THE MAN BOX
Recently I had a bit of a stoush on LinkedIn with a man about the cause of the high suicide rate in men. He had commented on a post about intimate partner violence and homicide, a gendered issue in Australia, and, indeed around the world.
“What about men” comments are pretty much guaranteed on any intimate partner violence post. The men making the “what about men” comments rarely seem to do any ACTUAL advocacy for men or men’s well-being, they just seem to like drawing attention to themselves in an attempt to minimise the importance of the content of the original post.
It is frustrating and exhausting. It would be like me commenting on a post about prostate cancer research and saying “But what about breast cancer”. I would not do that, and frankly, I don’t think it would happen in any online domain.
So, back to my comment.
I suggested that the root cause for many male suicides and intimate partner violence was the same.
Rigid “unhealthy” male stereotypes, attitudes and behaviours.
These include men needing to be strong, in control, use violence to get what they want, not show emotion, not ask for help or be vulnerable. My adversary nearly flew out of the app to bollock me, at this suggestion.
Luckily, I didn’t mention that 50% of female suicides are known victims of intimate partner violence as well. This would mean that these unhealthy male attitudes and behaviours were responsible for at least 50% of female suicides AND a large proportion of male suicides.
I therefore found it super interesting to see the research presented by Rachel Thomson Executive Director - The Men’s Project, Jesuit Social Services at a recent conference.
Their 2024 research, The Man Box 2024, shows a significant proportion of young men (18-45) agree there are social pressures on them to behave or act a certain way because of their gender.
36% of men felt social pressure to follow the Man Box rules.
24% of men personally believed in the Man Box rules.
The research went on to show that men who most strongly agreed with the Man Box rules were:
31 times more likely to believe domestic violence should be handled privately
17 times more likely to have hit their partner
9 times more likely to blame a woman for making a man hit her
8 times more likely to have thoughts of suicide nearly every day
6 times more likely to have forced a partner to do something sexual that is degrading or humiliating
6 times more likely to exhibit signs of problem gambling (in fact, more than half of the men who most strongly agreed with Man Box rules met the criteria for problem gambling);
3 times as likely to report consuming violent pornography in the last six months; and
Twice as likely to binge drink.
I’ll paraphrase Brene Brown here, “fitting in requires us to change who we are, belonging requires us to be who we are”. It would appear that men who believe in the Man Box rules, or feel pressured to fit in with Man Box attitudes and behaviours are at risk to themselves, and are a risk to women.
My summary: The root cause of intimate partner violence and male suicide do (largely) appear to be the same. A stupid box.
To tackle these damaging and fatal outcomes we need to challenge rigid “unhealthy male’ stereotypes, attitudes and behaviours, and encourage the majority of men who don’t subscribe to this so they feel empowered to speak up.
If you would like to read more about this study, you can find the information here: The Man Box 2024 - Jesuit Social Services.