u/SnooBeans6591

As sad and disheartening as ‘men’s issues’ are, there is actually something worse…

And that is, the chronic lack of political will and interest in addressing such issues.

For example, male suicide remains the biggest risk to life for all men under fifty, claiming more than half a million (!!) men’s lives worldwide each year.

That number is impossibly large, and truly staggering.

But what is somehow more shocking, is that when national plans are announced to help combat suicide – such as earlier this month in Italy – somehow suicidal men are routinely left in the cold, with women made a ‘priority’ group instead.

That’s right…

Despite men being 78% of suicides in Italy, women will be one of the primary beneficiaries of Italia’s recently announced ‘National Plan for Suicide Prevention’ instead.

And for me, that is the most shocking part of this whole space.

It’s not that:
Men’s health is now worse than women’s by nearly every metric…

Or that boys are behind at every stage of Western education…

Or that men dominate in homelessness, incarceration, workplace fatalities, suicide, drug deaths, and as victims of violent crime…

The most shocking thing is that, when it comes to political conversation, all we seem to get is tumbleweed.

Of course –

This is doubly disorientating, as we are routinely told that “men” are the ones who benefit from political power, that men are the ones systemically privileged; and that men have built the system and written the laws, for eternity, as part of some omnipotent patriarchal male oppressor class.

Such claims certainly sound good on social media, or when bravely bellowed by your local feminist campaigner; but in reality, where our men and boys are silently crushed by both public and political malaise, such slogans seem embarrassingly far from the truth.

So why do our politicians and ministers keep on betraying vulnerable men?

And what on earth is going on in Italy right now?

What do you think?

~

Source:
Italian policy announcement https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/news-e-media/notizie/10-settembre-giornata-mondiale-la-prevenzione-del-suicidio/

78% of suicides in Italy are male https://countryeconomy.com/demography/mortality/causes-death/suicide/italy

Ana Redondo, “morally, ethically and constitutionally” wrong https://www.esdiario.com/nacional/240509/135661/ministra-igualdad-ana-redondo-hombres.html

Ana Redondo, “frivolous” waste of money https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/13/male-rape-centre-waste-of-money-spain-equality-ministry/

Aurore Bergé rejects request for first support line for abused men https://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/q17/17-8484QE.htm

Jess Phillips laughs at mens issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XX6ATwQv7Q&feature=youtu.be

For generations, society has propagated countless harmful myths around male rape victims… especially when the perpetrator is a woman.

The myth that he should have defended himself, that he encouraged it, or that such an experience has no significant impact on him.

And then, perhaps most concerning, is the idea that a man would enjoy such an experience at the hands of a woman, with many going as far as to consider him “lucky”.

As is the way, it is usually “other men” who are blamed for holding these harmful views, that transform men into some kind of perpetual f**k machine; who is always looking for sex, from anyone, at any given opportunity.

And yes, historically, this has sadly been true.

Nearly half of all sampled college men in 1984, believed a man found it “pleasurable” to be raped by a woman at gunpoint.

That is truly shocking.

But times change.

Men, as much as we refuse to admit it, have gone through a renaissance of sexual education; to better understand consent, and intimacy.

So much so, that of surveyed college men 35 years later, only 5.3% agreed that a man who is raped by a woman, finds such a thing ‘pleasurable’.

It’s still 5.3% too high, but it represents a staggering 89% drop, in just one generation.

But that’s not the end of the story, for this same study measured how women’s attitudes have changed over this same time, and, well, the results will shock you…

Let’s take a look.

~

Full study here https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34978934/