Male body image

Body image is extremely serious. It is dismissed as a vanity issue yet it can leave people feeling suicidal at high rates.

It is not vanity.

Your post is very powerful. Too many people suffer in silence.

As a woman, sometimes my body image is so low I can't leave the house.

People are too polite to say things to my face but every so often someone just tells me how different I look, as I have lost a lot of weight in my face and look older, more gaunt. I don't look great. I don't look well.

I see what you mean how comments hurt.

Thank you, I'm sorry you've had your own struggles but am glad someone understands at least part of it.

This particular topic is different than others:

You can't join a club.

You cant put pictures on your facebook of men like you to show its ok and raise awareness.

There's no extra letter in LGBT for you.

You cant put a sticker on your car.

You cant come out to your family.

You cant talk to your best friend.

There's no sense of community or safe place.

You cant even sink yourself into netflix.

There's no upside, no silver lining, unlike as random examples many smaller chested women get to be slim, or many bigger women have a larger chest. Being small is never, ever an advantage and never comes with a positive tradeoff.

It's literally called your manhood. You are not a real man.

The medical community legit treats you like you're delusional, how can they not see that an man who is almost statisticaly impossible, and a man that women reject and laugh at and society and your best friends joke about to your face about, have totally opposite lives and suffer legitimate trauma?

Women harm you then hate you for being hurt or damaged.

The same progressive, openminded people that support body positivity, curvy women, etc still use this insult or joke.

Women who scream about men not understanding consent or coercion, shame, pressure, and ridicule men who are don't consent to or are intimidated or hurt by a plastic toy the size of the exes they preferred.

Even the rare women who try to help, say things like their ex was so much more of a man than you that they were too big, as if somehow that helps. Your ex had d**k to spare? I feel much better, thank you. Noone would EVER say to a woman "you're ugly but at least you're not super pretty like my ex, her perfect body meant i couldnt be with her as often because she was so busy modelling" and think that would help.

Even other categories... larger women, smaller chested women, etc have positive fetishes in adult content. You know the equivalent for men like this? Humiliation/cheating/cuckolding/degradation/feminisation fetishes. I realise adult material is hard for many people, but for men like me it just shows that noone, anywhere, wants or respects a man in this category.

Maybe you might be settled for once women realise the men they cant tie down the men they really want, who just treat them badly. Sit there and shift awkwardly together on the couch when yet another joke comes up. She can say nice things like you can do other stuff or you're a really good guy, but you both know that if they could choose you'd be more like their ex, hell, even just normal would be a night & day improvement.

An ex of mine withheld sex until I made home porn with her. She then used this material without consent to meet others and also shared it to people who know me. The police didnt care, neither did the esafety commissioner, even with third party witnesses confirming it. They didnt even make a phone call to the person whose messages and phone number I gave them.

It doesnt matter though, I'm not dating again. Instead of love, intimacy, respect, I'm smoking 40 cigarettes a day, have an awful cough, and probably wont be here for much more than another 5 years or 10 sick and miserable ones on an oxygen tank.

I wont end myself but I'm simply too far gone after decades of this. I got laughed at, at the age of 44 by a 46yo woman, who was aware of my insecurity, nearly two months into our relationship. This is not going away. It's not an age or maturity thing. Its just how my life is and always had been and i feel so stupid for ever having thought I deserved to be treated differently or loved.

Best I can do is hope to raise some awareness for others.

Me? Im not even tiny, just much smaller than women expect, and thats enough to change the entire landscape of my life. I honestly dont know how even smaller men do it, I guess they gave uo early or never even tried in the first place - ironically making ME one of the smallest most women have ever seen because anyone smaller rarely exists in the dating market regardless of the fact they make up 20% of the population, and the top 20% are overrepresented causing an even heavier skew toward what women think is normal.

I'm just so tired.

I've left my (latest) abusive relationship. Put on a nicotine patch. Ill see if i can quit smoking and if so what damage ive done.

But i wont date again.

Next time a woman complains there are no good guys, and that men are AHs, remember my experience. Society hates me, but women I trusted did the damage.

@MenSufferToothank you for your post, it really made me think as I had never really considered the subject.

It must be very hard especially as there are so few safe outlets to discuss what must be a very painful, ongoing trauma.

Of all my issues, fortunately body image has not been one, although I do get embarrassed when I get noticeably overweight I have never been given too hard a time about it.

If you can, keep educating people, you have woken me up to an issue that I will be very mindful of in the future and will definitely stand up for if mates make reference to size in the future.

Thanks for you bravery in discussing this and I hope that you gain more confidence as others support you.

Thank you for hearing me.

The challenge is that the topic doesn't stop. Ever. It's not just implied, like many other body image issues, it is in your face and very specifically mentioned. When was the last time someone specifically made a joke about stretch marks, or cellulite? What if it was EVERY day?

We all have issues with body image but this is all-consuming and overrides every other part of your self-worth, any achievement or anyrhing. I could win the lottery tomorrow, become a gym junkie, go to university and become a professor, and it will still never change.

It's literally called your manhood. You are not a real man if you don't measure up.

It's a trauma that doesn't stop, until the day you leave this place. Your trigger is sitting there loaded and ready to go in every aspect of society, socialising, and media, at any moment it could come out - and it's so common that sometimes when a conversation goes a certain way like talking about the size of a steak etc you start sweating that it will lead to some not-so-witty innuendo about how such and such loves a big piece of meat so half the time youre wounded purely by the proximity to a reference that in a rare occurrence wasnt made.

Those who aren't impacted don't realise JUST how common it is and the few people I've talked to have come back to me and said OMG it's EVERYWHERE and that they'd never actually noticed.

A great example is the show Umbrella Academy. This show championed LGBT awareness and supported Elliot Page's transition by actively writing it into the script. A man with no p***s.... yet that same show had numerous references to the size of cis men. Even in the most progressive circles this is perfectly acceptable body shaming.

Body positivity / body shaming is one of many double standards men face in society that you're not allowed to talk about, and if you do it's always straight to "women have it worse".

Having read my posts, I'm sure many would now realise that if they had one affliction, being a man with a small one would be the one category theyd want to avoid being.

The other thing is that this topic is dehumanising. EVERYONE makes small jokes / praises or jokes about big being better. The thing is, if you're in a room with two men, statistically speaking one of those two men is below average. It's like making fat jokes in a room with a blindfold on, not realising your overweight friend is sitting right there. Small jokes are the go-to for nearly anything in society - whether it's reprimanding a toxic person, chasing a cheap laugh, or trying to fit in with others.

It's hard when your best friends have all made these jokes in your presence. You know that, secretly, your best friends think you're a joke, worthless.

But you'll never tell them to stop.

Because it's not safe.

OMG, @MenSufferToo 😢

You write powerfully, and I am so sorry to read what you have suffered /are suffering.

I am so sorry also that there is no support groups or support for this issue 😢

I'm a woman but I will be more aware of this matter now.

Just letting you know that to let people know you've replied to them, you need to tag them by putting @ before their name and clicking on their name in the drop down box. You can edit your posts at the top right corner of the post to add this if you want.

Have you ever seen a psychologist or counsellor for your trauma regarding this?

Sending you many best wishes...

@NatureLover

Thank you

I've tried therapy including a sex therapist, but they don't even know what to say, and are as shocked and surprised as anyone else when I point out this is devastatingly harmful to men. Guys don't even go to therapy about it, I've spoken with three separate therapists and none of them have ever had the topic raised in decades of practice each - that's how much shame and resignation is involved.

Also as I mentioned men who are severely impacted by this to the point of seeing an actual psychiatrist, they are treated as delusional provided they are over 2.5". Your life is not at all the same, you are not delusional, it shapes every interaction with the world not just the part of your life when it's in use.

The entire 'healing' process is accepting that you will never, ever, be anything but a downgrade in that way, and that anything you do to be better for your partner or be confident or feel like a man is something they'd still enjoy more if you brought to the bedroom what other guys were born with or your thing suddenly became the size of their ex in the middle of proceedings. It's like I can work really hard to make someone the best toast in the world but everyone else is serving steak. Sure, it's not awful, and they appreciate the effort and aren't going to starve to death, but it's not the same and by being with them you subject them not only to missing out, but to a life of feeling shame themelves because their partner is someone everyone hates, stuck there squirming at jokes on TV with silent awkwardness, or at a BBQ hoping the topic doesn't have to come up and find a way to play along without drawing attention to me being small, without also saying something that hurts me.

Perhaps that's fine for some things in life like not being the tallest or whatever, but being settled for in such an intimate way is so very different. That look of disappointment, shock, or confusion on women's faces is impossible to forget, no matter how great a time you have afterward or how the relationship goes you know how they really feel. And you can't talk about it with your partner, all you do is frustrate them and push them away, so I've learned not to do that, though I've also been stung by warning people in advance, or making the topic off limits because it becomes the elephant in the room. There's no strategy that works, and often it leads to partners lying to you to say something nice, which makes you feel unsafe and not be able to fully trust them.

The other part is to just ignore and bottle up the stress from the jokes and pretend you're confident in the bedroom, in exactly the opposote way to anything else as you CANNOT avoid the trigger, also living life knowing that the friends you would give your life for not-so-secretly think you're a loser.

I guarantee there are hundreds of thousands of men secretly suffering from this, and as a coping mechanism they probably join in the jokes too, so you'd never know who they are.

And if it gets worse they certainly won't write it on a goodbye note, who wants to be remembered like that?

@Boppa Thank you, I've done a lot of looking online and only found one place where it's understood and validated, a reddit forum, but it is a cesspool of depression and self loathing, and a number of members have ended things, as everyone there is just as lost and hopeless as the next guy. The validation was nice, temporarily, but I had to get out of there before long.

As for dating, I realise I can't speak for any or all woman, but the reality of my experiences in society is that excepting a rare medical condition, someone who doesn't like regular sex, or someone who wants power over a man or has a fetish for humiliation/domination, parctically no woman wants to be with a guy who is hands-down one of the smallest she's seen.

I've had one friend suggest I should 'try' being gay and receiving. One counsellor suggest I find a female partner who wants a man to use a strap-on with. Another counsellor suggest I should wear a hollow toy so I can be more like what women want or are used to.

None of these things are solutions, they just skirt or highlight the issue even more.

The best I can do is vent here and hope it helps spread awareness that reduces impact on others, especially if that awareness can radiate out.

I can't exactly be the face of small peckers, my anonymous cause needs to be picked up more broadly - and even then, women with partners who speak out about this, draw an obvious eye of assumption to their partner.

@Boppa It's not that they don't enjoy sex, I've had a varied and interesting sex life. It's just that it's not as good for your partner as it would be if you were ALSO like everyone else physically.

People often quote same sex women as having enjoyable member-free sex, but even apart from any toys they might use as a substitute in some cases, they are actually specifically not interested in penetrative sex with that body part so it's quite a ridiculous comparison.

If a partner wanted a lesbian, she'd be with one, but she wants penetrative sex with a man as at least part of the deal and while I'm more than big enough to be functional I'm a good 30% below what women consider normal, a good 50%+ below what they consider ideal, and as much as 100% smaller than some men they've been with.

And they INSIST on saying stuff, whether it's harmful and cruel, or well intentioned and harmful anyway. It's like my smaller size is just TOO obvious not to leave without commenting on.

I had a final chat with my ex today, she admitted after constantly hinting and baiting but denying any truth that I'm the second smallest she's seen in 46 years and that three of the last four men she has been with were massive, the only man I'm smaller than was actually very overweight and it may just have been obscured by bulk, so I may be smaller than him too, and that I'm the only man she has ever laughed at.

I'm just so tired.