It drives me nuts the kind of things guys think they can share with me. “Women should be seen, not heard” and so on.
Guys learned to steer clear of me real quick when they’d spout off nonsense like that to be part of the “club” and I’d go off on them. Did it make me many friends at work? No. Did I care? No.
I spent 10 months trying to get fired from my last job in the trades. After dealing with lawyers and finishing with that part of my life, I cancelled my apprenticeship.
I’ve spent most of my life in manual labour or trade jobs and I can’t stomach going back into these fields. The men I have to deal with in those fields are awful and they act so gross.
I could go forever about their shit behaviour. The lockdowns from 2020 amplified that shitty behaviour. It was unbearable. The shit they would say about women and the shit they would say to women were gross and fucked up.
These guys basically used their shitty attitude towards women as a way to gain attention from other men. It’s weird and really, really gay in a gross, repressed and unattractive way.
The comment on homoeroticism strikes me. It’s a sensitive subject but I think I get what you mean. A lot of the things “straight” guys say and do really gives me pause. Like even just the obsession with male genitalia, or the concept of “bromance”. I really think it’s the culture of patriarchial misogyny that’s pushing guys into resenting their honest feelings towards other men, and so they find culturally acceptable ways to feel intimate with men in a world that demands confirmity to heterosexuality. I think we’d have a lot more happy, loving bi/pan men in this world who were kinder to women and each other if we could wave a magic wand and make the patriarchy disappear.
Early days of my career in Southern Ontario, yes. the coworkers were often disgusting, and there was no PC movement yet, but it just seemed so wrong to me so I found different circles.
When I moved to BC I found the office culture much different, discussions were normal. The companies had actual rules and expectation surrounding respect and boundaries.
For the most part now its not common place in my bubble, but occasionally I have been in sales meetings (I’m not sales) and clients and sales often bond over stupid jokes , golf and discussing hot ladies. Its like it all goes together somehow.
Maybe I’m sheltered, or lucky, or just anti-social, but I’ve never associated with other guys who do shit like that. I don’t doubt that assholes like that are common, but they’ve never been part of my friend group.
Amen to that! Curate your feed, curate your life. If you see something growing, wait till you can ID it, if it’s noxious, then pull it. No mercy.
Back in college yes, but nearly 20 years later my friends have changed or I have changed friends. I think there was a lot of “just trying to be funny” and fortunately most of my friends learned better jokes.
Not really, no.
I remember in my twenties, guys in the pub describing intimacy with women they were seeing. Graphic detail. They named them and everything. It was so vulgar and degrading. It’s one reason I don’t go to pubs anymore.
