If you were boarding a plane and were told the pilot had chronic depression and had tried to crash a plane full of people 4 times but hadn’t killed anyone yet- would you get on and let them fly you?
If you found out they just tried to crash a plane full of people this morning while landing at your airport- are you getting on?
There’s more to all this, but understand that you generally are lucky to get away with one massive disruptive emotional outburst in most any social or business setting, but if you have repeat and/or regular and long lasting bouts in which you don’t seem to be seeking any constructive help to mitigate the thoughts and behaviors- it isn’t grace to enable you.
At some point some jobs- like being a celebrity- may just not be compatible with some peoples mentality emotional well being. At some point being honest and trying to get better involves stepping away for your own sake or the sake of others.

It’s complex and I’m leaving it here-
These are very rich and very public men who have little excuse for their behaviors when they literally have staff to help them with everything including managing their personal lives.
A pilot trying to crash a plane and commit suicide along with the passengers is not a “man sharing his emotions” or struggles with mental health- he likely had quite a bit of warning up to that point that the cheese was slipping off his cracker and as an adult, managing those feelings and moods before it got to that point or stepping away from doing things like flying a plane full of people would be examples of dealing with it. Running up to your breaking point is not an example of that. It’s an example of poor self care or serious underlying conditions like schizophrenia that need treatment and possibly restrictions.

This is less a case of “why men don’t share their feelings” and more a case of what happens when men do not express their emotions in healthy ways and lack or refuse to use the tools to process them.
And every single man on this list has had MULTIPLE very public meltdowns- often ones they themselves instigated and chose to have broadcast to mass audiences.
Let’s keep this simple, especially when it isn’t your first breakdown- you can only get on the work intercom or the radio or the work Twitter or live TV and have a breakdown so many times before it is clear that you should either be better at recognizing and managing the signs before you reach that point (or have people around you who are..) or you should maybe take a mental health break from your work and the sorts of triggering events and high visibility situations while you recover.

It’s very odd. I have more questions than answers. For the time being, there are so few instances and we are talking about such a statistically small group that is a relatively modern re discovery, that the data is sparse at best to make arguments on. Most things are intuitive or emotional or based in bias or personal opinion.
We can know if this person or that was a “success” or not but… only really after the fact no?

But the studies and data can show this or that is best- but at what point do we legally bind parents to follow what has shown to be “best practice?” It’s very odd to me. It’s odd that you can feed your child junk or stifle their mind and that discussion doesn’t get the same intensity as hormone therapy.
You can raise a kid playing sports or competing and all manner of unhealthy baggage that often goes with that- shaping their life each step and into the future- and that’s fine, but not another thing?

So I don’t know man. There probably needs to be a line. You’d think and hope we could trust parents not to diddle their own kids or work them like draft animals or exploit them for profit but… welcome to the world. It happens everyday and has happened throughout history. You won’t meet many people who would argue that if a parent wants to marry or bed their child that is up to them as a parent. That’s sick, and rightly as a society we won’t stand for it. Society has yet to come to consensus at large as to wether a slap across the face or a tap on the bottom is over the line, but most of the world is at a place where you can’t leave them broken and bloody if you get physical in discipline.

Why trust parents and medical professionals at all with those in their care since some will certainly make poor choices or choices we disagree with? I haven’t met more than a handful of people that don’t have some regret or resentment to their parents- hell, enough people literally will hate their parents simply for having them as they “didn’t ask to be born.”

We can take this to some odd places.
At the end of the day, very few people favor unrestricted access to “gender affirming” or biologically altering drugs and procedures. What is probably needed most are criteria by which assessments are performed and standards of care as well as review processes to investigate issues that may arise later.
At the end of the day, parents have a tremendous potential to alter the course of their children’s lives for better or worse and often times we can’t say wether the outcomes will be appreciated by the child or not until much later.
“You pushed me too hard,” “you didn’t push me enough” too strict, too lax, raised religious, raised without religion- blah blah blah.
If we want to just get to the end of the dispute- why don’t we codify a “path of childhood” with diets and routines and environmental criteria, financial and other background qualifications- that all parents must have and use?

At what point do we get the right to tell parents what they ca. Or can’t do? For social harmony or for the child’s welfare many countries either have lists of approved names or lists of names that are forbidden for children. Undeniably “X1E” or “such is likely to face down rough spots in life from their name. So should names that could be teased be illegal?
What if your kid is fat or out of shape? Let’s get crazier. What if you knew you had a disease or gene condition that you could or likely would pass on? Can conception itself be abusive because you’ve set that child up to suffer from birth? If knowing suffering is abuse- the poor, uneducated, emotionally immature having kids is abuse no?

It’s a problem. A big one. Parents by the nature of things and by custom have enormous ability to shape their child’s lives. They are generally trusted to make decisions for the child’s best interests and we generally afford a great deal of autonomy to allow for individuals to raise their children with the values and such they deem fit.
It isn’t total- we have a concept of abuse. Is it abuse to send a child to bed without dinner? To yell? What if you spank them? Closed fist and leave a black eye? What’s emotional or mental abuse for a parent?
Fun fact- what is abuse today was not abuse 20+ years ago. It’s an evolving concept. But what is abuse? Do you know it when you see it? Oddly there are things many of us would consider abuse or inappropriate that aren’t legally. And it can vary by culture or place.

Oh no. We just stepped in it.
If you believe a parent should have the right to refuse to allow their child gender affirming care when the child wants it… then you must believe a parent has the right to approve it if the child says they want it.
That’s basic. If you think a parents rights allow them to make decisions that can shape their child’s future in irreversible or long lasting ways- you have to believe you can say yes.
We allow circumcision- effectively irreversible genital mutilation.
We allow parents to give children piercings, and in fact most places will allow parents to sign off on elective plastic surgeries for minors. There are highschool girls who have received breast implants as gifts.
So…. What is different here? What makes this so different than all the other medical and life decisions parents can make for children?

But what do we do? Because some percentage of people would rather die than not see or walk or whatever- we just don’t let doctors save lives when they have the science to do it?
It’s much more clean cut with adults- adults make decisions and they regret then or not- but being an adult means you live with your choice. Lots of people regret boob jobs or other procedures. People also regret NOT having things done. Go figure. You’ll never win ‘em all.
With kids it’s tricker since kids are.. kids. They aren’t considered capable of making their own choices. So what do we do? How do we protect kids from themselves and possibly parents biases and such..? How do we make sure kids aren’t caught in politics- denied care for their parents views or pushed into it because of theirs?

Can’t function. Too much and it can’t function. That’s how all this shit works.
Medicine isn’t magic. When they prescribe a drug or treatment they look at what they’re fighting and what the costs or risks are. Taking antibiotics for that heart infection Can give you upset stomach, yeast infection etc. but your odds of dying from a yeast infection tend to be much lower than a serious heart infection.
So then… regrets? Statistics? The big question is wether or not a procedure helps more than it hurts.
Ideally no one ever regrets a decision- but you’ll find plenty of people who got transplants or pace makers or amputations etc. that saved their lives but they will say they regret it- that they wouldn’t make the choice. Those without advance directives and such have sued for having their lives saved at the cost of mobility etc.

So here is the thing- gender affirming care is a medical treatment.
This isn’t some one off special case or something you have no concept of. You’ve likely been to the doctor or taken some aspirin or vitamins or something.
Medicine IS poison. Poison IS medicine.
How much, when, who, the circumstances. That’s all that makes one classify as medicine or poison. Often medicine is both.
Your heart pills might make you fatigued or disoriented, give you headaches. If you get in a bad accident or have a condition that makes it so you can’t digest food, being “fed through a tube” can give you diabetes, destroy the kidneys. Gal bladder, etc.
medicine to stop you from bleeding out in surgery can cause strokes, medicine to fight stroke can cause aneurism.
Licorice- the candy, and anything with real flavoring- eat enough and you’ll die. You need iron to live but too much will kill you. Same for vitamins like C,D,K. Too much protein will shred your kidneys. Not enough fat and your body

But it doesn’t need to go that far does it? Let’s step back from extremes like suicide. What about overall quality of life? Who has emotional breakdowns looking at their potter tattoo-less body in the mirror or thinking about having to disrobe or show skin in front of folks who have potter tattoos when they don’t? Ok. Now- who hasn’t received gender affirming care and has breakdowns like that…?
How many nights will someone cry themselves to sleep or look at their future in despair thinking about how they can never lead the life they want because they don’t have a potter tattoo? How many do that thinking about their gender…?

For example- people with Harry Potter tattoos- how many have tried or succeeded to Jill themselves because they have a Harry Potter tattoo and regret it?
Ok- now… how many people regret gender care and try to kill themselves?
I don’t know. Haven’t looked it up. Doubt you’ll find good stats for either.
But let’s not let that be an ideological final straw because we need to examine the inverse don’t we?
How many people have tried to kill themselves or succeeded because they DIDN’T get gender affirming care?
Yeah. Didn’t think of that huh?

Other issue- say you get black out drunk, crash a car with your entire family in it, kill them all and the kids in the scout troop bus you hit. You’d regret that probably right?
Ok.
Now say that you can’t choose soup or sandwich so you order the sandwich thinking it’ll be better. The sandwich comes, it’s terrible, the soup at the table over looks great and they are loving it.
You regret ordering what you did.
Which- which of those regrets is worse? Almost everyone would objectively say the murder one. Bigger regret. Probably stick with you longer and hit harder overall.
So… does it really matter what more people regret vs. how much they regret it?

That isn’t the entire picture though is it? Firstly, regrets Can be transient. So what are we talking about? Someone homeless and broke might regret dropping out of school to be an actor after 20 years of failure but if they make their big break at 40 and become a multi millionaire success story- perhaps they don’t regret it? But what happens if you regret not dating “the one that got away” in highschool, then marry them when older and learn you don’t regret not dating them as they were/are terrible- but… then you divorce and in your death bed regret not staying together…?
So what are we talking about- regrets after a year? 5? 10? 20? 40?

So comparing penis’s to breasts doesn’t really work because there aren’t enough similarities in attitudes towards them or gender dynamics. What’s more, women wear their breasts where they can generally be seen easily and readily, with fashion and athletic wear often making the breasts prominent. Men’s fashion generally doesn’t work to show as much if your dick as possible. Unless it is very large or your close are very tight (uncommon for men’s fashion), or some magic point between those things on a sliding scale- no one actually knows how big your penis is if you don’t show or tell. And well… for most of modern history men have driven the fashion and culture that have created these sentiments. Women aren’t the ones who put so much emphasis on breasts and self objectification as a gender average. Women didn’t start men’s “locker room talk.” So I mean…. The average dude probably thinks about and cares about dick more than the average woman.

But that said, you won’t likely find many men who have large but not monstruos dongs being like “I want a reduction” or “I’m so envious of your average or below average penis. I wish I could trade.”
But women often do have “boob envy” even if momentarily. They feel a certain style would suit them better with a different size or a task might be easier with a different size. It is very common for women- even those who don’t have uncommonly large breasts but are on the larger size, to want to reduce their size, and of course it’s fairly common for women to want to go larger- though not always the case they want to actually go through with the process to do either.

But then you have to live without.

If you’re making $10,000 a year off 401k and investments and such- your bankers and creditors and investment firms are probably making many times that off your money and billions off the combined money of you and everyone else doing the same things to try and get the life you want. To crush those systems doesn’t require armies or marches or press or courts. It just requires enough people to say “no. I will not gain benefit if it means enabling you.”