I’m an honest and straightforward woman and I’m constantly punished for it! Men get to be “direct and a straight-shooter” and women get to be “tactful and delicate, or else.”

I once heard a guy start laughingly talking about how he'll do things like the dishes badly so his girlfriend will just do them instead, like he was getting one over on us. He went all shocked Pikachu when I told him, yes, we know. We tend to call it 'weaponized incompetence' in feminism, because so many men do it, it's exploitative, and we're fed up with it, but when we go along with it and just do the damn dishes it's because they need to be done and we're tired and don't want the fight over it.

Men really don't like it when they find out they aren't pulling one over on us when they think they're being maliciously clever. Men don't like it when they realize we see them.

Editing to add: They ALSO don't like it when we take it to the logical conclusion and tell them...so you'd prefer it if we believe that you're literally too stupid/incompetent to wash a dish? And if so, shouldn't that disqualify you from positions of leadership anywhere, handling sharp objects, etc?

*Men literally spend entire lifetimes lying to women to play the long game.

-> A teenage boy wants to get laid, so he tries it on with a lot of girls, acting with each as if he has deep feelings for them.

-> He selects the one he thinks will repay him the most for ongoing mininmal interest.

-> He begins a relationship with her. He is always looking around for another woman, because he feels like something is missing (he doesn't realise this is an internal feeling that he should be fixing). The girl grows up in this relationship, always pulling out all the stops to 'keep her man'. He knows to occasionally make a big display of romance, frequently enough that she keeps accepting his long periods of laziness in the relationship.

-> In previous generations, he would have married her soon, because he'd get a live-in servant and sex whenever he wanted, with or without her consent. In post-WWII generations, this has changed. Depending on culture, a lot of young men now move in with their girlfriends - for the sex and free laundry, now with split rent - without marrying her. This gives her the impression that they are working towards one day getting married, when in reality the man is still keeping an eye out for 'something better'. She keeps 'working to keep her man'.

-> Eventually they get married. Maybe he realised he was never going to bed any hotties, or he just realised that having the wife and kids was part of his image as a successful man. The woman thinks he is besotted, because he tells her so, and gazes lovingly into her eyes and occasionally drops her a compliment.

-> Every time she has niggling doubts, she looks around her at a culture that teaches that 'men are just that way' and women have to accept it. Her mum, grandmother, sister, aunt and friends all tell her this. All the media she sees tells her that Chandler eventually grows up and Mr Darcy eventually turns out to be kind.

-> They go through life like this. The man ostensibly has built his entire life on keeping his options open, with a woman he was never really crazy about, because he lied to her consistently for sixty years about how he felt. He learned to gaze at her, smile shyly, fake apologise when she's had enough. He planned wedding, anniversary and Valentines speeches about how she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He would leave her in an instant if his 23-year-old secretary winked at him.

If she gets a long-term illness, there is a 20% chance he'll leave her.

So, no, men are not more honest and straightforward than women. It is common for them to base their entire lives on a lie to a woman. When they moan about how women talk too much, argue too much and are too emotional, they are revealing that they dislike her honesty. They don't want to hear what's bothering her, they don't want to talk about what's wrong in their relationship and how to fix it. They want to be sullen while the woman falls into line. They carry this attitude when interacting with female coworkers, doctors, politicians, etc. 'Women talk too much and are too emotional' = I don't want to hear what they think and feel.

So why does this myth exist?

Maybe because men and women have different communication styles, but men communicate differently with other men than they do with women, whereas women communicate more or less the same with both sexes? So men understand each other, and assume a universal 'men are easier to work out'.

There is also a necessary difference in how men and women express anger. Men don't bother being polite to people they don't like. This could be part socialisation, part biology: they don't need to fear being argumentative, because they are built to be able to withstand a fist fight. Women naturally avoid physical violence, so when women are angry at a friend, or a waitress or coworker etc, they tend to stay polite, but try to communicate displeasure through being icy, or passive aggressive. Other women get the message easily: we are likely to ask what's wrong and try to resolve it - or sometimes, you get a long-standing passive aggressive rivalry with a colleague or sister-in-law.

To men, this behaviour is baffling. Because they cannot imagine trying to be nice to someone they hate, they think passive-aggression is two-faced, whereas their active aggression is just being a good bloke. They don't try to accommodate people they don't like: with a waitress they bully her till they get their way, with an ex-friend they don't try to include him socially, with a colleague they don't listen to him.

Men hold a stereotype that women in relationships give the silent treatment, rather than say why she's unhappy - but when the woman talks, he calls her a nag and wishes she'd shut up. Men emotionally withdraw all the time, only speaking to the woman to say 'What's for dinner?' It's mentioned specifically by Lundy Bancroft that they pre-plan this to make the woman desperate to know 'what she's done wrong'.

Last point: men have a pervasive idea that women are sneakily concealing our thoughts. As you say, OP, religions cast women as sly and devious. When men don't feel they have a complete understanding of a woman, they assume she is deliberately keeping something hidden - either in a deliberate attempt to be seductive, or because she's secretly evil. When a woman is quiet, men take it personally: they assume she must be keeping something from him, or trying to attract his attention. There's no way it's not about him, right?

In relationships they'll say, 'I don't know what she's thinking! What do women even want?!' There are probably more reasons for this than I can think of, but one is that they assume we are thinking about them. When they can't tell what we're thinking, maybe it's because they can't comprehend the bredth of things we think about. I've had lots of men tell me they don't know what I'm thinking, and it has always meant 'I don't know what you're thinking about me'. That's because I wasn't thinking about them. I was thinking about my work the next day, or remembering a childhood holiday, or wondering whether I'd enjoy horse riding, thinking about a problem my friend has, what time can I shower in my schedule today, thinking about a book or tv show, thinking about what's going on in world events or politics.

Men will be in relationships with women, not knowing that the woman has all this inside her. If he can't read her, maybe he should get to know her better.

tl,dr: It's a myth brought about by difference in communication styles, and men's unwillingness to consider how women think.

*Some

Maybe I am recalling this incorrectly, but I remember having read somewhere - and my anecdotal travel experience bears it out - that highly inegalitarian cultures tend to have the most formal rules of etiquette. Makes sense. If you fail to bow and scrape to your feudal overlord - aka tell him what you really think - you could well wind up dead.

This tracks absolutely with women’s versus men’s respective forms of speech and behavior. A woman who speaks her mind directly, or otherwise behaves in a confident, straightforward manner, rarely winds up dead for it, but she is punished in a thousand-and-one small and not-so-small ways. Unfortunately, by men and women alike.

So she perfects the art of indirectness, and is punished for that as well.

Everything men accuse women of is projection.

OK, let's view how "honest and straightforward" men are when it comes to the subject of domestic abuse and rape.

When famous men have suddenly come into the spotlight as being rapists, many people ask "Why didn't she report the rape at the time?" Cases in point, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby.

The women who has been raped *knows * she will not be believed by the police. Furthermore, if she makes a report to the police, such men can hire an army of goons to harass her privately and also plant newspaper stories of what a lying gold digger she is. He will be believed. Clearly these men are not being honest and straightforward. If the woman is honest and straightforward she will automatically be not only doubted, but actually attacked for doing so.

In the case of Nicole Brown Simpson, the cops used to ask for Simpsons autograph when being called to the home for domestic abuse. So the people she was calling to help were on her abusers side.

Women have learned from childhood they must monitor their own speech, always gauging the reactions/possible reactions of those to whom they are talking. Men seem straightforward because they just blunder through talking and face little to no consequences.

Men only want two things - primarily from women: sexual services and emotional labor. Everything they want is related to, a part of, or intrinsically associated with those two wants. And they will do whatever it takes to obtain those wants.

Elizabeth Holmes notwithstanding, women are actually less likely to commit white collar crime than men. Criminologists long chalked this up to the "Opportunity Factor" but the latest research shows even accounting for that, women still commit less white collar crime.

It even fits in with the Trad narrative- women are more nurturing and caring, while men are more "assertive." Assertive is really a flattering code word for selfish. Men as a class are indeed more selfish, more impulsive, more risk-taking, and more over-confident than women are. So this tracks. Of course they would commit the majority of white collar crime.

If an angel told me I had to pick a new mayor of ten people, 5 men, 5 women, and 7 were corrupt, I'd have to roll the dice on a woman.

Men are not simple, straightforward creatures filled with refreshing childlike candor any more than women are abstract, enigmatic creatures forever tangled in a complex web of psychological duplicity. We truly do live in a patriarchy when men have such excellent PR despite constantly proving they possess few of the virtues they assign to themselves.

Every woman who's been alive long enough has encountered male predators who were unnervingly good at lying, manipulating, gaslighting, and being shamelessly fake. But even the least threatening men out there talk shit (also known as gossiping), act passive-aggressive and petty, bottle up their true feelings, play the victim to fish for sympathy, weasel their way out of responsibilities, and brag about things that never happened. There's no reason to believe the average man wouldn't be a coward who takes the path of least resistance in a difficult situation. They don't want the consequences that come with being straightforward when there's stakes involved. It's easy for a man to be a straight shooter when it inflates his ego, but it's not so fun when it might get him in actual trouble.

I also think a lot of people conflate being tactless and blunt with being sincere and guileless. They assign a false sense of integrity to men who they think are "keeping it real" when they actually just lack basic empathy for how their words might affect someone. And that's not even taking into consideration that a lot of men are perfectly aware that what they're saying comes off as rude or inappropriate, they just can't resist the opportunity to be an asshole.

Of course, it doesn't work that way for women. Our straightforwardness is simply ignored because men don't care about what we have to say to begin with (and when the issue can no longer be comfortably disregarded, they will blame us for their failure to pay attention). That, or our straightforwardness is punished because we were a little too honest and expressed some kind of sentiment unbecoming of an emotional support human who isn't supposed to have needs, emotions, or opinions of her own.

This is spot on. Yes, interactions with the two sexes have a very different feel, but it's not because men are more honest. It's because their deceptions come from a place of entitlement. When they sneak and lie to you, it's because they feel you have no right to know what they are doing.

It's because if women were more honest and straightforward, more men would kill us.

That's a myth that needs to die. It lies at the heart of patriarchal religions and legends -- the honorable man, the devious women leading him into temptation -- and acts as justification for the oppression, abuse, punishment and killing of women.

It also serves to gaslight women into overlooking bad behavior or ignoring gut instincts and red flags. And we internalize the message that we can't trust ourselves because we aren't to be trusted.

I've posted it before, but if you haven't read 'myth of the male bumbler' I strongly recommend it. And of course, Lundy Bancroft's Why Does He Do That?

[(https://theweek.com/articles/737056/myth-male-bumbler)]

Everything men want us to believe about ourselves is projection. They are masters of mean spirited gossip, betrayal, backstabbing, and manipulation. Of course I have felt let down and bullied by many women in my life, but I have never been afraid that a woman might rape and murder me. It is just not worth trying to form close relationships with men. With women, the reward is worth the risk. Women are actually capable of real bonding and intimacy.

This is an interesting topic. For the most part, it's just referring to stereotypes - on average men do tend to be a little more direct and blunt with everyday discussions, and women are less so. Maybe it's natural, maybe it's female socialization making women feel they have to be more supportive and indirect, but it is a real thing. Doesn't apply to every man or woman, of course - a large percentage of people don't fall within stereotypes.

But it only applies to everyday conversation topics. As you point out, men are more willing to cheat and lie. Men will weaponize incompetence, men will take advantage of the stereotype to be rude and insulting under the cover of "I'm just being honest", "I thought you women wanted men to express our feelings".

Interesting point about religions too - men created these religious stories, and shockingly God wants men to be in charge of women. It's actually absurd that even in relatively recent times (as religions go), Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard were able to make up the most ridiculous religious nonsense and gain a huge following and create a religion that negatively impacts so many people's lives. Never seen a woman do that.

I definitely don't think men are more honest than women, there's just that kernel of truth about them being more direct in unimportant social situations.

Regardless of all of this, it's not a contest. Individual women and men don't have higher/lower value based on whether the side they're on does more lying or not. Everyone should be seen as an individual. We don't go around talking about how green eyed people are most trustworthy than brown eyed people, or brunettes are most trustworthy than blondes. People's physical features don't define who they are as individuals, especially based on the behavior of others who look like them.

I feel like the image of men are simple minded doofuses has been carefully maintained as part of some giant gaslighting project.

That's a relatively modern invention created by TV. I don't remember that trope existing before Homer Simpson.

Patriarchy is indeed a "giant gaslighting project."

I admit, I'm not straightforward, I'm not dishonest, but im not the what you see is what you get type of person. I think I always try to be nice and polite, so as to not offend. I think its personality plus socialization. There's plenty of women who are straightforward, and don't mind to tell it like it is. I wish I could be more like those women, to be honest.

It is a total lie. Men are NOT straightforward unless they are totally comfortable that they are in the company of like minded men, or they have authority.
I speak of IRL.

I feel the same. When my ex came out as a TIM and would deliberately go about dropping info and decisions on me in ways I explicitly asked him not to, what slowed me from dropping his ass immediately was the thought that he was “too stupid and obviously bad at it” to be gaslighting me or doing things to hurt me on purpose. It was too obvious, he couldn’t be doing this maliciously and purposefully , that would be too fucking stupid, I have eyes! Me giving him the benefit of the doubt that he was just a fool and not being cruel was a big hurdle to get over to get to dumping him.

I have trouble believing it’s a planned coordinated effort to protect their own, but who knows. I do feel like individually they all sort of realize how us thinking they’re simpler and dumber creatures can be leveraged to their advantage.

An unrelated point, it’s so telling that depth and intelligence are only attributed to women in the way that we’re “too complex” to understand, and that all our intelligence goes to scheming and undermining men. The first point is to make acquiring our desires and demands by asking for them near impossible since they can deliberately miss our points if they’re allowed to interpret what we say however. The second point is probably pure projection, as men are the ones scheming to undermine us most of the time, it seems.

They go from men are smarter and more intelligent, we basically invented EVERYTHING (never mind the women they stole from or who supported their asses so they could have their leisure thinky time) to wow women are evil geniuses at making men sad :(((((

Absolutely to the last one. That's my father's favorite strategy for deflecting any accountability for his selfish behavior.

Not if they are trying to get laid

Society believes this b.s. because men are great liars.