Janet Bloomfield zum Massaker in den USA: Wir müssen viel mehr für geistige Gesundheit junger Männer tun

Auf der männerpolitischen Website A Voice for Men kommentiert Janet Bloomfield, wie hemmungslos das Massaker in Kalifornien von interessierter Seite ausgeschlachtet wird, um antisexistisch engagierte Menschenrechtler zu diskreditieren – und welches wichtige Thema dabei unter den Tisch fällt:

In a desperate attempt to paint the MHRM as violent and hateful, prominent media feminists are ignoring evidence and body counts to create an association between the desire for social equality and murderous rampages.

This is both sad and totally expected. Sad that feminists will take the dead bodies of innocent young people and parade them as evidence for something that doesn’t exist and never has. Sad that media feminists will step over the bodies of dead and injured men to fuss and fawn over dead and injured women and then claim they are interested in equality. Sad that feminists will mourn dead women but not dead men. And sad that feminists will insist that a community of men and women working to ensure that both boys and girls, both men and women, are treated fairly and equally are the reason for Elliot’s tragic, deadly outburst.

The fact is that Elliot’s outburst does indeed highlight an issue of central importance to the MHRM – the inadequate, almost non-existent treatment of mental health problems for young men. Socially, our treatment seems to be to wait until the tortured young man puts a bullet in his own head, and just pray that he doesn’t take innocent victims with him.

As a strategy for health, it’s not working very well.

Compare that to how we respond to women who are mentally fragile after giving birth. We screen for Post Partum Depression and throw money and resources into keeping both the women and their children safe, because if we don’t do that, a lot of babies will end up dead. Women struggle with mental issues, too, and take it out on the innocent. But rather than ignore those women and hope for the best, we create programs designed to identify and help them.

There was tons of evidence, especially on YouTube that Elliot was a dangerously unwell person, struggling with demons he likely could not understand and certainly could not cope with. A society that had true compassion for men and boys would respond to hurting men like Elliot, the same way we respond to hurting women.

So in that sense, yes Elliot is linked to the MHRM and MRAs. He is one of the men and boys we are fighting for. If we had stepped in, Elliot would be alive. His life matters, too. If we had resources and means to assist young men struggling to integrate into our complex society, his victims would be alive.

Two beautiful young women lost their lives in Isla Vista. But so did four beautiful young men. And thirteen other people were wounded. Either way, they deserve our compassion, too. They are more than grindstones on which to sharpen a political axe.

Because men are people, too. Why is that so hard for some people to remember?