Looking at men differently now I know too much?

[clingfilmed]

In recent years I've seen so much in the news and online about men's abuse and violence towards women. A man who looks totally normal and pleasant and is perhaps in many ways a good man might still be going home and creating fake AI nudes of women he knows or watching extreme porn or abusing his wife or kids or using prostitutes or cam girls or has a fetish that degrades and dehumanises women or is a complete misogynist.

There is a post on the relationships board now where a married man is hoping that just because a mum of his sons friend has been friendly towards him she might fancy him and be up for it.

Then looking at many of the men I know day to day how they talk to and interact with their wives and families is depressing to see, almost like they don't care at all.

I know its not every man, I know some men who I do think are good. I do look back to the rose tinted days of my teens when I would idealise boys and think they were so amazing and now knowing what I do about general trends and some men in particular its quite a disappointment.

I feel the same. I can't look at men in the same way now I know that most have weird fetishes or fantasies about women and sex and that they compartmentalise it so easily and believe that none of it has any affect on their relationships with spouses or partners. Once you have your eyes opened to all of this you cannot possibly look at men in the same light as before you did not know. It's so easy to be aware of this now with all of the male "celebrities " that are caught out and their sordid fantasies made public as well as all the others who are caught out on line. I wouldn't trust any man. It's very sad.

"They have three hearts: a false one in their mouths for all the world to see, another within their breasts only for their friends, and the third in the depths of their hearts, reserved for themselves alone and never manifested to anybody" Father João Rodrigues

Me being straight is a fucking mystery daily.

I fancy men, but I hate them.

And I’m raising sons, who seem to be ok, but every mother hinks it’s not her boy, dowsnt she?

There's a lot of people with agendas causing disruption to 'the traditional family'. I think they've got too used to people falling for a load of old rubbish and they think they can get away with virtually anything now.

I've always been wary. I know good men do exist but I believe it's in very small numbers.

Two blokes who feel comfortable talking to me told me they used to wolf whistle at women from their cars. Nothing I said could convince them that the attention was likely unwelcome for a good many of the recipients. They would likely both think of themselves as upstanding citizens but I felt slightly sick.

I had this exact conversation with my mum today. I have men who I believe 100%. And yet, knowing men, if someone told me something about them I would question what I thought i knew.

The more I know of men the less I like them.

Ridiculous thread. There are plenty of decent lovely men in the world.

Any one of you might be defrauding someone of their life savings for all I know.

Yanbu

Since Gisele Pelicot especially

Look.

There are a LOT of bad men out there. Lots. A sizeable minority.

But you can't think like this, it's not healthy. It's always good to be wary. For sure, there are many men who do not see women as human, equal, just see them through a sexual lense.

But there are also many men that don't, you are doing all of humanity a disservice if you view all men thusly. Yes, be aware that a great deal of men and not your friend, and never will be.

It won't do you any good to think it's all of them though.

This.

The problem with basing your life view on what you read online is that you're generally seeing the worst stuff. Men who dedicate their lives to helping others don't make front page news unless they're truly exceptional - charity founders etc.

Which sex saves more lives day to day? Do you think it's more likely to be women rescuing men from burning buildings/cutting them out of car wrecks or vice versa? If a terrorist attack happens will the response team be mainly female or male?

I too went through a very similar phase in my 30s, really started hating men. I actually have a great father who never saw or treated me differently because I was a female, and had a mother who was a feminist and took me to Greenham Common, and always had really good boyfriends, no harm was done to me by men for a long time. Worked in the City in finance, and held my own because I never realised I shouldn't.

But! Then I married a bad man. I didn't even recognise bad men, I'd had no experience of them. Until I did.

And then after I left him and looked around I realised there there were a lot of bad men out there. That was a revelation. I did immerse myself for a while in anti-man rhetoric.

And then I met my second husband and had a son and spoke to them both, all the time about life and sex and gender and the patriarchy and harm etc etc etc.

Anyway, my husband is a good man, and my son has been described by his friends, as 'A walking green flag', which makes he happy. He would never describe himself as a feminist, (nor would my husband), they both understand that women are equal but different because of sex-based differences and because the world ain't right.

They don't view women as intrinsically different though, the same way my father didn't.

So I've come full circle.

What a bitter and simplistic way to view the world.

I never idealised men btw. Just saw them as human. Some good. Some bad.

And I think that's where you went wrong OP.

I am not men’s number one fan, and I wouldn’t trust most of them as far as I can throw them, but the generalisations aren’t great. I have joined in the anti men rhetoric lately, god knows we have had a lot of bad examples to choose from to base our bad opinions on.

However, it is just the same as Andrew Tate’s generalisation rhetoric against women, except we are attacking them instead. Just like Tate, the anti men rhetoric is just another example where we have to be for or against these days, you are not allowed to have a more balanced view. You are meant to be in one camp or the other.

I haven’t had great male role models in my life, starting from childhood. And I don’t seek them out nor find them fascinating. But they are people - women aren’t all a wonderful bunch either, although most of them manage not to be violent either in person or on the global stage.

I would pick women over men every day but we seem to being pushed into a us and them situation which doesn’t help society.

YANBU. 90% of men are rubbish. I was abused by many teen boys and some men as a child. Some of the men were "upstanding citizens" like ministers. That really bothered me but what bothered me more was that most men didn't care. I had police officers, shopkeepers, etc. walk in on some of the sexual abuse and none of them did anything to help me. The most they did was yell at or threaten all of us and treat me as being as much of the problem as my abusers. For them, it was true: the problem was that their day was being disrupted and we were all involved. Anyway, I must be a slag or I wouldn't be doing it (as if I had a choice).

If I told people, I was bad for letting it happen but also for "ruining a good man". In other words, the worst thing about male violence is that it makes men look bad. Girls are responsible for what boys/men do. I was the one making them look bad by letting it happen and by telling other people. Easier to blame me or look the other way than to stop the abuse or report it. I could deal with being abused by men/boys but not with how no one in the community cared bc I was just a girl. I think that hurt more than the abuse.

As I got older, I trusted men more than I did as a child but almost all of them turned out to be rubbish too, in one way or another. None of them really viewed women as full, equal humans who were just as important as men.

I'm sorry that happened to you.

Where were the people that were meant to protect you?

Some of them were abusing me. Others were covering for my abusers. Most didn't know but I told a few adults and none of them did anything to help me. They acted like I was bad bc I was not an innocent little girl any more (bc of the abuse) and bc I was putting them in an uncomfortable position where they had to choose between me or e.g., their church, their friends, "upstanding" members of the community, etc. A few adults saw the actual abuse (e.g., they walked into the back room, where it was happening) and either did nothing or, e.g., threatened to send all of us to prison. (It was an idle threat but I was a child so I believed them bc they were respected adults.)

If a terrorist attack happens, will the terrorists be men or women?

If there's a car crash, is the at-fault driver more likely to male or female?

"Women, you need men to save you from the problems that men cause" really isn't a convincing argument.

"Women, you need men to save you from the problems that men cause" really isn't a convincing argument".

Yeah, it's a stupid argument but you're the only one using it. My point is that people always focus on the Wayne Couzens of this world, which are relatively few, rather than all the good men. Usually these people are spending a lot of time online like OP and letting media stuff affect their day to day decision making.

If there's a car crash, is the at-fault driver more likely to male or female?

I don't see how this is relates to whether the rescuer is male or female?

If a terrorist attack happens, will the terrorists be men or women?

They could be female like Samantha Lewthwaite who is estimated to be responsible for around 400 deaths from things like grenade attacks on bars. However, they're more likely to be male. There will always be good people and bad people, and it's usually men fighting to stop the bad ones.

Their good deeds aren't cancelled out just because there are some bad men too. That would be a ridiculous statement, a bit like saying that gender critical feminists are irrelevant because it's mainly women supporting trans rights.

The view that "they're all the same" is a common one in hateful rhetoric. Racists certainly love it. But most people with these views have a 'justification' to rationalise it to themselves.

I think you can replace 'know too much' with 'think too much' tbh.

I'm frequently baffled how so many people purport that they're "terrified" over the ICE shooting in the US etc. Same with the thread about how to safely navigate the train to work lol. I'm not thinking of stuff like that on the way to work nor am I thinking about Sarah Everard. Most of us have got real life stuff to deal with.

If you're going about your day worrying about being murdered you likely have a psychological disorder of some kind!

The MRAs have found this thread...

OP you are not wrong at all.

You listed a bunch of problems that predominately caused by men, and then praised men for saving people from them. Even burning buildings: was it women who made the decision to fit the shoddy cladding on Grenfell?

If men didn't cause these problems, they wouldn't need to swoop into the rescue like Superman.