It isn’t society putting pressure on little boys to not eat healthy, there’s just something anti-boy about eating healthy.

Turns out Little Johnny doesn’t actually hate vegetables. Turns out all you’re serving is mushy green beans. Turns out he actually likes romaine lettuce and snow peas and carrots and spinach. But you’ve got it stuck in your head that mushy green beans are the only healthy option you can think to offer. Anyone turning up their nose at green beans is simply “unhealthy”.

Why are women’s numbers so much lower?

Wrong question. The right question is “how are we failing women too?”

If therapy is such a systemic failure where’s the systemic faliure?

The systemic failure is what you were describing in your first two paragraphs in this thread.

There is evidence, that when men attend therapy,

Men don’t attend therapy at the rates you think they should. Men are highly resistant to what you are offering.

Your proffered solution to that isn’t to make your offering more palatable. Your solution is to blame them and tell them to suck it up.

Any evidence therapy is particularly uncomfortable for men?

The fact that men are actively choosing not to attend therapy at the rates you seem to think they should is prima facie evidence that therapy is particularly uncomfortable for men.

Instead of accepting, internalizing, and taking responsibility for that fact, the field outsources blame for it to men.

Me: “Little Jonny isn’t eating his vegetables.”

You: “Boys who eat their vegetables enjoy them about as much as girls who eat their vegetables”.

Me: “Yeah, but little Johnny isn’t eating his.”

You: “What did I just tell you? Boys who eat their vegetables report they like them at similar rates as girls”.

Me: “That’s great, but we aren’t talking about a boy who eats his vegetables. We’re talking about a boy who chooses not to. He doesn’t like vegetables.”

You: “He’s just experiencing social toxicicity. If he tried them, he’d like them.”

Me: “He has tried them. He doesn’t like them. And he’s getting pretty pissed off that you keep ignoring him when he tells you he doesn’t like them.”

You: “Nonsense. Boys who eat vegetables like them just as much as girls do. Science.”

Me: “Yeah, but little Johnny isn’t a boy who eats vegetables.”

You: “Right. Because he’s got some sort of toxic attitude against vegetables.”

Me: “Or he just doesn’t like what you’re trying to shove down his throat.”

You: “How many times do I have to tell you that boys who eat vegetables like them just as much as girls who eat vegetables?”

Me: “Whatever. Maybe we could try serving something that he might actually enjoy?”

You: “There’s nothing wrong with the vegetables, just keep serving them. When we get rid of his toxic friends, he’ll admit he actually likes his vegetables.”

Me: “…”

You: “I do wonder why aren’t boys eating vegetables as much as girls.”

/Scene

But the system men are being failed by has also been discussed for 30+ years.

The system alienates men. 30+ years after realizing that, your first thought isn’t “The system is the problem. How do we make the system more appealing to men?”.

The very first thing you have to say about it is “The men are the problem. How do we make the men more appealing to the system?”.

And I don’t just mean you personally. That hostile attitude pervades the whole field. When confronted with complaints that this overt hostility is uncomfortable, off-putting, and alienating, double down. Force the patient to choose between submission or retreat, then act all surprised at the ones who never come back.

Got it. Therapy works.

All these people killing themselves aren’t indicative of any sort of problem with “the system”. They’re responsible for their own deaths, because they refuse to accept what you know to be true.

Makes perfect sense. Have a nice day.

It doesn’t show therapy causing harm.

it shows therapy failing to prevent harm. It shows a systemic failure that you refuse to accept.

Liar. I haven’t, please provide a quote of me directly blaming a patient that isnt.

The very first words you gave us in this thread:

We need to get mem comfortable with therepy.

You didn’t say we need to make therapy comfortable for men. You said we need to make men comfortable with therapy. You described the problem as being on the side of the patient, rather than on the side of the system. You continued:

I know, toxic masculinity says “Real men don’t talk about their problems”.

Didn’t bother to discover any of their concerns. Didn’t bother to determine the validity of those concerns. Didn’t validate their feelings on the subject; just dismissed them entirely. You collapsed every concern of men about therapy into “toxic masculinity”. Your very first thought on the topic was to blame the patient.

That victim-blaming attitude upset me considerably, and is the specific reason why I decided to engage with you. The attitude you presented in your very first words of your very first comment is my answer to a question you will ask later in the conversation:

Why do men utilise mental health services at a much lower rate? Perhaps other men erroneously say it doesn’t work for men. Perhaps other men erroneously say its no better than staying at home and jerking off. Perhaps men are under a social pressure to not seek help.

Stop dismissing their concerns. Stop alienating them. Start listening. Start fixing the system so that it adequately addresses their concerns. Stop blaming their “toxic masculinity”, start validating their concerns.

You didn’t say that therapy was as effective as sitting at home and masturbating?

No, actually, I did not. I invite you to read the comment again. You provided “booze” and “suicide”, and argued that therapy was better than these harmful alternatives.

In response, I asked whether therapy was better than neutral alternatives. Obviously, it’s better than direct harm. I asked whether it was better than a placebo. I asked whether therapy was better than chronic masturbation, among several other neutral, non-harmful alternatives.

My frustration is not with men who were failed by therapy. It’s with the narrative leap from “this didn’t help me” to “this shouldn’t be encouraged,

You’re arguing against a strawman. That narrative leap isn’t being made.

A treatment can be fallible, imperfect, and even damaging for some people and still be worth recommending when it reduces risk for many others.

Of course. BUT, (and this is the part you keep missing) when you have concrete evidence in front of you that it is ineffective/damaging (The Graph), the focus needs to shift toward ameliorating that harm. Stop shoving the failing status quo down throats. Stop blaming patients. Admit failure, admit fault, and focus on fixing the system.

Recognize that there is a group of people for whom the current system doesn’t work. Stop telling that group to utilize the current system. Give them a system that does actually work for them.

I am sorry you were failed by the system

No, no, no. You don’t get to go there now. You’ve spent all this time explaining to me that “the system” works. You’ve shown all the scientific data supporting it. That’s now an absolute fact. The system clearly works, so if I experience any failure, that has to be all on me.

I’m not sure I can say anything to mollify you.

You could scroll up. You’ve posted any number of scientific studies showing that therapy works. Scroll up far enough, and you’ll find a graph that says it doesn’t.

You could shift your focus away from “the system’s” successes and shift instead toward its failures.

It’s much easier to fix something that we know to be broken. Stop fighting people when you’re told how badly it sucks, and keep the focus on what it needs to change.

You could completely remove the word “toxic” from your vocabulary: 100% of the time, it is used accusatorily against the very people that “the system” has failed.

You were very clear. Therapy didn’t fail these men. These men failed therapy. I understand perfectly.

Gotcha. Therapy works. The problem is the men. Makes perfect sense. Thanks for listening, have a nice day.

I’ve heard similar arguments from other people, with the only functional difference being the replacement of the word “therapy” with the word “church”.

I accept that therapy has benefited you. I accept that church has benefited others.

My own experiences with therapy do not match yours. Much like my interaction with religion, I found multiple experiences with therapy to be denigrating and exploitative. Despite external criticism and accusations of “toxicity”, I feel my viewpoints on therapy are as valid as anyone else’s.

What would convince you? Not science, you have that already, it didn’t work. What could change your mind?

Science says I don’t get to present my anecdotal evidence. I don’t get to discuss how it has failed me, personally, in the multitude of times I have experienced it. The explanation for that could be that I have failed; the explanation could be that therapy has failed.

Refreshing my position:

I feel I’m being told “Therapy is the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to mental health but through therapy”. And I feel that this sort of worldview is far more toxic than anything I might have in my head.

The answer to the question you posed of me is “falsifiability”. An understanding of how therapy can fail, rather than a blanket assertion that it can do nothing but succeed. Therapy is presented as infallible; that if it doesn’t work, fault and blame lies primarily or entirely with the patient and their “toxic worldview”.

That’s not mental health. That’s religion. Therapy seems to work for the same reason that religion works. And it seems to fail for the same reasons that religion fails.

The conversation that we should be having isn’t how patients can succeed at therapy. It’s how therapy can better serve the patient. And for that, we need to ignore the successes, and look at the people it has failed.

The science says therapy is just as effective for men as women, we’ve known this for over 10 years.

Confirmation bias. Therapy works for the people who decide to keep using it. The people who realize it doesn’t work for them stop using it, or don’t start to begin with.

We need to communicate to men

You need to listen to what men are communicating to you, rather than immediately dismissing their concerns as a “toxic worldview”.

I feel that anything I post contradicting the “outcomes comparable to those of women”, is trying to “keep our toxic world view intact.”

I feel that any criticism I have about the validity of therapy is dismissed as a “toxic worldview”.

I feel that there is a distinct difference between “talking” and “therapy”.

I feel that you’re demonstrating the parent comment’s point:

Therapy doesn’t work well for man anyway, and health professionals are still in the denial stage, blaming the patients for the failure.

With regards to your comment:

It works better than booze and suicide. See post.

I feel that this is not a valid comparison. Yes, therapy works better than booze and suicide. You know what else works better than booze and suicide? Joining a cult. Scientology. Weed. Pretty much anything works better than booze and suicide, including therapy. I feel that the “alternatives” you provided are disingenuous.

I feel that the primary destabilizing factor in my mental well being is economic, and I feel that any benefit I might achieve from therapy is vastly outweighed by the bill for that therapy.

I feel I’m being told “Therapy is the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to mental health but through therapy”. And I feel that this sort of worldview is far more toxic than anything I might have in my head.

Peer pressure is not an adequate replacement for scientific study.

Is therapy any better than a placebo?

Is a therapy session better for men than watching a YouTube video about mental health? taking a walk? Reading a book? Bingeing a TV series? Chronically masturbating?

Somehow, I doubt it.

I haven’t kept up with the development side of it…

Clicking through the links on F-droid, their issue tracker (https://lists.sr.ht/~petercxy/shelter) is active as of three weeks ago. Author’s github shows commits as of November 2024, and suggests a custom F-droid repository.

Try “Shelter”. It’s available on F-droid. It’s an app that lets you manage your phone’s “Work Profile”. I use it to house scummy corpo apps that I occasionally need, but don’t want running all the time. From inside the work profile, HSBC shouldn’t be able to see apps installed outside of it.

Jon Stewart, 2028.

The problem with Reagan and Trump isn’t that they were actors. The problem is that they were complete pieces of shit long before they were elected.

Actor-presidents have demonstrated a natural propensity for revolutionary disruption of entrenched attitudes. Reagan completely fucked over economic policy; Trump is completely fucking over the fundamental concept of democracy.

Imagine that same degree of revolutionary disruption moving us toward egalitarianism rather than corpo-fascism.

The fact that he collected billions in the first place is the problem. He should have been charging consumers less, and paying his workers more. He never should have accumulated his obscene wealth to begin with.

princess Leia owned a ton of slaves.

You mean “droids”?