As a man with my own set of privileges, and personal experiences, I have learnt to sit down and listen to the words of women, and those who are not like me. I don’t know, what I don’t know. And I struggle to understand, what I cannot understand. I will never live a single day as a woman, so I doubt I can ever fully understand what they go through. Naturally, the same is true in reverse. Yet when it comes to male suicide, a incredibly complex global phenomenon, which claims the lives of hundreds of thousands of men worldwide each year – the conversation seems to be happening in places, and by people, who really ought to be listening. Too often I see suicidal men spoken over. Too often I see suicidal men kicked about like a political football, or used as pawns on a chessboard of performative wokery. Too often I see their rich and invaluable experience watered down into memes, caricaturised, or exploited by disingenuous social media grifters. Too often I see them pointed and sneered at. Called “toxic” by low effort psychologists, who have betrayed empathy, to instead turned to dogma. Who are these people? Because the chair in which I sat, listened, and learnt, remains empty. And so the suicidal men, who we told to “talk”, are spoken over. Their trauma gatekept by trolls, stomped on, and used by ideologues to indoctrinate, and divide. I don’t understand why the people, who told me to sit down and listen, are so reluctant to take their own advice. And it was good advice too. So what do you think? Are we caricaturising suicidal men? Do we trivialise their pain? And who really cares, and who’s just pretending? ~ Images by Austin Human, Majestic Lukas, Anaya Katlego, WheresLugo, Ray Zhou, Gradienta, Mathias Reding. #suicideprevention #malesuicide #malesuicideawareness #internationalsuicidepreventionday #suicidepreventionweek

2023-09-16