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Speak Up- Kōrerotia15 November 2017Issues affecting menMaleThis programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.FemaleComing up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.SallyE ngā mana, E ngā reo, E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.?Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.Welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton here in Christchurch. Today’s topic: We’re talking about issues affecting men, massive topic I’m sure and in this one we’re going to be thinking about issues that particularly, or perhaps disproportionately, affect men and what can be done and what should be done to shed some light on some of these issues. I’m thinking that this discussion might take place at a theoretical level -particularly around the idea of why discussions tend to focus on women’s rights or gender rights; why men aren’t necessarily explicitly mentioned often in right’s discussions. And I specifically don’t want this to become an either/or thing - not men’s rights at the expense of women’s rights or vice versa - but just to point out that there is some work that still needs to be done in the space of men and issues affecting men, just as there is obviously work that needs to be done with issues affecting women. I’m going to be very interested to hear what you all have to say, why this might be the case. I think the feminist in me thinks it might be partly to do with the society has been programmed in such a way that men have traditionally been the oppressors - but we can obviously speak about that a bit more. And I think once we’ve broached some of these theories then maybe we’re going to talk more about some of the issues that are affecting men and what can be done, what should be done, what kind of supports are out there for men affected by these issues. We’ve got three guests with us today: Iain Fergusson, Iain approached me with the topic suggestion so thanks very much, it’s always cool to have that happen. IainNo problem. SallyDonald Pettitt, CEO of the Canterbury Men’s Centre and Steve Carter, you’re joining us over the phone from your trip in the North Island so thank you for that. SteveKia ora. DonaldKia ora. SallyNow I’d like to invite you to tell us a wee bit about yourselves and why you might be interested in this topic. Perhaps we’ll start with you, Iain. IainYes I’ve been interested in this since probably the ‘90s when I was working at the Youth Health Centre and there was a really high rate of suicide among young men. It’s dropped a wee bit now so that’s good but that kind of got me thinking about it and it’s just been ticking away in the background for the last 20 years or so and recently I’ve just found out a few other issues that men have and that kind of piqued my interest and I started looking into it and it turns out there’s a lot to look into. SallyYes I’m sure. DonaldI got interested in men’s groups, men’s weekends, personal growth stuff about 25 years ago and went on any number of different weekend events and really got into it and it was really exciting for me, part of my hippie years and then I became a social worker and didn’t really find my feet until about 12 years ago when a group of us decided to start the Canterbury Men’s Centre and I’ve been the CEO ever since and it’s been a lot of fun, a lot of interesting learning over that period. Like Iain, I’ve gone, “Wow, there’s actually a pretty deep well here to be worked on.” SallyCould you just give us a wee bit of information about what is the Men’s Centre? DonaldWell our mission statement is ‘Happy, healthy, Canterbury men.’ We’re quite a sizeable counselling service now; about 120 men a week are seeing us. We do the Blokes Book which is a fairly well publicised and supported resource thanks to the Ministry of Social Development for another print run... The Fun for Older Men booklet… We helped set up a string of men’s sheds - there’s about 30 of them almost in Canterbury - so it’s been a really tumultuous ten years and I’m looking forward to the next ten. SallyFantastic and so much of that stuff is quite well publicised so that’s good to know. And Steve? SteveYeah so I think I was sort of raised in a family that had a stronger sense of social justice and that drove me towards being trained in the law and then I sort of deviated from the law and focused much more on social justice so I took my teeth in forensic setting so in a residential first aid accommodation for men coming out of prison and also some probation and bail beds as well and from there got into community development and wellbeing, community health development. And since I’ve been in New Zealand, which is about 14 years now, my focus has been on mental health so I worked for the Mental Health Foundation for nine years on the flourishing work on the Like Minds, Like Mine campaign and then latterly on the Alright? campaign mental health project after the Canterbury earthquake. And for the last three years I’ve been going it alone as it were and working as a consultant so I do training and writing and facilitation and pieces of community based research, so yes. SallyGreat! Well I’m sure that the Alright? campaign is one with which most Cantabrians, I would hope, are fairly aware which is really good, it’s done very well in terms of getting its message out there which is nice to see. SteveYeah and also I think it’s quite timely, I mean obviously we’re in Movember right now but I’m aware that Alright? also just rolled out its men’s mental health campaign. Manly As, so I guess we’ll probably refer to that. I’ve been out of the city for all the time that’s been rolling so I’m interested to hear the other guys’ perspective on what they’re doing there. SallyInteresting. Well you just brought up the first question that I wanted to ask you, which is: Why are we discussing it at this particular moment in time? You’ve mentioned Movember, Steve. SteveYes so Movember and I think… I don’t know whether it was a because it’s November and Movember but of course International Men’s Day, it’s inside November as well so it’s just a timely point to be discussing men’s health in November. The focus for Movember is both male cancer and also mental health so yes, it’s a good time to be talking about it. IainAnd as for me, well I’m always thinking about men’s health, it’s my day job so I can’t really… Obviously there’s a bit more interest during November when Movember is happening and then Men’s Health Day on the 19th comes up but there’s also Men’s Health Week in June during which we run any number of projects. DonaldWe’ve just had the Blue September for prostate cancer as well, so that’s another thing that’s been on our minds. SteveAnd I think this highlights something which is really positive, that actually there is an increasing awareness around some of the men’s health stuff and therefore some projects starting to kind of chip away at this kind of resistance to talking about it. We’re talking about it a lot more and I think that’s really positive. SallyI was actually thinking, when you mentioned June and September and November, do you think that these awareness weeks or months are helping? SteveMe? Well this is my day job, kind of social marketing and awareness campaign so I’m loath to say I think that they’re not. Obviously I think it’s really important that we have a national conversation about all kinds of stuff and in terms of men’s health and some of the inequities which I think we’re obviously going to get into, clearly having a conversation about it in a public forum is a really important thing and it’s to be applauded and more of it please. DonaldI think one of the interesting things that shows where the public’s thoughts are is that most searches on Google for International Men’s Day occur in March around International Women’s Day because people are thinking, “h I wonder if there’s a men’s day?” and so when International Men’s Day rolls around everyone has forgotten about it. IainThere is a sensitivity online in the men’s community, isn’t there, about the issue of not having a Google doodle for International Men’s Day but there is for International Women’s Day, that usually gets a comment each year or two. SallyThat’s an interesting way of reading it, isn’t it? It’s kind of banal but it’s symbolic, isn’t it?IainIt is. SallyNow, you’ve touched on the fact that there’s International Women’s Day, International Men’s Day and there’s obviously a different way that it’s perceived. Any thoughts as to why that might be the case? I throw this open. DonaldOh I think I’ll hear criticism of both days, I hear of men talking about oh women whining day or something like that. I don’t know, it depends which particular storm in which teacup you’re riding. The men’s issues one will be really excited about International Men’s Day when you go onto the websites and hear a conversation but actually I don’t see much of a down vote for women’s day. I have seen… There are lots of instances overseas where there have been Men’s Day events that have been shut down or shouted down or oppressed or resisted and I find that really disturbing and the belief is that men don’t need that day. The discussions in the British Parliament about that, universities in England shutting them down… Was it something… I forget where it was now but I remember thinking well that’s not very generous really considering especially this is young men that are attending university and I don’t know… Somehow it was an opportunity to raise those issues especially about mental health and suicidality and they weren’t allowed to discuss it in the university setting. It somehow seemed really strange to me. IainI think the difference between International Men’s Day and International Women’s Day is that International Men’s Day is definitely a grassroots effort where people who are concerned about it get together with people they know to try and make something happen. International Women’s Day is supported by the UN and the Ministry of Women and a lot of other organisations support it so there’s quite a dichotomy about how each...DonaldAbout who supports it, that’s true, institutional support. SallyDo you have a sense as to why or indeed how you might… What steps might be taken to getting that kind of support for Men’s Day or why that support is not there? DonaldI think it’s an historical movement transition. I think we’ll be in a different place in ten years. We already are in a different place from where we were ten years ago, I think there’s more recognition of it, there’s more recognition of a need. I would say when I look at support services in New Zealand for example, I take that as an indicator that things are changing, that there is an interest in seeing men are cared for so I’m actually really hopeful about the future but we do have a long way to go. IainLast year for International Men’s Day I contacted a few organisations to let them know it was coming up and it wasn’t very successful. Last year’s official theme was, I think, reproductive rights so I contacted the Family Planning Association and said they might want to just make a comment about it or something like that and they replied oh that’s a good idea, thanks for letting us know… Radio silence. So I’m not sure...DonaldWe’re talking about theory here so making a great leap: I think when it comes to women’s health and women’s wellbeing there’s a lot of people whose job it is either informally or formally, there’s a lot of people feel that way and when it comes to men’s health and wellbeing there’s not a lot of actual jobs or structures to support it but there’s also not a lot of people that are informed and able to do that kind of work as well. It’s a lot like the reciprocal of women businessmen or businesspeople back 20 to 40 years ago when women were trying to get a foot in the door that way, there’s not a lot of male social workers, not a lot of dialogue, not a lot say a platform for those kind of, that type of work to be done. I think that is changing, we were talking earlier about Reddit for example is a really excellent platform for men’s issues. I think the Men’s Centre that I run has actually done a really good job of rallying some local support and once again there is a movement, there are hopefully men’s centres developing around the country, men’s health projects that Movember has been supporting so there is a rising shift and I think there’s a cultural shift as well. Younger men are quite different from younger men 20 or 40 years ago. IainOne of the things recently that concerned me a little bit in terms of the progress that’s been made is the new Minister for Women made the comment that the Government would be focusing on women’s issues. DonaldTrue. IainAnd I’m happy for the Ministry of Women to focus on women’s issues but it concerns me that it’s going to make the advocacy of men’s issues even harder if the Government is focusing on women. DonaldIf that implies the exclusion of men when it comes up. I didn’t take that as a no to men at the same time, I even consider that maybe an in so I’m hopeful. There was expression by interest in Labour and Greens last year and some work for men and once again the Ministry of Social Development came in about three years ago and started funding for the first time Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse Trust and has helped set up a string of services up and down the country as a starter. That is a remarkable step to be taken by the… I know it was the National government but that was supported by all parties to make that happen so I’m quite hopeful about further progress and I think it’s more of a cultural shift, I didn’t take that commitment by Labour as expressing a negative towards doing some work for men as well. SteveI was just going to say that alongside the cultural shift that Donald referred to, obviously a big social change movement, the kind of vanguard which is very radical and then once the door is open the discussion becomes a little bit more objectified and we’re starting to see the recognition that it’s a public policy and a public spending issue when we see certain quite extreme disparities in men’s health. So for instance men overrepresented in suicide, men overrepresented in substance misuse and alcohol statistics, road deaths for instance. Those are all issues around cost and spending and once you get through the radical edge which at the moment is focusing things on women’s issues, we can start to focus in on the actual inequities and say look there are real issues here that we need to address. So cultural shifts always take a while to rattle themselves down. SallyI think one thing that I seem to be picking up is that it doesn’t… As we said at the beginning, it’s not an either/or. If women’s rights are being furthered then men’s rights are also being furthered and I think that’s an important message to be promoting. IainWhen you say that, it’s quite interesting because often women’s issues are the flipside to men’s issues. For example, there’s groups of men who are really concerned about the family courts, that they’re not getting a fair deal and getting custody of their kids and the flipside to that is that women have to take care of their children more and therefore have trouble making progress in their careers so the obvious solution is that we make it easier for men to take care of their kids, they get what they want and that makes it easier for women to work on their careers. There’s that balance that comes into play with a lot of these issues. SallyInteresting point and perhaps a really good one to end up this first segment on. Donald, we have a song that you chose: ‘Daddy Don’t Live Here Anymore’ by Paul Urbana-Jones and then we’ll come back and I think we’ll pick up that point around dichotomies and various issues that do affect men. MUSIC BY PAUL URBANA-JONES – DADDY DON’T LIVE HERE ANYMORESally Nau mai hoki mai, this is “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia” and we’re speaking about issues affecting men. We’re going to jump straight into the second segment and my question is open to all of you: What are some of the issues that disproportionately affect men? IainThere’s so many. The obvious ones that most people are aware of is the male suicide rate which is three times the female rate so that’s pretty common knowledge. Men’s health is worse than women’s health overall depending on how you measure it exactly. Men have a lot more injuries than women, serious injuries from the workplace and outside the workplace so that’s another issue. Someone wants to pick up on some…DonaldDrug and alcohol abuse, imprisonment, obviously prostate cancer and prostate issues is a health issue. SallySpeaking about the prostate cancer, I know there’s a lot of awareness around breast cancer for example but I believe - and I might be wrong about this - that prostate cancer actually is the bigger killer? DonaldSlightly higher numbers, there’s a lot of damage as well done by the surgery, men losing continence and losing their sexual performance, their capacity to sexually perform as well. There’s about 600 people die every year of prostate cancer. I don’t actually like to compare the two so much in the sense of women get breast cancer much younger so there is… I know three women that were 50ish that died way too young and it is more likely to affect men at an older age but I think if you’re talking about rights and comparing the two there would be the Government expenditure question, about how much money gets spent on both those issues which some say is 20:1 in favour of breast cancer for both Government and private spending. SallyBig difference, isn’t it? DonaldYes but you could justify that at a social level saying it’s more important for parents, some of those women I knew were mothers to younger kids and that it would be nice to have them around for. SallySteve, have you got anything to add?SteveNo I think they’ve covered… I mean, particularly the mental health aspects that Iain mentioned, the suicide rate is three times higher amongst men which is quite extraordinary really. Men are actually less represented in the national mental health statistics but it’s often thought that this is because women are more likely to seek help and therefore be diagnosed and referred to services, men less likely. So I think prevalence in the population is probably skewed slightly by that. DonaldI’ve heard if you combined the drug and alcohol with the mental health you’ll find very similar numbers for men and women so one argument is that men are more likely to self-treat with the drug and alcohol, using it as a cover for anxiety issues, depression whatever. SteveYes and I think mental health is now mental and addictions so it’s starting to recognise that and that will shift some of the statistics. I just saw today actually - talking about mental health, this is jumping ahead perhaps - but Dr. David Clark, the new Minister for Health, has just announced a big review of the mental health system and the reinstigation of the Mental Health Commission so I think we’ll start having a conversation about unpicking some of the statistics and what they mean and how we respond to them so I think that’s really positive. SallyYou mentioned the statistics there Steve, do you guys feel that - and we’ve talked about statistics and perhaps they might show a certain story - but given the work that you’re doing, do you feel those statistics align with the reality? DonaldI’m confused by the question. SallySorry perhaps not very well phrased. The statistics are saying one thing, do you feel that that’s actually reflected in what you’re seeing? Do you think there should be more men being ‘counted’ - and I say that in inverted commas - in some of these statistics?SteveWell I think one of the issues, as I said and Donald sort of mentioned, things like self-medication and stuff like that, the expression of what might broadly be called mental health problems in men is different from women so I think men are not captured within the national prevalent statistics because they will tend towards displays of violent behaviour or use of substances to mask stuff and women are more likely to seek help, there’s plenty of studies around how men seek help and why they don’t seek help so I think the statistics do paint a muddy picture of where we’re at in terms of prevalence for men because Donald also mentioned imprisonment, is that look at then the numbers of men in prison and the prevalence in prison of mental health problems you can see that there’s a connection there going on. So I think the issues are around things like men’s help seeking behaviours or not help seeking behaviours. IainJust to add an example in terms of statistics: If we’re looking at self harm, traditionally there’s been a range of self-harm behaviours that have been measured and women tend to do those behaviours more. The Dunedin Longitudinal Study looked at a wider range of self-harm behaviours including things like excessive working out at the gym until it hurts, punching walls, deliberately reckless driving in the hopes that you’ll get into an accident, those kinds of things and if you include those self-harm behaviours then men and women are actually self-harming at similar rates. DonaldI think there if were a Minister of Men’s Affairs, for example, we’d find there were some significant changes in how and what we collect as statistics both on the Census and when we go out to do research from a government level because I think there is a lack of framing. And it reminds me a bit of that old metaphor, that old story about the ten Indians and the elephant, we’re only looking at a certain portion of the elephant right now and we’re not really consciously searching to improve the wellbeing about half this population and I’d love to see that unfolding. That begs the question of would New Zealand create a Minister of Men’s Affairs? I think that’s highly unlikely, I don’t think men in particular would support that and I don’t think women are advocating for it either so I’m hoping to just work without that and make the changes we can anyway. SallyYou mentioned you don’t think many men would support it, why do you think that might be the case? DonaldWell I think in general men are more likely to not self-advocate as a group, I think guys - whether it’s nature or nurture - are more likely to think independently, they aren’t likely to identify as much with men’s stories maybe until they have it happen themselves and all of a sudden they’re open to a world of pain and then they start getting a bit more interested in men’s issues and that wouldn’t happen until a man is 35 or 40 or so, so once again I think guys are a bit more sceptical. They’d be a bit more sceptical of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs as well. IainMen don’t have the same kind of in-group bias that women have. I’m recalling a study where they did several experiments and they found that women have a bias towards women and men have a bias towards women. DonaldSeeing they’re cared for and seeing their wellbeing. IainThis was a more abstract experiment to see if there was that in-group preference and…DonaldThe women are wonderful effect is how it’s described, you can look it up on Wikipedia. IainThe men don’t have that kind of sisterhood feeling that women have, they don’t identify themselves as men, they more identify themselves possibly about what they do in their work or by their sports team and so there’s not… The identity is not man whereas it seems like women have more of that kind of being part of a big group of women. SteveIt’s really interesting that you mentioned that women are biased towards women and men are biased towards women because again that’s played out in the help-seeking behaviour research that a lot of men are more likely to turn to female friends and female partners for discussions around emotional needs or things like that, they’re not likely to turn to their mates to discuss those things, to other men. So there’s an interesting practical play out in those kinds of things. DonaldThere’s that interesting research the Mental Health Foundation did last year that found that… I think it was 95% of men would support a male friend who approached them for help but only about 65% of men would ask a male friend for help. SteveYeah that’s right, yes. DonaldIt’s a strange dichotomy which wouldn’t show up for women at the same degree at all. SteveAnd I think there’s a cultural thing there and again at a more structural level that culture is also played out in… And it was mentioned before about men in caring professions and things like that. I do work for development training for a mental health service provider, national service provider - it’s one of the things I’m up here in the North Island to do - and I could say without fail that each session I go to you’d get 75%/85% of the people in the room are women so that men are very much in the minority in those caring professions so again it’s played out at a structural level, not just a natural level about who men go to talk to but actually the support services that are there for them are disproportionately loaded towards women as care providers. DonaldSure and I’d say that men’s strongest social setting generally is in the workforce and the workforce has been decimated as let’s say as a social capital, there’s not many people you could reach out to if you’re inside of a bank or an insurance company to say, “Listen Brian, I’m feeling a bit blue today.” Often there’s casualisation, there’s limited contracts, there’s not the 20- or 40-year arrangement that used to exist. While I talked to some of the old chippies and so on, they used to have some beautiful engagement with the older men, bringing them into manhood and they talk about those times quite positively. It wasn’t perfect of course but they actually had fellowship and somebody who they respected who was older often to talk to about something. IainI think we definitely have lost the male space. The Movember Foundation was talking about a while ago, about whether they could incorporate some kind of mental health care into barbers because that’s a place where men go regularly and the barber… If they’ve got the same barber every time then they can sort of monitor them and maybe be able to pass them off to some more professional care if that’s the case. I think they’re still looking at that, I don’t think anything has come of it but that’s the… There’s kind of a male space where that work can happen but those spaces are few and far between. We don’t have working men’s clubs anymore, we have… What are they called? They’re just called clubs. SallyIt’s interesting you mention the barber because I have feeling that… You know there used to be those barbers and hairdressers generally that provided a haircut and a beer and I think that now it’s health and safety hygiene issues, you can’t serve a beer whilst hair is being cut. I know that makes sense on a health and safety level but on the other hand that kind of social environment the barber might have created, that’s been minimised if you can’t also sit there and have the chat. DonaldSure. If you go back 40 or 50 years, all those volunteer clubs as well, those are all gutted now and it’s wonderful the Lions for example are still around, the Freemasons and all of that but I think at that time you were really connected a lot more to other guys through those service clubs. If you were a made man you had to be in one of those and if you were then you were part of a collective code and you were brothers, they would call each other brothers. IainAnd interestingly the suicide rate for men in the ‘50s was about ten per 100,000 and now it’s like 16 per 100,000, 17 per 100,000. DonaldDespite growth in general GDP for every person. Ideally better support, less violent work place settings or less dangerous work place settings. IainAnd we encourage men to talk about their feelings a lot more…DonaldAnd where we are dying even more. IainI don’t know what the cause or relationship is in all those things but it’s just interesting that all the things we’re encouraging men to do and we have a higher rate than…DonaldThan way back when. SteveAnd there were two key things that are often referred to when discussing suicidality, particularly amongst men but actually just more broadly, and one of them is isolation and disconnection and the other one is a sense of futility or a sense of not having a space in the world and I think everything that we’ve just discussed right there is just played out in those two things there. So clearly if the suicide rate is increasing amongst men and suicide is connected to futility and isolation then there’s another conversation needing to be addressed here. SallyI’m wondering as well, based on something you mentioned, Donald, around the workplace once upon a time definitely but perhaps even today still providing that space where men could talk to each other. Do you see an increase in people coming to you once they’ve reached retirement age? DonaldNot at all, no, I think men have kind of come through it there and they probably have… I think they’ve made some resolution of whatever has gone on in their lives. Our age group is more… It opens up around 25, around there, that’s when we get a peak between the age of 25 to 40, that’s our largest demographic. SallyOK well I think we might break in with another song now. We’ve got Steve’s choice: ‘Men’ by Loudon Wainwright III which is obviously very appropriate for our topic today. MUSIC BY LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III – MENSally You’re listening to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton and we’re discussing issues affecting men with Donald Pettitt, Iain Fergusson and Steve Carter. For this final segment, we’re going to think about what is being done, what could still be done, where people could go for help. And I open this discussion by talking about what kind of services are there for men who might be needing help? DonaldWell there are the traditional doorways, the counselling services, mental health services and so on and there is the Canterbury Men’s Centre, we’ve been operating for ten years as I’ve mentioned before. I would say we’re a really good first stop to figure out or phone up if you’re not sure about where you should go. We’ve also got a Blokes Book which is a really good paper resource for people, you can often find it at a doctors’ or phone us up and get some sent over to you. SallyAnd what’s in the Blokes Book? DonaldWell it’s a list of all the different services, different needs that men have whether it’s drug and alcohol, family breakup, depression, a bit of advice about some fun things to do around the city as well for guys. SallyHow about what’s not there or what’s lacking? DonaldOh I could… I think I’d need to sit down and get really creative on that. I think dads going through separation is a huge issue - I’d love to see more care for the men in that situation. I’d like to see another men’s centre in every city in New Zealand; I think there’s a really strong case to be made for that. I’d love to see men’s groups support services especially in smaller cities around Canterbury, Ashburton and Timaru and so on. We’re working on it and we do have one counsellor working out of Ashburton and one working out of Kaiapoi but I’d love to do a lot more for those guys especially. IainWhat do you think about having more outreach into the community because men are isolated from knowing where to go in the first place so you’ve got the Blokes Book but what else, do you think that’s important? DonaldWe’re going to be doing the A&P Show for example, that’s nice but obviously we’ve have to marshal our resources to do even that, it’s quite a big ask. SallyYou mentioned having a counsellor in Ashburton and Kaiapoi, I would imagine that there is a fairly big need in rural New Zealand for support for men. DonaldYes there’s a real need, I think we’re struggling to find male counsellors in that setting. I don’t think counselling is the only support that’s relevant, I think it is a good starting place but I actually believe a lot more in groups of men, in facilitated groups and I’d love to get more of those going. We do have one that’s based at the Men’s Centre called Men’s Line and it’s getting pretty chocka now and that’s great but I think they should be run in three or four parts of the city as well because there is a call for addressing social isolation, helping men make sense of what’s going on and especially it’s a good holding place for a guy who is going through a loss. It could be a relationship, it could be time with their children, it could be loss of a child, loss of a parent, something for… I think there’s critical points in our lives when we’re “hatched, matched and dispatched” is what they say in insurance talk and when guys actually go towards other men, I think they really would benefit from sharing their stories and having men tell their stories about those issues to help them make sense of what’s happened. SteveI’d like to jump in there because I think retelling is really important and as a health promoter and having worked on campaigns that are about promoting discussion so promoting health seeking but actually just promoting discussions around wellbeing so men’s wellbeing, encouraging men to look after their wellbeing, to have more literacy around their wellbeing so to look out for their own triggers and warning signs around decreasing or diminishing wellbeing or that of their friends and then seek…One of the things that we have is men don’t know what they don’t know so they don’t go and seek information from the very start and things like the Blokes Book are really important but men have to go and access them. So I think we’re about to see a new rollout in the next few months I think of the Like Minds, Like Mine campaign. That’s kind of been very quiet for the last few years but I think stigma around mental health and particularly as it relates to men is a huge one, mental health being kind of conflated with weakness or loss of agency and loss of control and that’s why men often don’t like to talk about it and we said while many men would offer support to their friends if they needed it, many men also won’t go and talk to their friends about these kinds of things because they don’t want to be perceived as weak, they don’t want to be perceived as not in control so I think that rollout of Like Minds is going to be really interesting. There are other projects attached to that, the National Depression Initiative so things like Movember again, kind of kicking funding into having a conversation about what is it about Kiwi male culture that needs to change, what is it about Kiwi male culture that needs to be celebrated and how do those things relate to men’s wellbeing? Obviously in this instance there’s a brand new government advocating for increased funding in those kinds of campaigns because then I think we’ll see men accessing the pathways that Donald referred to earlier and seeking support and seeking information when they need it. DonaldI’d point to Mates in Construction as well, as a model that’s starting to break into New Zealand in Auckland, it’s from Australia and it’s about getting people in the workplace mostly guys but in those hardhat settings where the guys are actually taught how to reach out to somebody and they’re taught who is on their crew is the one that they should go to for example. SteveAnd the NZ Rugby Union has put together a really great website called Headspace which is… I mean, again getting at men particularly in the spaces that they inhabit so team sports and that kind of culture so that’s also promoting mateship and promoting that kind of buddying and team culture that we want to see more of. I think we’re starting to kind of chip away now and see that awareness is increasing so just more of it - I said it right at the beginning and just reiterate that now. We just need to have more of these conversations. IainOne of the things I find interesting about the conversations we have is how we talk about men and men’s issues. I think a lot of the time we focus on what men can do or what men aren’t doing and not so much about how the systems we have suit men or don’t suit men. DonaldYeah when men have a problem it’s men’s problem whereas when women have a problem it’s everybody’s problem, is it a different framing of it? IainYeah well one of the things that I liken it to is if you had a group of refugees or something coming into the country and they weren’t fitting in then it would be like well the services aren’t working for the refugees, our services are no good but when we talk about men often we frame it as in terms of well men aren’t accessing the services and men aren’t doing this or that. DonaldThat’s right, there’s not that ownership by the health professionals or the structures. IainSo there needs to be both approaches but I think we tend to lean on expecting men to do something…DonaldBe changed. IainAnd we’re talking about men who are actually in a vulnerable position, who probably aren’t at 100%, who aren’t in a position to always do the work that we’re expecting of them. SteveI think also a lot of the discourse is just negative, the ways that men are portrayed tend to be negative in the context of this radical cultural shift around identities and things we tend to portray men really negatively and we need to get back to celebrating the great things that masculinity brings to society instead of being down on men or down on masculinity and constantly making the connection between masculinity and violence for instance, there’s a whole range of those kind of conflations really. We need to be celebrating all the positive aspects of masculinity as well so that men are able to step into a strong identity of fathers and brothers and workmates and all of those kinds of things. IainI definitely agree with that. SallyActually that seems like a really lovely point to be ending on, a positive end and the theme for this year’s International Men’s Day I noticed is Celebrating Men and Boys so perfect in that respect. Before we wrap up, any final comments? DonaldI think of men’s rights as emerging from a 500-year long journey of democratisation of society, this is just another step. It’s wonderful to be part of it.IainIn terms of celebrating men, I’d like to say when we think about the things men have done and accomplished and provide for society like it’s overwhelmingly men who hold together the infrastructure of society. The fact that we’re living in a place where we can have warm, dry homes with electricity, we can connect to the internet and all of those things are held together by men who are willing to go out on a rainy night, climb up a pole, put the power back on. This is something… When we’re talking about celebrating men there’s one of the things that we’re celebrating is men holding the infrastructure together. I think it’s important to recognise that. SallySure. And Steve? SteveNo I think it’s really been covered. I guess probably in the context of rights as a lawyer and someone with a longstanding interest in human rights, I think it’s just important to say that human rights is exactly that, it’s human rights. It should never be the rights of one group to the exclusion of other. What we’re trying to do is level the playing field for everyone and we don’t level the playing… We level the playing field by raising up those people who are living in inequitable circumstances not by dragging down those who seem to have more power and more influence. So I think levelling the playing field so that we all have human rights is really important to acknowledge and I think that’s where you came in, Sally, is to say that we don’t have one to the exclusion of the other, what we’re trying to do and the main aim really, the main project of society is to bring out the greatest wellbeing for the greatest number of people because that’s a kind of very utilitarian way to end it. SallyGreat, perfect thought, lovely sentiment. Just if you’re listening to this don’t forget we’ve got Facebook and Twitter and we can put up some of the resources that you guys have been mentioning but the Like Minds campaign, Mates in Construction, this rugby union website that you mentioned as well, those sorts of things can all be up there and you can also find a transcript if you’d prefer to read it. I’d like to say kia ora, thank you so much guys for coming in, this has been a really wide -ranging and informative discussion and hopefully some of our listeners will go away thinking a bit more deeply about some of these issues. IainThank you Sally. DonaldYeah it’s been good. SteveCheers. ................
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