I loved the article linked, and I want to read more about trans folks (both directions) and how they saw differences in their lives, personally. Beyond that, I find it very hard to live life as a man (I can't compare to a woman's life, so I won't say theirs is harder or easier on average compared to mine) and I have been a man since birth.

NOTE: I'm not looking for troll comments in replies (or for folks to try and rope me into some toxic anti-something culture/group). I understand this is a sticky subject, so please take the most-positive interpretation of my words below, as I am not a good writer or speaker.

When I recently discovered, at mid-life, that I could have been a stay at home dad, I was amazed that I went through my whole life striving for a career when all I really want is to take care of my home and kids, and have someone else make the money and do the career stuff. It never even occurred to me that I could choose to do the "woman's work" as a full-time homemaker, and find a partner that had a career. Now, I am stuck being the career person for at least another 5 or 10 years (while my wife tries to build a career, which she prefers over home-making) and I have to go through daily crap that I hate, rather than spending all my time with my son and maybe other kids I could have had. I'm just lucky my wife enjoys working and wants to build a career to support our family.

When I got married, my wife didn't want to change her name (for various reasons that are extremely valid) and I didn't mind that. However, I wanted to have the same name as my possible future kids because it's hard to do things like pick them up after school. So, I changed my name to my wife's last name. Lucky for me, the state that I resided in and the state that I was married in were both of the 9 out of 50 (at the time, not sure today) which allowed a man to take the last name of his wife when married (again, I am not sure about same-sex marriages so I can't comment). If not, I would have had to spend thousands and months of my time to change my name. Interestingly, I also had several people comment straight to my face (or behind my back, which I heard about) that me changing my name wasn't what a man did, it wasn't manly, etc.

The biggest issue: I also have trouble finding my own spaces where I can be supported, not even just with other men. Sure, traditionally men gathered in pubs or lodges and they could talk about men's issues, and perhaps those still exist today. However, there is no club or place for a guy like me, who is not into sports or anything, and where I would rather talk about my problems and how to solve them without blaming women, getting crass about sex and women's bodies, or talking about the things I enjoy. Sure, I can go to a game store and talk to folks about my hobbies, or I can discuss things here on HN about tech, but that's not my everyday life. Also, I found that after 10 years with various "professionals", that a therapist is NOT a replacement for friends and an open environment. I want to discuss my issues with stress and anxiety, I want to discuss my marriage issues, and I want to talk about my hobbies with men who won't tell me to divorce my wife, get a girlfriend on the side, or tell me to "suck it up". I basically want to be accepted much like women seem to accept each other, and will just listen to each other even if they don't understand or don't care about some topic. I have tried to make friends with women in groups, but they are always thinking I have ulterior motives, and I don't disagree with their pattern-matching in that area because many men do have ulterior motives for befriending women. When I was in college, one of my favorite things to do was go into the dorm room next door with the 3 women who lived there, and I would sit and talk to them about various topics, I don't even remember what. I never thought about sex or relationships with them, I just enjoyed time with them as friends. After a while, other men in the dorms would tell me I should stop hanging out with them, because I would turn into a woman, or they would say "so and so is such a BITCH, why are you in there all the time? are you fucking them?" In any case, I stopped going in there, through social pressure, and to this day I regret caving to that pressure.

Anyways, this was just on my lunch break, so I have to go work, but I have this empty hole inside myself that needs a social connection where I can talk and not be judged, and where I also don't get that toxic social negativity about blaming some other group for my problems. Women, feminists, liberals, etc. are all blamed for the problems I face, but I don't see anything in their platforms that say, "We're out to get 'ok_dad' and everyone should make his life harder in subtle ways". I just want to be me, and be accepted for it, and for people not to ascribe my anger/stress/anxiety as some nebulous factor of my personality only due to being a man or being some ethnicity or class or whatever.

AGAIN: I do not want to get into a fight over this, here on HN or anywhere else, so please don't try to pivot my words into hating some other group or try to blame my ills on another group or person; my problems are my own and the ones that are structural in society are due to the weird things that happen when different groups interact, not because some group is trying to make my life, or men's lives, harder.