I’m sure this one is going to cost me something.
A while back, I was talking with a friend/coworker about the fact that I have been dealing with really bad depression for a while, and how it wasn’t something I was used to. I used to live in a constant rage growing up, and that made me feel powerful, in control, strong. Now, though, there are days when it’s hard to stop seeing and putting a knife through my vein.
And during that talk, she mentioned that men often experience depression as Anger, rather than Despair. While that doesn’t make me think that my initial near decade of rage meant I was depressed back then, it did start making me wonder about other men. How often it might be that we might see them being angry and lashing out, and thinking it is about exerting power when it is in fact something else.
Which got me thinking about domestic violence.
See, we all know the story, or at least the stereotype. Man comes home, hard day at work at a dead end job with a shit ton of stress and no hope. He drinks, trying to numb the pain, and flies into rage and starts beating. And then the next day, he’s sorry, legitimately sorry, and he tries to do better, until the next time it happens. And it happens again, and again, always with him in tears, begging for forgiveness, because he can’t help himself.
Until his family leaves him. Or he’s sent to jail, where he drowns in the violence.
It makes me wonder what the suicide rate is among male spousal abusers when they’ve been left behind. Unfortunately, I don’t know of a way to get that data. Still, it would not surprise me if it was rather high.
If I remember my numbers right, men commit suicide at a rate of 4 to 1 compared to women. This largely goes unremarked upon, and few are the resources for men, designed for men, to help with depression. Men are physical animals, and to an extent we are simple creatures. By design or society, we are rarely as good with our words, or talking about what bothers us. In society, a woman can bitch and complain and vent about her problems and it’s okay. But a man can’t, he’s expected to be grateful for all that he has, no matter how terrible it is, no matter how hopeless it is, and to buckle down and man up so he can keep providing for his family…which likely includes a wife telling him what a terrible husband he is for never being there to help her, or not rising up in the world and making something of himself.
Because the default setting for in society men is that we are worthless. We have no inherent value. It is women who bring forth children. It is women who are closer to earth, more wise and sacred and civilizing, than men. Men are the beasts of the field, who only by rising up as high as they can become worth something. A woman, no matter what she looks like, will feel that she should have a man, is entitled to a man, but most men do not feel like they can have a woman unless they have made themselves worthy of her.
It’s not a correct notion, it’s not a polite notion, but I wonder how many of those men who commit domestic abuse are actually just depressed, lashing out like a tiger in a cage, screaming on the inside for someone to help them, often lashing out and harming those they are supposed to protect, because those are the only people they can turn to for help, yet who never seem to be helping them, someone to make it better, someone to stop the pain and the despair and the self loathing that they can’t leave behind because they have to provide for their families…up until they drive drunk into a tree, or a car, or put a gun through their heads, or some other way to end a hopeless, joyless experience, rather than just monsters who get off on it.
Son of Hel 
This had honestly never occurred to me and I’m a little bit ashamed of that fact. I think you might be on to something here.
Can I state for the record that we live in a seriously fucked up society? Why must I, who am usually perceived as a woman even though I am technically something outside the binary, always be the whiny complaining one whose opinions must be voiced through a male to have any impact? Why can’t I be the quiet tough guy who can find a few good people to open up around? That persona suits me far better. Why must all men be the quiet, stoic providers when some of them are much better suited to being open and nurturing? Why must the way we take a leak define our social role and limited our range of acceptable behaviors? It makes no damned sense to me. We insist on filtering everything we see through restrictive ideals of manliness and womanliness when we should be concerned with humanness.
And depression is very human.
End rant.
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This is one of the major problems with society.
Men aren’t aloud to have feelings except anger and joy. That’s it.
If a man is seen crying, well then he “isn’t a man, he’s a whiney pussy”. But if he is seen angry well that’s simply normal.
To the men being seen as worthless. On this I haven’t seen it, but I’m a female so I couldn’t give an accurate on that. All I can say is I don’t feel that way, and all the women I know don’t either.
The whole men having to be “worthy” thing just really irritates me. I know there are plenty of women that do feel this way. Not women I choose to associate with because I don’t deal with people who put themselves on a pedestal. It’s just fucking dumb. You find someone you have chemistry with, someone that you genuinely enjoy their company, and everything else can be worked on together. And that DOES NOT mean that the woman pushes the man to get further up at his job and he is worthless and needs to be dumped if he doesn’t manage it. Means you both work, and figure out your budget TOGETHER. But of course encouraging someone to be better is not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to show unconditional love at the same time.
Anyway, getting slightly off topic.
I do have experience in the domestic abuse. My step father (from when I was a child) was physically abusive. Outside of funerals, I’ve seen a grown man cry only twice in my life so far, and both times was him. He had other issues going on though. He was on drugs and I found out later in life that his father was a monster.
I don’t think domestic abuse can necessarily be attributed to one certain trait (like depression). There are simply too many options. I believe depression could be a cause. Sometimes, when a child is abused, he or she grows up and continues that cycle of abuse because that is what they have know their whole life. Then again, some people are just violent drunks. There are just too many options.
Either way, there is no excuse for domestic abuse. And I say that about men abusing their spouse/significant other, or women doing it.
But to be able to get help for men, we will need to first change society’s archaic view of the male gender.
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The men being worthless thing is something men are growing more aware of as of late, it hasn’t quite spread as a concious idea to most women yet, it seems. I would recommend watching some videos by Girl Writes What on youtube. She’s got a couple videos about “the disposable male” that are very enlightening in the context of history as well as the present day.
But it is, ultimately, a depressing reality. While not all women push for a man to prove himself, enough of them do, and enough of them are of those kind that could be described as “highly desirable” that its been a serious societal force since, well, the dawn of society. As Futurama put it brilliantly, all civilization has been an attempt to impress the opposite sex.
And no, depression probably isn’t the only reason why men abuse. Some do it because that’s how they grew up, and the cycle continues (although I suspect that would cause a severe depression in and of itself). And sure, some do it because they get off on it, they feel weak and it helps them feel stronger.
I don’t know if we need to change society’s archaic view of the male gender. That archaic view has existed for nearly ten thousand years, in one form or another. I think we need to instead understand it. You can’t just wave away thousands of years of evolutionary forces. Certainly, we need to change the way women look and react to men, because lets be honest…women are the strongest force of influence when it comes to men.
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This is interesting. I hadn’t thought of this before.
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