Men commit suicide four times as often as women and no one knows why. This has been going on for many years. The chart below shows this ratio as being stable from 1950 to 2014 so that tells us that the ratio is not due to some recent shift in our cultural values or due to the economy or some other external source. (blue line is males, black line females, US suicides per 100,000) There are other stats that show that even in the 19th century this ratio seems to hold up. But why?
Let’s take a male friendly look into the possible reasons for this.
First we need to look at the standard manner of dismissing such a huge difference. So many people, including people in our educational systems, suicide prevention organizations and even researchers make the claim that men commit suicide more often due to their choice of lethal means. They point out that 25,926 males used lethal means to kill themselves in the United States in 2012 and only 2,818 females used the same lethal means. Most listen and then nod in agreement at how many men use lethal means and how few women, assuming this must be why men suicide more often than women. Then it is pointed out that many more males than females commit suicide so it is more accurate to compare the percentage of male and female suicides that use lethal means. Have a look at this chart and notice that men chose the lethal means of hanging or firearms in about 81.6% of their completed suicides. But also notice that women chose those same lethal means in 54.7% of their completed suicides. Those two numbers are not that far apart. Yes, this is probably a part of the reason for men to complete suicide more often than women but it in no way explains the mammoth four to one ratio that has held for years. Something else is obviously happening.
Most people are not even concerned about this difference. If you look at the suicide prevention web sites you will notice that this problem is rarely discussed on the first page and all too often not even on later pages. They usually fail to tell their readers that the largest risk factor for suicide is being male. This is such an important piece of data it is hard to believe that they routinely omit it but they do. Even government reports on suicide, college classes, media stories, suicide conferences and many others tend to fail in alerting people to this problem. People are simply not interested. Even researchers lack interest. Just try and find research studies that look into the reasons for this difference. You probably won’t find much.
There is one man, a psychologist, Thomas Joiner, who has theorized about this difference. Joiner points out a possible contributing factor for the 4 to 1 ratio is that men are more fearless and this fearlessness allows them the courage to end their own lives. A very interesting and at least partially true idea but again, it would be difficult to explain such a huge difference by one psychological trait. I think Joiner is on to something but I think it is just a part of the puzzle.
Let’s turn to some other ideas that might relate to our understanding why boys and men are so much more likely to complete suicide. Let’s first look at cultural messages.
CULTURE
It starts early. Little boys are told that BIG BOYS DON’T CRY. Most of us shudder at the thought that this clearly tells boys they need to stuff their feelings but there is an even more pernicious aspect to this. When an adult tells a little boy that big boys don’t cry they are indeed telling him to stuff his feelings but they are also telling him something else. They are telling him that when he does feel hurt and in need of support that they, the adult offering this idea, will not be there to help and offer compassion. So the message is two fold. First it tells the boys to stuff it and second it alerts him that when he is feeling hurt he should not expect support or compassion. He watches as his sisters get what he lacks. (for more information on boys see my book Helping Mothers be Closer to Their Sons: Understanding the World of Boys)
With this default it is simple to see that he will be unlikely to seek help when he has been taught for years that no support will be there when he is in need.
Much has been said about men being reluctant to express emotions but what has not been pointed out is that no one really wants to hear men’s emotions. How about you? When was the last time you offered to listen to a man who was emoting? Most of us have to answer that we haven’t done that for a very long time or possibly ever. A man’s emotional pain is generally seen as taboo, something that people want to avoid. You can contrast this with the way people see women’s emotional pain and you see that women’s pain is seen as a call to action. When women have tears people scurry to help, when men have tears people simply scurry away.
But that’s far from all our culture does to boys and men. As boys get older the culture refuses to accept any signs of dependency. Men, and sometimes older boys must appear to have things covered by themselves, to appear independent, and when they don’t, guess what happens? They are shamed as not being real men. A man named Peter Marin wrote an excellent article on homelessness and explained this very dynamic. Here’s what he said:
“To put it simply: men are neither supposed nor allowed to be dependent. They are expected to take care of others and themselves. And when they cannot or will not do it, then the assumption at the heart of the culture is that they are somehow less than men and therefore unworthy of help. An irony asserts itself: by being in need of help, men forfeit the right to it.“
Exactly. A man’s choice is to appear independent or face being judged as not being a real man. The hallmark of a suicidal person is to feel hopeless and helpless. So the man who feels hopeless and helpless also knows that if he exposes this he will be judged as not being a real man. This is a very tough double bind that men face. If I do open up about my helplessness and hopelessness I will be judged harshly, if I don’t open up I am totally on my own. Most men choose to be on their own. Can you blame them?
This is just one facet of what scientists have named “precarious manhood.” They have shown that around the world men and young men are expected to prove their manhood repeatedly in order to be considered men. Men are under constant surveillance to appear independent and if they fail to appear independent they pay a severe price in being devalued and judged as not being “real” men. Women face nothing similar. When girls reach physical maturity they are considered women, not so for the boys.
Men intuitively understand the above. They live it on a daily basis. However, women are not under similar pressures and don’t realize the hardships men face. Too many times women simply expect men to be more like them. I often see it in the couples therapy I do. The women expect their men to talk openly about their vulnerabilities, their feelings, and their need for help. This of course flies in the face of his certainty that his neediness and feelings will do nothing but harm to him and expose his dependence. He has a natural and learned tendency to do his best to appear independent and he comes by it honestly. For us to suddenly expect him to do a complete 180 degree change and appear needy is a bizarre and unreasonable expectation.
These two elements, not expecting any help to be available and routinely being shamed for any sign of dependence have a cumulative impact on men. When they do feel hopeless and helpless it is easy to see now why he would be less likely to open up about this to anyone.
RESEARCH
Let’s turn to the research and see if there are studies that help us understand why men would be so much more likely to complete suicide.
The work of Shelly Taylor is a good example of research that helps us in understanding this problem. Taylor realized in the early 2000’s that nearly all of the research on stress had been done only on male subjects. Women had been left out. What we know about fight and flight surely applies to men. Taylor proceeded to only study women under stress. She wondered if women might have different strategies. She found that women, unlike men, would be much more likely to “tend and befriend.” That is, women were more likely to move towards interaction when stressed, to move towards other people. A sharp contrast to the male tendency of fight and flight that moves men either into action or inaction. So think about it. Can you see how the female nature of moving towards others when stressed will make it much more likely that she will interact with a person who will realize her distress and then push her to seek services? Notice also that the male tendency to move to action or inaction under stress takes him away from concerned others. Indeed action and inaction are very powerful forms of healing (for more info see The Way Men Heal or Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of Healing) but they do leave men more on their own to heal and a very powerful depression is a very difficult thing to heal by ourselves. The more feminine interactive modes are more likely to open avenues of loving others challenging our shame, guilt, and self deprecation. Healing with action and inaction will often lack this outer challenge from someone we love and this leaves men more at risk to persistent negative thoughts, shame, and guilt. His pain is less visible to others and this is dangerous in a powerful depression.
I hope you are seeing that men are taught to keep their emotions to themselves, that their emotional pain is not something that others want to hear, and that it is not something that does them much good if expressed. Rather, they see that if expressed they run into a wall of shame and judgment. It is a short step to now realize that for these reasons he is much less likely to seek “help.” First he knows it is likely not there for him but second he also knows that it’s a trap, if he does show his vulnerability he is toast.
BIOLOGY
Then there is the biological aspect to this. Men get 10 times more testosterone than women and we are now learning some fascinating things about testosterone. For years scientists have been unsuccessful in trying to connect testosterone with aggression. With improved research techniques they now know that rather than being related to aggression , testosterone pushes men to strive for status and to protect that status once gained. Men and to a lesser degree boys, are built to strive for status. Wanting to succeed, wanting to win, wanting to be good at something and working towards that are all now known to be related to testosterone. It’s easy to see how winning and succeeding are important to men and boys and also are the antithesis of dependency. When we win we are far from dependent. Boys and men are not only socially conditioned to be independent they are pushed in the same direction by their biology. Independence equals success, dependence equals failure.
Another impact of testosterone that has been verified recently is that it reduces fear and increases willingness to take risks. This adds some strength to Joiner’s ideas about fearlessness.
If you look at the factors we are discussing separately they don’t make much sense. Why push boys to not cry? Why try and win all the time? Why does precarious manhood push men to repeatedly prove their manhood? Why would testosterone push men to strive for status and take risks? Each by itself doesn’t make much sense. But if you look at them working together it begins to add up. All of these things are helping men in what is being called the masculine hierarchy. Big Horn Sheep butt heads to determine which male will have access to the top rated females, right? What scientists are now finding is that human males also live in a hierarchy. And, like the sheep, the bottom line of the hierarchy is reproductive access. Precarious manhood, testosterone, the desire to win and not be seen as dependent are all factors in moving upwards in the male hierarchy. None of this really makes much sense until you realize that women really, really, like high status. Men of high status, like millionaires, Senators, professional sports players, famous musicians all have a much better chance of attracting women than most guys on the street. These men are high in the male hierarchy. All men know this and will work hard to be as high in the hierarchy as he can, knowing that higher status means a better chance of success with very attractive women.
So really, the parents discouraging their sons from crying in public is done not as a crazy and inexplicable act but as a way to help him be higher in the hierarchy. They want their son to succeed. Same with precarious manhood. The pushing of males to repeatedly prove their worth is just another way to push him higher in the hierarchy. Testosterone does something similar when it pushes men and boys to strive for status. It is this striving for status that has literally built much of modernity. It is nothing to sneeze at.
Men live in this hierarchy each day, in fact, their lives are surrounded by hierarchy. What are men’s favorite sections of the newspaper? Sports and business? What do those have in common? Hierarchy after hierarchy. Things are broken down to who is first, second, third and on and on. IBM stock up today, DOW up but the NASDAQ down at the close of trading. RBI’s, batting averages, quarterback ratings and a host of sports stats are the domain and love of many men. Think hierarchy. Many men enjoy this and women are often perplexed.
stats
The hierarchy is what it is, but it does have some lethal effects when it comes to suicide. Men will strive to stay up in the hierarchy as high as they can. But this means putting on your best face whenever possible, putting your best foot forward. In order to maintain your place in the hierarchy you don’t want to share your failures, your dependencies, or your depression. This puts men into a very dangerous place. Their lives have often been filled with striving for status and trying to put a successful face on for the public.
Women often do not understand this. They think that he should just get over it and start talking about stuff. But wait a minute. Women have a similar hierarchy. It’s called attractiveness. Women do their best to put their best foot forward when it comes to their appearance. While men’s hierarchical involvement is more global and touches nearly every sphere of his life, a woman’s hierarchy is more limited to attractiveness. Just as status is one of a man’s tickets to reproductive success, the same is true for women and attractiveness. And most women work hard at this. Just a quick look at the 64 billion dollar cosmetic industry should give you a sense of how important this is
In this conversation, I sit down with Stephen Baskerville and Rick Bradford to explore a provocative idea: could father custody be the key to addressing many of the injustices men face? Both men are leading experts in this area, and together they examine some fascinating angles. One insight is that the legal contract of marriage doesn’t just unite two people — it’s also the mechanism that legally creates fathers. Yet when that contract is dissolved through divorce, the law often strips fathers of their rights, reducing them to mere “visitors” in their children’s lives. This and much more is unpacked in our discussion.
We also point to Rick’s and Stephen’s books (linked below) and to AI tools that allow you to interact with their work directly. (also linked below)
If you’ve ever wondered why custody is such a defining issue — not just for fathers but for the future of men’s rights and well-being — this dialogue offers insights you won’t want to miss.
Men are good, as are you.
Books...
Join me as I talk with Janice Fiamengo and researcher Dr. James Nuzzo about the shocking story of his academic cancellation. What begins as one man’s ordeal soon reveals how woke ideology and radical feminism are undermining science, silencing dissent, and eroding academic freedom. Thoughtful, eye-opening, and at times heartbreaking, this video exposes what really happens when universities put politics before truth.
Dr. Nuzzo's GoFundMe
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ChildStrengthResearch
Dr. Nuzzo's Donorbox
https://donorbox.org/the-nuzzo-letter
https://jameslnuzzo.substack.com/
Previous Interviews with Dr. Nuzzo on MenAreGood
grip strength https://menaregood.substack.com/p/childhood-sex-differences-in-grip
sex differences in strength https://menaregood.substack.com/p/sex-differences-in-strength-and-exercise
bias against women in exercise research? https://menaregood.substack.com/p/bias-against-women-in-exercise-research
childhood sex differences in strength ...
This video will be presented in two parts and is a joint venture between MenAreGood and Hannah Spier’s Psychobabble. Hannah’s standard approach is to make the first half free for everyone, with the second half reserved for paid subscribers. To align with her process, I’m setting aside my usual practice of making all new posts free and following the same format for this release.
Janice Fiamengo, Hannah Spier, and Tom Golden respond to a YouTube video on The Diary of a CEO channel, which features three feminists debating the question: “Has modern feminism betrayed the very women it promised to empower?”In their response, Hannah, Janice, and Tom have a lively discussion, highlighting inconsistencies, omissions, and a variety of other notable observations.
Men Are Good
My apologies for the last empty post. My mistake. Let's hope this one works.
Tom takes a stab at using the podcast function. Let's see how it goes.
This is a short excerpt from Helping Mothers be Closer to their Sons. The book was meant for single mothers who really don't know much about boy's nature. They also don't have a man in the house who can stand up for the boy and his unique nature. It tries to give them some ideas about how boys and girls are different. This excerpt is about play behaviors.
Thank You to Our Veterans
On this Veterans Day, my deepest thanks go to all who have worn the uniform. Your courage, discipline, and quiet sacrifices have given the rest of us the gift of safety and freedom. Many of you carry memories that the rest of us will never know, and yet you’ve continued to serve your families, your communities, and your country with strength and grace. We honor you today — and every day — with gratitude and respect.
Men Are Good. As are Veterans!
Part 1 of 3 in the series “The Victim Trap: How a Culture of Helplessness Took Hold”
Something powerful happens when a person begins to see themselves as a victim. It doesn’t just shape how they interpret the world — it shapes who they become.
In therapy, I’ve watched people recover from immense trauma once they reclaimed a sense of agency — the feeling that they could influence their own lives. I’ve also seen others sink deeper into despair when they made victimhood their identity.
The difference isn’t what happened to them. It’s how they understood what happened.
The first casualty of victim thinking is agency — the belief that your choices matter.
When someone becomes convinced that their suffering is entirely someone else’s fault, they begin to feel powerless. Over time, that belief solidifies into a mindset. Life starts to feel like something that happens to them rather than something they participate in.
Psychologist Martin Seligman called this learned helplessness: after enough experiences of uncontrollable pain, the mind simply stops trying. Think of an animal that has been shocked in a cage with no escape. Even when the door is later opened, it doesn’t leave — because it has learned that effort is futile.
Humans do the same thing psychologically. Even when their circumstances change, the sense of helplessness remains. People stop acting not because they can’t, but because they’ve learned that trying doesn’t work.
Victimhood can feel strangely comforting. It offers a simple, satisfying story: “I’m suffering because they wronged me.”
That story brings sympathy and moral clarity — two powerful emotional rewards. It can even give life meaning for a while, especially when pain otherwise feels random or senseless. The problem is that, over time, this identity replaces growth with grievance.
When the victim role becomes part of one’s personality, it begins to demand constant confirmation. Every slight, disappointment, or setback becomes further proof that the world is unjust. In relationships, this can look like chronic mistrust — interpreting neutral behavior as betrayal.
It’s a trap that trades short-term comfort for long-term paralysis. The more we tell the story, the more we become it.
Blame is a refuge. It protects us from guilt, uncertainty, and the anxiety of freedom.
If we can point to someone else as the cause of our pain, we don’t have to face our own part in it. Yet this comes at a heavy price. Without responsibility, there can be no empowerment.
Responsibility doesn’t mean self-blame; it means reclaiming authorship — the power to choose how to respond. In therapy, progress often begins the moment a person stops asking, “Why did this happen to me?” and starts asking, “What can I do with what happened?”
That subtle shift — from passive to active, from blame to authorship — marks the true beginning of healing.
Living as a victim is emotionally exhausting. It keeps the body in a constant state of alert — scanning for unfairness, injustice, or disrespect.
Each time we perceive ourselves as wronged, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this constant vigilance wears down the nervous system. Sleep suffers, digestion falters, the immune system weakens.
Psychologically, the effects are just as corrosive. Chronic resentment hardens the heart. Cynicism replaces curiosity. Trust becomes dangerous. Eventually, life starts to feel like a battlefield where every encounter carries the potential for harm.
When that happens, even joy feels suspicious — as if it could be taken away at any moment. Gratitude becomes nearly impossible.
Gratitude and victimhood cannot occupy the same space. One looks for what’s been taken; the other notices what remains.
Practicing gratitude doesn’t mean pretending injustice never happened. It means refusing to let it define you. It’s an act of quiet rebellion against despair — a way of saying, “You may have hurt me, but you don’t own my perspective.”
Even small acts of gratitude — writing down three good things each day, thanking someone sincerely, noticing the ordinary kindnesses that surround us — begin to loosen the grip of grievance.
Gratitude shifts the focus from what’s wrong to what’s possible, reminding us that healing begins not with fairness, but with perspective.
Once victimhood takes root, the mind begins to filter reality to fit the narrative.
Every perceived slight becomes proof. Every kind gesture from “the enemy” is dismissed as insincere.
Psychologists call this confirmation bias: our natural tendency to seek evidence that supports what we already believe. It’s how belief becomes identity — and identity becomes destiny.
This loop can be hard to escape because it feels truthful. The more you look for injustice, the more you’ll find. Eventually, you stop seeing anything else. The mind edits reality until it mirrors the wound.
Freedom begins with the quiet realization: I can choose my response.
That one insight breaks the spell of helplessness. It doesn’t erase the past, but it reclaims the present.
When people rediscover agency, they stop waiting for justice before living again. They stop making peace conditional on apology or fairness. They act from strength instead of grievance.
We cannot rewrite the past, but we can decide what story it tells about us — tragedy or transformation. The choice is ours.
We live in a time when victimhood is often rewarded — socially, politically, even financially. It’s praised as awareness, celebrated as moral insight. But the personal cost is enormous.
It steals joy, isolates the heart, and locks people into a story that keeps them small.
The truth is, pain is inevitable; helplessness is optional. And the moment we reclaim our authorship, even suffering can become a source of strength.
In the next part of this series, we’ll explore how this same mindset expands beyond the individual to entire groups and movements — how collective victimhood becomes a kind of moral currency that shapes modern culture.
Men Are Good.
A new article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor magazine, titled “Rethinking Masculinity to Build Healthier Outcomes,” looks, at first glance, like progress. The author, Efua Andoh, highlights many of the crises men’s advocates have been warning about for decades: higher male suicide rates, educational decline, loneliness, and the massive toll of economic insecurity. It’s a relief to see mainstream psychology finally acknowledge that men and boys are struggling.
But as you read on, a familiar pattern emerges. The compassion is there — but it’s conditional. The sympathy comes wrapped in ideology.
And beneath the glossy language of “healthier masculinities” runs an unmistakable undercurrent of misandry.
The piece centers on the claim that men’s suffering largely stems from their “rigid gender norms.” This “man box,” we’re told, traps men in emotional stoicism, dominance, and self-reliance — all of which supposedly lead to loneliness and self-destruction. The solution, according to the experts quoted, is to “deconstruct masculinity” or “redefine” it in more emotionally expressive, prosocial terms.
But this framing quietly does something damaging: it pathologizes masculinity itself. It treats male distress not as the product of a culture that devalues men but as a symptom of how men behave.
Nowhere does the article mention the broader social neglect of men — the fatherlessness epidemic, male-biased education systems, family-court disparities, or the stigmatization of male vulnerability. These aren’t small oversights. They’re central to understanding why men feel adrift. Yet in this “rethink masculinity” framework, male pain is repackaged as a self-inflicted wound.
That’s not empathy. That’s therapy-speak misandry.
Most of the voices quoted — Smiler, Wong, Addis, Hoffmann, and others — belong to the same ideological circle that helped craft the APA’s Div 51 2018 Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. Those guidelines were widely criticized for implying that “traditional masculinity” is inherently harmful.
There are other scholars — Mark Kiselica, John Barry, Warren Farrell, and countless clinicians who’ve spent careers understanding men’s psychology from a balanced, non-ideological perspective — who see things differently. They view masculine strengths such as stoicism, protection, and risk-taking as potentially healthy traits that can be used for good when understood in context.
And she briefly mentions Kiselica and Englar-Carlson’s Positive Psychology/Positive Masculinity Model but then swiftly pivots back to “deconstruction” — the view that masculinity itself should be dismantled as an identity.
Imagine telling any other group that the path to healing begins with dissolving their sense of self.
The article’s tone is polished, inclusive, and sprinkled with compassion. Yet phrases like “manosphere,” “hostility toward women,” and “hypermasculinity” reframe large numbers of men as potential threats rather than people in need of understanding.
This rhetorical move — concern on the surface, suspicion underneath — has become the default stance of establishment psychology toward men. The message to boys is: “We care about your pain — as long as you agree it’s your fault.”
It’s hard to imagine a less effective therapeutic approach.
The crisis in male well-being is real and urgent. Men are dying younger, lonelier, and more disconnected than ever. Yet when institutions like the APA approach that crisis through a feminist lens, they end up moralizing it rather than understanding it.
The truth is simpler: most men’s struggles are not caused by being “too masculine.” They’re caused by a culture that no longer values what men naturally offer. When men’s roles as protectors, builders, and providers are dismissed as relics, when their achievements are mocked as privilege, and when their emotional pain is politicized, men withdraw — not because of “toxic norms,” but because they no longer feel welcome.
That’s not pathology. That’s heartbreak.
A psychology that truly helps men would start with respect, not suspicion. It would recognize the adaptive strengths of masculine behavior — courage, duty, persistence, loyalty — and build from there. It would invite men to heal without demanding that they surrender their identity in the process.
It would also take seriously the biological realities that shape male psychology. Research has long shown that testosterone — so often caricatured as the hormone of aggression — is in fact primarily linked to status-seeking and social hierarchy navigation. Men’s drive to compete, to achieve, and to earn respect among other men arises from this deep biological impulse. Far from being pathological, this striving for status underlies much of men’s cooperation, innovation, and willingness to shoulder responsibility within male hierarchies.
When understood through this lens, many so-called “problem behaviors” make sense as expressions of an ancient human drive to contribute, excel, and be valued by one’s peers. A healthy psychology of men would not shame this drive but would help men channel it toward purpose, service, and integrity — recognizing that status, when earned honorably, is not vanity but meaning.
And it would acknowledge that masculinity, like femininity, is not a pathology to fix but a deep and necessary part of human wholeness.
“Rethinking Masculinity” claims to offer compassion. But what it really offers is conditional acceptance — a quiet insinuation that men will be worthy of empathy only after they stop being who they are.
That isn’t progress. It’s the same old prejudice, just with better PR.
Men Are Good
