Missing men and boys don’t just go missing from their homes, or our streets, but also from our hearts. They go missing from news reports. They go missing from inquiries and investigations. They go missing from our cries of advocacy and compassion. Missing from our placards, and missing from the speeches of our political leaders. I call them our ‘missing missing.’ Whether it be the boys taken by Boko Haram, those disappeared in Kashmir, or the lost indigenous males of Canada; we simply don’t care about men and boys when they go missing. This tendency to prioritise missing (white) women, is a phenomenon known by social scientists as ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’: ‘Missing white woman syndrome is a term which is used by social scientists and media commentators in reference to the media coverage, especially on television,of missing-person cases involving young, attractive, white, upper middle class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who were not white, of lower social classes, or of missing men or boys.’ So ask yourself, why have you never heard of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men? Why is there no hashtag to #BringBackourBoys? Do we simply care less about our missing boys and men? ~ Globe and Mail Toronto Star EquitableEducation.ca The Wall Street Journal The New Yorker Sommers Study Images by Black Kiwi Hug, Max Whitehead, Dan Cristian Padure, Francisco Andreotti from Unsplash. Illustration by Umer Younas

2023-02-13