'Sexist' stance hurts men

**MikeT** · 14th-February-2010

From Stuff: LINK.

A "sexist" attitude towards health funding means men are missing out despite being more likely to suffer heart attacks and cancers than women, Canterbury health-promotion workers say.
A new report, The State of Men's Health in Canterbury 2009, paints a dismal picture of men's health, but says little is being done to improve it.

Men were more likely to have high cholesterol and heart disease and have higher rates of many common cancers than women.
"While men continue to show, on average, poorer health than that of women, there appears to be significantly more health promotion targeted at women," it said.
Young Canterbury men were more likely to be hospitalised with mental-health issues and abuse of substances such as drugs and alcohol.
They were also more likely to die or be injured in an accident.
In the past five years, 1693 Canterbury men aged 15 to 24 were involved in serious-injury crashes compared with 1221 females.
More than 70 per cent of drowning victims are male.

"It would appear that this is due to the `untouchable' or `bulletproof' attitude a lot of young men tend to possess," the report said.
Canterbury Men's Centre manager Donald Pettitt said there had been a strong focus on women's health for the past 20 years, but men had the worst health-related behaviour and worst health outcomes over that time.
"The system has been blind to the outcome for men and unresponsive to the obvious statistics and it's hard not to think of it as sexist when you look at it long enough," Pettitt said.
He put the lack of focus on men's health down to the absence of advocates within the system and because people were naturally more sympathetic to women's health.
"We have been bailing out half of the boat and the bigger holes are on the men's side," he said.

Report co-author and Sport Canterbury events and marketing manager Jonny Kirkpatrick said it was difficult to attract funding for male-focused health projects.
"Men are partly to blame themselves because of the `she'll be right attitude', but it starts at the top," he said.
"The awareness around women's health is fantastic, but men get breast cancer too and as many men die from prostate cancer as women of breast cancer."
The report's main recommendations were raising awareness around men's health and making services gender appropriate.
"The services are there for them, but the pathways for men to access them aren't quite right," Kirkpatrick said.

A Canterbury District Health Board project, Green Prescription, involved GPs referring patients to a supported physical activity programme rather than prescribing medication.
However, males made up only one quarter of participants, meaning the pathways or programme itself were not engaging enough for men, the report said.
Another health board project, Appetite for Life, was a free service offered only to women wanting to make a healthy lifestyle change.
Kirkpatrick said a steering committee was meeting this month to look at what funding could be available for supporting some of the report's recommendations.

"The reality is health was hit pretty hard with budgets this year and men's health isn't high on the radar."
Health Minister Tony Ryall said major men's health issues were covered by significant spending each year, including an estimated $430 million on heart disease; $950m on cancer; just over $1 billion on mental health; and more than $750m on primary care.

{Please note that these figures above are for all health spending, not just on men, so you can guess where the lion's share of this is spent.}

**Percy** · 14th-February-2010

The focus on 'accident' and 'drugs' as ill-health in men is cherry-picking from the smaller end of the ill-health list. Emphasising these is misandry in itself. I wonder how many of those 'accidents' are work related and stem from the bais in work where men do the dirty and dangerous almost exclusively. One never hears of men 'dominating' the sewerage industry or fishing or mining.

As for the 'pathway' to using exercise instead of medication, all of the outreach programs are aimed at women as are the 'in-surgery' advice. Women go to the doctor in far greater numbers than men. Do you ever see local doctors putting 'advertising' pamphlets in local letterboxes? The pizza man does. The gardening chap does. The real estate man does. These are entrepreneurial people who go out and seek customers. The doctor's 'pathway' seems to be one that goes only from her front door to her gate.

**Marx** · 15th-February-2010

"The system has been blind to the outcome for men and unresponsive to the obvious statistics and it's hard not to think of it as sexist when you look at it long enough," Pettitt said.
He put the lack of focus on men's health down to the absence of advocates within the system and because people were naturally more sympathetic to women's health.

No, it's easy to not think of it as sexism because it's "only men" who are being adversely affected and our society has been demanded to see sexism as a one-way traffic.
People might be less 'naturally' sympathetic IF they were allowed to be without the fear of being called a sexist for daring to view men as equally worthy of support & advocacy.

**shaazam** · 15th-February-2010

when a heavily biased situation favours men it is sexism shrieking for redress !! when it favours wimyn it is affirmitive action and a step forward in wimyn's liberation

**dad_savage** · 19th-February-2010

I don't like this article. It deals with something that is important, I won't deny it, and it is good to see some focus on these important matters but I don't like the approach this article takes:

It would appear that this is due to the `untouchable' or `bulletproof' attitude a lot of young men tend to possess

Could this attitude perhaps be a result of the fact that, publicly, there is no emphasis on men's health which is to say that since nobody considers men's health important, does it not follow logically men should perceive their health as not being a matter for concern? That is how I would look at this, but they prefer to frame it in terms that are misandric, placing the blame upon men.

The system has been blind to the outcome for men and unresponsive to the obvious statistics and it's hard not to think of it as sexist when you look at it long enough," Pettitt said. He put the lack of focus on men's health down to the absence of advocates within the system and because people were naturally more sympathetic to women's health.

Here is blatant justification of acknowledged sexism. He says it's hard not to think of the system as sexist, he then goes on to say he does not view the system as sexist, but the reasons he has for doing so can only be perceived as being sexist! If there is a lack of advocacy for male health, and people are more sympathetic to women's health issues how can this be anything other than an expression of anti-male sexism?

Jonny Kirkpatrick said it was difficult to attract funding for male-focused health projects.

More blatant sexism, we see, people do not wish to fund male health projects; this cannot be the result of anything but anti-male attitudes which exist in society.

"Men are partly to blame themselves because of the `she'll be right attitude', but it starts at the top," he said. "The awareness around women's health is fantastic, but men get breast cancer too and as many men die from prostate cancer as women of breast cancer."

Now this has entered the arena of mental gymnastics. Again, we are asked to swallow that it is men's fault, and we're told the current overwhelming focus on women's health (at the expense of men's) is a good thing; the only concession that there might be something wrong comes in the form of saying men die of prostate cancer as much as women die of breast cancer, and that this 'lack of focus,' (they do not dare to call it sexism, discrimination, misandry) 'starts at the top,' the shorthand version of this article would be 'men are dying needlessly due to cultural misandry; we are part of the problem and acknowledge this to a degree, nevertheless we hold it is still men's fault.'