After Gary Speed - Young Men, Suicide and Feminism

"Suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 35 in the UK, and seventy five percent of all suicides in the UK are male."
Not saying this for shock value, but I knew 4 men under the age of 40 who took their lives this year. One of whom was a very very close friend.  And since the sports man Gary Speed passed last week, there has been a outpouring addressing the state of minds of men who suffer from depression. An article came to my attention from the CALM campaign - Campaign Against Living Miserably.

click to enlarge

The reason I was drawn to this article is because of its reference to roles men and women have to endure, imposed upon them by "society", whatever that is these days. But whatever it is, it is taking lives as more and more men find it hard to be the square jawed, strong silent types that are apparently what they are (still)?!) expected to be.

Jane Powell, Chief Exec of CALM,  raises the issue of the role of feminism and male depression in a very condensed and  simplistic way but enough to rouse your interest in in the CALM website, the campaign and enough  to make me want to unpack why a global patriarchal system is failing its subjects, aside from propagating much unrest all over the planet that is  linked to profit driven and uber-individualistic idioms. Or maybe the three are closely connected: as men are expected to still bring home proverbial bacon and other  miscellaneous shiny things, they become a tad resentful of women and their "constant noise" (not my words) for equality, and women still expect men to open doors for them.

In the meantime, we all suffer traumas and distressing experiences that we need to talk about, that we need advice on how to cope with.  Then with expansion of  urbanisation and globalisation, the intensity of technology and the  white noise of the information age leave us with  little or next to no time  for introspective, reflective  thought, as the demand for our attention is constant and persistent. Some find ourselves in a habit of filling a need to be awake 24/7 in case we miss the next hot topic or an opportunity to buy the upgrade of a 'shiny thing'.  When we do stand still a moment, the noise can be deafening. Find something - a ritual, an addiction, SOMETHING - to squash it: alcohol, drugs, sex, partying... how many of us have been appalled by the behaviour of the young people we see on the BBC's "The Worlds Most Strictest Parent?"

The turbulence caused by conflicting emotions when maintaining an 'I can handle it'  exterior,  means the  burden of silence builds and compresses within hearts and minds. It shadows the spirit, undermines the psyche and the wounds  seep and begin to manifest themselves as misery, lethargy, pessimism, an anger that you cannot put your finger on and finally,  for some, a hopeless desperation that appears to leave no other option except ending the torment by taking steps to stop the beating of the ailing heart. I can only come to wonder where we are headed in the  ever raging gender equality dispute. Janet Powell says:

"We should indeed take a long, hard look at society and question some assumptions. Women now have full permission to be just who they want to be.  We can be a stay at home mum or a city banker, with or without a family...."

"If you flip that picture, and ask if men can do all of those things – in the way that women can – then the answer is no...."

And when the pressures get too much: "To lose control mentally and emotionally can/must/should only be done in a proper manly way."  

What is that?  - "a proper manly way"?

Ultimately, the whole globe is in transition as we come to a zenith in the need for  self-awareness, or else get swallowed up in the myriad of  identities forced up on us by mainstream media and intrusive bolshie ad campaigns telling you will never be happy unless... and when you don't meet that unobtainable  standard of femininity or masculinity - designed to be unattainable so you keep buying - you are left with guilt, inadequacy and a struggling self-esteem.
It is the peak of the 500 year capitalist campaign and there is only one way it can go from here.

For one day, one WHOLE day, I challenge you ,while you go about you everyday business, to consciously look around and see how and what types of images of masculinity and femininity are pushed in our faces at every corner, bus stop, tv ad, sitcom, in our language and even in your own home.
And while there are plenty who die at the hands of profit-driven-gotta-have-it greed in the guise of a"democracy" hailing liberal personal freedom and individualism through wars abroad, at home there are many who silently suffer from isolation caused by the pressure of insidiously forced gender roles.  In the age of the metro-sexual male and predatory Cougars, we can no longer push aside how gender socialization and sexual colonization, as crazy as it may sound, is  killing people.

Click the link and check out CALM and what Jane Powell has to say about "Suicide, an Issue for Feminists". http://www.thecalmzone.net/2011/04/a-call-to-feminists/

Here is another article from 2008 where Jane is quoted before the creation of the CALM campaign. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7219232.stm

Help Lines worth checking out:

Depression and Suicide in Men

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/menshealth/facts/depressionsuicide.htm 

Support Line

http://www.supportline.org.uk/problems/suicide.php

MIND

http://www.mind.org.uk/help/people_groups_and_communities/mens_mental_health

THE CONSCIOUS MEN APOLOGY - "DEAR WOMAN?" - ARE THEY BRAVE OR STUPID MEN?

These guys must have known they'd be putting themselves in the firing line for some serious ribbing but went for it anyway. I kinda respect that.

The "Dear Woman" youtube video made by a group of men who call themselves 'conscious men' has gone viral and is a collage of "conscious men" reading a  manifesto of "consciousness" built around their belief of the sacredness and power of the Feminine. Since its upload, the responses that hate it go beyond passionate! Their youtube comments ability - disabled. 

Some of the men who have blogged/vlogged in response think that their male counterparts in the vid are 'pussy begging' and trying to curry favour with women.  Some responses to the 'dear woman' vid are ill-thought out justifying some of the aggresion that is meted out on women globally as , 'women made  men this way!'
Are these riled guys are projecting what they know of themselves on to their 'conscious' brethren and are making wolf calls for 'real-man' masculinity who would chew up  these "conscious men", all in the name of natural selection and getting a mate. But so what if a couple of guys want to speak out against the supression of women and fore Feminine  acknowledgement and empowerment? And, if they don't like it, write your own manifesto, make your own video.


Then there are women blogging/vlogging who don't want to be patronised by some random self-appointed 'conscious' guy telling them how they honour their 'nurturing nature' and their innate ability to commune with 'Mother Earth.  Oooo.... they really touched a nerve there.
 The haters, male and female , are taking offense  by

As Property Protests - A Poem to the Voice of Shifting Unrest

They thrashed her within an inch of her life
Told her it would make her a wise woman, a better wife
For this Life was never about her skin that bled woman in the dust
She’d have to wait for the next

There were no floodgates; no bastion could hold her tongue
It sat ripe, ripe for bursting

Marinating in the velvet, thorny seat of her will

She had to snare her trembling agitation

With prayers and bitten lips

She herself, had to hobble her insurgent instinct to express, break it  at the knees

Forcing her Self to kneel at every clock tick,

In every sunbeam

And every crack of light she could find

She’d pray

And she’d pray and pray

The tremor were felt all over the house

The neighbours complained of pictures jumping like lemmings off the walls

And china plates edging themselves off shelves when she prayed

But no one saw it coming

Summoned, the air rushed to where she knelt

The windows got sucked out

The furniture, that clock and the kitchen pots

Flew around the room

How the cheap chandeliers and wall lamps clung

The force of this wind fingered the nails from the floorboards and flung them

Plaster from the walls stripped in great clumps

And the hinges on all the doors strained, creaked then broke

The noise was a thunder of bewildered wildebeest hoof

The roaring crash of water on rock from a 500-foot drop

The sonic boom of silence mercilessly inverted

And the acrid smell of gas and fresh ash woke in her nostril (oesophagus)

The scream incubating all her 21 years

She had seen enough to know that

If her jaw dropped and lower

If her throat opened any wider

If her lungs drew the breath that would complete their involuntary mission

She knew her reflex

Would be fearless evolution.

As Property Protests
©Zena Edwards

WOMANS WORLD

Fighting For Airtime - Travelling Light Extract

Fighting For Airtime

written by Zena Edwards May 2010©

I have been a woman that has
looked out of windows, stood on street corners,

cleaned floors on my knees,  borne children

on my knees and  chased rainbows
wrote my name out loud in a cloud
from a deep sigh on the glass

a silent gale force
that could huff and puff and blow

the houses of patriarch down

The space that my voice was to occupy

my part in the harmony, my heart on the melody

my life woven in the song of life’s symphony

was constricted, my voice,

hollow chest,  shallow depth, suffocating

See when it was my turn to talk
which wasn't very often (because I am a woman)

a child’s voice squeezed out, 

my voice on this tongue, hadn’t a chance to grow

this was lesson one

speaking my mind is a minefield

 trip wires every where,

in the court, where I must have wanted it dressed like that

at work after the sexual harassment case,

at war, after the 17^th rape

disgraced there was no returning

at home, he walked in the door, high, pissed and late,

full of misplaced hate, number 2million and 8 on the jobless list

and still punctuated his demands for dinner with a fist

but I found when it was my turn to talk

(which was not very often)
being black,  my tongue had the weight

of a continent wrapped in chains

fixed to a concrete slab (tied to it)
and a whip crack was all that came out

when I opened my mouth

when it was my turn to talk

 they told me I was to old, that I was too fat ,

that I was too skinny, that I was too fat

 they told me my skin was too dark, that I had to fix the attitude

 that came with it

 the one that asked “why not?”

 the one that said no and meant it

They asked me to tell that voice to behave,

to bury it, in this here conscripted government grave

Where it will be logged and forgotten about  for the next millennium

my input would only upset the equilibrium

you trade my voice, trick it, trap it,

 force it then beat it if it refuses

to sleep with man number 13 at this hour of the morning

stack it up as dirty money, stained. moss green –

bottle fly blue, purple aubergine, mucky yellow mottle

the colour of bruises, the colour of lust,

 the colour of  my  dreams

that stand in the corner stunned

turned, facing the wall

they cannot look at this me,

this scene of my dignity’s carnage

When it was my turn to talk

 It was made perfectly clear that there

was no space for me to talk here

 amongst the men, amongst the testosterone

 because the hysteria that sits below my navel,
it raises the risk of instability

in a system that is evidently working so fucking well

war running smoothly, lining the pockets

of  arms and oil traders

might scupper the race to evacuate this planet made dump,

by fantasy space invaders

the plot the rule the world

 is working thank you very much

to protect herself,  a woman has to know

when to make her presence felt and when to shut up

and stay skinny, stay fat, stay uneducated,

stay at home, stay on your back, stay in the kitchen,

stay under cover of broken wings,

while they sing with tenor, alto and bass

 sonic booms that crack the face of this earth

till she bleeds lava, tsunami whips her hair,

floods the land with her tears

and I am here,

looking out of the window of this body

displaced in my own skin

trapped between brick walls and the corrugated

 sheets of a run down shanty town

called life where I’m barely existing