Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
These days, we hear and read a lot about the crisis of masculinity. People discuss all types of masculinities: traditional, toxic, performative males, and even fragile masculinity. The latter probably surprises women most often. What do you mean you won't cuddle with my male cat because it's gay?
That's just one example of a man being so insecure in his masculinity that it made his partner do a double take. Unfortunately, there are more who think that doing something or acting a certain kind of way will be a threat to their male ego. Bored Panda has collected answers from two threads on r/AskWomen where someone asked: "What examples of fragile masculinity have you encountered?" and even we had a hard time believing the things men think threaten their masculinity.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
This post may include affiliate links.
RELATED:
#2
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.
#3
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 h**l 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.
#4
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.
#6
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.
#7
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.
#8
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.
#9
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.
#10
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?
#11
Refusing to let me open doors. It is nice to have someone hold doors open sometimes- especially if I am carrying a big bag or in heels. I know some people are flattered by this and it is a nice gesture, regardless of gender.
But I met a guy who simply refused to let me get near a door handle and would race me to hold it open when I was only an arms length away from one. On top of that, he would not walk through it if I held it open for him, doing that awkward standoff with an open door in front of us. Seriously dude, I don’t think you are less of a man for letting me get doors and I am perfectly capable of opening doors myself!
#12
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.
#13
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.
#14
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.
#15
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.
#16
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.
#17
My husband takes the wrapper off of the strawberry chapstick I buy for him so he won’t be carrying around a pink chapstick container at work.
His coworkers made fun of him for driving my car to work one day instead of his truck. I drive a black sports car that is far from feminine.
I don’t know if this one counts for anything but I helped my husband fix some of the plumbing under our house one day and his coworkers said that I shouldn’t be doing that work and that they should have called them instead because women shouldn’t work on plumbing.
He gets made fun of at work because he helps me with chores and has told his coworkers that we are on a budget and trying to save for retirement.
#18
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 [angry] 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.
#19
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.
#20
My ex boyfriend refused to buy lotion for himself and instead put shaving cream on his dry skin the day it was really bothering him.
#21
Had a coworker tell me yesterday that I intimidate him because i’m almost as tall as him. (i’m female, about 5’6).
#22
Way back when I was a temp, a guy in an office I worked in briefly got seriously [angry] off that I could type faster than him. Note I said I worked there briefly. It was supposed to be a few weeks gig but they said they didn't need me after two days. Too funny.
#23
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.).
#24
My father promised to wash the dishes every day for the rest of his natural life because when he bought the wrong kind of kitchen sink to replace one that had broken, he was too embarrassed to take it back and admit to the guys at the plumbing store that his wife had told him to return the sink he had just bought. And he still washes the dishes every day, more than 40 years since.
#25
This one seems a little more subjective because it’s just how I viewed the event and I could be wrong, but I just can’t find any other explanation for it.
I work the front desk at a gym, once a year we shut down for a week for deep cleaning, repainting and any general maintenance work, if you’re scheduled you still go in, but instead of doing your normal job you do a very basic maintenance thing. Last year during this time I came in and was told to just find something to do since they didn’t have any real need in any of the areas. I noticed that there was a group moving exercise machines around and they all happened to be men. Now I don’t think it was done intentionally, and i don’t find it inherently offensive that it was only men, but since I had nothing else to do I thought I’d go join them, since it was just such a stereotypical thing. They did not seem to be happy about this, they constantly insisted that there was no way I’d be able to lift/move things myself, rushed to grab something I was clearly already on my way to get, and actually started calling me by a more feminine version of my name (not actually my name but for example: If u went by Pat, they started calling me Patty). It just totally threw me, these machines, while heavy, are made to be easily moved but they seemed to feel like their masculinity had been insulted by the fact that I was doing it just as easily as they were.
#26
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....
#27
My boss cannot go anywhere without a gun on him. He's basically textbook. Ex-military, ex-cop, smaller guy, gun nut.
#28
I work in a skincare store. All of our products are gender natural. Men and woman have the same kind of skin, literally no difference.
We have a very small "men" section for those men who insist on men only products with those intense men scents. I had this one guy who came in, told me his concerns and what he wanted and in our men section, we just didn't have the products he needed so I gave him some options and he refused to look at any of the products because they weren't labeled "for men" even though they would immensely help him. I kept trying to explain to him the products weren't only for women. Both genders can use them and he made a big scene about going somewhere else for men products and left.
I can understand if I was showing him something with very fruity or floral scents (but even so those scents wear off after 30 minutes) but I was showing him things that pretty much had no smell to them. None of the packaging were even girly looking.
#29
I'm a bartender.
If I had a dollar for the number of times a guy has ordered a cocktail based on listed ingredients that sound tasty to him... only to ask me to put the drink in a "many" glass, or if the color was too girly, pass it off to his girlfriend/wife/any-female-in-sight, and then ask me if can make him something less girly... I'd probably have about a hundred bucks at least.
This doesn't include times a dudes *friend's* have made fun of him, for ordering something that sounds good, but the color of the drink or the glass ware is deemed too 'girly'.
I even had a guy tell me to put his Manhattan in a rocks glass. When I told him, "You're a wise man. It is easier to carry this way, and won't spill..." His response was something like, "naw, I just don't want to look like a woman carrying around that pansy glass..." Um, ok then.
#30
As a male massage therapist I've seen some stunning displays of fragile masculinity. Cause, ya know, getting a massage as a man and enjoying it when your therapist is also a man MUST mean you are gay.
Most of the time this plays out in people requesting female therapists. One time this dude came in with his girlfriend, completed consent forms even went to bathroom and came back. However when he saw that they would be getting worked on by two male therapists he started backing away slowly saying "Babe, Babe, Babe". The girl goes over to him and they quietly talk for a bit then she approaches us and just says that " something came up" and they need to go attend to it immediately.
#31
Coworker asked me out. I said no. He threw a tantrum about me leading him on. I was just trying to be friendly to him because he was new, and I noticed he was extremely shy and felt uncomfortable with new work environment. Well, apparently it was a bad idea.
#32
Broke up with his girlfriend who had hair above her shoulders because he refused to date a girl with shorter hair than him and his was long.
Another guy, when my girlfriend's sister was correcting him on something he was completely wrong, knew nothing about and talking out of his [butt] about in a pub, proceeded to shout "I AM THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THIS PUB!"
#33
This just happened on Monday. I was doing bent over rows next to a guy who was deadlifting. He said "Do you powerlift?" "yes" "cool! It isn't common to see a woman bent over rowing, so I kinda figured". We get to chatting and it's going great. We talk for close to 15 minutes, each breaking to do a set and then coming right back to conversation. He told me his max weights for the 3 main lifts, squats being at 275lbs for a set of 3. I praised him on those numbers and told him to keep going. At the very end of the conversation he asked me what my squat max was. I said "391lbs". He choked on his words in an audible cough and said "Did you say 3...?" I nodded. He actually gathered up his things and said "alright, well, you have a nice workout" and left the gym. :/.
#34
My friend's son was about one, and he was trying on (women's) shoes because a bunch of people were over, as kids do. My friend said that he hoped the kid didn't grow up to be gay.
#36
He took the joking like a champ, but I used to have a customer (as a barista) who literally would not say the word “latte” because it wasn’t a manly drink. He would order “a large vanilla” and wouldn’t say the word latte.
There are more odious examples but that one always cracked me up/blew my mind.
#37
I know guys who get all weird and defensive because my husband took my last name when we got married. Like, they feel threatened because another dude took his wife's name. As if that somehow reflects on them as men. Idk. Some men seem to think everything is somehow about them.
#38
I was in high school and went to lunch with a guy that I liked, however it was definitively NOT a date. I had $20 cash and was going to pay, but he felt weird about it. So he asked me to give him the $20 in the car so he could pay at he register. Sooooo stupid.
#39
One guy wanted to date me and I said "ok, let's get dinner, call me this weekend!". This was WAY to pushy and emasculating for him. Needless to say: we didn't date.
#40
I used to work in a jail as a civilian worker. When I was hired, I was told I would not ever have to work directly with inmates without a deputy present. 4 years later, I get a recently promoted sergeant who was out to prove himself. We were short staff and he tried to force me to working in a housing unit alone with male inmates with nothing to protect myself with (deputies who normally work those areas get a taser). I was the best trained booking specialist, who was also trained in other easential areas so there was no reason besides him being on a power trip to have me doing that job that day. I flat out refused due to what I was told at hiring. If I had to work directly with inmates I would have not taken the job. He tried to get me written up for insubordination to prove a point, but my Lieutenant actually took my side. I was I think 1 of 4 females on that team that has 20 people on it including the deputies and specialists. I even had to have a meeting with him about my insubordination, where I stood my ground and said that even though he was the sergeant, I was not working that specific job. He did make my life a living h**l though until I quit half a year later to move in with my boyfriend now husband.
#41
My answer happened this week. A man at my work was being very condescending about something we disagreed on. For reference, he is in his 60s and I'm in my late 20s. I ended up standing up for myself and telling him that he needed to communicate more directly with me to avoid us arguing and he replied "ok then." to my very neutrally worded email. I then had to email him again asking him a question about what we were arguing about and he replied "at this point, I don't care." and is refusing to speak to me because I stood up to him.
#42
I work in a comic store. you can only imagine the distress and terror that comes with a) being a feeeeeeeemale fan of something macho, or b) the encroachment of a comic book about a teenage [intimacy] the new-comic-book stands. I have met a few dudes who don't even like Batman to have a romantic interest, because 'that softens his character'.
#43
I went to a shooting range with my SO and best friend, both are men.
We just wanted regular silhouette targets, but the regular targets they had left were pink. The men at the counter apologized to my SO and friend, and asked if they wanted to try the other targets. I was baffled.
#44
One of my co-workers dresses exclusively in military-styled attire, has an odd barking military-like manner of speaking and browses knifes and military gear when the work is slow. Whenever his competence is questioned (or whenever he just feels threatened) he will immediately jump to arguments like "I'm a MAN, not someone's boy", "I have DIGNITY" and will basically explain in a very dramatic way how it's beneath him to admit his mistakes.
He's not a bad guy at all, actually, but he is very, very over-the-top in defending his masculinity. He's also never been in the army from what I've heard.
#45
There was this guy - just one year older than me who hired my husband and I on different positions in his small business (I left in less than 2 months). While he seemed to worship my husband, he micromanaged and second guessed everything I did, even questioning my ability to work remotely (I was part time there and he knew I did remote work for several other clients) because "who's there to check up on you?"... He was positively shocked one day to discover that I have a PhD (aparently skipped actually reading my resume) and would almost not believe it, kept going: "YOU have a PhD?!", which I found quite offensive. And after I quit, for very good reasons, he tried to pull one of those "women, eh?" kind of rethoric on my husband, implying that women weren't cut for that 100% office job. Needless to say, it didn't go over well. And I found out he had been a jerk to other women in the workplace before on that account, his own wife included (hence she stopped working there but is sadly still married to him).
#46
I’m a doctor in the US and someone came in to see me about a year ago. About halfway through the appointment he told me that women can’t be trusted as doctors and my place was in the kitchen.
#47
Worked at a daycare. Dad of one of the babies wouldn’t put her jacket on her and had a staff member do it.
#48
I was a manager at a fast food restaurant in college. One of my employees, also a college student, talked about how he was going to make so much money once he got a job in his field. He never listened to me when I would ask him to do something, and would instead talk about how he would be making more money than me someday, so nothing I said mattered, even though I was his direct supervisor.
One day I was sick of it, and told him that right now, I make more money than him and that he has to listen to me or I would send him home. He got really offended and reported me to Corporate, who actually listened to both sides of the story and dismissed his complaint.
#49
My older male boss consistently gets threatened when I come up with a good idea and pretends that it would never work when I present it to him one on one.
Next thing I know, I see on the agenda for leadership meetings "Discuss [insert my great idea] here". Everyone praises him for how innovative and creative he is. Cool.
Or the amount of times I have put together a presentation for him which he then puts his own name on.
The constant taking credit of MY work is exhausting. God forbid our CEO ever think a good idea came from a millennial woman instead of my fragile white baby boomer boss who enjoys spending his lunch break on the phone shouting at customer service reps at the cable company.
#50
My x and I lived together.
We needed some wood-work done, and since both of us are not at all handy, nor had the tools, I suggested we start looking for someone cheap to hire. I also suggested we get his grandfather to look for us, because he owns a residential building and knows all the good maintenance people etc.
My boyfriend looked *stricken*, and asked “*You don’t think I could do it*”, and I had to reasonably explain why I didn’t think so, while coddling his feelings.
Add Your Answer! This post is a community curated
Add Your Answer!
Related on Bored Panda
