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Using Research to Push a Narrative
October 03, 2024
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Using Research to Push a Narrative

There’s a noticeable trend in research about men and women that often tells only part of the story. A prime example is domestic violence studies that falsely claim women are the sole victims, while ignoring men’s experiences. This happens in other areas too—like reproductive coercion, teen violence, healthcare, and others. Women’s troubles are spotlighted, while men’s are overlooked. Once you see this pattern, it’s hard to unsee it.

In this post, we’ll look at a study published in July of 2024, that employs a similar strategy—not by lying, but by omission. The researchers present only the part of the story that supports the narrative they want to push. And in this case, it’s clear.

___________________________

I came across a media article about boys and threats to their masculinity. From the picture below that  accompanies the article, I anticipated some dramatic findings on violence or hostility. 

 

The research claimed to investigate adolescent boys' responses to threats to their masculinity. Here's a quick summary of the study:

The study was simple. 207 boys, ages 10-14, were given two quizzes—one on stereotypically feminine topics like flowers, makeup, and dresses, and one on masculine topics like tools, guns, and cars. Regardless of their actual scores, the control group was told they had scored high on the masculine test and were congratulated. The boys in the experimental group, however, were told they scored well on the feminine quiz but poorly on the masculine one. In other words, they were told they were more like the girls—meant as a threat to their masculinity. The boys then took a third quiz, a word completion test designed to measure their level of aggression. The parents took a series of questionnaires to assess their parenting.

The researchers aimed to see if this perceived threat would spark aggression. (One might also ask if the boy's aggression might be sparked simply because they were lied to. After all, they probably were well aware that they knew more about guns and cars than makeup and dresses.)

This type of response has been studied before and has been identified as "threat vigilance," a common reaction to status threats among men and boys, often linked to testosterone levels. Studies show that when a male's status is challenged, he is more likely than a female to respond aggressively, partly due to higher testosterone. However, prepubescent boys typically don't display this aggression, as they have not yet reached the higher testosterone stage of life. Curiously, despite examining what appears to be this same phenomenon, the study in question makes no mention of the previous research about threat vigilance. As we will later discover, the researcher was aware of this concept but chose not to include it in the study.

The media article I first read didn't mention threat vigilance or even mention testosterone, though it's a key factor in this type of research. Thinking I might have missed something, I searched for other articles on the study and found many—but still, no mention of testosterone in any of the articles.

What I did find were media portrayals showing angry, hostile boys, even though the researchers themselves didn’t claim the boys were violent.

 

Here's a quote that appeared in many of the articles: “Beyond just aggression, manhood threats are associated with a wide variety of negative, antisocial behaviors, such as sexism, homophobia, political bigotry, and even anti-environmentalism,” said the researcher, Adam Stanaland. Wait, what? How did we jump from threats to status to sexism, homophobia, political bigotry, and even anti-environmentalism? This felt like a massive leap, though it's worth noting the researchers didn’t directly say boys were violent. It seems the media exaggerated that part as seen in the photos, and I doubt the researchers did much to correct it.

Somewhat confused about this, I decided to find the actual study and read it. Testosterone was mentioned—once—in the limitations section, suggesting that future studies could explore its role. This made no sense, given that existing research clearly links testosterone to threat vigilance and status defense. This puzzled me and I was determined to find out what was going on so I wrote to the researcher with some questions.  He got right back to me and we carried on a conversation.  He was a very nice fellow and I do appreciate his initially taking the time to field my questions.  The sense I got was that he was interested in pushing the "it's all about socialization" ideas.  I looked  up his history and his graduate work was done at Duke University and he was a member of the Duke "Identity and Diversity Lab" for 5 years. The name says it all.  I think my assumptions were pretty close.  He was likely to follow the ideas that socialization is the most critical element of human development.  

 

When I asked him, "Isn't threat vigilance related to testosterone levels?" he responded: “Basal testosterone and aggression are certainly related, but here our focus was figuring out whether a social mechanism (i.e., typicality/masculinity threat) could also cause aggression among adolescent boys (as it does among men), as well as when/why.”

In other words, he didn’t answer the question.  He acknowledged the biological link but chose to focus only on the social aspect. To me, this is like studying a car engine but only looking at the spark plug and ignoring fuel, air, and combustion. A well-rounded study would acknowledge that both testosterone (biological) and socialization play important roles. Omitting one side feels like an intentional way to push a narrative.

I asked the researcher again if he was aware of studies showing testosterone’s role in threat vigilance, and he responded: “Yes, I’m familiar with the complex role between testosterone, threat vigilance, status-seeking, and aggression. My previous explanation was all to say that there is definitely a biological component to aggression, but our results provide evidence that there is also a notable social component.”

Basically, he’s saying, "Yes, testosterone matters, but we’re focusing on the social side." And that’s how narratives are built, by telling only a part of the story. Unfortunately, this study—like many others—implies that boys could be “fixed” if only they were taught to be less aggressive when their masculinity is threatened. But this ignores the biological factor. Once boys hit puberty, higher testosterone levels biologically predispose them to defend their status. Yet, this crucial piece of information is left out of the conversation.

Puberty

The study focused on 10-14 year old males from pre-puberty through mid- and late-puberty stages. The researchers made several statements that highlighted their views on puberty, including this one:

"We contend that puberty represents a developmental shift in boys' psychological relationship with societal definitions of their gender."

The researchers acknowledged that puberty is an important factor in these behaviors, but what does puberty primarily signal? It highlights the increase in testosterone levels in young males. However, the researchers never mention testosterone. Instead, they describe puberty like this:

"We contend that puberty represents a developmental shift in boys' psychological relationship with societal definitions of their gender. Puberty causes boys to recognize themselves—their bodies, their relationships, and so forth—as being adult-like, which means they must now contend with newly discovered societal expectations of manhood: a precarious status that is earned, can be lost, and is only regained by conforming to rigid norms, such as aggression."

Their interpretation suggests that boys, upon recognizing their maturing bodies, must now face "societal prescriptions about manhood." The focus here is entirely on socialization, asserting that boys must conform to rigid societal norms. There's no mention of testosterone—it's all framed around societal pressures, leaving biological factors out of the discussion entirely.

The Word Completion Test

Another issue I had with this study was their method of measuring aggression: a word completion test. The boys were asked to fill in blanks like "GU_" (which could be "gum" or "gun") and "_UNCH" (which could be "punch" or "lunch"). The number of aggressive words chosen supposedly indicated their level of aggression.  I find it hard to believe this test accurately measures aggression, but the researcher assured me it had been validated in other studies.  It seems to me that they are taking a cognitive response and then expecting that cognition to predict an actual behavior.  Seems wonky to me.  I was fairly new to the word completion tests and poked around a bit and found that there is considerable controversy about this.  As there should be. 

I continue to think this is a very weak indicator but the study got magazines to print pics like this based on choosing gun rather than gum:

 
 

These pictures, like the other pictures in this post, imply not only aggressiveness but hostility.  Seems like a jump to me.  There is a big difference between aggressively defending your status, which is what threat vigilance does, and overt hostility or violence.  Looks like they are trying to imply the later.  But this is what the media wants.  Give them some research that shows the men and boys are aggressive and they will put violence on the front page.  Whatever happened to the word assertive which is similar to aggressive?  I think assertive might be a better word for men defending their status.  Their defense in some cases might get aggressive but the norm might be simply responding to the challenge in a strong, rational, and assertive manner.

The Sample 

The sample used in the study also raised some questions. Nearly 90% of the parents involved were mothers, and more than two-thirds were single parents. This is far above the national average for single-parent households, which hovers around 20-25%. Research shows that boys raised by single mothers are more likely to exhibit aggression, yet the study doesn’t address how this may have influenced the findings.

"Regarding the parents themselves, 87.4% identified as women (mothers) and 12.6% were men (fathers). Most parents were the sole primary caretaker of the participant (68.6%) or shared caretaking responsibilities equally with another person (30.0%)." 

I asked the researcher about the chances of a biased sample due to the large number of single mothers and here is what he said:

"I’m not sure that it’s fair to say that our sample comprising a majority of mothers is "strong indication that [we] had a biased sample.” Research has shown that although dads are more involved now in their child’s caregiving than they used to be, moms are still vastly overrepresented (hyperlink) as the child’s primary caretaker. It makes sense, then, that our sample would comprise more mothers than fathers—i.e., it’s representative and not biased (in fact, a sample with half mothers and half fathers would be biased against the reality of parenting in the U.S.)." 

Maybe so, but he doesn't address the over-abundance of single mothers in the sample and how that is far from the norm for parenthood in the US today. I  specifically pointed out the single mothers issue and he simply avoided it and focused on mothers doing the majority of child care.  The link he provided was not about single mothers, it seemed to be about two parent families.  If he had 87% mothers in his sample and they were all from two parent families, then that would be a different story.  But that was not the case.  It was 87% mothers and 2/3rds single parents.  This tells us that it is likely most of those mothers were single parents.  A predominance of single mothers should be a red flag, but not in his view.  Could the excess of single mothers have had an impact on the findings?  I do wonder.

Framing Parents as the Problem

One key takeaway from the study was that boys from conservative, less wealthy families with parents teaching “hegemonic masculinity” were more aggressive in response to the threat. The tool used to assess this was the Male Role Norms Inventory, which includes statements like these:

  • Men should know how to fix cars.

  • Men should be physically tough.

  • It would be awful if a man enjoyed dressing like a woman.

  • A man should be able to fix most things around the house.

  • A man should always be the boss.

  • Men should lead their household.

  • A man should always be ready for sex.

If the parents score high on this questionnaire they are assumed to be teaching their boys to be "hegemonic".  Hegemonic is seen as something bad. It's meant to say that men are controlling and dominant.   It comes from the writing of R. Connell who some time ago became a transwoman.  Many academics seem to find Conell's book as the essential word in Masculinities. The parts I have read seem highly anti-male.  Connell's book brought a great deal of change into the research on men where many of his ideas were unceremoniously and artificially planted into studies like in the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI).  I did a report on the CMNI and the very suspect manner that it was developed with a focus on how Connell's ideas magically appeared.  You can see that one here.

The researchers seemed to focus on the parental pressure (hegemonic attitudes) as being a prime motivator for the boy's aggressive responses.  They titled that variable pressured motivation (PM).  When reading the media articles it seemed that this parental pressure was being portrayed as being a large part of the reasons for the aggressive responses. This would lend credence to the idea that boys could be fixed if parents would just stop teaching them to be hegemonic males.  But wait a minute.  The PM variable (parental pressure) when paired with the threat variable (the word completion test) only had a significance score of p=.835.  Usually a score of .05 or below is considered to be significant so this one was far off the mark.  But they also had a variable that indicated the Degree of Puberty for the Boys (PDS) which showed that the only boys to appear aggressive in response to the word completion were boys who were in mid to late puberty.  When that PDS variable was paired with the threat variable (the word completion test) it came up with a score of p=.095.  Still not considered significant but surely more significant than the parental pressure variable.  When both the PM and the PDS were paired with the threat variable, voila!  They get a significance of <.001. 

Simply put, the data suggest that puberty (and its associated changes) has a stronger influence on the boys' aggression than social pressure alone.  This reinforces the idea that biological factors, like testosterone, may be important drivers for these aggressive responses, even if the study didn’t say so directly.

If puberty is so closely linked to aggression, and testosterone is one of the primary hormones behind puberty, doesn’t it stand to reason that testosterone might be a key factor? The fact that the puberty variable shows a stronger effect than pressured motivation only strengthens the argument that the biological side of adolescence is critical here.

 

One does tend to wonder if defending one’s status as a male is such a bad thing as it is being portrayed in this research.  There are some good reasons for it.  Men are reinforced and rewarded for independence and for their ability to protect.  Being seen as independent and able to protect is a part of the male hierarchy. But in a highly gynocentric atmosphere these once highly valued traits are framed in a negative manner. If you think about it, maybe the boys who failed to defend their status are actually the ones who need help?  

Conclusion

In the end,  I never got answers to all my questions. It’s been a month and a half since the researcher stopped responding, but I’m left thinking this study was designed to push a particular narrative, one that minimizes biological factors and highlights social ones. This leaves people pushed towards the narrative that boys can be fixed (and be more like the girls) if only the parents and the culture would stop teaching them to be aggressive.

It’s true that research often focuses on a specific, narrow aspect of psychology. I’ve read many studies that follow this pattern. However, in those studies, there was always a section that reviewed previous research on the topic and acknowledged earlier work in the field. This study, unfortunately, did not do that at all.

But there’s something important that can be gleaned from this study that even the researchers missed: pre-puberty boys didn’t respond aggressively to threats to their masculinity. This strongly suggests that puberty—and by extension, testosterone—is key to understanding these behaviors. Yet testosterone was never discussed in any meaningful way.

Just as an engine needs both a spark and fuel to run, adolescent boys’ aggressive responses to threats to their masculinity likely involve both social triggers and biological factors like testosterone. By including both in the analysis, we can move beyond a one-dimensional explanation and start to understand the complex interplay of factors that drive behavior during this critical period of development.

In the end, it’s not just about what makes the engine run — it’s about understanding all the components that come together to make it work smoothly. And when it comes to adolescence, testosterone is a big part of that equation.

Men Are Good

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Finland’s Legacy — Lessons for the World

Post 3 in a series on what the world can learn from Finland’s suicide prevention efforts


In the first two posts of this series, we traced Finland’s extraordinary journey: from confronting its suicide crisis head-on with unprecedented research, to building a nationwide prevention strategy that saved lives and changed culture. (plus an intro post)

By the mid-1990s, the results were visible. Suicide rates, which had climbed for decades, had finally begun to fall. Hunters were talking to their mates about mental health. Army officers were watching out for vulnerable conscripts. Teachers, clergy, and even journalists had taken on new roles in prevention.

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The External Evaluation (1999)

In 1999, an international team of experts released their assessment of Finland’s National Suicide Prevention Project. Their job was not to pat Finland on the back, but to weigh the evidence: had the ten-year gamble worked?

The answer was a resounding yes.

The reviewers noted that suicide rates had fallen by about 20% from their 1990 peak, reversing what had seemed an unstoppable upward trend. They praised Finland’s creativity and breadth: more than 40 subprogrammes, dozens of guidebooks and training manuals, and a public conversation that no longer treated suicide as taboo.

They were candid about shortcomings. The elderly had been largely overlooked. Firearm restrictions — an obvious lever in a country where hunting rifles were common — had not been seriously addressed. And some of the project’s ideas had not been fully anchored in municipal governments, raising questions about long-term sustainability.

But the overall conclusion was clear: “The achievements of the project greatly outweighed its shortcomings.”

For the first time in history, a country had launched a research-based, nationwide suicide prevention program, implemented it across society, and then subjected it to systematic internal and external evaluation. Finland hadn’t just lowered its suicide rate. It had created a model the rest of the world could learn from.


The Nordic Ripple Effect

Finland may have been the first to take suicide prevention to this scale, but it didn’t remain alone for long. Its bold experiment caught the attention of its Nordic neighbors.

By the early 2000s, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland had all developed their own national suicide prevention strategies. Each looked different, shaped by local politics and culture, but the family resemblance was clear:

  • Multisectoral involvement — bringing schools, healthcare, media, and workplaces into the effort.

  • Government backing — strategies tied to official health policy, not just isolated projects.

  • Focus on high-risk groups — men, youth, those with mental illness or substance use issues.

  • Community-level adaptation — prevention designed to fit local contexts.

This Nordic wave turned suicide prevention from a fringe idea into a mainstream policy goal. Finland’s willingness to declare suicide a preventable public health problem gave other countries the courage to do the same.

And while no nation copied Finland exactly, the influence was unmistakable. What began as one country’s desperate attempt to save its men became a regional movement — and, eventually, part of a global shift in how we think about suicide.


Beyond Suicide — Open Dialogue

While the National Suicide Prevention Project was reshaping public health, another Finnish innovation was quietly revolutionizing psychiatric care. It was called Open Dialogue, and it began in the remote region of Western Lapland in the 1980s.

Open Dialogue grew out of the same spirit that drove Finland’s suicide work: the belief that mental health crises should be faced directly, in context, with honesty and community. Instead of isolating patients in institutions, Open Dialogue brought treatment into their living rooms, with their families and friends present.

Its core principles were deceptively simple:

  • Immediate response — no long waits for care.

  • Include the social network — every meeting included family and close supporters.

  • Transparency — no secret discussions; all decisions were made in front of the patient.

  • Continuity — the same care team stayed with the person throughout.

The results were extraordinary. In Western Lapland, outcomes for psychosis — one of the most severe and stigmatized mental health conditions — improved dramatically. Hospitalization rates plummeted. Long-term disability dropped. Many people recovered fully, without lifelong medication. And suicide risk, so often bound up with psychotic crises, declined as well.

Open Dialogue was not designed as a suicide prevention program, but it turned out to be one. By treating people with dignity, involving their communities, and responding quickly in moments of despair, it reduced the very conditions that so often lead to suicide.

Over the years, Open Dialogue spread far beyond Finland. Today, it has inspired projects in 20+ countries, from the UK and Denmark to Italy, Australia, and the United States. In Boston and Atlanta, pilot trials are exploring how it might transform American mental health care.

If Finland’s suicide prevention project showed how to mobilize whole societies, Open Dialogue showed how to humanize psychiatric care. Together, they represented a double legacy: a country rethinking both the prevention of suicide and the treatment of mental illness itself.


The Contrast with the United States

Set Finland’s story alongside that of the United States, and the difference is almost painful to see.

In Finland, suicide was treated as a national emergency. The government gathered data on every case, identified high-risk groups, and then designed interventions that met people where they were — in hunting clubs, army barracks, schools, and village churches. Prevention became everyone’s business: teachers, clergy, journalists, even hunters were mobilized. Men were not ignored; they were named as a priority.

In the United States, by contrast, suicide prevention remains fragmented and underfunded. National data are often shallow, slow, and rarely translated into targeted local strategies. Middle-aged men in rural areas — the group most likely to die by suicide — are treated as a tragic inevitability rather than a challenge to be solved. The refrain is familiar: “men won’t seek help.” And then the conversation stops.

Where Finland built systems that carried help into the everyday lives of men, the U.S. still waits for men to find their way into psychiatric clinics — a threshold many will never cross. Instead of designing support around real lives and communities, America has largely outsourced suicide prevention to crisis hotlines and awareness slogans.

The contrast is not just policy. It is philosophy. Finland chose to look directly at suicide, however uncomfortable, and act with precision. The U.S. continues to look away, resigned to the loss of tens of thousands of men each year.


What the World Can Learn Today

Finland’s story carries a message the world can no longer afford to ignore: suicide is not inevitable. It responds to culture, to policy, and to whether a society is willing to face hard truths.

The lessons are clear:

  1. Do the research. Prevention begins with knowing who is dying, where, and why. Finland’s psychological autopsy study remains a gold standard for how to understand suicide in context.

  2. Tailor interventions. Generic slogans don’t save lives. Finland designed specific responses for hunters, soldiers, farmers, drinkers, and suicide attempters.

  3. Use whole communities. Suicide prevention is not just for psychiatrists. Teachers, clergy, journalists, co-workers, and peers can all play a role.

  4. Address men directly. Male suicide is not an afterthought; it is central. Finland dared to say so, and designed interventions with men in mind.

  5. Sustain the effort. Short-term projects can spark change, but long-term structures anchor it. That remains one of Finland’s unfinished tasks — and one of the biggest lessons for others.

For the United States — and for every country still wringing its hands over “men not seeking help” — Finland offers a blueprint. You don’t wait for men to come to you. You go to them. Into their workplaces, their social clubs, their barracks, their communities. You make prevention part of everyday life.

Finland’s achievement wasn’t only lowering its suicide rate by 20% in a decade. It was proving, for the first time, that suicide is a preventable public health problem. And that societies willing to look directly at despair can bend the curve of death.

That is Finland’s legacy. And it is a challenge to all of us: if a small country on the edge of Europe could do it, what excuse do we have not to try?

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Update: Dr. Partonen sent me the latest figures for male suicides in Finland, showing that the rates for men were 52.6 per 100,000 in 1990 and had dropped to 20.3 by 2023 — a stunning 61% decrease.

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September 12, 2025
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Who Really Glorifies Violence? Incels vs. the Radical Left

Who Really Glorifies Violence? Incels vs. the Radical Left

For the past several years, the media has been obsessed with incels. Scroll through the headlines and you’ll see the same story over and over: young men, alienated and angry, gathering in online spaces that are supposedly breeding grounds for misogyny and extremism. The word incel has become shorthand for “potential terrorist.”

But when you actually look at what incels say and do, a very different picture emerges. These are not young men plotting the downfall of society. They are young men drowning in despair. Their anger is almost always turned inward. The statistics are overwhelming: nearly 40% report daily suicidal thoughts. Large numbers are neurodivergent. Most have histories of bullying and rejection. The overwhelming danger for incels is not that they’ll kill someone else. It’s that they’ll kill themselves.

And here’s the striking thing: if you spend time in incel forums, you won’t see people celebrating murder. You won’t see a culture of glee when someone they disagree with dies. If anything, incels fear the lone outlier who lashes out violently, because every such case is used as proof that the entire community is dangerous. Violence by incels isn’t glorified—it’s seen as another blow to an already stigmatized group.

Now let’s compare that to what we see in radical activist circles today, particularly on the left. Here the dynamic is inverted. When someone on the “enemy” side is harmed, the reaction is not horror or sadness—it’s laughter, memes, applause.

Take the case of the young man who murdered the CEO of an insurance company. Instead of universal condemnation, there were corners of the activist left that hailed him as a hero. They justified the killing as a righteous strike against capitalism, a blow against corporate greed. A man lost his life, a family lost a father and husband, yet in certain circles his death was something to cheer.

Or look at the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Almost instantly, social media lit up with celebration. Jokes, laughter, memes of joy. Whatever you think of Kirk’s politics, the act of gloating over his murder reveals something chilling. This wasn’t despair—it was cruelty. This wasn’t pain turned inward—it was hate turned outward.

Here lies the real moral difference. Incels may be troubled, confused, even bitter. But they are not celebrating the killing of their opponents. They are not laughing when someone they disagree with lies bleeding in the street. The radical left, on the other hand, has a documented record of doing exactly that.


Despair vs. Cruelty

It’s important to linger on this distinction, because it cuts to the heart of what we mean when we use words like “dangerous” and “evil.”

Despair—even toxic despair—is tragic. A young man who feels he has no chance in love, who spends hours online venting his frustration, who thinks daily about ending his own life—this is heartbreaking. It’s not something to excuse, but neither is it something to demonize. The harm is largely self-directed. He sees himself as the enemy, not his neighbor.

Cruelty is something else entirely. When activists laugh about a murder, when they hail an assassin as a hero, when they gloat over the death of a political opponent, that crosses into the territory of evil. Because cruelty doesn’t just accept suffering—it delights in it. It revels in the humiliation and destruction of others.

That difference matters. It matters morally, and it matters socially. A society that stigmatizes despair while excusing cruelty is one that has its compass broken.


The Media’s Inversion

Yet this is exactly what we see. Incels, who mostly hurt themselves, are branded as ticking time bombs. The media frames them as violent extremists, sometimes even as potential terrorists. Politicians repeat the line that they are a public danger. Entire studies are funded to examine whether incels might pose threats to others.

Meanwhile, when activists openly celebrate the killing of someone they dislike, the response is muted. There’s always a rationalization ready at hand: the victim was powerful, privileged, oppressive. The killer was “lashing out” against injustice. The laughter and memes are brushed aside as dark humor.

This inversion should make us pause. We’ve reached a point where the group that rarely, if ever, glorifies killing is treated as the greater danger, while the group that openly delights in murder gets a cultural pass. It is as if we’ve lost the ability to recognize cruelty for what it is.


Why the Double Standard?

There are several reasons this inversion persists.

First, the media has found incels to be a perfect bogeyman. They fit a ready-made narrative: disaffected young men, angry at women, festering in online echo chambers. It’s a story that generates clicks and moral outrage, even if it wildly exaggerates the real level of risk.

Second, there is a cultural reluctance to hold activists on the left to the same moral standard as others. If someone claims to be fighting for justice, their actions—even violent ones—are easier to excuse. The cause sanctifies the cruelty. This is how cheering a murder becomes acceptable in certain circles: the victim was “bad,” the killer “brave.”

Third, there is a deep gynocentric bias in how we view male suffering. When young men suffer, we blame them. When young men despair, we mock them. When young men kill themselves, we shrug. But when activists (especially women or minorities) express rage, we are trained to sympathize, even when that rage crosses into violence.


The Real Danger

None of this is to say that incel communities are healthy. Many are filled with bitterness and hopelessness. The despair is corrosive, and it can reinforce unhealthy worldviews. But that’s a very different problem than celebrating death.

The real danger to social life is not despair—it’s cruelty. Despair ends lives, yes, but cruelty erodes the fabric of community. When groups begin laughing at the deaths of their opponents, society loses the ability to see opponents as fellow citizens. Violence becomes not just acceptable, but entertaining.

That’s where evil lies.


Restoring Moral Clarity

We desperately need to restore moral clarity here. It is not incels who pose the greatest threat to public life. It is those who celebrate violence, who revel in the killing of their enemies, who turn human suffering into a punchline.

We should stop demonizing the wrong group. Incels are not a death cult. They are a community of wounded men, most of them quietly self-destructing. They need compassion, not caricature.

The real confrontation belongs elsewhere: with the activists who strip others of their humanity and cheer their destruction. That’s where the true corrosion is happening. That’s where the real evil lies.


Conclusion

A society that confuses despair with cruelty has lost its way. Despair deserves our empathy; cruelty demands our opposition. Incels, for all their flaws, are not celebrating murder. The radical left, disturbingly, has shown that it will.

If we are serious about protecting life, if we care about the moral health of our culture, we need to get this distinction right. The young men drowning in loneliness and self-loathing are not our enemies. The people laughing when someone is assassinated are.

Until we can tell the difference, we will continue to aim our outrage at the wrong targets—and the real evil will keep smiling.

Men Are Good

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September 08, 2025
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From Research to Action — How Finland Helped Its Men
Post 2 in a series on what the world can learn from Finland’s suicide prevention efforts

In the last post, we saw how Finland took an extraordinary first step: instead of shrugging at suicide rates, they studied every single case in the country for a full year. They learned who was dying, where, and why.

But research alone doesn’t save lives. The true test came next. Could Finland turn this knowledge into action?

In 1992, the government launched the National Suicide Prevention Project, a sweeping, nationwide effort that would run for five years. Its ambition was bold: to translate the research into targeted interventions across every layer of society — from army barracks to hunting cabins, from classrooms to church pulpits.

The official goal was clear: reduce suicides by 20% in ten years. But the real innovation lay in how Finland went about it.


The National Strategy (1992–1996)

The project was structured into four phases:

  1. Research (1986–1991) — the “Suicides in Finland 1987” study and its provincial reports.

  2. Strategy formation (1992) — drawing up a national action plan based on those findings.

  3. Implementation (1992–1996) — launching over 40 subprogrammes across sectors.

  4. Evaluation (1997 onward) — both internal and external reviews of what worked and what didn’t.

Unlike typical health campaigns, this was not limited to posters or hotlines. It was a multisectoral strategy, pulling in schools, the military, the church, health services, media, and community associations. Each was asked the same question: What role can you play in preventing suicide, based on what we now know?

This was Finland’s genius. The national strategy was not a blunt instrument. It was a framework that allowed each institution, each community, to shape prevention in a way that made sense locally.


Tailoring Interventions to At-Risk Groups

The 1987 research had given Finland something precious: a map of where suicide risk was concentrated. The next step was to design interventions for those specific groups.

Hunters and Rural Men

Middle-aged rural men were at the very center of Finland’s crisis. Many were farmers or hunters, living in isolation, often drinking heavily, and reluctant to seek formal help. The suicide data showed that licensed hunting rifles were among the most common methods.

Instead of preaching from afar, Finland did something remarkable: they went into the hunting clubs themselves. The idea was simple but powerful — hunters already cared about their “mehtäkaveri,” their hunting mate. So why not train them to look out for each other’s mental health as well?

This became the foundation for what later grew into the Hyvä Mehtäkaveri (“Good Hunting Mate”) programme: peer-support training that taught hunters how to ask the difficult question — “Are you doing okay?” — and how to connect someone with help if they weren’t.

Conscripts and Rejected Recruits

Finland’s system of compulsory military service turned out to be both a risk and an opportunity. The research showed that young men rejected from service for health or psychological reasons faced a sharp rise in suicide risk. The rejection carried stigma — it marked them as different at precisely the age when they most wanted to belong.

So the Defense Forces became a frontline partner. Officers and military doctors were trained to spot vulnerable recruits, offer counseling, and refer them to civilian health care when needed. Rejection from service was reframed, not as abandonment, but as a moment to connect a young man with support.

Beyond counseling, Finland also recognized the practical challenges these young men faced. Initiatives supported by the A-Clinic Foundation and the Finnish Association for Mental Health provided concrete assistance: vocational guidance, social support, and structured activities to help rebuild identity and belonging. These efforts aimed to ensure that rejection from the army did not mean rejection from society. One notable example was the “Young Man, Seize the Day” project (1997), which worked with rejected recruits in several cities to provide vocational guidance, structured activities, and community belonging.

Rural Networks and Gatekeepers

Beyond the army and the hunting cabin, Finland leaned on local gatekeepers — the people already embedded in small communities. Teachers, clergy, police officers, even farmer’s association leaders were given training to recognize warning signs and start conversations. The principle was clear: suicide prevention wasn’t just the job of psychiatrists. It was the job of the whole community.

Alcohol Misuse

Alcohol had long been tied to Finnish male suicide, and the research confirmed its role. The project partnered with the A-Clinic Foundation, Finland’s leading addiction services, to integrate substance treatment into suicide prevention. Men who might never walk into a psychiatric clinic might still accept help for their drinking — and through that doorway, receive broader support.

Suicide Attempters

One of the most striking findings from the research was how many people who died by suicide had already made a prior attempt — but had never received proper follow-up care. The project responded by pushing hospitals to change their protocols: no longer would a suicide attempt be treated only as an emergency to be “patched up.” It was to be seen as a red flag demanding structured aftercare.


Engaging Institutions Beyond Health Care

One of the most radical features of Finland’s approach was the insistence that suicide prevention was not just a medical problem. It was a problem for the whole of society — and so the whole of society was asked to respond.

Schools

Teachers and guidance counsellors were trained to notice the early signs of distress in students. Peer-support programs were introduced so that young people themselves could be allies for one another. The idea was to catch suffering early, long before it showed up in statistics.

Churches

In rural Finland, the local parish was often more trusted than the clinic. Clergy were trained to recognize warning signs, offer crisis counseling, and support families after a suicide. By drawing pastors and priests into the project, Finland tapped into one of its most powerful social institutions.

Media

The project also confronted one of the most sensitive issues: how suicide was reported in newspapers and on television. Journalists were given new guidelines — no sensationalism, no detailed descriptions of methods, and always include information about where to find help. The aim was to prevent copycat deaths and shift the narrative from despair to support.

Workplaces

Though less developed than other strands, workplaces were not ignored. Employers were encouraged to recognize stress and depression among workers, especially men in male-dominated industries like farming, forestry, and manufacturing. Early versions of employee assistance programs began to take shape.


The Male Coping Strategies Programme (Planned but Unfinished)

Among all the subprogrammes Finland envisioned, one stood out for its directness: the Male Coping Strategies Programme.

The research had made it impossible to ignore: Finnish men — especially rural, middle-aged men — were at the center of the suicide crisis. They were less likely to seek help, more likely to drink heavily, more likely to use firearms, and more likely to die by suicide.

The Male Coping Strategies Program was designed to tackle this head-on. Its aim was simple but radical:

  • To help men talk openly about their struggles.

  • To normalize seeking help.

  • To strengthen resilience in ways that fit male culture.

The plan included a public information campaign that would have framed help-seeking not as weakness but as strength. It also envisioned building spaces for men to talk — whether through workplaces, community organizations, or even informal networks.

But the program ran into the one barrier no research can overcome: funding. It never received the resources it needed to stand on its own. Instead, pieces of it were absorbed into other projects, most visibly in the military programs for conscripts and rejected recruits.

Even so, its very existence was telling. In the 1990s, Finland was willing to say openly what many countries still refuse to: male suicide is a gendered issue, and if you want to prevent it, you must address men directly.

And although the national campaign never fully materialized, its spirit lived on. Later, local projects like Hyvä Mehtäkaveri in Kainuu — which embedded suicide prevention into rural hunting clubs — were, in a sense, the Male Coping Strategies Programme reborn in community form.


Results

By the mid-1990s, Finland’s gamble was starting to pay off.

Suicide rates, which had climbed steadily for decades, peaked in 1990. Then, during the years of the project’s implementation, they began to fall. By 1996, suicides had dropped by about 20% from that peak, bringing the numbers below where they had started a decade earlier.

The change wasn’t just in the statistics. Across Finland, you could see new practices taking root:

  • Hospitals no longer discharged suicide attempters without follow-up.

  • Journalists wrote about suicide more responsibly.

  • Teachers and clergy were equipped to recognize distress.

  • Hunters and soldiers had begun to see suicide prevention as something that concerned them too.

An internal evaluation in the late 1990s found that 43% of service sectors reported adopting suicide prevention measures as a result of the project. More than a dozen working models had been developed, along with 70+ publications, training guides, and handbooks.

An external international review in 1999 concluded that the project’s achievements outweighed its shortcomings. The reviewers praised its breadth, creativity, and impact. They noted some gaps — the elderly had been largely overlooked, and the long-term anchoring of prevention into municipal structures was still weak — but the core finding was clear: Finland had changed the trajectory of suicide in the country.

The numbers proved it. And behind those numbers were lives saved.


Why This Matters

The Finnish project showed something the world badly needed to see: suicide prevention works when you meet people where they are.

Instead of waiting for men to walk into clinics, Finland brought prevention to the places where men already lived their lives:

  • In the forests and hunting cabins with their friends.

  • In the army barracks or on the day they were turned away from service.

  • In the pulpit, the classroom, and the local newspaper.

They refused the fatalism of “men won’t seek help.” They built a system that didn’t rely on men crossing the threshold of a psychiatrist’s office. It relied on communities, networks, and everyday institutions to notice, to care, and to act.

And the results speak for themselves: a 20% reduction in suicide rates during the project period. Hundreds of lives saved. A culture shifted.

The contrast with the United States could not be starker. Here, suicide among men — especially middle-aged rural men — is often treated as an inevitability. Our prevention strategies remain vague, underfunded, and detached from the very communities where the deaths are happening.

Finland’s lesson is clear: if you want to prevent suicide, you cannot stop at awareness campaigns and crisis hotlines. You must go out and build support into the fabric of everyday life — in the places where people already gather, work, and belong.


Coming Next: Finland’s Legacy

By the end of the 1990s, Finland had achieved something unprecedented: a national, research-based suicide prevention program that actually bent the curve downward. It wasn’t perfect — some groups were overlooked, funding wasn’t always secure, and not every community took the work as far as it could go. But the results were undeniable.

The project left behind more than lower suicide rates. It left behind a set of models, training tools, and cultural shifts that would ripple across the Nordic region and, eventually, far beyond. Other countries began to take notice. And at the same time, another Finnish innovation — a quiet revolution in psychiatric care called Open Dialogue — was spreading internationally, offering yet another way to reduce suffering and save lives.

In the next post, we’ll look at Finland’s legacy: how their suicide prevention ideas influenced other nations, what worked and what didn’t, and how a small country in the north became a global leader in rethinking how we respond to despair.

Men Are Good

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