By Dr. Charles Prempeh 
This evening at about 5: 30 pm, l came across a caption, “Men go through a lot, but struggle to share it,” in a news item on a social media platform. The report was by a woman counsellor. I mention the biological sex of the author for a reason. One reason is that when women diagnose the challenges men face, they often struggle to follow through with what I consider the appropriate prescriptive solutions.
Typically, the advice is that boys should be allowed to cry like girls, or that men should simply open up to their wives. Yet the reasons many men remain silent are numerous and varied.
I will begin with a comment posted in response to the social media item I referenced. A woman wrote: “How can a man tell his wife that his girlfriend is pregnant and the girlfriend is refusing to abort the pregnancy?”
Such responses are hardly unusual because, for a long time, the dominant narrative has been that men are incorrigible cheats and therefore deserve whatever consequences befall them as karma taking its course. But if that argument is stretched to its logical conclusion, the source of the man’s burden is still a woman who may well know that the man with whom she is involved is married.
In any case, advances in DNA technology have made it increasingly apparent that men do not cheat with fellow men, except in what some would describe as recent psychological aberrations, but with women.
So, do men suffer social and psychological paralysis because of women or because of men’s infidelity? If sisterhood is truly about women supporting one another, why would one woman betray another by engaging in an amorous relationship with her husband?
Moving beyond popular cultural expressions of the problems associated with masculinity, some scholars have reduced the entire issue to socialisation. This explanatory framework is reflected in titles such as The Making of Men.
Indeed, drawing on the subtleties of existentialism, virtually everything about masculinity is attributed to culture. Little or nothing is said about the natural and biological constitution of men and how it shapes masculine behaviour.
Against this backdrop, boys are encouraged to cry like girls, while men are expected to publicly lament, rant and openly articulate every challenge they face.
Even so, amid all these discussions, is it not curious that, unlike women’s conferences and movements, men have rarely organised major conferences devoted to their health and wellbeing or sought affirmative action on their own behalf?
Regrettably, history is often invoked, frequently without adequate context, to argue that it has been “his-story”, privileging men at the expense of women. It is commonly asserted, in rather simplistic terms, that patriarchy disenfranchised women by denying them the right to vote in the Western world until the early twentieth century.
None the less, many who appeal to this historical marginalisation remain silent, whether intentionally or inadvertently, about the historical relationship between civic responsibility and political rights, including the right both to vote and to be voted for.
Blinded by the passage of time and the fallacy of presentism, few acknowledge that participation in governance during periods of territorial conflict was closely linked to the willingness and ability to defend the polity. In effect, men were expected to put their lives on the line as a condition of participating fully in public affairs.
Meanwhile, misunderstandings and selective readings of history have, in my view, been weaponised to create a form of gender blindness in which men are expected neither culturally nor ontologically to differ from women.
The influence of what is often described as “woke” culture has, I believe, made many otherwise educated people overlook the reality that women’s biological experience of menstruation alone is sufficient to suggest that men and women are functionally and ontologically distinct.
Ironically, the world readily acknowledges the enduring impact of menstruation on women.
In an effort to narrow biological differences between the sexes, puberty blockers have been introduced in some contexts. However, after roughly a decade of experimentation, critics argue that concerns about their long-term health effects suggest that nature ultimately resists human attempts to redefine it.
The biological differences between men and women, as products of nature, remain an important reference point for understanding cultural behaviour. Within the dynamic interplay of nature and nurture, the male sexual organ gives, while the female sexual organ receives. Socially, this is interpreted to mean that men are oriented towards giving, while women are oriented towards receiving.
Over many years of researching expenditure patterns among couples, I have observed that, across many relationships in Africa and elsewhere, women generally expect men to serve as providers, protectors and leaders.
Even highly accomplished women in stable relationships seldom assume greater social responsibility than their husbands, even when they earn more.
Likewise, accomplished women rarely marry men they perceive as less accomplished. The reasons for this may be complex. But could they also be connected to the relationship between submission and fidelity as foundational pillars of marital stability?
Be that as it may, a character in the 1990s Ghanaian film ‘Escaped to Love’ memorably remarked of a successful man pursuing the daughter of an ordinary waakye seller: “As for men, the higher they rise, the lower they go; the bigger they are, the smaller they take.”
I have also studied relationships that collapsed because the men involved failed to demonstrate effective leadership and protection. Indeed, there is a saying that “No one usually cares about a fallen breast, but everyone cares about a fallen penis.” It is further said that while a man might quietly accept a woman’s physical decline, a woman might convene a family meeting over a man’s sexual dysfunction.
If anyone is tempted to believe that men simply have the luxury of infidelity, they should first reflect on the universal anxiety surrounding male sexual failure.
In any event, anyone genuinely interested in understanding why men often keep their pain to themselves must first distinguish among different kinds of men.
Men do speak about their problems, but to what end? If a man confides in another man, he may simply be directed to the nearest “blue kiosk” for alcohol or to a brothel. But would a responsible man stoop to such options?
If he confides in female friends, he risks creating the impression that he is seeking sexual favours. Would a responsible man willingly jeopardise his hard-earned reputation in that way?
Why is the world so unreasonably hypocritical about men’s mental health?
If so much emphasis is placed on promoting girls’ education while boys’ education receives comparatively less attention, why is it difficult to acknowledge that society cannot fly effectively on one wing?
I pray that the ultimate Father will come through for His men, and for those responsible women who are not, in my view, blinded by the Emperor’s new clothes into asking, however pretentiously, why men do not talk about their problems.
Satyagraha
Maxwell John Bugli