A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women


Hey, women, I’ve been reflecting on this video I watched where a woman was laughing off the male loneliness epidemic as something “made up,” blaming men for being reckless with our lives. It started as just another eye-roll moment for me, but the more I think about it, the angrier it makes me. Because this isn’t isolated, it’s part of a bigger pattern where women’s voices, time and again, downplay and outright dismiss the mental health crises men face every day. Society just lets it slide, like our struggles are fair game for ridicule while everyone else gets empathy.

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

Take the suicide rates, for example. Men are roughly half the population, but we account for nearly 80% of all suicides. In 2023 alone, the rate for men was 22.8 per 100,000, nearly four times higher than for women at 5.9. We’re literally dying in droves from despair, isolation, and unspoken pain, with 39,045 men taking their own lives that year compared to 10,270 women. And according to the WHO, suicide remains a leading cause of death globally, disproportionately affecting men because we internalize our pain until it kills us. The trend over time is even more damning: back in the late 1990s, the male suicide rate hit a low of around 18 per 100,000 in 1999, but it has steadily increased since then, climbing to 23.0 in 2022, a rise of nearly 28% amid broader societal shifts. And there could be a correlation with the incessant anti-male rhetoric that’s ramped up over the same period, as messages portraying men as toxic, unnecessary, or inherently flawed contribute to a crisis of masculinity, heightening feelings of worthlessness and pushing more men toward suicide. Yet when we try to talk about it, we’re met with dismissal or blame. And God forbid a woman steps up to advocate for us; she’s immediately branded a “pick me” girl, accused of betraying other women just to chase male approval. It’s a nasty label that shuts down any real conversation, revealing this deepseated disdain so many women seem to have for men as a whole.

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

Now let’s hit the loneliness stats hard, because this epidemic is real and devastating. A Gallup survey from 2023-2024 found that 25% of U.S. men aged 15 to 34 felt lonely a lot of the previous day, making us among the loneliest in the West. Pew Research shows that 16% of men feel lonely or isolated all or most of the time, and this isn’t just a feeling, it’s tied to higher risks of depression and suicide. The U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023, noting that half of adults experience it, with young adults hit hardest, and men suffering in silence because societal norms tell us to tough it out. Meanwhile, depression affects nearly 6 million men in the U.S. every year, but we’re far less likely to seek help: only 40% of men with mental illness received care in 2021, compared to 52% of women. The CDC reports depression prevalence at 13.3% for men versus 24% for women, but our lower diagnosis rates don’t mean less suffering, they mean we’re bottling it up until it explodes. And the WHO echoes this, with anxiety and depressive disorders being common, yet men dying by suicide at rates four times higher than women because we don’t get the support we need.

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

It boils my blood, the way you’ve popularized things like that “man vs. bear” trend, where women say they’d rather face a wild bear in the woods than a random man, painting us all as inherent threats. Sure, safety concerns are real, but it turns into this blanket vilification that ignores the fact that most men aren’t monsters, and studies show it leads to men feeling further alienated and dismissed in discussions about gender-based violence. Then you chant “I don’t need a man” like it’s empowerment, making us feel obsolete and unwanted. And in the next breath, it’s “Where are all the good men?” implying the rest of us are trash just for existing. You’ve hammered this message home: men are less than, unneeded, and somehow bad at our core. Pew Research highlights how society pressures women more on appearance and parenting, but it also shows growing perceptions that men face unique societal expectations to be providers and stoic, which fuels our isolation. It’s eroded our sense of worth, fueling the very loneliness you mock.

And don’t even start with “not all women”, I know not every one of you is out there directly trashing us. But your inaction? That’s complicity. You stay quiet when your friends do it, you like the posts, you scroll on by, all to avoid standing out. Does fitting in with that naive sense of belonging really matter more than men’s lives? It’s exhausting, and honestly, HOW DARE YOU KEEP THIS UP! YOUR SCORN AND SILENCE ARE KILLING US, AND I’M DONE PRETENDING IT’S OKAY!

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

This reminds me so much of that song “Hero” by Superchick: “No one sits with him, he doesn’t fit in / But we feel like we do when we make fun of him / Cause you want to belong, do you go along? / Cause his pain is the price paid for you to belong.” You’re doing the exact same thing, ridiculing our pain to feel part of the group, and the cost is our isolation, our breakdowns, our deaths. STOP THE HYPOCRISY! If equality means anything to you, show some damn empathy for men instead of this endless dismissal. Your words and your quiet enabling are destroying us, and I’m yelling through these words because I’ve had enough!

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women

But listen, everyone has a father, some have brothers, husbands, sons, or other men in their lives who matter deeply. It doesn’t take much to ask how someone is doing. Instead of just hearing the words, look them in the eyes and really listen to the tone of their response. If it seems off, push harder. Ask again, “How are YOU doing? How are you feeling?” Do better. Men have been ingrained to put up a strong front, hiding our pain behind it. And God forbid, if he trusts you enough to open up and tells you he isn’t okay, he’s struggling, he’s actually suicidal, do what I’ve done: stand firm and flat out tell them they have two options. They’re going to the hospital with you voluntarily, or you’re calling the police to have them taken there by force. My friend hated me for it in the short run, but later thanked me for saving his life. I’ve gone to more funerals from suicide than I care to count, and I don’t want you to experience that.

A Furious Wake-Up Call: A Message for Women
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