Male body image

Hi there @MenSufferToo .

I'm so glad you have been able to raise this very important points with the community. I can see how much it is affecting you.

Your strength and resilience really shines through your posts. It takes people like you to advocate for what they believe in and I'm so glad you have raised these matters that many people take for granted.

Until I came to your thread, I've never thought about it in the way you have put it. It's really opened my eyes.

Your username in itself speaks loud and clear that Men Suffer Too. I hope your posts gives others the courage to stand up and share their experiences. Hopefully you will feel less alone in this journey.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Hugs, tyme

@tyme Thank you

I'm going to keep largely venting to myself here.

One of the hard parts about this is that not only do you have what is, effectively, sexual disability (and I apologise to those with 'real' disabilities), but not only do you suffer but you are actually hated for it, ACTIVELY, by seemingly everyone on the planet.

I still have the same hopes, dreams, desires, thoughts, feelings, and needs as any other person, but I am constantly told I not only should I feel shame because I am less, but that I deserve to suffer and everyone I have ever met not-so-secretly hates me, but at the same time messed with and told it doesn't matter at all to anyone, ever.

No other category of body image issue or other restrictive element of your body causes you to be categorically hated and joked about daily, rather than supported. Even women who are morbidly obese can ride the 'curvy' wave for some support and solidarity. We don't get that, we don't even get the worst sort of support: pity. We don't even get pitied, we get ridiculed & hated universally.

I had a therapist tell me not to take the jokes personally. They're not about me.

THEY ARE.

They are LITERALLY about men like me.

They reflect my entire life's experience.

The therapist is literally saying i'm oversensitive, and gaslighting me about it. Those jokes are ABOUT men like me and directly correlate with my entire existence.

Society, including the same women who if they speak honestly have a strong preference for a man to be *at least* average and ideally a fair bit above average, & the medical community gaslights us and says size doesn't matter, noone cares, only men care, and that they need to stop feeling down or inferior, have confidence. Even if you get past the jokes it's impossible to have confidence for anything longer than it takes for another woman to say something - and at my size it's practically 100% of women. It's terrifying dating... do I warn someone? Do I say nothing? The same thing happens either way, even setting a boundary and outting it off limits for discussion is a red flag to women. They cant help themselves but comment.

The reality of decades of life experiences even as a man who is still large enough to be functional and have a good-enough sex life, absolutely none of that doesnt matter stuff is true.

Scarcely a single woman on the planet prefers to be with (in my case) the smallest or second smallest man theyve ever seen. It is at best reluctant settling and you can feel the disappointment in the air.

For those who have suffered gaslighting, this is very painful. Your life experience involves being laughed at, rejected, joked about, told you're not enough, told you don't compare to the ex who didn't treat them right, etc... and society tells you it is all in your head, that it never happened, that it doesn't effect you, that those experiences are neither real nor damaging, that you are too sensitive, and that it is not in any way a disadvantage in life, dating, or relationships and doesnt very validly impact your self worth and self esteem.

The way men with this affliction are treated lacks empathy, compassion, understanding, and humanity.

For me, the jokes are a trauma trigger. I do my best to handle them, I have to, but it's not uncommon for me to dissociate If this topic goes on for more than a few seconds.

I'm treated like I have delusions or paranoia, but I can give you the names of women who have laughed at or rejected me or said horrible things, made awful crushing comparisons unprompted, even lied to my face that I'm massive - how do you trust someone who is lying to your face? I have a smaller package, it doesn't mean I'm stupid or deserve to suffer gaslighting.

It's just exhausting to know you will never be safe.

I have lived a life of abuse, partly on the topic and more broadly as a result of the fact I have no value in this world and tolerated a pattern of mistreatment, in order to be loved. I realise this, but it changes nothing.

Thank you for your reply, @MenSufferToo . I'm sorry that therapists have been no help at all.

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@MenSufferToo wrote:

I've had a varied and interesting sex life.

I'm pleased to hear this - this is more than some people (including myself) has had.

I'm sad to hear that so many women you've known have made hurtful or insulting comments 😢

I don't think that everyone on the planet hates you, @MenSufferToo .

@Boppa Those suggestions sounds great!

Pretty low tonight.

Tried to reach out, called mensline.

They won't talk about the topic.

Moving away from the topic, they wouldn't even validate me on how hard it is to have a topic I can't talk about.

They kept saying we can't talk about it.

I kept saying I understand, I'm not trying to talk about it, what I am now seeking from you some understanding and validation about how impossible it is to live in a society where we are told to talk about things, and not be able to talk on a crisis line about it.

Honestly, I just.... it's all too hard.

Sitting here smoking and drinking on the couch, it's all I can do to numb the pain and hopefully end my day and try again tomorrow.

This isn't going to beat me, but I don't know how I can win.

I honestly don't.

@Boppa

Not wanting to be a time waster and ask for help but then not take it, I looked into your dating site suggestion.

Please don't apologise; I post only as it confirms something I'd said earlier and validates my experiences. Perhaps that will help understanding my life and total hopelessness.

Sadly & painfully, it seems to be largely a 'femdom' site for dominant women/submissive men seeking partners to dominate because of their inferiority. As I mentioned apart from super-rare medical conditions, or those who do not like to regularly have sex, this is the only subset of the female population who want smaller men: to feel power from humiliating and controlling them.

I'm sure some women with physical limitations (or the one in a million with a preference) might test the site but they're likely to be run out quickly by people into this stuff.

Although a little cherry-picked, a quote (edited to change certain words):

[While a dating website for guys with small bits is definitely a niche product, Dinky One is hardly just a chipolata-fest. Of the close to 30,000 users, 27 per cent are women, like K, a 42-year-old user that knows big things come in small packages. “Being a dominant woman, the idea of man with a small thing really appeals. I don’t want to have him on me, asserting his authority. He should be pleasing me orally or with toys. If he does a good job then I will let him finish, but only under my terms,” she said.]

It's a pretty tough life when you'reventually primarily wanted by people who seek to degrade, humiliate & control you & the power and control women have over you in such situations even occurring naturally in the dating market has been repeatedly evident in my relationships, but in my case without consent or willing/informed involvement so it's not a fetish (for me, but maybe for them) but abuse or assault (of me).

This is what I've actually lived, anywhere from occasional comments to cut me down to full-blown public humiliation and having been called a 'little b**ch" which I obviously challenged immediately and was cut down saying I was too sensitive and she didn't mean it. And noone believes me that something quite prevalent in the world, is believed to also happen without consent through abuse and gradual brainwashing.

@MenSufferTooI'm so sorry to hear that is what it turned out to be & that you are treated this way, it is obviously a far more complex problem than I imagined and I'm very appreciative of you being so open and candid about it.

Hi @MenSufferToo

Just wanted to pop in and say welcome to you. I'm one of the peer moderators here on the forums. I am just catching up on posts from the weekend and came across yours. Thank you so much for sharing what I can only imagine must be a painful topic (can only imagine because I'm female). It's not something I'd considered that much. But yes, you're right about the jokes being so pervasive in society. I never really thought about how hurtful that must be for anyone who is sensitve to this. Gosh, it really is awful.

Anyway, I do hope you stay around here. I see you've got some nice and supportive responses.

Take care

Hanami

@hanami Thank you.

As I mentioned, this is such a topic of shame that of the three counsellors I've spoken to, one a sex therapist, noone had ever had this topic raised across decades of therapy each.

I think once it affects a man so much that he might seek therapy, the helpless, hopeless, and resignation is so high that they know there is no solution, and the shame is so high that they wont raise something pointless and result less in therapy in order to 'talk out' a dead end topic you've learned you'll be invalidated about.

If it does get any further it's a referred to a psychiatrist and you're treated, as mentioned, as delusional.

Imagine if a woman 3x the weight of many women, was told it doesnt affect her life and that she was crazy, the whole world would explode in seconds... and that's a woman who often is a candidate to naturally or surgically change her appearance to a significant extent.

It's so very hard seeing body positivity movements about women, that actively exclude men. Even the men's body positivity movement, is about big, strong, often hairy men, who have dad bods. There is little to nothing about height (except the 'short king' thing which I find quite demeaning and patronising compared to just a neutral stance where height is not a point of discussion, and men are actively selected against in all aspects of life for this (childhood bullying, exclusion, being invisible at parties and bars, ignored on dating apps, even in the workplace the same discrimination women face for being 'weaker' shorter men also suffer from), and ABSOLUTELY nothing positive about size.

It's just tiring feeling like everyone hates, or at least thinks less of, me for something that has dictated the shape of my life since I was a boy when jokes started and I noticed other boys in changerooms swimming etc.

Just tired of it and it'll never change, ever.

In trying to understand it, just imagine that you knew, and daily had it pointed out to you on TV etc and by friends, and many times by partners, that no matter what you do you will be in one core way the worst sexual experience of their life, no matter how good the rest of it, and rest of you, is, and that people who are the monsters in the stories from their life, all far eclipse you in a way you can never provide for your partner no matter how much you love them.

It's soul destroying. Truly. And once you have this beaten in, it does not ever matter what any partner says, they don't have to say a thing, because you've had enough feedback to know where you stand and hope they settle for you despite the fact you're not what they really want and are used to from every other man they've been with, even others who are wildly inferior are still better than you can ever hope to be.