51 Of The Most Ridiculous Ways Fragile Masculinity Manifested In Men

I worked in a male dominated profession. I was at a field meeting where I was the only woman. The man who had requested the meeting refused to work with me and demanded that I bring my supervisor the next time. So I did but he didn’t like her either.

I was doing my weight lifting set at the gym and another guy wanted to use the same machine that I was. Since the rest of our routines didn't overlap at all, we had no issues working around eachother. After I was done and was refilling my water bottle so I could do some cardio, he thanked me for moving the weights back to his settings after I was done each time. I told him that I didn't, he and I just happened to be using the same weight.

His friends immediately started giving him hell for lifting the same weight as a girl.

I ducked into the bathroom and when I came out the guy was standing in a crowd of people as they piled every weight they could find onto a bar for him to deadlift.

The male ego is a fragile thing.

Guy here, but the saddest I ever heard was a guy who refused to kiss any of his male kids, even as babies. Because, they may turn gay. Same age guy as me, a young father. It hurts my heart even thinking about that.

One of my guy friends refused to go and buy tampons or pads for his girlfriend because and I quote, “People will think they’re mine.”

YES, BECAUSE MEN HAVE PERIODS NOW APPARENTLY.

A guy who suggested that cuddling with a male cat was “gay”.

My brother is totally disgusted that my husband used to do burlesque (he's the one who got me into it when we started dating) because he thinks it's "kinda gay, dude". He refuses to listen to me when I tell him that he had an adoring fan base of dozens of women because of it.

I used to love standing in the back of the audience, listening to women scream and whoop and holler when he was on stage because I was like, "Yep, he's coming home with me, ladies..." My husband looks fine in a pair of gold booty shorts, y'all.

Guys who get their girlfriends to order their drinks at Starbucks because they don't wanna say "fruity made up words". If you're embarrassed to drink 26 ounces of caramel frappucinos, then stop drinking it.

A guy I dated for a few weeks during sophomore year of college very seriously tried to convince me that I should drop out of engineering school and become a waitress, because "no man wants to date a girl who is smarter than him." (Because, you know, occupation dictates intelligence.).

So I work in aviation. I few years ago we were having a problem with a plane. It was basically one of those cases that it started as one problem that couldn't be fixed then it turn into all these other problems contributing to it.

We had mostly an all female team with just 2 inexperienced male coworkers.

Well one of the male higher ups overlooking the operation didn't believe the problems we had found. So he brought in someone else experienced with the plane. He was a really awesome dude, I worked with him before and he is a really great mentor. Well we explained the problem we found, he did troubleshooting of his own just to say the same exact thing we said.

These words will ring in my head after he was told this news "See! He knows what he is doing!" He yelled this across the hangar. My female supervisor was so fed up she just drops her tools and walked out.

I wish there was a better ending but no, she just told me that as a woman in a very physical and mostly male dominate job that you will have to work extra hard to just even be heard.

My now ex took one of my multivitamins and then threw a tantrum because the packaging was marketed towards women. Vitamin B6 isn't going to turn you into a woman overnight, relax.

My friend's husband won't hold their 3 year old son's hand in public, even if they're crossing the street, because he's too manly. He would rather have his kid run out in front of a car and get hit than risk strangers thinking he was womanly.

My boyfriend won't change clothes with our (male) dog in the room bc it's "gay".

My ex. So many issues...

We bought a coffee table and side tables at IKEA and I put together one of the side tables while he was out because I like doing that stuff. He got home and I proudly showed off my work, suggesting we could do the coffee table together while watching a movie. He got super angry, saying he wanted to do it all and it’s his job. He went to the bedroom and pouted the rest of the night. I had to wait a few days before he had time to put the other two together, as I wasn’t allowed to touch them.

Our female dog could not wear girly colors when he walked her. She had a blue and black harness and black leash and everyone said “what’s his name?” Then he’d get annoyed and say “HER name is...”
When I moved out I bought her a purple collar, leash, and harness.

Got pissed at me for commenting to some friends that I did our taxes. Cuz you know, it makes it look like he couldn’t do them. (So, the truth)

If there was any topic I was more knowledgeable about, we couldn’t discuss it anymore because it would make him feel bad because he’s the man and supposed to be smarter.

He drove a friend’s car a few hours away as a favor and covered up the equality sticker on the bumper so that the strangers on the freeway wouldn’t think he was gay.

I’m sure there are more that I’ve blocked out.

I’m a waitress. The amount of dudes that will refuse/send drinks back because they come in a “girly” glass is unbelievable. The drinks usually consist of like 10 different kinds of fruit juices, liqueurs and schnapps but the hurricane glass and maraschino cherry is the line for them.

I had a guy who was very interested in me and I was interested in him break it off with me because I "could beat him up". Yes, I do martial arts and work out. Why is that bad?

I make a decent amount of money. Guys I've dated have reacted to this in pretty absurd ways in the past.

The weirdest one though, was when I got a job offer after college, and I wanted to talk to my friends about the salary amount to see if it was reasonable for the area I was moving, fair, and so forth. My ex, who had not even found a job yet, tried to forbid me from mentioning it to anyone we both knew because he didn't want them finding out that I may make more money than he did.

I work at a coffee shop and a dude came in to order a “not girly drink”. It was so hard finding him something to drink because he wouldn’t admit that he likes his coffee drinks sweet and kept refusing the non-sweet drinks. I wish I could have shown him those big ol’ burly construction workers who LOVE their strawberries and cream frappuccinos.

I went on a date with a guy to the zoo, and he pointed at every big animal and said he could beat it in a fight. He was not about me saying that, no, he could not in fact take a fully grown lion or crocodile with his bare hands.

My boyfriend won't use drinking straws because his dad taught him that straws are for women. On the bright side, he's saving a lot of plastic.

I had a boss that ran a women's oriented business. Mostly beauty products. A chain of local stores. He'd come in from time to time and target a young employee specifically to try to make her cry. Then he'd leave with his chest puffed out. In my culture young women are raised from birth to be meek, to please, to get married and raise babies.


One day it was my turn. At the time I was 19, 5'10" and about 115 lbs. Willowy. Because of my physicality alone I would be targeted and by then I knew exactly how to react to it. He needled, got gruff, started to yell about me being responsible for things out of my control and I yelled back. He was not used to that. Eventually he started to sulk and he backed off. Fifty year old man thinking he had balls because young female employees feared him and then would bend over to try to mollify him.


I was NOT going to do that....and he knew I had no problem losing that job if it came to it. I could work for minimum elsewhere. I liked the job itself. I was good at it and he knew it. It could have gone the other way. He could have doubled down on me but he didn't. Instead he avoided me because I took effort. However, when he came in and thought he could target one of my coworkers, it didn't get far because I'd get between them. Not aggressively. Just, go over and start talking to him about my department in a way where I'd force him to have to make some sort of executive decision.


In my time working there I'd reduced his visits to our store from 3 times a week to once a month and our productivity rose. It's amazing how well people work together when they don't walk on eggshells. I'm sure he went to other stores to berate the girls....