They are Humans too!

If a woman cries in front of her friends or family, the reaction will be, "Oh poor girl, she must be feeling sad or depressed," and people will feel bad for her. But, if it was a man, then?

"Oh boy, be a man", "Don't cry like girls, be strong" and tons of speech on masculinity.

WHY? 

Are they not humans? Are they stoic and impassive? Can't men be sensitive?

Why does society teach us that men are considered to be strong, both mentally and physically? 

Why only women are considered to be sensitive?

Because of this stereotypical thinking of our society, men who are depressed, men who are the victims of gender-based crimes are ashamed or afraid of talking about their problems and their mental health, because they would be considered weak and unmasculine by our so-called literate society.

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, men died by suicide at a rate of 3.54% higher than women in 2017. Depression and suicide are ranked as a leading cause of death among men, and yet they’re still far less likely to seek mental health treatment than women. The reason is the same, upbringing of the people. Men think that they are strong and try to cover up their emotions from everyone else and themselves too. But this is really dangerous because men suffering from depression are four times more likely to commit suicide than women.  

A shocking 20% of Indian men are clinically depressed, which often results in drug and alcohol abuse, suicide and domestic violence. It is believed that the figure can be doubled because of victims' reluctance to seek help.

In our country, not only depression but gender-based crimes against men are overlooked too. If a man is a victim of such crimes, he is either considered to be weak or rather those men are accused of such crimes. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), rapes, sexual harassments are some common examples of gender-based crimes which not only victimise women but men too.

Statistics indicate that under-reporting is an inherent problem with IPV irrespective of gender. For example, in England and Wales, the 1995 "Home Office Research Study 191", carried out as a supplementary study to the British Crime Survey, reported 6.6 million incidents of IPV. Of the 6.6 million incidents of IPV in 1995, 3.25 million involved male victims, with 1 million incidents resulting in injury.

In India, our laws do not recognise that (abuse against men), neither our society does. Even if a man is sharing his suffering or his experience, we tend to belittle his experience. Absence of gender-neutral laws is the reason many of them don’t report violence and abuse.

Journalist and Activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, who advocates for men’s rights said, “There is no doubt that we have extremely strong gender stereotypes, our upbringing is in such a way that a man or a boy is told that he needs to be strong. And if he is being abused by somebody, especially a woman, he is considered weak to have it inflicted upon him,” 

“There is a lot of disbelief when we talk about domestic violence on men. That's the reason why men don’t go and report about these cases,” Bhardwaj said.

Not only domestic violence, but the rape of males in India is commonly underreported. For this reason, some activists and research organizations, including Jai Vipra at the New Delhi think-tank Centre for Civil Society, argue that the phrasing of rape laws should be gender-neutral. This view is opposed by some human rights advocates and women's rights activists. Mumbai-based human rights lawyer Flavia Agnes told the India Times, "I oppose the proposal to make rape laws gender-neutral. We had opposed it when the government made child rape laws gender-neutral ... If made gender-neutral, rape laws will not have the deterrence value and it will make it more complicated for judges in court." International human rights lawyer and activist Vrinda Grover was quoted in the same article: "There are no instances of women raping men. I don't think men are facing serious sexual violence as women. Consider the brutality and intensity of sexual violence against women."

For people who think that these advocates and activists are right, for them:

Female-on-male rape is under-researched compared to other forms of sexual violence. A 2010–2012 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that one in 17 men (5.9%) reported being made to penetrate at some point in their lives (up from 4.8% in 2010). The surveys also found that male victims often reported only female perpetrators in instances of being made to penetrate (2012: 78.5%, 2010: 79.2%).

Depression, anxiety, IPV, rapes are real problems, which are faced by men too. But we won't accept it. We want men to be strong, mentally and physically, or else they ain't a man. Women face more problems than men and its true, and when they open up about their problems, people don't judge them. Unlike men who are judged, considered weak-willed, unmasculine. We live in a society where we want our soldiers to be mentally and physically strong, but we could never ever imagine the trauma, the agony, the stress they feel. We live in a society where most of the men mask their feelings and pretend to be nonchalant because that's what they are taught, and expected to do, die from inside but always keep a smile on your face. 

If women are an integral part of society, then men have equal rights too. They too have the right to express their feelings without being judged. They too have the right to be sensitive. They too have the right to share their miseries with other people. They too have the right to seek justice for the gender-based crimes against them, because,

THEY ARE HUMANS TOO!