HEART Hot Topic: Toxic Masculinity and Suicide
New Zealand has an alarmingly high rate of suicide, particularly among our youth. With men more than twice as likely to commit suicide than women, one of the reasons suggested as being behind this is our ‘harden-up’ attitude towards our men, young and old. Emily Writes highlights some recent examples of this attitude in her article for The Spinoff.
She says: “Our children are dying. Men are dying. There are men dying because they keep being told to harden up. To not cry. To hide their feelings…Being hard and being told to harden up might be why they couldn’t open up to their wives or children about their struggles. Being hard might be why none of their friends ever saw that they were hurting so very, very much.”
In the lead-up to Father’s Day this year Aaron Hendry encourages us to consider the responsibility we have to redefine these ideas about how to be a man for our kids in this article.
He shares his own experiences with depression: “I had always thought that strength meant fighting this thing on my own. That if I admitted I had depression, it would make me less of a man. That it would make me weak...These ideas are a hangover from a patriarchal society which has told us that to be a man you have to be tough, stoic, gumboot wearing, rugby playing, pig hunters. It has led us to believe that true men suffer in silence. That true men just toughen up...These ideas hang like a noose around the minds of men in this nation. They are proof that the harm the patriarchy has caused extends beyond the dehumanisation of women, returning to wreak havoc on us as well. That the toxic nature of masculinity in this country is killing us.”
These are the very same ideas about how to be a man that are linked with men’s violence towards women – ideas like men should be tough, not talk about feelings, be the head of their households, not negotiate or compromise with their female partners and anger is the only emotion that is acceptable to display. These are the ideas that The HEART Movement seeks to challenge and change.
These ideas are not only connected to suicide rates for men in Aotearoa. A recent online survey by Women’s Refuge found a link between women’s experiences of intimate partner violence and self-harm and suicidal thoughts and attempts. You can read about the results of this online survey and the stories of three women in this article on Stuff.co.nz.
The women interviewed says: “Professionals need to know about the relationship between suicide thoughts or attempts and abuse. They go hand in hand…"
"The agencies who are encountering these women disclosing their plight need better and more training…"
"It's a matter of people knowing how to respond. They need to know what's going to hurt and what's likely to help.”
This is where we can see the value of the work that HEART is already doing in our community, providing training for whanau and professionals in identifying suicide risk and knowing how to respond.
Click on the text in bold above to read any of the full articles mentioned.