I have never felt discriminated against. Nor have I ever seen any discrimination towards other men I have worked with. Sometimes I think maybe we find what we are looking for.

Whats up with this management thing?

To tell you the truth. I have not run into discrimination on the black front in the profession. I have been given a few pokes about men being in leadership positions. I think work environments are going to have a few deals everywhere. Its always been my belief that the profession is hard on people going in. Another deal has always been the doctor situation. I were the name tag, tell em Im there nurse, and still get "thanks doc". In the end the unimportant bs is not worth my time. Some people are not going to like you. Thats their deal.

"Laugh at yourself and you will never be unamused"

Hi, I'm Frank, if you didn't notice. This is my first post. I'm a newly licensed LPN and would have started orienting on my first job this Thurs. if I hadn't received a jury summons So I can't say I can give to much of an overall outlook; but here is how I felt:

I was encouraged in my path by women; my wife, sister, mother, and a couple of friends who are RNs. The only time I felt a real sting about being male and a nurse(student at the time) was from a male doctor. I've received some ribbing from some guys (Gay Focker jokes). A couple of my instructors made some ignorant sexist comments, but I didn't mind; they meant well and I loved them. They treated me well. The closest I think I came to discrimination was during my first interview:

DON, "Perhaps I shouldn't say this, but, the one problem I've noticed with male nurses is that they don't multi-task well like women do. Can you multi-task and how do you organize these?"

My reply, "I'm sorry, one question at a time please. What was the first one?"

I got the job.

FranK

I took the rank out of crank and put it in Frank.

Originally Posted by Dayray

Yes it happens.

Some times though it's hard to decide what is discrimination and what is just a reflection of the cultural norm. The simple sad fact is that it is currently "cool" for women to be man haters.

My wife was talking about this, the other day. She was with a bunch of other women talking about how men are dogs and so on. She didn’t join in and someone said, "oh I forgot, you love men and think they are great". She doesn’t think all men are great but we have a very good marriage and she knows that ALL men are not dogs and doesn’t give in to the peer pressure to join in on the man hating so thus, she is made to feel not a part of the group.

To make the situation more complicated, In many cases the man haters have good reason to hate individual men. Now I'm not saying that their attitudes should be extended to all men but I can see why they have a hard time not generalizing. The things other men do to women continually astonish me. We live in a confusing time where shifting gender roles have left men floundering and having difficulty finding a mold to fit.

Back in the old days men were strong, domineering and providers for their family. It wasn’t seen as politically incorrect to boss women around or to play knight in shining armor to their damsel in distress. Now its wrong to be domineering yet it is even worse to be sissy or XXXXX whipped so this leaves guys with a very thin line to walk and honestly it is impossible to fit everyone’s expectation of what men should be in today’s world. I think this is what leads to so many men letting women down.

Still I find comments made by many women offensive now I don't go running to file a complaint and I can't even fault them because I also hear them talking about the awful, awful things men have done to them. It makes me sad for both men and women.

I have also seen real discrimination and been subject to it on both racial and gender basis. The problem here is that most of the discriminators are not evil villains that set out to make all men pay (although sometimes they are). They instead are otherwise perfectly nice people compelled by (many times repressed) feelings of resentment toward men or by stereotypical views (unrealistic) of what is proper for one gender or the other. It is therefore impossible to verbally convince these people that they are doing something wrong. It is however possible with lots and lots of patients to prove yourself to some (not all) of them. Yet the price for this is often too high. I mean how much abuse do you want to take to prove yourself to someone that hates you?

I used to work at a place where I was the continual butt of jokes. Where I was always suspected of not working or of stealing or hiding ...etc...Etc. I know that some of the accusations made toward me were out and out attempts to get me fired but I also know that some people actually believed them and that I never had these problems before I went into nursing. My manager knew that the reason I was being harassed was because I was the only male on the unit and she made it clear in her comment to me. "...(Sigh) this is the price you have to pay for choosing to work with all women and remember you made that choice"

Now I work in place with a great staff that judges me based on my performance and personality rather then my gender. Still I recently experienced a situation where my gender was brought under scrutiny. It was in attempt to protect me from some harassing comments and actions made by 1 staff member and was not meant to make me feel out of place but to keep that from happening. Still I have been made to feel even more uncomfortable by this situation then I was by the one fool that choose to harass me. So is that discrimination? Or is it just "the price I pay for choosing to work with all women?"

The problem is that things are made even harder to deal with because society does not see me as normal for choosing to be a nurse. My choice of profession is the subject of jokes and whispers. Hell, my mom doesn’t even talk to me about work and other family members have openly expressed strong disapproval about men being nurses.

I don’t know the answer all I know is that I have a feeling of awkwardness that I can't seem to shake and that it is effecting my performance and attitude toward work. I’ve always dealt pretty well with crappy comments made by people but now I'm having a hard time seeing there comments or inquires as innocent questions/observations and just seeing judgment and condemnation in their eyes. It would be simple if my choice to become a nurse was only based on the income and working hours, I however really love being a nurse and don’t have a desire to leave it.

So am I right and society wrong? Or the opposite? Lol I'm not sure? All I know is that it's frecken hard to be different

"My wife was talking about this, the other day. She was with a bunch of other women talking about how men are dogs and so on. She didn’t join in and someone said, "oh I forgot, you love men and think they are great". She doesn’t think all men are great but we have a very good marriage and she knows that ALL men are not dogs and doesn’t give in to the peer pressure to join in on the man hating so thus, she is made to feel not a part of the group."
Your wife is most likely in a satisfying relationship unlike her co-workers.
It's a lot easier for them to blame all men for their failed relationships and label them all as liars and cheaters rather than to admit that they made some bad choices of their own in life.

"To make the situation more complicated, In many cases the man haters have good reason to hate individual men. Now I'm not saying that their attitudes should be extended to all men but I can see why they have a hard time not generalizing. The things other men do to women continually astonish me. We live in a confusing time where shifting gender roles have left men floundering and having difficulty finding a mold to fit."
We're all confused because it seems that nobody knows what they want in life and then we are let down when we don't get it.
I've worked in a female dominated profession long enough to see that the women who make those types of comments at work are so lonely and longing for a meaningful relationship but continuously get let down after they move in with a man they met 2 months ago at the local bar and wonder what went wrong.

"Back in the old days men were strong, domineering and providers for their family. It wasn’t seen as politically incorrect to boss women around or to play knight in shining armor to their damsel in distress. Now its wrong to be domineering yet it is even worse to be sissy or XXXXX whipped so this leaves guys with a very thin line to walk and honestly it is impossible to fit everyone’s expectation of what men should be in today’s world. I think this is what leads to so many men letting women down."

Just the other day I saw a commercial on TV that said it all.
They showed this hot sexy guy with long hair hanging in his face with a scruffy unshaven look and the female voice talked about having a guy with "the bad boy look without the bad boy behavior."
I can't count the number of women I've worked with who think it's so hot to have a guy who picks fights with other guys and pushes his weight around, they feel so protected by them and think it's so romantic until the same guy starts hitting them after a while.
They can't figure out that a guy who is aggressive toward other men on a regular basis for small stupid reasons is also a likely candidate for a woman beater as well. How many times do you need to get your butt kicked until you figure that out?

I recently went out with a straight guy co-worker who lied to the woman he was interested in and said that he was a firefighter instead of a nurse because he felt he couldn't compete with another guy who really was a firefighter.
He'd been rejected many times over and passed up by women for a guy in a more "masculine" profession.

Originally Posted by RN34TX

[b]
I recently went out with a straight guy co-worker who lied to the woman he was interested in and said that he was a firefighter instead of a nurse because he felt he couldn't compete with another guy who really was a firefighter.
He'd been rejected many times over and passed up by women for a guy in a more "masculine" profession.

Wow he must have a lot of insecurities. I f I was going to pick a more a more masculine role, it certainly wouldnt be a Firefighter. Maybe someone like John Wayne, maybe, or maybe Robert Mitchum or Audie Murphy

Originally Posted by fergus51

None of them seem to get trouble from us female nurses. I could care less the gender of the nurse. I get SO sick of hearing that women are catty and women are the reason for all the problems in nursing, so there is no way I would ever start making generalizations about men.... Maybe I have grounds for a lawsuit too

Statements like these make me approach this thread with some trepidation. No, Fergus, I don't believe you would ever generalize about men, or any other group for that matter. However, the fact that you wouldn't do it, and have not seen it, does not equate to it not happening.

It is not a terribly prevalent problem. It isn't nearly as pervasive or as far reaching as the author of the initial article would have you believe. But, there are those nurses with an anti-male bias, and most of us have run into it. Personally, I ran into it early on in my education as a nurse. Long story short, one of the instructors in our school (still there, as far as I know) believed that nursing was a "woman's profession," and worked very hard to make life very difficult for males in her classes. She admitted the truth of this to a class full of female students.

And I won't get into all the stories related to me by other male nurses. Yes, it happens. One of the bigger problems men face when trying to make it stop is the attitude "What's the matter, can't take a little kidding from a woman?"

Kevin McHugh

Originally Posted by teeituptom

Wow he must have a lot of insecurities. I f I was going to pick a more a more masculine role, it certainly wouldnt be a Firefighter. Maybe someone like John Wayne, maybe, or maybe Robert Mitchum or Audie Murphy

LOL! That same thought crossed my mind as well. When it was going on I kind of viewed it as overcompensating and the "homo-erotic half-naked fireman" type calender came to mind.

Originally Posted by kmchugh

Statements like these make me approach this thread with some trepidation. No, Fergus, I don't believe you would ever generalize about men, or any other group for that matter. However, the fact that you wouldn't do it, and have not seen it, does not equate to it not happening.

It is not a terribly prevalent problem. It isn't nearly as pervasive or as far reaching as the author of the initial article would have you believe. But, there are those nurses with an anti-male bias, and most of us have run into it. Personally, I ran into it early on in my education as a nurse. Long story short, one of the instructors in our school (still there, as far as I know) believed that nursing was a "woman's profession," and worked very hard to make life very difficult for males in her classes. She admitted the truth of this to a class full of female students.

And I won't get into all the stories related to me by other male nurses. Yes, it happens. One of the bigger problems men face when trying to make it stop is the attitude "What's the matter, can't take a little kidding from a woman?"

Kevin McHugh

That was my take on it as well. The article was a little (ok, a lot, actually) overly dramatic about male discrimination in nursing.

But the "little kidding" type comments that I get from female co-workers and managers every day (99% of which I consider to be completely harmless) as well as the physical boundaries such as touching my hair or rubbing my shoulders without asking me first are far more likely to get me into real trouble as a man if I were to say and do many of the same things to women.

There is definitely a double standard as far as what is considered inappropriate and harassment in the workplace depending on who is doing it to who.
The classes we have to take every year at work on that issue reflect it.
99% of it focuses on how men victimize women but will casually mention "Oh well I guess it could happen the other way around and has been documented on occasion" as if it's barely worth mentioning.

When did men get so thin skinned and overly sensitive, which decade did this happen in, maybe we can find a cure. I remember growing up no one was this sensitive, and we did see one he generally got stuffed into his locker at school.

Originally Posted by Demonsthenes

discrimination in nursing against men is wide spread, oppressive, and accepted. I agree with him completely with regard to the same. I am a male RN, a paralegal, and a biochemist.

Two points (from a woman)
1. I think nursing must be one of the very few female dominated fields. If we had a website for all the descrimination in all of the other fields that are male dominated, the internet would run out of space. Discrimination in any field is wide spread, oppressive, and aggressive-this is nothing new-except maybe to you.
2. Do you think that your position as a Biochemist is in a male dominated field? Have you even thought that a female biochemist wasn't a intelligent as you or some other man in your field? Have you noticed the same type of behavior in that field towards women as you have described happens towards men in nursing?
Just a thought.