A quick flip back through these ~1700-ish pages will reveal that up until three or four years ago I spent much of my life drifting in and out of a depressive, often suicidal funk. So perhaps unsurprisingly, when I went back to finish my university degree I eventually wound up at the counseling center.
They weren't much help. Granted, that largely wasn't due to gender issues but age and life stage and the very limited scope of college counselors. The place consisted mostly of former art major chicks who'd been given enough psych training to reply to the usual twenty-year-olds' problems with grades, boozing, getting dumped or career panic. A thirty-year-old's cemented anxieties and existential malaise lay somewhat outside their wheelhouse. But two discoveries made clear that no matter what my problems, I would never be welcome there.
If you've ever seen one of those institution-affiliated head shrinkeries, they tend to be full of pamphlets on every topic in or out of the DSM. A hefty chunk of the gigantic binder full of typed and illustrated concerns was of course dedicated to women, with all the usual feminist rape paranoia and reasurances that nothing is ever your fault and you deserve better no matter how good you have it. I was surprised, however, to discover that it did, also, contain a section on Men's Issues! It consisted of a single double-sided page: on one side father issues (and
specifically issues with your father, not parents or heaven forfend,
mother) and on the other side sports.* The supposed professional-grade concerns and help offered by an
institution with a yearly operating budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars reads like stage comedian beat-filler, like the offhand
insults spat at straw-men in commercials and sitcoms. (You can't think of other issues which might weigh on the mind of a college-aged male? Seriously? Just brainstorming here but ida know, maybe, y'know... sex...?)
The waiting room had the usual smatter of magazines lying around. One day a newspaper had been thrown on top with the giant headline "why can't we hate men" from an article which made the rounds nationally after Harvey Weinstein was condemned by all the groupies who'd used him to cheat their way past their competition. But really, I don't give a fuck what the context was. Muslims could've bombed whatever they damn well please and still, any psychiatric nurse or receptionist would've checked herself before adorning her waiting room with the imperative to Hate Iranians! Or Hate Jews! Or Hate Blacks! Or Hate Gays! Or do we even need to try imagining the obvious corollary of Hate Women!?
So there you are, when you're already making plans to kill yourself and you work up the
courage to walk into a place you're terrified you might be seen entering for the
stigma of personal weakness it carries, all because you simply can't
think of anything else to do in your desperation... and the socially conscious, caring and compassionate mental health professionals greet you
with "hi, we hate you for being born the wrong category, everything you like is wrong and don't you ever
dare find fault in your demographic superiors" and by the way all your worries can be summed up on a single sheet of paper condemning you, the better to wipe our asses with.
I'm gonna bitch out Men's Rights Activists in a couple of days. They deserve it. But you also have to keep in mind why the noise they make is nonetheless necessary, how immeasurably our society is skewed until one side of the issue is not even visible.
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* Look at this blog and tell me again how much I care about sports. Say "sports" again, motherfuckers, I dare you!
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