Public silence is consistently recognized by experts as one of the biggest challenges faced by the men's rights movement. The what, you might ask? You read it correctly the first time. The notion that men's rights constitute a non-laughable, legitimate cause of concern in 2018 may seem odd, or outright preposterous to many readers. This, experts argue, is part of the issue.
Robert Whitley, a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill and specialist on men's mental health, points out that public attention is typically geared toward women's issues (and increasingly, transgender issues) when questions of gender and equality are raised. In a recent study led by Whitley, McGill researchers found that Canadian news and media items focusing on mental health tended to portray women in a markedly positive light, while articles about men were significantly more negative. Articles that focused on men were much more likely to showcase stigmatizing content and emphasize violence. Those depicting women, in turn, were significantly more likely to discuss mental health interventions, quote experts, and promote key resources for recovery.
In a recent Psychology Today piece, world-renown psychologist Philip Zimbardo (father of the Heroic Imagination Project) identified an "empathy gap" surrounding men and boys' issues. Zimbardo points out that this gap is most prevalent in schools and universities, in which training programs on the dangers of "toxic masculinity" have seen a rise in popularity. By Zimbardo's account, the problem goes beyond the silencing of men's issues. It is masculinity itself, rather, that is increasingly seen as a "risk" and a disease.
I make no such claim or argument here. Oppression and victimhood are not naturally occurring features of the world. More to the point, it takes a cultural invitation to interpret the world that way. The problem, rather, lies in the all-too-common mental flaw of ascribing a simple essence to categories of persons (e.g., "high-risk", "vulnerable"), and simplifying complex social processes to the actions of bad perpetrators and the passivity of good victims. Contrary to common claims, the public narrative has now heavily shifted toward negative portrayal of men and boys, and condescending portrayal of women.
Samuel Veissière, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist who studies the interaction between cognition, culture, and cooperative human behavior. He teaches at McGill University.