Do we care less about missing boys and men?

TheTinMenBlog · 2023-02-13T15:01:30+00:00

Missing men and boys don’t just go missing from their homes, or our streets, but also from our hearts. They go missing from news reports. They go missing from inquiries and investigations.

They go missing from our cries of advocacy and compassion. Missing from our placards, and missing from the speeches of our political leaders.

I call them our ‘missing missing.’

Whether it be the boys taken by Boko Haram, those disappeared in Kashmir, or the lost indigenous males of Canada; we simply don’t care about men and boys when they go missing.

This tendency to prioritise missing (white) women, is a phenomenon known by social scientists as ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’:

‘Missing white woman syndrome is a term which is used by social scientists and media commentators in reference to the media coverage, especially on television, of missing-person cases involving young, attractive, white, upper middle class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who were not white, of lower social classes, or of missing men or boys.’

So ask yourself, why have you never heard of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men?

Why is there no hashtag to #BringBackourBoys?

Do we simply care less about our missing boys and men?

~

Sources

The Globe and Mail Toronto Star EquitableEducation.ca The Wall Street Journal The New Yorker Sommers StudyImages by Black Kiwi Hug, Max Whitehead, Dan Cristian Padure, Francisco Andreotti from Unsplash.Illustration by Umer Younas

CCMF_volunteer · 2023-02-13T16:05:50+00:00

Thank you Tin Men for your excellent work, as always.

The exclusion of men from the inquiry in Canada was unacceptable, and unjustifiable on statistical grounds. We (CAFE) tried to get them included, yet sadly the government didn’t listen.

https://equalitycanada.com/advisory_necktie_campaign/

Unnecessary_Timeline · 2023-02-13T15:42:37+00:00

Another example of the same issue is the nonexistent search for Mark Bishop whereas the search for Nicola Bulley has been receiving near daily coverage for over 2 weeks.

House_of_Raven · 2023-02-13T18:47:24+00:00

I’ve been saying this about the MMIWG investigations and hearings for years. Why does a small minority of victims always get so much more attention than the huge majority of victims?

Same thing with the “stop targeting female reporters” rhetoric and the UK’s “random violence against women” pushback. It seems men are always victims more often but it’s never acknowledged.

Far-Reputation7119 · 2023-02-13T15:24:36+00:00

There is no denying this is intentional. The war against boys and men is very hard to ignore now. Women and girls being favored and only cared about, cannot last long, because people are waking up.

Kuato2012 · 2023-02-13T16:31:44+00:00

Humans seem to be either hardwired or conditioned, or both, to care a lot more about girls. Neoteny and perceived hypoagency probably play heavily into it.

I did some statistical analysis for a charity a while back. I'm pretty sure the NDA on that has expired by now, so I can talk a little about it.

We were studying which factors affect charitable giving, so that they could tailor their ads (have you ever seen those "for just a dollar a day" ads?). We looked at a variety of independent variables like whether the fundraising was done in wealthy neighborhoods, whether it was done at a church, various geographical regions all over the US, etc.

Far and away, the single most important factor that got people to open their wallets was if you showed them pictures of impoverished girls and told those stories. Keeping everything else the same but changing the demographic to a boy caused a highly significant drop in charitable donations.

I'd have to dig through old data to find the precise figure, but it was... stark.

hottake_toothache · 2023-02-13T18:10:50+00:00

People don't care about men. So, yes, people care less--by far.

TisIChenoir · 2023-02-14T17:17:32+00:00

What's in fact, pretty ironic, is that by focusing so much on female victims while ignoring male victims (for example about domestic and sexual violence), feminism is actually perpetuaring patriarchal gender roles and the idea that women are in perpetual need of saving.

The actual anti-patriarchal thing to do would be, quite weirdly, to focus instead on male victims... and it would solve a LOT of problems.

Male disenfranchisement which can lead to resentment and potentially violence, chief amongst them. Quite frankly, if men weren't at such a disadvantage in society, and weren't asked so much to provide, there would probably be less violence, most notably from poor communities...

So, let's allow men and boys to be vulnerable, and stop sweeping them under the rugs for convenience's sake. Pretty please?

JustLinus · 2023-02-13T15:40:48+00:00

Is that from Volume?

ProfessionalPut6507 · 2023-02-23T10:48:03+00:00

You remember the whole out-roar about Boco Haram abducting girls? Well, prior to that they murdered boys, but nobody cared. They only got the international recognition once they targeted girls.

So yeah.

Title	Do we care less about missing boys and men?
Author	TheTinMenBlog
Upvotes	288
Comments	29
Date	February 13, 2023 2:59 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/111b5g8/do_we_care_less_about_missing_boys_and_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/do-we-care-less-about-missing-boys-and-men.1152875 https://theredarchive.com/post/1152875

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