It is endlessly frustrating to me that so much of men’s “activism” comes from trying to shut down women’s activism. “You think you ladies have it bad? Wait till I tell you about the SUICIDE RATE!!” You can try to explain that the rate of attempted suicides for men and women is on par, men just tend to use more extreme (and therefore, successful) methods. But they aren’t there to actually talk about the suicide rate. They don’t actually care. They just want to shut up women.
I wish I had some advice for you. If I had the time and energy (I don’t) I’d write a whole book about how patriarchal systems are also bad for men and all the ways they are bad that still acknowledges that women and non-men continue to have it worse in many respects. And that undoing patriarchal systems is good for everyone. That the suicide rate would go down, for everyone. That men could engage with the world in richer and better ways than most of them do now.
But the people pushing the narrative of Poor Beleaguered Men don’t actually care about men’s wellbeing. An awful lot of men don’t care about men’s wellbeing. They are there to reinforce the power structure, assuming one day they will be the ones to benefit from it. They won’t.