Questions & Commentary about Men!

Let this thread be all the things you would ever like to know about men and things you never knew about men.

Why are some men "meterosexuals" while others shower/shave/deodarent/clean clothes and out the door... will do for them?

I admit that I'm concerned about where this thread could lead...

Please refrain from generalizations or male-bashing (Pilatus, I'm not implying that you're doing this, but a question like this could get out of control quickly)

Thanks

Hi LMo

I totally agree with what you have said about male-bashing.

Lets keep in clean and respectful!

are we allowed to discuss / post about sex on the boards?

how about if we go:

******trigger**********
********trigger*************
******trigger**********

?

I think we can talk about sex as long as it's not inflammatory of men, as long as its supportive of the posters, etc. It would prolly be a good idea to say I TALK ABOUT SEX HERE hahaha so in case someone doesn't want to talk about sex they can see that and not read. =) A good healthy discussion about sex with my women friend is always good thing, for me anyway.

Hi Raynaadi

I think it's safe to say that we can discuss SEX here...take a wee look in the Drug Forum!

Take Care

Well, actually, I'm terrified of men. I think they all have hidden agendas and even when I try to reason with myself rationally about this I still seem to think there are levels to their agendas. Well, so, I'm in therapy and working on that because I get angry and/or extremely frightened when one even looks at me in the grocery store.
I guess, I'd like to hear what everyone has to say in here about being able to get past this and see some better qualities in them. They can't be all bad right??

I think my fear of men was born out of a mixture of experience and my own view of what I thought they were all about. It's hard, because men have a totally differnt take on sex then women do. So I still have a hard time accepting that. I can take it or leave it, but my boyfriend feels totally different and it's hard. I've had to start setting boundries in regards to sex, not forcing myself to do it just because I know he wants it, because I was causing my own resentments at men and sex.

But it's hard, when all you hear about is sex and (expletive for breasts) when you hang out with guys. N wonder we all think that's all they want from us.

I've really had to work hard on myself to change my views and start loosing the fear. It's not easy, but it's a lot better than I used to be.

I think that discussions regarding sex are fine. Sex is a part of life. A part of life most of us deal with, if not now at some point and in some way(s).

I do think, though, that when we do speak we don't use negative general statements regarding the opposite sex (or even same sex as it might be) when discussing. For instance, I think how it's being discussed here is great so far in that yes, there's talk of the opposite sex in a general manner BUT it's referring to our perceptions or misconceptions...not as factual truths or accusation. Does that make sense?

Yep, I think talking about sex can be healthy. I do think that we should have the warnings as stated here. If we start the thread, put it in title. If we bring in up in a thread maybe give a ***********sex talk************* warning. Also, obviously when discussing we wouldn't want to cross over into the obscene or vulgar.

Those are my thoughts and not requirements.

What do y'all think?

KD

i think a healthy part of the discussion could be the very fact that misconceptions and such could be discussed and things cleared up. i see no male bashing at all.

i see women honestly admitting how they feel about certain things and how it has impacted their relationships now or to be......

how will one learn and grow if the misconceptions aren't cleared up by opening up here? where it's a safe support forum.

this could turn out to be a "life-saver" for some of us.......pat

Thanks for expanding on my point, Pat.

I see no bashing, as I stated. I do see generalizations to a slight degree, but only in personal opinion and as discussing beliefs and difficulties. I think that's great, positive and as you said, really helpful potentially.

For instance, I see no one saying, "Men just so and so and such and such". I see, "this is my concern men or a man, and what I deal with."

KD

one can hardly talk about a relationship without mentioning a man. that's what is, to me, essential in our discussions....we talk about what we have or don't have.......and men/SO always enter into the equation. i feel this is a great place for women to be able to talk freely about our feelings......or anything else that affects us as females.....

I'm still struggling to not generalize and to not clump them into a category. I don't have many men in my life and I've always had a significant distrust for them. They start with a dirty slate and must work very hard to clean it (if I allow them to at all). I always thought I could live my life this way. I thought they were of little to no significance of me altogether as I am/always have been a lesbian. So, due to my past experiences and my not wanting to have them as a sexual part of my life (orientation) I always just wrote them off as an unecessary part of my world. Rude, i know. I'm really working hard to balance my skewed perceptions of them. I really am. It is a HUGE struggle for me though. And, for this reason I could always use help in identifying the things I'm missing and the contributions I need/am missing from them as humans. So, I'm afraid of them, and I completely don't understand them, and I still struggle to know if I need them at all and if i should write them off, or delve deeper into making friends with them.

i really value my male friends. i have one in particular that i share a lot with and he shares with me.

i think it's worth it because he puts a different perspective on problems than my female friends do.......go for it....in little bitty steps..... xoxoxo pat

I just want to repeat in case I was misunderstood...

I think the discussions here are FINE. They have been and are. Generalizations have been fine as well...not all generalizations are negative, yes?

I think we should talk about sex, men and rock and roll or whatever we want to under the sun.

I just agree with LMo that there shouldn't be flat out bashing. In other words, have at it.

Enjoy what's offered.

KD

Have you had some bad experiences with men in the past? Your Father? Other male figures in your life?

I typically tend to get on better with guys than with girls.

These are going to be generalisations / stereotypes - but I think they are fairly positive ones :-) Of course there are exceptions but these are just general tendancies I've noticed:

Things I like about guys:

- They tend to be fairly 'straight-up'. If they have a problem / concern then they will tell you to your face. You can hash it out. Then they MOVE ON. (This is compared to females who, in my experience, tend to talk about things behind your back while being all lovely to your face. They also are - in my experience - more likely to hold onto resentments / hurts and take much longer to move on).
- They are more into doing doing doing. Which is nice for me to get out of my head. Girls tend to gossip gossip gossip on the other hand ;-)
- They are less concerned with such things as how much you weigh and precisely what you are wearing than girls are. Guys often don't see what all that fuss is about... Girls (in my experience) tend to be more into making comparisons and feeling inferrior etc etc.

I try and learn from the guys in all these things because I'd like to be more like that.

I think that yeah, such traits as those (which are typically more masculine rather than feminine traits) make it very worthwhile indeed to have guys as friends :-)

But of course we are still talking in stereotypes....

Hard not to talk in stereotypes given the 'male' and 'female' boards.

Personally... I think it is a shame really... But making the most of an unfortunate situation...

but then i guess it is because... and i hate to admit this... but it is because... i've become a bit of a feminist.

ak!

but i'm reminded of a quote out of Atwood's book 'The Handmaid's Tale'

Is our future destined to always be determined by our bodies?

Or similar...

The notion is that...

By embracing the ideal of feminine traits... We perpeptuate the stereotype... Which does nothing for equality.

But then similarly for guys. Similarly for guys.

Why o why o why can't there be a middle way?

People are people are people are people...

I find gender stereotypes to be about as unhelpful as racial stereotypes.

Ain't so bad if you have a 'positive' stereotype...

But negative stereotypes... Can be confirmed as a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy...

And the stereotype of females... What it is that we should aspire to... Well... Its incoherant / Inconsistent is what it is...

Develop as a *person* imho...

(this is a rant about how these boards are supposed to be useful. i see the use with respect to a relatively safe place for people to discuss difficulties they are having etc. but i guess i worry about this notion that somehow or other a persons opinion is supposed to be worth more because they are the same gender as you)

Ya know, funny thing, my father is fantastic! I also have two brothers, wonderful guys as well.

Yes, I've had some bad experiences with men, really one in early childhood, by a male physician and i think it really started there as far as setting a precedent in my mind......

It's pretty intricate and involved for me and I hate to generalize as well, but I don't think I'm up for my drawn out analysis of all the reasons why and why not. I battle this frequently and my t tells me my perceptions of "men" in general are skewed so it was really her that brought to the forefront that I might need to alter these ever so slighty even, to function better "out there"....

otherwise, I'd probably be living my "men are of no signifacance to me" role to the utmost. I'm working on it, I really am. But overall, I don't understand them and that scares me....I feel like they are soooooo different biologically, genetically, etc, etc. I can't trust my perceptions of them according to my t, but I'm so afraid to misjudge them (even thought I might already be..) that I'd rather have the skewed version on my head than make a mistake that could get me hurt.

yea, ok, this is probably pointless for me since I don't want an intimate relationship with one.....

I need to not feel threatened by them all........

Also, with respect to your feelings on this thread, yea I get that...

Sometimes I feel the same way with the whole gender thing, but, and I don't mean to sound ignorant at all, don't generalizations exist on some level that we cannot escape? How wrong am i if I like being "clumped" sometimes? Akkk, ya, I can feel one way about it and then another depending on the situation....

yes, we are all just people and it's hard not to see through generalizations even if they are not considered "negative". I think our brains revert to that way of thinking to sort info in a way, whether to justify our stance or just make us feel like we belong.

Oh my gosh are you in my head, alexandra??

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
I typically tend to get on better with guys than with girls.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> --- Me Too!!

</font><blockquote><div id="quote"><font class="small">Quote:</font>
- They tend to be fairly 'straight-up'. If they have a problem / concern then they will tell you to your face. You can hash it out. Then they MOVE ON. (This is compared to females who, in my experience, tend to talk about things behind your back while being all lovely to your face. They also are - in my experience - more likely to hold onto resentments / hurts and take much longer to move on).
- They are more into doing doing doing. Which is nice for me to get out of my head. Girls tend to gossip gossip gossip on the other hand ;-)
- They are less concerned with such things as how much you weigh and precisely what you are wearing than girls are. Guys often don't see what all that fuss is about... Girls (in my experience) tend to be more into making comparisons and feeling inferrior etc etc.

</div></font></blockquote><font class="post"> Wow-- this is EXACTLY how I think!! I tell my husband these very things!

I feel that non-harmful differences should be embraced with acceptance. It can be a good thing to have variety-- opens ones world to a bigger view. I also agree with the idea that a human's future should not be determined by ones body.

Each human--brain, emotions and body-- is unique and should be accepted and valued just as each snowflake, diamond or leaf is. We can each be a gift to this planet.

I have had various abusive experiences with males in my life--both as a child and an adult.... but my stubborn streak will not allow me to apply what I feel towards a few males to a whole group........ not sure-- maybe I'm thick headed?

With that said though, in general I find trust very difficult, no matter what gender.

Funny thing is that I have a few male friends... but no female ones... (except here)

It's just that guys have a lot less bs and backstabbing... but I guess that depends on the person and not the gender as I have been hurt by men a lot too....

I have a question though... are men generally slack on hygiene? Is it normal? Cause I freak out every time my b/f gets on my bed without washing his feet... (with good reason, I won't moan if they are clean) And he uses one type of soap to wash everything.... I use shampoo conditioner, face wash, bodyscrub and footscrub... Should I just let the whole issue go and accept the fact that men are just not as clean?

i see i am not the only one who doesn`t stust men sometimes...

what do you girls think about being "hard to get?"
does it work?
well. from my experiance it does....just....what about YOU?

i'm not sure about the hygene thing...
i wonder about the porn thing more...
i think that regarding the hygene thing...
women do tend to be more into 'grooming behaviour' which can be a pro-social kind of thing... there are jokes about how having a girlfriend typically makes for a more stylish wardrobe and those nosehairs tend to be trimmed and so forth. not so much because guys suddenly get all self conscious when they have a girlfriend but i think more because the girlfriend does the grooming thing ;-) if it grosses you out then i think it is fair enough that you make him wash. but that being said it might be nice to reciprocate if there is something that he would like you to do. trading can be a nice way of keeping things kind of equal and avoiding the whole nagging saga...

i'm cringing a little at some of the stuff i posted before about the differences between guys and girls. i know they are generalisations (hard not to generalise when guys and girls are the topic) but i do think that i was harsher on the girls than the guys...

yes, categorisation is something that people do naturally and unconsciously. it is part of making the world more managable. if we didn't do that then we would be overwhelmed by stimuli and we wouldn't be able to function in real time. categorisations / generalisations are meant to be heuristics. like i said, we wouldn't be able to function without them and typically they serve us well. but that being said sometimes they actually impair our functioning so if we are able to bring them into conscious awareness and challenge them a bit it can improve our lives.

stereotypes about the typical attributes of people of a certain gender or racial or social class are examples of categories that are unlikely to be useful. why? because there can be more variation in attributes of members within the same class than there can be between the attributes of members of different classes. when we have only encountered a few instances of the category (or when only a few instances are considered salient so they are more heavily weighted with respect to their features being assumed to be representative) then there is a particular danger in overgeneralising.

the problem can manifest in the sense that people tend to be exquisitly sensitive to our assessments of them. oftentimes we convey out judgements / estimates by subtle emotional reactions that we aren't even consciously aware of. there is also this phenomena that people tend to conform to your expectations of them. if you expect that people are a certain way they are more likely to behave in a way that confirms that (and we also selectively attend to information that confirms that).

i guess i have a harder time with girls than guys.

but the porn thing... i don't really get that... though i guess that is a question for the guys really so i don't expect i'll get any answers off this board ;-)

and that question has been known to upset people too so maybe it is better left...

I am also afraid of men. I am afraid that they would judge me harshly, so I avoid most of them. It also scares me that they are physically stronger than me. I think it is a control thing. I'm thinking I need therapy about it because it is quite a large and consuming issue in my life.