Apparently the world is too 'female'.....

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DH was voicing his view last night that 'masculinity' is being wiped out and that men can no longer do the things that make them men any more because they are frowned upon and that in a few years there will be a need for a 'masculinist' movement because the world is becoming so 'female'. He inferred that these manly things include shagging and fighting without consequence.

I was trying to make the point that in a world where equality is still a million miles away this kind of whingeing is pathetic and that men were only able to do these things in the past (largely) at the expense of women. I actually had to leave the room in the end because of a strong desire to lamp him.

I think his attitude sucks and his view of the world completely deranged. These views don't really seem to be in sync with the intelligent, thoughtful man I thought I had married. AIBU, is this just a typical male view? If I'm not, how can I put him right back in his box?!

Men aren't having sex without consequences, fighting and drinking any more?

Really????

Opinion or not, AliGrylls, the fact speak a different story.

If you are a woman with a wealthy husband, odds are you sacraficed your career to bring up his children and run his home, allowing him the time and peace to generate his wealth. The UK divorce laws recognise that (Heather Mills aside) this is as valuable a contribution to the marriage as the accumulation of wealth. The fact is, most women are worse off after divorce. Divorce is the most common factor in families sinking below the poverty line.

Women may be entitled to up to a year's maternity leave, but they pay for it with decreased promotion prospects, lower wages see here and you only have to take a brief look at the employment boards to realise how often they are squeezed out of a job. According to the Fawcett Society, 30,000 women a year a re forced out of their jobs due to pregnancy.

I'll agree with you that courts favour women in divorce with respect to child custody. But men routinely skip out of paying for their children. Again, just have a quick roam around the lone parent or legal boards to see just how common this is.

While some women may give up on the company director path after having children, many others tell a different story. Even the Govt 'apprentice Czar' SurAlan, has openly stated that he hesitates to employ women of childbearing age.

Men like to pretend that they are hard done by, but really, the deck is still stacked in their favour.

Just tell him that unreconstructed "masculinity" and its uncivilised ilk is going the way of the dinosaurs and he can either adapt or be wiped out. Maybe behaviour of the kind he is harking back to had its place when we lived in caves and he would have had to defend you, the children and the fire against sabre-toothed tigers and marauding neighbours, but it has little place in civlised society.

You were right and he is wrong with a capital R.

Vinegartits,

Last time I fed my baby he seemed fairly convinced that I was a women.

Crackfox,

MOST women aren't married to rich men but there are some and it is easy to milk the system in the UK.

It is actually against the Law to sack someone for being pregnant nowadays. However, I know that some women have a horrible time during pregnancy with their employers.

My point was not really about how awful it is to be a woman - it was about the fact that the Law works strongly in favour of women and men have to put up with it.

I went to a wedding on saturday.

There were lots of "unreconstructed" men.

They did drinking, heavily. They did strutting and swearing. After we left there was a fight.

Classy huh.

Anyone who says that men have been forced to change clearly only ever goes out in muswell hill. The vast majority of men do all the things that they have done for the last however many decades - boozing, ogling girls and women, watching football, swearing. I would say that recent changes include them now being allowed to spit with impunity, and much more casual sex.

I am not sure where your DH is coming from TBH.

Mind you most of the men I know don't work in offices... (thinking of abetadad's point). Not sure what that has to do with things though - is it that men should have hard manual jobs in order to tire them out or something?

Slug,

That is a very well argued response and I do appreciate what you have said. I will look up the Fawcett Society.

What about the fact that the laws WRT sexual equality, rape, domestic violence etc etc have failed comprehensively to do much to address the problems?

Can't these whiny men buy themselves a shed and go and sulk in it? Or bugger off to the pub for a pint?

Court system favours custody of women.

no it doesn't it favours the existing status quo. if children statrt off with mum as main carer, they stay. that is generally the case, and why generally primary custody stays with Mum.

Well dont you think its about time the law started working in favour of women? for years they were treated as second class citizens, the law is now changing to make sure women are treated equally to men, or maybe you think we should go back to our kitchens and revoke our right to vote

And men are not exactly 'putting up with it' its not like they are suddenly being treated differently, they are treated the same as they always were, its just that more people are realsing that women should be treated this way too.

As for paternity leave, men dont carry a child for nine months and are not able to BF, when they grow a womb and a pair of tits then you can argue that they should be given maternaity leave

it was about the fact that the Law works strongly in favour of women and men have to put up with it.

it does not favour women, crime for crime, a woman is more likey to get a longer custodial sentence. in what way do you think the law favours women?

legislation made to protect women against discrimination can (and has) been used effectively by men too. It may be against the law to sack someone for pregnancy, it is also against the law to sack a man for a discriminatory reason.

divorce law - in what way is a 50-50 split unfair? that is what is generally allowed under UK laww (with provision for duration of marriage/ children etc)

men in this country still have a whole bunch of advantages. not elast they almost never have to queue for toilets.

I think men do all that aggressive posturing, swearing and fighting because they are frustrated at not having a more manly (for want of a better term) role. My DP pretty clearly expresses that he fought after the pub because it was a release (I think we can take for granted he hadn't pulled).

But as someone above said, it's adapt and survive. A real man will be able to channel these energies without behaving like a twat. There were probably neanderthal twats too, but they all got eaten.

Who and where are all these whiney men?

Just on the maternity leave angle I actually think that after the first 6 weeks that maternity leave should actually be given to a couple...so that either the mother or father (or partner) can take the 6 months/year....or share it.

OK I haven't really thought through the consequences of all this....but I it is something I think could be considered.

If parental leave was available to share instead of maternity leae, do you honestly think many men would actually take up the offer? Or that many families would even be in a position to, given that its still generally the man of the house who makes more money?

As the working half of our partnership, iwish more men would take up parental leave. It gives them an insight into the real pressures of bringing up babies. There'd be less of this "Dossing around on maternity leave" type of comment I hear so frequently from men.

All those poor men who can't get jobs because of their fertile wombs making them poor employees. Diddums.

Sorry, but your DH is talking crap. In some areas the balance has switched to favour women, such as, I believe in Family Law. However, on the whole, unless you are a SAHM, a nurse or you work in a nursery or primary school, I believe that most people would say that the world is still, on the whole, masculine. If he feels insecure about being the man he wants to be (and frankly if fighting and shagging are the main things he's thinking of then perhaps he needs a little oestrogen injection ) then he should man up and take responsibility for his own sense of inadequacy.

Actually, the reason men don't have to queue for toilets is because there are more places for them to go. Legally, a building has to have x amount of space designated for bathrooms of each sex. But, because urinals take up less space, there tend to be more of them, so men get more places to go than women.

The mere existence of Top Gear, and that that IDIOT Jeremy Clarkson gets any time to air his views in public shows that the world is not too female.

As for the fighting, I think if many men knew the realities of war, they would thank their stars that they don't have to go and fight. We recently found out that one of my ancestors won an award for bravery in WW1. He went to fight for a country that wasn't his own, got gassed, then got sent back home, to the wrong CITY, spent many months in hospital and came out disabled. Unsurpisingly, he committed suicide a few years later.

the world too female? Bloody rubbish! Hmm.... get him a flight to Afghanistan- would he approve of the the new 'fuck or starve' law?

Or what about the fact that every half an hour one woman in the country dies in childbirth or pregnancy?

What about women being sold into marriage as young as 6 and then being being beaten and rapred for years on end?

What about the women being so desperate they set themselves on fire? Women have so much freedom in Iran, Iraq and Saudi. Women are also highly favoured in Africa I see, men are definately downtrodden there!

And in this country? Oh yes, of course woman never pay a huge financial penalty for having children so they? Motherhood devestates woman pay for years it has been shown. At least Europe is generally more advanced when it comes to affordable,quality childcare so women have more choice.

Do men work as hard as women? Do most do their fair share of the housework?

Equality for women has a very long way to go so NO the world is still run by men and for men.

Childcare is dominated by women because most ( and I say most, not all) men don't want to do childcare- it's still regarded as woman's work- like housework- while they do what they think are more important jobs like banking etc.

There are some great points on this thread.

My DH isn't normally a meathead which why I was so hacked off with his ridiculous comments that seemed to boil down to 'men have a biological need to fight and shag and it's not fair that nature is now curbed'.

I agree with you dittany and tried to make this point to him last night that in the past men's masculinity came at the expense of women. The idea that it is anything but a man's world in the main is just daft IMO.

I'd love to get him to come on here to debate it but I suspect he wouldn't.

I think you should get him here to do a live webchat to explain himself. I would loveto see his arguments as to why men are so hard done by.

"These views don't really seem to be in sync with the intelligent, thoughtful man I thought I had married."

Maybe you should talk some more about it when your both calm and try to see one anothers point of view?

I am a member of the Fawcett Society too.