MORE MEN WITHOUT CHESTS

By Tim Rohr

"We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful." —C.S. Lewis

I was saving this post for a future Guam Daily Post column, but as I only get one column per month and there are many other things I will want to write about for the Post I've decided to share this here and now, especially given that JW has a much larger readership than the Post and there are many who may benefit from the following, and perhaps immediately. 

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It is not clear who said that “anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in America.” But regardless of who said it, as a Catholic, I am inclined to mostly agree. 

I say “mostly” because there is another last “acceptable prejudice” that I believe is bigger than anti-Catholicism: the “acceptable prejudice” against men…especially white men. 

There is a mountain of data to support this but most of it would be pedantic and boring, so I’ll cut to the chase: 

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, in 2021, men died by suicide 3.9 times more than women, and white men killed themselves at a rate many times that of Blacks and Hispanics. 

Statistics from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center tell us that most of these white men were middle-aged: “between 2015 and 2020, persons over the age of 45 accounted for the majority of U.S. suicides.” 

Why are middle-aged white men killing themselves? Aren’t they members of the same demographic that is supposed to define “white privilege?” Aren’t they the racists, the sexists, the oppressors?

I could really launch off here as to why this is happening- shooting arrows at everything from the destruction of men and fathers in the family court system to the emasculation of men and fathers in just about every movie and TV program over the last twenty years, as well as the feminization of males from movie stars to Catholic pastors. 

The real culprit though appears to be divorce. 

According to Psychology Today, divorced men are nine times more likely to die by suicide than women.

Why? 

Aren’t middle-aged white men the dudes who run off with “young things” and leave their menopausal, putting-on-the pounds, greying wife?

The facts say otherwise. According to Divorce.com, it's the women who leave their men: women initiate 69% of divorces. 

One might think that a husband’s unfaithfulness is the reason women initiate divorce, but according to the same Divorce.com article, unmet needs are the top reason and unfaithfulness is third.

Interestingly, the number two reason is an earnings imbalance wherein women who make more than their husbands have an 8.4% chance of divorcing versus a 2.9% chance when the husband earns more.

But back to the serious matter at hand, despite all the propaganda to the contrary, the number one victim in America, based on the suicide facts, is not Black, is not Hispanic, is not a woman, but a white, middle-aged male whose wife has left him.

Without getting too personal, suffice it to say I have had some experience in this arena. And it is not pretty. 

You’re a guy. And a middle-aged guy. That means you’re a bad guy. I can’t tell you how many times I heard “What did you do?” or “You must have done something!” 

In fact, my own then-attorney on the eve of trial turned on me and said, “you know Mr. Rohr, you’re a really bad father.” 

It’s not hard to see how a middle-aged man, white or otherwise, can feel that the world is against him and simply take another way out. 

He is middle-aged. He is tired. Everything he ever worked for and dreamt of is gone in an instant. 

And he is being crucified in court in declarations from his wife - and even sometimes his adult children - with the most outrageous allegations, and all permissible because such declarations are considered “privileged communications.”

And all the while, his own lawyer is saying “You must have done something wrong. Look, your wife hates you, your children hate you, just give in and settle. Give her the house and the kids and sign here for child support.” 

At the risk of continuing to be too personal, I got rid of that lawyer (my 4th at the time), learned how to represent myself, later found an attorney willing to let me write my own papers, and, in the end, while I won’t say I won, I will say, I, a middle-aged white male, am still standing, quite alive, and not willing to accept the last acceptable prejudice in America, be it against Catholics or middle-aged white men. 

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I was saving the following for a separate article or JW post, but choose to add it here:

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Guam is very different.

First, we must note that -per a report published by Guam State Epidemiological Outcomes Workgroup (GSEOW), Guam’s suicide rate (in 2020), at 30 per 100,000 population, is more than double the suicide rate of the rest of the U.S. which is 13.5.

Next, Guam’s suicide facts are unique in other ways. 

According to Dr. Annette David, lead epidemiologist of GSEOW, in 2020, 34 percent of all Guam suicide victims were 20 to 29 years old - half the age of the national average.

Moreover, while men killed themselves at at a rate of 4 to 1 in the rest of the U.S., here in Guam, according to David, the male to female rate in Guam is 26 to 1. 

Let’s say that again. The male to female suicide ratio is 26 males for every one female.

Staying with the Guam facts, our outrageous suicide rate and its anomalous characteristics is really no surprise. 

Guam celebrates its matriarchal cultural superstructure wherein males are rarely encouraged to lead while we push females to the top of our matriarchy: witness our self-congratulations for electing our first female governor, our first openly gay Lt. Governor, and a dominant female majority in the legislature led by a female speaker.

But back to the original thrust of this post.

Guam is not unique in crushing males, we’re just especially adept at it. 

The rest of the nation, if not the western world, has functionally engendered a world of “men without chests” - as C.S. Lewis called them - but continues to demand that the same hollowed and psychologically castrated men perform as if they were not.