Toxic masculinity may be quadrupling the suicide rate for Canadian men

File: men-s-depression.jpg (36KB, 720x405px) Image search: [Google]

36KB, 720x405px

>Men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women in Canada and those numbers have been climbing for a decade. A recent study shows that the dark data points to one salient cause - toxic masculinity.

>The term, a buzzy word that's been floating around for awhile, is most often used in feminist circles. It's shorthand for the poisonous paradigm in which we raise boys to deny any human emotion that isn't linked to aggressive power. At its core, it's a "boys don't cry" model where stoicism and solitary strength are the very height of masculine virtue.

>Dr Joel Wong has found a definitive link between clichéd machismo and poor mental health in men. I suspect many mindful men may be unphased by that revelation. But after leading researchers at Indiana University Bloomington in analyzing data of nearly 20,000 participants (a synthesis of 78 studies) Wong says his team's findings are definitive. "It supports and confirms research done in the last 60 years that people who conform to masculinity have poor mental health." The hard truth is that manning up is tearing people down and we've had a sense of it for decades.

>Researchers found that both mental health and the tendency to seek out appropriate help dropped based on adherence to societal masculine norms. Eleven traits (some more upsetting than others) best identified the hyper-manly norms Wong used as benchmarks. The wince inducing "male" traits are as follows: winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy, self-reliance, primacy of work, power over women, and disdain for homosexuals. Anecdotal proof: for fear of being bullied, my best bud in high school refused to eat bananas in the cafeteria - phallic foods never escaped a hazing. Three of Wong's tested traits stood out more than the rest. Sexual promiscuity, self-reliance, and power over women were most categorically linked to frail mental health.

http://archive.is/WBIu7