The focus is so heavily focused on these ideas:

  • Men don't ask for help
  • Men are too arrogant
  • Men's difficulties are caused by entitlement (compared to women's difficulties)
  • Men's difficulties are caused by a loss of their place in society due to reductions in barriers for women
  • Men not being interested in doing the work

It's extremely simplistic.

Literally, a boy and girl, or a man and woman can to through the exact same things, but the narrative assigned ​to it will be different. Boy goes through bullying? Their anger is down to entitlement. Girl goes through bullying? Their anger is due to going through a stressful situation and being treated unfairly.

Even consider body dysmorphia (the MH disorder with the highest suicide rate), such as in children bullied for their looks (I myself recall in school being randomly called ugly or other looks-related comments out of the blue, while just sitting or standing around). In a girl, it's considered a mental health issue and a sad situation. In boys, they're referred to as incels and said to have a bad character. Exact same situation - they just happen to be different genders.

Then there's the idea of men not liking to talk about things unless it's solution-focused. I think this is true for many men, but definitely not all.

Men not doing the work is hilarious or maddening to me, because due to lack of access to external services I know I did several years of self-therapy and self-improvement, with my daily goal being self-improvement for 8 years (even what TV shows I watched was mostly based on self-improvement and not on entertainment) and to this day spend time reading literal clinical textbooks and that the vast majority of women (or men) haven't put in as much effort.

The idea of "men don't ask for help" puts the blame on the individual, and means:

  • Health systems don't look at themselves and think "are we failing men who actually attempt to access help services?"
  • Governments don't have to question "are we failing men by having publicly-funded child/domestic abuse charities for women but not for men?"
  • We don't have to look at socioeconomic factors or social factors, such as whether men may have a harder time getting time off work for appointments or that a man is criticised for not just getting on with things or for feeling" sorry for themselves" if they don't function as expected