International Mens day again
(... it's the 8th of March)
Sometimes I feel like I’m suffering from ‘first world problems’ by being a man in this world of ours. I mean, there’s a load of ways I undoubtedly have a measure of ‘advantage’ in a lot of places in life.
So I try not to whinge and moan about it too much, because in a lot of ways - I do have a good life.
But even so, I think it’s international mens day, and if I can’t be a little self indulgent about mens rights today of all days, then what’s the point?
I’m still bothered about men’s mental health. I’m still really concerned about just how neglected a lot of men are. I had a really bad time a couple of years back. It might have ended much worse that it did, and for that I’m thankful, but even so… I’ve come to realise just how much a problem that toxic masculinity has become.
How much a problem ‘ze Patriarchy’ is for those of us that should - at least in theory - be benefitting from it.
I mean, it’s all well and good to be told - or to recognise for yourself - that you’ve got an advantage. But then feel a failure, because despite that, you still found life hard, and you still didn’t achieve enough.
I think men are held to a high - indeed impossible - standard in a few areas, and the main one of these is mental health and emotional stability.
BECAUSE of our entrenched toxic masculinity, we’ve ended up in a slightly weird situation where … a lot of men have been ‘left behind’ in various ways.
I truly believe that’s causing us a lot of problems right now - we’ve got to this weird places that prejudice is … acceptable. To be treated as your demographic has always been prejudice. To be reduced to a statistic in the interests of ‘harm prevention’? That’s not fair and it never was.
No matter how true it might be, we’ve a whole bunch of people growing up today feeling unfairly judged by society, and they’re getting angry about it.
And I’m coming to recognise more and more that there’s a toxic cycle around managing mental health more generally. Men grow up learning that they need to be stoic. To be strong. To never cry, and never show weakness or fear or uncertainty.
But… well, honestly, men are just as emotionally vulnerable as women. Honestly perhaps more so. It’s just so deeply repressed, masked, and hidden away, that … it’s hard to tell.
That’s exacting a horrific price. Since I had a really bad time a few years back, and started talking about it a little more openly, I’ve had a lot of people open up in turn. I hadn’t really realised just how big a problem this is - I barely even recognised my own problems.
But there’s far more people who’ve got extremely close to the edge of ending their lives, and the people close to them… don’t know. Because they weren’t making a cry for help. They were just … done. Wanted it all to stop and end everything.
More still that … got a bit reckless. It’s so very easy when you’re really not sure you want to continue, to take stupid risks because you don’t care any more, and that has consequences and collateral damage too.
Because … depression is slow and insidious. I think men are uniquely vulnerable to it in some ways because of this whole toxic masculinity problem. Depression eats away at your sense of self worth. You start gradually to lower your expectations, and hide away your wants and desires, and just sort of frame your self worth as … being a stereotype. Being the stoic resilient provider.
Until one day it shatters and you realise there’s nothing left.
I don’t know what the solution is - because I think a lot of the people who want to help… also can’t. I mean, no one really wants to partner with someone who’s an emotional wreck. But when they’re also a perceived threat due to ‘being a man’ … well, that really makes the problem worse. After all, men are undoubtedly physically stronger and have statistics indicating danger.
And if they have a breakdown? Well, suddenly they’re unpredictable, deceitful and potentially dangerous, and … that’s the kind of thing that just destroys trust and shatters respect in ways that … might never recover.
It doesn’t matter how well meaning you are - if you’re not a trained therapist, you probably just can’t handle the sort of ‘trauma dump’ that someone who’s spent their life emotionally repressed and generally screwed up has loaded up inside. And why should you? It’s certainly not fair on partners and spouses to be in that position in the first place!
But that’s the problem here, and like I say, I don’t think there’s an easy solution. Of the people who I have spoken to about … difficult things in their lives, there’s a common pattern of the consequences of opening up at all.
Sometimes it’s nasty people who claim to want an emotionally vulnerable man, but then will abuse them. Who want someone to ‘open up’ because they want ammunition and gossip.
But it’s perhaps worse when it’s kind people, who truly mean what they say… and yet who find the image of that person, their trust in their mental competence and general safety as a person… well, that illusion - for that’s all it was - is shattered, but … rebuilding that trust may be impossible, because it was based on an ideal of a person who never really existed.
And so the silence continues, because there’s so few people it is safe to trust, and it each lesson becomes more painful still.
I don’t know what the solution is. This has been going on for enough generations now that … it’s hard to really know where to start. But I’m holding out a little hope, that as we make some progress on deconstructing ‘gender based’ baggage in all it’s various forms, we will gradually get to a point where equality is the norm.
Where both boys and girls are permitted the ranges of self expression that they actually need to grow up to a well rounded, emotionally mature adult, who have ways to meaningfully process their emotional trauma in life.
We’re not there yet, and it feels in some ways like there’s even further to go than ever. But I think that’s at least in part because the problem has been hiding in plain sight, unacknowledged for multiple generations.
As Tyler puts it:
