‘Women’s Problems Are Everyone’s Problem,but Men’s Problems Are Their Own’—Anti-feminist Meaning-making in Affective Discourses on Young Men’s Mental Health

Data

Our analysis is based on two data sets: survey data and Reddit discussion. As the survey data lacked depth in emotional expression and Reddit data lacked representativeness, combining the two data sets allows us to understand the broader spectrum of nuances in the discourses of gender equality, anti-feminism and men’s mental health in different contexts.

The first data set is from an anonymous survey conducted in November 2020 by the Family Federation of Finland and Nyyti ry ¹ for their project to promote young men’s mental health. The survey ‘Young men—How are you?’ focused on the perspectives of young men on their own mental health and on the broader societal attitudes towards men’s mental health. Distributed on the websites and social media channels of the surveyors and their collaborators, the survey reached 975 participants, of whom 91% were between the age range 15 and 34 years, and 92% were men.

The survey comprised four Likert-scale matrices, four multiple-choice questions (each offering an open-ended option of ‘something else, what?’) and three open-ended questions. The multiple-choice questions addressed what young men see as the most significant obstacles to men seeking and getting support, reasons for the potential deterioration of young men’s mental health, the most useful services to improve young men’s mental health and the ways men’s mental health is addressed in public. The open-ended questions addressed the importance of anonymity in mental health services, other important features of such services and ‘what else would you like to say’. To enable a qualitative approach, we chose the responses to the seven open-ended questions for analysis. They had in total 924 answers, varying from one word to several paragraphs. The Likert-scale matrices, which we excluded from our data, were on a scale of strongly disagree to strongly agree and addressed possible changes in the respondents’ behaviour in the past month, how men’s mental health has concerned them in the past year, the importance of different features of mental health services and statements about men and their mental health. Extracts from data set 1 are indicated with code Q/2020.

The second data set is from the social network Reddit, an anonymous social platform used as a discussion forum to post and comment on any topic imaginable (Proferes et al., 2021). Our focus was on the subreddit r/Suomi. The subreddit is meant primarily for discussions about Finland in Finnish, but is not limited to any certain topic, unlike many other subreddits. A survey conducted by r/Suomi in 2021 (n = 1,145) revealed that most of its users are relatively young (39.5% under 25 years, 43.2% aged 26–35) and mostly male (80.2%) (Reddit r/Suomi, 2021), which follows international trends of Reddit users (Proferes et al., 2021).

The second data set was produced in September 2023 by the first author. Using combinations of Finnish search words ‘mental health’, ‘well-being’, ‘youth’, ‘men’ and ‘gender’, the relevant threads were found. Discussion threads from a span of five years (2018–2023) were included in the data set, resulting in 38 threads and 3,705 comments, ranging from one sentence to several paragraphs in length. As Reddit is user-created and user-moderated, subreddits vary significantly in terms of what they allow (Proferes et al., 2021), which can enable unfiltered, antagonistic and polarized discussions. To account for this, we removed multiple comments by the same user on the same topic from our data, as well as threads that we interpreted to have been posted as mere provocation and continued the same line and/or were contributed to by only a few users. Twenty-nine discussion threads started with an article or a column linked from a Finnish newspaper discussing youth mental health issues or services, youth (un)employment, the Finnish military service (compulsory for every male Finnish citizen over 18 years of age) and its connections to men’s well-being and equality, or public figures or researchers raising concern over youth well-being or boys’ positions in society. Eight threads were started by a Reddit user sharing experiences or opinions on mental health services or issues or men’s inequal treatment in society, and one thread commented on a post about men’s mental health from another social media platform. Extracts from data set 2 are followed by the number of each discussion thread and year of publication (e.g., DT3/2018). The extracts have been translated and paraphrased to ensure the anonymity of the Reddit users and to meet the GDPR requirements for anonymous processing of personal data.

We have followed the ethical principles of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (2019). According to these national guidelines (p. 61), this study does not require a formal ethical review.

Method and Analysis

The first author started the process of analysing with reiterated readings of both data sets and making initial notes. After familiarization, she coded both data sets based on sentiments in the data. Then, codes that related to one another were grouped together, and these clusters were studied and named. Finally, the clusters were developed into themes to represent broader sentiments in the data. The analysis followed a data-driven approach, meaning that the codes and themes were mainly developed inductively (Saldan˜a, 2013).

Two of the most prominent themes revolved around anti-feminist rhetoric and men’s exclusion. In the survey data, ‘women’ or ‘feminists’ were repeatably named as a reason for the possible deterioration of young men’s mental health, although the questions or answer options did not include mentions of gender equality or intimate relationships. Similarly, many of the Reddit threads that started discussing youth mental health in a more neutral tone often drifted towards anti-feminist rhetoric. Intrigued by these similarities and after continuing the analysis together, these two interconnected themes were refined and selected for a deeper analysis. Other common themes in the data focused on advice on how to improve one’s well-being, wishes to break the stigma of mental health issues and Finnish military service.

During the first stage of the joint analysis, particular interest was paid to the emotionally rich sentiments in the data. To analyse these further, inspired by fellow critical men and masculinity scholars de Boise (2018) and Hyvönen (2023),the aim was to utilize Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) notion of affective–discursive practices and Sara Ahmed’s (2010) ‘happy objects’ for the second stage of the analysis. After reiterated readings of the data sets, Lauren Berlant’s (2011) ‘cruel optimism’ was included as an analytical concept because, alongside happy objects, it captured something essential from our data about what kinds of objects are constructed as desirable but can turn detrimental to the desirer and the affective circulations surrounding the actors enabling or hindering the realization of these desires.

The conceptualization of affective–discursive practice (Wetherell, 2012) understands affects and discourse as inseparable, reinforcing each other, together contributing to meaning-making. Therefore, affect is not merely an emotion inside the self, but entangled in discourses, understood as performative, social and patterned in nature. Affects are rarely performed through explicitly describing one’s own or others’ feelings or emotions, but instead as evaluations and significations of events (Wetherell, 2012, p. 72).

According to de Boise (2018), not only affects are embodied and relational in interactions and relation to others but ‘affect can also be generated through, and in relation to, imaginary discursive positions’ (p. 168). Here, Ahmed’s (2010) concept of happy objects works to shed light on the ways discourses work to produce affects and the affective connections people make with the world around them. With happy objects, we examined the objects which are associated with the promise of happiness; as this promise gets distributed through affective narratives, it guides our perception of objects, experiences, bodies or situations as good or bad and directs our attention and actions towards them, with the presumption of future happiness. This way, affect inseparably involves material and discursive processes, shaping the ways in which it circulates and is mobilized by and against certain objects or causes (Ahmed, 2010; de Boise, 2018).

Drawing on Berlant’s (2011) ‘cruel optimism’, we considered how the discourses of gender and mental health are associated with a promise of happiness but get turned into cruel optimism. For Berlant, ‘cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing’ (2011, p. 1). This occurs because the object of desire, while offering hope, binds individuals to precarious conditions in which those promises become increasingly untenable. Consequently, the continuous pursuit for happiness can become harmful to the pursuer and a distraction from observing the conditions in which the distress is produced.

With this methodological lens, we asked from the data: (a) What are the characteristics of the discourses on mental health, gender equality and men’s positions constructed in the data? and (b) How do affective components interact within these discourses?

Both the survey answers and the discussion forum threads were in Finnish. The translations were done by the first author. The chosen extracts in the results are individual responses, selected for their ability to encapsulate key themes within the presented discourses.

Next, we discuss our results in two interconnected empirical chapters. The first one addresses the affective–discursive anti-feminist reactions in the context of men’s mental health. The second one focuses on the reproduction of binary gender differences with the perception of mental health discourses and services as an ‘arena of women’. After the results, we discuss the significance and implications of our findings.

Anti-feminism, Resentment and Victimhood

In this section, we address the ways discourses of men’s mental health in Finland were seen as entangled with and influenced by the feminist movement, exhibiting anti-feminist rhetoric similar to the manosphere (see Botto & Gottzén, 2023; Saresma, 2014). This discourse positioned men as ‘victims of feminism’ and consisted of a combination of affects, such as frustration, resentment and anger, mobilized against the feminist movement. This rhetoric was prevalent in both data sets. However, the Reddit discussions were more nuanced, including more rationalizing of and opposition to anti-feminism than the survey data.

In line with previous research (Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012; Saresma, 2017; Venäläinen, 2022), the respondents considered that the continuous strive for gender equality has left young men in the margins and feminism was the reason for men being disregarded by society. This discourse echoed the Finnish self-identity as an egalitarian nation, rendering the contemporary feminist movement redundant or as ‘oppression of men’. Both through aggressive statements of feminists hating men and with a more rational tone indicating how feminists focus on imaginary problems when there are real issues in the world, this rhetoric involved a lot of potential to strengthen the collective affects of resentment and injustice. In Reddit, these affective discourses were often supported by providing evidence from outside sources, such as research articles or interviews with experts, used to legitimize men’s victim position as factual. Moreover, the responses in both data sets often implied a shared knowledge of feminists’ ‘irrationality’ with rhetorical means of exaggeration and placing quotation marks around ‘women’s problems’ or ‘promoters of equality’ when talking about feminists.

With belligerent statements of feminists and women—often used as synonyms—intentionally ignoring men’s issues, the respondents built an image of feminism as an enemy of ‘real equality’. The data contained several references to a (fictitious) past of ‘traditional’ gender order that has been ruined by the feminist agenda (see Saresma, 2017). Following Blais and Dupuis-Déri (2012), men were positioned to be in crisis due to the ‘toxic feminism’ in society. This was built on exaggerated affective descriptions of how men, especially young men, are ‘always’ or ‘only’ seen as harmful and problematic, which has created an atmosphere where they need to be ashamed or sorry for being men. Furthermore, both data sets contained similar repeated notions of feminists only caring about men’s issues when they become a problem for women, or at least are ‘conveniently framed as women’s problems’, casting men as marginalized figures in public discourse.

This disregard and contempt of men’s issues from society was seen to weaken the mental health of young men. In the Reddit discussions, feminism was seen as widespread and infiltrated into every aspect of society, including most media and politics, leading to men’s inequal treatment. In the survey answers, men’s perceived inequality was attributed more to men’s systemic discrimination in contemporary society, positioning men as the new gender victims. Furthermore, misogyny permeated the survey responses more explicitly, where ‘women’ were repeatedly identified—alongside feminism and societal attitudes—as the root cause of young men’s ill-being. On the one hand, the answers echoed a sense of being excluded and recurring concern about the perceived lack of public discussion about men’s ill-being. On the other hand, this victim rhetoric positioned individual men’s grievances against feminist critiques, mobilizing sympathy towards men and diverting attention from structural inequalities that maintain gender hierarchies. Both data sets revealed striking similarities in how feminism was predominantly understood as a homogenous ‘anti-men’ movement, either as actively silencing anyone who acknowledges men’s issues or as a reason why men’s issues are not publicly discussed, since they are not the primary focus of feminism. By framing the feminist movements as inherently discriminatory and unnecessary, this rhetoric can be seen, echoing Chouliaraki (2021), as the use of power and a tactical claim to victimhood, aiming to silence and delegitimize those who acknowledge gender equality issues in ‘egalitarian’ Finland.

This discourse, exemplified in the extracts above, illustrated how feminists were seen to portray men and masculinity as inherently bad and especially ‘white, heterosexual men’ as the root cause of countless problems, often implicating that the category of ‘men’ mainly applies to white, heterosexual men. This victim rhetoric, distinctive in both data sets, also displayed a strongly misinterpreted understanding of the concept of privilege, as if privilege would mean that one never has any problems or obstacles in life. Claiming men as privileged was seen to place them as responsible to manage their problems on their own without help from others or society. This type of understanding of privilege evoked affective potential for rage and resentment, mobilized towards the feminist movement. The affective descriptions of neglect across both data sets were utilized to justify and strengthen the anti-feminist discourses as factual, demonstrating the circular effects of affect and discourse (Wetherell, 2012).

Many respondents also criticized the tendency to attribute men’s problems to their personal qualities and behaviour, if they get recognized at all. This can be interpreted as critique towards therapeutic culture, which emphasizes individual solutions over broader social contexts.

However, the individualized focus we interpreted from the data was seen to apply only to men. The respondents perceived women’s issues to be addressed as structural gender equality questions that are considered a matter of collective responsibility. Consequently, the data accentuated an urgent need to recognize men’s mental health as a societal equality issue, while paradoxically most of the articles linked to Reddit did exactly that. The respondents described how the social norms around ‘traditional’ masculinity limit men’s possibilities and willingness to address topics such as mental health, especially publicly. Thus, both data sets included explicit declarations that feminists should take care of men’s problems, presented as an act for equality. This way, feminists were paradoxically positioned to blame for and to solve men’s issues. Simultaneously, feminists were often positioned as ‘the other’, highlighting their partiality towards or ignorance of the nuances of men’s experiences and challenges in society.

Both data sets also contained some critique towards the gendered oppositions and anti-feminist rhetoric the respondents had observed in society. On Reddit this was frequently brought up as a response to other commenters and often backed with a statement that the writer himself is a man and a feminist. The survey answers mainly criticized the opposition of men’s and women’s issues, whereas in Reddit, men were seen to victimize themselves and to purposefully misinterpret feminists who are raising awareness of the problems that influence everyone. The respondents considered this as a way to hinder the awareness of the real issues men face in everyday life.

The pervasive framing of the feminist movement as the reason for young men’s ill-being and victim positions exemplifies Berlant’s (2011) cruel optimism, as it created a fond attachment to a ‘traditional’ gender order where the limited, conservative ideas of gender are seen as a source for happiness and a simpler life. This way, the fictitious past of ‘traditional’ gender hierarchy becomes a happy object (Ahmed, 2010), seen as hindered by the contemporary ideals of equality and pursued through the condemnation of feminism as unnecessary and harmful. As cruel optimism maintains ‘an attachment to a significantly problematic object’ (Berlant, 2011, p. 24), the ‘traditional’ gender order becomes a form of cruel optimism, governed by the fear of losing masculinity and power and privileges historically associated with it (see Allan, 2018), as this attachment tends to cultivate rage and resistance towards gender equality and maintain an old-fashioned, restrictive image of ‘masculine men’. The idealized past is portrayed as a solution to contemporary uncertainties, decontextualizing the precarities of a neoliberal, competitive society (Brown, 2019; Brunila & Ylöstalo, 2020) and placing blame on feminists and their strive for gender equality.

Feminized Mental Health and Gender Essentialism

In this section, we examine how mental health discourses and services were viewed as inherently gendered as feminine, aimed at women or minorities—a group constructed as excluding men—and to oversimplify men’s issues. Utilizing a gendered logic of mental health, this discourse reproduced essentialist ideas of gender and masculinity, directing focus towards gendered oppositions. While the survey data contained more explicit references to mental health services due to the nature of the questions, similar notions of gendered differences in emotional expression emerged across both data sets.

This discourse revolved around the perception that nobody cares about men’s mental health, as media was seen to treat men unequally and portray women as ‘more affected by mental health’. Both data sets displayed collective frustration towards the affective rhetoric utilized when men’s mental health is discussed in public. This included descriptions of experts laughing at men’s suicides on TV, aggressive and accusatory talk about ‘marginalized, violent men’, ‘shouting’ about incels, patriarchy or ‘men who just slack off and do nothing for themselves or the society’. This was seen to elicit gendered shame when discussing mental health, as especially young men were seen mostly as an object of ridicule or blame when their issues were publicly addressed. These encounters evoked emotional interpretations of how men’s problems are not considered as important as women’s or minorities’, positioning men as marginalized in the public discourses of mental health.

Youth mental health in general was seen as a repeated topic in public debate, yet this debate was understood as not including men, which suggests that young men were seen as a separate group from other young people, with separate problems. This notion was often explained by claims of the ‘current trend’ of equality, regarded to not encompass men. Simultaneously, some respondents across both data sets stated how they would not want to detract attention from ‘women or minorities’ but hope for more public discourse explicitly about men’s mental health. However, there was an inclination to express mere frustration over the perceived state of public discourse, illustrating a strong either–or approach.

Some respondents noted how young men’s mental health has risen as a topic in media discussions, but they were viewed to often underestimate and simplify issues.This discourse often rested on exaggerated affective rhetoric of the media ‘only’ or ‘always’ talking about violence or other ‘side-effects’, rather than addressing the causes of men’s mental health issues or their impact on men themselves. The affects of frustration and anger were employed to provoke sympathy towards men and mobilized especially against the media. The survey answers were more aggressively against the media, containing claims of media’s misandry and problem-centred ways of talking about men. In the Reddit comments, the discussion was more nuanced, including more reflections about the ways men’s problems are already acknowledged, but pointing out shortcomings in current discussions. In both data sets, the media discourses of men’s issues were seen to denigrate men, their needs and the diversity of men, as the most prevalent issue discussed in the media was regarded to be men’s need for (heterosexual) sex. In the Reddit data, many commenters discussed how this homogenous narrative of men’s needs and sexuality works to construct a normative picture of men, which the respondents saw to belittle men and to produce an idea of men seeing women as inequal ‘objects’.

Although the respondents critiqued the perceived normative media representations of men, there was a strong tendency throughout both data sets to accentuate an understanding of gender as a binary division between men and women. Affective discourses appealing to taken-for-granted differences between men and women were utilized to establish essentialist, hierarchical ideas of gender.

As such, this theme involved an interesting paradox, as ‘men’s problems’ were seen to adhere to all men, casting men as a homogenous group, despite the critique towards this kind of rhetoric in public discourse. Simultaneously, the discursive practices placing men as the opposite of women and minorities worked to construct a normative idea of a man as someone who is not a part of any minority group, excluding, for example, men of colour and trans or gay men from the conversation (see Hearn, 2015; Rossi, 2015).

The gendered discourses of mental health, paired with the expectations from society, were deemed to position men outside of both the mental health discussions and the opportunity to seek help. In line with previous research (Courtenay, 2000; Tähkä et al., 2024; Valkonen & Hänninen, 2013), this notion was built on references to ‘traditional ideals’ of masculinity that prevent men from talking about their issues or from even recognizing their problems. The situation was explicitly described as unfortunate, unnecessary and frustrating, and these affective discourses were utilized to place blame on both men themselves and the society around them. Especially in the survey answers, this rhetoric was often employed to position men as victims of a larger entity outside of themselves, which neglects men’s agency in the reproduction of masculinities (see Waling, 2019). In the Reddit data, young men were positioned as more agentic in upholding this ‘traditional’ image of being a man, especially in their homosocial relationships. Concurrently, many Reddit comments constructed men as the ones who should initiate the discussion about and change in the societal expectations of masculinity. However, in both data sets, the participants described the pressure from society to cause men to be unable to challenge gender norms or take care of themselves.

These discourses that we interpreted from the data were used to mobilize affects of resentment towards the contemporary mental health services for disregarding men and not addressing the (assumed) differences between genders. Echoing Salmenniemi and Kemppainen (2020), well-being was constructed as a domain of women, cultivating affective rhetoric of victimhood and negligence. In the survey data, most services were seen to be directed at women and girls, or provided by women who could not understand men’s needs. The need for the service provider to be the same gender works to again accentuate the idea of gender as the most important factor in a person’s lived experiences, not taking into account other intersectional differences and positions. Moreover, especially in the Reddit discussions, men were also portrayed as ‘bad customers’ of mental health services—understood as individuals who do not seek help, fail to seek it early enough or do not respond to the help offered—because of the pressure to conform to ‘traditional’ ideals of masculinity, which was assumed to also influence the gendered statistics of mental health services. Following Olsson and Lauri (2022), this suggests that a part of idealized masculinity in contemporary Finland is aligned with the ability to express emotions and vulnerability. However, the difficulties to fit into this new norm elicit affective descriptions of suffering and exclusion, employed as an evidence of men’s victim positions in society.

Both data sets also contained critical remarks towards the gendered oppositions in these discourses. With sarcastic and humorous notions, the gendered perspectives were constructed as unnecessary, as everyone’s mental health was seen to be failing. This discourse strongly echoed therapeutic culture, often viewing the decline of youth mental health as self-evident, emphasizing the importance of individualized services and measures to improve it, but to leave out unnecessary gendering.

In this theme, mental health was constructed as a happy object (Ahmed, 2010) that directs actions towards constantly tending to it. However, achieving this happy object was seen to be hindered by the feminized discourses and services of mental health that ignore men-specific needs and by men’s own behaviour stemming from societal expectations of ‘traditional’ masculinity, highlighting a gendered logic of addressing mental health. As the continuous self-optimizing, promoted by the neoliberal, therapeutic culture, decontextualizes problems from their societal circumstances and requires that individuals are never truly happy with themselves (see Nehring & Röcke, 2023), seeking the happy object of mental health becomes a form of Berlant’s (2011) cruel optimism. As our analysis shows, the gendered logic of mental health can cultivate frustration and disappointment and, despite the criticism of normative representations of men in public discourse, can direct focus towards essentialist notions of masculinity and binary oppositions between genders instead of the societal condition and normativities around gender, manhood or mental health (see Blais & Dupuis-Déri, 2012; Brown, 2019; Rossi, 2015).