Remember, just because you don’t hear about something, doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

I know – despite us feeling like worldly creatures, who seem plugged into what’s going on, everywhere; the truth is that our news and media provide us with a very narrow and heavily curated medley of outage, catastrophey and carnage.

Some suffering is simply less news worthy than others, and often, it’s the pain and loss of men and boys that is left on the cutting room floor.

How many times have you read the headline, ‘500 dead, including 50 women and children’, only to be left wondering… who are the remaining 450?

How many times have you seen the heroism, sacrifice or loss of men and boys referred to in gender neutral terms such as ‘victims’, ‘vigilantes’ or ‘people’?

How many times is the tragic loss of men and boys submerged in darkness, ignored and left unreported by a disinterested and disingenuous mainstream media?

And yet when women and girls are harmed, their gender is presented front and centre, as the main talking point, and the subject of outrage.

Well, that is the phenomenon known as ‘male disposability’: which suggests we simply value the well being and safety of boys and men less than we do that of women and girls.

It’s why Mayor of London @sadiq buries his head in the sand as young black boys stab each other in his city, saying nothing about the unprecedented rates of violence against men and boys, and yet, when a single young woman is killed, Mayor Khan hops onto his soapbox and grandstands about the ‘epidemic of violence against women’.

This lopsided and deceitful world view, which deprives men and boys of care and visibility, and heaps compassion onto women and girls, is framed as some kind of compassionate form of modern advocacy, which it’s not, never was, and never can be.

So what is to be said about male disposability?

Do we care less about men and boys?

Might the tragic crimes of Boko Haram, some of which became world news, whilst others are barely mentioned, tell us more about how we truly value male and female suffering?

And who will bring back all of Nigeria’s children?

What do you think?

~

Study https://tinyurl.com/kbs6sa9m

2024-04-17