In some comment, someone mentioned to denial/minimization of boys and men being the victims of sexual abuse. Just wanted to say I have seen this en masse as a counselor, male survivors i mean.
Thank you so much Matthew. So true the untapped power in coupling. I agree, healing as a political act, the energy of our heart rippling out. warm wishes in the darkness.
I have noticed, as have many others, there is a war on white men. It’s goal, like feminism, is to destroy the healthy empowered male-female relationship. Because united sacred masculine and feminine coupling would be greater than the shadow forces that run the country.
This is a 66 year-old white woman talking, growing up in the second or third wave of feminism that absolutely emphasized “the disposable male,” promiscuous uncommitted sex and anger toward the “ruling white men.” Now we (me) are alone, lonely, unhappy and without family.
It is preposterous there is no Office of Men’s Health considering as the author says men are at a higher risk of dying and the number of deaths due to the number one and two causes of American death (heart disease and cancer) are equal and more than women.
Is it an indicator of men’s health and happiness that they shoot themselves (men are serious about suicide) to the tune of 40,000 per year? As author said, as many deaths as woman’s breast cancer and I would also like to add that men die of prostrate cancer at the rate of 40k per year also.
There has been greater awakening to the intentional destruction of the masculine with the equal force of the “transgender movement,” where children are coddled independently from their parent to commit the terrifing metaphorical act to cut off their male genitalia all leading to a post-human era.
Appreciate you speaking to your experience, Kimberly.
There is so much untapped power in couples. In the midst of the darkest night of the year, I feel my wife and I reaching for that right now, using words like "vision" and "practice" and "what's good for the community".
I see all healing as a political act in many ways. From within the individual, to the couple,... family, community, city, state, nation, world...
DV (and rape and child sexual abuse) are NOT overwhelmingly committed by men as the Lying in a Room of One’s bigots you seem to worship would have us believe. Heaven help male survivors of female DV, rape, child abuse (majority of female perps) and child sex abuse were they to foolishly trust feminist ideologies or agencies. Believing the self-serving myth that feminist hate mongers care about sexed equality, about males, or about a single JUST standard with respect to female violence is how gullible male survivors routinely get double victimized.
Imagine Johnny Depp going to a feminist DV shelter, the bigoted woke feminist WaPo, or the feminist-addled ACLU for help handling his diabolical female DV predator. Nobody but a male fool would do that. Any feminist who spreads the idea that he should do so are either brainwashed ignoramuses who have swallowed the pink KoolAide or they are cynically evil feminist flunkies.
I've been advocating for men and their families for more than fifty years. The times are shifting (finally) and more people are paying attention. Thank you Richard for your work, your fine book, your passion, and clear and balanced graphic expressions of the facts of life. Our Moonshot for Mankind launched in July. Hope you'll all check it out. www.MoonshotforMankind.com.
Oh, I agree entirely about the need of men for a healthy identity. As I've said elsewhere, a healthy identity must rely on the ability to make at least one contribution to society that is (a) distinctive; (b) necessary and (c) publicly valued. For men, that would making at least on contribution that (a) women do not make; (b) society cannot do without; and (c) confers at least symbolic prestige.
The problem is that women already do almost everything that men do--earning money, protecting themselves and their children--if not by themselves then with help from the state and its many agencies. That leaves only one thing that no woman, and certainly no state bureaucracy, can do. That's fatherhood. For society to value fathers, however, would require common agreement that fatherhood is not the same as motherhood (let alone assistant motherhood)--in other words, that the function of fathers is not only very different from that of mothers but also just as necessary. We have much empirical evidence to support this claim, but few people, either men or women, are ready to take it seriously. Too many men (and some women) assume that good fathers are simply fathers who do their share of diaper duty. Too many women (along with some men and almost all transgender people) believe that sexual "equality" means sexual "sameness" or that taking fathers seriously as essential features of family life would undermine the political interests mothers, especially single mothers, and gay couples. Consequently, we have divorce and custody laws that, in effect, make children the property of their mothers and therefore millions of fatherless children (all of whom are at far great risk of every social, economic, psychological and even physical pathologies than children who live with both their mothers and their fathers).
So, I'd conclude by suggesting that "gender equality" is not unambiguously good--not if it prevents people from seeing the obvious fact that men and women are different enough to make their functions within family life both distinctive and equal.
--or, to put it a slightly different way, that men are something other than women.
Well sad Paul! Do you know if it’s a state by state law that automatically children of divorce go to their mothers? (Obviously if you have money you can battle in court). In my mental health work I saw Manny low class women with children in abusive situations I remember a couple where the father wanted to be involved he was far more healthy he should’ve had custody. Wondering if it’s law or a huge assumption on just about every national judge?
Gender equality is a self serving feminist falsehood that needs to called out and condemned as such.
Men must have a viable identity as men before they become husbands, and viable identities as (heterosexual) husbands before they become fathers. All three identities are under merciless attack by our lovely Lying in a Room of One’s Own bigots. Men who don’t call out those lies and condemn the misandrist bigots who spew them will never have viable identities as men, as husbands, or as fathers because feminism is about ending men, dispensing with husbands, and turning Camille Paglia’s ‘grass huts’ girls into men, lesbian husbands, fathers.
Men are very different than are women but one would never know that today given how many so/called men have turned into craven cowards under the woke feminist onslaught or who have garnered obscene alpha status (eg Joe and Justin(e)) by turning into honorary misandrist women who sell their bros down the river to coddle favor from feminist bigots as toadying socio-political-corporate traitors.
It seems that prominent homosexual men have taken the most effective shots at our fav lying gynocentric hatemongers so far which is great but DEI won’t DiE until straight men gird their loins and tame the sadistic feminist shrews who currently control Western Civ. Straight men must somehow overcome our fear and fascination of the world’s most powerful (female) organ if we are going to ever to become able to step up with the homosexual men who could care less about same. Said straight stepping up would create far more healthy identities for all three male roles AND force women to grow into genuine adults who are treated equitably but not equally in the public realm…unless, of course, those women publicly sacrifice and perform EQUALLY with men to serve the common good..
Male social worker here. Can’t argue with the need for more support for men & boys. It’s so tempting to seek a singular source of mens despair and yet most of us know it’s more complex than that. It does seem men are fighting against their biological determinism in a modern world. So many of the general qualities that got us here aren’t the ones most needed to keep us here. We aren’t at risk of extinction but men and boys often need additional relational support to initiate and maintain relationships (a key health indicator). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in mens groups watching men struggle with connection and looked out the window and seen women just out walking and talking in small groups getting exercise!
Female social worker here. Yes, women understand the importance of connection with others. And, men are equally capable of developing these skills and overcoming societal conditioning to be insular, unfeeling, pillars of strength. Women can be allies in this process and work with men to create safe space to heal.
Yes! Love that you are a social worker too. I work with men individually and in groups to develop these skills. Often it takes a lot for them to be willing (divorce, addiction, suicide attempt). I bet you and I could do some damage at a dinner party with our experience with these topics. 😬😂
Since World War II the world of work has changed--and men haven't. The share of employment in goods producing industries (male dominated) has shrunk from 48% in 1948 to 15% today. The share of employment in private service industries (female dominated) has grown from 41% in 1948 to 71% today. The best paid jobs in service industries require substantial higher education. Women are getting that education and men have been falling ever farther behind women in collegiate enrollment since the early 1980s. I study higher education enrollments, and the boys arrive at college too often poorly prepared and unready to take on the requirements of success in college. Girls come through the existing K-12 system better prepared to succeed in college than do their brothers (from the same families, attending the same schools). The worlds of children--home and school life--serve one gender far better than the other. This is a global problem, and Richard's recommendation for an Office of Men's Health would be a very useful start if its scope and charge were substantially broadened to include K-12 education.
I think men and the changed work landscape has contributed to men’s despair. i have heard from men not feeling “useful enough” not thriving in the provider role they instinctively want to be in.
Great question Lisa. I think education/career choice is a minimal contributor to men’s despair. Boys are in despair because their fathers are. Many of their fathers are in despair partly because they struggled as boys. Generally speaking women & girls seem able to grow (not thrive) in poorer soil than than men & boys.
I am frightened by the lack of awareness of the fact that men/boys are suffering and dying from despair. I read everything I can find and talk with my husband about what he sees as a clinical psychologist to try to understand. Despite how the topic is commonly presented as a competition between gender groups, the data is clear; men and boys are suffering and dying for reasons and at rates entirely different than women. So, let’s frame the issue for discussion in ways that allow women to join the quest for a solution. I do not hate men and I know there are many women who would answer the call to help who recoil at this language and just keep scrolling.
I imagine we have similar dinner conversations Lisa. I’m a male social worker married to a psychotherapist in clinical practice. I see why the issue slides into an us/them dynamic. There are still so many ways women are disadvantaged. That isn’t history - I haven’t seen it since yesterday. I’m frightened too and also encouraged by how few women I know (I know a lot in my field) hate men. Haven’t met many and they mostly want to be heard. Same for men “hating” women. The ones who do find some comfort in blame. Reeves nailed it when he cites holding two thoughts at once. I won’t even get into how we support non-binary/gender fluid youth who have astronomical death rates.
You know I think we would be better off if all of us could just accept that gender is a continuum on which each of us moves throughout the course of our existence. Maybe that’s for another life, though. Contending with this one requires all hands on deck.
Boom. Yep and I bet that’s where we are heading with gender. Interning in a medical clinic that provides gender affirming care to minors really opened my eyes to this. Perhaps in another decade gender will be a 5 point scale on job applications instead of binary?
Reeves is right on track. The outcomes for boys and men are startling. In a number of educational meetings with policy makers, there is always a pause when it comes to deaths of despair (suicide, overdose, and alcohol deaths). Most policy makers do not know that 80% of suicides, 70% of overdose deaths, and 69% of alcohol deaths are male. This has happened time and time again. Policy makers are unaware because they are not educated on the subject. It's the reason an Office of Men's Health is so critical.
OMG I know these stats are true and it makes me so sad and mad! how insane there is no an Office for Men and Boy’s Health! yes you can hear a pin drop when “deaths of despair” among men is brought up.
Try ‘Congressman Conyers’ by Daddy Justice Films on Vimeo. The totalitarian girls who control content on the Do Be Evil empire (Google/YouTube) are busy squashing anyone who dares to diss the PC Party Line. So you better grab it before it is gone forever.
I tend to think we need fewer federal agencies not more. However, this doesn’t mean that the data you are sharing here isn’t distressing. Couldn’t the NIH, for example, regain some of its former credibility by taking up this project very publicly?
I think we need both! But to some extent those government agencies help create the conditions for cultural change by raising awareness. Look at what the Surgeon General has done around issues of loneliness, for example.
One of the big big big issues that needs to be grappled with is that women can not care and love men into caring and loving themselves. Trust me, I have tried. I simply work harder at my mental health than just about every man I know, save the ones who are trying to be Tony Robbins.
I love men, I care deeply about the mens health crisis as does every woman I know. But when the men in our actual lives refuse to go to the gym, on a walk, an healthy meals and go to therapy...it is really hard to continue generating the emotional energy to see this as a problem we can do anything to solve.
And just like solving women's and girl's attainment disparities took a lift from both genders...so will solving this for men. But good lord...our husbands have to do the work of participating. The everydayness of improving mental, physical and spiritual health is HARD.
I agree this movement needs a lift from women as well! I think the issue is so minimized it needs like a woman’s validity (?). there are sexist things to break through like men should be fully independent, they should not “cry or be weak.”
It sure does! Good women are fine pins for the bigoted feminist bombast balloon because they can’t be easily shamed for talking about men whereas men are instantly shut down by the woke feminist though thugs. That’s almost certainly why the good Dr Reeves refuses to show the public the invisible elephants in the room.
You might enjoy the late great psychologist David Snarch's brilliant work on how to keep sex hot within marriages. As presumably 'no-sex' Sex spouses, you control your marriage relationships. That means that you really don't have to work nearly as hard as you say you are to solve your husbands' problems....assuming you really are already working as hard as you say you already are on your own personal differentiation.
But since men tend to differentiate a lot more in the masculine public realm of strangers than do women, it is not likely that women, who tend toward gynocentric woke feminist group think, will be able to differentiate enough to break free from the barbaric Me Too mob and to pitch in with female political chivalry for men at the PUBLIC level. Those rare women who do differentiate themselves publicly from Valley Girl mob are almost always viciously attacked by the mob just as are men who dare to diss the mob. Therefore if women are ever going to be of much use in terms of solving common public crises that don't affect just their own already grossly gynocentric Sex, they will have to first free themselves from their own mob of totalitarian thought thugs so that they can THINK freely, speak freely, and follow their own consciences with respect to closing the gross gender death and empathy gaps for men.
I agree with you. I want to start my own substack thread and have been working on an article “Female Totalitarianism.” As a counselor, i am talking more about emotional/psychosocial issues related to the mother. i get and validate your anger.
Glad to hear your very very rare willingness to see and to care about the invisible elephants or, I should say, the crocodiles in the room. Mebbe a good Dr. named Reeves will deign to go to core cause instead of surface solutions but I, for one, am not holding my breath because going to core causes, as a man today, requires uncommonly big balls. A thread on female totalitarianism written by a woman is very welcome and will probably be a lot less tendentious than are men like Jordan Peterson on the same topic.
Your response is not within the dignity of the conversation that the institute is trying to have. Personal and ad hominem attacks are trite and boring.
There’s no ad hom attack on your person here. Go read Passionate Marriage or look up Snarch’s work online. You’ll see that I’ve directly addressed your stated personal concerns constructively by referring you directly to a great dude (yes, it’s almost always a dude) who can show you how to get what you need from your husband without working so hard assuming your husband is willing to work hard HIMSELF to have a better marriage with you or that you are willing to honor your own hard work on yourself if he isn’t.
Due diligence and comprehension before condemnation from you would go long way in terms en-gendering respect for you here. What’s really trite and boring are your baseless attacks on my responses before you have a clue about my responses or about their credibility or lack thereof. Such responses are so girlish this from a woman who appears to be working really really hard to be more womanish.
In your defense, however, we live in a world wherein feminist women demand that all women STAY in pitiful girlish states as fictional victims of their favorite conspiracy theory (patriarchal oppression). This makes it very hard for women to grow thicker skins and to hear men when they knee jerk dislike what men have to say. It also makes it easy for women like you (and men like Reeves) to shut down ‘not ok’ (lmao) responses that you disagree with but that are just as potentially valid as are your own.
You’d be a lot better off were you to stop trying to censor my responses out of hand and were you start using your Google fingers and your noggin to start understanding them so that you can respond intelligently to them. In any case, you don’t get to police thought on this thread unless, of course, the powers who control the thread permit you to. But in that case they would engender the same contempt that feminists the world over garner for their trite
Agreed! It is hard. That's why we all need help, from each other as well as from the power that be. I see a lot more eye-rolling and finger-wagging, on both sides of this debate, than helping hands. Thank you for reading and commenting, and for your love and compassion for the men in your life! R
You can LISTEN, learn, and earn the right to lead or you can diss your fellow men and coddle favor from loving and compassionate women who don’t yet have a clue about how most women treat most men. You can’t have it both ways and expect to gather a male following as a nice guy in an extremely nasty environment. The woke feminist moral, cultural, and intellectual rot that got us here will have to be addressed before anyone will really listen to your reasoning and evidence no matter how solid or sobering it is.
Women care about the men they know and love personally but they are grossly gynocentric and indifferent to rest of the male population. Their psychology is not built to think about the public implications of just about anything unless it concerns them directly, unless it concerns womankind (and even there the thinking is pitiful feminist thinking), or unless it concerns the women and men in their personal circles. This means that the female political chivalry needed to get an Offive for Boys and Men is not going to be there.
Women have to do better because they're themselves no small part of the problem.
With respect to your contributions to the endeavor, so far you've shamed a poster ("not ok") rather than engaging with him, trumpeted your own alleged accolades, and told men they need to step up (these last two in your first post here, e.g "But good lord...our husbands have to do the work of participating")
Why indeed! Because women, IN GENERAL, are grossly gynocentric, happy to ride on male disposability and are indifferent to male suffering. Because gross gynocentric or feminist double standards in virtually every public service institution crush men and entitle women. Because the deadly woke feminist madness behind our culture moral rot and collapse is coming from women and from traitorous male toadies who back bigoted women.
I’m glad that you are curious and that seem well intentioned but you have a ton of work to do before you diss dialogues in support of yet another feminist man who is not YET courageous enough to go to core causes himself.
Hi Augustin, thanks for commenting. I'm at pains in the post to point out that the neglect of male health issues is NOT, in my opinion, because women don't care about men. It's because there aren't institutions and agencies doing the slow hard work of ensuring those health issues are addressed. In the end I sincerely believe that we're all on the same team, and that there is plenty of compassion to go around. Again, thank you for reading and commenting.
Ah, perhaps you should examine your underlying assumptions then.
The "institutions and agencies" are made of people, and reflect the beliefs and biases of those people.
I do also hope that women will join the team and act with compasion toward men (individually and in aggregate,not just those they love and "should" care about) and introspection on how they can change, but I'm not hopeful. The poster I replied to and your interlocutor are way too common to believe otherwise.
I hope you are correct and the time has come for a National Office for Men's Health. It is so needed. There are strong forces working against this happening as I found out when I was the vice chair of the Maryland Commission for Men's Health. I know Ron Henry and his excellent group The Men's Health Network have been working to make this happen for many years.
The suicide issue is one that has gotten very little attention. I have been working on this one for a while and did a two part video series on it a while back. For anyone interested here's a link to part one: https://menaregood.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-male-suicide
This is exactly why mens issues don't get gov't support or taken seriously & there's no mens movements comparable to women's movements. Every time they have a positive space to help each other, all they talk about is women & spew hate. They refuse help they claim to need & not get.
Feminism=equality is the lie that just won’t die. It might be good idea to become angry with how long feminists have lied to you, TOO. Toxic feminist feminity is not exactly creating the safe, prosperous, and caring End of Men Utopias that feminist totalitarians wax so poetically and so gleefully about. It is creating increasingly miserable women alone with their cats in their old age.
You wish, girlfren. I am thoroughly enjoying reactions from feminists like you who hate the fact that men are finally starting to wake the flock up and empower ourselves. Any Mr married to a feminist man-hating Mrs is a truly pitiful fool.
In some comment, someone mentioned to denial/minimization of boys and men being the victims of sexual abuse. Just wanted to say I have seen this en masse as a counselor, male survivors i mean.
It starts here with top feminist ‘researchers’: https://toysoldier.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/mary-koss-doesnt-think-women-can-rape-men-and-boys/. But it’s also part and parcel of the traditional damsel in distress/male disposability trope.
Thank you so much Matthew. So true the untapped power in coupling. I agree, healing as a political act, the energy of our heart rippling out. warm wishes in the darkness.
I have noticed, as have many others, there is a war on white men. It’s goal, like feminism, is to destroy the healthy empowered male-female relationship. Because united sacred masculine and feminine coupling would be greater than the shadow forces that run the country.
This is a 66 year-old white woman talking, growing up in the second or third wave of feminism that absolutely emphasized “the disposable male,” promiscuous uncommitted sex and anger toward the “ruling white men.” Now we (me) are alone, lonely, unhappy and without family.
It is preposterous there is no Office of Men’s Health considering as the author says men are at a higher risk of dying and the number of deaths due to the number one and two causes of American death (heart disease and cancer) are equal and more than women.
Is it an indicator of men’s health and happiness that they shoot themselves (men are serious about suicide) to the tune of 40,000 per year? As author said, as many deaths as woman’s breast cancer and I would also like to add that men die of prostrate cancer at the rate of 40k per year also.
There has been greater awakening to the intentional destruction of the masculine with the equal force of the “transgender movement,” where children are coddled independently from their parent to commit the terrifing metaphorical act to cut off their male genitalia all leading to a post-human era.
Love this:
Because united sacred masculine and feminine coupling would be greater than the shadow forces that run the country.
Appreciate you speaking to your experience, Kimberly.
There is so much untapped power in couples. In the midst of the darkest night of the year, I feel my wife and I reaching for that right now, using words like "vision" and "practice" and "what's good for the community".
I see all healing as a political act in many ways. From within the individual, to the couple,... family, community, city, state, nation, world...
All good things to you.
You know you’re talking about generation(s) ago?
Times change.
DV (and rape and child sexual abuse) are NOT overwhelmingly committed by men as the Lying in a Room of One’s bigots you seem to worship would have us believe. Heaven help male survivors of female DV, rape, child abuse (majority of female perps) and child sex abuse were they to foolishly trust feminist ideologies or agencies. Believing the self-serving myth that feminist hate mongers care about sexed equality, about males, or about a single JUST standard with respect to female violence is how gullible male survivors routinely get double victimized.
Imagine Johnny Depp going to a feminist DV shelter, the bigoted woke feminist WaPo, or the feminist-addled ACLU for help handling his diabolical female DV predator. Nobody but a male fool would do that. Any feminist who spreads the idea that he should do so are either brainwashed ignoramuses who have swallowed the pink KoolAide or they are cynically evil feminist flunkies.
I've been advocating for men and their families for more than fifty years. The times are shifting (finally) and more people are paying attention. Thank you Richard for your work, your fine book, your passion, and clear and balanced graphic expressions of the facts of life. Our Moonshot for Mankind launched in July. Hope you'll all check it out. www.MoonshotforMankind.com.
Looks like a great organization -- thanks for sharing.
It's (past) time! Let's voice our support for an Office of Men's Health.
Oh, I agree entirely about the need of men for a healthy identity. As I've said elsewhere, a healthy identity must rely on the ability to make at least one contribution to society that is (a) distinctive; (b) necessary and (c) publicly valued. For men, that would making at least on contribution that (a) women do not make; (b) society cannot do without; and (c) confers at least symbolic prestige.
The problem is that women already do almost everything that men do--earning money, protecting themselves and their children--if not by themselves then with help from the state and its many agencies. That leaves only one thing that no woman, and certainly no state bureaucracy, can do. That's fatherhood. For society to value fathers, however, would require common agreement that fatherhood is not the same as motherhood (let alone assistant motherhood)--in other words, that the function of fathers is not only very different from that of mothers but also just as necessary. We have much empirical evidence to support this claim, but few people, either men or women, are ready to take it seriously. Too many men (and some women) assume that good fathers are simply fathers who do their share of diaper duty. Too many women (along with some men and almost all transgender people) believe that sexual "equality" means sexual "sameness" or that taking fathers seriously as essential features of family life would undermine the political interests mothers, especially single mothers, and gay couples. Consequently, we have divorce and custody laws that, in effect, make children the property of their mothers and therefore millions of fatherless children (all of whom are at far great risk of every social, economic, psychological and even physical pathologies than children who live with both their mothers and their fathers).
So, I'd conclude by suggesting that "gender equality" is not unambiguously good--not if it prevents people from seeing the obvious fact that men and women are different enough to make their functions within family life both distinctive and equal.
--or, to put it a slightly different way, that men are something other than women.
Well sad Paul! Do you know if it’s a state by state law that automatically children of divorce go to their mothers? (Obviously if you have money you can battle in court). In my mental health work I saw Manny low class women with children in abusive situations I remember a couple where the father wanted to be involved he was far more healthy he should’ve had custody. Wondering if it’s law or a huge assumption on just about every national judge?
Gender equality is a self serving feminist falsehood that needs to called out and condemned as such.
Men must have a viable identity as men before they become husbands, and viable identities as (heterosexual) husbands before they become fathers. All three identities are under merciless attack by our lovely Lying in a Room of One’s Own bigots. Men who don’t call out those lies and condemn the misandrist bigots who spew them will never have viable identities as men, as husbands, or as fathers because feminism is about ending men, dispensing with husbands, and turning Camille Paglia’s ‘grass huts’ girls into men, lesbian husbands, fathers.
Men are very different than are women but one would never know that today given how many so/called men have turned into craven cowards under the woke feminist onslaught or who have garnered obscene alpha status (eg Joe and Justin(e)) by turning into honorary misandrist women who sell their bros down the river to coddle favor from feminist bigots as toadying socio-political-corporate traitors.
It seems that prominent homosexual men have taken the most effective shots at our fav lying gynocentric hatemongers so far which is great but DEI won’t DiE until straight men gird their loins and tame the sadistic feminist shrews who currently control Western Civ. Straight men must somehow overcome our fear and fascination of the world’s most powerful (female) organ if we are going to ever to become able to step up with the homosexual men who could care less about same. Said straight stepping up would create far more healthy identities for all three male roles AND force women to grow into genuine adults who are treated equitably but not equally in the public realm…unless, of course, those women publicly sacrifice and perform EQUALLY with men to serve the common good..
Male social worker here. Can’t argue with the need for more support for men & boys. It’s so tempting to seek a singular source of mens despair and yet most of us know it’s more complex than that. It does seem men are fighting against their biological determinism in a modern world. So many of the general qualities that got us here aren’t the ones most needed to keep us here. We aren’t at risk of extinction but men and boys often need additional relational support to initiate and maintain relationships (a key health indicator). I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in mens groups watching men struggle with connection and looked out the window and seen women just out walking and talking in small groups getting exercise!
Female social worker here. Yes, women understand the importance of connection with others. And, men are equally capable of developing these skills and overcoming societal conditioning to be insular, unfeeling, pillars of strength. Women can be allies in this process and work with men to create safe space to heal.
Yes! Love that you are a social worker too. I work with men individually and in groups to develop these skills. Often it takes a lot for them to be willing (divorce, addiction, suicide attempt). I bet you and I could do some damage at a dinner party with our experience with these topics. 😬😂
Since World War II the world of work has changed--and men haven't. The share of employment in goods producing industries (male dominated) has shrunk from 48% in 1948 to 15% today. The share of employment in private service industries (female dominated) has grown from 41% in 1948 to 71% today. The best paid jobs in service industries require substantial higher education. Women are getting that education and men have been falling ever farther behind women in collegiate enrollment since the early 1980s. I study higher education enrollments, and the boys arrive at college too often poorly prepared and unready to take on the requirements of success in college. Girls come through the existing K-12 system better prepared to succeed in college than do their brothers (from the same families, attending the same schools). The worlds of children--home and school life--serve one gender far better than the other. This is a global problem, and Richard's recommendation for an Office of Men's Health would be a very useful start if its scope and charge were substantially broadened to include K-12 education.
I think men and the changed work landscape has contributed to men’s despair. i have heard from men not feeling “useful enough” not thriving in the provider role they instinctively want to be in.
Do you think education/career choice is the biggest driver of men’s dispair today?
Great question Lisa. I think education/career choice is a minimal contributor to men’s despair. Boys are in despair because their fathers are. Many of their fathers are in despair partly because they struggled as boys. Generally speaking women & girls seem able to grow (not thrive) in poorer soil than than men & boys.
I am frightened by the lack of awareness of the fact that men/boys are suffering and dying from despair. I read everything I can find and talk with my husband about what he sees as a clinical psychologist to try to understand. Despite how the topic is commonly presented as a competition between gender groups, the data is clear; men and boys are suffering and dying for reasons and at rates entirely different than women. So, let’s frame the issue for discussion in ways that allow women to join the quest for a solution. I do not hate men and I know there are many women who would answer the call to help who recoil at this language and just keep scrolling.
I imagine we have similar dinner conversations Lisa. I’m a male social worker married to a psychotherapist in clinical practice. I see why the issue slides into an us/them dynamic. There are still so many ways women are disadvantaged. That isn’t history - I haven’t seen it since yesterday. I’m frightened too and also encouraged by how few women I know (I know a lot in my field) hate men. Haven’t met many and they mostly want to be heard. Same for men “hating” women. The ones who do find some comfort in blame. Reeves nailed it when he cites holding two thoughts at once. I won’t even get into how we support non-binary/gender fluid youth who have astronomical death rates.
You know I think we would be better off if all of us could just accept that gender is a continuum on which each of us moves throughout the course of our existence. Maybe that’s for another life, though. Contending with this one requires all hands on deck.
Boom. Yep and I bet that’s where we are heading with gender. Interning in a medical clinic that provides gender affirming care to minors really opened my eyes to this. Perhaps in another decade gender will be a 5 point scale on job applications instead of binary?
Reeves is right on track. The outcomes for boys and men are startling. In a number of educational meetings with policy makers, there is always a pause when it comes to deaths of despair (suicide, overdose, and alcohol deaths). Most policy makers do not know that 80% of suicides, 70% of overdose deaths, and 69% of alcohol deaths are male. This has happened time and time again. Policy makers are unaware because they are not educated on the subject. It's the reason an Office of Men's Health is so critical.
OMG I know these stats are true and it makes me so sad and mad! how insane there is no an Office for Men and Boy’s Health! yes you can hear a pin drop when “deaths of despair” among men is brought up.
When they do become aware they simply don't care and they often shoot the messenger too boot: https://vimeo.com/30932671.
the link didn’t work for me
Try ‘Congressman Conyers’ by Daddy Justice Films on Vimeo. The totalitarian girls who control content on the Do Be Evil empire (Google/YouTube) are busy squashing anyone who dares to diss the PC Party Line. So you better grab it before it is gone forever.
There is certainly truth in your comment D Bear.
Thanks Sean!
I tend to think we need fewer federal agencies not more. However, this doesn’t mean that the data you are sharing here isn’t distressing. Couldn’t the NIH, for example, regain some of its former credibility by taking up this project very publicly?
Regardless where the help comes from, it must come! Let’s begin now and create efficiencies when men and boys aren’t killing themselves in droves.
And where the misandrist woke feminist system is not driving them to kill themselves in droves: https://www.proquest.com/openview/18ff860071ff793d5240c7040a00d4d9/1.pdf?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y
I was thinking the same. When has government fixed anything? I believe we need a bottoms up cultural shift in our attitude and care for men’s health.
I think we need both! But to some extent those government agencies help create the conditions for cultural change by raising awareness. Look at what the Surgeon General has done around issues of loneliness, for example.
One of the big big big issues that needs to be grappled with is that women can not care and love men into caring and loving themselves. Trust me, I have tried. I simply work harder at my mental health than just about every man I know, save the ones who are trying to be Tony Robbins.
I love men, I care deeply about the mens health crisis as does every woman I know. But when the men in our actual lives refuse to go to the gym, on a walk, an healthy meals and go to therapy...it is really hard to continue generating the emotional energy to see this as a problem we can do anything to solve.
And just like solving women's and girl's attainment disparities took a lift from both genders...so will solving this for men. But good lord...our husbands have to do the work of participating. The everydayness of improving mental, physical and spiritual health is HARD.
I agree this movement needs a lift from women as well! I think the issue is so minimized it needs like a woman’s validity (?). there are sexist things to break through like men should be fully independent, they should not “cry or be weak.”
It sure does! Good women are fine pins for the bigoted feminist bombast balloon because they can’t be easily shamed for talking about men whereas men are instantly shut down by the woke feminist though thugs. That’s almost certainly why the good Dr Reeves refuses to show the public the invisible elephants in the room.
You might enjoy the late great psychologist David Snarch's brilliant work on how to keep sex hot within marriages. As presumably 'no-sex' Sex spouses, you control your marriage relationships. That means that you really don't have to work nearly as hard as you say you are to solve your husbands' problems....assuming you really are already working as hard as you say you already are on your own personal differentiation.
But since men tend to differentiate a lot more in the masculine public realm of strangers than do women, it is not likely that women, who tend toward gynocentric woke feminist group think, will be able to differentiate enough to break free from the barbaric Me Too mob and to pitch in with female political chivalry for men at the PUBLIC level. Those rare women who do differentiate themselves publicly from Valley Girl mob are almost always viciously attacked by the mob just as are men who dare to diss the mob. Therefore if women are ever going to be of much use in terms of solving common public crises that don't affect just their own already grossly gynocentric Sex, they will have to first free themselves from their own mob of totalitarian thought thugs so that they can THINK freely, speak freely, and follow their own consciences with respect to closing the gross gender death and empathy gaps for men.
I agree with you. I want to start my own substack thread and have been working on an article “Female Totalitarianism.” As a counselor, i am talking more about emotional/psychosocial issues related to the mother. i get and validate your anger.
Glad to hear your very very rare willingness to see and to care about the invisible elephants or, I should say, the crocodiles in the room. Mebbe a good Dr. named Reeves will deign to go to core cause instead of surface solutions but I, for one, am not holding my breath because going to core causes, as a man today, requires uncommonly big balls. A thread on female totalitarianism written by a woman is very welcome and will probably be a lot less tendentious than are men like Jordan Peterson on the same topic.
Your response is not within the dignity of the conversation that the institute is trying to have. Personal and ad hominem attacks are trite and boring.
There’s no ad hom attack on your person here. Go read Passionate Marriage or look up Snarch’s work online. You’ll see that I’ve directly addressed your stated personal concerns constructively by referring you directly to a great dude (yes, it’s almost always a dude) who can show you how to get what you need from your husband without working so hard assuming your husband is willing to work hard HIMSELF to have a better marriage with you or that you are willing to honor your own hard work on yourself if he isn’t.
Due diligence and comprehension before condemnation from you would go long way in terms en-gendering respect for you here. What’s really trite and boring are your baseless attacks on my responses before you have a clue about my responses or about their credibility or lack thereof. Such responses are so girlish this from a woman who appears to be working really really hard to be more womanish.
In your defense, however, we live in a world wherein feminist women demand that all women STAY in pitiful girlish states as fictional victims of their favorite conspiracy theory (patriarchal oppression). This makes it very hard for women to grow thicker skins and to hear men when they knee jerk dislike what men have to say. It also makes it easy for women like you (and men like Reeves) to shut down ‘not ok’ (lmao) responses that you disagree with but that are just as potentially valid as are your own.
You’d be a lot better off were you to stop trying to censor my responses out of hand and were you start using your Google fingers and your noggin to start understanding them so that you can respond intelligently to them. In any case, you don’t get to police thought on this thread unless, of course, the powers who control the thread permit you to. But in that case they would engender the same contempt that feminists the world over garner for their trite
banal, and boring but deadly totalitarianism.
Always love your comments Michele. I think we both know some of those guys trying to be Tony Robbins. 😬
Thanks!
Right on the Tony Robbins dudes...Whoof. But, they do help people so...hey, it's good.
Agreed! It is hard. That's why we all need help, from each other as well as from the power that be. I see a lot more eye-rolling and finger-wagging, on both sides of this debate, than helping hands. Thank you for reading and commenting, and for your love and compassion for the men in your life! R
You can LISTEN, learn, and earn the right to lead or you can diss your fellow men and coddle favor from loving and compassionate women who don’t yet have a clue about how most women treat most men. You can’t have it both ways and expect to gather a male following as a nice guy in an extremely nasty environment. The woke feminist moral, cultural, and intellectual rot that got us here will have to be addressed before anyone will really listen to your reasoning and evidence no matter how solid or sobering it is.
Here’s my suggestions for such an agency: ban porn from the internet and promote (subsidize) male only groups, like what the Boy Scouts used to be.
Women care about the men they know and love personally but they are grossly gynocentric and indifferent to rest of the male population. Their psychology is not built to think about the public implications of just about anything unless it concerns them directly, unless it concerns womankind (and even there the thinking is pitiful feminist thinking), or unless it concerns the women and men in their personal circles. This means that the female political chivalry needed to get an Offive for Boys and Men is not going to be there.
This comment is not okay. It directly harms the dialog that Mr (uhhh, is it Dr?) Reeves is trying to create.
What are your solutions?
Did you miss the paragraph that began with "I was talking to a friend the other day?"
The solution is for women to do better. Please feel free to be the first.
Out of curiosity why, in a men's health crisis, do women have to do better.
I am not sure why you are assuming that I am not already working on solutions.
The light I see in you...is a reflection of the light see in me. Peace my friend.
Women have to do better because they're themselves no small part of the problem.
With respect to your contributions to the endeavor, so far you've shamed a poster ("not ok") rather than engaging with him, trumpeted your own alleged accolades, and told men they need to step up (these last two in your first post here, e.g "But good lord...our husbands have to do the work of participating")
Peace back.
Why indeed! Because women, IN GENERAL, are grossly gynocentric, happy to ride on male disposability and are indifferent to male suffering. Because gross gynocentric or feminist double standards in virtually every public service institution crush men and entitle women. Because the deadly woke feminist madness behind our culture moral rot and collapse is coming from women and from traitorous male toadies who back bigoted women.
I’m glad that you are curious and that seem well intentioned but you have a ton of work to do before you diss dialogues in support of yet another feminist man who is not YET courageous enough to go to core causes himself.
Hi Augustin, thanks for commenting. I'm at pains in the post to point out that the neglect of male health issues is NOT, in my opinion, because women don't care about men. It's because there aren't institutions and agencies doing the slow hard work of ensuring those health issues are addressed. In the end I sincerely believe that we're all on the same team, and that there is plenty of compassion to go around. Again, thank you for reading and commenting.
Ah, perhaps you should examine your underlying assumptions then.
The "institutions and agencies" are made of people, and reflect the beliefs and biases of those people.
I do also hope that women will join the team and act with compasion toward men (individually and in aggregate,not just those they love and "should" care about) and introspection on how they can change, but I'm not hopeful. The poster I replied to and your interlocutor are way too common to believe otherwise.
Are you saying that women caring about men is an inaccurate assumption on Dr. Reeves’ part or that it is impossible?
That women care about men, and especially a randomly chosen specific man, is, outside of some special cases, unlikely. Not impossible, just unlikely.
There are other assumptions as well, but this is a particularly specifically concrete one actively under discussion.
I hope you are correct and the time has come for a National Office for Men's Health. It is so needed. There are strong forces working against this happening as I found out when I was the vice chair of the Maryland Commission for Men's Health. I know Ron Henry and his excellent group The Men's Health Network have been working to make this happen for many years.
The suicide issue is one that has gotten very little attention. I have been working on this one for a while and did a two part video series on it a while back. For anyone interested here's a link to part one: https://menaregood.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-male-suicide
This is exactly why mens issues don't get gov't support or taken seriously & there's no mens movements comparable to women's movements. Every time they have a positive space to help each other, all they talk about is women & spew hate. They refuse help they claim to need & not get.
Feminism=equality is the lie that just won’t die. It might be good idea to become angry with how long feminists have lied to you, TOO. Toxic feminist feminity is not exactly creating the safe, prosperous, and caring End of Men Utopias that feminist totalitarians wax so poetically and so gleefully about. It is creating increasingly miserable women alone with their cats in their old age.
You wish, girlfren. I am thoroughly enjoying reactions from feminists like you who hate the fact that men are finally starting to wake the flock up and empower ourselves. Any Mr married to a feminist man-hating Mrs is a truly pitiful fool.
So typical. No one home here.