Reader’s Opinion | Men’s well-being is not women’s responsibility

Opinion|Reader’s opinion

Doctor of research Joona Räsänen wrote (HS Vierakynä 28.1.) about men’s sexual loneliness. The topic is current and important, but it is too often discussed in such a way that women are held responsible for men’s nausea. This requires a clear social change: men’s well-being is not women’s responsibility.

Finland is the most violent country in the EU for women. Lack of sex does not make any man violent, but misogynistic attitudes might. Men’s emotional skills must be strengthened and diversified so that they can take better responsibility for their own emotional regulation and thus create non-violent, meaningful human relationships. Achieving this requires action starting from early childhood education and basic education.

In addition, it would be important to understand where misogynistic attitudes stem from: for example, in male-dominated online communities, increasing equality and women’s ability to choose a partner of their choice is seen as a problem. We talk coldly about “market value” and mate selection as a determinant of social power. Instead of intimacy, connection and expression of feelings, sex and women are only treated as tools to relieve pressure. Society can offer support, but ultimately the responsibility for dismantling these thought patterns that increase nausea lies with the men themselves.

Meaningful intimate relationships include, for example, mutual mental presence, conversational ability and the ability to reflect on one’s own feelings. Sex is not anyone’s right or duty, and women are not commodities measured by the Gini coefficient, as Räsänen suggests in his writing, but people who have the right to live without men’s violence against them.

Ville Savonlahti

chairman, feminist men’s organization Miehet ry

The reader’s opinions are speeches written by HS readers, selected and edited by the HS editorial board. You can leave an opinion piece or familiarize yourself with the principles of writing at the address www.hs.fi/kiryotamielipidekeisuis/.