The new obsession with male suicide has little to do with the facts and more to do with the sclerotic growth of gender politics. Men’s rights activists, those most wont to fearmonger over male suicide, have set about playing feminism at its own game. Just as feminist campaigners use shocking stats about domestic violence to prove that all women, regardless of circumstance, are oppressed, men’s rights types present male suicide as proof of the psychic imperilment of all men.

Herein lies the great contradiction of men’s rights activism. Despite positioning itself against the feminisation of public life, and the demonisation of unreconstructed masculinity, men’s rights activists still buy the idea that men are somehow deficient and destructive. Apparently our problem is that we’re too blokey, too beholden to ‘archaic’ and ‘harmful’ stereotypes. As they criticise the idea that men are all misogynistic, gropers-in-waiting, they pathologise ‘male’ attitudes, suggesting men’s inbuilt inability to talk about their feelings is driving them to self-destruction.

Yes, men are more likely than women to kill themselves. But this can’t be boiled down to a universal gendered experience.

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