"man up"

[miniwedge]

how about we change that phrAse to "time to be assertive", and even better, change the assumption that being male makes you better equipped to be assertive?

Just a thought. Have seen the phrase used a lot recently and it is becoming irritating.

I say "woman up" sometimes, but not often as there are so many fine alternatives. Don't like body-part imperatives: my family's prone to testicular/ovarian cancer, as a result of which many of us have only one ovary/testicle. Kind of takes the chutzpah out of the phrase.

A confession, though - when I started driving again after a total loss of confidence, I resorted to telling myself to "drive like a man!" but it worked.

GB, I have often thought about starting a thread on something like, 'a feminist perspective on driving'. I suspect that there is a difference between male/female approaches to driving, but have only very very vauge thoughts and no idea how even to start a converation. Don't want to hijack the thread but your thoughts would be appreciated - again....

I just needed to be assertive & decisive. In fact, I could be heard growling "Decisive! Decisive!" to myself while negotiating that horrid big roundabout near Croydon ...

I lived in Tooting at the time, so needed a viable alternative to "Drive like someone whose uncle in Peshawar issued their licence, without requiring lessons!"

Please don't make assumptions about that unless you have actually driven round Tooting on a market day.

Here is a thread elsewhere on Mumsnet in which a woman says she must "man-up" in order to...

...deal with a spider.

Feminism has far to go.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/1210612-fucking-hell-theres-a-daddy-longlegs-in-my-kitchen-HELP

Lol!
I didn't know that about deodorant, though - one to keep in mind when the very big, furry moths with hard wings appear in autum

I hate, hate, hate 'suck it up, princess'.

Doesn't it imply a woman being forced to swallow semen following a blow-job, that she's not too good for it, putting her down, sexual violence essentially?

hate it.

I thought "suck it up" just meant anything unpleasant but prudent - like "take your medicine"?

I think it originates from porn

I'm reasonably sensitive to language I think, and I do object to "grow a pair" but I think that the "man" in "man up" tends to be used as the opposite of boy, not of woman.

On MN in particular it's often used in the context of a man needing to behave like an adult and take responsibility for parenthood or not be over-reliant on his mother - and in that context I don't have a problem with it.

However I do strongly object to it when used to women, especially in the context of spiders FFS. A grown woman who has to rely on men to deal with minibeasts needs to woman up, or get therapy.