Many guys will assume that girls don’t think being a guy in Egypt is hard because we have it way worse. The truth is that both of our daily struggles don’t have to cancel each other out. Just because someone points out that girls face many issues doesn’t mean we don’t understand that guys have their own set of battles to fight. There’s no need to downplay any of the scraps both genders deal with just because one of them has it worse. We asked 16 Egyptian guys what do they hate the most about being Egyptian guys and this is what we got.

1-“The fact that the Egyptian army is mandatory. At a time we should be figuring out our lives and building our future, we are obliged to join the army and waste an important bulk of our time.”

2-“I hate how it’s hard for Egyptian guys to get Egyptian women. It’s not easy because of the social stigmas, generalizations and expectations.”

3-“We are faced with many stereotypes with regards to work, lifestyle, marriage, etc. and therefore can’t easily get out of the box that society has trapped us in.”

4-“I hate that foreign guys in Egypt get more matches with Egyptian women on Tinder, because most Egyptian women think that Egyptian guys will label them as bad eggs while foreigners won’t. It’s just a generalization, and it’s not true.”

5-“The social norms and standards are so aggressive and oppressive for feminine and emotional guys, and that makes me mad. We don’t have enough liberty to express ourselves or our feelings. However, it disgusts me how guys express themselves sexually by assaulting and harassing women, because they don’t know any better. Guys actually think girls like this kind of attention and that that’s how ‘we’ flirt.”

6-“I can’t really say that I’m faced with many struggles but overall, the expected responsibility society is supposedly building me up for would definitely set me up to fail. I’m required to have enough money so I would handle and manage a house, raise a family and carry all the responsibility alone.”

7-“The fact that I get scared to death every time my sister, mother, daughter, girl-friend or wife goes out of the house. They are scared of being harassed; I’m scared too and there’s nothing I can do about it because I can’t be with them everywhere.”

8-“It happens a lot that I want to go to a party and I can’t because I don’t have a female partner, so they don’t let me in because it’s couples only.”

9-“Sexism goes both ways. Even when it comes to the smallest of things. For example, if a girl slapped a guy on the street, no one would bat an eye but if it was the other way around, it wouldn’t be normal. And guys are not allowed in some places if they’re not accompanied by girls, while girls have special nights dedicated to them.”

10-“The social pressure society enforces on us that we HAVE to get a decent paying job. We can’t quit our job unless we get a better or an equal one. We don’t have the option of staying home and raising kids and becoming stay at home dads.”

11-“The generalization that all Egyptian men are scumbags and that they all sexually harass and abuse women.”

12-“That most guys here are macho and sexist so people assume that we’re all cavemen with no feelings.”

13-“The fact that society keeps telling us ‘Estargel’ when in their dictionary it means we can’t cry or be open about our feelings.”

14-“Everything starting from uni to lifestyle to work to marriage to the army, it feels like my life is pre-planned for me while I have no say in it. The fact that I’m a guy means that there’s no escape. Having a job is not optional! And when I decide to get married, I also have to get married under conditions that I might not necessarily want.”

15-“All girls think Egyptian guys have nothing on their mind except sex. Girls mistake being nice with flirting and as a result, guys just stop being nice and genuine. So girls say 90% of guys are a**holes. I’m not talking about guys on the street who mostly don’t have an education and belong to much lower social backgrounds. I mean guys you interact with, like guys with you at work or in uni or someone you met at a party.”

16-“When it comes to marriage, I’m required to have a job that pays well, buy a shabka, a house and follow all the other marriage rituals which makes it all very stressful while I’m still starting out my life. I might decide to take the untraditional route of getting a girlfriend without marrying her. But then our actions would raise questions either from my family, her family or the people surrounding us because we live in a conservative society. So eventually we will have to get married and go through all the stress. If we decide to rebel and go against society’s rules, we’ll feel like the odd couple out. And if we decide to leave the country, we would be making a life changing decision just so we could evade Egypt’s cultural and economic downfalls.”

Girls and guys need to unite in order to end the stigmas and expectancies that are associated and expected of both genders. Guys won’t have it easier if girls don’t understand, and the opposite is also true! We have to, once and for all, admit that we need each other in order to liberate both of our genders of society’s madness and expectations.