r/TheTinMen

I know your local instagram armchair expert will claim to know why so many male victims of abuse don’t seek help (yada yada “toxic masculinity”), but in reality, very little research has been done to ask such an question.

But what we do know is –

Male victims of abuse are two and a half times less likely to ask for help than female victims, and not only does that deafening silence preclude such men from potentially life saving services, but it also removes them from much of the data that society continually uses to discuss such a issue.

Men don’t seek help, and therefore less help is given to them, and therefore fewer men seek help, and yup, as a consequence, less help is given again.

It’s a brutal self-fulfilling cycle that rolls over abused men, and has erased them from the picture for generations.

And so it would seem that solving the problem of ‘barriers to male help seeking’, is one of extreme importance and pressing urgency; and the good news is that various academics, including the world-leading IPV professor Denise Hines, have answered the call.

Their new study scales up the research to unprecedented levels, asking more than 1,100 men, who were abused by women: “what are the major barriers you experienced when seeking help?”

And their responses tell us far more than what we thought we knew…

Shame, concern for being labeled an abuser, fear of retaliation, or of false allegations in response; not knowing where to go, hopelessness, love and protection of their abuser, and feeling like domestic abuse is a “private matter”, to name a handful of the dozens of barriers abused men provided.

So could this data help increase the resolution of a conversation that for so long, has been gatekept by sloganeering social media know-it-alls?

And is it about time we asked the male victims themselves, why do so few ask for help?

What do you think?

~
Full study https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2027-52236-001.html

Not everything about being a man is to live life on easy street.

In fact, in many mays, for a lot of blokes, things can be really hard.

It’s a blind spot for me too.

Because I post a lot of infographics, scientific studies, and data on this page; huge reams of research and analysis…  but what’s so often missing, is the lived experience.

So let’s start to fill that gap, and ask: what would women dislike most, if they became men?

What do you think?

A lot of people talk of “male power”; pointing to a long list of male CEOs, politicians, Prime Ministers, Presidents and world leaders.

And there is certainly some utility in doing so.

But what is to be said about ‘Male Power’, when arguably the most powerful man on the continent of Europe can be openly assaulted by his wife, and nobody seems to mind?

Worse –

When instead of anger, the world responds with mockery and memes, turning such a man into the butt of jokes, rather than the recipient of concern.

What about when that same man is so closely controlled and monitored by his wife, that allegedly, she personally has to approve every single woman who works with him, and if any of these women are deemed to be a threat, their job application is thrown in the bin?

What if this same man met his wife, and entered into a ‘relationship’ with her, when he was just 15 and she was forty (!?)

When she was his drama teacher, and a married mother of three children… and he was an impressionable teenage boy?

What is to be said then?

So what happens when this man, one of the most powerful in the world, who has the launch codes to an arsenal of nuclear weapons, can be seemingly abused by this wife, on live TV, and the world looks the other way?

Is that the “Male power” I hear so much about?

And if such a man is so easily disarmed of a power, then what does that say about the normal men who live all around us?

So, is it time we talked about French President Emmanuel Macron, and his infamous wife, Brigitte, who hides such a controversial and worrying past?

What do you think?

It’s results day in the UK.

And to those who got what they wanted, congratulations, and for those who did not (such as myself when I was your age), I know it feels like the end of the world right now, but I promise you, it isn’t.

The thing that I find so interesting about this fateful day, is that the destiny of students has already been decided.

Students have been given their university offers already.

Students have applied, been accepted, and even made their final decisions, several months before this day arrives.

But... how?

Well, through what’s called ‘predicted grades’.

Predicted grades are decided by teacher assessments, not exams, and they are given to students several months before the final results day.

Students then use these predicted grades to decide which universities to apply to, and then universities use them to decide which students to accept; and the actual final exam results are supposed to confirm these grades, and... well... the rest is history.

This all sounds well and good, I suppose.

Except… what if teachers were giving different grades, to students of equal intelligence?

Or to be specific: what if boys were getting lower predicted grades in comparison to girls who achieved the exact same final results?

And if such a thing were happening –

Could it help explain why 45,000 fewer boys go into higher education than girls every year in the UK?

Well, an enormous new study, captured over three years, which analysed the results of 350,000 (!!) A-level students, has suggested yes, this is happening, and not just once, but consistently across all subjects.

Yes.

The study finds girls are more likely to be overpredicted, and less likely to be underpredicted, than boys, and this could be influencing the education, careers, and entire lives of countless millions of students.

Let’s take a look….

~

Full study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775726000567

Cambridge Analysis https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/gender-gap-in-predicted-grades-raises-questions-over-their-use-in-university-admissions

Whenever I’m asked to give talks, the same thing happens at the end; I get surrounded, mobbed practically, by concerned parents, particularly boy-mums, wanting to ask me questions.

Full transparency –

I’m not a dad; and beyond listening to my niece chatter away for hours, or swinging my nephew around like a bag of spuds, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to be one.

But sadly, amongst the clamoring masses of worried parents, such an honest admission means little.

However –

There is one piece of advice I do think it’s safe to give in such situations, wise words that I think every parent of a boy ought to hear:

“Don’t lecture him”.

Because, to do so, is the surest way to never win him back.

I remember a former, particularly odious radical feminist colleague of mine doing exactly this to her younger brother.

She’d smuggly tell me about it, lecturing me about how she’d lecture him; her endless berating and finger-pointing, so as “to make him the perfect feminist brother”… a strategy that I am certain would only achieve the exact opposite.

I think about her poor brother often, too young to let her ignorant words wash over him, as I had learnt to.

Because, between then and now, I have come to understand that boys are nothing like she, and the media, often portrays them.

And that is: boys are not monsters.

They are smart, discerning, compassionate people.

They are not ‘rapists in waiting’, who are part of some cabal of young misogynists; and the more we treat them as such, the more we create the very reality we fear.

So please stop.

Stop with the endless clamoring, pearl clutching hysteria, that bludgeons and berates them.

“Stop talking about boys, and start talking to them.” I’d say.

“Just talk to your boys.”

Because if you do, you’d realise what I have known for quite some time – boys are good.

Boys are good. And the data backs it up.

Let’s take a look…

~
Full survey
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/52863-young-men-masculinity-and-misogyny

On November 19th 2025, three remarkable things happened all at once –

First, the announcement of the world’s first Men’s Health Strategy, of England.

Second, it was announced on International Men’s Day, in so doing acknowledging a date in the calendar that for too long has been surrounded by undue public controversy.

And third, the announcement was followed by an official reception at 10 Downing Street, hosted by the Prime Minister himself.

Any one of those three things would have been unheard of just a few years ago, and yet here we are, with such events now a mundane part of every day life.

Things have changed.

The hostility around “mens issues” is waning.

The whining and complaints are increasingly unwelcome.

And the jokes of “isn’t every day International Men’s Day?” Well... they're not quite so funny anymore.

We call that progress, and it’s just the beginning.

So who better to tell us more about this historic piece of legislation than one of the men who’s been fighting for it for more than a decade?

Here’s what you need to know, so far, about England’s Men’s Health Strategy, that promises to help men live longer, happier, healthier lives.

So what do you think?

And more important, what happens next?

~

Full conversation with Mark Brooks OBE here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep6WOiIy2PQ&feature=youtu.be

Survey (UK adults only) https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L8GGKSC

Male survivors of sexual harms need your help.

Last week, a new survey that aims to understand both the prevalence of sexual harms against men and boys in the UK, as well as public attitudes toward it, has been released, and it can be completed by any adult living in the UK.

This is a meaningful, long overdue moment in time.

With so little research conducted around such an important issue, this survey could become a seminal piece of foundation work that helps fill in the enormous gaps of understanding around male victimhood.

Because, for far too long, men and boys who experience sexual coercion, abuse, violence, stalking, and various other such crimes have been left in the dark; misunderstood, maligned, and maliciously shouted down when trying to speak up.

So help us draw a line in the sand and say no more.

Help us listen to men and boys, to support those who needs us, help understand who they are, how they’re treated, and most important, what we can do to help them.

Please take the survey by We Are Survivors and Movember; lend us your voice, and help us help men –

Survey (UK adults only) https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/L8GGKSC

What do you think?