Meninism is widely regarding as a bad topic. Bad in a whole variety of ways — silly, unnecessary, sexist, and just outright uncomfortable. In today’s society, the consensus is that there isn’t a shred of doubt that most men have it well. Institutions seem to favor the sex and men don’t have to face many of the issues women struggle with on a daily basis. Despite history favoring men for thousands of years, however, it is unfair to say that men are having it easy. There are institutions blatantly denying men the same treatment that their female counterparts receive. Many men in developed countries are now facing a variety of issues that have grown sharply worse as time passes. Suicide, divorce, and domestic and sexual abuse are hardly exclusive to women. All of these are men’s issues. Issues that have gone unaddressed and disregarded as meaningless. Men are discouraged from speaking up for themselves and wrestling with their problems, and activists are quiet in challenging their societies.

“Why You Gotta Take it So Hard, Man?”

For a while now, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has been keeping a keen eye on suicide patterns and prevention. And it isn’t just the CDC who’s growing more and more aware of the issue. The media and Western society view suicide as a tragedy, something in need of remediation. With celebrity deaths like Anthony Bourdain, Kurt Cobain, and Chester Bennington, everyone wants to preserve the people they love. But suicide rates have only increased; in 2016 alone, 44,965 people across the US took their own lives. And from these almost 45 thousand, 77% of them were men. In every age demographic, men take their lives almost double or sometimes 10 times as often as women do. An octogenarian suicide victim is ten times more likely to be male, despite the fact that women over the age of 75 outnumber the men in their age group 1.4:1. In another study, the CDC associated suicide rates with financial and physical struggles, as well as substance abuse and failed relationships. The statistics show this as a men’s issue but an article by Slate delves into the underlying causes and solutions when discussing male suicide. Psychologists have identified a disorder some call alexithymia, which is the inability to meaningfully express emotional experience, choosing to suppress it instead. These psychologists identified this disorder as something more common in men, and the disconnect with emotional well-being and suicide, seemingly tied together by the inability to question said well-being. An organization called Promundo held a seminar with young men and asked them about their comfort with expressing various emotions, and discovered that they were most comfortable with expressing happiness and anger. When trying to express sadness and affection, however, they had difficulty. These emotions are vital to the confrontation of suicidal thoughts, and without a sincere means or will to self-reflect, more and more men will continue to take their own lives every day.

“I Want My Mommy!”

Deeply intertwined with men’s suicidal tendencies are the short straws they pull in divorce courts. The aforementioned “failed relationships” have left men in emotional and financial ruin. Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman wrote an article about divorce filings in the NurtureShock, and found that ⅔ of divorces are filed by women. When analyzing further, they found that the same percentage of people who wanted the divorce were still the women. Another report found that men tended to express deeper feelings of loneliness without a partner and after a divorce. Men responded more intensely and were more severely crippled on an emotional level after ending a long-term relationship. But men’s emotional status is just one of the issues at the surface of divorce disparity. Divorce courts almost unanimously favor women, even when they are equally or less fit to bring up their children than men are. A US Census report from 2002 found that 84% of custodial parents were the mothers, and were 17% more likely to receive financial support than their male counterparts. Furthermore, when awarded custody, women received, on average, $500 more than fathers did. The disparities in divorce rulings are clearly unfair. Divorce courts will still favor women even when their partners are equally qualified to raise children and often are given full or majority custody. This is a blatant inequality that should not be an accepted norm. The issue is not a biological matter. If men are equally qualified to raise their children, can provide for them financially, and are psychologically fit, then they should not be denied the right to raise their children and watch them grow up alongside them.

“Stop, Don’t Touch Me There!”

A rampant issue in the developed world is sexual assault and sexually aggravated crimes. Women in America and the rest of the world have had to struggle with men’s uncontrolled urges, and have been left traumatized and damaged by their experiences. They have also suffered at the hands of explicitly abusive men. But men have suffered sexual assault and domestic violence, too. On January 10, 2016, a Youtuber by the name and tag Matthew Santoro publicized a video titled “My Abuse Story”. Santoro recounted his history with an ex-girlfriend who verbally abused him, and was in tears throughout the video. Although it publicization was an accident, Santoro kept it up for some time due to how well-received it was by his fans. Santoro’s story is actually not too uncommon. Although the issue, is predominantly female, men have experiences afflicting them too. ¼ men are estimated to have experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. 11% have experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact by any type of person at some point, and 5.2% of men have experienced some form of stalking victimization too. Men get raped frequently, too. Prison rapes afflict too many men in the prison system, with 98% of the 300,000 annual prison rapes having male victims (only 5000 of the people raped in prison are female). Scott L. Anderson, who gathered all these statistics, also noted that some 80,000 unwanted sexual advances happen daily in prison, not necessarily involving penetration. Abuse and rape are not exclusive to women. Men can be raped too, and not just by other men. Abusive and sexually aggressive partners have traumatized many men in America, and the damage among them is real. 35% of men who have experienced rape of any sort struggle with some kind of post-traumatic stress. Although the issue is nowhere near as severe as it is with women, the issue does not deserve to be ignored. Sexual and domestic abuse can and does hurt men every day in America and across the globe, and the world society has to face it and fight it, not put down the men who underwent the trauma and mental scars that they did.

“So What? Not My Problem.”

Men’s issues can’t go ignored any longer. They are now society’s problem. It’s a global issue that needs to be seen and spoken about openly. Suicide is not a trivial matter, and neither is abuse and divorce disparity. Men who struggle and wrestle with physiological issues deserve to be cared and about listened to. It’s not helping to just “man up”. It’s not helping when children don’t get to be with their fathers despite their financial and physical health. Men who get abused don’t deserve to be laughed at. These toils and struggles are as real as they are human. They’re universal, and they are untouched, undiscussed, unaddressed. The only way the world will grow is if men grow with it. End the apathy. Fight for equality.