For the 30 or so years I’ve been alive; boys have been failed by schools. Every single year, I see the results come in, and ever year boys fall further behind. And every year I’ve watched nobody do anything. Similarly, I have never known a time where male survivors of abuse are supported, sheltered, or listened to, as female survivors have been for 50 years. I have never known a time where male homeless, those addicted to drugs, or incarcerated, are treated as human beings and with dignity. I have never seen a single ‘International Men’s Day Doodle’. I have never seen a well meaning space for men and boys not be invaded, picketed, and shouted down, by a bunch of warbling idiots calling the whole thing ‘misogynistic’. I have never seen fathers not routinely humiliated on TV. I have never known a time where dads have equal rights to mums. I’ve only ever seen ‘men’ blamed for everything wrong in the world – despite the vast majority of men being good people, and having no role in any of it. I’ve seen people plead with ‘men to talk’, whilst at the same time shrieking and crying, ‘men please shut up!’ Like every man, every day I wake up, and I know the biggest threat to my life is suicide – and yet I see the brave men who are fighting suicide called ‘toxic’, ‘patriarchal’, or ‘privileged’ even, by some of the most ignorant, and privileged people I’ve ever met. I have watched the brothers in my life fall behind, give up, drop out, and let go; betrayed by both left and right; politician, and public alike. And yet, again and again, I am told the conversations I try to foster on this page are not needed; offensive even, and that men have ‘had their say’, and I should go join the back of the queue. ‘Men have had their turn’ I hear. But which men, and when, and what the f**k are you even talking about? This is not Argos, there are no tickets and we can all have a turn, and as far as I’m concerned, men and boys will have a turn too. But what do you think? Did you have a turn? Or did I miss mine? And is it so hard to simply treat ‘the issue’, not the gender? ~ Images by Ilya Chunin, Jakob Owens, Taylor Flo, Christopher Burns, and Matt Collamer.

2023-10-17