We're not going to make much progress here as long as being interested or active in men's issues is equated to being an oppressor class torch-carrying Capitol-storming MAGA cultist or to worshiping Andrew Tate. We seem to have forgotten about healthy and pro-social male role models and instead only focus on whatever downsides come with masculinity.
Belonging to the male sex needs a serious PR campaign.
So do you disagree with the part of the article that points a finger at traditional expectations and stereotypes, such as:
> “We used to think women were overutilizing health care, and men were doing it correctly,” Griffith said. “What we realized was that women were doing it better, mostly for preventive care, and men were actually underutilizing health care.”
> Cultural biases around masculinity that teach boys and men to hide their feelings and not complain also can influence men’s health.
> But even when visits for pregnancy are excluded, research suggests that women still are twice as likely as men to schedule regular annual exams and use preventive services.
I don't think we ever had healthy male role models that were concerned about going to the doctor regularly, say.
(The article also talks about some systemic issues in the last section, from two women at the Washington Post; as a result are these women being labeled as "oppressor class torch-carrying Capitol-storming MAGA cultist or to worshiping Andrew Tate" anywhere?)
I realized this was the truth when I observed that while most feminists are "technically" against MGM (male circumcision at birth for non medically necessary reasons), very few are putting any serious energy into ending this barbaric practice. In fact, some complain that effort on ending this "trades off" with ending FGM, despite that FGM is quite rare in the USA and developed world while MGM is still happening to tens of millions of American babies
It's mainly groups who are loosely affiliated with "MRAs" who are putting meaningful effort into ending this. I'm not a huge fan of "MRAs" or traditional "red pill" ideology - but men who look down and see evidence of the evils of a sick society on their body cannot find a meaningful defense from the very people who claim to want to "rescue" men from "patriarchal power structures".
I think that there are plenty of positive masculine people to look up to, but they’re not as well regarded likely because pro-masculine, anti-misogyny positions don’t go viral. Look at healthygamer, a twitch streamer who is a man, a gamer psychiatrist man, and literally all he does is primarily address men’s issues of loneliness, struggling to find a gf, making friends, etc. F D Signifier is a black man who is fat, has two kids and is happily married, and talks a lot about masculinity and specifically how to be a black man, even talking about how black men are hypersexualized to the point where they’re expected to welcome sexual harassment. I like Folding Ideas, he just does YouTube about things and I think that’s neat, also a cis guy.
Edited to add: healthygamer literally has a discord room with a channel just about taking photos of walking outside to prove you went and touched grass as an initiative to have an entire community cheer about people going outside. So it’s not just like one dude streaming, he’s actively community building to have healthy male mutual support networks.
I don't know if any of the people you mentioned should be considered good male role models. I think we should aspire to having exemplars who are more than simply heterosexual or a man, but who positively advocate for leading a purposeful life. "Look, here is a married fat person or a psychologist/gamer" doesn't quite cut it in my books, especially when then entire psychiatric profession labelled 'masculinity as a whole' as a _mental illness_.
The sad fact is that society as a whole idolizes celebrity and does not celebrate moral ways of living. People who do advocate for moral ways of living are either a) demonized or b) considered "fringe" groups, like the Mennonites. Sure, various organized religions or even community organizations (like the Scouts) have had their scandals - but maybe we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater a little bit. There are many signs that our society is sick and that our culture is in the decline (falling marriage and birth rates, suicide, decline in life expectancy, decline in children's IQ etc...) and there just isn't an easy answer.
Now, this is all separate and aside from men's issues, which are absolutely taboo to discuss. Anyone who even attempts to do so gets demonized. Jordan Peterson is a good example - his original message of how to live a responsible life and to own your 'destiny' can be very helpful, especially for men. Sure he is considered "cringe" and his online rants have become more and more unhinged. However, I consider this a _reaction_ to being demonized - originally, Peterson was very articulate, and there were many, many testimonials about how his books improved people's lives for the better. His story actually serves to discourage people who would otherwise speak up and improve the lives of people around them - here is someone whose message improved many lives and look what he became after years of constant vitriol and attacks.
> especially when then entire psychiatric profession labelled 'masculinity as a whole' as a _mental illness_
Wait, what? Where is masculinity in the DSM or ICD? I’m pretty sure being a guy isn’t a mental illness dude.
> I think we should aspire to having exemplars who are more than simply heterosexual or a man, but who positively advocate for leading a purposeful life
I think a guy who is dedicating his career on teaching men to celebrate going outside and making dude friends, the very small steps out of isolation and depression, on the platform where they are most likely to waste their lives in (twitch gamer streams) is precisely this kind of guy. He is actively building his life on encouraging other men to live positive, happy, fulfilling lives, one step at a time.
> Jordan Peterson is a good example - his original message of how to live a responsible life and to own your 'destiny' can be very helpful, especially for men.
Jordan Peterson says he advocates for men but also he advocated for a bunch of bs that had nothing to do with living a healthy life, like rah rah against pronouns. Dude pronouns have nothing to do with you as a man. Get over it.
In regards to your specific examples, I'm very happy you personally derived value from this influencer/streamer's videos, but I kind of see that as part of the problem - a good male role model shouldn't just be a twitch streamer. Sure, if his content is helping people, promote it (I personally didn't see the value from what little content of theirs that I have watched, but you do you), but maybe your idea of a good role model is different than mine.
In regards to Jordan Peterson, he's just a specific example - but he was (I don't think he is anymore) very influential in this debate for a period of time and I just didn't think the conversation would be complete without bringing him up. What you wrote in your last paragraph is common: "He didn't want to use pronouns, therefore I will dismiss anything and everything he ever wrote/said". (Nevermind that the whole issue was the Canadian government forcing its professors to conform to a specific ideology if they wanted to keep their jobs - in Canada, almost all education is government-run).
Apparently the exact language was “certain aspects of traditional masculinity” as “ a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.”
And yeah I can see where certain aspects of this suck. Anti-femininity is, to me, not very masculine. Masculinity is to stand on its own without being against the other sex. Eschewal against appearance of weakness is also to me not masculine. Humbleness is confidence. Papering over your flaws is super insecure, not confident, and pretty not masculine.
I think you made this model of masculinity and then eschewed happy, whole men who don’t fit in that box. Healthygamer is a man, who is happily heterosexually married, who is dedicating his life to uplifting his fellow men. I think that’s a win for all men. Jordan Peterson frankly strikes me as kind of miserable in comparison. Healthygamer doesn’t go on long tweet tirades about pronouns and genders. He just focused on the mission, which is addressing men’s issues.
It's a mistake (or intentionally othering) to malign something like "traditional masculinity", which many people identify as a set of qualities about themselves that they enjoy, rather than just pointing out the _specific things_ about "traditional masculinity" that are considered harmful. I like being traditionally masculine, personality, I consider some of the personality traits I associate with it as virtuous and even help guide me in daily life.
It's also helpful to enemies of feminism and modern thought on gender roles: now all I have to say is "see, look, they are calling what you are a personality disorder!" and I can convince them to dismiss the entire movement whole cloth.
Peterson is indeed quite the victim, but I wonder how much of that is down to his drug addiction and attempted crash treatment?
There are many countries on Earth that score higher on the KPIs you listed (though birthrate is lowering most everywhere); perhaps you could look to them as models.
I don't disagree about the addiction in regards to Peterson, but I do think, in part, the social pressure eventually got to him. Either way, I don't consider him as important a voice in this space as he used to be.
To your other point, I was thinking in the context of modern Liberal/Western democracies, which have similar issues on those KPIs. Certainly, Asian and certain European countries have far different issues than the ones in North America, which is the context I was focusing on (and which the original article focused on). In any case, I don't necessarily think solutions that work in the Netherlands (a country of ~17 million people) will work across the entire US, especially when the cultures are so different. Either way. it's hard to dispute that there are many positive male role models for young men today, and the issues only get worse from there.
It occurs to me that I have no idea what anyone means by just about anything anymore. I don't know what culture is supposed to mean. I don't know who people who have problems with culture think can actually fix culture (it's never the government from what I can tell; they tend to be very anti-government). I don't even know what they mean by positive male role models - Bill Gates? Elon Musk? Joe Biden? Donald Trump? Tom Hanks? Dave Chappelle? The Pope? There seem like a near infinite number of possible role models, but I don't know what is supposed to be positive.
I think having a psychanalyst, fan of Jung and subscribing his 'theories' as a role model, however articulate he is, should be as lauded as having a 'homeopath' as a doctor.
I'm sorry, I know there is a lot of French and Canadians here, but let's get real, psychanalysts are expensive and barely usefull (you get to talk to someone), and make money on loneliness and isolation. Buy an escort instead, it's more useful imho.
Okay, how about the guy who started building houses for vets? Or just whatever local guy who is doing good in your neighborhood? I know a guy who does bbq for charity. That guys great. 10/10 masculine role model.
Sorry, i really don't care that much about US culture war, you can have role models you want as long as they're not crooks.
I hated that JP brought Psychanalysis to the US (who have real psychologists, unlike in my country) way before he became a culture war hero/vilain.
The number of years psychoanalysts destroy is quite high. In my mother's case, 30, and 4 different psychoanalysts . She changed to a behavioral psychologist with my insistance, the psychologist told her after 20 minutes "I think you are bipolar madam, you can alleviate your symptoms by doing X regularly and being careful of Y, but you should go to a psychiatrist". She got to a hospital, go some lithium, and is finally easy to live with (to bad her relationship with my sister is already destroyed). 40 to 60 euros every two weeks for almost 30 year vs 60 euros once. Psychoanalysts are crooks.
====
My role models are my grandfathers and my father (and one of my uncles, kinda), so i don't need any celebrity, local or global. The advantage of having a mostly good family.
>I hated that JP brought Psychanalysis to the US (who have real psychologists, unlike in my country)
>Psychoanalysts are crooks.
In the USA, there are two specializations in the field of primary mental health care: psychologists (people who talk to you) and psychiatrists (people who prescribe psychotropic medication).
The former is a highly-trained counselor who can debug thought processes or situations (software), the latter is a medical doctor who can debug physiological issues within the brain (hardware).
Both are critically important to holistic mental health care and maintenance.
We barely know anything about the brain. We don't know how consciousness arises from a collection of neurons. So talk therapy is the best we've got. Sure, pay a sex worker for an hour so you've got 59 minutes to talk about your loneliness with, after you finish having sex with her if you'd rather talk to a woman you paid to have sex with instead of a licensed and trained professional listen to you. (And to be fair some sex workers are actually really great therapists due to what their profession involves.)
But you be real. Women don't have the same epidemic of loneliness as men because they talk to each other. Talking about your loneliness and isolation helps address the problem. Sulking at home and jeering at people who go to years of school to learn how to help people address problems in their lives, (and then gasp charge money for goods and services under capitalism) is a very counterproductive viewpoint.
If by 'talk therapy' you mean psychoanalysis, it's not at all the best we have. I mean, I know some people prefer lithotherapy and homeotherapy over evidence-based medecine, but I would not argue that they're 'the best we have'. I'm not a fan of hypnosis at all (I prefer therapies that involve the patient becoming an agent), but it's cheaper, shorter, and have empirically a better success rate, and a lower remission rate.
We don't know how it work but we can mesure how much it does, an in case of psychoanalysis, it doesn't.
Take homeopathic antidepressant with a certified homeopath, it'll work the same.
Psychoanalyst are entrenched in a early 20th century view of the human brain, just listen to them talking about autism.
'trained professional' psychoanalyst have the same effect on me as a 'trained professional' sorcerer does, except I can play pathfinder with the second.
I don't really care that they charge money now that my mom got out of their claws, just as I didn't really care about cryptocurrencies grifters charging money for financial advice, my typical friends and family are not the usual prey so I don't feel threatened. I'm just sad that as American women managed to escape this grift (unlike French women), young American men seems to fall into the trap.
> Edited to add: healthygamer literally has a discord room with a channel just about taking photos of walking outside to prove you went and touched grass as an initiative to have an entire community cheer about people going outside
Man, anyone that needs an influencer type to tell them to leave the house is in a bad, bad situation in life.
Yeah, the whole point is to give the smallest possible steps to get people out of the darkest situations and towards self actualization. Watching his streams makes me realize just how bad some dudes got it.
Our culture is trying to destroy the masculine as fast as it can. Tate and the rise of Islam is a reaction to it.
You can look at all the Disney movies for kids: all men are stupid, liars, stealer, and when you hit them it’s funny. On the opposite the feminine is often perfect, manage it all on the first try.
Currently most men get soft and depressed, a few react in opposition to the current progressive narrative.
> You can look at all the Disney movies for kids: all men are stupid, liars, stealer, and when you hit them it’s funny. On the opposite the feminine is often perfect, manage it all on the first try.
A few counterexamples: Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, Raya and the Last Dragon, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatoullie, Up, The Good Dinosaur, Onward, Soul, and Luca.
There are many examples of great men in modern media, but I have certainly noticed there are fewer positive, powerful male characters in newer media, and more comically evil/stupid/openly misogynistic caricatures.
Let me think.
Tangled: The guy is a stealer that is aimless, the girl is pure heart, victim. Even the evil woman is a victim of the mens that stole the flower.
Ralph: pretty stupid, (but good hearth) the girl is a victim and smart (more balanced)
Incredible: this one is laughable, watch it again, the men is lying, fat, get into trouble and get saved by his wife.
Also look at Frozen, you have evil men, stubborn father, and clueless men and women as victim and hero of the story. That is one where were a women punching a men as vengeance is funny and celebrated. (there is something similar in tangled with the frying pan)
Look at the latest Star Wars for example. They actively destroyed the male heros from previous movies and replaced them with perfect (without flaws) feminine.
The writers didn’t hide it, it was their goal.
Look at the critical drinker on youtube to get this perspective.
In my experience, it's not worth discussing or even mentioning men’s issues with anyone that isn’t a man. And even then, the type of man matters, because a straight white male will have a totally different perspective than say, a gay black man.
Historically, the reason men reap the lion share’s of power and resources is because we take the risks. We take life threatening risks because compared to women, we are expendable. Not sure what’s happening now assuming we are supposedly working towards equality (which should include both the good and the bad eg women should be able to get drafted just like men and the custody of children should not predominantly favor women) and the “lean in” movement isn’t just a fad
> Historically, the reason men reap the lion share’s of power and resources is because we take the risks.
I would have thought it had something to do with almost all men being able to physically overpower almost all women. Which might also guide how which risks women are willing to take compared to men.
In nature, might makes right. It makes sense to me that men reap the “lion’s share of power and resources” simply because they can take them from women, not because of men taking more risks (which I am not sure how one can make that statement anyway since men and women are exposed to very different risks that are not easily comparable in magnitude).
I think it's fair to say that for whatever reason (biological, cultural, or otherwise) men are exposed to greater risk since they die at a higher rate for every age group (just based on the graph in the article).
That is just mortality risk. There are other myriad other risks in life that I would not classify as being a "lesser" risk, such as the risk of having to live your whole life being abused by a spouse.
I've read that males have a different risk to reward ratio (not in every species but in many, including humans) especially in terms of reproduction. One male can in-theory have many more offspring in the same time period than one female, and any gene encouraging that kind of behaviour in the past would probably have been naturally-selected-for amongst our ancestors. Of course the welfare of the offspring will likely be lower in that case but evolution still seems to have still left human males with remnants of a strategy of reproductive risk-taking.
Men are stronger and inherently more violent then women. We commit most of the crime especially violent crime. Brutal but it helps with resource and power accumulation
This isn't true. Women just express violence in different ways (many of which are not seen as typically 'violent' because the benchmark is based on the sort of violence men do).
Capacity & propensity for violence isn't an exclusively masculine trait, but rather a core human trait.
Can you expand on this because it sounds completely baseless
> Capacity & propensity for violence isn't an exclusively masculine trait, but rather a core human trait
While committing violence isn't exclusive to males, males are statistically and historically much more prone to violence than females regardless of culture or race. There's plenty of data to back this up.
The ways in which we classify violence is itself often sexist and reinforces toxic gender stereotypes. Many of the violent things women do are normalized in society because they're not seen as 'real' violence and diminished solely by virtue of having been committed by a woman (e.g. intimate partner violence against men in heterosexual relationships, intimate partner violence against women in lesbian relationships, or child abuse especially against girls and & gender-conforming children), often seen as not 'worthy' of the same types of classification or intervention as violence perpetrated by men.
This is the flip side of the stereotypes we typically associate with misogyny, and a form of benevolent sexism[0]: "women are weak" -> "women can't be violent" -> "women can't be soldiers" -> "women can't be abusers or criminals".
As for psychological violence, the subreddit /r/RaisedByNarcissists is full of women talking about living with the aftermath of abusive mothers.
If one believes in "the radical notion that women are people" then it stands to reason women can fully embody the totality of the human experience, which includes a certain capacity and propensity for violence.
But you don't die from prostate cancer at 12/14. Ten percent mortality rate during you first labor mean a lot of young girl didn't make it, historically.
Violence still killed a lot more men than childbirth killed women. Otherwise, the male mortality rate wouldn’t be historically higher than the female mortality rate
> “Men are advantaged in every aspect of our society,
> “We tend not to prioritize men’s health, but it needs unique attention, and it has implications for the rest of the family. It means other members of the family, including women and children, also suffer.”
> Advocates for more research into men’s health say the goal isn’t to steal resources from women, girls and gender minorities.
So men's health deserves to be an issue only because it may impact children well-being, and only if it doesn't steal resource from other more noble causes.
I don't know how US audience reads this type of article, but as a foreigner, it seems every single issue nowadays has to be artificially rebranded as a social justice fight.
The problem, at least in US general social discourse, it everything is viewed through an essentialist lens. It's an addictive resolution to the ambiguity of post-modern thought, because it reduces nuances to a cacophony of labels, creates clear villain/hero dichotomies, and allows everyone to architect their maximal perfect victimhood.
Apparently, it’s reducing that individuals are what they are, because of the circumstances that created them (like root cause analysis).
This is in contrast to assigning some other factor that may be that might be too paternalistic, too taboo or too “blamey” to consider (like incompetence or a lack of spirituality/belief).
It’s a bit of a mindfuck for me, because how else are you going to explain a given situation without looking at the factors that created them.
Essentialism is the idea that there is a pure form of something tied to its classification. Basically it's allowing classification to supersede qualification.
Originally it was used by right-leaning schools of thought to justify racism and sexism. They viewed women and minorities as "essentially" inferior as an essential factor of their classification as such.
Now it is used by left-leaning centers to create narratives of human. They view differences in human attainment essentially the cause of certain social factors, individuals and institutions that are justifiably characterized as such because they are "essentially" evil.
'liberal-leaning' not left leaning. And they're winning.
They already expurged feminism from emancipation, replacing it with empowerment.
I thought BLM was the BPP successor, but weirdly, any leader referencing the rainbow coalition get shafted, as it seems that Fred Hampton is waaay better as a martyr than as a thought leader. But he was assassinated because he was a Marxist who reassembled minorities, not because he was black.
And declaring institutions are influencing human behavior is not essentialism. 'l'existence précède l' essence' apply to living being, human constructs can be essencialized, and that's why people believe in essentialism, or at least that's how I understood Sartre.
>The problem, at least in US general social discourse, it everything is viewed through an essentialist lens.
Which is the highest of ironic outcomes to critical theory in American humanities departments spending the 80s and 90s trying to get us all to grasp the instability of monolithic framing of identities, historicism, etc
Edit: TBF, people like Wendy Brown at UC-Berkeley saw this coming in the late 90s
I can understand not thinking highly of Wapo and NYT, but what sorts of things would you point to that would put them on the same level as Fox News given what we’ve learned about Fox News in recent weeks from the Dominion lawsuit?
> “Nicholas Sandmann agreed to settle with the Post because the Post was quick to publish the whole truth—through its follow-up coverage and editor’s notes,” Sandmann’s attorney, Todd McMurtry, said in an email.
See the difference?
> and had to settle lawsuits for huge amounts as a result
Are we talking about the Sandmann settlement here? Because as far as I know, we have no clue what “huge” might entail in that case. Whatever it was, I’m quite confident it doesn’t belong in the same descriptive bucket as $787 million.
Unfortunately it takes that kind of language to get some people to even notice men face issues.
The constant bombardment of "Men's advantages" by many groups has had the effect that empathy for men's issues non-existent unless it intersects with problems that matter to them.
> “Men are advantaged in every aspect of our society, yet we have worse health outcomes for most of the things that will kill you,”
Maybe it's not a good idea to predicate any mention of serious men's health issues with initial blanket dismissal / overt acceptance of discrimination and subsequently making it about how it's actually important for these other groups. Even if aspects of that are hypothetically arguable, let the point be made to be important on it's own.
It's pretty much impossible to write an article about issues that disproportionately affect men and boys without first establishing that other groups have it worse and signing off with facts about how it's actually their fault anyway. You see this in every discussion about men/boys neglected in education or having worse health outcomes and life expectancy.
The problem with addressing men's mental health is that many who claim to advocate for it fail to realize that they perpetuate and reinforce the very culture that causes men's mental health issues.
They claim to care about the plight of men who are body shamed, but make small dick jokes, worship traditionally attractive male archetypes, and think it's funny when a pathetic, evil male character is either short, bald, or has a high-pitched voice.
They claim to care about men lagging in education, but pay much more attention to the academic/professional fields that are "boy's clubs" and never talk about "girl's clubs" in the same way, even though nowadays women outnumber male college graduates 3 to 2.
They claim to be all for sex positivity, but continually vilify male sexuality, to the point that men feel scared to express their desires and urges without being labeled a predator/sex pest/-cel adjacent.
The reason men's mental health is so messed up nowadays is that people on all sides of the spectrum seem to implicitly reinforce a traditionally masculine winner takes all culture, where the confident, attractive and aggressive men reap all the rewards. Any reasonable heterosexual male isn't gonna look at this reality of modern culture and think "well, at least I know how to share my emotions properly", when they see the positive romantic attention lauded much more often on those embodying the more stoic, traditional male stereotypes. They'd much rather do whatever it takes to fit into that stereotype so they don't miss out when they're still young. And further, if they feel that no amount of effort will get them there, and they express that concern, they are offered no sympathy.
What's up with that dramatically different shape of the "Ratio of male-to-female death rates across ages for the U.S., other countries" graph between say Chile/US and South Korea?
And if you prefer American and a bit older, that what Emma Goldman basically said, that the power structure of capitalist America (and later the Marxist leninist Russia once she saw what the butcher of Kronstad did) was hierarchical and that to avoid having the bottom revolt against them, the top direct the anger to citizen lower than them. I personally don't think it's on purpose, I think most people lack courage and prefer punching down rather than punching up.
Yes the civil rights movement was impeded by politician and some violent white nationalists, but the overt political support was from middle to high class female, and you don't have to read a ton of anarchist / Marxist books to understand why.
> Males have dominated all power structures in every society in the history of humankind
> Why are men doing this to themselves?
What you are doing here is using a tiny substrata of hyper-successful men (those who "dominated power structures" as you put it) and using that to represent the entire structure of Western society. There is nothing about that that is vaguely appropriate.
The worst part of even trying to have a discussion about men's health and issues today is how often it devolves into arguments about male status in society.
If we had more empathy for one another it would be easier to solve the problem instead of arguing about who suffers most.
We all suffer, we should help each other suffer less.
Somehow it’s in my mind that societies with an “over abundance” of men are more likely to be violent and go to war. I think I got it from sociology long ago.
If men aren’t taking their health seriously I wonder if it could reflect a societal stigma similar to an over abundance of men with similar outcomes.
Feels like we’re in that kind of historical swing at least.
Life sucks for everyone (men, woman, children, etc.). Most “support” and charity towards those causes has been primarily through material means — merely acting like a band-aid or an anti-depressant to “keep you going, until — perhaps — one day your life improves and you don’t need it anymore.
There are a limited number of resources (physical, mental, emotional, human, etc.). Most of them have gone towards people that are viewed as being unable to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and soldier through the shit” — primarily women, and children to a lesser degree.
If you were to start supporting men, you would necessarily deplete the already bare resource that is human compassion — and deprive others of it (whether current, by redistribution and reallocation, or future and expected, I.e men’s issues become the new fad, as women’s issues have been, but overtake the latter). One can twist logic all one wants to try to find a way that isn’t true to balm the cruel reality of being alive — it is a constant effort to survive, and make the most of the resources in one’s environment (this goes for all living things).
This couples with the reality that women are more likely to “pull themselves up” via group and social dynamics —- I.e the reason why “women’s issues” are a thing (gravely overshadowing children’s issues, something I find more important, vital, and underrepresented — because children cannot organize together in any meaningful capacity). In contrast to men, who suffer alone and — perhaps — one day find the good fortune of life improving — rather than banding together or influencing others to help fix their own lives.
With all this in mind, I don’t think men’s issues will ever be a “thing” — except some passing fad that halfheartedly and halfassedly “addresses men’s issues.”
The main issue is that life is hard — it’s a constant struggle. The way women and children receive support is different than what men need. Men just need some peace and quiet to sort their shit out - and then do the work to build up their own social support networks (via community and other men) - if they so desire. The most straightforward way to do that would be to improve working conditions, access to sustainable employment, a place to rest that is both peaceful and affordable, and access to good affordable food.
But we all need that don’t we? And the apparently-less-abled are first in line to receive those resources — while men are in the back of the line.
> Men are at a greater risk of dying from covid-19 than women, a gap that cannot be explained by rates of infection or preexisting conditions.
I noticed during the worst parts of the pandemic in the US that the people who decided to not try to do anything to avoid getting it and if they did get it didn't take it seriously were much more likely to be male.
That might explain some of the difference. (Although then it raises the question of why males were more likely to ignore COVID).
> More men die of diabetes than women.
Obesity seems to be a pretty strong contributor to becoming diabetic. Too much excess body fat seems to be a particular aspect of obesity that is involved.
I wonder if women get an advantage here because a healthy female body has a higher body fat percentage than does a health male body? As a man becomes obese and puts on excess fat, the percentage of excess fat will be going up faster than the percentage of excess fat in a woman who is becoming obese and putting on excess fat.
> The cancer mortality rate is higher among men.
I wish they'd have gone into more detail. First, a breakdown by cancer type would be useful. Some cancer risk is associated with behavior, such as lung cancer with smoking. Males are more likely to smoke. Another example would be skin cancer, which is associated with UV exposure. I think males are more likely to have jobs that require being outside all day on high UV days.
Second, I'd have liked to also see the rates for getting cancer rather than just the mortality rate. There are two ways males can have a higher death rate from cancer X than females.
One is that males and females get X at the same rate, but males with X die at a higher rate than females. That would suggest there might be something wrong with how we handle X in males.
The other way is that males get X at higher rate than females, but people with X die at about the same rate regardless of sex. If that's the case then it is how people get X that we need to look it.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadBelonging to the male sex needs a serious PR campaign.
> “We used to think women were overutilizing health care, and men were doing it correctly,” Griffith said. “What we realized was that women were doing it better, mostly for preventive care, and men were actually underutilizing health care.”
> Cultural biases around masculinity that teach boys and men to hide their feelings and not complain also can influence men’s health.
> But even when visits for pregnancy are excluded, research suggests that women still are twice as likely as men to schedule regular annual exams and use preventive services.
I don't think we ever had healthy male role models that were concerned about going to the doctor regularly, say.
(The article also talks about some systemic issues in the last section, from two women at the Washington Post; as a result are these women being labeled as "oppressor class torch-carrying Capitol-storming MAGA cultist or to worshiping Andrew Tate" anywhere?)
It's mainly groups who are loosely affiliated with "MRAs" who are putting meaningful effort into ending this. I'm not a huge fan of "MRAs" or traditional "red pill" ideology - but men who look down and see evidence of the evils of a sick society on their body cannot find a meaningful defense from the very people who claim to want to "rescue" men from "patriarchal power structures".
Honestly we just need the dads on this one, but they’re probably going “I want his dick to look like mine”
Edited to add: healthygamer literally has a discord room with a channel just about taking photos of walking outside to prove you went and touched grass as an initiative to have an entire community cheer about people going outside. So it’s not just like one dude streaming, he’s actively community building to have healthy male mutual support networks.
The sad fact is that society as a whole idolizes celebrity and does not celebrate moral ways of living. People who do advocate for moral ways of living are either a) demonized or b) considered "fringe" groups, like the Mennonites. Sure, various organized religions or even community organizations (like the Scouts) have had their scandals - but maybe we've thrown the baby out with the bathwater a little bit. There are many signs that our society is sick and that our culture is in the decline (falling marriage and birth rates, suicide, decline in life expectancy, decline in children's IQ etc...) and there just isn't an easy answer.
Now, this is all separate and aside from men's issues, which are absolutely taboo to discuss. Anyone who even attempts to do so gets demonized. Jordan Peterson is a good example - his original message of how to live a responsible life and to own your 'destiny' can be very helpful, especially for men. Sure he is considered "cringe" and his online rants have become more and more unhinged. However, I consider this a _reaction_ to being demonized - originally, Peterson was very articulate, and there were many, many testimonials about how his books improved people's lives for the better. His story actually serves to discourage people who would otherwise speak up and improve the lives of people around them - here is someone whose message improved many lives and look what he became after years of constant vitriol and attacks.
Wait, what? Where is masculinity in the DSM or ICD? I’m pretty sure being a guy isn’t a mental illness dude.
> I think we should aspire to having exemplars who are more than simply heterosexual or a man, but who positively advocate for leading a purposeful life
I think a guy who is dedicating his career on teaching men to celebrate going outside and making dude friends, the very small steps out of isolation and depression, on the platform where they are most likely to waste their lives in (twitch gamer streams) is precisely this kind of guy. He is actively building his life on encouraging other men to live positive, happy, fulfilling lives, one step at a time.
> Jordan Peterson is a good example - his original message of how to live a responsible life and to own your 'destiny' can be very helpful, especially for men.
Jordan Peterson says he advocates for men but also he advocated for a bunch of bs that had nothing to do with living a healthy life, like rah rah against pronouns. Dude pronouns have nothing to do with you as a man. Get over it.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/01/1...
In regards to your specific examples, I'm very happy you personally derived value from this influencer/streamer's videos, but I kind of see that as part of the problem - a good male role model shouldn't just be a twitch streamer. Sure, if his content is helping people, promote it (I personally didn't see the value from what little content of theirs that I have watched, but you do you), but maybe your idea of a good role model is different than mine.
In regards to Jordan Peterson, he's just a specific example - but he was (I don't think he is anymore) very influential in this debate for a period of time and I just didn't think the conversation would be complete without bringing him up. What you wrote in your last paragraph is common: "He didn't want to use pronouns, therefore I will dismiss anything and everything he ever wrote/said". (Nevermind that the whole issue was the Canadian government forcing its professors to conform to a specific ideology if they wanted to keep their jobs - in Canada, almost all education is government-run).
And yeah I can see where certain aspects of this suck. Anti-femininity is, to me, not very masculine. Masculinity is to stand on its own without being against the other sex. Eschewal against appearance of weakness is also to me not masculine. Humbleness is confidence. Papering over your flaws is super insecure, not confident, and pretty not masculine.
I think you made this model of masculinity and then eschewed happy, whole men who don’t fit in that box. Healthygamer is a man, who is happily heterosexually married, who is dedicating his life to uplifting his fellow men. I think that’s a win for all men. Jordan Peterson frankly strikes me as kind of miserable in comparison. Healthygamer doesn’t go on long tweet tirades about pronouns and genders. He just focused on the mission, which is addressing men’s issues.
It's also helpful to enemies of feminism and modern thought on gender roles: now all I have to say is "see, look, they are calling what you are a personality disorder!" and I can convince them to dismiss the entire movement whole cloth.
There are many countries on Earth that score higher on the KPIs you listed (though birthrate is lowering most everywhere); perhaps you could look to them as models.
To your other point, I was thinking in the context of modern Liberal/Western democracies, which have similar issues on those KPIs. Certainly, Asian and certain European countries have far different issues than the ones in North America, which is the context I was focusing on (and which the original article focused on). In any case, I don't necessarily think solutions that work in the Netherlands (a country of ~17 million people) will work across the entire US, especially when the cultures are so different. Either way. it's hard to dispute that there are many positive male role models for young men today, and the issues only get worse from there.
I'm sorry, I know there is a lot of French and Canadians here, but let's get real, psychanalysts are expensive and barely usefull (you get to talk to someone), and make money on loneliness and isolation. Buy an escort instead, it's more useful imho.
I hated that JP brought Psychanalysis to the US (who have real psychologists, unlike in my country) way before he became a culture war hero/vilain.
The number of years psychoanalysts destroy is quite high. In my mother's case, 30, and 4 different psychoanalysts . She changed to a behavioral psychologist with my insistance, the psychologist told her after 20 minutes "I think you are bipolar madam, you can alleviate your symptoms by doing X regularly and being careful of Y, but you should go to a psychiatrist". She got to a hospital, go some lithium, and is finally easy to live with (to bad her relationship with my sister is already destroyed). 40 to 60 euros every two weeks for almost 30 year vs 60 euros once. Psychoanalysts are crooks.
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My role models are my grandfathers and my father (and one of my uncles, kinda), so i don't need any celebrity, local or global. The advantage of having a mostly good family.
>Psychoanalysts are crooks.
In the USA, there are two specializations in the field of primary mental health care: psychologists (people who talk to you) and psychiatrists (people who prescribe psychotropic medication).
The former is a highly-trained counselor who can debug thought processes or situations (software), the latter is a medical doctor who can debug physiological issues within the brain (hardware).
Both are critically important to holistic mental health care and maintenance.
But you be real. Women don't have the same epidemic of loneliness as men because they talk to each other. Talking about your loneliness and isolation helps address the problem. Sulking at home and jeering at people who go to years of school to learn how to help people address problems in their lives, (and then gasp charge money for goods and services under capitalism) is a very counterproductive viewpoint.
We don't know how it work but we can mesure how much it does, an in case of psychoanalysis, it doesn't.
Take homeopathic antidepressant with a certified homeopath, it'll work the same.
Psychoanalyst are entrenched in a early 20th century view of the human brain, just listen to them talking about autism.
'trained professional' psychoanalyst have the same effect on me as a 'trained professional' sorcerer does, except I can play pathfinder with the second.
I don't really care that they charge money now that my mom got out of their claws, just as I didn't really care about cryptocurrencies grifters charging money for financial advice, my typical friends and family are not the usual prey so I don't feel threatened. I'm just sad that as American women managed to escape this grift (unlike French women), young American men seems to fall into the trap.
Man, anyone that needs an influencer type to tell them to leave the house is in a bad, bad situation in life.
You can look at all the Disney movies for kids: all men are stupid, liars, stealer, and when you hit them it’s funny. On the opposite the feminine is often perfect, manage it all on the first try.
Currently most men get soft and depressed, a few react in opposition to the current progressive narrative.
Here is one example with Moana https://youtu.be/ZT6Qo146Ncs
A few counterexamples: Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Zootopia, Raya and the Last Dragon, Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatoullie, Up, The Good Dinosaur, Onward, Soul, and Luca.
Ralph: pretty stupid, (but good hearth) the girl is a victim and smart (more balanced)
Incredible: this one is laughable, watch it again, the men is lying, fat, get into trouble and get saved by his wife.
Also look at Frozen, you have evil men, stubborn father, and clueless men and women as victim and hero of the story. That is one where were a women punching a men as vengeance is funny and celebrated. (there is something similar in tangled with the frying pan)
Look at the latest Star Wars for example. They actively destroyed the male heros from previous movies and replaced them with perfect (without flaws) feminine.
The writers didn’t hide it, it was their goal.
Look at the critical drinker on youtube to get this perspective.
I would have thought it had something to do with almost all men being able to physically overpower almost all women. Which might also guide how which risks women are willing to take compared to men.
This isn't true. Women just express violence in different ways (many of which are not seen as typically 'violent' because the benchmark is based on the sort of violence men do).
Capacity & propensity for violence isn't an exclusively masculine trait, but rather a core human trait.
Can you expand on this because it sounds completely baseless
> Capacity & propensity for violence isn't an exclusively masculine trait, but rather a core human trait
While committing violence isn't exclusive to males, males are statistically and historically much more prone to violence than females regardless of culture or race. There's plenty of data to back this up.
This is the flip side of the stereotypes we typically associate with misogyny, and a form of benevolent sexism[0]: "women are weak" -> "women can't be violent" -> "women can't be soldiers" -> "women can't be abusers or criminals".
As for psychological violence, the subreddit /r/RaisedByNarcissists is full of women talking about living with the aftermath of abusive mothers.
If one believes in "the radical notion that women are people" then it stands to reason women can fully embody the totality of the human experience, which includes a certain capacity and propensity for violence.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambivalent_sexism
> “We tend not to prioritize men’s health, but it needs unique attention, and it has implications for the rest of the family. It means other members of the family, including women and children, also suffer.”
> Advocates for more research into men’s health say the goal isn’t to steal resources from women, girls and gender minorities.
So men's health deserves to be an issue only because it may impact children well-being, and only if it doesn't steal resource from other more noble causes.
I don't know how US audience reads this type of article, but as a foreigner, it seems every single issue nowadays has to be artificially rebranded as a social justice fight.
This is in contrast to assigning some other factor that may be that might be too paternalistic, too taboo or too “blamey” to consider (like incompetence or a lack of spirituality/belief).
It’s a bit of a mindfuck for me, because how else are you going to explain a given situation without looking at the factors that created them.
Originally it was used by right-leaning schools of thought to justify racism and sexism. They viewed women and minorities as "essentially" inferior as an essential factor of their classification as such.
Now it is used by left-leaning centers to create narratives of human. They view differences in human attainment essentially the cause of certain social factors, individuals and institutions that are justifiably characterized as such because they are "essentially" evil.
They already expurged feminism from emancipation, replacing it with empowerment.
I thought BLM was the BPP successor, but weirdly, any leader referencing the rainbow coalition get shafted, as it seems that Fred Hampton is waaay better as a martyr than as a thought leader. But he was assassinated because he was a Marxist who reassembled minorities, not because he was black.
And declaring institutions are influencing human behavior is not essentialism. 'l'existence précède l' essence' apply to living being, human constructs can be essencialized, and that's why people believe in essentialism, or at least that's how I understood Sartre.
Which is the highest of ironic outcomes to critical theory in American humanities departments spending the 80s and 90s trying to get us all to grasp the instability of monolithic framing of identities, historicism, etc
Edit: TBF, people like Wendy Brown at UC-Berkeley saw this coming in the late 90s
"...but it needs unique attention, and it has implications for the rest of the family..."
> and only if it doesn't steal resource from other more noble causes
"...the goal isn’t to steal resources from women, girls and gender minorities..."
So no and no.
> it seems every single issue nowadays has to be artificially rebranded as a social justice fight.
What do you think "social justice" means?
You say 'only because it may impact children', the article says 'and it has implication for the rest of the family'.
That rather changes the statement.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/24/media/washington-post-sandman...
See the difference?
> and had to settle lawsuits for huge amounts as a result
Are we talking about the Sandmann settlement here? Because as far as I know, we have no clue what “huge” might entail in that case. Whatever it was, I’m quite confident it doesn’t belong in the same descriptive bucket as $787 million.
The constant bombardment of "Men's advantages" by many groups has had the effect that empathy for men's issues non-existent unless it intersects with problems that matter to them.
Maybe it's not a good idea to predicate any mention of serious men's health issues with initial blanket dismissal / overt acceptance of discrimination and subsequently making it about how it's actually important for these other groups. Even if aspects of that are hypothetically arguable, let the point be made to be important on it's own.
They claim to care about the plight of men who are body shamed, but make small dick jokes, worship traditionally attractive male archetypes, and think it's funny when a pathetic, evil male character is either short, bald, or has a high-pitched voice.
They claim to care about men lagging in education, but pay much more attention to the academic/professional fields that are "boy's clubs" and never talk about "girl's clubs" in the same way, even though nowadays women outnumber male college graduates 3 to 2.
They claim to be all for sex positivity, but continually vilify male sexuality, to the point that men feel scared to express their desires and urges without being labeled a predator/sex pest/-cel adjacent.
The reason men's mental health is so messed up nowadays is that people on all sides of the spectrum seem to implicitly reinforce a traditionally masculine winner takes all culture, where the confident, attractive and aggressive men reap all the rewards. Any reasonable heterosexual male isn't gonna look at this reality of modern culture and think "well, at least I know how to share my emotions properly", when they see the positive romantic attention lauded much more often on those embodying the more stoic, traditional male stereotypes. They'd much rather do whatever it takes to fit into that stereotype so they don't miss out when they're still young. And further, if they feel that no amount of effort will get them there, and they express that concern, they are offered no sympathy.
I think this addresses a large part of the issue well: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-roman...
This calls for an obligatory Jordan Peterson video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mgDvTew6TXU
Males have dominated all power structures in every society in the history of humankind
Why are men doing this to themselves?
So the patriarchy is anti-male?
And if you prefer American and a bit older, that what Emma Goldman basically said, that the power structure of capitalist America (and later the Marxist leninist Russia once she saw what the butcher of Kronstad did) was hierarchical and that to avoid having the bottom revolt against them, the top direct the anger to citizen lower than them. I personally don't think it's on purpose, I think most people lack courage and prefer punching down rather than punching up.
Yes the civil rights movement was impeded by politician and some violent white nationalists, but the overt political support was from middle to high class female, and you don't have to read a ton of anarchist / Marxist books to understand why.
I think it’s loss aversion and belonging to the in-group
Men control power and also control what little power other men have
> Why are men doing this to themselves?
What you are doing here is using a tiny substrata of hyper-successful men (those who "dominated power structures" as you put it) and using that to represent the entire structure of Western society. There is nothing about that that is vaguely appropriate.
Western, Eastern, Northern and Southern - all societies
It’s like the prison guard complaining to the prisoner about how badly the king treats the guards
If we had more empathy for one another it would be easier to solve the problem instead of arguing about who suffers most.
We all suffer, we should help each other suffer less.
If men aren’t taking their health seriously I wonder if it could reflect a societal stigma similar to an over abundance of men with similar outcomes.
Feels like we’re in that kind of historical swing at least.
There are a limited number of resources (physical, mental, emotional, human, etc.). Most of them have gone towards people that are viewed as being unable to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and soldier through the shit” — primarily women, and children to a lesser degree.
If you were to start supporting men, you would necessarily deplete the already bare resource that is human compassion — and deprive others of it (whether current, by redistribution and reallocation, or future and expected, I.e men’s issues become the new fad, as women’s issues have been, but overtake the latter). One can twist logic all one wants to try to find a way that isn’t true to balm the cruel reality of being alive — it is a constant effort to survive, and make the most of the resources in one’s environment (this goes for all living things).
This couples with the reality that women are more likely to “pull themselves up” via group and social dynamics —- I.e the reason why “women’s issues” are a thing (gravely overshadowing children’s issues, something I find more important, vital, and underrepresented — because children cannot organize together in any meaningful capacity). In contrast to men, who suffer alone and — perhaps — one day find the good fortune of life improving — rather than banding together or influencing others to help fix their own lives.
With all this in mind, I don’t think men’s issues will ever be a “thing” — except some passing fad that halfheartedly and halfassedly “addresses men’s issues.”
The main issue is that life is hard — it’s a constant struggle. The way women and children receive support is different than what men need. Men just need some peace and quiet to sort their shit out - and then do the work to build up their own social support networks (via community and other men) - if they so desire. The most straightforward way to do that would be to improve working conditions, access to sustainable employment, a place to rest that is both peaceful and affordable, and access to good affordable food.
But we all need that don’t we? And the apparently-less-abled are first in line to receive those resources — while men are in the back of the line.
I noticed during the worst parts of the pandemic in the US that the people who decided to not try to do anything to avoid getting it and if they did get it didn't take it seriously were much more likely to be male.
That might explain some of the difference. (Although then it raises the question of why males were more likely to ignore COVID).
> More men die of diabetes than women.
Obesity seems to be a pretty strong contributor to becoming diabetic. Too much excess body fat seems to be a particular aspect of obesity that is involved.
I wonder if women get an advantage here because a healthy female body has a higher body fat percentage than does a health male body? As a man becomes obese and puts on excess fat, the percentage of excess fat will be going up faster than the percentage of excess fat in a woman who is becoming obese and putting on excess fat.
> The cancer mortality rate is higher among men.
I wish they'd have gone into more detail. First, a breakdown by cancer type would be useful. Some cancer risk is associated with behavior, such as lung cancer with smoking. Males are more likely to smoke. Another example would be skin cancer, which is associated with UV exposure. I think males are more likely to have jobs that require being outside all day on high UV days.
Second, I'd have liked to also see the rates for getting cancer rather than just the mortality rate. There are two ways males can have a higher death rate from cancer X than females.
One is that males and females get X at the same rate, but males with X die at a higher rate than females. That would suggest there might be something wrong with how we handle X in males.
The other way is that males get X at higher rate than females, but people with X die at about the same rate regardless of sex. If that's the case then it is how people get X that we need to look it.
I spent about 30 minutes typing up a recent experience and how I felt. I deleted it because my urge not to impose is too strong.
I need a dog.