Masculinity - to Vice President Biden

(sent separately via email)

Dear Vice President Biden,

Your efforts on behalf of women related to domestic violence and other related violence against girls and women has been greatly appreciated by many women and men!

At the same time I wonder when you will recognize a Huge problem we have in the U.S. and indeed worldwide that I might label "The Masculinity Epidemic". We, males, die at higher rates than females do from birth on. Strangely though, the rates of difference peak as we become teenagers and don't let up until we are past our mid-20's and move towards "middle age".

It should be noted that we learn to be violent in disproportionate numbers and direct our violence at women (as you've ably noted), but also at other men and boys as we learn to "be a man" in so many ways.

Our problems undoubtedly begin in the home as we learn to keep our feelings to ourselves and be independent of others. In school we disproportionately have learning problems and commonly adapt to the structure of schooling with more difficulties than girls have.

As teenagers we learn not to seek help for our issues and besides being aggressive we also are too commonly suicidal. As we grow into manhood we continue to avoid finding help for our problems, whether they are personal or medical issues.

A significant percentage of men carry scars from trauma or abuse. Stacey Bellem of The Unifying Center (http://theunifyingcenter.org) is one of the few people I know of who is seriously attempting to reach us as men to help heal us.

We should continue efforts such as you are making to societally support female survivors of abuse! We should not make efforts on behalf of boys and men at the expense of efforts for women and girls.

I have created a website: http://www.AMensProject.com - A Men's Project - to try to encourage positive, affirming efforts to help men and boys.

I hope that you will both continue your efforts on behalf of women and begin to also reach out to help boys and men in a variety of ways. Each effort will help support the other.

Thanks!

George Marx

p.s. - I'd be most happy to help in any area related to what I've written above now or at any time in the future