Hi partTimeParent.

1. Feminists don't claim victimhood for all women. Apart from anything else, there is no conglomerate feminist view. Feminism embraces many different streams of thought.

I agree with you - males die at a faster rate than females in every age group; though their life expectancy is catching up. That is, things are improving for them - why then would you want things to change?

As to suicide rates - females attempt more but men complete the act more often. The reasons include that men use more decisive means - like a gun instead of an overdose.

However, I think the problem is bigger than that. Men are not socialized to ask for help or to admit when they feel vulnerable or are struggling. They just feel like failures when they can't cope.
Quite a few feminists are interested in that aspect of sex role socialization and oppose socio-cultural conditioning that applauds risk taking behaviour and the devaluing of lives whether male or female.

As you say, men are clustered at the top of the power hierarchy. It's therefore not in the hands of the female sex to dictate how the economy works or who goes to war and so on. How is it that you reserve your angst for women (esp feminists) - but not for the men who exploit others to maintain their own social power?

2. I wasn't talking about work-life balance - though that's another interesting aspect I hadn't considered. I am talking about unpaid labour - 24 hours a day 7 days a week looking after the ones who go to work; their offsrping and everyone's aged, ill or disabled relatives. For NO pay; recognition nor gratitude. I think whoever does that is at the bottom of society's power structure.

- and further to your post partTimeParent,

I am in total agreement that the ADHD/ medication fad is a disgrace and harmful to children.

However, who does the diagnosing, writes the scripts and collects millions of dollars in profits?

Again, I see it as exploitation by vested interests. If people who diagnose and prescribe were doing their jobs ethically and people who own, manage or invest in multinational pharmaceutical companies had a modicum of conscience, the over medication of children, especially boys, wouldn't be occurring.

What can we do to stop it?

Pychme, just because some men exploit other men, doesn't mean that men don't deserve support or funding. The feminist line is because men are at the top, thus no men (even those at the bottom) don't need any help.

The point is very clear, men are at the top, AND at the bottom. While women are protected and safe (if a little bored) in the middle.

Every quantifiable statistic of female 'disadvantage' actually shows that men are the MOST disadvantaged, because at the bottom are men. (*Except sexual abuse, although again, men who rale are jailed where they are likely to be raped anally many times... an eye for both eyes)

But if you compare powerful men to average women, you'll see anti-female discrimination... But this is comparing apples with pears.

You are blaming the victim, if you claim that men don't ask for help thus they deserve everythin they get. Is not men's fault they are NOT ALLOWED to ask for help, nor given funding to raise awareness about their plight. Men don't get prostrate checks as much as women for brest cancer, mostly because millions of millions of funding is provided to tell women that they must check, they must look after themselves. Men are ignored

No partTimeParent, not blaming the victim. Men haven't traditionally asked for help (though the situation is changing for the better I think) for many reasons that spring from being socialized to ignore or hide their emotional pain and distress.

For example, sayings like, "crying like a sissy"; "getting his knickers in a knot"; "stop being such a girl" - and so many similar sayings, tell boys that showing emotional distress is a female behaviour that is undesirable and a sign of weakness.

Many men have relied on women to monitor their health; make their appointments and urge them to see doctors etc. Maybe this is part of the reason that being married confers some protection against early mortality - in any case their needs have not been ignored, except by other men.

For example, mainstream health - care; research and expenditure has been geared by default towards men's needs - eg: heart health; cardio vascular disease; the effects of drug and alcohol use. No GP, hospital or community health centre turns men away - and the staff, remember, are predominantly female.

Multi national corporations make unimaginable billions of dollars on drugs to help people with predominantly male afflictions such as those noted; however, additional millions have prioritized performance enhancing drugs for sport and sex - steroids and viargra, to name a couple, rather than towards prostate cancer.

Men are in the majority of positions at the top of the decision making tree: PMs; health ministers; hospital administrators; directors of drug manufacturing companies and all decision making bodies relating to legal, distribution, and subsidization of research and product development relating to health.

All that said, if you want to form a lobby group to address a male health need - do it and best of luck with it. You'll probably find a lot of women who would join in with such an initiative.

1: A few men at the top doesn't justify keeping your eyes closed to the suffering of the many men at the bottom.

2: Oh, form a lobby group? Sadly, one of the things that the few powerfull men don't do is protect weak men. Woase than that Marxist-feminism, (If you don't recognise the link, then you you don't understand feminism) is a belief in the POWER structures in society, and that these power structures are there to protect themselves, and to oppose alternatives. The very well-funded power structure today is feminism, and the one thing they will never allow is any independant funding of men's interest lobby groups for anything! Money is power nad visa-versa.

Women got funding from male politicians without any real entrenched opposition (powerful men like giving money to 'poor women', making them feel benevolent)... but now feminism is so generously funded, men can't get funding. Simply because the already funded feminist heirarchy hates men even more than they like women.