The cognitive dissonance I find in people’s reaction to “men and boy’s advocacy”, is perplexing. “Men’s issues don’t exist!” I often hear. Well – what about homelessness, is that an issue? And if it is, what about the fact nearly 90% of UK homeless deaths are men? The same goes for drug addition, and the fact that three quarters of drug overdoses are men. What about suicide? What about police brutality? What about work place deaths? Are these not issues to you? Because they overwhelmingly impact men and boys. So many of us are anti-war, and yet fail to recognise that nearly all military deaths are men. So many want to reform workplace safety, without understanding that 93% of all U.S. workplace deaths are men. In America, ending police brutality remains a centre point for social justice advocacy, but guess what - nineteen out of every twenty Americans killed by police are male. So what are you talking about, ‘mens issues don’t exist’? The problem is ‘mens issues’ are re-catergorised elsewhere, or not seen through a similar ‘gendered’ lens as we use for women and girls. Why is that? So today I want to try something, to erase the highly stigmatised label of ‘men and boys’ and change it to something neutral, something palatable and inoffensive. Something that allows us to look past our own prejudice and biases. So tell me, should we help ‘Group X’? ~ Sources [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]  Nartan Buyukyildiz, Anja Baurmann, Ha Nguy, Niamat Ullah, Fusion Medical, Rene Bohmer, Camilo Jimenez and Gradienta, from Unsplash. Illustrations by Alice Noir and Adrien Coquet from The Noun Project. #mensissues #mensmentalhealth #socialjustice #feminism #egalitarian #mensrights #malesuicideawareness

2023-03-14