We can flip this on its head.
I’ve grown up mostly friends with queer people and women, given they feel emotionally safer and are just generally more pleasant to be with. Men have it hard, but I don’t think any harder than any other group of people out there.
Now, I’m a dude. I got into clinical depression, trauma therapy, attempt at suicide, you know, the works. I’m very empathetic towards the suffering of other people.
But… men’s struggles can be 80% alleviated by men showing empathy, doing some therapy, and trying to connect with other people. There. Our ‘strengths’ aren’t that useful in the modern world, but failing to adapt and seeking behaviours that would help us thrive is contrary to evolution.
Things have been tipped in favour of women for a bit, which is a correction on the previous environment. And, eventually, it will all harmonise.
I’ve now had 3 separate moments where dudes were making fun of my toddler. You know, the casual snickering, the little comments. Uh, look, it’s a child doing child things. Womp womp, can’t be vulnerable, gotta tear everything down to make ourselves feel good.
I’ve women in my life that date or go on dates with the complete men-children that are perpetually in arrested development, inconsiderate, unkind. They’re not meanies or thugs, they’re just dudes that never learned compassion or empathy, that never had the curiosity of wondering “is the world unfair or am I not adapting to it?”
Men deserve help. We all do. But the Male Loneliness Epidemic is, if not self-inflicted, self-perpetuated. We need, as men, to take responsibility for ourselves and find ways out of this.