Skip Navigation

What are some double standards in society for men ?

For example workplace harrasment by women towards males like touching or groping being ignored because the victim is male but if it where to happen to a woman by a male the male would be fired

305 comments
  • Some good examples:

    • Fat acceptance and body positivity. Obesity is glorified (even fetishized) when it's a woman, whereas obese men are shunned. Have you noticed that nobody in the fat acceptance movement is vouching for the 300lb basement dwellers?
    • Older ladies who date younger guys are called cougars, whereas if you flip the gender roles, an older man dating a younger lady half his age is going to be labelled a pedophile, even if she's of-age. Just look at at the anger surrounding Tobey Maguire (48 years old) dating a 20 year old actress. There are people who legitimately think men like him should be hunted for sport.
    • The amount of effort you have to put into your dating profile. Women have the opposite problem of being inundated with matches even with minimal effort.
    • The body positivity one really upsets me. A few years ago Target rearranged the clothing area. The men's area shrank and the women's is like three times are big. The women's area has all manner of plus sized models and mannequins. Nothing of the sort in the men's.

      It's like, I've always known body positivity (when it comes to corporations doing it) is extremely one sided and they're only chasing profits but I'd never seen it so literally before. Target was one of my favorite places to shop for clothes.

      • Body positivity almost doesn't exist for men. As soon as some asshole guy does something, its jokes about their body. Ive seen jokes about being short and no one cares as long as your talking about Putin or Tory Lanes, fat and small dick jokes constantly thrown at Trump. All of these are body shaming that will never be seen by the people they're directed at but will be seen by pleny of others with those features.

      • I think I get what you're saying but let's be honest in that a larger guy half the time will just need an XL T-shirt. The sizes of these areas for merchandise are relative to consumer demands and consumer volume by sex. As someone who worked at Target for a couple of years back in the day, yes, far more women shop there. And the style of dressing for women has always been more diverse.

        With respect to the mannequins, there seems to be a difference in the perception of average body types in reflection based on the gender. Perhaps this is more a trait of conservative men, but no matter how much of a beer belly they have, they seem to want to be perceived like they're macho manly six-pack men. Marketing plays to that. On the flip-side, it has become trendy to give comfort to women who -- by far -- receive far more bullying over being large both online and offline. No doubt as a white male I feel fucking privileged by contrast of what my sisters or wife have gone through at times in their lives.

    • The amount of effort you have to put into your dating profile. Women have the opposite problem of being inundated with matches even with minimal effort.

      Dating apps have fuckloads of problems that work against non-top paying users, but for men the main issue is demographic: 80% of users are men. There just aren't enough women on them.

    • I am in the dating scene at the moment. I definitely agree that men and women suffer the opposite problem on those apps. I think the apps are generally not designed to be successful and take advantage of choice fatigue. I don't know if it's a double standard per-se but I do think there's a drastic difference in amount of effort applied.

      Of course there's no requirement but I do think that the minimum general expectation people have is that there is going to be effort applied to find a partner (aka, communication). That doesn't always seem to be the case, especially from my anecdotal experience, that getting anything more than a 1-3 word reply is considered a success.

    • On the age thing, TBH anyone under 25 or so should not be dating anyone more than 10 years older than them. It's still a very formative time both physically (brain development) and psychologically/sociologically. It can cause serious power dynamic issues that risk them being unable to end the relationship or deny consent for certain things. That said gender doesn't make a difference in those scenarios beyond the fact that women are at a disadvantage and less likely to be wealthy and use that to control the younger.

      But outside of issues where the older person holds power over the younger, I don't think age should even be that big of a thing. Yes, people of different generations are less likely to have things in common and other conflicts can occur that are age related, but that's for them to decide.

  • This isn't a blanket statement, but I have, in the past, been introduced to women in my friend group, and talked to them like I would anybody else. But for whatever reason, they get the idea that I'm hitting on them. I can see it in their body language, the way they bring up their significant other (Like, really? I was just introduced to both of you 5 minutes ago?), among others. They make it out like "how could you be hitting on me?" and I'm like, asking about a band she brought up? I wasn't even remotely attracted to her, I was just trying to be friendly, but her demeanor made it seem like she thought I was some insensitive asshole, and it hurt. I excused myself and just fuckin left. I had only gotten there like 20 minutes beforehand.

    Another time I was introduced to a woman while we were helping a friend move. This girl I was into (she ranted about recycling <3), and I was planning on asking her out once we were done for the day, but as we were talking, she mentioned her significant other, so I didn't. After we'd finished loading something into the moving truck, I said "hey so, thanks for mentioning your significant other back there, saved me a bit of awkwardness haha." To this, she took offense, and challenged me, "what do you mean? what are you talking about?" like, hands on hips, wide eyes, "how dare you" attitude... and I was dumbfounded. Here I was, thanking her for stopping me from embarrassing myself by asking out a girl that was in a relationship, and I was getting the third degree from it! At this point I didn't know whether it would make the matter worse if I confessed I had almost asked her out, so I just blankly stared, mouth agape (dumbfounded, like I said). I eventually excused myself and went back to loading the truck. Avoided her like the plague since then.

    These were just two myopic incidents, probably lasted 5 minutes in total each, but it affected me in such a way that I basically cut myself out from the entire social circle, and only ever hang out with a guy friend that's kind.

    However, I feel the need to add a disclaimer so you don't get me wrong.

    I've also gone through a lot of personal growth recently, and in the endeavor to understand myself and my sexuality (Go Fightin' Bi's!), I've encountered scenarios that help me understand women better. I've had guy friends who only acted like my friend because they wanted to sleep with me. That hurts, and it makes me feel cheap. Once I tell them definitely "No," or they realize I'm not interested, they stop interacting with me. It's like, is that all I was in your eyes? Some thing to fuck? And even getting to the point where I'd tell these guys "No," was excruciating! I don't want to lose a friendship, or hurt them by saying "No," I'm just not interested! Makes it hard to engage with my fellow LGBT peeps, when I feel like I'm just going to be pushed into hurting someones feelings. This led me to ghost some guys, and I'm not proud of it. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate it when someone is flirty or compliments me, that's nice and can be a real ego boost! But when I'm using all my body language to say "thanks but no thanks," and you are still uncomfortably close? or touching the small of my back like it's nonchalant or something? fucking GROSS.

    Additionally, I have an elderly, disabled, female neighbor that I used to help out a lot. Whenever she needed something done around the house, she'd come over and I'd take care of it for her. She is an old pot head, so she'd even smoke me up! We'd pass a joint while watching Amos and Andy or whatever was on TV, it was a nice relationship. Then, once I became single, it got worse. Before, after I fixed her fridge, she wanted to give me a kiss on the cheek, and it came uncomfortably close to my lips. Then she started standing in the doorway while I came inside, so I'd have to press past her to get in. Then she'd touch my arm, leg, small of my back when I was doing chores for her. It got to the point where she would wait till I was high, and then ask how big my dick was, and if I'd let her go down on me. Just repulsive behavior. I've since stopped helping her, and always decline her offers to smoke, despite missing how we used to be.

    All of this to say, guys get sexually harassed, Guys get sexually abused, and Guys get unfairly depicted as predators in hurtful ways. But also, girls get sexually harassed, Girls get sexually abused, and Girls get unfairly depicted as cold honey pots in hurtful ways.

    What we should all do is try to be more kind.

  • I work in a company that seems to have mostly women in management roles and the area I work in has mostly women in our area as well. The things I've heard women say about men though would get any guy shit-canned within a day if he were to say anything like that about women. Women can straight-up say things like, "I hate men" or "Men are such assholes" or "What is wrong with men?" or "Guys are so stupid!" or "My husband is such a fucking idiot" or saying blatantly sexual shit about men that they have crushes on or find attractive. It's just a joke to them, like whatever. Meanwhile, if a guy were to say anything even remotely approaching to what I've heard in our office, they would be gone like nothing, there's just no tolerance for that.

    And don't get me wrong, I'm not offended by women saying sexist things like that or talking sexually about guys, I don't give a shit, I've heard worse from other guys. That doesn't bother me and I'm not looking to get anybody in trouble over it, I just want tolerance from both sides. What bothers me is that men aren't afforded that same courtesy and aren't allowed to talk the same way. Women can talk shit at work all they want about men because "Fuck the patriarchy, old white men are ruining everything, etc", but whooo, if a guy says anything remotely out of line about women, they will be reported like that 🫰.

  • The shit older women said (and did) to me when I drove a cab in my twenties.

    Also, not wanting to fuck someone, even if they're somewhat attractive.

305 comments