Suicide is the Number One Killer of Men Under 45 - Why is This Not Headline News?

A statement an interviewer recently made to Jordan Peterson shocked me to my core - it was more telling than any reply the celebrated academic could have possibly given.  "We've met your male fans [who are] struggling with their manhood" said the interviewer, "you give these men the message that it's okay to be a man."

Every aspect of this statement was profoundly disturbing - the insinuation that it is 'not ok' to be a man, the fact that men are in need of a stranger's encouragement in the first place, and the mental abyss that surely is their reality, that Peterson needs to help men 'justify' being born male, but most importantly, the fact we live in a toxic anti-male climate, where such a statement does not in itself raise an eyebrow, but is accepted as a given.

Men are not just "struggling with their manhood", they are in a crisis so serious that many of them are giving up on life. Suicide is now the number one killer of men under the age of 45 - a staggering 4303 men took their lives last year and three out of every four suicides were male. Every day, between us waking up in the morning and going to bed at night, 13 men end their lives. This is a catastrophe.

Statistics released every year point to men's devastating, much hidden reality - according to The Men and Boys Coalition, 86% of rough sleepers in England are male as are 84% of the the country's 'hidden homeless', 95% of prisoners are male, and men are more likely to be sent to prison, and receive longer sentences than women for the same crimes. We also know that over two thirds of murder victims and 73% of robbery victims are male, that boys are falling behind girls at school and that men's drop out rates from university are alarmingly high. Most importantly for many, in 96% of court cases, men are the ones who apply to court for access to their children.

Why is this catastrophe not headline news? I asked The War On Boys author Christina Hoff Sommers.

"Male problems are invisible" Sommers told me, "men don't talk about them and journalists, legislators and activists mostly ignore them". The reality is that "men are more likely to be illiterate, uneducated, incarcerated, homeless, die from the major diseases many years earlier, and yes, they commit suicide at far higher rates."

For Mark Brooks OBE, chair of the ManKind initiative, the lack of action and conversation "is due to a growing antipathy towards men and boys' wellbeing, it is as if men and boys are to blame and responsible for everything that befalls them..because of their gender. You only have to see how the phrase toxic masculinity has become so embedded." 

Jordan Peterson agrees, pointing to a culture where even man's natural strive is seen as somehow representing past 'patriarchal oppression', and where men are told that they are "denizens of tape culture and tyrants in waiting."

The reasons for so many men reaching rock bottom might vary - from unemployment and young men living life without meaning, to fathers separated from their children following a divorce, but the overall sweeping current is clear - feminism is alienating men from society to a disastrous effect.

"Feminism has a lot to answer for in our society and its attacks on men and masculinity" says Society Kills Men author Kenneth Jolivet. "When Gillette chose to preach to its male customers, branding them with the offensive term toxic masculinity, it was clear things had gone too far" he explained. Soon after, he added, The American Psychological Association went down the destructive feminist path, advising its members who counsel men, that "being less masculine and more feminine will be good for men, women, and society, and that masculinity is toxic." Masculinity itself is under assault. 

Male suicide phenomenon is deeper rooted in the gynocentric culture rather than only in feminism, argued Yoav Levin, chairman of the Israeli Lobby For Men and Boys, "feminism as the third stage of gynocentrism made it worse, took it to extremity - the suicide gap skyrocketed under feminism but it has already existed throughout history."

Gynocentrism to those not familiar with the concept is the focusing on the woman and placing her at the centre of every theory and practice. A story of how Covid kills more men than women for example, would be presented as the negative impact this reality is having on women's lives.

Understanding this phenomenon is crucial to getting a grasp on how feminism has been able to reach the ridiculous extreme of today and the consequential alienation of men.There is the biological evolutionary gynocentrism which exists in all primates - these are female centered societies due to females being the natural as well as sexual selection - "this means that the womb in evolutionary terms is more important then the semen" explained Levin, "this in return is the basis of what is called the disposability of men." Culturally - we live today in the millenia of socio cultural gynocentrism", which started centuries ago with Eleanor of Aquitaine - "this is where the culture of putting women on a pedestal and worshipping them as goddesses was created."   

Gynocentric culture has been simmering for a long time but the advent of technology, along with our age of decadence, brought it to a head. The result is a society where the policies within many institutions and public bodies, including education are set by women and are therefore inevitably feminized. "The entire school system has been feminized" said Charlie Kirk, "it's designed for women by women to be taught by women and for women..the result is hyper effemination of our schools."

The dominant feminine narrative coupled with the absence of fathers is to Charlie Kirk among many others, the reason for us seeing "one of the most fragile generations in the history of humanity."

When sports training, in 8th grade, Kirk has recently told Order of Man viewers, he could tell "just in the first 24 hours who was accustomed to having another grown man up in their face yelling at them" and who grew up without a father - "they broke within a 24-hour, versus the men with dads who were unbreakable." Male coaches pushed Kirk to make him better, "they screamed and yelled because they wanted you to get to that next level..become a stronger person..they expected you to take responsibility for yourself" explained Kirk - "what the feminists have done is they say all of that moral discipline and male involvement is wrong because "of the few examples of abuse, therefore we must feminize everything - that's a really bad idea, in fact it's a civilisation ending bad idea."

Today's young men are "grown infants" says Kirk, with no capacity to "endure opposition or suffering." Like Jordan Peterson, Kirk speaks of the urgent need to strengthen and toughen men up through challenge and responsibility -  young men need to say "yes sir, no sir, to a strong male figure" as they grow up, without that we have "tens of millions of fully mature infants or males that are not men, that have no responsibility, they own nothing they're full of substances, they're overweight, they have no direction and they're cowards." 

Data released through a multitude of sources, including Jordan Peterson, unequivocally tells us that children need fathers, that they suffer without a father's guiding voice. Girls too, says divorce attorney Merylin York, whose lecture What Representing Men in Divorce Taught Me About Fathers went viral. York has told of her chosen charity NYEP which helps homeless girls ages 18 to 24 - "their backgrounds and what they have enduredwould haunt you" said York, asking "do you know the one thing all of these girls have in common? they all come from fatherless homes."

Many men in today's world feel isolated, rejected, betrayed and that their life is worthless, as ominous comments on male suicide forums reveal - "you are expendable, you are a tool, you are taxes, you are replaceable" said one, "I've had 10 close male friends commit suicide" he added, "I don't know any woman myself who had". One viewer asserted that "government has replaced the role of men, we have been reduced to tax cattle", and another pointed to a popular video highlighting male suicide, presented by a concerned woman, to say "I love how women are the ones advocating for men's rights, depression, suicide, custody, alimony etc, because we all know, that if men were doing it, we'd be labeled as sexist or misogynistic."

For thousands of years, well throughout our entire evolution, asserts Camille Paglia, "men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children, none of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters" - men now "feel betrayed by women who abandoned them" said Levin. In the wild, the female instinct to 'mould' and nudge the man to provide for the family, balanced out, but practiced in today's age of plenty - it is destructive, excessive to a fault, and damaging to society. Because, as Peterson's reply to the interviewer's statement argued "it's not (just) okay (to be a man), it's necessary -  what the hell are we gonna do without men? you look around the city you see all these buildings go up these men they're doing impossible things, they'reunder the streets, working on the sewers they're up on the power lines in the storms and the rain - they're keeping this impossible infrastructure functioning, this thing that works in a miraculous manner, they work themselves to death and often literally, and the gratitude for that is sorely lacking."

The solution? 

Stop blaming male suicide on men's perceived lack of ability to express sentimental emotions - yes, men telling others of their troubles will get immediate help but we need to look at the big picture of why so many men are reaching such levels of isolation and depression.

We must acknowledge that there is no such thing as toxic masculinity and allow men and boys the space to be with fellow males - it is a preference males have from early age explained Philip Zimbardo of The Demise of Guys, "there's actually a cortical arousal we're looking at" - it empowers and uplifts them.Women should turn away from feminist groups, realise just how earth shatteringly painful their negative narrative is to men, and fiercely oppose hateful comments directed at the entire male gender. We need to take a close look at reducing the 10,000 hours of video games a boy would play by the age of 21, most of that in isolation. We must bring men into teaching and put legislation in place for protecting men in general and fathers in particular.  A minister for men would be a great start. 

Everyone should know that more men commit suicide, get cancer and are the victims of violent crime than women, so that when an MP suggests parliament discuss men's rights, it will be met with serious consideration and empathy, never laughter.