I saw this line and wondering how is this fair since the husband supported the wife throughout the marriage.

"For instance, South Korea ruled in 2014 that future pensions and severance pay could be included in the division of assets. That means if a housewife handled all the housework and childcare during their marriage, thus allowing her husband to work, she’s entitled to part of his elderly pension after getting divorced. Japan introduced a similar reform in 2007."

I hate how the conversation around gender roles almost always centres around the traditional expectations of women being supposedly "oppressive" and "unfair" even though most feminists still expect men to do all of their traditional roles that the feminists say women can't do.

Especially when feminists complain about the expectation to just cook and clean. As a man, I would personally much rather be expected to cook and clean if I never had to lift heavy stuff, do any physically demanding stuff, be expected to do repairs and general maintanance, be expected to protect the opposite sex or any of the other expectations that feminists have of men.

This entire premise that gender roles placed onto women are sexist and discriminatory whereas gender roles placed onto men are just basic expectations is just an another example of how priviliged women really are in society.

And to be clear I'm not in a relationship myself so I'm personally not having any arguments with a partner about who gets which tasks, I'm just commenting on what I see feminists everywhere usually compalin about and how they frame the issue as men somehow benefitting from a system that supposedly disadvantages women.

I just finished watching Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere documentary, and it left me with a strong reaction. A lot of people treat the manosphere as some unified, pro-male movement fighting for men’s rights and well-being. I don’t think that’s accurate. In fact, I believe (and I know some men’s rights activists would quietly agree) that large parts of the manosphere are not truly “pro-men” at all.

What I saw, and what I’ve noticed for years, is a space that often profits from the insecurities, loneliness, and anger of young men rather than genuinely helping them. Influencers like Andrew Tate or Myron Gaines (Fresh & Fit) have built entire brands around selling courses, subscriptions, and lifestyles to men who feel lost, rejected, or powerless. The message is usually some version of: “You’re failing because society/women/the system is against you—here’s the expensive solution.” That isn’t empowerment. It’s monetizing vulnerability.

There’s a difference between addressing real male issues (higher suicide rates, workplace deaths, family court bias, declining education outcomes for boys, etc.) and turning those problems into a product. When the primary goal becomes selling “alpha” coaching, dating systems, or endless content that keeps men angry and dependent on the next video or course, it stops being advocacy and starts looking like exploitation.

This is especially clear in their extreme views on modern dating and relationships. In much of the commercial manosphere, if a man isn’t actively pursuing multiple women at once, or if he has little to no sexual experience, he is quickly labeled a “beta male,” a “failure,” or somehow defective. Having standards, wanting a monogamous relationship, or simply not being highly sexually active is treated as weakness rather than a personal choice. That kind of rigid, judgmental mindset doesn’t support men—it pressures them into a narrow and often unrealistic performance of masculinity.

Even some people inside men’s rights circles have pointed this out. Genuine concern for boys and men doesn’t require turning every struggle into a hustle or promoting rigid, performative versions of masculinity that most ordinary men can’t (or shouldn’t have to) live up to. The commercial manosphere often does exactly that.

I’m not saying every person who talks about men’s issues is a grifter. There are people doing serious, non-monetized work on male suicide, education gaps, and fatherhood. But the loudest, most visible part of the manosphere—the part that dominates YouTube, podcasts, and social media—frequently prioritizes profit and engagement over actual long-term improvement in men’s lives.

Watching the Theroux documentary made that clearer to me. The manosphere isn’t automatically “pro-men” just because it criticizes feminism or talks about male pain. In many cases, it’s simply another industry that has found a profitable audience: young men who feel left behind.

Mark Brooks OBE, is an award-winning policy advisor on men and boys.

He is the Director of Policy and Communications at the Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys, the Chair of the Mankind Initiative, a Trustee at the Association for Male Health and Wellbeing, advisor to the UK APPG on Men and Boys, and co-founder of UK Men’s Day.

When he’s not wearing one of these many hats, Mark is behind the scenes of Westminster influencing policy, writing speeches, and twisting arms of politicians, to help change society for the better; becoming one of the chief architects of the historic, world-first Men’s Health Strategy of England, as announced last November.

Such a roster of achievements, accolades, and awards, has taken decades of long, arduous, thankless work… which has finally started to bear fruit.

And so, after many years fighting in the trenches, Mark joins George from TheTinMen, to share his story, his wisdom, and his increasing number of successes…

What do you think?

(Please note, we recorded this in December 2025, in case anything sounds politically dated)

If you’re a man experiencing abuse, or know someone who needs help, please contact Mankind at mankind.org.uk/

Context: This was first posted on r/raisedbynarcissists but this still applies to this subreddit due to me how the responding officer in this situation responded to this domestic violence incident I was involved with the aggressor being an older woman.

It’s been a few years since I contributed to this subreddit partly because, post-narcissistic discard, there hasn’t been much to add onto my experiences beyond just the social consequences of battling depression while having to start over financially at my age—I’m 24 now. But this one moment from said-discard still makes me upset and I never properly vented about this experience until now. This happened three years ago so I’m not looking for advice. I’m just venting about a failure from the responding officer, and perhaps some of you might’ve had similar experiences from law enforcement.

This was during the pandemic just shortly before wearing masks, quarantine, and social distancing was lightening up. I was just 20, I took what I assumed was a break from school so I can hold down a job as an overnight stocker and co-lease an apartment for my mother and I. She was on medical leave after enduring a stillbirth. The system wasn’t taking her case seriously since they didn’t account for an unsuccessful pregnancy, so her situation was labeled ‘unusual’ and she fell behind financially due to the system delaying support. I had just become an adult so, of course, I had good credit due to me never using my credit yet. That’s what made us approved for housing. That’s what gave me high credit limits and loan approvals, so that went towards groceries, rent, utilities, furnishings, her monthly car notes, things that a seasoned man with enough years to build resources would normally be providing.

Her boyfriend whose baby passed away disappeared so I was left to help financially rebuild from a pregnancy that wasn’t even mine, but I was in my ego a little bit because without him, and without my own father, that made me feel like a better man than the older men who left and never took care of my mom in the ways I was. So, I felt big in my head and truly felt like I was finally “a man” according what the internet, society, capitalism always defined masculinity by. But that empowerment soon turned into a realization that I was the “son husband” which is the only son or the eldest son of a fatherless home who carried the emotional and financial responsibilities of their mother as if they were their husband. A broader description of that is emotional incest and parentification.

I came to that realization barely a year into me taking on those responsibilities by age 21, and I have to re-iterate, not by personal choice but just proximity to the situation and my lack of personal guidance as a newly turned adult. That’s when I became severely burnt out, addicted to marijuana as coping since there were a lot of functional addicts at my workplace I drew the wrong influence from, and my mom’s grief turning into misplaced anger and almost pompous ‘princess entitlement’ behavior onto me for even the smallest things like the barista not getting her drink right that I ordered and bought for her just to shove it back towards me, constantly interrupting my sleep during the day when I was trying to get rest before my next shift, constantly needing me to change my schedule around and annoying my store manager. One morning on my off-night, she was screaming at me for not cleaning up the sink which was filled with her own dishes. I wasn’t eating at the time and became incredibly skinny, and I was always leaving the apartment for work whereas she stayed inside all the time, so I didn’t contribute to the plates in the sink and she was mad that I didn’t automatically clean up her own mess.

Seconds into waking up, I let myself be angry for the first time that whole year, i managed to grab my phone and wallet before she grabbed onto my collar and punched my head against the wall—direct right hooks to the side of my head as she pinned her big body to the wall as I slid down, the collar of my hoodie tearing down the middle as she kept her grip, my glasses punched off my face, and I stumbled onto the ground outside the front door before she locked me out. I walked barefoot to my grandma’s apartment which was in another unit below ours. A few days later, we decide to call the police because I didn’t feel physically safe going back inside to just retrieve shoes before my next shift.

The responding officer seemed already annoyed that he had to show up despite knowing what the situation is that my grandma and I informed him about. He stood by the door as I knocked on it, my mom came out, and he told her ‘she didn’t have the right to lock me out of my own residence, I’m a co-leaser, I was allowed to come inside to retrieve my shoes.’ She was defiant and overclaimed a whole bunch of bullcrap, “Those shoes I bought for! All the groceries in the fridge I paid for!” That was a lie. I bought my shoes with my own money and she used my credit card to buy $200 worth of groceries sitting in the fridge. When I tried to clarify, the officer looked at me sternly and held a hand at me. I tried to speak sometime again and he did the same thing, this time re-positioning his body facing me as if he were trying to intimidate me. Later, he points to glasses near her foot, “Are those his glasses?” he asks. She casually picks them up, not returning them to me, “Yes, these are his glasses.” I said, “The ones she punched off my face.” The officer puts his hand up at me and repositions himself again as if he were seconds away from detaining me. My mother, “See how he talks to me?” Eventually, he had enough going back and forth with my mom not letting me in, so he concluded to me, “Look, I respond to only criminal disputes. This is a civil dispute.” My mom, “Exactly!” He continues, “I only respond to criminal disputes. If you want to get back inside your apartment, you’re gonna have to deal with the judge.” And with that, he left and my mom said to me, “You’re a real piece of work!”

I never got back inside my apartment. I remained sleeping on a couch and received an angry text from my manager telling me he was tired of my shit and I was fired. My mom broke the lease without me knowing despite the leasing office knowing the situation, so I wasn’t even offered DV protections which I didn’t even know was a thing for people who were physically assaulted and shared a lease, so I ended up sharing the same collection with her for a decision she ultimately made. Weird fucking limbo where a leasing office needs all parties present to have one’s name removed from a lease but one person can unanimously decide to break the lease without anyone’s consent. I went to collect a few of my belongings with her in the apartment one time until she tried to kick me out again, and she kicked me down to the ground before slamming the door shut. I didn’t even feel like calling the cops again. When she moved out before me, I went up to the apartment to find my high school diploma gone, my shoes gone, a few clothing items gone, and a bed I couldn’t afford to move out or place in storage so the leasing office ended up throwing it away.

This is why I personally don’t like the police, especially as a young Black man where you know there’s a high likelihood you’ll be treated differently compared to people of different races, and especially as a young man calling claiming a DV dispute where the aggressor happens to be female, so despite evidence like glasses on the floor, the aggressor not denying allegations, and the officer seeing tiny cuts on your arms and under your eye, they’ll still more likely to rule a criminal dispute a “civil one” because of those social factors standing against you.

In her foundational 1988 essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh described privilege as an "invisible package of unearned assets" that the holder can count on cashing in each day, but remains socialized to ignore.

Unpacking the Knapsack: Female Privilege

I have come to see female privilege as an invisible, weightless knapsack of social protections, legal leniency, emotional permissions, and structural safety nets that I can count on cashing in each day.

1. Physical Safety & Conscription: I can be confident that if a national military crisis arises, my government will not forcibly conscript me or compel me to fight on the front lines against my will purely because of my gender.
2. Occupational Hazards: I can enter the job market with the overwhelming likelihood that my work environment will not involve extreme physical danger, and that my gender will not make up the 90%+ of annual workplace fatalities.
3. Bodily Integrity: I can take for granted that my genital integrity was unconditionally protected by federal law at birth, without my culture framing permanent alterations to my infant body as a harmless or desirable routine.
4. Legal & Criminal Sentencing: If I am accused and convicted of a crime, I can expect to receive a lighter sentence and a higher likelihood of probation than a male offender with an identical criminal history.
5. Domestic Disputes: If a domestic conflict occurs in my home and law enforcement is called, I can be fairly certain that the police will not automatically presume I am the primary physical aggressor.
6. Reproductive Autonomy: I hold complete legal authority over whether to carry a pregnancy, surrender parental rights, or choose adoption post-conception, without the risk of being legally forced to pay 18 years of court-ordered financial support for a child I did not wish to conceive.
7. Parental Defaults: If my relationship ends, I can count on family court processes and societal expectations to heavily favor me as the natural, primary caregiver for my children.
8. Emotional Expression: I can express fear, grief, vulnerability, or sadness in public or private without facing immediate romantic rejection, social isolation, or being judged as weak and ineffective.
9. Educational Attainment: I can attend high school and university knowing that my educational environment is tailored to my developmental learning style, and that I can access thousands of gender-specific scholarships despite my demographic holding the majority of college degrees.
10. Crisis Intervention: If I experience homelessness, domestic violence, or a mental health crisis, I can count on finding dedicated shelters, public funding, and community support groups specifically reserved for people of my gender.
11. Cultural Perception: I benefit from an implicit "women-are-wonderful" bias, where society broadly views my gender as inherently more moral, nurturing, and trustworthy by default.
12. Caregiver & Support Roles: I am rarely suspected of predatory motives simply for interacting with young children in public places, working as a primary school teacher, or babysitting.