Oh good Lord! 🤦♀️ You didn't actually say any of those things until right now. You just whined that if I weren't a man I couldn't possibly know what it was like to be lonely - something that is patently false.
And no, I didn't mention guns being a gendered issue.
Yes, men suffer a lot of things in this social system - most of them as a result of patriarchy, a social system that for the most part, men cling to desperately and vehemently. And then, for the most part, they blame women and feminism for all those things that they've actually brought upon themselves.
And, if you want to start in with a contest (which I don't recommend, in part because it's inhumane, but also because men will lose) women make up most of the poor, 1 in 3 women will be raped, 85% of American women will be sexually harassed starting in childhood, often as young as 10 or 11 years old. Men work more hours because women are expected to take primary care of home and children on top of their career. It's known as "the second shift." More men are single than women because men have such poor social and emotional skills and women no longer need to put up with that for economic reasons. Women surgeons, women in STEM, women police officers, women in mining and oil and gas still get sexually harassed and discriminated against overtly and routinely because a lot of men don't want women in male-coded spaces. Women go there anyhow and try to power through as best they can despite the bullshit. Your problems may be real, but they are systemically a fraction of what any women you have ever met ever has faced her entire life - including your mother and grandmother.
So I hear you, I see you, and I'm not unsympathetic, but your martyrdom doesn't fucking work in a world where white men still have the most privilege by far. That doesn't mean you don't have problems or pain, but when you start trying to trot that out as worse, without any acknowledgment of anyone else, that's when you come off looking like an entitled dick. It's not a good look.
The social cause of men's pervasive experience is patriarchy. Stop embracing that social system and help other men to redefine masculinity so that it's not primarily about domination and control of women and life gets better for everyone.
The APA recently issued new guidelines for working with men and boys based on 40 years of research. Here's a snapshot of what they said:
"The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful. Men socialized in this way are less likely to engage in healthy behaviors."
Stop shooting yourself in the foot and them blaming it on women. Wars are overwhelmingly started by elite men who stand to economically gain from them and then send the little guys off to die for their bank accounts. Stop blaming that on women as well. Wake up and notice that the social system you buy into every day is what is actually harming you.
If there are places where everyday men seem to be treated as expendable, it’s not because women were being prioritized. It’s because the patriarchal dominance hierarchy elites want to keep you from noticing that you are a cog in their wheel. There is no anthropological or sociological indication that women were ever prioritized or protected at the expense of men at any time in history.
