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"Unlike the feminist movement, there is no male movement that draws together men of all ages and walks of life."
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Men's health is part of a larger system of men's perceived position and importance within society. You don't waste money on valueless people. You don't care if they're well or happy. I've noticed that articles about men's health tend to have a somewhat 'huffy', 'bothered' quality to them, as if men's health is an annoyance or a distraction from something else. Men are blamed for 'not taking care of themselves' by the very people who know there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Rarely is an opportunity missed to put men down in some way - usually by comparing them to women, who are 'better' at looking after their health. Here in the UK we spend something like six or eight times as much on women's healthcare as on men's, so it seems hardly surprising that women are 'better' at looking after their health. When she reached the age of 60, my mother received an appoinment card from a local hospital requesting her to come in for a mammogram. My dad, who's 76, has yet to receive a request to be tested for prostate cancer.
I agree with one thing: men really do need to take better care of their health. However, as I said at the top of this reply, this is part of a larger system of ideas about men. If you want men to take better care of their health they have to value themselves more generally; value themselves and their wellbeing and the wellbeing of other men. Feminists had it easy. The idea that women should be protected already existed, and they were able to use the idea that male oppression was denying vital health care to women. Men, on the other hand, are still lumbered with the idea that their wellbeing must be sacrificed for that of women - I wonder where the money for all this men's healthcare will come from; it certainly won't be at the expense of women's healthcare programs. Furthermore, thanks to three decades of feminist hate-mongering, the perception of men as people we should care about in any meaningful way has been eroded to the bone. If you want to improve men's health you have to get rid of all the anti-male crap. It's not just about men going to their doctors more, it's about the whole perception of men and the value placed on them. The issue of men's health is an area ripe for exploitation by the men's movement, but don't be suprised when the feminists get in a flap about resources being diverted from women.
Men shouldn't have to become 'the new women' in order to get good healthcare. They need to be encouraged from an early age to value their wellbeing; physical, emotional, and spiritual. Society also needs to view these things as fundamental. Anything that opposes men's wellbeing - be it illness, social factors, or a system of ideas - should be attacked with real and equal conviction.
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After a successful propaganda campaign was launched by NOW that accused the medical research industry of ignoring women's health needs, funding was redirected into "approved" programs that specifically addressed women's healthcare needs, and political action committees went into action assuring that the health care needs for women are addressed. After the campaign had been waged the AMA issued a statment that no conclusive gender bias existed.
Consistent with the overall sexist nature of feminism, contemporary health care has become another front where women's issues, needs and concerns have been so highly politicized that the funding and specific concern for men's health has been marginalized.
Do you think feminists care about men's health? Or do they care about directing as much funding and attention into women's issues while men's health needs get general coverage without specific funding? I have never seen anything that the feminists stand for that has been even
remotely egalitarian.
Classic feminist formula: Radical feminists conduct studies (that always lack empirical credibility), plug the findings into receptive media outlets as news relevant to "women's issues" - create a public outcry, send out the attack lawyers that have been empowered by a legal system that overvalues emotive values, build incumbent feminist infrastructures within the industry that addresses the interests of women only, and provides jobs for valueless skill sets (i.e. gender study degrees)
One would think that by all of the publicity that exists today for women's health care needs- that men are living healthy long lives compared to women.
It's time for equal gender representation.
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