To find it hard to care about men's issues

Stupid comment. Its rich old men (voted in by both men and women) who start the wars and young men - often too young to have even had a say in who is gets to decide on those wars - who are sent to fight them.

Yes and no
I work with the homeless services very closely and usually the reasons for them being outside our alcohol and drug related. If anybody new is spotted and they are very quickly, within 24 hours by the local police and homeless services, they can be sorted out and it can be arranged so that they never spend a second night outside
But obviously there are boundaries surrounding that no drink no drugs no Violence and that’s simply beyond a great deal of them for whatever reason reasons.

@Brefugee and yes homelessness is a huge tragedy and ime single men are the ones most likely to be sleeping outside.

I agree with those saying of course they care but they don’t see it as their problem to solve.

I think we can acknowledge a problem and ensure we are not part of making it a problem without taking in the burden of fixing it.

im a carer to my disabled child. Everyone says they care about the disabled but I don’t generally see people campaigning on their access to education etc unless it affects their families directly. It’s just expected the women quit work to care, it’s just expected the women keep the kids if/when the dad thinks this is too hard and funks off. Dad doesn’t turn up to meetings and not a problem mother doesn’t turn up then that’s cause for safeguarding referrals.

my ex who sees his son about every 8 weeks (his own choice!) will moan how hard it is to care for a disabled child. In meetings (when he bothers to attend) about how to support this child half of it will be taken up with ex needing that validation. If I ever make a comment about how hard it is I’m told it’s my responsibility as a parent. I get most of my support and understanding from other women/mothers who can come out with relatable stories when I say we didn’t get to xyz in the meeting because ex dominated moaning how hard his one overnight bimonthly is for him!

men leave long term sick partners at high enough rates it’s part of the training for cancer nurses. Women do not leave their vulnerable or terminal partners like this.

so yes I care about males. My disabled child is male. But I’ve not missed the fact almost all the care staff and support he receives is from women unpaid or low paid. This pattern plays out in most of the families I know.

I won’t make it worse for men. If course I believe we are all equal. But women are already having to support each other, children, elderly relatives and disabled relatives at much much higher rates than the men. With less money, less free time and less physical strength. Men can and should address this issue themselves women have enough to be getting on with

@Brefugee The men who ( hopefully never) would be sent aren’t the men that that started the wars anymore than you or I are bloody Mary or Margaret Thatcher. Those very men in charge have often been democratically elected by both men and women.

oh the poor menz, starting all those wars and then making other men fight them....

it isn't as though a) women don't get killed in wars they aren't even combatants in and b) aren'T already in the military (with all the issues that brings)

Rough sleeping is a massive problem. Not helped when people book hotels for them and they are turned away for being rough sleepers. We need to do something about that.

I do think it’s harder for women to care when middle aged men aren’t getting stuck in to fix problems.

@Parsleyforme- your brother is a middle aged man, the group with the most power, influence and authority in our society. If he’s just whinging and not making any effort to fix this, then I don’t think it’s terrible for you not to care.

It does feel like this generation of middle aged men are pretty useless- previous generations created social spaces for men. Younger generations have rejected those, but not bothered to replace them and then are now sad they are lonely. Well of course. Your dad’s generation went to the pub/working man’s club/masonic hall/golf club/football etc for the social interaction. You want to spend your leisure time in the gym solo or on a bike ride or run, and you would rather have a glass of wine with dinner at home than in the pub immediately after work - and you’d rather WFH than commute into the office 5 days a week? Ok but then you need to create a new social space to replace what you’ve given up and no you can’t expect a group of women to do it for you.

I absolutely care about both women and men.Rough sleepers are mainly men ( but not only) Hopefully it won’t ever come to it (please God ) but who will be sent to fight first if military conscription was ever to happen? ( again touch wood and praying it never happens)

what can we do? what did women do?
Campaign, talk to MPs, get the message out there.

I, and a group of feminist friends, used to spend IWD tweeting resources, statistics etc relevant to women's issues.
Then we added similar for International Men's Day. We got a few men involved, but for the most part it was ignored or belittled. So last year i just stopped because - well i direct my energy towards women's rights.

But what i have noticed is that a lot of men expect these things to just happen spontaneiously. But they don't. What you are doing in your school, @Creepybookworm should be happening everywhere. I hope it sows seeds of success.

There are men that are dads (and some that are not) that are really helping boys (and girls) at the school.

What else can we do but take individual action to help people. I worked for 10 years trying to help women navigate a potentially traumatic experience so i have tried to help women too. Its possible to care about both.

right so you are one person. Are the dads doing this? other men? men who aren't actually tangentially affected by this?

There needs to be more effort. And i want to see men leading that.

Yep, couldn't give a monkeys. In fact the only words I can think of is 'get a fucking grip'.

1. Donating to a charity that trys to help prevent suicide in young people.
2. Working in a secondary school in a role which has an element of helping mental health
3. Talking to my own kids about mental health

god the fucking whining from the "well i can't take leave because... i earn more, they need their mum..." was infuriating

There was a news item a couple of days ago where it was said that men are struggling to get paternity leave and if they do, it can harm their career. I just said, welcome to our world, now they know what it’s like. (They have no idea in reality) It’s the same with trans issues, I’m not saying they don’t have problems but women don’t even get equality yet.

ETA: sorry, that was very short. I am sorry that this is going on in your boys' lives.

How are you and the people around them addressing it?

I have more than a few friends who have been sexually assaulted, raped, abused by men. I have given a lot of time to individuals, and to organisations who try to counter MVAWAG and so on. Help for men is not going to come from nowhere. And i rather suspect it will be women driving the efforts. As usual.

I am so so sorry to read that. Absolutely heartbreaking.

the fact that you can instantly name the few that are dominated by female characters (same as "oh female leaders... and people can instantly name the only ones we've had in the uk but would fail to list all the men) says a lot about the skew towards male.

We know that JK Rowlings editors deliberately kept a female name off the cover because "boys don't read books by women" we know that is why PD James did the same.

Things were slowly getting better but i suspect it is now going backwards in terms of female representation and participation.

Most of us have limited capacity - we can't care about everything and we set priorities. For some it is cats, donkeys, hedgehogs, women's rights. and that is ok

but many many many men are whining that "nothing gets set up for International Men's Day". Wonder why that is?

As my children have navigated the teen years and early 20s, 2 of their friends have taken their own lives. Just heard of a friend's son who has lost a friend in the same way. All male. I care about the reasons why as a mum of boys. I don't believe we can say these boys/young men bought their problems on themselves and therefore we should not care.

Ca c’est bien un commentaire de branleur

ca c’est bien un commentaire de branleur

Are you not capable of a simple Google search? You can answer your own questions in half the time if you look for information instead of waiting for someone to spoon feed it to you.

you keep making statements about research coming out and "if you have access to academic databases" so presumably you think you're an academic?

Then you know the rules: you make the assertion, you back it up. We don't do your "research" for you

As for sex preference: my DH is from an Irish catholic family as are many of our friends. Ask yourself why my DH has 4 older sisters (his parents couldn't afford more children and yet...) and his friends and wider family, so many men/boys with more than 2 older sisters. Hmmm. It's a real headscratcher.

(to be fair i think sex-preference and sex-disappointment is something that needs therapy)

gosh don't go to Incel Reddit then. 🙄

Men aren't lonely enough imo

I talk to my brother about whatever either of us are bothered about at the time. I would never say I didn’t have bandwidth to deal with any of his issues, neither would he to mine. I think it’s pretty rude.