Hi Inky Buds, I hope your day is going well. The topic we'll be discussing today is gender inequality, as the title suggest, the title however may cause some raised eyebrows. Hear me out, while men are often treated well in the workplace and pay, whereas women sometimes don't get this treatment, some areas have men as the individual with the short end of the straw. I will introduce a scenario. Imagine that a man is being physically abused by his female partner, and he defends himself in the wake of this dispute. The response is often jail with no hesitation. Now let me introduce the same scenario, but with a woman. The woman often receives a lesser sentence, or none at all. Why is this? Is it because she is a woman?
Men are often shrugged off when it comes to domestic/sexual abuse. They often aren't believed, or expected to know how to deal with it, and stick it through. This article will discuss some of the inequalities that men experience. Please note that I am not introducing anti-feminist beliefs or trying to pin anything against women. As I've said before in other articles, I try to introduce topics with a level head and a sense of neutrality. I am a feminist, and I believe that we have made exceptional progress with women's rights to a point where there is hardly any example of inequalities on our part, the only real obstacles being the gender/race pay gap. However, men are also treated unequally in some fronts. Both genders have their social issues and have some situations that need to be resolved.
Men are often expected to be strong and deal with their emotions internally and any major issues as well. Surveys from around the world find that males everywhere are reluctant to talk about their mental health and are more likely to die by suicide than females. In the United States, males make up nearly 80% of all deaths by suicide, report by the CDC, Males die by suicide four times more often than females do.
I believe that this is the result of pent-up emotions that is a result of the neglect of expressing emotions and one's feelings. This often leads to other problems like substance abuse, issues with dating, discouragement in seeking help and an increase in these problems. This leads me to further discuss the physical/sexual abuse of men. Many people don't believe that a man can be raped or experience the same type of abuse a woman can. This statement can be easily disproved with the number of abuse victims that are male that don't report their situation or seek help. In fact, there are many famous men that were abused physically or sexually in their childhood or well into their adult life.
An example is Shia LaBeouf. The actor is known for his roles in movies like Holes, The Transformers franchise, and many other movies. In an interview with Dazed, the actor says that a woman âwhipped my legs for ten minutes and then stripped my clothing and proceeded to rape meâ during his silent performance artwork #IAMSORRY.
According to theguardian.com:
"#IAMSORRY consisted of LaBeouf sitting silently with a paper bag on his head, bearing the legend âI am not famous anymoreâ â members of the public queued to be able to sit in front of him in the one-on-one piece. It ran for five days in February at a Los Angeles gallery."
This took place in 2014, but nonetheless is an example of the abuse. Below is an image of the art exhibition he was a part of.
It's not just LaBeouf that has faced this type of abuse. There is a huge list of men that have faced abuse in many different forms. Some of these people were Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson, Carlos Santana, and more recently, Johnny Depp.
In 2022 the Depp v. Heard trial took place between the dates of April 11th and lasting until June 1st. The trial took place in Fairfax County, Virginia and followed Heard's earlier allegations of Depp abusing her. These statements were uncovered as false, and that Depp was the one being abused instead of Heard.
One of the worst parts about the conclusion is that Heard aligned herself with the #MeToo movement as a survivor and activist against sexual abuse and violence. This trial gained a huge following, I'll admit, me and my family were fairly invested in it. This was a topic I was invested in and had opinions about. It happened way before I started my blog, but now I can apply this to a post.
As I watched this trial, I often thought about the male domestic abuse victims that aren't as brave as Depp was to speak out against his abuser. As I stated earlier in this article, many male abuse victims leave their voices unheard as a result of the stigma against them. The phrase "man up," or "take it like a man" are some of the phrases that contribute to the bottling of emotions. It leads me to wonder why. I honestly think this is inhumane in many forms. Humans should be entitled to express themselves to the ones they care about without the fear of being pushed away or ridiculed.
In my conclusion, I believe that both genders are stigmatized in many forms. Today, many inequalities are being stomped out by the new open-mindedness of Gen Z and Millennials, however, this negligence to male abuse victims has yet to be bridged. The word needs to get out that men can in fact be abused just as a woman can, and a woman can also do this to a man. I strongly believe that more efforts need to be made to aid men that are dealing with abuse.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you've learned something today, and I hope you have a further understanding on this topic.
If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please consider doing the following actions below:
Call or text 988
Chat at 988lifeline.org
If you or a loved one is going through domestic abuse, please consider doing the following:
Call:1-800-799-SAFE (7233) or TTY 1-800-787-3224
Contact 911 or your region's emergency contact.
Thanks again for reading, and I hope you have a good dayđď¸/nightđ
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