One that always annoyed me is when it is around the holidays, when stores advertise gifts for men. They always assume a guy is into toilet humor, beer humor, assuming they’re a lumberjack who needs to survive out in the wilderness, are into bbq-ing all of the time so gotta have those available all year around for some reason.
Even when I used to have identified myself as a guy, I never once fit into any of those traits. Just because guys grow beards, doesn’t always mean they’re chopping wood somewhere and always wearing plaid.
I used to teach community college sociology. One of my students told me “it would be gay” to be kind and fire eating with his 4 year old son.
I often wonder how that kid turned out. Not good I imagine.
Marketing people prey on insecure people. It’s not just guys. I had a girlfriend who would spend a fortune… Not even kidding on hair products, cremes, you name it. She was always jealous of my hair and skin and i always told her that i literally make my own soap and don’t care about products. But on Instagram… Well, then just buy stuff from influencers i guess.
Oh this hits so close to home. She does not spend that much but also not little. Does a 20 minute routine every night and morning with like 5 different products.
Then goes and tells me she is jealous of my skin. I almost never wash my face directly even under the shower I just use water. And it’s somehow so much better than hers.
I think that’s the issue. Letting the body take care of itself with its natural oils and just cleaning it with pure water is pretty good I think. Could do with a once in a while light scrub to get bacteria out of course, couple times a week maybe.
Could do but I never did and have not really had any issues. She is constantly nagging me that I need to do skincare but I just cannot be bothered to do it for no gain. I do sometimes moisturise but that is it.
Definitely don’t start anything, no. If your skin is healthy you need to tell her that starting now with a bunch of chemicals that the skin isn’t used to will more likely do damage than good if anything.
“You’re a man. You can take it.” No, cunt. It’s domestic abuse.
I would extend that to pretty much all gendered advertisement. Especially for kids, the way toys are advertised in such a gendered way does quite a bit of harm to those who don’t neatly fit into the stereotypes.
Do you all remember the public freak out when Target said they were de-gendering their toy isles
The toys situation annoys me so much more now that I am a parent. Also it does not matter how hard you try to avoid certain things, we keep getting gifted clothes that would turn our daughter into a free walking advert for Disney princesses and our son into a truck and heavy machinery enthusiast.
Which, there wouldn’t necessarily be anything wrong with if they were into that to begin with, but that’s really not the case. The push is unreal.
I read “sexiest stereotypes” and got confused as to why you would want to stop them.
The market has determined the gender stereotypes that are most profitable and insecure people increasingly take on those qualities as parts of their personality.
All other interests are niche and require someone to establish a special interest club to attract like-minded folks.
Most, if not all of them, should just die to be honest. But the one that is targeted at me and annoys me most at the moment is the following.
Where I currently live, there seems to be an assumption that if you are a man, you’re going to be a deadbeat parent.
The bar is in absolute hell to be considered a “good dad”. Change nappies? You’re so “hands on”. Spend time with your kids minding your own business? Mums out of the blue coming to tell you “you’re doing great”, with optional condescension. Thanks, I didn’t ask. Or conversely if my child is crying, get offered help insistently, because yeah, you must know better than my sorry man ass, even though you only met my child 5 seconds ago.
When my partner is present, any questions from doctors or childminders about our children are by default asked to her, and if I don’t (repeatedly) chip in, I don’t even get a look.
No, I’m not “babysitting” to give my wife a rest, I’m enjoying spending time with my children. No, I don’t feel emasculated having my baby in a carrier/sling or pushing a buggy. Also no, I don’t need to be advertised “manly” looking dad gear (you know the one, looks like you’re cosplaying a spec ops soldier).
This seems to be getting better as my children are getting older but during the baby phase it was absolutely mind blowing how I felt I either had to assert my presence quite a bit, or paradoxically get infinite praise for doing the bare minimum.
the bar really is that low, tbf. congratulations you are in the top 0.1% of parents/dads
lot of people out there that really shouldn’t be having kids because they’re barely aware of themselves let alone other people
Tbf, this is not super local specific necessarily. I definitely pass judgement in fellow coworker dads who show up to work a week after they have their new born. When I chat with them about how nights are going and they say “oh fine, I just sleep in the basement so the baby doesn’t wake me” I want to throttle their weak asses.
Much of it is definitely cultural. Its made worse that we work at a company that offers dads two months full pay and live in a country with employment insurance benefits for parents that can be split over 18 months.
Yeah, by “where I live” I meant the country I am currently in. I am not saying there is no sexism where I am from, far from it, but from what little I can tell, the specifics that I am describing seem to be more prevalent in English speaking countries. Sexism expresses in different ways, that’s definitely a culture thing.
And yes, here in the UK, fathers are only entitled to two weeks paternity leave which only makes things worse. I was very lucky to be working for a company which had a great parental leave policy when both my children were born (3 months full pay) so I could do my part and bond with my children at a very early age. I remember after two weeks thinking “how do fathers even go back to work at that stage?”. And that’s not even taking into account a difficult birth, like needing a c-section, and the mum needing at least 6 weeks to start being able to safely do anything remotely straining again.
It’s just insane.
Meat. I’m vegetarian, my wife is not. When we go out to eat, if she orders meat, there’s a good chance the meat dish will get put in front of me.
We were at a Christmas market on the weekend, and one booth had a sign that said “Make your husband happy”, and it was of course a butcher stand.
Men just want this simplistic life with no amenities. No bed just a mattress, cheap canned food, cheapest tshirts bought in packs of 50 and so on. I’m sure there are people who genuinely like that, but a lot of the times I find it so sad when men think they can’t treat themselves. And often if they just tried finding out what is a good product for them they’d find that it solves a lot of their problems.
One example: my husband told me when we met that he didn’t like to go to the pool because he was very self-concious about his unclean skin and lots of akne. He was also using any cheap soap he saw at a shop. I did some research for him and we tried some medical shower gels and just a few month later his skin had cleaned up completely. He isn’t even someone who buys into this manliness-stuff, but I think society just never suggested to him that as a man he could care about what soap he buys and put any thought into it. For him it was just a fact of life that he had bad skin and he was sad that it kept him from going to the pool or sauna, but he kind of accepted it as his fate. Because somehow trying to feel good and care for your body is still coded female outside of some fitness/bodybuilder etc bubbles.
He has since also found out that investing some research and money into the right mattress and bed base helps against his back pain that he had before also kind of just accepted.
Man, you’d likely be a boon to marketing companies - help everyone realize what markets they’re underserving by targeting one gender demographic.
I’ve noticed that when you want a question answered it’s best to put your own answer in a comment and let the post only be describing or clarifying the question. When you put a question and your answer together in the post, the question reads more rhetorical since you’ve already given “the answer”, and your answer will be what people discuss rather than giving their own answers.
My sexist stereotype that needs to stop is that men are not good with kids, or unsafe.
I want to see more men playing with kids, being handed strangers kids to hold at gatherings, men hugging and cuddling kids. It’s no more suspicious or odd for a man to enjoy and appreciate and be caring with children (not just his own) than it is for a woman.
I have no qualms asking a strange child if they want help if I see them struggling (seeming lost, trying to reach something, scared of the escalator, whatever), and I want men to feel equally comfortable stepping in without being afraid of what people might think they’re up to… Because people need to stop thinking men are up to something when they are clearly trying to have a positive impact.
This is one thing that I’m pretty self conscious about. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet and see lots of actual creeps on there but it’s often on my mind in public to try not to come off as a creep. The only exception is with my nieces or nephew, I’ll be dammed if someone’s going to accuse me of something because I’m playing with them or keeping an eye on them in public, but outside of that, I’m a single guy in his 30s and that don’t look good, so I keep to myself.
Actually, as I was typing this out I remembered the guy that I saw while I was with my nieces and their parents waiting for some food at a fast food place a few months back. The place was busy so we were all there for a while and this old guy comes up nearby, waits for a while, then complains out loud to us. Ok, that’s normal, but then he just hangs out for a while close to the kids. After we get the last of our food as the youngest is getting off of a stool, he reaches out to help her off, holding her under the arms. That type of situation is exactly what I try to avoid. Maybe he was harmless and thought she needed a hand, that for some reason the three adults she knew couldn’t provide, but keep your hands off the kid, we don’t know you. (She was not struggling to get off the stool)
Anything machismo. Guys shouldn’t take pride in being big dumb oafs that can swig gasoline if they wanted to.
I even think our current view on machismo is too product-driven, rather than traditional male values.
Don’t learn to build a cabin, because that’s old fashioned. But do DRINK BEER, and drive a big truck, and mock clean energy initiatives because real men love the ROAR of an expensive motor paid for by oil companies!
Old values would’ve been about treating a lady right, or standing up for what you believe in - even if it was as simple as punching someone who mocked your wife.
an swig gasoline if they wanted to.
By all means let’em win Darwin Awards.
The timing of this post is ideal.
I’m a guy. Yesterday, a coworker (a woman) told me about a male customer who was shopping before my shift started. She tried to help him, but he said “can I get a man to help me?” Ugh.
Amusingly, only her and two other women were working at that moment. She said “I’m the best you’re gonna get. There’s only two other people on duty right now, and they’re both women with less experience than me.” She wasn’t bragging, either. She’s always the one I go to when I have questions.
I’m glad I wasn’t there. I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with that caveman.
If you were there, you could’ve just played dumb and driven the point home by redirecting each question to your coworker.
I get annoyed when I order a cocktail or a vegetarian dish at a restaurant and they put it in front of my wife.
Sometimes I want a veggie filled meal, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pass up a cocktail because it’s not “manly”.
I have scotch at home, and if I’m buying a steak it’s going to be from a high quality restaurant. I hate overpaying for steak that I can cook better at home.
My wife is a huge prime rib fan. Invariably, the waiter gives me the prime rib, and my wife the salmon.
I can sort of relate. I’m fat as fuck, but I really like salads and veggies. When I go out to eat, my (much smaller) partner will order like a steak and potatoes, and I might order like a chicken cobb salad, not because I’m dieting, but I because I really wanted a dinner salad. And like half the time they give the salad to my partner and give me the steak.
Lol happens to me all the time, I only drink fruity or sweet alcoholic beverages and my wife loves beer and whiskey.
Couple weeks ago we were out with some work friends and I ordered a “Trophy Wife” and it came with a flower in it and everything lmao (tasted fantastic) and one of the guys we were with (who is gay even) made a comment about my prissy drink lmao. He was doing it in jest but like… Why shouldn’t I like things that taste good? XD
So I had a similar experience. I was a vegetarian, I don’t like coffee, I don’t drink alcohol.
First the waiter put the wine in front of me and the soda in front of my wife.
Then I got the meat and she the veggie dish.
Then finally she got the white tea and I the coffee.
That if a woman is into stereotypically feminine things she must be dumb and shallow. Just cause I love the bimbo aesthetic doesn’t mean I can’t also be into “serious, deep” stuff like science, tech, politics, academia, etc.
As a teenager I never wore dresses, skirts or nail polish because I didn’t want to be seen as a girly girl. I was into science and books and that didn’t seem to fit the vibes.
I’m glad that I figured out in my twenties that being in a male-dominated tech field doesn’t require you to dress masculine or wear nerd shirts. If you’re into that, that’s great, but it’s also okay to wear dresses or put on make up if you work as an engineer or a software developer.
Woman does normal thing dressed as woman.
“OMFG do we really to sexualize normal thing?!?”
To be fair, she did explicitly refer to the bimbo aesthetic. That’s not just dressing “like a woman”, it’s a pretty objectively sexualized aesthetic. Not that what you’re saying doesn’t also happen.
I mean, to be fair, a lot of women’s clothing is geared to be sexually attractive. Just because it’s been normalized doesn’t make it untrue. Something can be normal and sexualized.
Or do you think there’s a practical, unsexy benefit of women’s pants having tinyass pockets and being skin tight?
Not that I agree with their complaints. I’m totally fine with people dressing how they want, unless it’s dragging their bare unwiped ass all over the furniture.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wearing clothes that fit well and makes you look good, but it will be judged.
On the internet in general and specifically on YouTube, it’s difficult for handsome people to do anything at all without being accused of doing normal stuff while being attractive just to increase monetization.
It’s a weird kind of gate keeping, but I do understand it. There are definitely channels that only exist for that reason, and it might be annoying to see your favorite topic being used by someone who ought to be on OnlyFans instead. However, it doesn’t actually take anything away from anyone, so it’s really just a ‘crabs in a bucket’ mentality, where nobody are allowed to stand out.
Yea, agreed. Anyone complaining about something being too attractive is really just advertizing their own insecurity and/or lack of self control.
Who the fuck wants an ugly environment?!
That men always want sex with anyone at any time, and if they don’t that means there’s something wrong with them.
I’m on the far end of this spectrum, and I’d argue that there’s definitely something wrong with me, but it’s a curious issue in the sense that it only affects me negatively when someone else is bothered by it. You don’t really miss sex when you have no desire for it. It’s actually kind of a superpower too at times. I feel more free than many of my peers whose minds are constantly occupied with chasing sex.
As desires go, it certainly takes up an awful lot of time and energy that can be put to other uses.
