u/Mapfeed01

I’m not trying to be combative, I’m just trying to do the right thing. I try to listen to what women are saying and adjust my behavior accordingly because as I man I know I have blind spots in how some of my behaviors and actions can affect women in a patriarchy.

One of the things I’ve been most confused on recently is the idea of protecting women. I feel like in my adolescence, the common messaging was that men should not seek to be the protectors of women. That its infanilizing, demeaning and that women don’t want and/or need men to protect them.

So I haven’t. Of course growing up in a family that wanted to uphold gender norms, I was always told I need to be willing to fight to defend women because they were weaker, so I had to go against my programming.

But it feels like every time something egregious happens to women publicly (for example the Cornell SA), the response contains stuff along the lines of “and men call themselves protectors, yet none of them stepped in”. Or even when it’s just like a video of a man and a woman fighting, it’s “why are the men doing nothing, they’re supposed to be protectors”.

Again, I’m not trying to be argumantive and I’m not asking in bad faith. I’m on the spectrum and I do at times have issues picking up on subtext so this might be one of those cases, I’m just looking for clarity on what I should be doing if I want to be a good man who doesn’t contribute to the harm women face.

Idk why but my social media feeds have inundated me with women talking about how fucked up the dating world is for them, and it’s kinda left me bummed. It’s awful stories, guys that they go out on dates with, have no manners, bad hygiene don’t care about what the woman their dating thinks or has to say. Or they string them along for sex and future fake with promises of a relationship. It really does sound like it sucks.

But it has also made me realize, these are the guys who are above the bar. These are the guys who women are romantically pursuing, and trying to make it work with. These are the guys that ask out women and get dates, that women are hoping will text them back. This is the representation of what men that succeed where I fail is, and im somehow below that.

I’m below the guys who will go on a date with a woman and not ask her a single thing about themselves. I’m below the guys that string along multiple women promise them a relationship and never deliver. I’m below the guys who are openly disrespectful or misogynistic to these women on dates.

I don’t want to be anymore, I thought I was at least above them, but clearly if they can get dates and get women to like them, then I’m not. I’m still below the bar and doing something wrong. I just want to be good enough so bad. I’d give up 40 years of my life to just be good enough for women to like me but it feels like no matter that I do nothing changes. So what do I need to do?

Something I've noticed in the last 2ish years is that incel rhetoric and talking points no longer really seem to be something I only stumble across online in incredibly toxic corners of the internet. No, I see it everywhere. My friends in my real life will joke about being under 6' making you short to most women or the 80/20 rule.

I'll see like tiktokers and instagramers saying things that are things I see incels arguing about, but they'll do it in a sanitized way. It just feels really surreal.

If so why do you think this is? I've been wondering if because of how hard dating has gotten for men and how easy it has gotten for women is pushing a lot of men in more radical less positive directions.

I'm not an "incel" in the sense that I am not blackpilled, but I am a virgin at 26 and have had no luck with women. I realize now that during college, I set myself for failure, wasn't all that social, only pursued women I thought were physically attractive, generally had less progressive views on women's issues.

In the last 6 years, I have made leaps and bounds of a difference and now I'd consider myself a datable person. The issue is no one else really does. I don't think there's something I'm missing. The main driver of this thought is seeing the guys I was friends with in early college, who looking back were total pieces of shit now getting engaged and getting married.

Even in college they had a lot of sex and dated around. I didn't. Now despite many being the same type of guys they were in college, they have found love and found women who want to be with them for the rest of their lives.

I put in the effort, developed as a person and I'm still unable. I know I shouldn't change to find a partner, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that if I do genuinely change, there should be some change.

I'm using blackpilled in the title in a sense of "I'll never find anyone" and not whatever bullshit incels believe about women.

So how do I not fall into this belief?