Toxic masculinity is responsible for so much nonsensical behavior. Guys, it's not cute to always have to assert your dominance. All it does is exude insecurity. Plus, it costs $0.00 to not be a douche.
tokenbisexual asked men of Reddit: What's the most pathetic/ridiculous thing another man has done in attempt to assert his dominance over you?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
15. Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, brah.
I always feel like the guys who refuse to make room for you when walking by in the other direction are trying to assert their dominance and make themselves feel like hot sh*t. I never understand why people do that.
I figured out the best way to handle this when I was in college and the sidewalks were narrow.
Just stop walking and stand still. Now they're the only ones walking and have to go out of their way to avoid you instead of them expecting you to move.
14. Trump University athletics.
He tried to drink water faster than me - no one drinks water faster than me.
I heard if you create a vortex to spin the water out of the bottle you can drink it faster. I haven't bothered to verify if this applies to actually drinking water, but it seems to allow you to pour it into the sink faster, so that's something I guess?
13. Obvious overcompensation is obvious.
Literally last weekend some really drunk dude who I had never once met or interacted with tried to fight me (to impress the girls he was with?) It was completely ridiculous, and his way of trying to initiate it was just repeatedly body checking me on the dance floor which I ignored because I thought he was just being drunk and dumb. Turns out one of his friends had to stop him from blindsiding me with a sucker punch to the face (assuming he was able to aim that well)
Some people do not mix well with alcohol apparently.
I've worked in bars my whole life and this is very common. If you are tall you are a target. It makes no sense and it has nothing to do with the personality of the "tall guy" it's just what it is. It's even worse for bouncers. The mentality, which is probably subconscious, is that if you're an aggressive smaller guy and you fight a bigger guy it's win win. Either you lost because he is bigger or you won and took down a bigger guy. It's funny because over the years I have never had a problem with a big guy. The 6'5" dudes are fine, it's always the short guys who you have to kick out. People are weird.
12. You know what they say about protesting too much...
I used to tend bar in Milwaukee, and there is nothing that triggers self-conscious weiners more than seeing someone drinking something they don't like. I cannot tell you how many arguments began with some dude - always unsolicited/unprovoked, mind you - feeling compelled to judge and "educate" other guys about what they're drinking (or not drinking).
"You drink that piss, you p*ssy?" and it goes downhill from there.
No one cares. Drink what you like and shut up.
I was at a bar in Stevens Point and the barman whips out a porno mag asking if I want to read it. "No thanks.." "Why not? Are you gay?"
He looked as if I had offended his ancestors by not wanting to read his porno mag in the middle of a bar.
edit: Wow, this gained some traction! This was about 5 years ago, I was visiting a friend (I lived in London). In all honesty, I don't remember the bar and I've tried finding it on Google maps but had no success. We did the Point Brewery tour, then did pre-drinks, then did a bar crawl (because there seem to be more bars than London has pubs). Surprisingly the worst part of the bar crawl was some "traditional Polish" berry liquor shot one of the bars served.
11. Proof that we really are related to monkeys.
In junior high I remember this one bully that would get on his tip toes and bow out his chest like a gorilla and get all in your face whenever he felt threatened. It was such a funny stereotype maneuver.
A guy did that to my friend once as he was trying to start a fight.
He would spread his arms wide and push out his chest while aggressively asking, "you wanna go? Huh! You wanna go?"
Without a word, my friend grabbed his collar and pulled him into a headbutt, knocking him to the ground, delirious, in one hit.
My friend, in fact, wanted to go.
10. All masculinity is delicate.
A former coworker. He would just stand in the way and refuse to move. Even if he wasnt in the way he would purposely get in the way. I work in a narrow kitchen so you can imagine how annoying that could be.
At one particular moment I was carrying a bulky 20 lbs box and he decided to do that. I pretended to not see him and barreled into him. He fell over and got incredibly mad at me. Started talking about how I have no muscle. It was pretty funny.
It was a display of the most fragile masculinity I've ever seen.
9. It's not gay if you're trying to impress girls.
One time at a house party, a few of us were talking to some of the girls there and one of the guys randomly started talking about how he does MMA, then another guy joined in and those 2 started wrestling in front of the girls. I don't think their shirts needed to come off either but what the f*ck do I know.
Taking your shirt off is proper MMA procedure and culture. Leaving them on could have dishonored their whole family.
8. What a cheesy attitude.
This happened over DnD when my friend (who owns a store) let these guys we didn't know that well to join our campaign. I don't know why, I, out of the table got singled out but a girl walks in and this guy:
- complained that I didn't order pizza for him
- said 'how about you go f*ck yourself' when I asked him if he wanted some
- walked over behind me and 'playfully' puts his arms around my neck, I told him I'd punch him in the face if he did it one more time because I don't know who the f*ck he is.
Absolutely ruined my day.
Was that his way of trying to impress the girl??
I'm not entirely sure but he became erratic after the girl walked in. He was quiet right before.
7. Cagey.
I work in a grocery store and sometimes help unload the delivery trucks and our delivery comes in on what we call cages, like a 6 foot cage on wheels and obviously one that's full of toilet paper will be really light and one filled with 2 litre bottles of juice are the heavy ones. The lift that lowers them from the truck has that patterned metal floor and you have to pull the heavy cages hard to get them off, now Im 5'8" and don't have a lot of weight on me but I can pull these cages off just fine but there's a guy who's like 6'2" and is always trying to show how strong he is, so whenever I'm helping and he's there he always insists he gets the heavy cages and that I get the "little guy cages." Everyone agrees he needs to grow up.
Guys like that are great though because you can just chill and let them do all the annoying work if they feel the need to prove something.
6. How about a degree in minding your own business?
Talked about the MBA program at his Alma mater was superior to where I was getting my MBA.
For clarification, he doesn't have and isn't working on an MBA, but wanted to be sure I knew he was better because he went to a school with a perceived better program.
5. Oy vey.
I had someone stand on their tippy toes to seem taller when we where talking.
The irony here is that standing on your tip toes makes you look far less "manly."
4. Udderly silly.
So when I was in the 8th grade thre was this one kid who hated me for no reason, I was really big for my age, so there was no way this 5' 1" guy was going to fight me, so he did something so cringy I have no idea what he was going for.
I was sitting at lunch with my friends, and this kid walks up to us, and spits in my glass of milk and says in a very commanding tone: "drink." I just stood up and the kid bolted, got a good laugh out of it with my friend though.
Edit: to all asking what it tasted like, I did not drink the milk.
Edit 2: The kid bolted bolted because he was a huge pussy, never wanting to get in trouble, I'm not flexing by saying that.
3. Bro gonna bro.
I worked in residence life over the summer at a moderately sized college campus. The pay was good, but there were tons of broken furniture and even more piss-stained mattresses.
Anyway, I was good enough at doing this that I became sort of an on-site supervisor. The supervisor would tell us what building we would be evaluating/emptying that day, and then I would basically take over as soon as we left.
One day, we had a five-story dorm to go through, and ALL of the mattresses were due to be replaced. I told the group (there were seven or eight of us) that the easiest way would be to form a relay down the stairs. Two people would go to the rooms on the topmost floor and toss 'em down the steps to the next level, and then they would toss those down the steps, all the way down until the last two people on the bottom would put the mattresses in the truck. And then, every floor, we'd swap off, so people could have the "easier" jobs.
We're moving along ridiculously fast under this system. We cleared out a whole floor in just under an hour.
And then the supervisor showed up and told me that, no, EVERYONE NEEDED TO CARRY OUT THEIR OWN MATTRESSES because he didn't want "lazy people" on the team. In other words, he wanted everyone to go to a room on the fifth floor and carry a mattress down five flights of stairs to the truck, all through the day.
He told us that it was "an easy job" and then proceeded to make a show of lifting up two mattresses on his shoulders and jumping down the half-flight steps onto the landing. He did this two or three times, complete with loud grunts (to this day, I have no idea how he didn't get injured), and then berated us for being lazy.
He didn't make us jump, but he make sure that he stayed to watch us do it "the right way." We finished the next floor by the end of the day.
EDIT: I'm getting these questions, so I'll clarify here: the quicker we moved, the better. On this campus (and I suspect, many others), colleges make money over the summer by hosting summer camps. Residence life, housekeeping and telecom all have to move in a particular order through the dorms in a particular fashion and adhere to a very tight calendar. This building, in particular, would have had housekeeping come by the next afternoon, and I think the dorm was supposed to be opened to summer campers the day after.
2. He seems fun.
When asked about what his hobbies are, he responded with "Hobbies are for children and single women. I work."
"You want to know how cool I am? You want to know how tough I am? I'm so tough that I have no life, interests or friends."
1. Flying is fun.
Was on a 4-hour flight. In a 2 person row. The guy demanded to have full access to the middle armrest. Would push my arm off it if I ever got near it.
Oh man. I was in the middle of a three seat row. The guy in my left was some type of exec checking his work email on his laptop. Anyway after the first hour of arm rest jockeying I just ask him, "are we doing this the entire flight?"
He pretended to not speak English. The mother f*cker was reading his emails in English and pulled the No hables card on me.
He finally conceded the armrest after that.
