Hello everyone. Although I am now in my mid-20s, I've been fortunate in the sense that I am still in contact with my friends from school, college, previous jobs, etc. Although I do not live in the western world, none of us are poor per se, this group consists of mostly middle class people (with some exceptions).

Over the last few years, I've increasingly seen that most, if not all women in this friend circle are doing way better than the men. (Disclaimer: personally, I've not had the best year either, so perhaps that's why it perhaps stands out to me)

Now the first thing that comes to my mind is that: well, maybe the people who are successful are because they did something to get to where they did: they worked harder, they are smarter, they made better 'contacts and connections', etc.

This is certainly true for some of the women in my friend group. One of them got into Harvard for her PhD this year, and I seriously could not think of anyone more deserving than her. She's been a friend since my school days and we all knew that she would go on to do amazing things.

However, this idea does not hold for the rest of our group. As with most 'social groups', we are a pretty ordinary set of people as a whole. For the rest of us, I see the men (including myself) falling behind women when it comes to professional, academic, and even personal achievements.

For the same job, employers these days seem to prefer women instead of men. For instance, this is especially true for 'high status' fields such as management consulting, investment banking, private equity, data-science, etc.

In academia, (PhD programs) it's the same. All of my female friends who applied to grad school this application session (which has been touted as the hardest since the 2008 crisis) were accepted, with scholarships. None, not even one of my male friends got a single offer of admission, let alone any funding. In fact, one guy I know will try for a second master's degree in the same field to make his application 'more competitive'. And yes, he's paying for it himself.

Just to be clear, it's not that guys I know are slacking off, playing video games and what not, as the usual stereotype would suggest. In school and college, many of the guys I know did better than the girls in just about every aspect - grades, sports, extra-curricular activities like music and theater, etc. And now, they've fallen behind. The worst part is that they (or we) don't know what we did wrong. We worked hard to build technical skills, we developed our soft-skills, we networked, everything that one is supposed to do. And yet, it doesn't seem to work for us. But it seems to work for women!

This has its social consequences too. I cannot tell you how much I hate to admit this - but there are many women in my social group who have 'moved up', dating/relationship wise. Off the back of my head, I can mention at least 5 women who've dumped their partners (also my friends) and gone on to date someone older, mostly in the same profession (this has happened mostly in finance, interestingly enough).

Let's make another thing very clear - I do not have any problem whatsoever with women doing well or better than men. It's just that all of this seems so drastically different from what we're told everyday, in literature, in the media, by our peers, etc.

What I am really concerned about, is the plight of young men. Increasingly, many of my guy friends have grown to be cynical of the world around them. As men who live in the East, we are very much, still expected to be the breadwinners, earn a high salary, and establish ourselves early in our career. Any deviation from that, and you're into the 'worthless' category of society - you'll be shunned and left to be alone.

It's strange how male stereotypes still abound so strongly in the 'modern' world. Here's the response I get from the earlier generation (our parents and grandparents): complain all you want, but ultimately if you do want to have a family (or even a partner), you have to earn and have the ability to provide. The funniest thing is - it works! Rich, older, established, attractive 'high status' men seem to have no problem in finding women to marry, for life even! It's the young ones, the working class, the non-elite who have 'nothing to give', who are facing problems. The only young people who escape this seem to be the traditionally good-looking, tall & attractive types. So much for social-pogressivism, eh?

I've never cared much for 'societal expectations', but recently it's been starting to get to me. A LOT of young guys also feel the same way, and are increasingly cynical and bitter with the world they find themselves in.

It doesn't help when the global feminist media constantly harps around telling men that they are oppressors, they are awful people, that they don't matter, etc. etc. What new fashionable idea comes up in the USA/UK, finds itself on our shores a couple of days later.

I write all of this as a former card-carrying member of the feminist faction, which is why this hurts so much. I genuinely believed that women have been horribly oppressed throughout history (past to present), and had no power or agency in society. I thought that we as men, would do well to change this unfair state of affairs. Needless to say, I was wrong. I never accounted for class differences. I never understood how much power women have in society. I never thought that one's gender would have anything to do with the opportunities they got in life...

What can young men do to become less cynical and bitter?