Men Who Don't Respect Women Tend To Use 11 Condescending Phrases Way Too Often
Wirestock Creators | Shutterstock There are plenty of men who claim to respect women, but not all of them are being fully transparent. For example, they may say this, but continue using condescending phrases, even when they know they're being annoying or offensive. Some of them love the idea of having a girlfriend or a wife, but deep inside they don't respect women enough to ever be real partners in life or in work.
There are certain phrases men are more likely to say when they don’t respect you. Recognizing these statements for what they truly are could mean the difference between finding a good man and wasting your time on guys who will probably never see you as a true equal.
Men who don't respect women tend to use 11 condescending phrases way too often
1. ‘It’s just a joke’
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While it may seem innocent enough, this is one of the phrases men say when they don’t respect you in conversation. It’s not only annoying, but largely representative of a larger issue of deflection, specifically in men.
According to psychologist Dr. Steven Gans, deflection is a coping mechanism that allows people to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, giving them an escape route to sidestep uncomfortable emotions like guilt, shame, and embarrassment when they’re called out. Equally dismissive to your genuine emotions and isolating for the perpetrator, a reliance on “jokes” to degrade or disrespect others never comes from a healthy place.
2. ‘It’s not a big deal’
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While other people can validate our internal conflicts and support our emotions, nobody has the power to tell us how to feel. This is especially true if he's a man and the goal is to convince you that something they chose to do that hurt, offended or burned you “isn't a big deal." It's a classic silencing tactic.
Empowerment coach Cindy Watson says that men who are uncomfortable expressing emotions or empathizing with others will often try to gaslight to avoid conversations that require vulnerability. While this isn't just a man problem, men and boys are uniquely socialized to never show weakness and taught that vulnerability is a weakness.
This doesn't excuse their use of condescending phrases or disrespect toward women, but it does add some insight into why it's so pervasive.
So don’t shrug off your true concerns and emotions for the sake of someone else’s misguided comfort. If you do, you could be missing some of the big signs that a man isn't going to respect you. And you deserve to be understood, or at the very least, heard.
3. ‘You’re too sensitive’
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According to psychotherapist Amy Morin, gaslighters typically resort to emotional invalidation or manipulation tactics to grasp at control in their relationships. Men who don't respect women will extend this manipulation over time to make it harder to notice.
Shaming you for your emotions with a condescending phrase like this is not just disrespectful, it's a form of gaslighting. They’re creating a false narrative that favors them and dismisses you, sacrificing your emotional health for the sake of their own comfort.
A healthy conversation should help you feel secure, not disrespected, confused, and/or invalidated. Any man who can't offer you this likely doesn't respect women.
4. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’
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As a woman, it doesn't matter how educated, how accomplished or how competent you are, there will be a man who doesn't respect women who will say, "you don't know what you're talking about" at least once in your life. Hopefully this trend will decrease in future generations, as some observers suggest, but if you're dealing with Gen X or Boomer men with any regularity, you've probably heard this.
When they say this, men are trying to assert their dominance, undermine your intelligence, and disrespect you by belittling your contributions. Sometimes they do this because they feel insecure, other times it might be because they were raised to believe they were smarter than women. Regardless of why, they're hoping to take control of a conversation and/or make themselves look better.
Rooted in a place of insecurity, this kind of behavior only isolates them from healthy relationships (and even workplace relationships) with women. If they don’t actively check themselves when using condescending phrases like this, they are likely never going to respect you.
5. ‘That’s not what I meant’
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A man who doesn't respect women will often be caught saying condescending phrases like, "that's not what I meant!" when caught being unkind or offensive. While wanting to clarify your intentions is important in these moments, men like this don't protest this way to be clear, they do it to avoid responsibility.
What often comes next is for him to shift the blame back to you. If you’re upset by something, you must have taken it the wrong way. If you felt targeted, that’s on you. It’s phrases like this that continuously belittle and gaslight women, whether it’s in a professional setting or a personal relationship, making them feel equally misled and confused.
By responding with questions like, “Was that intended to hurt me?” or “Can you clarify what you meant?” you may be able to get them them to reconsider their words, spark some introspection, and most importantly, set boundaries for the kind of respect you expect from interactions.
6. ‘You’re not like other girls’
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Men who don't respect women tell you exactly who they are when they say, "You're not like other girls." They're telling you directly that the don't like or respect "other girls" and you should believe them. Yes, he's putting you on a pedestal to do this, but it's a pedestal you'll likely eventually fall from because his lack of respect will eventually make its way to you, too.
While it might not seem malicious, men who utilize condescending phrases like this hope that you’ll continue coming to them for external validation and self-confidence, further asserting their dominance or control over the relationship.
Generalizing the behavior and identities of women is not only disrespectful, but ignorant. As journalist Aileen Barratt writes, "women are done with compliments that pit us against each other."
7. ‘No offense’
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You've probably already discovered that people say “no offense” when they're about to say something incredibly offensive. When it comes to men who don't respect women, this condescending phrase is often used as a way to shirk any responsibility for what they choose to say.
Shifting the blame to someone who’s upset about a remark you made is a telling sign of insecurity. Someone who says this is not only failing to take accountability for being disrespectful, they're also placing unrealistic expectations on the people around you. One of the unfortunate side-effects of men who don't respect women habitually shirking responsibility is that shifting blame has actually been found to be socially contagious.
Grown adults, including men, are capable of taking responsibility for their choices. Those who are not self-aware enough to consider the impact of their own words are likely disrespectful to their core.
8. ‘If you loved me you would’
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Men who don't respect women tend to be incapable of seeing women as fully autonomous people. They often only see women as people from whom they can get something.
Labelled short-sighted and unfulfilling by psychosocial specialist Kendra Cherry, these types of transactional relationships tend to manifest in subtle ways across interactions and conversations. Phrases like this show that you’re only valued and worthy of support and love when you're “doing something” for your partner.
If you needed the reminder: you’re deserving of respect from everyone, even if you’re not “producing something” or actively supporting someone else. So, set your boundaries with disrespectful men and remind them that you’re capable of making decisions in your best interest.
9. ‘You owe me’
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A man who commonly talks about what you owe him is likely only seeing you as a vessel for personal fulfillment rather than as the dynamic, full human being that you are. Worse, when this phrase is used by men who don't respect women, it indicates that he feels entitled to your attention, body or more. That can be kind of scary.
Here's the reality: no one is entitled to anything from anyone else in a relationship other than respect. And yet, many men seem to feel they are owed something from the women in their lives, especially when it comes to romantic relationships.
Researchers from Case Western University found that "entitled men were more likely to hold hostile views of women." So if a man is letting you know clear as day that he feels you owe him something, chances are he has low to no respect for you.
10. ‘You’re being crazy’
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There's a long, long history of men who don't respect women calling them "crazy" to dehumanize and silence them. Only in the last few decades has this started being seen as the degrading, manipulative tool most people recognize it to be today.
Still, many women are still systematically silenced by men using this technique. Being told they're crazy when they express their opinions or emotions leaves many women feeling the need to more fully assert their presence, which often results in a man digging back in and calling her loud, aggressive or unfriendly.
From professional interactions to personal conflicts at home, being told you're crazy by the men you are supposed to be able to trust will often undermine a woman's confidence. She may even start buying into the idea that she's unstable, which is a cruel tactic only a man who doesn't respect women would utilize.
11. ‘You’re so needy’
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Men who don't respect women are often shocked when women express a need. Often, they respond by using a condescending phrase instead of being supportive, which does enormous damage to relationships, both personal and professional.
Expressing your needs is an important aspect of healthy communication that informs the best relationships. You should want to be on the same page, able to support one another, and ensure that miscommunication and resentment don’t slowly sabotage your connection.
This kind of communication is often impossible with insecure and disrespectful men, who either don’t respect women’s genuine emotions or struggle to be vulnerable themselves. Feeling weak or embarrassed in healthy conversations about emotions, they isolate themselves or shame their partner into doing the same.
Instead of accepting the emotional intelligence of another and learning from it, they degrade the women in their lives. If a woman hears a many say something like this, it's best to address it right away and make clear you won't tolerate it or it can grow into something much worse overt ime.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories
