the behaviour of most men

[notevensurprised]

I’m in my 50s.

Almost all important and non important men in my life, have disappointed me in catastrophic ways. Some directly treating me badly. Some indirectly by treating people I love badly.

I’m at the stage where the scales have fallen from my eyes. Not just fallen, but disappeared into a black hole. I know this happens for many women in perimenopause. I know we suddenly look up and around at this age and we are absolutely done with tolerating bad behaviour.

Some of my own personal stories relating to bad behaviour from men relate to verbal and physical abuse, financial and economic abuse, infidelity and cheating, inequality within the home in terms of chores and life admin, inequality in the workplace and in salaries.

I am just so done.

I’ve been devastated by the actions of my own DF, my own DH, ex BFs, uncles, cousins, friends.

There was one remaining man who I held in high esteem my entire life. BIL of decades. The brother I never had. I learnt recently he has cheated for years. When my DSIS told me, it was just like the last remaining shred of… I can’t even think of the word…. died within me.

It could not be more shocking in terms of who he appears to be from the outside. And yet I am numb.

The world seems to be run and controlled by lunatic men at the moment and this is just the icing on the cake.

This final revelation means I have zero belief in the goodness of any man any longer. I was holding on to it by a shred anyway.

AIBU to feel that the majority of men are cheating, abusive, lazy, weak willed, insecure, selfish, overpaid, mediocre, disrespectful fools?

Maybe the desperation seen already on this thread that women NEED a man?

Well , it’s like this. When I actually had choice and agency , yeah I picked badly twice (out of quite a few) , but I think that can be excused since I was a traumatised teen and both relationships were actually fairly short in the grand scheme of things.

However, from the age of 11, the really abusive behaviours I had from males were in circumstances I had no choice over, or worse from men that morally, legally and /or professionally should have been safe.

How does that work with your theory?

Also, how are OP’s choices responsible for the behaviour of men in her wider circle like friends, a BIL etc. ?

Thank you. You are right.

But the vast majority of men you meet wont be committing these crimes

Of course I’m angry. I’m sick and tired of the amount of excuses made for terrible men. I don’t care whether someone tries to discredit my opinion by using words like spiralling or emotional to undermine my point. That’s for you to unpick. But am I ok? Not I’m not ok. And neither should any other woman be about the state of the world we have to live in because of awful men. I don’t think all men, but going back to my original post, I think the majority of men are bad human beings.

I'm really sorry that you were mistreated as a child.
I don't recall saying I had a theory as to why some women pick bad boys over dull but decent men, though.

(I do as it happens but I don't recall saying so in my post.)
My post was about what I've observed and the lack of self-awareness that some women have in realising that exciting men are usually trouble.
Which they do.
I'm not judging this, but I'm not going to backtrack, either.

You will be ok though. Aware , but ok.

But are they speaking out about them? I travel on trains/buses and go in pubs, I often wonder were all these lovely sons are, because after about half an hour, the disrespect towards women, starts. I don't hear many challenging it. When we were being sexually harassed, from the age of 12, in the 70s, none of the older men were putting a stop to it. I'm sure most of the relatives of the MET police thought the men in their lives were decent. Lovely men left for war, then raped women and girls. There was a poster on here, who was reading about an incident during the war, then was heartbroken to realise her Grandfather must have also committed sex crimes (this wasn't ordered). Male charity workers, swapping food for sex. The anti rape protests in the streets across Mexico/India/Pakistan are mainly women. The only way child marriage stops, is when the townships etc have enough women leaders. Go to the pub, log onto FB and see what the comments are like when sex crimes are reported. One common one is, why wait so long to report it/they must be after money. Men protect men who are pedophiles and victim blame victims of sex crimes, without even realising it. The thread on here about the new Mum, post C Section, being left, sums attitudes up. Women aren't leaving men to their new born, even though they are recovering/on their knees in pain/exhaustion. No-one would be saying it's ok if they did. On the subject of the Police, every televised true crime murder of a woman, could have been solved, or prevented, if sexism wasn't at play. Not one of those other policemen spoke out.

YANBU.

My father was a good one, gentle, kind, honest, loyal but of his generation in that he could barely boil an egg (although he did do all the gardening). Apart from him, my experience and observation of men has been very bad.

ExH misrepresented who was from the outset, in reality he had shabby morals, selfish, secretive , entitled, and unfaithful I think. Also a lazy, disinterested misogynist parent and duplicitous and tight with his extensive hidden funds.

Current partner is better but I agree with this comment upthread …Even the nice switched on ones generally exhibit selfish and entitled attitudes towards women at some level. And they generally think they are pretty fucking great because they look after their own kids sometimes (as long as it doesn't affect their career) and cook a bit (using all the pots and fancy expensive ingredients whilst expecting a round of applause) or "help" their women clean the house they live in (although rarely cleaning the toilet, those unseen bits around the dishwasher…

Just looking at my immediate neighbours there are three examples of unfaithful men, one a pit pervy, definitely his eyes wandered over his teenage daughter's friends and makes crude sexist jokes. That one was financial dodgy too- lost job under a cloud. There’s an ok one who is acutely on the spectrum who doesn’t do anything domestically - wife is breadwinner and she organises home too. Two others where both the DHs are very dominant, misogynist, take themselves off for hobbies for hours, leaving wives to do everything else. The final one is better, long marriage, praises his wife. Seems very equal partnership and equal parenting, both highly educated academic types. So out of eight local examples there’s only one where the man seems a really good one.

The issue with this train of thought is that the focus is once again on women(their choices, their decisions, their behaviours) and the male issue and VAWAG gets quietly dropped. Not just that, but those men would be arseholes whether you omen picked them or not.

P.S. If you want to start a thread about why women choose “bad” men , I’ll happily join you. I have a lot of theories on that one too.

Have you met most men? Or just some men?

I absolutely agree there is a type of misogyny that shows up, often sadly in women, where they detail all of the absolutely perfect, idealistic totally unreachable ways women should have to behave and give absolutely no responsibility to men to have anything that remotely resembles basic human standards.

Other women have to believe that they made a good choice and that it is entirely down to their judgment that nothing bad has happened to them. The alternative is too awful to admit that they are just lucky, for now and their luck could change at any moment

but a much higher proportion than you think either are, would if they could, or have thought about it.

If you think about the stats - the vast majority of women have had some experience of sexual assault. It's highly unlikely that just 1% of 'bad' men are out there committing 100% of violent crimes - for the numbers to work out they'd have to be raping multiple women every single night. Most rapes are by men the victim knows, not strangers in dark alleys - their husbands, boyfriends, uncles, friends.

There was a study done a few years ago where men were asked if they would rape if they could definitely get away with it - the proportion who replied 'yes' was staggeringly high, particularly when the wording varied so the word 'rape' wasn't used but the action was the same.

Even if only a comparatively small men rape or sexually assault children and women, far more watch porn or images of CSA fantasising about it. "It" might not be your Nigel (husband) but it almost definitely is your Dave (brother), Ramesh (work colleague), Jack (uni friend), etc.

I am incredibly biased against such narratives, for obvious reasons.

The funny(not really)thing is, if you dig deep down enough most of those women will also have a story or two. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, maybe it didn’t quite escalate , maybe other things/people kept them safe , but there normally is a story. Of course the moral of the story is still “it didn’t happen to me because I’m a special/the right kind of woman.”

I think most men have raped if they told the truth. If we agree rape is sex women didn’t consent to, were not sober enough to consent to, wsnted to stop but it didn’t, were talked into to get out of a situation, persuaded to then 1% is more likely to be the number that are innocent

I don’t think that’s right at all,but what saddens me is some posters here just have had very bad life experiences with men and clearly don’t know any decent ones or been treated well. And that’s made them think it’s them all. It’s not, it’s a minority, but I can see why a woman who has sadly never experienced the majority would think otherwise.

Its not just my life experience though - sister in law - 12 years younger/ different location/ life choices/ work etc jokes my brother basically stalked her, got her pissed, got her pregnant now they are married ha ha
Daughters, had sex with a man who took the condom off - rape and assault - 30 years younger than me, different part of the country/ social class etc
There only one common denominator

Like blaming Sarah Everard for "walking home alone'.

Oh save your sympathy. It’s an awareness of what they can be capable of. It’s the lack of surprise/shock at yet another headline or friend crying cause her husband is a cheat /arsehole/abuser. It’s knowing that it can happen to you. It’s knowing that it can be him.
I know decent men, as far as I know them and there are always limits to that.l I also know what can lurk between and the obliviousness (sometimes deliberate) of the people(family, friends, community, spouses etc.) around them.

I’m just thinking of a row of houses I live opposite. House 1. Wife left him due to him being alcoholic House 2. Wife left him due to cheating. House 3. Wife left him due to cheating. Moved a new partner in. Seemingly happy for several years. Threw new partner out after a stranger popped up to say he had a one night stand with her and to introduce the resultant baby. House 4. Partner a cocklodger. House 5. Financial control House 6. Son of house owner is drug addict and turns up randomly ripping doors off and threatening to kill his 70 year old mother if she doesn’t give him money. House 7. Don’t know much about him except he’s done a land grab. House 8. The ex husband found out his ex wife was seeing someone new so he drove his car over my front garden and hers, destroyed everything in his wake and punched the new man in the face.

It’s a posh affluent area. Not a deprived, drug and drink filled area.

So true

YANBU at all.

Also in my 50s, started out so optimistic, loved the men in my life (and still do), to find over the years that it’s the women in my life who keep shit going whilst the men, even the good ones, are mediocre at best.

I know so many women who are quick to defend their perfect husbands, to announce “women are crap too” whenever men are held to account, and I can see that their husbands are largely not great either.

I don’t know one man who isn’t misogynistic even in a mild way, but we’re so used to it we mostly don’t see it.

You are being very unreasonable to generalize about half the human race. Every human being is a mixture of good and bad; and as the mother of three sensitive and kind young men, I resent you making such a generalization.

I have 2 daughters and 3 sisters.

Both daughters have been sexually harassed repeatedly since around age 11/12. One has been raped, both have been assaulted.

My sisters are all married, 1 to an absolute dick who doesn’t lift a finger in their home of help with their children “I’m not a babysitter”. 1 comes across as a good guy but when drunk the misogyny seeps out and he shows his true colours - in vino veritas. Sister number 3 was, I believed, married to a genuinely nice man, but it turns out he had an affair and my poor sister had to decide whether to leave or push all her emotions down and ignore it in order to stay in a marriage with the cheating bastard. She stayed.

Even the nice men have so many subtle ways that show how disappointing they are, but there’s none so blind as those that can’t see.

I wish women would defend women like they defend men. The world would be a better place for it.