I tend to stick to women's subs when asking for advice for reasons I probably don't need to explain here, but I recently posted in r/AskMen as I felt a male perspective might be useful. The way they approached my issue was really eye-opening!

To summarise my question to them, I play guitar in rock bands, a very male dominated arena. I love doing it but the experience is often dampened by toxic competitiveness, where guys feel the need to prove they're the 'best guitarist', or their band has the biggest fanbase etc. This kind of behaviour can make gigs, hanging out backstage, or just trying to play my set really uncomfortable. I wanted advice on how I could address this and try to create a more supportive environment, rather than a competitive one. I felt men must come up against overly competitive guys all the time so it would be interesting to get their thoughts.

The overwhelming response was, 'I just ignore competitive men'. Firstly, thanks for stating the obvious! But the thing that shocked me was the advice guys gave ignored the part about trying to foster a more supportive community, they basically just said 'ignore it and then it won't bother you', or even 'if you don't compete then you won't lose!' Thanks guys, problem solved!

When I pointed out that ignoring the issue wouldn't help change anything, a lot of guys didn't seem to grasp the fact that I wasn't looking for advice to benefit myself, I wanted to address something bigger. I wanted to try to turn competitiveness into mutually beneficial support for everyone. I know this is overly ambitious, but I want to at least feel like I'm trying to do something about it.

I feel women are so used to fighting against bigger things like stereotypes, systemic sexism and negative culture norms that we default to trying to fix stuff like this, whereas guys just miss the point, and feel 'if it doesn't impact me then that's the problem solved.'

I know that's kinda harsh and obviously not all guys think that way, but the majority of 'advice' I got in that thread really depressed me. I don't have much more of a point to make, I just needed to get that off my chest.