Women name 25 things 'a man would never understand about' them

If one were to make a list of all the atrocities everyone who's not a cis white male has had to—and continues to—go through as a result of patriarchal conditioning, it'd probably take them a lifetime. So let's examine just one today: Having to deal with men who think they've got it all figured out when in fact they don't. We've been seeing this for decades in conversations about women's reproductive rights where folks who don't have the faintest clue about what it's like to be a woman, make decisions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies. Reddit user u/Top_Run4841 highlighted this blatant male ignorance a few weeks ago when they took to the r/AskReddit forum with this question: "What is one thing, that a man would never understand about women?"

Here are 25 of the top responses to the query:

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"How much of our behavior is influenced by the fear that a man will physically harm us. By 18, I stopped smiling at men 25 and up in passing because too many took it as sexual interest. At 23 I stopped jogging near streets or apartment buildings because the catcalls were too aggressive. And at 31 I cut a married, super religious, father figure from my life because he couldn't keep his eyes off of my body and started talking to me like a mistress. Right now no man I've had any sort of relationship with knows where I live and I feel safer than ever before." — PeligrosaPistola

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"From the expense to the constant need to take care of hygiene to the pain to the hormonal shifts to the period pooping it is all terrible. Add to that getting older usually adds problems like fibroids or heavy flow and it is a true negative. I like being a woman but if I had gotten a choice to choose my sex before I came I would’ve said nope to female as soon as they got to the period part." — Ok_Accident3380 

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"How exhausting/depressing it is seeing so many rape scenes on TV and Film. It’s like they are trying to inform us of how vulnerable we are to sexual assault when we are fully aware and live with that knowledge on a daily basis." — Hot_potatoos

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"How we're expected to be extroverts -- to smile and coddle everyone's feelings. I constantly used to catch myself indulging men in 'conversations' that were really just them showing off. They would never do that for me, but I was socialized to be a polite, attentive audience to stroke a man's ego. Needless to say, I do not do this anymore. The difference in male/female socialization actually hurts men too. The average man doesn't go out of his way to be kind to a woman unless he is attracted to her, so plenty of dudes end up thinking a woman is attracted to him when she is merely being polite." —herebekraken

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"We care about men's issues too. We just get angry when men only bring them up to downplay female issues. If you really care about male mental health or unrealistic body standards, you won't just use it as a gotcha when you're annoyed with feminism." — herebekraken

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"In corporate culture: (1) Being mentored by men is more difficult without the camaraderie that men share. Male leaders see themselves in young men. (2) Women need to assert professional boundaries CONSTANTLY. (3) The connection between beauty and perceived ability. Ugly fat men are very common in leadership. Ugly fat women, however... (4) Working in [computer science] is off-putting because many [computer science] dudes only interact with women in romantic contexts, and find it difficult to treat them as fledged colleagues." — Creative-Toe 

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"How your brain gets re-wired by pregnancy. And I don’t just mean the 'I'll kill anyone who tries to hurt my little bologna loaf.' I mean how some foods you loved now taste like crap. And others you only tolerated taste like heaven. How some smells are now more intense or slightly off from before pregnancy. That you can't remember how to drive a stick shift (true story, ground the gears for at least a month) but can put together some complicated storage unit with no instructions and nothing but a pair of pliers and a nail file, while 8 1/2 months pregnant.That you can spy a poisonous plant from 50 yards away but can't find the orange behind your water glass. And that if/when you get pregnant again everything will get re/wired in a different way." — meld68

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"That we really can’t stand unsolicited d*ck pics. So please, for the love of god, stop sending them. They take a conversation from 0 to and 'ya lost me' real quick." — Cleonce12

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