Tuesday 20 September 2016

Conversations we need to have (but can't because of bastards)


I really wish we could talk about men. There are a whole bunch of conversations I think we, as a society, need to have about men and masculinity. We need to talk about particular stigmas of diagnosing mental health issues in men (we are massively under-diagnosed for disorders and conditions that make us more aggressive because that's apparently just how we're meant to be whilst women are massively under-diagnosed for conditions that make them more passive because same).

We need to talk about how young men and boys are literally not taught how to talk about our emotions. I mean, we are just not taught the language and that has to have an effect on the suicide rate.

We need to talk about how funny some men get about physical contact. How we will literally shy away from each other and how that's not only rooted in unconscious homophobia but also as a manifestation of how we're not meant to connect with each other.

We need to have a lot of conversations about fatherhood. There's that distance again, that lack of contact and emotional honesty. Its a vicious cycle of fathers not being taught how to talk about or deal with their emotions and then passing that

There are health issues that have to be discussed. Not only the peculiarities of certain mental health issues but also the fact that prostate cancer is very rarely discussed in spite of being the second most common kind after skin cancer. And things might have improved since I was at school but there were a lot of sexual health and hygiene issues that weren't fully broached, though this was true of both genders. 

But having these conversations is difficult because once you try to have a serious conversation about men and our place in an evolving society some bloody retrograde “Men's Rights Activist” will butt into the conversation yelling blue murder if you so much as suggest that maybe masculinity needs to change with society.


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