Emotions Are Temporary; Fatal Decisions Are A Lifetime
As we have ended the month of June, I saw a lot of #Pride posts about being Pride month. I support it as I have a couple of cousins who are gay and one even changed their pronouns. I love them and will always have their backs.
Therefore, a great accomplishment in the LGBTQIA+ community is having their own month to celebrate coming out of the closet, to not be ashamed of who they feel they are. June has become the #Pride month for the community and it couldn’t make a lot of people happier.
They have had the month since 1999. It has evolved over the years into the community that it is today.
Did we really allow the Pride community to overshadow a couple of other things that happened this month?
I found out through an Instagram post that June also represents something else.
Two things were overshadowed: Juneteenth and Men’s Mental Health Month.
I saw a few more social media posts about Juneteenth, so my attention to this post will be about Men’s Mental Health Month. #MensMentalHealthMonth
Men’s Mental Health Month, which started with the month of June in 1994: Five years before gay pride inhabited it.
“#Suicide is the highest in males over 85 and was the 7th leading cause (2.2%) of all male deaths in 2011. Gay males are at an increased risk of attempts, especially before the age of 25. Four times as many men as women die by suicide. In 2010 there were 38,364 and over ¾ or 79% of males died by suicide.”
-Georgia Hope, 2023
-Image from Georgia Hope
One would think that with homosexual males being at a high rate of suicides, the two would coincide with each other that if a male needs to "come out" to be themselves, it should be okay to do so without negative retaliation.
How did we allow ourselves to ignore men’s mental health? Most men may say it’s okay, but I don’t want them to feel that all the time. Maybe it really is for some of them, but for others, they may not be in the same field. Men are less likely than women to seek help for themselves, for any issues they may have to face. I have seen men suffer from mental health. I have a few buddies who have succumbed to the #22 for various reasons, the biggest one is they felt that their mental health didn’t matter to anyone.
True, as men were raised to not show emotion, but it may be better for them if they did. To show that they, too, suffer as much as women when it comes to depression.
I’m not here for the women who contradict men whenever they can. Nor to support women who kick men in the balls when they are supportive of women being equal. Those, to me, are not feminists. Those I, unfortunately, call Feminazis.
Fem-i-na-zi
Noun ⚠Derogatory⚠
A radical feminist.
-Dictionary.com
Radical feminism: a re-ordering of society eliminating male supremacy in most, if not all, contexts. How this may be called upon for certain situations when men will not allow women to lead, is plausible. However, I find this type questionable, as there have been women who abused this type of feminism shoving off good men who want equality for women as much as women do.
Well, I, a liberal feminist (meaning equality across all genders, but not bringing anyone down), am here to tell you that it does matter. It matters when men reach out to the right people. The right people are those who will listen. Those who will take you out for a drink or a trip to take the troubled mind off of things.
You matter.
Men matter too.
It’s okay to not be okay.
#Emotions are temporary, fatal decisions are a lifetime.