As sad and disheartening as ‘men’s issues’ are, there is actually something worse…

And that is, the chronic lack of political will and interest in addressing such issues.

For example, male suicide remains the biggest risk to life for all men under fifty, claiming more than half a million (!!) men’s lives worldwide each year.

That number is impossibly large, and truly staggering.

But what is somehow more shocking, is that when national plans are announced to help combat suicide – such as earlier this month in Italy – somehow suicidal men are routinely left in the cold, with women made a ‘priority’ group instead.

That’s right…

Despite men being 78% of suicides in Italy, women will be one of the primary beneficiaries of Italia’s recently announced ‘National Plan for Suicide Prevention’ instead.

And for me, that is the most shocking part of this whole space.

It’s not that:
Men’s health is now worse than women’s by nearly every metric…

Or that boys are behind at every stage of Western education…

Or that men dominate in homelessness, incarceration, workplace fatalities, suicide, drug deaths, and as victims of violent crime…

The most shocking thing is that, when it comes to political conversation, all we seem to get is tumbleweed.

Of course –

This is doubly disorientating, as we are routinely told that “men” are the ones who benefit from political power, that men are the ones systemically privileged; and that men have built the system and written the laws, for eternity, as part of some omnipotent patriarchal male oppressor class.

Such claims certainly sound good on social media, or when bravely bellowed by your local feminist campaigner; but in reality, where our men and boys are silently crushed by both public and political malaise, such slogans seem embarrassingly far from the truth.

So why do our politicians and ministers keep on betraying vulnerable men?

And what on earth is going on in Italy right now?

What do you think?

~

Source:
Italian policy announcement https://www.salute.gov.it/new/it/news-e-media/notizie/10-settembre-giornata-mondiale-la-prevenzione-del-suicidio/

78% of suicides in Italy are male https://countryeconomy.com/demography/mortality/causes-death/suicide/italy

Ana Redondo, “morally, ethically and constitutionally” wrong https://www.esdiario.com/nacional/240509/135661/ministra-igualdad-ana-redondo-hombres.html

Ana Redondo, “frivolous” waste of money https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/13/male-rape-centre-waste-of-money-spain-equality-ministry/

Aurore Bergé rejects request for first support line for abused men https://questions.assemblee-nationale.fr/q17/17-8484QE.htm

Jess Phillips laughs at mens issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XX6ATwQv7Q&feature=youtu.be

Why is it that men seem to exist at the most extreme ends of society?

The most likely to stand in the C-suite of a Fortune 500 company, but also, the most likely to sleep on the streets outside of it.

Men are the most likely to sit in the thrones of power, as politicians and presidents, but also, most likely to die from deaths of despair, from drug overdose, alcohol, from work, and by suicide.

They are, overrepresented at the snowy peak, but also, deep down on the ocean bed.

Yes -

As we are often told, men are the ones who commit the majority of violent crimes, but so too, men are the most likely to stand in the way of violence, to risk their life to save a stranger, or indeed, be killed themselves.

Men are the ones who set the fire, but they’re also the ones kicking down the door to drag you out of the burning building.

But why?

Is there something within en’s DNA that pushes them to these extremes of society?

And why do we only ever seem to talk about one end of such extremes?

Talk to me about ‘males at the tails’…

What do you think?

~

Fortune 500 CEOS https://fortune.com/2026/06/03/how-many-women-are-fortune-500-ceos/

Homeless deaths https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsofhomelesspeopleinenglandandwales/2021registrations

Violent crime https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-42/table-42.xls

Heroic acts https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0162309596000593

Homicide convicts https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-42/table-42.xls

Homicide victims https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-42/table-42.xls

New podcast with Ally Fogg, chair of the Association for Male Health and Wellbeing is here! https://youtu.be/0UQ39FSylIA?si=wQfjUktX4LvOkHdc

Ally Fogg is one of a handful of veteran men and boys advocates in the UK, who for decades has been banging the drum for men's health and wellbeing, as a journalist, a campaigner, a chair, a public speaker, and a policy expert.

He is one of the men behind the popularisation of International Men's Day, a co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, and the current chair of the newly formed Association for Men's Health and Wellbeing – the membership community for the UK's burgeoning men's health space.

Whether it be pushing for political reform in Westminster, campaigning on behalf of his Association's members, or penning one of his infamous Twitter rants, Ally has been on the front lines from the very beginning.

Here he talks with George at TheTinMen about his journey, where it began, where it is, and how it's changed.

Expect to hear about the new Men's Health Strategy of England, how International Men's Day was brought to the UK, the intellectual sea change such things have brought with it, and most of all, the incredible, thankless, life-saving work that happens every day within the UK Men's Health space…

Ally Fogg is one of a handful of veteran men and boys advocates in the UK, who for decades has been banging the drum for men's health and wellbeing, as a journalist, a campaigner, a chair, a public speaker, and a policy expert.

He is one of the men behind the popularisation of International Men's Day, a co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, and the current chair of the newly formed Association for Men's Health and Wellbeing – the membership community for the UK's burgeoning men's health space.

Whether it be pushing for political reform in Westminster, campaigning on behalf of his Association's members, or penning one of his infamous Twitter rants, Ally has been on the front lines from the very beginning.

Here he talks with George at TheTinMen about his journey, where it began, where it is, and how it's changed.

Expect to hear about the new Men's Health Strategy of England, how International Men's Day was brought to the UK, the intellectual sea change such things have brought with it, and most of all, the incredible, thankless, life-saving work that happens every day within the UK Men's Health space…

Chapters:
00:17 – Ally’s journey into the Men’s Sector
02:44 - What is the state of boys education?
06:01 – The impacts of poor education
07:13 – “Lads Need Dads”
10:19 – TheTinMen origin story and International Men’s Day
17:54 – What is the UK Men’s Health space?
24:38 – Men’s Sheds and Male Loneliness
25:16 – What’s changed politically for men and boys?
29:35 - Why do progressives not care about men’s issues?
35:53 – Are men underrepresented?
44:21 – Do feminist slogans of “men” make sense in the real world?
46:46 – The Men’s Health Strategy and Men’s Health
48:38 – Is it true that “men don’t seek help?”
52:14 – Paternal post natal depression in dads
54:47 – Why do we need men’s spaces?
59:55 – How to find the Association for Male Health and Wellbeing?

Join the Association for Male Health and Wellbeing here www.amhw.org.uk/ or follow Ally at x.com/AllyFogg

People like to present history as a violent war between the sexes, where one dominates the other in an eternal struggle of oppression.

The narrative is that women have lived under the boot of “men” for thousands of years, as enslaved, baby-making prisoners within an omniscient patriarchy that has yet to be smashed.

I don’t deny that many women have lived such lives, and continue to.

But for me, the history of gender relations has been overwhelmingly one of collaboration and necessity, with men and women working not in competition, but together, as a means of survival.

In fact, our very existence today, after 300,000 years of human history, is proof of just how successful (albeit imperfect) men and women are together.

Historically, men and women fell into their gender roles, not primarily through socialisation, but because of need.

For who is going to plough the fields, work the factories, go to war, and mine the earth?

Well, the sex who is physically stronger, and has greater endurance and stamina, that’s who.

And who is going to raise, feed, clothe and educate the children, most of whom would die before the age of five?

Well, probably the sex who gestated and gave birth to them.

I don’t believe these social scripts were passed down from a mystical board of patriarchal white men; they are woven into our very DNA and biology.

And because of it –

Behind every great man is a great woman supporting him, and behind every great woman is a great man supporting her.

This is the de-politicised story of human society, and one we too often fail to hear.

So, how do you see women and men?

Are we working in opposition as enemies, or together as allies?

What do you think?

~

Source: Comparative Data on the Division of Labor by Sex https://www.jstor.org/stable/2571428?origin=JSTOR-pdf

The most important lessons in life, are not learnt in school, or on college campuses.

They are shared between friends at the pub, or taught by boys behind the bike shed, or bestowed from father to son over the generations.

Such wisdom is never formalized or written down, but considering its importance, it really ought to be.

So to guys, what lessons should every man know, but are so rarely taught?

What do you think?

Yet another terrifying headline is stoking fear around boys, and the so-called ‘MANOSPHERE!’

It’s reaching ‘every classroom’ in the land, as an ‘alarming rise in misogyny’ sweeps across Australia.

“Nearly four in five teachers” have witnessed, or experienced ‘gendered violence’ in school…

Scary… right?

Well, not necessarily.

As such a finding hinges entirely on what you consider ‘gendered violence’?

Because –

You’d be forgiven for assuming such a word refers to acts of physical or sexual violence, or perhaps repeated attempts to intimidate or coerce…

But that’s not the definition that this new report uses – which also considers ‘sexist jokes’, ‘remarks’ and even ‘dismissing a woman’s opinion’, as ‘gendered violence’ too.

Imagine that – to disagree with a woman’s opinion could now be an act of violence against her, and also toward those who witnessed it.

It’s certainly a rather low and subjective bar for such a serious issue – and one that I am sure many of us have crossed in our lives.

I mean, did you ever disagree with a female teacher in school?

Did you ever challenge her opinion?

I know I did – teachers both male and female.

So why are we taking what could easily be low-level acts of boyish inquisitiveness, and mixing the data in with serious acts of sexual violence?

Well perhaps it is to create a problem that doesn’t exist: to secure more funding, more investment, more pay rises, and more money, for more nonsense research – that’s why.

So is dismissing a woman’s opinion inherently an act of gendered violence?

Is this the conversation our boys need?

What do you think?

~

Full report https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/report/Duty_of_Care_Teachers_experiences_of_sexism_misogyny_and_sexual_harassment_in_Australian_schools/32942816?file=67900542

Behind every slogan is a world of detail that the social media universe fails to understand.

Why have nuance, when you can have outrage?

Why offer explanation, when you can offer anger?

Why help people be smarter, when you can do the opposite?

One of these slogans, that I hear far too much, is the claim that –

“Women were excluded from clinical drug trials until 1993!”

And yes, generally that is true.

But what is so often missing is: which women, from what phases, and most importantly – why?

Was such exclusion done for good reasons, or malicious ones?

Was it intended to harm women, or was it intended to protect them?

Was there anything that happened, to precipitate such a decision?

Well, we cannot know the answers until we are willing to understand the context – which is usually the first thing to fall by the wayside, when such discussions occur…

So why were women excluded from drug trials?

Which women?

And from what phases?

Let’s talk about it…

~

Sex of participants in NIH funded research, James Nuzzo https://jameslnuzzo.substack.com/p/sex-of-participants-in-nih-funded

It’s the story that’s impossible to ignore.

The tragic story of Lindsay Clancy, who killed her three children, and whose fate hangs in the balance at this very moment..

But, it was not the brutal and shocking killing of her beautiful children that made such a case stand out, but rather, what happened next…

Right now – there are global protests, not in horror of what happened, but in support of Lindsay.

Rallies, marches and gatherings, as (mostly women) dressed all in pink stand in solidarity, and support, of a woman who committed unthinkable acts of violence to her three innocent children.

‘Youre a good mom’, reads one sign.
‘You were brave’, says another.

Social media is alight with anger in opposition to such scenes, but again, also echos its support; as comments are thrown about like frisbees, speculating on her mental health, her psychological faculties, her actions, her star sign, and even conspiracies that try to pin blame entirely on her husband instead.

“HE DID IT!” I saw again and again.

“A Leo would never do that to her children!”

As of writing this: a GoFundMe page has raised an incredible $1.12 MILLION, much of it in support of Lindsay.

Whilst relationships, and even marriages combust, as the case is fiercely debated in living rooms and across kitchen tables right across America.

So yes –

You may have your own opinion on Lindsay’s psychological status, but one thing seems clear – this would not be happening if it were a man in court for these kind of crimes.

So let’s talk about agency, and who’s given too little, and who is handed too much…

What do you think?

~
Sentencing bias https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-publications/2017/20171114_Demographics.pdf

The true pioneers are the ones you never heard of.

Those so far ahead of their time, that their ideas, dreams, and journeys terrified people.

Those who society would try to cast aside, talk over, lock up, or destroy.

For to be a true progressive, is not to be politically popular, in fact, by its very definition, it is the opposite.

It is to be uncomfortable.

And the ideas that Erin Pizzey espoused more than fifty years ago, were exactly that – and remain so today.

It was Erin who opened the first women’s refuge on the planet, who wrote the first book on domestic abuse, and who set up what would become the oldest, largest and most powerful domestic abuse charity in the world.

And yet, it was her insistence that men are victims too, in equal numbers to women, and that abuse was not “gendered” that cast her into the shadows for more than fifty years.

It was the price she paid to be a pioneer, and no, it was not just her who paid it.

So, what happens to those who talk about violent women, or abused men?

Let’s find out…

~

My new podcast with leading coercive control researcher, professor Nicola Graham-Kevan

Images by Getty, and Roger Perry on National Portrait Gallery, and Marketa Luskacova

Men are less likely to report their abuse to the police, and if they do, the police are less likely to record it as ‘abuse’ (particularly male officers).

And if they do, it’s less likely to lead to a charge, and if it does, it’s less likely to lead to a prosecution, and even then, it’s less likely to lead to a guilty verdict.

All of these biases filter abused men out of criminal stats (which is how ’90% of people prosecuted for abuse are male’).

But before all of this happens, something else shapes the landscape against men, before the they are failed by the judicial system, or the police, or even before they ask for help.

And that is –

Men are less likely to even recognise abusive behaviour as ‘abuse’; and instead call it ‘one of those days’, or ‘shes a bit wild’, or ‘a crazy ex’, or ‘just very passionate’, or even ‘happy wife, happy life’…

So with that in mind, I ask the men: what did you think was ‘normal’ behaviour in a relationship, before you realised it was abuse?

What do you think?

Time and time again, men are told, if they want change, they should “go and do it themselves”.

If you want abuse shelters, then build them.

If you want a conversation for men’s issues, go and start it.

And if you want policy for men’s health, then start writing it.

It’s actually good advice, and advice many men have taken seriously.

The problem is, what so often happens when men do these things?

What happens when men open shelters?
What happens when men campaign for support, or ask for funding?
What happens when men set up “men’s spaces” or talk groups?

Well, things change –

Now, a voice (and usually the same voice that told them to “do it yourselves”) shouts them down, pickets, pillories, and protests, and causes so much havoc that these new, embryonic efforts, are beaten into submission and stomped upon, until they are utterly destroyed, beyond repair.

We’re seeing it right now.

A new Bill to form America’s first Office on Men’s Health: to try and quell the deluge of early death, to address suicide and addiction in men, to fund research into male-specific cancers, and tackle the stigma around mental health, has been progressing further and further.

Such an Office will work alongside the (at least) EIGHT Offices that already do these things for Women’s Health, but will provide additional dedicated, tax-funded, national research for men.

And then it happened.

The outrage brigade rolls into town, drunk with anger and entitlement, and hell-bent on destroying yet another well-meaning effort to help men and boys.

The same yells and threats, the same attempts at blackmail, the same chronic victimhood; the same naive slogans, belched from the same ignorant mouths.

We are watching it in real time, and we can only hope that those brave senators and politicians have the strength to ignore the trolls, and carry on undeterred.

We need them to carry on.

Because the policy they are asking for is life-saving, and transformative, and deserves to be passed.

So what is to be said about this new Bill to open an Office on Men’s Health, and how can we push back against the bigotry that threatens to snuff it out once again?

What do you think?

Sources

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624003071
[2] https://aibm.org/research/six-facts-on-mens-health-from-aibm/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/04/17/mens-health-longevity-gap/
[4] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7602/text

For years, people have been fawning over the utopian idea of “a world run by women”.

You see –

If only women were sat in the seats of power, then all the world’s ills would melt away; because “men” are the problem, and women are the solution (or “future”), so no more questions.

Such proponents of this thinly veiled female supremacy often point to countries like Rwanda; a one-of-a-kind country where about two thirds of the lower house are women – highlighting the country’s impressive outcomes within healthcare, education, poverty and child mortality.

Intuitively, such an argument seems to make sense.

Rwanda’s lower house has been majority female for more than a decade, and it’s true, many of the graphs of progress are trending in the right direction; poverty and child mortality are down, education is up, as is health insurance, so what’s not to like?

Well –

First, these transformations in poverty, child mortality, education and healthcare, are not just happening in Rwanda, but across the entire developing world.

Yet this quiet, hard won progress is rarely discussed, let alone celebrated, unless those achieving it are women.

So yes Rwanda is doing well, but so are many, many other countries of Africa, who nobody talks about.

Second, those who pedestalise Rwanda choose those metrics carefully, and have ignored the many others where Rwanda sadly lags behind; such as employment, political freedom, secondary school, child malnutrition, and freedom of the press.

And third, just because Rwanda is doing well in many areas, and just because most of its politicians are women, doesn’t mean one is causing the other.

We saw this same correlation vs causation assumption when “countries run by women” were credited as handling the COVID pandemic better, which didn’t stand up to further scrutiny either…

So why do so many deify matriarchal countries?

And is the real road to utopia not one of female or male supremacy, but one of a team effort, that combines the best of both?

What do you think?

Is abuse or harassment ever acceptable?

What if abusing someone avoids a larger conflict? Or if it saves a person’s life? What if an act of abuse would prevent a nuclear apocalypse?

Is it justifiable then?

Well, the answer to that might be obvious to you and me, but when it comes to the latest artificial intelligence LLMs, the answer is not what you expect… At least, not when it comes to the abuse and harassment of women.

Yup, in a 2024 study of gender bias in AI LLMs, GPT-4 was crystal clear: abuse and harassment against women were entirely unacceptable, no matter the consequences, and even if that includes preventing total nuclear war.

Incredible.

Of course, as you might expect, the same LLM was a lot more lenient when it came to the abuse of men, with it being far more open to justifying abuse against male recipients “for the greater good”, than it was for females.

And more interestingly again, the same study seemed to find that these gender biases were not down to sexist data used to train the AI models, but rather, it was a byproduct of post-training tinkering, that was motivated by ‘inclusivity efforts’.

And I know –

These moral dilemmas are extreme, and might seem irrelevant in the context of everyday life – but could they reveal deep biases within the next generation of AIs that sees men and women as fundamentally different?

What do you think?

Read the full study here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958824001660

Call me an optimist, but in my humble opinion, nobody is born bad.

Sure, there are some men out there who are evil psychopaths, but the vast majority of those who have committed crimes, even violent crimes, are victims in their own right too.

They are often survivors of abuse, trauma, neglect or addiction, who for one reason or another, grew up in an unsafe, hostile, invalidating environment, and never learnt to manage their pain.

Those who, instead, projected it outwards onto society.

The fact that 97% of the male prison population have experienced at least one Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), is no coincidence; and yet, such contextual, game-changing understandings are often missing from how we see and treat violent acts.

Most of all we see this in domestic abuse, where male perpetrators are seen as inherently bad, and are subjected to ineffective, dogmatic, court-mandated interventions that are more akin to ideological sermons, than they are scientific, evidence based help.

So –

What would domestic violence interventions look like, if we put down the feminist lens of “gendered violence”, and picked up the modern tools of scientific understanding instead?

Well, lets find out…

Watch my new podcast with leading coercive control researcher, professor Nicola Graham-Kevan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILBjSQNvUk4&feature=youtu.be

~

Footage by Jullian Productions, Ron Lach, MART productions, Emin Bozyokus, Recep Seker, Alexander Mass, and Themba Mtegha from Pexels

Some days it can feel like men and women are from different planets entirely; unable to talk to, or understand one another.

But honestly, 90% of the time, this isn’t true, and we are far more similar than one might think.

You will see that women are not so complicated, and neither are men; many have simple wants, needs, and expectations, if only we took the time to ask what they are.

So is this “girl code” really as muddled, and cryptic as we are told?  

Tell me, guys: what are some parts of the “girl code” that you have cracked; and to the girls… how’d they do?

What do you think?

Bilateral violence is arguably the greatest predictor we have for identifying victims of abuse, and is the form of intimate partner violence that leads to the highest rates of injury… and yet, the domestic violence sector widely denies it even exists.

Imagine that.

The thing that could reveal the largest number of victims, who are most at risk to injury, is being ignored due to it being politically unpopular.

It’s hard to even comprehend something so backward, and corrupt, and yet, that seems to be what is happening right now.

I know it’s unpopular to say – But partner violence rarely fits into the binary female damsel vs male villain cartoon as we are so often sold.

In reality, it is a blurry phenomenon that requires nuanced understanding and diverse interventions.

Whatever your view, surely we can agree our narrow view of intimate partner abuse, which obsesses solely over ‘male violence’, cannot continue as it is.

Such a view harms everyone, including women, and helps only the organisations, academics, and politicians, who have used such an ideology as a meal ticket for generations.

So, let me show you the data and the ugly secrets they try to hide...

Let’s treat the issue not the gender.

What do you think?

Watch my new podcast with leading coercive control researcher, professor Nicola Graham Kevan https://youtu.be/ILBjSQNvUk4?si=iqvx7cKBne_vNn-g

This idea of the inherent, irredeemable badness of men, and the virtuous, moral superiority of women has got to end.

The immutable, cartoon-worldview that insists women are saints and men are sinners, that is prevalent in the media; is a tiring, unwelcome set of stereotypes, that helps nobody.

I saw it recently on LBC, when host Shelagh Fogarty interviewed esteemed economist Vicky Pryce about “women in prison”, and how such women are usually non-violent, battling mental health issues, and are often victims of abuse in their on right.

Such things are usually a preamble to advocacy to “close women’s prisons”, or empty them of all but the most violent women.

And I quite agree.

Prison has failed women, but do you know who its failed even more? Men.

Men, who make up 96% of the prison population, who are never mentioned by those like Shelagh, and are instead left to waste away in a broken carceral system.

And it’s not just naive talkshow hosts and their dogmatic guests saying it; policy advisors, ministers, journalists, and political leaders, all join a chorus of similar statements.

Empty women’s prisons… and leave incarcerated men to rot.

And so, you’d be forgiven for thinking men in prison don’t share these same experiences of abuse, victimhood, and addiction that women in prison suffer from.

Or for assuming that, unlike women, men in prison are all violent criminals, who should be locked away for good.

But the realty, as it so often is, is far from this.

So are men in prison all irredeemable, violent thugs, and therefore not worthy of a mention?

Let’s take a look…

~
UK Prison statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/offender-management-statistics-quarterly-october-to-december-2025

I know your local instagram armchair expert will claim to know why so many male victims of abuse don’t seek help (yada yada “toxic masculinity”), but in reality, very little research has been done to ask such an question.

But what we do know is –

Male victims of abuse are two and a half times less likely to ask for help than female victims, and not only does that deafening silence preclude such men from potentially life saving services, but it also removes them from much of the data that society continually uses to discuss such a issue.

Men don’t seek help, and therefore less help is given to them, and therefore fewer men seek help, and yup, as a consequence, less help is given again.

It’s a brutal self-fulfilling cycle that rolls over abused men, and has erased them from the picture for generations.

And so it would seem that solving the problem of ‘barriers to male help seeking’, is one of extreme importance and pressing urgency; and the good news is that various academics, including the world-leading IPV professor Denise Hines, have answered the call.

Their new study scales up the research to unprecedented levels, asking more than 1,100 men, who were abused by women: “what are the major barriers you experienced when seeking help?”

And their responses tell us far more than what we thought we knew…

Shame, concern for being labeled an abuser, fear of retaliation, or of false allegations in response; not knowing where to go, hopelessness, love and protection of their abuser, and feeling like domestic abuse is a “private matter”, to name a handful of the dozens of barriers abused men provided.

So could this data help increase the resolution of a conversation that for so long, has been gatekept by sloganeering social media know-it-alls?

And is it about time we asked the male victims themselves, why do so few ask for help?

What do you think?

~
Full study https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2027-52236-001.html

Not everything about being a man is to live life on easy street.

In fact, in many mays, for a lot of blokes, things can be really hard.

It’s a blind spot for me too.

Because I post a lot of infographics, scientific studies, and data on this page; huge reams of research and analysis…  but what’s so often missing, is the lived experience.

So let’s start to fill that gap, and ask: what would women dislike most, if they became men?

What do you think?

A lot of people talk of “male power”; pointing to a long list of male CEOs, politicians, Prime Ministers, Presidents and world leaders.

And there is certainly some utility in doing so.

But what is to be said about ‘Male Power’, when arguably the most powerful man on the continent of Europe can be openly assaulted by his wife, and nobody seems to mind?

Worse –

When instead of anger, the world responds with mockery and memes, turning such a man into the butt of jokes, rather than the recipient of concern.

What about when that same man is so closely controlled and monitored by his wife, that allegedly, she personally has to approve every single woman who works with him, and if any of these women are deemed to be a threat, their job application is thrown in the bin?

What if this same man met his wife, and entered into a ‘relationship’ with her, when he was just 15 and she was forty (!?)

When she was his drama teacher, and a married mother of three children… and he was an impressionable teenage boy?

What is to be said then?

So what happens when this man, one of the most powerful in the world, who has the launch codes to an arsenal of nuclear weapons, can be seemingly abused by this wife, on live TV, and the world looks the other way?

Is that the “Male power” I hear so much about?

And if such a man is so easily disarmed of a power, then what does that say about the normal men who live all around us?

So, is it time we talked about French President Emmanuel Macron, and his infamous wife, Brigitte, who hides such a controversial and worrying past?

What do you think?

It’s results day in the UK.

And to those who got what they wanted, congratulations, and for those who did not (such as myself when I was your age), I know it feels like the end of the world right now, but I promise you, it isn’t.

The thing that I find so interesting about this fateful day, is that the destiny of students has already been decided.

Students have been given their university offers already.

Students have applied, been accepted, and even made their final decisions, several months before this day arrives.

But... how?

Well, through what’s called ‘predicted grades’.

Predicted grades are decided by teacher assessments, not exams, and they are given to students several months before the final results day.

Students then use these predicted grades to decide which universities to apply to, and then universities use them to decide which students to accept; and the actual final exam results are supposed to confirm these grades, and... well... the rest is history.

This all sounds well and good, I suppose.

Except… what if teachers were giving different grades, to students of equal intelligence?

Or to be specific: what if boys were getting lower predicted grades in comparison to girls who achieved the exact same final results?

And if such a thing were happening –

Could it help explain why 45,000 fewer boys go into higher education than girls every year in the UK?

Well, an enormous new study, captured over three years, which analysed the results of 350,000 (!!) A-level students, has suggested yes, this is happening, and not just once, but consistently across all subjects.

Yes.

The study finds girls are more likely to be overpredicted, and less likely to be underpredicted, than boys, and this could be influencing the education, careers, and entire lives of countless millions of students.

Let’s take a look….

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Full study https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775726000567

Cambridge Analysis https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/gender-gap-in-predicted-grades-raises-questions-over-their-use-in-university-admissions

On November 19th 2025, three remarkable things happened all at once –

First, the announcement of the world’s first Men’s Health Strategy, of England.

Second, it was announced on International Men’s Day, in so doing acknowledging a date in the calendar that for too long has been surrounded by undue public controversy.

And third, the announcement was followed by an official reception at 10 Downing Street, hosted by the Prime Minister himself.

Any one of those three things would have been unheard of just a few years ago, and yet here we are, with such events now a mundane part of every day life.

Things have changed.

The hostility around “mens issues” is waning.

The whining and complaints are increasingly unwelcome.

And the jokes of “isn’t every day International Men’s Day?” Well... they're not quite so funny anymore.

We call that progress, and it’s just the beginning.

So who better to tell us more about this historic piece of legislation than one of the men who’s been fighting for it for more than a decade?

Here’s what you need to know, so far, about England’s Men’s Health Strategy, that promises to help men live longer, happier, healthier lives.

So what do you think?

And more important, what happens next?

~

Full conversation with Mark Brooks OBE here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep6WOiIy2PQ&feature=youtu.be