insideMAN

Why Abused By My Girlfriend was a watershed moment for male victims of domestic abuse and society

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Mark Brooks OBE is Chair of the Mankind Initiative, a charity which supports male victims of domestic violence. Here he describes what he says is a game-changing moment for the recognition of the suffering experienced by the hundreds of men his charity receives calls from each year.

For decades there has been a reality gap when it comes to domestic abuse. It is the same across the world. This reality gap is based on the view that domestic abuse is a crime that only affects women, even when the reality is much different.

This reality gap is reflected in government policy – which frames domestic abuse as a gendered crime based on the view that it is a cause and a consequence of wider gender inequality. This is despite the fact that government figures show one in three victims of domestic abuse are male, while also the government does not view suicide or rough sleeping as being gendered issues when far more men suffer from this than women. This can and does affect service provision.

The reality gap is also reflected in how society views domestic abuse – with a gap still remaining with the public in not recognising male victims in the same way they do female victims. This cognitive bias can affect responses from “blue light” responders and also can lead to no or delayed responses from the public – including friends, family and neighbours. The award winning #violenceisviolence video shows the stark reality of the gender differences in how society views domestic abuse.

The way society and government views domestic abuse also affects male victims. It means they fail to recognise what is happening to them, feel ashamed, feel they won’t be believed and do not know where to turn.

This is set against the backdrop of an estimated 450,000 men (1 million women)  – broadly 30%  – being victims of partner abuse every year yet only around 5% of those victims using domestic abuse services are men. In addition, just under 50% of male victims do not tell anyone against 20% of female victims. The figures are too high for both genders and it is vital that we eradicate domestic abuse against women as much as we do against men.

The moving BBC Three documentary “Abused by my Girlfriend” broadcast in February has made such a difference in closing this reality gap. It charts the story of Alex Skeel (an Ambassador of the ManKind Initiative charity) and how he became a victim of domestic abuse, how he was rescued and how he is rebuilding his life.

It was seen by over 1.6 million alone on BBC One (Tuesday 19th February) and has been a real discussion point all week on social media and in workplaces. What has been significant is the number of women of all ages who have been at the vanguard of so much of this momentum – sending Alex messages, promoting the broadcast on social media and generally speaking out. The fact that Alex’s mother plays such an important role in the documentary especially when she recalls her sister saying “he just wants his mum” was a significant emotional moment that resonated with so many other mothers.

This week also saw Libby Wright, being awarded a prestigious High Commendation in the National Crimebeat awards. In her former role as Durham’s Young Police, Crime and Victims’ Commissioner she was behind a campaign, No Less Of A Man, to make people aware of male domestic abuse and how to get support.  The Paul Lavelle Foundation, named after Paul who was killed by his partner who was convicted of manslaughter, also opened a new service for male survivors in the Wirral. The foundation is led by his brother, his family and a wide group of friends.

These events are crucial in encouraging more men to come forward, more people to reach out to them and a better response when they do come forward especially from the police and other blue light services. Significantly, it closes the domestic abuse reality gap so that domestic abuse is no longer seen as a gendered crime or a crime that is only a “woman’s crime”. It is becoming seen as a crime that affects everyone – women and men in heterosexual and same-sex relationships. In that way we will see more men coming forward, more male-friendly services and a more inclusive society which is in keeping with a modern and diverse Britain.

Mark Brooks OBE

Chair of the ManKind Initiative charity

Masculinity isn’t toxic: The debate is

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By Dr Ben Hine & Ally Fogg, Co-founders of the Men and Boys Coalition

If you begin any conversation about men’s behaviour in the year 2018, it won’t be long before someone throws in the term ‘toxic masculinity’. It seems to be used by some to help understand men and by some to demonise them, by some to pity men and by others to shame them.

Such conversations make it painfully clear that society is pretty confused right now about how we feel about masculinity, and men, and the relationship between the two. And here’s the rub – the term ‘toxic masculinity’, and the way people choose to use it, are part of the problem.

The phrase itself emerged in the 1990s to describe elements of masculinity which are destructive or harmful to the man displaying the behaviour as well as those around them. One of the most influential applications of the term was in Terry Kuper’s 2005 article, arguing that such traits were the principal barriers to men in prison seeking treatment for mental health issues. Put simply, ‘toxic masculinity’ refers to those norms and behaviours, associated with masculinity, which cause harm to men themselves, as well as those around them.

Recognising and identifying such behaviours, and highlighting their damage, remains an incredibly useful exercise. For example, in providing health, social or psychiatric care, it is essential to understand that some men, particularly those marginalised and maligned by society, have grown to believe it is better to engage in damaging and self-destructive coping mechanisms than admit to personal vulnerability or accept that they need help, and so compromise their gender scripts. Moreover, while the jury is still out on the biological versus socially-constructed nature of such behaviours, being able to objectively identify negative elements of masculinity is an important step in understanding the relationship men have with themselves and with others, particularly women.

However, whilst identifying the existence of ‘toxic masculinity’ may be useful, the term itself may not be. Put simply, the concept of TM is valuable, but the label is confusing and unhelpful, for several reasons.

First, not all masculine traits are inherently ‘toxic’. Examine some of the traits typically associated with masculinity – competitiveness, assertiveness, protectiveness, courage, rationality, independence (you get the idea). It can and should be argued that those are, objectively, GREAT qualities for a person to have – I mean, who wouldn’t want to be an independent, assertive, rational thinker? We all want our sons to have those traits, and if we have daughters we want them to have those traits too. However, all too often when people throw around the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ it is taken to mean that all masculine traits are toxic. All too quickly it becomes difficult to tell the baby from the bathwater.

Second, the traits that are labelled as ‘toxic’ aren’t negative or problematic all of the time. Even when you look at some of the more problematic characteristics, like competitiveness and protectiveness, their ‘toxicity’ depends on context and extremity. Wanting to win whilst playing a board game is not the same as throwing the board at your opponent if you lose. The same applies for protectiveness, it is a matter of context. Wanting to protect the people you care about from harm? Healthy, of course. Becoming so protective that you constantly check where your partner is and control their behaviour so that they won’t ever leave or hurt you? Not at all healthy. Crucially, all of these behaviours can be classed as performances of masculinity, but only some should be branded toxic and it is not always obvious where the line lies.

This is partly because masculinity means different things to different people. Individual traits aside, even if society says ‘this is masculine, and this isn’t’, most men (and women) have their own definition of what it means to be masculine, and those descriptions are changing all the time, and vary across generations and cultures. Being competitive may be part of my masculinity, while not being part of yours, but we’re still both masculine by our own definitions. Just ask any undergraduate cohort to name ‘typical’ masculine and feminine characteristics; the usual suspects will inevitably crop up, but the mix of words changes every year. To shake things up even more, some people act in ways that are traditionally labelled as masculine by others, but don’t actually identify themselves as masculine, and some people class typically feminine traits as part of their masculinity (for example being a caregiver). So, when we talk about masculinity as being toxic, without qualification, whose masculinity are we even talking about?

Often, people aren’t talking about masculinity at all, they’re talking about men. But, and we really can’t stress this enough, ‘masculinity’ does NOT mean ‘men’, nor vice versus. Our physical biology (hormones, brain structure etc.) undoubtedly have some part to play in our gender identity and how we behave, but it is also clear that a large part of our gendered behaviour is shaped by environmental and societal influences, as are the traits, attributes and characteristics we believe are appropriate for men and women. What this means is, when a man does something seen as typically ‘male’, even if many other men behave in a similar way, that does not mean all men behave this way. It also means that, in most instances, men aren’t biologically bound to act that way, it is society that has taught them it is appropriate or even desirable to do so.

This is demonstrated by our fifth point – women can and do show ‘masculine’ behaviours, traits and characteristics. Indeed, as mentioned above, one of the principle outcomes of feminism has been the break-down of restrictive female gender role expectations, which have encouraged women to venture, nay charge, into traditionally masculine realms, and excel in doing so. If we depend too heavily upon the concept of toxic masculinity to explain negative and destructive behaviours by men, how do we explain similar or even identical behaviours when they are performed by women?

The sixth and final issue is that toxic masculinity is invariably described as something that men have. It is a noun, a thing, an entity, something which is just there inside us, like a hereditary disease or an internal organ. It is both applied, and understood, to mean that the individual man is held responsible for his own toxic behaviour. But the reality is that gender scripts and gender roles are (at least to a large extent) socially conditioned. They are dynamic, and are not things we have but things we do; roles we perform. Attributing problematic behaviour to toxic masculinity is therefore offering an individualistic diagnosis of a social and political failure.

Based on these observations, wouldn’t it be more accurate to talk about ‘toxic masculinisation’ rather than ‘toxic masculinity’? By that we mean the myriad destructive and poisonous ways in which we raise our boys to be men, including how we brutalise them with actual physical violence, or how we instruct them to toughen up, man-up or punish them with mockery and humiliation for showing emotion or vulnerability. Put simply, imagine if we were instead having the same conversation about men, and the male gender role, that we have been having about women and the female gender role for decades. It is unarguable that this would enable men to show a more diverse, and much healthier range of gendered behaviour, and yet we seem so resistant to evaluating men with the same care and attention. Why?

The two principal answers – that we don’t want to, and that we don’t need to, are equally damaging. Both speak to a key issue that we have with men at the moment – the male empathy gap – as described by Dr John Barry and colleagues at UCL. This work speaks to the belief that men are less in need, and less worthy, of our help and compassion because they either don’t need it or they themselves don’t want it. This stems from the ideas outlined above that men are expected to be strong and stoic and can not only cope on their own, but that it is heroic to do so. Unfortunately, such ideas leave men in a position of immense vulnerability, as no-one, not even they, are interested in their issues or needs.

In this sense, assessing the direct link between a restrictive male gender role and the myriad issues which affect men is long overdue. Indeed, it is becoming ever harder to argue against acknowledging and attempting to tackle issues in which men and boys are disproportionately affected, such as homelessness, suicide, and educational underachievement, as well as those where men suffer gender-specific challenges, for example as victim-survivors of domestic or sexual violence, or as new or separated fathers.

However, it is also important to note that, as we write in the summer of 2018, the world is still coming to terms with the unfolding scale of institutionally-enabled sexual abuse and harassment – for example that relating to the #MeToo movement, and before that the succession of scandals from Savile and Operation Yewtree, to abuse in football clubs, children’s homes, the Catholic Church and beyond. Therefore, we are only too conscious that we are questioning the notion of toxic masculinity against a backdrop of the appalling behaviour of all too many men. We could even broaden that vista to include terrorists, school shooters and other violent criminals in the news, who are disproportionately (if not quite exclusively) men.

However, identifying why men behave so negatively and understanding their issues, as well as understanding what we can do to make such behaviours less likely or frequent, is all part of the same big question; finding the answer to which is arguably a key challenge of our time. And the argument we raise is whether throwing around the term ‘toxic masculinity’ is helping or hindering that process?

Because, whatever the original intentions of those who coined the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’, and whatever the motivations of those who throw it around today, it seems clear to us that it is a phrase that a large majority of men and boys find alienating and unhelpful. Correctly or not, the term is understood to be associating men and boys – all men and boys – with the very worst behaviours of anyone who shares our gender. In this sense, the first thing that needs to change is how we speak about men and boys, and how we engage with them.

Crucially, engaging in such debate is not only important in improving the lives and experiences of men, but of women also. So many of the behaviours currently blamed on men as a universal group are negative acts directed towards women. However, many of these, again, are not a result of biologically being a man, or even masculinity, but of a restrictive male gender role that, for example, socialises men to be sexually domineering.

Thus, in writing this we are not asking for the worst of men to be given a free pass. On the contrary, we are calling for outrage. Just as women have been outraged by the oppressive gendered structures that have long shackled them to restrictive gender roles, we call for outrage at the impositions on men and boys. Such restrictions, perpetuated by oppressive patriarchal structures are both real and extremely damaging. But crucially, we need to recognise that such structures are damaging to both women and men, and that men per se aren’t the problem, they are, and must be, part of the solution. We should all be battling against oppressive gender socialisation, in an attempt to improve and enrich all of our lives.

So, let’s ditch #toxicmasculinity, and instead place due value on men and masculinity, and the richness they, and it, brings to our lives. It is only by doing so, alongside engaging in critical, positive debate on what it means to ‘be a man’ in the 21st century, that we will finally find ourselves on the path to true equality.

 

What affects 1 in 200 girls, but 1 in 12 boys? Colour blindness

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One in 12 men are colour blind (and one in 200 women) which, by any standards, is a lot. Yet not many people are aware of this statistic, probably because colour vision deficiency (CVD) is a hidden condition. Sometimes colour blind people themselves don’t realise they have this condition – they simply think everyone sees colours the way they do. But living with CVD can have serious repercussions for a person’s safety, their education, professional and social life, and, in some cases, their self-esteem.

People with the most prevalent forms of CVD confuse all sorts of colour combinations, not just reds and greens. So, on an average day, they might bite into an unripe banana, they may confuse the recycling bins, documents corrected in red ink at work could be meaningless, and watching Liverpool play footie on the box could be more of a challenge than a pleasure (their all-red home kit blurs into the green pitch).

Not insurmountable problems perhaps, but day after day, and in certain jobs and situations, they are definitely a frustration and can constitute a disability – and failure to assist people with this disability, whether intentional or not, can be discriminatory.

Pie chart v3-01

Images copyright Colour Blind Awareness

Ignoring the needs of people with colour blindness can also be a form of indirect sexual discrimination. Girls could be considered to have an advantage over boys in all kinds of situations because so many more boys struggle with undiagnosed colour blindness, or a lack of support post diagnosis, compared with the small numbers of girls who are colour blind.

A key area where CVD causes difficulties is at school. In the educational environment, CVD can impact negatively on a pupil’s performance, and ultimately their opportunities going forward in life, if the classroom and teaching methods are not adapted to meet their needs. For example, traffic-light coding in primary schools is incomprehensible to children with CVD, colour-coded pie charts are impossible to navigate, while chemistry students will be lost when it comes to colour-reliant experiments.

“People, including teachers, don’t realise how widespread the problems can be in school,” says Kathryn Albany Ward, founder of Colour Blind Awareness. “It can affect performance across the whole curriculum including, geography, maths, ICT and even languages.”

‘What’s most annoying is when people don’t understand why it’s a problem’

Marcus, aged 9, says: “At school I get confused sometimes in lessons like geography – flags and maps can be difficult to understand. In food tech, I always have to ask my partner if something is cooked and the science stuff I look at online is sometimes challenging.

It’s also really annoying when I’m playing football and the cones aren’t the right colour. But what’s most annoying is when people don’t really understand why it’s a problem.”

Marie, his mother, says: “As a parent of a colour blind child I’m continually shocked and appalled by the lack of awareness and understanding of this condition in education. It is basically as prevalent as dyslexia, yet teachers generally receive no training and children are no longer screened. It beggars belief in a 21st century classroom where colour is used constantly that this is not on the radar of most schools.”

Regrettably, screening for CVD is no longer a mandatory part of school entry, nor is a colour vision test part of the NHS eye test for children. As a result, some youngsters can struggle for years at school if a parent or teacher has not spotted there is something wrong. It can also affect their career prospects – and therefore their choice of subjects as they advance into higher education – because certain jobs and professions will be off limits, at worst, or complicated, at best, for people with CVD, such as working as a pilot, electrician or in medicine.

The good news is that, thanks to sustained efforts by Colour Blind Awareness in recent years, many sectors of society are starting to take notice. Significant advances are being made in football, with UEFA and the English FA leading from the front, raising awareness and implementing CVD-friendly strategies. Educational institutions have been slower on the uptake, but CBA has written best practice information leaflets and runs workshops for teaching professionals which it is hoped may begin to make a difference soon.

In reality, we can all play a part in helping to prevent discrimination against those with colour blindness. If you come across information or methods that can’t be interpreted without colour recognition – a danger sign, an occupied toilet indicator, computer software – why not point it out to the relevant body or, if necessary, log a complaint? And keep an eye on young people in your entourage, in particular young boys, for any signs of trouble with colour recognition (see the tips below). If in doubt, ask an optician to test for CVD. Like most things in life, once a difficulty is identified, you can work out strategies to help manage the negative impact.

‘Bombarded with graphs, images, figures and tables’
Oliver Daddow, Assistant Professor in British Politics and Security in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, reveals the frustration he has felt since joining Twitter earlier this year.

“I am bombarded daily with graphs, images, figures, and tables that are a staple of Twitter feeds for the politically interested. Opinion polls, pie charts of public expenditure, Brexit negotiation flow charts etc; all get the full colour treatment.

“The problem is that, being colour blind, I can only read around half of them at best. I can spend time deciphering what is going on in a few of the remainder. The rest remain an impenetrable mass of lines and words.

“With around one in 12 men and one in 200 women colour blind in some form, it is time designing for the colour blind became a much more integrated component of academic and media training. Bad graphic design prevents significant numbers of the population from accessing data.

“If all members of a society are to engage equally on matters that affect all of us, then designing politics-related graphics so they can be read by everyone would be a hugely important step for young and old alike.”

What causes CVD?

Essentially, CVD a deficiency in one of the three types of specific cone cells in our eyes that absorb red light, green light and blue light respectively. Most cases of CVD arise from a defect in the red or green cone types – commonly known as red/green colour blindness – but colour blindness can affect many other colour combinations. The generally held view that colour blind people only confuse reds with greens is a myth.

Why does CVD affect men and boys in greater numbers?

Colour blindness is far more prevalent in males than females (1 in 200 women is colour blind) because the condition is inherited via the X chromosome. If a male inherits the colour blindness gene on his single X chromosome, he will be colour blind. If a female inherits colour blindness on just one of her two X genes, the good (non colour blind) X overrides the bad X so she won’t be colour blind but she will be a carrier, with a 50% chance of passing the bad gene down to her sons. If, however, both her X chromosomes carry the gene, she will be colour blind.

How to spot CVD?

There are a few tell-tale signs to look out for that may indicate CVD. For example if someone:

  • Needs more time, or looks for other clues, to process information that uses colour
  • Appears to regularly misunderstand instructions (is it because colour is involved?)
  • Has difficulty ‘seeing’ colours in PowerPoint presentations or data communication (see personal testimony below)
  • Has difficulty using software programmes (many website pages uses colour text or graphics on a colour background that can be very difficult for people with CVD to ‘see’)
  • Appears confused by coloured sports equipment – e.g. green bibs, red cones, blue court markings (see below)
  • Isn’t sure when meat is cooked

For more information, visit colourblindawareness.org

 

Out of the Madhouse: A Father and Son’s Journey through Mental Ill-Health

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The Maitlands – Iain, Tracey, and their three children, Michael, Sophie and Adam – were a happy family living by the sea in Suffolk. Their eldest son Michael then went to university and everything changed.

Whilst there, Michael suffered from anxiety and depression. He kept this to himself. His family did not know what was happening. Eventually, Michael’s mental ill-health led to anorexia, hospitalisation and a five-month stay in the Priory.

Michael went on to do an MBA and marry – he then became unemployed and divorced because of his mental illness. He moved back home to start over. Today, he is happy and fulfilled and works as a tattooist. Michael and Iain are ambassadors for the teen mental health charity, Stem4, and the authors of Out of the Madhouse by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Here, they talk about their journey.

Michael’s Thoughts

Mental ill-health can strike anyone, any time, and you don’t always realise it until it’s got its claws into you. I just thought I was low and felt lonely (when I went to university) because I’d moved away from home to a new environment and lifestyle. But it was depression, and by the time I recognised that, I had all sorts of other related issues too.

I became anorexic as eating food – or not eating – was the only thing I could control. The anorexia was what led to me going into hospital; that, the pneumonia and the collapsed lung. I thought that was the worst moment of my life, but it wasn’t. The Priory got me back into the right BMI range and I went home, but the depression and all of that was still lurking, and it came back and ruined everything. It was only when my wife broke up with me, I lost my house and went back to my family’s home that I hit rock bottom; my ‘live or die’ moment, really.

Getting better was a long, long haul; it took me two years. At first, I just felt completely empty and pretty much wanted to die as I had lost everything. My dad kept on at me to see someone, a therapist, and I went to a hypnotherapist called Suzanne who talked me through everything. That was a huge help. Getting it out in the open and talking it through was a big relief. Talking is so important with mental health.

Other things helped me too – I tried to have a structure to my day, eating regularly, exercising, and keeping busy-ish. I have always loved art and focusing on sketching helped me relax. Playing computer games took my mind off things too. Seeing friends is important as well. I had good friends who came back into my life at this time. My family were supportive and we went out to the cinema a lot. They were always there in the background, not too close, but around if I needed them. It’s good to have support that’s nearby but not suffocating.

Today, I work as a tattooist in my home town of Felixstowe. I work with a close-knit team who are like a family to me and I feel good about myself. Experts say that mental illness never goes away, but it’s been a while now since I felt depressed and I am hopeful for the future. Like anyone, I have odd moments of stress and stuff and I have breathing exercises that I do. I go to the gym before work. I also set aside time to relax and meditate. When I go to bed, I like to fall asleep to music; these little things all help keep me balanced.

My dad and I are ambassadors for Stem4 (Stem4.org) – they have a brilliant (and free) Calm Harm app for when you feel stressed. We go into schools and colleges to talk about mental health and our book, Out Of the Madhouse. I read the book again recently (it was published on 18 January), my diary entries in the Priory and when I came back home; it’s so weird to see how down I was then, close to suicidal. It’s been such a turnaround.

I am always asked two questions when I do a talk to students or parents. One, ‘how can people spot mental ill-health?’ The answer is it’s not always easy. Quiet people may be suffering. So too might the ‘life and soul of the party’. Over-the-top, almost forced cheerfulness can be a disguise. You can look for changes – personality, demeanour, manner, body language – between what someone is like now and how they used to be.

The other question is, ‘what can you do to help someone with mental ill-health?’ Getting mental health issues out in the open is really important so that people feel they can talk about them more. There is such a cliched sense of ‘masculinity’ in society but it’s changing, albeit slowly. It’s good to see ‘strong’ men such as the actor David Harewood speaking out about their mental health. There’s still a stigma. Mental health matters need to be normalised. Talking and listening and ‘being there’ without trying to impose your own thoughts or solutions is very important.

Iain’s Thoughts

The question I’m asked most about Michael’s journey goes something like this – ‘how could your son go to university, become depressed and anorexic over a five-year period and collapse and be rushed to hospital whilst you stood by and did nothing?’ And the honest answer is, I don’t know. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Guilt and a sense of failure probably don’t help much though.

I think the answer is a complex one. We were a happy family and had no knowledge of mental illness. It never occurred to me that anything like this could happen to Michael, even though I know now that it can happen to anyone. He did not know himself for ages – maybe two years – and he felt embarrassed and ashamed. He never wanted us to know. And anorexia? Well, that’s for teenage girls isn’t it? At least, that’s what I thought at the time. Ignorance, that’s what that was – men, and not just teenage boys, suffer too. Arguably, it’s harder for men – they have to be ‘tough’ and ‘strong’. Nonsense really.

Looking back, there were plenty of red flags – the ‘changes’ Michael talks about. The signs were all there – he changed his appearance dramatically and repeatedly, he was more distant with us, he stopped engaging, he hid himself away, and he became stick-thin with lots of layers of clothing. And still we didn’t see. I don’t know how.

I wish – and I always tell parents this – that I had been a more open, emotional father. I saw myself as a good father – picking my children up, dropping them off, sitting in my car for hours whilst they did this and that. And, as they grew older, I made sure they had enough money, their cars had MOTs and all of that practical stuff. But we never talked, not properly – I shied away from it. Lots of men do; it’s not helpful.

The advice I give to parents I talk to is much the same as Michael’s. Watch for anything ‘different’ about your children. Perhaps they chop and change their minds a lot, cannot settle; maybe they no longer talk to you or confide in you the way they did. It may be something and nothing – but it could be the start of something more serious. It’s easy to mistake changes, as we did, as part of growing up; it’s not always the case.

Spotting an issue is one thing, dealing with it is another. I talk to a lot of parents – they come up to me after a presentation and share their, sometimes tragic, stories. A common theme is that Dad goes in too strong, ‘This is the problem you have, son. Do this! Do that! Now! There, that’s fixed that!’ This may work if you’re teaching them to kick a football or climb a tree but it’s about the worst thing you can do with mental health.

We learned fast what to do when Michael came home. We had to, we thought he was going to kill himself. We took advice from anyone we could speak to (GPs are a good place to start, those who work in self-help groups and who have experienced mental illness themselves are better). The sufferer has to want to get well – Michael did – and they need to find their own way through. You have to be there to support them.

Michael said he was on the mend for a long time before we believed him. We spent months tip-toeing around him, being gentle and saying the right things. Eventually, we all sort of relaxed together. Writing the book was a positive experience; reading Michael’s diary entries was shocking at first but gave us an insight into what he was thinking. It helped us to understand him better.

As for the future, Michael really enjoys tattooing and will be doing that long-term. I have spun off to write dark, literary thrillers. The first, Sweet William, was published in November and the next, Mr Lamb’s Secret, is out at the end of the year. We continue to go into schools and colleges for Stem4 and will do that for a while yet. We are also working together on an illustrated book, Stick Boy, which should be published in 2020.

Michael and Iain’s book, Out Of the Madhouse is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishing, available here

 

A response to Robert Webb’s attack on International Men’s Day

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Dear New Statesman,

At the close of a year in which Robert Webb made important and welcome contributions to debates on masculinity and male wellbeing, it was immensely disappointing to see him use his NewStatesman column [December 7th] for an ill-informed and spiteful attack on International Men’s Day (IMD).

In the UK alone, IMD 2017 was marked by well over a hundred events hosted by charities, campaign groups, health services, local authorities, schools, churches, synagogues and mosques. IMD organisers and activists come from across the political, ideological and social spectrum and their concerns criss-cross a complex network of men’s issues. It was marked by women and men of all backgrounds across the UK and some of the most heartfelt contributions were from women celebrating the roles their fathers, sons, brothers and partners play in their lives.

It is a pity Robert was unable to attend the inspirational Rocking Ur Teens event for inner city boys  in London, or the One Blue String busking challenge in the centre of Manchester, supporting the one in six men who are survivors of sexual abuse or rape. He could have attended the live comedy podcast recording by the wonderful Sarah Millican, or he would have been welcome at any of the academic conferences on topics including LGBT issues; men’s mental health; male victims of domestic violence or men and boys’ experiences with eating disorders, where he would have found, ironically, that his own book was widely mentioned and discussed.

It is particularly baffling that Robert holds up CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, as an example of an alternative to IMD, apparently unaware that CALM have long been at the forefront of promoting IMD and are among our most active and prominent supporters. Just a quick glance at the UK IMD website could have shown him that IMD 2017 was also celebrated by numerous overtly feminist organisations including Women’s Equality Party branches and university feminist societies.

It is unquestionably true that within the broad men’s sector there are elements which can be labelled “a noxious bunch of antifeminist cranks.”  However, these elements did not create IMD, have never significantly promoted it, and their involvement has never been more than marginal. It is downright harmful to attribute ownership of IMD to those groups –  that serves to inflate their reach and influence, while seriously undermining the important work of charities supporting boys and men in need.

Robert concludes by saying International Men’s Day could and should be “just like Christmas: a celebration of shared humanity. But it’s also a time when we spare a thought for those of us especially vulnerable to the cold and dark.” This is not only a beautiful description of what IMD could become, but of what it already is. We look forward to IMD 2018, when we hope Robert will be standing at our shoulders helping IMD to bloom, rather than carping misguidedly from the side-lines.

Glen Poole,
Ambassador, UK Men’s Day

New play 31 Hours: ‘A journey through masculinity, mental health and messy aftermaths in modern Britain’

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Do you remember the last time you were on a train delayed by a “passenger incident”? Can you recall what went through your mind — was it a shudder at the possible devastation hidden behind the euphemism? Or did you look at your watch and curse at being made late for work again? I’m ashamed to say I know which of these responses I’ve had in the past.

Now an extraordinary new play, entitled 31 Hours, about four men who clean up after rail suicides, is forcing its audiences to take a moment to think about the reality behind these often hidden tragedies. Filled with humour and humanity, it takes the audience on a journey through masculinity, mental health and messy aftermaths in modern Britain.

Here in an exclusive for insideMAN the play’s author, Kieran Knowles, explains what drove him to tackle this taboo subject. 31 Hours runs until October 28th at The Bunker, Southwark Street, London — scroll down to watch a YouTube clip from the play.

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Every 31 Hours someone jumps in front of a train. For me that statistic started it all.

I was working for Southeastern railway at the time I stumbled across it, I was a maintenance manager, waiting for my acting career to take off, I’m still waiting, though no longer at a rail company. I was sat in a Management Safety Training seminar, and I was handed a Samaritans brochure with all of the statistics, figures and factsthat would inform the play and get me angry enough to write it.

For me the fact that the biggest killer of under 45 years old males is themselves is an indictment of the society we live in.If there was a virus causing that devastation we would be ploughing money into research and prevention. But its too easy to belittle mental health, it is too easy to ignore it, to assume it isn’t there.

The anger I felt at the suicide rate combined with working at a rail company, collided and I began to see incidents of suicide on the railway in a new way. The dehumanisation of a life is what drew me in, the public sacrifice and the logistics. When a human is hit by a train they instantly become dehumanised. Whether it is a tut from an angry passenger, a phone call to the engineers, an email to support teams and clean up teams that attend to make sure theservice can continue. One second you are human the next you are an inconvenience. All of your achievements and memories are replaced by a tinny announcement on a crowded platform speaker system. It was this element that caught my attention. So I started with that, and I came up with the idea that we would follow a network rail clean up team who attend incidents of this nature.

The first thing that this offers, and probably my favourite irony about the play is the uniform all rail staff must wear. High visibility coats, trousers, waistcoats, a hard hat, steel toe capped boots. All workers wear a uniform designed to keep them safe. But this plays into our general misunderstanding of Mental Health, we can’t wrap the part of your brain up that causes anxiety, grief, pain or worry we can’t dress it in reflective material. But until we deal with the issue in the same way we will never fully understand how to keep people safe. And if we don’t understand how to do that, then itseasier to ignore it, to stigmatize it, to pretend it doesn’t affect the people we love.

Literally everything about the outfit these workers wear is designed to protect them from the outside in, but nothing can help their struggles from the inside out.

I realise I have painted a fairly serious picture of the play here, and I know that no one really comes to the theatre to be lectured at, and so I hope I have created something that doesn’t.

The play actually, if you reduced to type is a workplace drama, it is about four everyday men in their workplace, their workplace though is perhaps a littleuntraditional. They do however, have a job to do and they have the banter, the gallows humour, the frictions between colleagues and the pressures from idiosyncratic maintenance managers (ahem).

I believe that in theatre it is important to laugh, to follow a story with a smile rather than constantly be bombarded with tragedy and so I have tried to marry the most serious of subjects with the most mundane everyday chit chat, and compliment them with other views of those involved in a clean up of this kind, in the hope that the elements harmonise to make the whole sound and look better and the message to ring out clearer. If you can enjoy a piece about mental health and suicide you are more likely to remember it. I hope.

To buy tickets for 31 Hours click here

How an all-male support network brought one man back from the brink of suicide

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“They understood without prying, did not judge and did not seek to. It wasn’t counselling, but a connection with men from every type of background” — Richard Holland, Vice President of the National Association of Round Tables

Experts in men’s mental health are beginning to discover that the kinds of support and therapy that work for women, do not always work for men. They are also finding that the often knee-jerk assumption that “men don’t talk” is inaccurate — closer to the truth is that men need the right environment in which to talk. This can mean all-male spaces in which men feel safe to be themselves and communicate in ways that work for them.

Here Richard Holland, Vice President of the National Association of Round Tables Great Britain and Ireland, an all-male voluntary organisation that has been supporting men for 90 years, speeks about his own battle following the breakdown of his marriage and how the uniquely male support of his tight network of friends from Round Table was able to bring him back to himself.

“Over my many happy years in Round Table and most recently being on the road meeting members as National Vice President, I’ve learnt something special. It’s a fact about Round Table that I know to be true because I have had personal experience of it. And this fact may not directly speak to you but I know that it will speak to someone you know.

“What is it I learnt? That Round Table saved my life, when I was at the lowest point of my life. When I was at rock bottom, the Round Table community was there for me. And this is my story.

“A couple of years ago, I went through a pretty horrible separation from my ex-wife which ended in us getting divorced. It left me devastated.

“I suffered terribly. And it took an overwhelming hold on my wellbeing. For the first time in my life, I felt vulnerable. For the first time in my life, I was scared for what the future held for me and for my children. For the first time in my life, I felt totally alone in the world.

“I took on habits to cope. Late night partying with people I didn’t know, drinking too much and an outlook on the world that was negative and bleak.

“In short, I will share with you how deep it went – without Round Table I would not be here today.

“But Table was there. The spirit, the fun, the opportunities, a reason to be involved in life again; it all lifted me. But it was something else more human and more touching that really helped. Others, that understood without prying, did not judge and did not seek to. It wasn’t counselling, but a connection with men from every type of background. I felt comfortable with Tablers, less scared, more confident. Through Table, I got my life back.”

As men, we too often think of ourselves as strong and in control of our emotions. Maybe a sense of “big boys don’t cry” keep our emotions under lock and key. When we feel hopeless or overwhelmed by despair we often deny it, even to ourselves. Yet depression is much more common than many first expect. It is estimated that 1 in 6 people in this last week experienced a common mental health problem.

And with an average of 12 men a day taking their own lives and suicide the biggest killer of men under 45, Round Table are proud to partner with the Men and Boy’s Coalition to directly draw attention to men’s issues and help more men like Richard.

Richard said: “Now I look back and my life is wonderful.  My children are beautiful and I am in love again – my heart and mind repaired.

“Round Table saved my life, as I know it has done for many other members of our incredible organisation. We not only help lift others through incredible fundraising activities, but we help lift ourselves – through fun, fellowship and community work. Some men don’t need help in the same way as I did, but I believe every man needs opportunity and Round Table gives young men so much. Men are beginning to break down their traditional barriers of a stiff upper lip and leading this change is the greatest young man’s club in the world – Round Table.”

Is it OK for Guys to be depressed?

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Yes. There, that’s that dealt with. Next question?

Except of course, it’s not nearly as simple as that. If you’re a regular insideMAN reader, I have a hunch that like me, you’ll take it for granted that men should be allowed to feel anxious, low and depressed. But the reason I’m writing this blog, is that according to a new stereotype-busting campaign by Lynx, men are repeatedly asking Google the question in this headline. That suggests many people don’t think it’s OK for men to be depressed at all.

There’s a strange contradiction going on here. On the one hand, it’s never been more acceptable for men to open up about their feelings – in fact, the last 14 months have seen a sea-change in the cultural conversation around men’s mental health.

From the House of Commons holding its first Parliamentary debate on male suicide on International Men’s Day 2015; to princes William and Harry (who are, FYI, male, Royal and ex-military) recently launching their Heads Together mental health awareness campaign in partnership with male suicide prevention charity CALM; to the Southbank’s Being A Man festival; to the fact Lynx, about as mainstream a brand as you can get, have launched this campaign to breakdown male gender stereotypes.

If we’ve got everyone from MPs and Royalty, to high street male grooming brands all championing the idea that it’s OK for men to be open about their feelings, surely we’ve got this stiff-upper-lip thing licked? Right?

Deep roots

Except that isn’t the story that’s being told by the statistics. When I first started writing about men’s mental health around ten years ago, suicide was the biggest killer of men aged under 35. Since then the male suicide rate has in fact gone up, to the point where it is now the biggest killer of men aged under 50.

So what’s going on? I mean, how can the male suicide rate actually have risen, at exactly the same time as society has been telling men it’s more acceptable than ever for them to talk about their feelings?

One answer, of course, is that the expectations society places on men to be stoical, strong and silent, have profoundly deep roots that aren’t going to be easily eradicated overnight, no matter how high-profile the campaigns promoting a different kind of message about manhood. The idea that “real men” should provide and protect and damn well keep quiet about it, still has a powerful grip on both men and women.

But that said, I believe there now really is a greater acceptance of men expressing their fears and anxieties. The suicide debate in Parliament, the princes’ mental health campaign and Lynx’s focus on broader ways of being a man, may all be recent, but they are signs of a profound cultural shift – MPs, Royals and high street brands don’t get behind ideas that haven’t already got mainstream acceptance.

How does all this add up? Isn’t men’s fear of appearing weak, their tendency to bottle things up until it’s all too much to bear, the root cause of the high male suicide rate? If it’s easier than ever for men to talk and show their feelings, why is there still an epidemic of male suicide?

Bigger questions

But maybe these aren’t the right questions – or at least, maybe they aren’t the only questions we need to be asking. You see, over the years I’ve been writing about men’s issues and after being immersed in the hundreds of personal stories we hear at insideMAN, I’ve come to believe there is another question that’s at least as important, but gets asked far less often. And that question is: “What’s driving male depression in the first place?”

Because it’s not just suicide that disproportionately affects men – there are a whole gamut of other disadvantages that also hit men hardest and that go right to the heart of a person’s wellbeing. From the fact that young men are now 35% less likely to go to university than young women, to the disproportionate impact of the recession on male-dominated industries, to the pain faced by men who are separated from their children, to the fact men make up 88% of those who sleep rough — anyone of these would have a negative impact on a person’s mental health, I know they would on mine.

What these issues also have in common, is that there’s a lack both of awareness that these are gendered issues affecting men, and of popular concern to address them. And it seems to me, that one crucial reason for this is society’s ingrained expectation that men must be strong and stoical – if a man faces disarray in his life, our almost instinctive reaction is that he should “man up” and fix his own problems.

I think it’s brilliant that Lynx and our culture as a whole are starting to challenge stereotypes about what it means to be a man. But if we’re serious about breaking down the expectations placed on men and improving male mental health, I think there are a some tough questions that we still need to ask ourselves. And I’m pretty sure Google won’t have the answers.

By Dan Bell

You can find out more about Lynx’s ‘Is it OK for guys?’ campaign here

If you need help or feel like you can’t be yourself, visit ditchthelabel.org 

BBC comedy chat show mocks male victim of domestic violence and gives ‘Mammy of the Week’ award to his abuser

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BBC comedy chat show All Round to Mrs Brown’s has triggered outrage among domestic violence survivors and campaigners after it depicted real-life domestic abuse by a wife against her husband as comedy and then gave her the show’s ‘Mammy of the Week’ award.

The segment of the popular Saturday night light entertainment programme, in which each week a mother is nominated for the award, shows a daughter describe to a laughing studio audience how her mother has repeatedly attacked her father with household objects and on at least one occasion with a knife.

Accompanied by Benny Hill-style comedy music, canned laughter and with the mother shown laughing in the corner of the picture, the daughter says: “She really likes to throw things and it’s dad that gets the brunt of it. He’s had pretty much everything thrown at him over the years, toasters, hair dryers, you name it.

“There’s still a dent in the wall from where she threw a knife at him — he says it’s a constant reminder to stay in her good side.”

At one point, as the daughter is describing the violence, a photograph of the mark made by the knife is shown on screen, accompanied by another burst of canned audience laughter, then followed by the words: “BUT STILL AN AMAZING MAMMY”.

Mark Brooks, Chairman of the ManKind Initiative, a national charity supporting male victims of domestic abuse, said: “It is frankly staggering this was ever broadcast by the BBC let alone treated as funny and a cause for celebration.

“It shows how deeply ingrained society’s view is in failing to understand or accept men are victims of domestic abuse too. This broadcast makes matters worse by reinforcing that view. Watching this would have been deeply upsetting to many men who are going through an abusive relationship or have done so in the past and still live with the memories – in fact it would have made matters worse.

“I am confident that the BBC understands both the sensitivity of the subject and the important role it plays in raising awareness. They should delete this segment thereby making it clear that this was unacceptable television that should never have made it to the nation’s screens and living rooms”.

‘I feared I would be laughed at’

Ian McNicholl, domestic abuse survivor and Ambassador for the ManKind Initiative said: “When I was experiencing domestic abuse, my biggest fears were that I would not be believed and that I would be laughed at if I told anyone.

“Had I been watching this at the time, it would have reinforced these views in my mind and made it even less likely that I would escape. As a society we have to be clear that domestic abuse is wrong whoever the victim is and this is why the content and tone is unacceptable as it is both completely insensitive and disrespectful to all male victims and survivors.”

The ManKind Initiative said is has written to the BBC Trust and co-producers Hungry Bear Media and BocPix, calling for an apology and for the episode to be deleted.

Mr Brooks said the segment “highlights and reinforces the continual belief that this type of abuse is acceptable and humorous when it is a man who is the victim. It normalises the belief that this behaviour is acceptable.

Double standards

“It also exposes the double standards applied to male victims as, rightly, both the BBC and the production companies would never treat a similar insensitive situation where the genders were reversed as a ‘celebration’ or ‘humorous’ let alone broadcast it.

“This makes male victims more vulnerable as it makes it far harder for them to find the courage to get help and feel they will be believed, when they see a national broadcaster and the audience think this type of activity is a source of amusement, not one of equal importance to both male and female victims.”

According to the Office for National Statistics, 450,000 men per year are victims of partner abuse – one in three of all victims with one in every six men suffering in their lifetime.

The cross-government definition of domestic abuse is any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are, or have been, intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality.

Watch the segment here from 44:10:

A day in the life fighting to bring down the barriers to boys’ education

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Boys are falling behind girls at every level of education and young women are now 35 percent more likely to go to university than young men. Despite this, there is currently no Government policy dedicated to tackling the issue. Here one small organisation describes what they are doing on a day-to-day basis to help boys overcome the educational barriers they face.

Mengage Limited is a not-for-profit company working on male health and the issues that affect male health; we are a practitioner-led organisation using a ‘what works’ approach to work with boys and men, which means that we acknowledge that there are a diverse range of disciplines and theories involved in work with men – and that these can sometimes be at variance.

All of that said, an area of work that most people attending our workshops can agree on are the social determinants of health, a prominent one being education. Girls outperform boys in schools in the majority of subjects and are more likely to go onto higher education, a pattern that is not unique to Britain, but one that can also be found in other developed countries.

Poor academic achievement correlates with reduced social mobility, poor health outcomes and also criminality, therefore to address these concerns it is essential that we take action on improving boys’ education and preventing early school leaving.

Government neglect

Social determinants are often influenced by Government policy – and education is no different. In the UK, despite boys falling behind girls at every level of schooling, there is currently no recognised statutory programme for improving boys’ education. In contrast in Australia, for example, biannual National Boys Education Conferences are held and work programmes with a specific focus on improving boys’ education are a normalised part of education work.

However without a policy – and the funding this brings — unlike some other social determinants of health, we can at least begin to address this in small part via workshops and initiatives that enthuse and provide knowledge and skills to UK teachers. Hence Mengage’s involvement in this field of work, with us criss-crossing the country visiting schools with our Raising Boy’s Achievement workshops for teachers and Mentoring Male accredited award for people interested in helping boys and young men in education through mentoring. It does of course help that one of the Mengage collective of practitioners –  the author of this article – is a qualified teacher.

What follows is my account of one of our workshops – a day in the life of a practitioner.

The majority of schools we work in are secondary schools, primarily for financial reasons with secondary schools being much larger and having bigger budgets to bring in external support; the opportunity to work in a primary school doesn’t arise too often. So when offered work at a larger primary with some 620 students and 50 staff we were pleased to accept; admittedly it’s easier to work with 15-20 committed staff – we’ve worked with a lot more than 50 staff at one sitting in secondary schools, but primary education is where we can really tackle issues such as boys and literacy, so I was keen to accept the school’s invitation to work with them.

Ideological resistance to helping boys?

Working in a primary school setting is different to work in secondary schools and required a change of approach. The format I used included an obligatory powerpoint introduction about who we are and what we do — and do not do. Experience of working in a gender-politicised area of work has meant we have had to build this into the start of many of our workshops. Whilst people know they are attending a workshop implicitly stating that it is about a boys and/or a men’s concern, people — often those from ideological perspectives – question whether we should be giving special support for boys or work with men, or that sometimes emerging research perspectives challenges their own views. We acknowledge that people can hold different views, but Mengage does not hold to any politicised or ideological doctrine and this is reiterated during these slides along with a robust rationale as to why we are doing this.

Once the introductions are out of the way, to explore these personal perspectives and allow staff to air their opinions, I used an activity we commonly employ, which uses questions such as: “what do boys want to know about education?” “What do boys need to know about education?” “What do we remember about boys/girls when growing up?” and so on.  Lots of participation and discussion ensued, informing me about their knowledge and opinions on work with boys and how they perceived them and this area of work (and as this was their first day back after Christmas the staff had conversations with each other about their holidays without being put under too much pressure to ‘perform’. Informality is part of the workshop!)

This then allowed me to explore research perspectives with them – challenging some of their views, looking at areas as diverse as neuroscience and literature, statistics and social mobility. I lovingly describe this as “the boring bit”, but it actually is the core that holds the whole workshop together. The discussion about the relevance of brain science and different viewpoints — social construction of masculinity/feminist schooling, the cultures of young men — onto psychology perspectives, action on social determinants and what does ‘salutogenic’ mean? This is the part that gets people to listen and get involved. Yes, you do need to know about best practice – but to improve practice you also need to build it on a sound research-based foundation, you need to know where practice is coming from. That took us up to a break and further discussion.

‘The biggest issue? Literacy.’

After the break, we were into the main barriers to boys’ achievement in school; drawing on best practice, in this case a nod of approval has to go to a leading expert in the field of work on boys’ education Gary Wilson, who identified a number of specific barriers and how to counter these. I certainly recommend anyone with an interest in this area to take a look at Gary’s work, and I always acknowledge my sources – after all I’m a practitioner spreading best practice. Hence we took a look at boys’ early years in school, literacy concerns, whole school approaches, socio-cultural issues, emotional intelligence and having a male-inclusive classroom – a lot of territory to cover in a time-condensed workshop.

Literacy is far and away the biggest issue we encounter and normally I would spend a bit of time allowing the staff to come up with their own ideas around this – but on this occasion and wary of timing I set out pre-prepared flip chart paper headed with each of the barriers, allowed them to sit where they had a particular interest and gave them 15 minutes to come up with their own ideas.

This worked really well. They were coming up with great ideas for their own school – such as suggesting areas of the school where there could be male friendly displays, doing an audit of classrooms to see whether the displays are ‘too feminine’, doing ‘stay and play’ sessions (for both sexes) so that parents/grandparents come in and they all put their technology down and play board games – and others too. Feedback followed with my offering solutions I have collected running  these workshops in many other schools and the staff then adding to them (a benefit of working cross-country is working with many different schools and picking up great ideas and sharing them) – experiential for both myself and the staff, as in future I’ll be running this particular part of the workshop in this way if there are more than a handful of staff.

The feedback at the end of the workshop was positive — the Head teacher and the Deputy Head who had originally organised the workshop were grateful and I was able to drive home at the end of the day feeling that at the very least the staff I had worked with were aware of exactly why we need to work to improve boys’ education and were informed and enthused to do so.

‘We shouldn’t ask why boys are failures, but why the system is failing boys’

This group of teachers embraced the workshop content. We shouldn’t regard boys and young men as a homogeneous deficient group – a problem, but as heterogenous and unique individuals with attributes that should be nurtured and allowed to grow so that they can build on their own strengths and succeed rather than be pigeonholed as educational failures; that it’s their fault, rather than that of a system that doesn’t account for their differential needs and how to work with them. We all know or have had experience of a boy who does not fit in with the broad-brush strokes we are using and probably know a girl that doesn’t too. We need to recognise this – but we also need to acknowledge that boys are not doing well in education and that gender-sensitive steps need to be taken to address this and not continue in the gender-blind fashion that has allowed boys to fail with subsequent consequences for themselves and the wider community.

If that sounds a little too idealistic or that I’m surfing on a wave of enthusiasm, I’m soon brought down to earth in the days following the workshop. There is a barrier to making all of this work, and one that many people will encounter. How many times have you been to a workshop or conference, come away enthused and ready to put what you’ve learnt into action only to be told by a manager or head of department who hadn’t attended that it wasn’t going to happen, it didn’t fit with the department’s ethos – etc? In this instance, upon finishing the workshop, the enthusiastic Deputy Head asked me to write a ‘quick check document’, a Red, Amber, Green rated checklist that could be applied to all aspects of the school environment to enable them to identify areas where they are letting boys down and so on – “stay in touch”. Sounds great?

I have emailed the Deputy Head about this several times since but to no avail. Our mentoring workshops are repeat business, we’re invited back as people want to train to be mentors and understand boys’ issues and concerns, but a workshop for busy teachers on raising boys’ achievement?  It would seem, as schools have so many pressures on them, that once this workshop is completed they are already moving on to the next thing. As a teacher I’m aware of this.

You could say that it’s a thankless task, and why do it when there is easier work to be had, but there is no provision for this area of work currently coming from Government and limited guidance for practitioners. So whilst that remains the case, as practitioners we will remain out on the road talking about work with boys and men and applying theory to practice – because, small company though we are and as frustrating as this work can be, we believe it can make a difference.

By Liam Kernan

Image: Flickr/DFAT