Unpeeling the male complex is crucial
AS A psychologist, I often hear expectant parents hoping for a girl “so we don’t have to deal with all the ‘boy issues’ going around”. Whether it’s media headlines or government reports, what we are often presented with is a one-sided picture of Australian males punctuated by poor literacy, risktaking behaviour, ADHD, violence, substance misuse and the fact that suicide remains the number one killer of young men.
All of this is true.
But one thing is clear – few are seeking a solution and even fewer know how to engage men in the process. There’s a passive attitude that this is “just how it is” and that this is all there is.
Few are asking the next generation of men what they need, how they feel and what’s going on.
At Movember, that’s exactly what we did. In our latest survey of 1000 guys, 39 per cent said they had no one they could really count on.
This is heartbreaking stuff.
Any psychologist worth their salt will tell you that bad behaviour can get isolated people the attention and closeness they want and need.
Meanwhile, two-thirds of the men surveyed said they didn’t feel like society understood them. More than half the young men reported feeling increasingly anxious about their future and weighed down by the pressure around being a man today.
We need to get to the bottom of men’s behaviour. We can never condone or excuse violence, abuse or discrimination, but we do need to contextualise it. Our responses to male violence and anti-social behaviour shouldn’t reinforce stereotypes of men as people who lack an inner life and are driven solely by anger and entitlement. We need to think of men differently.
In order to shift the tectonic plates of men harming themselves and others, we must expect and demand more from them. That includes recognising and valuing the everyday nature of men’s relationships, where we regularly show care and support to each other, our friends, our families and our communities, while also recognising the all-too common ruptures caused by male violence and aggression.
Acknowledging the emotionality underneath men’s problems opens up useful roads to intervention and potential progress. When November comes around, the moustache becomes the butt of plenty of jokes, but to us at Movember, it’s that yearly reminder to look yourself hard in the mirror. To reflect on who you are and who you want to be.
There are far too many men moving through the world on autopilot, and sadly, our ingrained, socialised norms of “masculine” behaviour don’t lend themselves to pause, emotion regulation and accountability.
Four in five young Australian men told us at Movember that the current focus on the impact of masculinity on men’s wellbeing is an important one, so we’ll take that as cause to double down and build out a model of healthy masculinity that speaks both to, and for men.