Someone Asked “What Are Some Men’s Issues That Are Overlooked?”, And 30 People Delivered

I am a single father with primary custody of a school-age child with little social support in my area. I was also the stay at home parent while I went back to college and completed my degree.

It is damn near impossible to find good childcare. My female work friends volunteer but then bail at the last minute. I'm looked at as a threat by husbands of my son's classmate parents. I find that I'm often the only guy at the playground and get sideways glances from the cliques of women who go there. If I hire a babysitter I have to make sure I'm overly-cautious about respecting boundaries (if I'm even able to have a babysitter watch my child). Also, the normal competition among female mothers gets amplified and I'm often looked-down on as a parent. I don't fit in with working guys who just want to go out and get a beer because I have a child to take care of and women often reject me on online dating sites simply because I have a child.

I love my son and would do anything in the world for him. I feel like I've done a lot, but men in my situation have zero to little support or infrastructure to manage as a single, full-time parent in society. Men can be just as good parents as women and society needs to normalize this pronto.

Men who are victims of sexual assault, rape, domestic abuse, male suicide rates, and depression

I saw a woman attempting to hit her boyfriend outside a local supermarket. He walked away from her. She followed him and kept hitting him. After this went on for about 90 seconds he shoved her away roughly once.

2 cars immediately stopped and men jumped out of them shouting at and threatening this guy for shoving her.

Nobody did anything when she was attacking him.

Edit: there are a lot of people commenting that I didn't help him either.

I reported the incident to the security guard. Both the man and the woman were bigger than me. I'm not a big/tough person, there are limits to what I would ever get physically involved in plus when the other people jumped out of their cars they could just as easily have targeted me if I had got involved.

I did what I could without endangering myself.

So I'm at the park playing tag with these kids I'm babysitting and out of nowhere this old lady comes up to me and starts asking all sorts of questions. Do you know these kids? What are there names? Can you call their parents for me? Even asking the kids if they knew me and when they answered yes, she responded with "you don't have to lie, if you don't know this man, you can tell me and I can help you.

The miserable Paternity leaves. Cause what man wants to spend time with his new born kid and a recovering wife right ! ಠ_ಠ

Loneliness. Many men tend to have a lot of friends, but never close friends or people they feel like truly care about them, which leads to declining mental health, and maybe worse.

"Sorry man, we can't arrest her just because you have bruises and endless death threats. The prosecutor won't even file. It's really shi**y, buddy, we know. You can't go back to your house. She's established residency and only a judge can order her to leave your property."

I didn't believe the guy. The police confirmed it for me. Poor dude. I didn't even know we had this much power. The only option to get the person out of your house is a month-long process in court. A process she must LEGALLY be notified of. While she barricades you out of your own home...destroying everything in your name.

That's real sh*t. Most guy's won't go on TV like we will to tell the story. Sorry, dudes. We have a lot of power.

The entire child custody/child support system.

Abuse from women/other men. We're told to just take it and toughen up, it builds character, puts hair on the chest etc. and we don't need support or a helping hand. F**k that.

Emotional abuse of men. My BF suffered that in both his marriages and I am SO CAREFUL to not say or do anything that could make him feel the way they made him feel. I try very hard to be sure he knows I value him for who he is, just the way he is, every single day. Even he doesn't know how much damage they caused him.

I will never get over this 1950s assumption that women can't abuse men. Women abuse men way more often than anyone realizes, and the system is stacked against men in so many different ways.

To the men who have been emotionally abused, I am so sorry, and I would encourage all of you to seek therapy. It really does help. To the women who love them: don't stop loving them.

Height is a common thing to joke about, nobody sees a problem with it but it can really whittle away at your self worth when people always make fun of you for it

There are almost always more shelters available to women experiencing homelessness. In my city, the split is about 75% beds for women and children and 25% for men.

I understand that society considers women more vulnerable, but I live in a city where it routinely gets below zero in the winter. Hypothermia doesn't care about your gender.

Society doesn't seem to support a man who is without a job. There is pressure and programming for a male to be a breadwinner and no sympathy for when they want to be a house-dad.

Reason for my rant: My brother left a job due to a health issue. He has a 4yr old boy. His wife makes better money than him and they are financially secure. He worked too much which probably led to the health issue. I told him to take his time and heal. If he felt that urge to 'provide' that he could take over the house duties and give the nanny the summer off to connect with his son. I shared with him that I had been laid off a few times and each time I rushed back to getting a job even though we were secure enough because of the guilt I felt everyday of not 'providing'. He took the advice, I could see him smiling more, he started a garden with his boy, he cooked every meal and realized he loved to cook. I was happy to see him being happy again. Enter my brother's wife who says to us, "I'm the only bread winner now. I am so stressed out having to provide for this family by myself." I saw the happiness drain from him and anxiety filled that place. He is now set to start the same job he had prior just appease the guilt he has from not 'earning'. The guilt was confirmed by his wife's statement on top of the male programming of not contributing unless he is making money.

TLDR: Men don't need to be pressured to earn or be the bread winner. Society has already told us we are not contributing unless we are making money.

Insecurity in general. You’re not supposed to show that you have doubts or worries about your abilities or self-image. A man is supposed to be confident, able and self-assured. It’s not okay for men to admit that they lack self-esteem, or that they have genuine problems with their self-image, as they are seen as weaknesses in-and-of themselves.

Other men or women aren’t going to ‘bring you up’. They won’t provide emotional support and tell you it’s okay to be unconfident or to feel shame about who you are - they will simply expect that you should take it on the chin. Not everyone can be ‘that’ guy.

But, for a man, what actually makes you feel like a man is being that guy.

So you kind of walk around pretending that you’re happy, despite the fact that you’re not seen as valuable or as desireable as other men - because in doing so, you would be seen as even less valuable or desireable.

TL:DR; If you feel like sh*t and are insecure, it’s bad; but if you display that you feel like sh*t and are insecure - it’s even worse.

F**k. I’ve never really been able to put that feeling into words before, but that felt insanely good to get off my chest.

Radicalisation. Joja Rabbit is such a sweet film about this. There are a lot of young, lonely and understandably angry men and boys who are targeted by extremist groups into that kind of failsafe ideology. You can almost see it happening.

Crushing, black, empty, cold, never-ending, screaming-into-the-void loneliness and everyone's casual shrug when I even hint about it.

Just work, pay taxes, walk the dog, keep your mouth shut, don't have feelings, don't be short, try to keep up appearances of virility, and never, ever, whatever you do, don't let anyone know how lonely you are because they'll just sort of awkwardly giggle and change the subject.

Men are frequently treated as expendable.

Even in countries with mingled militaries, men are the overwhelming majority of combat troops and thus casualties. Not to mention pretty much all child soldiers are male.

If you are male been the ages of 14-60 and happen to be anywhere near a combat zone, even if it's your own backyard, you are considered a "military age male" and a possible target.

News media regularly says things like "100 killed including 14 women and children" as if the other 86 men don't matter as much.

Something like 90% of all workplace injuries and fatalities are male. Whether men seek out more dangerous jobs or only men are selected for those jobs is debatable.

The consequences of body shaming, it has the same effect on men as it does women. No one likes to be insulted, no matter who you are. Just because we are a different sex, does not mean our minds are so vastly different that we react differently to even the most basic of things. SOME women think we are emotionless, meant to serve them. Sorry if I had worded this wrong.

If you ever bring up male-centered issues in conversations with women, it always turns into "well at least you don't have it as bad as women." or "well women deal with X, so why are you complaining?" or my personal favorite "Yeah, well then change it, it only happened because the patriarchy."

Male disposability. If something is dangerous, send men. Your partner can replace you easily. Your only value is what you offer to other people and the minute you are not useful anymore people cast you aside like the fungible commodity you are. I would like to be treated like I have inherent value as a person, not like I’m something to be tolerated until I’m no longer useful.