Stop asking me ‘what about men?’

Just stop.

Recently I have been getting increasingly frustrated with ‘whataboutery’ every single time I write or speak about women or girls. 

For those of you who don’t know what that word means, ‘whataboutery’ is when someone responds to a difficult issue or question with a counter issue or question that completely derails the conversation. 

Example:
Mai: My research focussed on the murder of women in Yemen 
Randomer: Uh, this is a bit sexist. What about the murder of men in Yemen? Don’t you care about men? 

Example 2: 
Pam: I’m really concerned about the way women’s mental health will be used against them when they report abuse
Randomer: What about men? They get their mental health used against them too!

Familiar with that? Yep? Thought you might be. Sometimes reminds me of gaslighting. 

Okay, so back to the rage. Rage that I need to put in context for this article to make a jot of sense. 

Almost 10 years ago, a male family member died after we had tried everything to help him and begged every agency and service for help. We got the dreaded phone call from police to say they had found a body. It was his. We had to go and identify him. He was struggling with addiction, homelessness, and a very complicated trauma history. 

At his wake, we decided to set up a charity for male mental health and well-being.

So in 2013 we founded the charity, and I volunteered to lead it for 6 years on top of my job, and my PhD (I don’t know how I did it either!)

As part of that voluntary role, I also worked frontline supporting men in significant distress, street homelessness, abuse, isolation, trauma and mental health. Additionally, I set up a soup kitchen for all of the men who were street homeless. I worked all hours of the day and night, not only doing the work, cooking in the soup kitchen, supporting men who needed to talk about everything from being abused to hearing voices, (even on Christmas Day), but also to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds to fund the services. I learned to write bids and applications, and managed to transform a derelict old building into a busy mental health service for men.

The team grew, and saw hundreds of men a year who benefitted from completely free, lifelong support including counselling, benefits advice, food parcels, housing advocacy, legal advice, IT suite, music and band practice, employment clubs and training courses, fitness clubs, art therapy and so on.

Why am I telling you this? 

Because in those 6 years that I was there, I NEVER received the amount of abuse and ‘whataboutery’ that I get for my work and research with women and girls. 

Most of you probably know me for my work with women and girls, which I have dedicated the last 14 years of my life to. I have always worked with women and girls, since I was 19 years old. I have written two bestselling books, ‘Why Women Are Blamed for Everything’ (2020) and ‘Sexy But Psycho: How Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them’ (2022). I am the CEO of international training, research and consultancy service, VictimFocus. We work hard to challenge and change misogyny, victim blaming and pathologisation of women and girls who have been subjected to abuse, trauma, distress and violence.

My PhD focussed on the psychology of victim blaming and self blame of women and girls in society which includes one of the largest ever literature reviews of every factor in society that supports victim blaming of women and girls.

I have a career history in rape centre management and criminal justice management of vulnerable and intimidated witness programmes, which is where I built my experience and knowledge of sexual violence, homicides, trafficking and other serious crimes across my courts. 

I have a large social media following of over 250k and a weekly reach of around 1-3 million. I talk about issues in society and psychology that impact and harm women and girls every day.

And I honestly cannot express how much whataboutery I get. 

Here are some real examples: 

‘Don’t you think you’re being sexist by only writing about women in this article?’

‘This article is good but where are your studies on men?’ 

‘I don’t condone murder but don’t you think you are gender biased, only caring about the murders of women?’ 

‘You can tell the psychologist who wrote this study is a sexist bitch who hates men’

‘This study was ridiculous. All you care about is women! What about men?’

‘You should have your PhD removed. This is so sexist. None of your research is about men.’

‘By only caring about women, you basically say that all men are rapists.’

‘This is great Jessica! But I wonder if you can now build one of these for boys and men and why they aren’t included in the first place?’

‘Why do you only focus on women? Men can get abused as well, you know!’

‘What about men, cunt?’

Honestly, I could go on forever and ever. 

In fact, I did one study where there was a free text question at the end and a whopping 9% of respondents chose to use that box to criticise me for not researching men. I say whopping because the free text box didn’t even ask them a question about that and 63 people still managed to use the box to whack in some ‘whataboutery’. 

Not only that but a further 14% (over 90 people) left comments that were just plain nasty or abusive. One guy told me that my work was shit and he hopes I fail my PhD. And then left his full name and job title. He was an academic at a university. In my field. He even put some kisses on. 
And what perplexes me about all of this, is that I had no such experiences of working in male mental health.

I can’t tell you about the hundreds of messages or tweets I got asking ‘what about women?’ - because it never happened. 

I don’t have any stories about the times we got sent a tonne of abuse when we conducted research with general public in the community about male mental health stigma - because it never happened. 

I don’t have any stories of giving speeches or workshops about male mental health in which a delegate totally derailed the session to make it all about women.

I don’t have any experiences of authorities or commissioners asking me to remove the training content about the experiences of men being abused because ‘it might offend women’.

I have never been interrogated or questioned about why I didn’t include women in the service I set up for men. No one asked me why I wasn’t being ‘inclusive’.

Every funder and commissioner we worked with thanked me profusely for setting up a service just for men.

I could switch over to the social media account for the male mental health centre and write literally anything about the experiences of men, and nothing bad would ever happen. Our social media had thousands of followers and we never got threats, abuse or whataboutery. 

Even back when my Facebook page was only on a few hundred followers, and I would get between 10-20 abusive messages and comments a week - almost exclusively comments about me focusing on women and girls - which usually resulted in me being called a ‘fat, ugly feminist cunt’ or something along those eloquent lines. 

Fast forward to 2023 with 250k social media followers and the levels of abuse, the rape threats, death threats, lies, harassment, stalking, violence, and obsession with me is out of all control. I don’t read most of my notifications or inbox messages. I have thousands of unread notifications and messages. My moderation assist filters out or hides around 20-30 abusive and violent comments to me every day.

And so this all caused me to reflect. 

Why didn’t I get any abuse when I gave speeches and wrote about men and boys? 
Why was I hailed? 

Why did we win 6 charity awards and over £300k in the first 18 months of operation? 

Why did I end up on every TV channel and radio in the UK?

Why could I launch studies and campaigns and videos and appeals about male mental health and receive ZERO whataboutery comments?

And why do I get shouted down if I even dare post one tweet about violence against women or rape statistics or murders of women by partners? 

Why do I get hundreds of messages and tweets every week asking me:
‘But what about men?’ 

And actually, this isn’t rocket science. This is uncomfortable but it’s real talk:

Women are socialised into their gender roles (gender roles are harmful, narrow, stereotypical characteristics and expectations assigned to males and females to conform to a societal norm) to not even possess a shred of the sense of entitlement that men have. Women do not read a campaign about male mental health or male abuse or male cancers and furiously tweet back ‘what about women, you cunt?!’ because they didn’t think about themselves when they read it. They didn’t see the campaign as two fingers up to women.

Perfect example: Movember. 

Have you EVER in your life seen women kicking off that Movember is sexist? Or that the campaign should include women? Or that focusing on testicular cancer is exclusionary? No. Have you fuck. 

Second example: Male suicide rates. 

We know that the leading cause of death in young men aged 18-35 is suicide. This is the strongest symptom of a patriarchal society where emotionless males struggle to cope with trauma and feelings, can’t open up, don’t feel safe to talk and become completely overwhelmed by emotions they are taught are ‘feminine’, which further induces shame and stigma. 
In all my years I have never seen women jump on those campaigns yelling ‘women commit suicide too, you know!!’ Or ‘what about women?’ 

Switch it over. Women’s marches. Pussy hats. IWD. Counting dead women. VAWG strategies. Women’s health screening. Women’s reproductive health. Women’s mental health. Rape campaigns. #metoo. 

There is ALWAYS someone saying ‘what about men though?’ under all of those issues. It’s as sure as taxes and death. 

Like a depressing new catchphrase nobody wants:

‘There’s only three things you can be certain of in life: taxes, death and some randomer yelling ‘what about men?’ every time you talk about women’s issues.’

‘Whataboutery’ comes from a place of misogyny. An arrogant, derailing technique used to respond to a campaign, video, research study, intervention, organisation or communication that screams ‘I don’t care about women, talk about men!!’ 

And the proof is in the pudding for me. Because when I did all those things with a focus on boys and men, I was a fucking hero.

But when I do all of those things and focus on girls and women, I’m a fat, ugly feminist cunt. 

So I need to explain something else. This is not about equality. ‘Whataboutery’ has nothing to do with equality. It’s not about reminding us that men suffer, too. Social issues aren’t equal. 

When I write a tweet about women being murdered or raped, I didn’t forget men. I didn’t forget they could be murdered or raped. I didn’t accidentally miss them off my tweet. I simply CHOSE to talk about the experiences of females. It is not helpful, or clever, or promoting ‘equality’ to write to a psychologist specialising in women’s issues and tell her in three paragraphs why she should focus on men. 

It is not useful to ‘send a gentle reminder that men can get raped too, you know’. 
If you’re reading this and you know you have done this to someone, please think twice before doing it again. It’s not helpful. It’s derailing. 

We do not need to centre men in every conversation we have. Women and girls are valid entities, independent from men.
We need to get to a point where we can talk about women’s issues and get the same level of respect we get when we talk about men’s issues. 

Until then, your ‘Whataboutery’ is unwelcome here. 

What about that?