Have you got any weird questions FROM the opposite gender?

Cryophilia@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 168 points –

Misread the title of the other post which made me think of this question.

I, as a male, have had multiple women ask me how we ride bikes without smashing our balls.

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One that used to really grind my gears was "oh, you're babysitting today?"

No, they're my kids. I'm their father.

"No, I mean, you're giving Mom a break?"

FFS.

Depends on the situation. I'm working and my wife is currently a SAHM because the little one is quite tiny indeed. When I get home after work I take the baby off her hands for a while because I KNOW my wife had a more exhausting day than I did because of the little demonsangels. And anything the 3yo needs, I'll be there for her so she doesn't bother mom with everything.

Sometimes it does feel like I'm babysitting or giving her a break, because she for sure spends way more time and energy on them throughout the day.

Ok, you just struck a nerve here, that shit drive me crazy.

I'm a first time father of a 6 months old and I love him to death. I want to spend every waking moment with him so I take up as much "baby works" as possible since his birth. Bath, feeding, changing, play, exercise, going outside, doctor appointments, I do all those things.

And EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN TIME I got asked "where's the mother?", "Is she busy today so you're babysitting?", "Why you have to babysit today?"

HAVE TO? BITCH! This is my fuckin pleasure, I'm craving it, I'm addicted to this little poop machine. GTFO!

I want to yell at their face "THIS IS MY SON, I LOVE HIM, CAN'T I JUST BE WITH HIM!?"

My wife admitted that I do a much better job taking care of our baby. I am kind of "extra careful" type of person and I've been taking care of foster newborn kittens for a decade, and believe it or not but some skills does transfer over. Infants is basically function on pure instinct, and I'm damn good at anticipate it. I can accurately translate my son's cry 90% of the time. He has 3 distinct cries for hungry, sleep, and diaper change, then later another "i'm bored" cry.

My wife would often call me on the phone to have me listen to his crying and ask what'd he want.

I'm a damn good father and I'm proud to take care of him. I don't have to do it, I GET TO do it!

Brother, you got it exactly. Being a parent isn't a chore I'm doing, it's my primary vocation.

Honestly with how oblivious most men are to the amount of work the average mother does, this is not a weird or stupid question. Insensitive, sure. Traditional gender roles still spill over into conversation, especially with older folks. The absolute least a father can do is aim to carry an equal share of the load of having children. The bitter reality is that this does not happen nearly as much as it should, hence comments like these.

Moms are underrated as fuck.

I think it's acceptable if the mother isn't working and the father is basically the breadwinner. Which, y'know, used to be economically viable. But if both parents are sharing the financial load then they should share the parental load as well. And even if a dad is working, he should still be a dad on the weekends and after work. All children need a good father figure.

Yep, absolutely agree. Thanks for seeing the nuance.

Yeah. It's awful how when society changes to give women more responsibility (financially) that the idea of them looking solely after the children is still expected, even though they are having to work and it dates back to when they were housekeepers.

Am I missing something? Aren't the people asking the man if he's giving mom a break the ones perpetuating the "moms are expected to raise children" stereotype? The guy in this scenario is simply doing father things, it's the assumptive person asking the question that's hanging onto old beliefs.

I'm all for fathers being fathers, and I think anyone who bothers to take their kid to the park on off times is probably in the same boat. It comes across as more than a bit condescending to have some random person imply that this activity isn't one that's normal for your family.

Yeah, that's exactly what's happening. People seem to be misconstruing my comment as endorsement of gender stereotypes? I don't know.

The assumption that the father is just giving mom a break is part of a systemic issue, that by and large women are still expected to bear the bulk of the burden of childcare. Older generations are much more likely to ask that assumptive question as they still see it as the norm. Hell, some families in my own personal circle fit that stereotype like a glove, to the detriment of the mother's mental health.

I think for what it's worth, as much as I advocate for a single working parent, I think a stay-at-home dad would also be a good thing and a working mother. I just think the capitalist system should allow families to live with one working parent.

Yep, nothing wrong with a stay at home dad. Unfortunately capitalist society axed the single income comfort for the vast majority of couples decades ago. I wonder what things would be like if our buying power remained at 1950s levels?

Probably like the 1950s but without the discrimination problems

Yeah. Dads should be dads and be involved in their children's lives.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing they shouldn't. It just seems really counterproductive to ever talk to a father as if he's a babysitter. As long as we're assuming Mom doing all the child rearing work is normal, and Dad's just a babysitter, we're leaving the door open to normalizing deadbeats.

That's exactly what I was trying to acknowledge with my comment above. I was just pointing out how common it actually is to come across folks that think that way and that they think that way due to systemic issues involving deadbeat dads and perpetuation of antiquated gender roles among other things.

I think the person asking a question like that shouldn't necessarily be treated with disdain as absent or uninvolved fathers is a rather large problem. Some men still lean into the gender roles without even thinking about it. Its still so normalized that its ultimately mother's responsibility to handle children and any additional involvement from the father is seen as charitable, it seems. Its a disappointing dynamic.

The absolute least a father can do

I find that these "bare minimum" assertions often crumble upon contact with any real-life scenario

Absolutely. That bare minimum is a distant unreachable fantasy for some married moms I know.

I don’t get it myself. I wanted to be a father for a long time and since I became one I’ve been loving it. Because you know, I wanted the relationship and all that rather than “you’re supposed to have kids.” It’s sad enough when people do that with dogs, never mind tiny vulnerable humans.

Tell the ladies that you have to pee before riding a bike so your balls are empty.

I always inform any ladies present when I need to urinate

your pee isn't stored in your balls!!!!!

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how we ride bikes without smashing our balls

I'm a man and I... I don't know...

For the benefits of the lurkers - this one comes up quite a bit - balls sit way higher / further forward than you think they do. All our stuff pretty much hangs off the pubic bone, and dangles down from there. We have to lean way forward to actually squish anything from underneath.

You get the same question if you slackline. It’s like…my balls aren’t there dude…

Quite a memory from the childhood.

We were competing at who could smash into the wall with their bike at the highest speed. You know, just smashing into it with the front wheel, coming to a sudden stop.
Ouch.

Kids are stupid xD. My bike memory like that is our parents for one of those BMX bikes from a garage sale. The ones with the bars coming out the wheels for tricks.

My sister, brother, and I decided those were for carrying additional people, so obviously having one driving, one standing in the rear, and one standing on the front would be fun. But in our infinite wisdom we decided going down the concrete driveway was a bad idea, so we decided to go down the dirt hill (which had a steeper incline).

We had one tame wipeout and decided to go for round two. This time we made it to the bottom of the hill (where the trees and branches/debris are) and wiped out. It wasn't pretty lol. No hospital but a few road rashes (or the dirt equivalent) and other various cuts and bruises led to us going inside to our mom for intervention.

She was not happy. The next day, the bike was gone.

You know how when you think about breathing, you start to "think" about breathing? How it moves in and out of the body? And then you learn all other weird things about breathing?

Do you really want to understand ball science? To understand where things move and go around and flex?

Why I'm trying to say is sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

Quite a few.

  • “How do you sleep on your stomach with your breasts?”

  • “How do you see down below your breasts when you need to look to the ground?”

  • “Do the size of your breasts alter what size clothes you buy?”

  • “How can you not swim? Don’t breasts float like basketballs?”

  • “Does having breasts ever make you feel you’re wearing your weakness?”

  • “How do you clean so much hair while taking a shower?”

  • “Do things ever fly up your skirt, and what do you do?”

  • “How do lesbians have physical fun time?”

“How do you see down below your breasts when you need to look to the ground?”

Do you just have enormous jugs or have you known a lot of particularly dumb men?

“Does having breasts ever make you feel you’re wearing your weakness?”

Ah ok so the second one

I'd say a lot of dumb men. Mine aren't even that big, probably average by the best judgment.

“How do you see down below your breasts when you need to look to the ground?”

You use mirrors, right?

“How do lesbians have physical fun time?”

Probably playing Wii U, like everyone else.

Most of us don't need mirrors though, we simply look down. And there are many forms of lesbian bedroom activity, the most common being using fingers in lieu of the sixth limb men have.

You use mirrors, right?

I think they meant that as a joke. Obviously, even if someone had extraordinarily large breasts, they could just peek over them or move them to side.

  • “How do lesbians have physical fun time?”

Ok, that one I don't understand.

It takes line 10s of adult research to find a whole range of possibilities.

Bro's tacitly admitted he's mediocre at best in bed

For real, does the entirety of a sexual encounter consist of penis-in-vagina for him? I prefer there to be like an hour of foreplay and I'm a dude. I mean I could go right away too, but the feeling is very, very different for myself too, not just my partner.

It takes line 10s of adult research to find a whole range of possibilities.

Plus it's a fairly commonly researched topic amongst male teenagers... or so I've heard.

Welp, I guess that solved the "breasts or ass" question for this guy.

  • “How can you not swim? Don’t breasts float like basketballs?”

Lol, this idiot. If breasts made people float on water. We would've used artificial wearable breasts to float instead of tubes!? Such stupidity!

“How do you sleep on your stomach with your breasts?”

Natural breast tissue moves to the side so it's often not an issue, however for women with larger breasts or for women with dense breast tissue, it can still be painful or uncomfortable.

For women with breast implants over the pectoral muscle, the implants don't slide to the side and so it would be quite uncomfortable for them to lie or sleep on their stomach.

If a BF of mine ever asks that, his bed better be a tempur pedic.

I like when girls sleep on top of me, I swear I'm not fat I'm just comfy

This question actually came from another dude, but similar energy: I have a deep voice, so they asked, if it's relaxing to feel those bass vibrations in my body whenever I talk.

This one is amazing. One of those ones that goes so far past dumb it becomes funny.

When you think about it, low humms sound soothing so... I guess he was right? I do enjoy humming to myself sometimes.

Well... Is it? :p

It for sure is. Like a goddamn built-in subwoofer.

I just had never thought about it before the guy asked, because obviously, I kind of grew up with that voice.

I know it's not technically what you said, but I did envision a baby with a Michael Clarke Duncan voice, and I found it pretty funny!

My mum does like to tell the story that when I was in like first or second grade, she attended some stage show that we were doing. And when I said something on stage, another mum whispered to her "Wow! What a deep voice that boy has!".

I do also remember not actually having that big of a voice change during puberty, so yeah, that is perhaps closer to the truth than one might expect. 🙃

Actually weird question that Ive been puzzling.

You know those anime girls who try to be obnoxiously cute, where they raise their voice to a high pitch? Then off screen, they're back to their regular tone?

For people with high pitched voices... Is that a choice?

I think, it has to do chest voice vs. head voice.

Basically, when you vibrate your vocal cords, then depending on the frequency, it can either resonate with your chest cavity or with your head cavity. The chest cavity is larger, so it resonates at a deeper frequency and the resonance is louder, which is why most of us use chest voice while talking normally.

But yeah, as you go up, there's a bit of a range where you have to put more force into making your vocal cord vibrations heard, because at those frequencies, it does not resonate well with either chest or head cavity.

And then beyond that, you get into the range where it resonates well with the head cavity, so it's again not as taxing anymore to speak in that range (although still usually more taxing than chest voice, because it just resonates less loudly).

So, even with my deep chest choice, I do also have relatively good range into the upper registers, because well, my head cavity isn't particularly larger than others'.
But I have heard that some people cannot tap into their head voice, not without vocal training anyways.

Sometimes I get a particular kind of headache. Listening to loud music with heavy bass can help ease the headache. Singing along to my playlist of songs I might sing at karaoke from my belly loudly also can help ease the pain a bit. So yes, I guess it can be relaxing.

In high school a female classmate asked me: "Do you masturbate?", and I answered "I don't need to answer you that." Well, I was actually uncomfortable by the fact that most people my age likely did, but I actually did not because I found masturbating disgusting. I thought they would think I was too odd for not masturbating lol

in 6th grade we'd go around asking the girls "do you masticate?". most would answer indignantly "no, that's disgusting!". then we'd ask them why they swallow ther food whole, like a snake.

ok, we were assholes

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I found it super uncomfortable to answer that in high school.

Then in my 20s, I'd go, "Yeah haha I guess I do."

And now my 30s, "I jag off twice a day. Three times on a good day!"

And every time, id get the same kinda approved nod.

Either masturbation has become normalized or I just give jerk off vibes.

If you would have said "no" I'm sure they just wouldn't have believed you. I was asked that question and said no because I was embarrassed. They didn't believe me.

I got asked that by a gaggle of 18 yo boys while I was waiting on an elevator in boot camp, trying to embarrass me or something since I was quiet. I looked at them weirdly and said, "Of, course", like they had just asked if I breathed air. The elevator opened just then and I walked in and though I didn't get to see their faces, they didn't get in. It's small victories over bullies like that that made me realize bullies are weak AF.

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I have had more than a few girls ask if they can hold my dick while I piss out of curiosity and not for sexual reasons. Most of them seemed to have thought it would have kick like a firehose. I can assure you: That only happens after I've had a large soda during a 3 hour movie in a theatre.

Most of them seemed to have thought it would have kick like a firehose.

You let them?

Ha, kind of related: I asked one of my early girlfriends if I clould pull the tampon string when she needed to change it. She let me.

Have you ever been asked to fish one out when it got stuck? Be prepared, it may happen one day

I find this incredibly hard to believe

Why? When you live together comfortably with a group of people, things like this become normal.

I was also surprised by how honest about my sexuality I could be with girls, when we spend 2 months together, almost all day long.

Most of my friends are women but I don't think they'd ever ask me to do this. But OP is gay so it makes sense knowing that.

I’ve been asked this by a number of ex girlfriends. This isn’t that weird.

I mean I had the same with ex girlfriends too, but friends??

Just lock a group of young men and women in a cage and see what happens ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Oh yay, this has finally become askreddit...

"Lemmings, what is the sexiest sex you have ever sexed?"

Lemmy is still overwhelmingly white, male, young, and nerdy. Until it gets a more diverse userbase, it won't be askreddit.

I don't know where you're getting your info, but Lemmy trends older, around 30 to middle aged and up. And there a lot of women here as well.

Questions asking "hey gender, what does X something gender?" is so stereotypical askreddit it's eye rolling.

I'd love to see the data on the "age 30 and up" because the people I interact with have the worldly knowledge and emotional maturity of a teenager far more often than not.

I suspect that data is out of date, from before the reddit exodus.

Edit: and perhaps women are keeping a low profile, but from casual observation I see more trans women than cis women on lemmy, which is insane when you think about the demographics involved.

Heyo, run of the mill cis girl here, middle age (that pains me to say it but it’s reality), we’re here. And I’ve honestly noticed the demographic being a lot of mid-30’s and up here. Not exclusively of course but more so than Reddit

I'm not sorry for pointing out your topic question is blandly stereotypical reddit drivel.

Do better.

I dunno, I figured it was a response to seeing the “do you have any questions FOR the opposite gender” thread. And it seemed an appropriate response. THAT question might be considered stereotypical Reddit drivel. This one is more interesting, simply because it’s a step removed.

I'm gonna ask. Is there a difference between white and caucasian?

Is there a difference between white and caucasian?

“Caucasian,” the classification from when we thought race was biological rather than social, referred broadly to people from Europe, and some from Northern Africa, and parts of the Middle East and West Asia. Caucasoid was one of three, alongside Mongoloid and Negroid.

Now in North American English “Caucasian” refers to people who are generally white and from European descent. It is sometimes seen as having a more polite or scientific connotation than “white.”

It can also refer to people from the Caucasus region.

Oh yeah, people from the Caucasus region of Europe/Asia aren't white in America anymore

Probably? Not in colloquial usage but I'm sure there's an academic difference.

How DO we ride bikes without smashing our balls?

What do you mean ? Left ball on left pedal, right ball on right pedal

Exactly, and I just throw my dick over my left shoulder so it doesn’t get tangled up in the chain.

First comment to get a cringe out of me as I thought of the spiky pedals. Congrats

We do smash our balls, in fact. That's why cyclist pants have balls protection.

I dunno about you, but my ass is on the seat, and the package generally stays above my legs relative to the seat.

Depends on the kind of seat too. If they're thinner ones it's harder to avoid, especially if you're leaning forwards. It's not hard with normal wider seats for me, the actual reason I have a seat cushion for my bike is to protect my ass when the terrain is rough.

I, as a male, have had multiple women ask me how we ride bikes without smashing our balls.

Been married for years when my wife asked me that... "How do you sit down?"

O_o

How many times have you seen me naked now?

Many women seem to assume that penis and balls are attached actually between the legs, just like where their vaginas are. They are surprised, if they're told, the whole assembly is actually more "at the front".

The reverse is also true, BTW. A lot of boys struggle finding the vagina because from their perspective it's waaay too low.

We barely understand our own bodies, it's not surprising that we have problems with other sexes bodies.

Yep, one of my first times messing around I got my hands down a girl's pants and was very confused for the first few inches, but got there eventually.

Hahaha, my second long term girlfriend was a bit...naive... tbh... We've been naked many times, but when we first went to a public sauna(which is textile-free here)she asked me exactly that.

Maybe it was the sagging old man's balls or something. But she was somewhat shocked.

Years ago there was a profile on PoF that would hit me up every couple of months asking if they could castrate me. (I'm a trans woman)

It was weird, they weren't pushy or aggressive, more just, "Hey, you don't want them, right? Seems like a win win." Sometimes I'd play along and ask questions and stuff, but they wouldn't say much, and never actually made any effort to meet up.

I haven't thought about them in years, hahaha, but seeing your question brought it all back.

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As a cis dude who's asexual, I've gotten weird questions from straight dude bros... one asked me if I "had to be super careful" to not get myself pregnant. Honest question coming from a person our country's education system has failed.

Are you sure that wasn't just an attempted joke about the phrase asexual reproduction?

I've had people wonder ask how I cross my legs (not foot-on-knee but actually crossed over) without my balls getting in the way or damaged

no opposite gender has ever asked me any weird question. I guess I am lucky :D