The world treats men and women in fundamentally different ways; men, often seen as the instigators and architects of their own pain, and women the perpetual victim, deprived of agency and caught in the inescapable whirlpool of societal oppression. And so men are frequently blamed for their own suffering. Men who die young are told to “go to the doctors” more, men who are depressed told to “open up”, men struggling in education should “work harder”, and even boys, who continue to fall behind in school are questioned with “well maybe girls are just smarter?” It makes little sense to me. Especially as someone who consults professionally with the largest healthcare provider in the world, the NHS, to support other groups who also die young, have poor health outcomes and are apprehensive about going to the doctors… And I promise you – If I were to pitch to them the idea of “this year thousands of black people will die because of stubbornness”, or “South Indian populations just need to go to the doctor more”, I would be fired, and rightly so. So why is such an approach anymore acceptable for men? It’s impossible not to notice the dichotomy, of when women have a problem, we correctly ask “what can we do to fix society?” But when men have a problem, even the same problem, we only ask “what can men do to fix *themselves*?” Yes, it is an ugly, but undeniable double standard on messaging and approach, that for too long we have ignored. But now, a new study, a huge, large-scale experiment, of 35,000 Americans has provided evidence of it. And yes, it found we care less about men, we blame them for a lack of effort when they fall behind, and have significantly less support for government initiatives that attempt to help them. And I know – For those of us in this space, such findings are equivalent to “water is wet”, but I wonder if this might finally open society’s eyes to how much we overlook men’s issues, how often we blame men themselves for them, and why there is virtually no support for political reform to change it. What do you think? ~ Full Study  Images by Andrew Lisakov, Adrian Infernus, Codioful and Pablo Merchan Montes

2025-06-11