AIBU to think that all men are…

[Millie2008]

… really pretty useless?! Well not all men I’m sure.
But a lot of them.
I just feel like I’m seeing examples of useless men
every way I turn…
-weaponised incompetence
-childishness
-selfishness
-carelessness
the list goes on…

I feel like once you see it you can’t unsee it. Friends, family, personal experience, out in public, everywhere!

Happy to be proved wrong

I was just thinking, I’m not sure I can ever go back
to dating men. At my stage of life they will likely be divorced men. And all I’ll be thinking is what did you do to piss your ex off enough to want to leave you…

I suppose I am lucky. My DH of 36 years is wonderful. My dad was a decent bloke. My DB likewise. FIL was apparently a bit useless when younger but improved as he got older.

I do think having a good, present, loving father stands a woman in good stead when it comes to choosing a good partner. You know what to look for. And you know what is not acceptable.

Horseshit. How on earth have I “attracted” my male relatives, my friends partners, my male colleagues? I haven’t, they are simply in my orbit. And yes, most range from vaguely incompetent to utterly vile twats.

Birds of a feather, flock together.

This makes zero sense. Obviously.

No it makes a lot of sense. Firstly, one gets raised in an environment with these useless men and that makes them expect to be useless. You then go through life dismissing the men who do not meet this stereotype, and attaching yourself to men who dobas part of your confirmation bias.

Then, the people that become your female friends are people who generally share your worldviews so these are also women who have shared your experience of all men being useless. It's something you bond over. So that cements your worldview.

Take Andrew Tate and his friends. Nobody is saying that no woman has the mentality they speak of. There are definitely women that do. The reasons why him and his friends solely attract women who fit this stereotype is far more about them than women generally.

My Dad is a complete bellend, one of my brothers is a predator and the others are relatively benign and a complete bully.

Thankfully I married a good one and I work with lots of really nice, capable, involved, competent men that for the most part I really like.

I think all people have some mix of prosocial and antisocial traits but I do think very antisocial traits are far more tolerated in men historically and culturally. It has not been good for them that this is the case.

Oh good. Another man bashing thread. Mumsnet really does like living up to it’s reputation.

i don’t know any useless men. You’ve just been very unlucky in life

I do love these assumptions, expressed with such confidence! You are wrong on all counts. I do know SOME decent men. And my own DH is a decent man thanks. I just find them to be very much the exception rather than the rule. It’s not “confirmation bias” it’s actual life experience. I’m old enough and smart enough to know the difference.

I work with a lot of wonderful men but obviously have zero idea how they are as husbands or fathers. They’re great at their job, that’s all I know and they’re kind, generous with time and patient with lovely temperaments. I’ve never had to feel afraid or weird around them.

One of them is a poor timekeeper and rubbish at responding to emails so I imagine out of all, he’s the most irritating partner. He’s a bit strange anyway in that he left his wife for a PhD student but she’d also been there as an undergrad. People are wary of him still as a result. I tried not to judge because they’re still together a decade on so clearly a good match.

You said:

"How on earth have I “attracted” my male relatives, my friends partners, my male colleagues? I haven’t, they are simply in my orbit. And yes, most range from vaguely incompetent to utterly vile twats."

So most of the men that you notice around you are this way inclined..all except your magical husband (for now at least). You fit my pattern entirely. You were raised by these type of men so expect all men to meet this negative stereotype.

Generally speaking, I think there are just as many childish, careless and selfish women as men. Women are generally better parents, but if you look at all aspects of life, women aren't much better than men.
Violence however is a different matter. Violence is male in 99% (my guess) of all cases and it's a huge problem.

Totally agree.

I've often said this on here.

I'm in my 50s. I've been married, lived with 2 men otherwise and I've never dated a useless man.

I'm sure I've met useless men and probably dated a couple of men who'd have turned out to be lazy, incapable and misogynistic but I've never been on more than a couple of dates with then before realising and ending it.

I've equally met a lot of women who I wouldn't be interested in living with because their standards, values, lifestyle, parenting don't align with mine.

Men I've encountered in the wider world on a day to day basis have been a mixed bag. But I don't have the same level.of choice in terms of involving them in my life and, where I do have a choice, they're not in my life.

No OP, not "all men". The man I called "dad" for 58 years was an absolute diamond. He raised me as his own, despite me being a constant reminder of his wife's cheating. He treated me the same as his bio kids, stood by me and supported me whenever I needed him. His job took him away during the week but at weekends he was always present and did his fair share of everything. In later years he took care of mum with no complaints. He called out any sexist behaviour ( "I have daughters who are women and Lord help anyone who puts them down").He set the bar high when it came to me finding a partner and taught me not to tolerate being 2nd best (hence why I've been divorced twice). I've been with DP now for 24 years and although her can be a bit of a twat sometimes (as can I), your description of what" all men" are like is not 1 I recognise. Some men, yes, all men, no.

The skewed poisonous messaging that is pumped out of the internet is just generally making both men and women operate personal relationships and general interactions increasingly like transactions.

Everyone has delusions of grandeur of how fucking special they actually are.

But it’s not everyone and it’s not everywhere.

We have two teen boys to navigate through this quagmire of dreadfulness. Luckily they have a great dad role model which can’t hurt, and we are very judgemental on their behaviour (perhaps the reason we rarely have to be, who knows?).

Thankfully women no longer need to live with this shit, they have the opportunities to earn their own money, take free effective contraception, so you don’t get stuck with these pricks and their offspring. So it could be a lot worse.

I don’t have many great males in my life. My Dad is a shit show but due to his childhood I think.

My DH completely takes the piss, regular conflict just trying to stop him double/triple booking himself as he just says yes to whatever he fancies doing. I do the mental load. Will step up when I lose my cool and slip back to how it was before.

I don’t have brothers but looking around at my friends partners not one of them is someone that I would like to be with.

Male colleagues staying away on business when they don’t have to, to escape family life.

I must be very lucky! My Dad is a good un, my brother can be a bit cantankerous but cooks and provides for his family. DH is a legend and so is his Dad!
At risk of being slated here but in terms of husbands I think we can end up with what we accept. I wasted 13 years with a man who wouldn’t talk about problems, was a lazy fecker, financially immature and just a general twat! I didn’t call him out on any it and stayed way longer than I should! Lesson learnt! I had 7 years on my own and was quite happy to remain so when I met DH. He’d also had an unsupportive, unhappy previous marriage. Neither of us will put up with what we had before!

I think some women are martyrs and men are happy to let them crack on. My dm micromanages every job so df says he’ll be moaned at whatever he does so he just doesn’t bother… I’ve seen it so can understand. Mum has so many rules for loading the dishwasher it’s insane (for example).

Some have different things they care about. At least my dad will cook, fil won’t even make his own toast.

Dh however pulls more than his own weight. I’m not lucky, I chose well and don’t tolerate anything other than a partnership.

Yes I think this pretty much sums it up and I agree. Add sexual violence as a separate category with a separate motivation to male violence and we are in the realms of where some of the biggest problems in society lie.

Double post

I think this is true, though I don't think anyone's responsible for "attracting" twatty men nor for the environment they're raised in.

I was raised in a very conservative environment and as a teenager I thought all the men around me (including my dad) were awful - though I also thought most of the women around me were awful too. Strict traditional gender roles all round.

The minute I left home I made a concerted effort to find people who, I guess, shared my values. The result is that in my 40s I'm surrounded by amazing men and women. There are awful people out there of both sexes, I've certainly met them, but I've removed myself from an environment where they dominated.

I also think by your 40s you should have enough life experience to know that someone's moral character isn't determined by their genitalia. MN is very weird for only being able to see things through the prism of Man or Woman, real life isn't like that.

Completely agree.
The very few nice men are the exception rather than the rule.

I see we have the usual handmaidens popping up here feeling the need to pretend that arsehole behaviour is equally represented in both sexes.

This is such a grossly biased and inflammatory thread. Well done for the click bait 👏

Don't beat around the bush. If you have an opinion, just spit it out, no need to sugar coat anything. 😜

I think there are genuinely great men out there who are great partners and fathers (i.e. manage at the operational capacity of the average woman) but they are the minority. Hopefully the new generation of teenagers and kids coming up will be better, I have genuinely high hopes (provided they see Andrew Tate for the poisonous pathetic little rate he truly is).

I grew up a full blown Pick-Me-sha - living for the male gaze, blithely accepting the patriarchy and my place in a patriarchal society, desperate to be picked by men, assessing my worth by my attractiveness to men and ability to obtain and keep a male partner.

I was with ex-H for 9 years, married for 4 years before the scales fell off. I won't get into the details but he was bad enough that I left him when DD was 10 weeks old. But I take accountability that I was willing to settle for crumbs and ended up with scraps, all because I wanted to be "picked".

Now I'm dating someone 12 years younger than me. I will never remarry or live with a man again. DP is wonderful for emotional support, physical intimacy, nice dinners, couples holidays and the odd occasion I need a plus one. I don't rely on him in any sense of the word and I love the freedom that comes with that. If he's useless, it's such low stakes for me that I don't notice or care. And if and when he decides he wants marriage and kids of his own one day, he has my complete blessing to move on and find that with someone else.

I wouldn't opt out of dating entirely because old habits die hard and I enjoy male company too much. But I won't ever be in a position of relying on a man again, apart from my dad (one of the greats).

There's some bias in that you only ever really hear the bad stories their a lots of decent men just their getting on with things and you don't hear about those guys just the bad ones