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Homelessness
Former Member
Posts: 1,875,648 The Mix Honorary Guru
Why are the vast majority of homeless rough sleepers single men? Are they discriminated against in regard to housing - or perhaps in general? It can't be coincidence that very few women and couples are sleeping rough. How is being a single man a major risk factor for becoming homeless? How does being attached and/or female act as a protective factor against becoming homeless? Millions of people claim that there's 'male privilege', but if that were real then most homeless people would be female. Can anyone explain this?
In parts of the world where there are many homeless children, the large majority are boys. That's true even in Asian countries where it's widely said that parents massively favour their sons over their daughters. Why then, have many of those parents discarded their sons onto the streets - whilst keeping their daughters. It doesn't make sense.
In parts of the world where there are many homeless children, the large majority are boys. That's true even in Asian countries where it's widely said that parents massively favour their sons over their daughters. Why then, have many of those parents discarded their sons onto the streets - whilst keeping their daughters. It doesn't make sense.
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I point you to these statistics from the Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/noserious...o-be-homeless/
This shows that there is a slight gender weighting towards 60% male homeless. It also suggests some factors as to why that might be.
In Asia, there's a high portion of female infanticide - so they're not keeping their daughters, they're slaughtering them.
Usually a couple in today's age will have at least one source of income, or family or friend who will take them in. Often, females will have care of the children, and are therefore given priority in housing.
Also, a lot of those who appear to be rough sleepers may not actually be - there are people in my city who beg instead of working yet have a home and a car over their heads.
I also looked for more recent statistics and found this stuff from Crisis, which highlights the incredible danger women face from sleeping rough. I don't think it's a great place for anyone, but it's less likely for a man to be attacked whilst doing so: http://www.crisis.org.uk/pages/homeless-diff-groups.html
It's still only a tiny minority of baby girls in Asia who are murdered. Why aren't many of those who survive early childhood becoming homeless later - if daughters are unwanted? There are a lot of parents in Asia who are throwing their ten-year-old sons out on the street, but far fewer are doing so to their ten-year-old daughters.
Why don't most single men have a family member or friend who'll take them in? It's much easier taking in a single person than a couple. Do most people not care about the single male family members?
The majority of violence is male-on-male. Being male is one of the main risk factors for being a victim of violence. Male murder victims massively outnumber female murder victims. Most homeless rough sleepers are victims of violence - their risk of being murdered or committing suicide is many times higher than the national average.
The large majority of homeless rough sleepers don't have any other option, so if you're saying that women avoid sleeping rough in order to avoid becoming victims of violence, that's ignoring the fact that male rough sleepers have nowhere else to go.
How does all this fit in with the idea of male privilege? How can a privileged person be homeless and unwanted? If all men are privileged, why don't they use their privilege to become rich and buy nice houses? How can a homeless man access his inherent male privilege?
Is there a racial bias as well? I've never seen an Asian woman sleeping rough in the UK - not even in a documentary, let alone in real life. They're said to be very oppressed and disadvantaged - so how do they avoid becoming homeless?
But beggars can easily be misinterpreted as sleeping rough, and sofa surfers are technically classified as homeless, not sure how many stats will differentiate between sleeping rough/sofa surfing though.
Also where do you get your claim of 90% from? Can you provide evidence for that?
That's making a lot of assumptions. The wording you use is very...black and white. "Most single men" - a portion of men and women both will be taken in my shelters + friends. Female bias i will explain below. I don't really know whether "most" men would be refused by shelters/families, which i doubt unless the shelter is alreayd over-capacity, or the family cannot financially or willingly take the person in no matter the gender. (Willingly = you are less likely to take in a family member that was abusive even if they were homeless for example).
But, some sociological research exists to say men are less likely to stay in touch with their familes after leaving their family home, and also that men are less likely to reach to their families in times of need. I could probably find some if i was given a day for the free time to find the studies im thinking of.
Women would be more vulnerable if they slept rough than men. Because of this, charities + friends/family of homeless women are more likely to provide someone shelter especially at night if they are a women comapred to a man. Due to this, it leaves most of the rough sleepers men, and since anyone who sleeps rough is in general at a higher risk of being a victim of violent crime, the statistic then shows that men are then more at risk.
That is, if men had as much protection as women, i doubt the statistic would be as high.
Also on suicide - it is believed that men in general are less willing to come out and admit they have suicidal feelings to anyone, homeless or not, and so they don't get the support that could have stopped them.
Mmmm, something about the wording here bothers me. Women and men both have access to homeless shelters assuming they can find them - most shouldn't discriminate based upon gender. But, as far as i'm aware, women due to their vulnerability have access to a few women-focused homeless shelters that men wouldn't have easy access to. So, it's not that men do not have any support, it's that women have more support that men.
Racial also put in here as non-white people also are more vulnerable to the dangers of sleeping rough than white people, so they also are prioritized and that eventually/over the long run leads to a lack of care for who originally was the least vulnerbale group just the same as above.
Male privilege is an incredibly old fashioned idea no longer applicable in some sects of society.
Plus even middle class people become homeless - no matter how "privileged" one is they can end up homeless, maybe to a disproportionate extent across social groups but still not absent from any. (e.g. if you look at the children of middle class vs working class parents, there's going to be more homelessness in the working class group BUT there will still be some amount of homeless in the middle class children).
The reasons? Well that's a sociologist's PhD right there to answer honestly. But i imagine one reason could be down to the fact men generally are more affected, in terms of ability of live, by mental illnesses. Due to the fact they are less likely to seek support, something like a drug addiction can lead to homelessness easy, something like depression can lead to losing job leadng to homelessness without any intervention because the man never sought it. Not that it doesn't happen in women, but it's statistically more occurant for this to be the case in men.
Few women sleep rough and very rarely do you see a homeless couple sleeping rough. It seems that society (government, families, organisations etc.) discard single men who are poor - they're viewed as worthless. In the general population, young males greatly outnumber young females. It seems to have been unofficially deemed that there are too many white males, which means that society needs to get rid of a lot of them.
If women and non-whites are given more help than white men, then that certainly disadvantages white men by discriminating against them indirectly.
It's not just that men are less likely to ask for help - they're also less likely to receive help. They're told to 'man up', to sort out their own problems - and if they can't, they should suffer in silence. Male-male friendships are generally much weaker than female-female friendships. Men talk to their friends less and offer less support than women do. Men don't talk to each other about their feelings and problems. If a woman cries in public, female strangers will comfort her. If a man cries in public, he will be ridiculed by some and ignored by the rest. A woman who is being hit by her male partner will usually receive help if she seeks it - a man who is being hit by his female partner will be ridiculed as a wimp or not believed. Are there any shelters for men who are victims of domestic violence?
Very few people care when a male is missing or has been murdered (especially if he's white) - unless he's famous or a notorious criminal. If Claudia Lawrence were a man, the national media would have ignored the case and there would only have been minimal local coverage. If Damien Nettles had been a girl, there would have been a huge amount of media coverage of his disappearance. There was very little media coverage after police shot unarmed Harry Stanley dead in London - and no demonstrations. Compare that to the situation soon after police shot armed Mark Duggan dead in London, riots erupted. Why was Duggan eulogised and Stanley forgotten? The only thing I can think of is that Stanley isn't missed because he was white. There are never demonstrations, riots etc. in reaction to the police killing a white person. The situation in the US is the same in that regard: there have been demonstrations and riots in some cases after police have shot black people dead - but never any such reaction when police have shot white people dead. Even with killings by civilians: no-one outside the local area would have heard of or cared about Trayvon Martin if he'd been white. How the hell did that become an international story? People kill each other in the street in the US every day.
I can't think of one high-profile case, anywhere in the world, of a white male (other than a celebrity or fugitive) going missing or dying. When did white males become considered worthless - and why? Is it an unofficial collective punishment for misdeeds of some ancestors?