Every day a man wakes up and leaves his home, the greatest risk to his life will be himself. And this will remain true, each and every day, until he’s about fifty.

Not an accident, a car crash, violent crime, or ill health; but suicide will be the biggest spectre hanging over him.

It’s a spectre that darkens the entire world, stealing 36 million years of healthy life, globally, each year.

It seems suicide is the prize at the end of the privilege rainbow, in a world where living life on ‘easy mode’ is so advantageous and wonderful, that countless thousands check out of it every day.

It’s hard to underline such a priority any deeper; for such an alarming issue should be front and centre, and right at the top of the men’s health agenda.

But it’s not.

Sadly such a devastating problem has instead become yet another pawn to be played on the ideological chess board of bigotry, a political football to be kicked about comment sections, and a calling card for the faux compassion and elephant tears of the virtuous social justice warriors.

So often these men are spoken for, and never spoken to.

We just hit them over the head with the same anti-male rhetoric, and shame-laden ideological dogma as always.

‘It’s toxic masculinity’ I hear, again and again and again.

Yet more garbage spat out by angry feminist mobs, cereal box psychologists, and hackneyed politicians, pandering for votes.

‘It’s male privilege’, or ‘the patriarchy backfired’, I see belched into the faces of vulnerable men.

But how can a problem that leaves so many bereaved loved ones with questions, be answered by the genetic catchphrases of an idiotic social media know-it-alls?

The truth is, there are no simple answers to male suicide.

And no, I don’t know ‘why men do it’ either, but I do know we’ll only find out by actually listening to what they have to say.

What do you think?

~

APPG on male suicide: https://tinyurl.com/36ta73db

Full podcast, Overcoming the Divide https://tinyurl.com/5yunc8sz @overcoming_the_divide

Images by Ali Jouyandeh

Music – The Art of Silence

#malesuicideawareness #malesuicide #mensmentalhealth #mensmentalhealthawareness #fyp

2024-03-13