have really explored what ‘more perfect’ - a relative term - might mean. I assert it is around a propensity to put self second in many situations.

Of course you can’t label exactly every single man (or woman) with the same badge but generalisation is the way we make our way though the world. I refer to that chair as being one from the family chair. It has fewer or greater perfections or utility to me but if I were to say ‘it’s the green one with frilly bits but that wobbles’ you know what I am talking about and what it means to me in that it shares the features of ‘chair ness’ with other chairs.

so perhaps NALMALT in particular scenarios but in the vast majority of cases those that disprove the generalisation are so vanishingly small as to make no difference.

And based on the first part of your latest post, we can agree that generalisations don't work. Thus, the "women bring more perfect' generalisations don't really work either, by definition... Well, unless the generalisation in question supports what I personally believe, right? That is... spectacular.

No matter how you slice it, the argument is:
"Being part of a group (women), you claim that an entire group that you are not part of is less perfect than your own". I can't help but see this idea of "we are better than them" to be echoed so often in our history. There were a lot of historical examples in this thread so far. Do we not see the resemblance between certain ideologies and what you claim?

I do like the musing around what perfect would or should mean, @NoEggs , sounds like an interesting concept and an intriguing conclusion of the topic. What does it mean?

Suggesting I am a proponent of some sort of eugenics @exhaustDAD is offensive.

I discussed a scenario in which women might breed men away given the choice but no more than that. I wasn’t advocating for it.

I can’t see a problem where one group of society is perceived to be ‘better’ on certain measures (in my scenarios empathy, kindness, putting community needs in the domestic sense before ones own desires).

I think women are great. They deal with a lot of life’s mundane crappy shit without performative demonstrations of why this makes them great. To aggressively attack me by implying I am some sort of Nazi by holding these views just because you don’t agree with them is, dare I say it, a very male way of engaging in debate.

edited cos typo and I don’t want to let down the sisterhood with typos.

Of course it's a very male thing to do, naturally - that is all I am capable of, at the end of the day. That observation defeats anything and everything I said - I mean, it practically addresses nothing that was said, but hey...

But I will thank you very kindly if you don't put words in my mouth @NoEggs , because I said no such thing, did not call you that, did not assume you'd want to advocate eugenics of any kind, I drew from a more generalist view, sure, the Nazis also built their ideology on "we are better than them", but there are way more than that. I was highlighting the core of how many-many things grew out of this point of view, not labelling anyone anything specific.

Oh, this is getting more spectacular every day. We started with women are more perfect. Plain and simple. All those perfect best friends being married to their not-so-perfect husbands. And now we reached a point where women are "perceived to be ‘better’ on certain measures". How interesting. We shifted a bit, no? Because if that was the angle of the post, I don't think most people would have second-guessed it. Certain measures. So, are we saying that men are perceived to be 'better' on certain measures too?

Are we saying that men and women are different, generally have different positives they can bring to the benefit of their loved ones and society as a whole? And maybe, just maybe, instead of pointing out how poorly one sex does when measured against the other sex's metrics, a simple acceptance of said differences and working together would be a happier outcome? You didn't get to outline what perfect should or would look... But I urge you to maybe think about it. Because your own 'certain measures' aspect is a great starting point to think about. Because your friend Julie might look perfect to you, a kick-ass, funny woman with a perfect hair who cooks mouthwatering and nutritious dinners for her entire family, she is perfect for you, as a friend, from the outside, and his bumbling idiot husband who doesn't know how to start the washing machine may seem - uhm - less so. But maybe, her Nigel doesn't think it's perfect that she buys 2 new pairs of shoes every two weeks, for example. You know? That is no issue for you, her friend. It might be on Nigel's radar though, who has a joint bank account with her. These are very dumb, very surface-level examples. But instead of Julie complaining to you, and Nigel watching some red pill idiot on youtube where a 20-year-old boy rants about women, maybe they should talk to each other, and work together better. Just maybe. I mean, I wouldn't know, I am just a man, not good at these fairness things, I am way too busy being important at work, wearing a suit (Even joking with it, it sounds horrible).

I don't have first-hand knowledge of selfishness within families-with-kids contexts, but in my experience of professional and social situations - as well as just everyday interactions with strangers out and about - I can certainly say I've known and seen many, many women who are very happy to put themselves first.

I consider myself fairly selfish - one of the reasons I never wanted to be a mother - but when it comes to entitlement in public spaces, insistence on deference from retail staff, frenemy-style oneupmanship or office politics manipulations, I can't say I've noticed much of a gender divide.

I'm unconvinced that selfishness is at all gendered.