You've left out that the Minangkabau are the world's largest matrilineal culture, where houses and land pass through the female line, where married couples make all major decisions together, and where women and particularly mothers, are given a huge amount of respect and responsibility in the culture. Rape is essentially unknown because it’s considered extremely unmanly. I totally agree that societies that have rites and rituals for different important life stages serve the needs of the people in ways that we've forgotten (and could benefit from having back).
But, everything that you've named that is ailing men is caused by patriarchy (not by women, except as they also sometimes uphold patriarchal norms) including not having a lot of women in the military. There's a long, long history of women demanding more exposure to combat positions, and wanting to be more involved in whatever wars were taking place, only to be largely shunted to the side and sexually harassed when they do whatever jobs they are allowed to because "we don't like girls doing a man's job." So, don't blame women for that.
Men's mental health issues today are overwhelmingly caused by the pressures of trying to live up to Man Box rules (what it means to be "a real man" in this culture) - which includes always being in control, not asking for help, not showing any vulnerability, etc. These things are isolating, and antithetical to how a highly social species naturally interacts, and it’s killing men.
Fatherless homes are largely the fault of the fathers, not some imaginary issue with female promiscuity. Women initiate 75% of divorces, even though that usually plummets their income level because men have been taught, not to be good partners, but to imagine that it's still 1950 and they are still king of their castle. 79% of mothers also work outside the home, and a huge majority of them come home and do a second shift of cooking, cleaning, and child care that fathers do very little of. Post divorce, a huge number of men ghost their kids.
“In industrialized nations like the United States, close to half of all children whose parents divorce lose contact with their fathers shortly afterward. Within ten years, the proportion rises to two-thirds. For many reasons, not all of which have to do with male priorities, only 52 percent of divorced mothers receive full child support; for children born out of wedlock, the proportion receiving support falls to 32 percent.” Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others (p. 150).
Dating apps are 70-90% men, so of course the small number of women on them have the supply/demand advantage. Boy, talk about living in a bubble. Try interfacing with facts and reality every now and then...
We absolutely need to be tackling the issues that men and boys are facing in this culture - by remaking what masculinity is defined by (violence, aggression, stoicism, controlling women) and making a space for everyone to be who they naturally are, and to do what interests them according to their aptitudes and abilities. But, most men don't want to do away with the perks of patriarchy, or to even acknowledge how terribly harmful it is to men (and everyone else), so there's that. Until more men take that on, you can continue to blame women, but nothing is going to change. We live in a dominance hierarchy system that is brutal to nearly everyone, even the men who seem to be winning at it. Confront that, and things get better for absolutely everyone.
After all, it’s not women who started the vast majority of wars and have sent poorer and less connected men off to fight on the front lines for the economic interests of a few elites. It’s not women who discourage men from going to the doctor regularly or who goad them to engage in risky behaviors as a way to prove their masculinity. It’s patriarchy.
Average men don’t count for much in a patriarchal dominance hierarchy, and the way to distract them from that fact is by giving them nominal control of and status over women. But as that aspect has eroded over the past 50 years, the focus has turned instead to blaming women for all the ways that late-stage capitalism and the elites have disadvantaged the average man.Unfortunately, this red herring has worked rather well in some quarters.
If you really do care about improving the lives of boys and men, start learning about what’s actually harming them (not imaginary scapegoating bugaboos). Women have to support these shifts as well, but guys need to lead the way in creating a more wholistic and functional culture.
