“Society *absolutely* does not care if a man is abused, and will usually blame the man on top of that.”

I'm a Senior Staff Writer based in New York City, where I've been covering classic BuzzFeed-style content since 2020.

"His ex didn't have a scratch or a bruise on her. They were about to take him away when the ex's daughter came out of her room and started yelling at the cops for arresting the wrong person. The cops took the cuffs off and left. The actual abuser was never punished, but my friend did leave her after nearly going to jail for being the victim of abuse. I feel bad for that kid. I hope she didn't turn out like her mother.

Society *absolutely* does not care if a man is abused, and will usually blame the man on top of that."

"This plus being Black...I'm tired, boss."

"The darker and bigger the worse it is. I'm 6'4", 260, brown, and I could grow a full beard by noon. Unless I go out of my way to be nonthreatening, people are scared."

"I saw a video today of a Black man waiting in his car for his bank to open. The bank called the cops on him for being suspicious and having alcohol in his car. It was their freaking customer, and it wasn't even alcohol. It was a Red Bull. They just assumed he was drinking."

"A friend of mine is a widower and single dad. He's not white, but his daughter is white-passing. He's had his child kidnapped at the supermarket by a woman trying to 'save' her from him. He gets the police called on him often enough that he keeps extra copies of a family photo in his wallet in case they just walk off with it. He never shows them the original after nearly losing it."

"My son ran off in a Walmart. I was walking down the main aisle to look down each individual aisle. A young woman and her daughter were on the opposite end, going in the same direction. I didn't notice them at all, as I was looking for my son. I found my son in the outdoor supply section, and right after, a handful of employees and a couple of police officers met me at the exit. The young woman was visibly upset. They thought I was looking for someone to kidnap and had to explain for 10 minutes too long that I was looking for my son and my son was indeed my son.

It took me over a year to feel comfortable taking my son with me to a department store, the mall, etc."

"Turns out later on that there was an older lady who actually answered wrong, which is why the video stopped, but she was never even considered by my peers...yeah, she got fired the same day after she apparently did something racist on the production line.

Funny enough, one of the women that stared at me was getting hired by HR, lol."

"I had a guy want to fight me for looking at his wife and kids in his truck at a gas station. I was pumping gas, after a grueling work shift, and doing the 1,000-yard stare. I didn't even notice his family or him until he came running over…"

"I was at the beach just yesterday, and a 20-something-year-old girl acted like I was sitting outside her window with binoculars while she changed.

I was watching my 5-year-old playing in the run-up, 20 yards behind her."

"I once was at a station for something in a college cafeteria. I was staring off into space, and this guy's girlfriend just happened to be in my field of vision. Guy came between us and SLAMMED down his tray."

"I'm a fast but almost silent walker. Every time I'm walking when it's dark, and there's a woman in front of me that I'm catching up to, I never know what to do. I tend to cough when I get about 50 meters back to alert them to my presence, so it doesn't feel like I'm creeping up on them. Most of the time, that's enough, because a loud man is less worrying than a quiet one.

But then sometimes they notice me and speed up, and it's like, okay, now I need to slow down so I'm not matching your pace so as not to stress you out, but now you're walking faster than you're comfortable doing, and I'm walking SLOWER than I'm comfortable doing. But then, when I'm far away enough for it to be comfortable for you, you're going to slow down again, and what, I have to match her speed 400 meters back? Do I go at my natural pace and catch up, and make her worried again?

Like, I don't blame the women in this situation at all, but I know I'm not a threat, and it's not socially acceptable (or even convincing) to yell out to a stranger who's clearly scared and vulnerable and say, 'Don't worry, I'm just a fast walker, I'm not chasing you.'"

"They want to know that you trust them enough to be vulnerable, but they don't *actually* want you to be vulnerable.

I saw the respect in my first girlfriend's eyes die as I explained to her how I was struggling with impostor syndrome at my job. I ended up breaking up with her when she started using the things I'd shared with her to belittle me in public.

Everyone always says toxic masculinity is something men enforce on other men, but that's absolutely bullshit. I have shared things with my closest male friends that nobody else in the world knows, and they will take that shit to the grave. "

"I told my ex that I was sexually abused by my grandpa as a child. Her response, I'm not joking, was, 'Well. Better make sure you don't do it to others. He was probably abused himself.' Like, I could never imagine saying that to another human being who tells me something like that. I just stopped talking, and we were done within a week."

Though: "This is clearly a thing that happens to quite a few guys, but I just want to comment, especially for the other guys here, that it is not in fact all women.

Of all my girlfriends and partners, maybe one got weird or negative about me being emotionally vulnerable. The rest were warm, supportive, and patient to the best of their abilities. None of them ever gave me a reason to think they were less attracted to me, having seen me cry or have a hard time, and a few clearly found me more attractive afterward.

Women are just people — like all people, some of them are self-interested pricks who will use you, and some of them are great. Dudes need to learn to spot the difference just as much as women."

"What they do not know is that my love for them makes me fear everything. I’m more likely to avoid or leave dangerous situations because of what might happen to them. If it came down to it, I’d fight everyone around me without thought if it meant their safety. That’s a switch I can absolutely flick at a moment's notice, but experience has shown me evasion is a better tactic than confrontation."

"I remember one time at my first job out of university, I commented to my line manager that the guys in the office really do like to complain a lot about their wives and families.

He said: 'Imagine what would happen if you came into the office and someone asked you how your weekend was? And you answered, "My daughter gave me a flower from the garden with a big smile on her face, and my heart filled with joy." Nobody wants that kind of banter.'

I thought I definitely would love to hear that. I'd get a small piece of vicarious joy myself if somebody told me that about their weekend. But yeah, that was a learning curve for me for sure. I think he was trying to be helpful with his advice, helping me to fit in better. Sucks that's what it takes to fit in, though."

"I went back the next day to do another prerelease, and because of the compliment, I felt better and decided to trim my beard and put in a little more effort. Not to impress her, but because of her compliment, I've been on a streak of keeping myself trimmed and dressing nicer.

But of course, when I told a friend about the compliment and subsequent effort, I was trying to hit on the woman."

"A woman told me I looked good in a shirt in 2019. I still own it and wear it from time to time and think about that compliment."

"I joined a random street class, and the instructor shouted, 'Can that handsome man over there come a bit closer?' I looked around to see who they were talking about, and dear reader, it was me! LOL, I still remember it 15 years later."

"I'm currently using dating apps.  It is wild how many women have anti-male comments in their dating profiles."

"'If you have a problem with the statement, you ARE the problem.' What? That’s not how any of this works.

(I've got no problem with folks venting. But I believe strongly in the reversal litmus test. If a flip of genders would offend the audience and result in the exact response they’re chastising, then it's a bad statement.)"

Guy finishes too fast? He sucks.Guy doesn't finish? He sucks.Girl doesn't finish? He sucks."

"i went to a gay club once with a gay friend, got more attention in there than I had in my whole life in nightclubs from women."

"I was invited to a gay night at a pub once. I'm not gay and didn't know it was gay night until I got there, but I'd made the effort to go out, so I figured I'd have a few drinks rather than just leave. In just the two or three hours I was there, I got hit on more by guys than I have been by women in the entire rest of my life. I felt like the belle of the ball.

So, to put numbers on it: more attention from men in a few hours than from women in about 25 years. (I'm in my mid-40s, so let's say my teens are when the clock started.)"

"I heard it said once that for most men, the only time they get flowers is at their funeral. And that's incredibly heartbreaking to think of."

"Or the frequency with which it will be brought around to 'men's problems are caused by men' before dropping any consideration for men at all."

"There was a men's rights activist on UK television a good few years ago now, but in a nutshell, his thesis was that men are also subject to sexism on a regular basis.

The problem with it was that the presenters' first question was essentially 'Do you just hate women?' — they then also had a 'feminist' on the segment who did nothing but denigrate his arguments with 'what about women?'

Now, as far as I can recall, the bloke was very fair in the presentation of his views and was using his voice to try to raise awareness of men's issues. The problem was that it was automatically seen as dismissing women's suffering, which he wasn't doing.

It's things like that that leave me completely unsurprised about the rise of the Andrew Tates, and manospheres in the western world."

"Man, I just had this exact experience listening to NPR over two days. The first interview was with a male researcher from the UK talking about the 'male loneliness epidemic/crisis,' which, from what he presented, is basically all of the top comments in this thread, backed with some data and also going into some suicide data, and other factoids. He basically boiled it down to the fact that men have few avenues toward meaningful relationships with others, and the areas where historically relationships could have been made for guys have disappeared or been co-opted by manosphere bs.

It was a good interview, but then the next day, the host had on a woman who came on just to kind of denounce everything the guy said. The host was laughing and jovial, basically just completely negating any serious attempt to talk about issues men are facing today.

The thing that really gets my goat about these conversations and the usual redirecting of them to women's issues being more important, or men's issues not really even existing to some, is that that ignoring these problems is just going to create more hurt men in the world who hurt others.

If people want men to be better, then they need to take their problems seriously, because the alternative is to let things keep getting worse for everyone."

"Like, I've seriously heard some terrible things said about men by women as if they were casually ordering a sandwich."

"'I have one of the good ones' is so bad, right? Every time I hear that, it reminds me of similar lines coming from racists struggling with times changing. 'Oh, he's a good one' or 'Oh, they aren't the ones I'm talking about.'"

"I saw a T-shirt in a pet store recently that says, 'Rescue Dogs, Not Men.'

That more or less sums up the general feeling men have about the world we live in. We all suck because a few of us suck, so none of us are worth saving."

"I quit talking to a very good friend bc she unironically said that all men should be killed, and when I asked if she was serious, she said yes. How are you gonna say that to my face?"

"I remember, decades ago, my mother saying to me, 'I don't think men are capable of love. lust, but not love.' That's stuck with me for a long time."

"I see this a LOT in comment sections. Yesterday or the day before, I saw a comment like 'god, why are all men such fucking losers?' replied to with 'it's like they're trying to be.'

Someone responds with 'damn what the hell did I do lol,' and they're flooded with downvotes and comments like 'a hit dog will holler.'

The guy was responding half-jokingly to gently suggest the comment wasn't a reasonable or kind generalization to make, and the response was to dogpile on them for taking it personally. It's like they've walked into a trap: because no decent person would ever stand in the way of letting women *constantly* say all men are complete and utter irredeemable trash."

"That was really hard for me to accept because my dad never taught me stuff like that, so I was always just winging it, but as you said, if I don't fix the garage door, no one will (unless we want to pay hundreds)."

"'Oh, Billy loves to help people. Use his truck, and he will help you move from that third-story apartment to the new four-story. No elevator? He's a man. It's going to be 100°? He will wear a T-shirt. Money? Oh, he just loves to help out, don't even mention money. Yes, his parents are very sick, but it will give him a break!'"

"I have worked for 23 years without ever taking any longer than a two-week break. I quit my job a little while back to focus on personal development and to travel and live life a little.

I already suspected men were only valued by what they can provide, or at least by what others perceive to be what they can provide, but holy shit… I wasn’t prepared to become completely invisible overnight. Family was a huge disappointment."

"People wonder why I like to play videos so much. It's literally the only way I can connect with most of my friends who are also scattered across the country. It's just as much of a social checkbox as it is personal entertainment."

"About eight months ago, I found out some unfortunate stuff about my closest friend — something pretty awful, that made it impossible to be friends with them any longer. Unfortunately, this friend was someone I spoke to every day, for years, and the rest of my friend group were all people that I knew through them. So, overnight, my entire friend group disappeared. There's been absolutely no replacing them. Every attempt has met with this exact thing - people who are friendly for chit-chat, but aren't looking to be actual friends.

I'd be lying if I said there weren't nights where I'm on my own, wondering if taking that moral stand was worth it."

"I've lost two male friends to suicide. That's far too many. Take care of your mates. Talk about your feelings. It's not unmanly and it may save someone's life."

"I'm not sure if this is a me issue, or a men in general issue, or what, but friendships are weird. I have lifelong friends, but the friendship kind of starts and ends with enjoying hanging out with each other, and that's becoming less and less frequent as we get older.

I struggle with anxiety, and even when these issues have occurred in front of all of my friends, no one has checked in afterward. I heard my friend's mother had cancer, so I tried to arrange a meet-up with him, and when he found out why, his response was, 'I thought it was weird you wanted to meet up.'

Emotional support is nonexistent, and we rarely know what's going on in each other's lives until the next time we hang out. When I compare this to the friendships my partner has with her friends — the communication, the support, and the effort to see each other — the difference is mind-blowing."

"I have one friend with whom we have *scheduled* check-ins every other week, but it's mostly me being the one to open up, and often getting it downplayed or turned back on me. He mostly just says things are good or mentions one or two things happening at work. But he doesn't check in with me outside of that schedule. Don't get me wrong, he's a fantastic friend, and we hang out outside of that, but even someone who is one of my best friends of 15 years doesn't go out of his way to ask how I'm doing.

I recently moved into my own space and have been realizing just how lonely it is. I wake up, go to work, come home, do some stuff, go to bed, rinse repeat. If you don't have people naturally gravitating towards you and actively including you, life can become dangerously lonely extremely quickly."

"I've tried to talk about things that bother me outside of the everyday 'work sucks, fuck traffic, look at those prices' kind of things.

I lived to regret it every single time. I just deal with it myself now. It's both heavy and lonely, but that’s not something I can say except amongst internet strangers.

That's one thing I admire about the younger generation. I feel like (hope) they're doing better with that sort of thing."

"My wife lost her mother, and then literally the next day, I found out about my brother dying by suicide. So many people would have whole conversations with my wife about her loss and then just say in passing to me, 'Sorry about your brother'. Even my wife seems to 'rank' her loss as a bigger personal deal to her than my brother is to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying she's insensitive or isn't supportive, just that there seems to be a subconscious minimizing of my loss compared to hers."

"Ninety-five percent of my evenings and 90% of my weekends are spent entirely on my own.

I'll often go from Friday after work to Monday morning, not having even seen another human being.

And yet I can feel lonelier in a room full of family or friends than I do sitting on the couch reading a book..."

"This is exactly what drives most workaholics. Staying busy and focusing on other things helps people to ignore their aloneness or their loneliness."

"That no one really gives a shit about you, at all. You're disposable. The suicide rate for men is four times higher than that of women, and nobody really cares, not even other men."

"I've been lucky to have access to therapy for a good portion of my life, but I think people don't realize, in general, the structural barriers that exist for most men to access it, and when we do, how subpar that mental health support is. It took me forever to find a therapist who I felt was actually taking me seriously and was actually equipped to help...like...I have so many experienced of seeing one trying to repair my relationship with estranged family members or figure out a way to heal from generational trauma and childhood abuse and the answer the person I'm paying $150 an hour is giving me is to just do more mindfulness practice on top of the 40 minutes of Vipassina I'm already doing every day in the Sangha I've been in for 10 years, like, join (another) men's group, and maybe take up a sport to handle the stress. Like, no wonder men as a whole don't seek therapy."

"Whenever a female friend or my wife tells me about how nice and helpful strangers were to them, I can only think that what for them is maybe one of the highlights of the day would be something that makes my whole year."

"I'm mtf trans, and I agree! People used to barely notice me or care, and women would avoid me like the plague. Now, women compliment me and make small talk, and are a lot more receptive! It's jarring to experience both sides; you don't realize how different it is until you experience it both ways."

"I live in the South. I’m a hands-on Dad who did all the Soccer and birthday party runs, etc. I used to talk to moms at soccer matches due to boredom. And you can read on these women’s faces, 'Is this guy actually trying to get in my pants?'

Uh, no. I was just laughing at the absurdity of the rules of kids' soccer, and the overly serious behavior of some of the dads. And no. I’m not trying to bone you.

Women just assume all men who can hold a conversation are flippin' lotharios.It was such a lonely journey being a dad in a sea of moms. We're not allowed to be friends."

"Not to diminish what women face. I am a trans man who grew up fearing rape from men as a woman. And now that I transitioned to male, I have quickly learned the other threat: aggressive male behavior and toxic masculinity. Always gotta watch my mouth (and it’s a big one) and be aware of the vibe and surroundings. And while it happens less often, rape is still always a possibility."

"I would never downplay the propensity of men to be violent towards women. But, they're also violent towards other men they feel are weak. I've never had a woman try to fight me, but I've had my ass beat by men and have to regularly talk myself out of violent situations."

"Yepppp. Statistically speaking, violence is perpetrated between males way more often than any other gender combination."

"I was seeing someone, and we went to a musical dancing show at the Royal Albert Hall in London while on a vacation. We got there a few minutes after it started and she wanted to go right to her seat. I held her back and said, 'Wait for a quick break.'

Three seconds later, there was a break, and everyone in the row stood up so we could shuffle to our seats.

That was the end of that. I don't remember a single thing about that show because of how angry I was."

"In my experience, the phrase 'man up' usually means cleaning up somebody else's mess, or being asked to stay quiet about something deeply unfair."

"People who say that are so shitty, and just really don't want to hear about your problems or be supportive. We need to shake these people more, and whenever they need emotional support, remind them of their lack of support when it was the other way around."

"Boys and young men have nowhere to go for positive interactions or support from good role models because those spaces have been chipped away.

The only people they can find are toxic men like Tate and others, so they glom onto that horrible mindset."

"Any truly positive, uplifting, and healthy movement is immediately squashed because they allow themselves to be a good ally to those telling them to stop. All the awful, toxic, straight-up evil ones are then left to fester and thrive, but it doesn't matter because society just blames the men anyway."

"I was told not to come back to a rape support group because saying I was raped by a woman made everyone else uncomfortable."

"I have primarily always worked in female-dominated environments, and the communication and working style is very female. I have to constantly watch myself and adapt my words and my behavior to not come off as too aggressive or say anything that could be interpreted as passive-aggressive (even when I am not, imo, being passive-aggressive)."

"I’m the only man in my college department. I love my fellow female colleagues, though I know way too much about their husbands. I will also hear them say, 'Oh, typical male student' sometimes. But they’re pretty good at putting up with my goofiness. The only thing that can get hard sometimes is that we have this group text message chat, and it will sometimes fill it with 150 messages a day, of just like stuff that has not much to do with anything. Still, I adore them, and a few times I’ve been down, they’ve really come together for me. But I also get asked to like do all the guy stuff around the office pod."

"As an openly gay guy in an office with mostly women, I feel like I get stuck with more 'husband gossip' than my other male coworkers. And it’s always usually so negative."

"Women feel this, too, obviously, because they have bills to pay, etc. But for a lot of men, it is financial pressure. I know a lot of men who will not date someone until they have enough money. A lot of tradies that end their own life do so because of financial pressure. Men feel they need a certain level of wealth to not only be worthy of being loved but also to fulfill their role in society. This feeling of not having enough wealth or being under constant financial pressure and obligation is making a lot of men depressed."

"The general societal belief that all men are hopeless parents, don't know anything about kids, and could never be effective at raising a child. Just look at any 'parenting' or family magazine or website, and you'll be hard pressed to find a man mentioned anywhere unless it's 'How to get your husband to change a diaper! Hardy har har!'"

"I'm a 26-year-old single dad. Almost every day, I'm asked by a woman if I’m on 'babysitting duty.' I'm sick of it. I take care of my son solely by myself; I'm not babysitting, I'm parenting."

"I have a fake woman account to ask for parenting advice in mothers' chats."

"Single fathers simply don't have the friends and family network to help with raising a baby. Being denied benefits and assistance that are guaranteed to single mothers."

Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.