Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

Remember, you are human, it's OK to not be OK. Life can be very difficult and there's no how-to guide for any of this. Try to be kind to yourself and remember that people need people. No one is a lone island and you need not struggle alone. Remember to practice self-care and alone time as well. You can't pour from an empty cup and your life is worth it.

Take a moment to check in with a loved one, friend, or acquaintance. Ask them how they're doing, ask them about their mental health. Keep in mind that while we may not all be mentally ill, we all have mental health.

If you find yourself in particular struggling to go on, please take a moment to read and reflect on this poem.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This mental health check-in thread is NOT a substitute for real-world professional help/support. MensLib is NOT a mental health support sub, and we are NOT professionals! This space solely exists to hold space for the community and help keep each other accountable.

Welcome to our weekly Free Talk Friday thread! Feel free to discuss anything on your mind, issues you may be dealing with, how your week has been, cool new music or tv shows, school, work, sports, anything!

We will still have a few rules:

• All of the sidebar rules still apply.
• No gender politics. The exception is for people discussing their own personal issues that may be gendered in nature. We won't be too strict with this rule but just keep in mind the primary goal is to keep this thread no-pressure, supportive, fun, and a way for people to get to know each other better.
• Any other topic is allowed.

We have an active slack channel! It's like IRC but better. Please modmail us if you would like an invitation. As a reminder, take a look at our resources wiki if you need additional support as well.

Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

Remember, you are human, it's OK to not be OK. Life can be very difficult and there's no how-to guide for any of this. Try to be kind to yourself and remember that people need people. No one is a lone island and you need not struggle alone. Remember to practice self-care and alone time as well. You can't pour from an empty cup and your life is worth it.

Take a moment to check in with a loved one, friend, or acquaintance. Ask them how they're doing, ask them about their mental health. Keep in mind that while we may not all be mentally ill, we all have mental health.

If you find yourself in particular struggling to go on, please take a moment to read and reflect on this poem.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This mental health check-in thread is NOT a substitute for real-world professional help/support. MensLib is NOT a mental health support sub, and we are NOT professionals! This space solely exists to hold space for the community and help keep each other accountable.

From an organizer with Right to Be:

Friday, Dec 6th is Canada's National Day of Action and Remembrance on Violence against Women.

I'm offering 2 free bystander intervention webinars that day - 1 in English et un en français.

Come learn community care so we can have safer communities.

Links to webinar in English et en Français: https://linktr.ee/julieslalonde

More training sessions: https://righttobe.org/upcoming-free-trainings/

More reading on the 5Ds of Bystander Intervention: https://righttobe.org/guides/bystander-intervention-training/

What the workshop specifically focused on is that the typical portrayed intervention type in video clips, direct, is far from the only tool and that distract is typically more effective. Direct also needs to focus on the target of the harasser to avoid escalation.

Welcome to our weekly Free Talk Friday thread! Feel free to discuss anything on your mind, issues you may be dealing with, how your week has been, cool new music or tv shows, school, work, sports, anything!

We will still have a few rules:

• All of the sidebar rules still apply.
• No gender politics. The exception is for people discussing their own personal issues that may be gendered in nature. We won't be too strict with this rule but just keep in mind the primary goal is to keep this thread no-pressure, supportive, fun, and a way for people to get to know each other better.
• Any other topic is allowed.

We have an active slack channel! It's like IRC but better. Please modmail us if you would like an invitation. As a reminder, take a look at our resources wiki if you need additional support as well.

I just saw this article with the headline "The 'your body, my choice' movement is sweeping the world. What can parents do to raise healthy, thriving boys?"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-23/your-body-my-choice-parenting-young-boys/104623442

Most of the article is about how to raise healthy, thriving boys which is all well and good, but the framing of it made me deeply uncomfortable, and I would argue that more often than not the framing is more important than the content.

A movement? Sure the misogynist right has been emboldened by Trump's victory, but this is at most a meme belonging to those circles. I know it's received a lot of media coverage, but this doesn't change the fact that at the base level it's a bunch of hot air. Not only that, this free publicity is legitimising it and expanding its reach.

But the real issue is that this alarmism is in service of a reactive, polarised view of masculinity. What the writer, Gemma Breen, is effectively saying in this article is that parents should embrace the inculcation of positive masculinity because the alternative is that boys will grow up to be misogynists. This effectively parallels the losing strategy of the Democratic Party. I'm not saying that there aren't serious problems with the behaviour of men and ideas about masculinity today, but making the idea that "we're the only thing standing between you and the bad guys" your main message is effectively saying that you have few substantive principles and are in fact parasitic on the other side. And by generating this phantasmatic enemy that we need to rally against, it embraces a false dichotomy of masculinity that moves between negative and positive versions of it. This is what we're effectively doing by constantly returning to the idea that masculinity is in crisis, as opposed to grounding ourselves in our values. Once you've adopted this position, no kind of call to be a "good man" will achieve its intended purpose, because in its efforts to ward off the alternative it closes off the dynamism required to be a good person.

"Dr Seidler says little boys are simply good men waiting to flourish, and we need to offer them the space, love and warmth to do that."

How about embracing men's and boys' liberation for its own sake? How about hearing all of these calls to be different kinds of men and just...walking away? Realising that they don't speak to us, they're not meant for us, and that we are driven by our desires and values as people prior to adopting an identity as a boy or man? What kind of parenting would foster that attitude?

Good day, everyone and welcome to our weekly mental health check-in thread! Feel free to comment below with how you are doing, as well as any coping skills and self-care strategies others can try! For information on mental health resources and support, feel free to consult our resources wiki (also located in the sidebar!) (IMPORTANT NOTE RE: THE RESOURCES WIKI: As Reddit is a global community, we hope our list of resources are diverse enough to better serve our community. As such, if you live in a country and/or geographic region that is NOT listed/represented but know of a local resource you feel would be beneficial, then please don't hesitate to let us know!)

Remember, you are human, it's OK to not be OK. Life can be very difficult and there's no how-to guide for any of this. Try to be kind to yourself and remember that people need people. No one is a lone island and you need not struggle alone. Remember to practice self-care and alone time as well. You can't pour from an empty cup and your life is worth it.

Take a moment to check in with a loved one, friend, or acquaintance. Ask them how they're doing, ask them about their mental health. Keep in mind that while we may not all be mentally ill, we all have mental health.

If you find yourself in particular struggling to go on, please take a moment to read and reflect on this poem.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: This mental health check-in thread is NOT a substitute for real-world professional help/support. MensLib is NOT a mental health support sub, and we are NOT professionals! This space solely exists to hold space for the community and help keep each other accountable.