Last year, I wrote an article addressing concerns surrounding Movember and its largely superficial platform of visibility that overrode the genuine concerns to be addressed not only for men but also for women. As November rolls around once more, Trinity’s campus and events once more turn towards Movember. Movember carries a simple message: men’s mental health matters. And it does, but when the entire campus mobilises around men’s wellbeing for an entire month, it is worth probing into whether Movember truly considers the societal structures that cause harm to women and men. The movement may be too simplistic to address the social and material conditions that create these issues in the first place, or else, it could simply shove these complexities under the rug for the sake of its image.
Last year at Trinity, Movember raised around €72,000. Movember and Ents organised a series of social events, runs, fundraisers, and the Roses all leading up to MoBall, turning men’s mental health into the highlight of campus life for a month. Yet, the amount raised tells us very little about how many of these men availed of the signposted services advertised by Movember (which was a concern I raised in my original article), or whether expectations of masculinity were actually challenged amongst the population of Trinity. This too was another criticism brought up last year wherein I questioned whether the methods of Movember –– the moustaches, exclusive events, the performance of acceptable masculinity by the Roses –– challenged constructs of masculinity, which in itself is one of the causes of men’s mental health issues. If we consider Movember to be a series of social events in November, then its success is notable. But if Movember is meant to make strides in addressing men’s mental health, its lasting impact is less visible.
Men’s mental health is a real issue. They experience disproportionately high rates of death by suicide (more women attempt suicide, but more men die by suicide). Social expectations surrounding masculinity may make it difficult to seek support or admit vulnerability. Nobody should have to earn the right to care or wait for gender equality before being treated. But this opens up the uncomfortable conversation of what it means to address men’s suffering while leaving the social structures that produce and sustain it intact.
Movember deserves credit for its transparency about its finances. In contrast to last year, they published robust accounts of the amount of money raised globally and where the money is channelled. While around 20 per cent of the money raised is spent on fundraising mechanisms and administrative costs, these costs are not inherently wasteful. 76.5 per cent of the money raised goes towards “Men’s Health Programmes”. While money put towards cancer research has tangible impacts, finding a similar translation for the impact that Movember’s largely visible machinery has generated in making meaningful changes to men’s lives. Because its impacts on men’s mental health are less measurable, Movember deserves more scrutiny for this: how much of the campaign challenges the social expectations that discourage men from seeking help? How much is put towards addressing the gendered behaviours that harm men and women alike? How much of the campaign has encouraged men to open up, and how much of the campaign has examined the social conditions that taught men to remain silent?
The familiar and tired response to feminist critique is that we can care about men’s and women’s issues at the same time. In principle, this is obvious. In practice, this is a convenient way of ignoring the ways in which men’s and women’s issues intersect and are perpetuated by the same systems. Prioritising men’s health in a system that has deliberately marginalised women’s is a designed choice. Questions about who receives the limited resources of attention, funds, urgency, and institutional priorities are shoved under the rug. By Movember’s own admission, the Dáil discussed their Irish reports around 20 times in September of 2024. With Movember commanding political power, time and resources are being taken away from platforming and addressing the plethora of women’s medical, sexual, and domestic issues whose cases are only rising year after year in Ireland and around the world. McKinsey’s report found that 1 per cent of medical and research funding went towards female-specific conditions like endometriosis and menopause, and a diagnosis for endometriosis may take up to nine years in Ireland.
These disparities are not proof that Movember is directly taking away money from other causes, but rather the language of “both/and” only exists hypothetically because resources are limited. While Movember enjoys the benefits of global fundraising infrastructure and sustained public visibility, other campaigns flounder, and insisting that we can care about both doesn’t resolve the imbalance but makes it easier to ignore. The term “himpathy” was coined by Kate Manne, who suggested that men’s issues usually garner more attention and sympathy than women’s solely by virtue of being male. This also extends to the skewing of issues in order to extend loyalty and sympathy towards men. For instance, talking about misogyny raised concerns about hurting men’s feelings (even though the victims of the issue were women) and talking about the male loneliness epidemic shifted towards male fragility.
When structural problems are reframed as individual responsibilities, individuals then have to bear the costs of collateral damage from institutional issues. Women have always performed emotional labour for men: providing reassurance, initiating difficult conversations, managing emotional turmoil in relationships, even at their own detriment. The expectation that women should be endlessly understanding, patient, and emotionally available receives none of the celebration or recognition that a fundraising campaign for male vulnerability does. The term “mankeeping” describes this labour that women perform for men to compensate for their thin emotional and social networks. As women gain autonomy and independence, exiting or turning down relationships where they’d be forced to perform this labour, the deficiencies in men’s developmental socialisation become more evident. The male loneliness epidemic did not happen to men but exposed how much of their emotional lives depended on women’s unpaid labour.
Men’s suffering is not delegitimised because women also suffer. The burden of addressing men’s issues is not evenly distributed. When Movember encourages men to speak up and talk, they need to consider the social networks that currently don’t exist without women to facilitate these conversations and support systems.
Growing a moustache can be a harmless act of solidarity; raising money can fund worthwhile services; encouraging men to talk about their health can make a genuine difference. But none of these activities challenges the conditions that make vulnerability shameful and emotional labour unequal. Movember has made a campaign where men can be celebrated for opening up without questioning why women must be there to absorb it. It promotes male friendships without questioning the norms that discourage men from seeking support until it reaches a crisis. It raises thousands of euros without addressing political choices that determine whether appropriate care can be dispensed.
At Trinity especially, the scale of the funds raised and events attended proves the ability of the college community to mobilise around issues. Trinity as an institution also has the ability to harness institutional power, with the Sports Centre, Student Counselling Services, College Health, Disability Service, and more working alongside Movember. But the same sustained institutionalised power is never directed towards issues of misogyny, consent care, and sexual assault (which is an especially strife issue). Even though these causes are not interchangeable and their funding shouldn’t be a competition, the unequal distribution of visibility proves that the “both/and” approach is far from being a reality. Mnárta in March also produced a slew of events by Ents and TCDSU/AMLCT culminating in the Mnárta Ball, but only raised €11766 and saw turnout for events which was far smaller than that for Movember.
I am not demanding that Movember turn into a feminist campaign. As a movement that presents itself as one addressing a serious public health problem, they should be able to explain how their activities translate into lasting and institutional change. They also must bear the responsibility that gender equality is not an optional addition to men’s health but an intrinsic part of the social environment in which their mental health is shaped. The emotional repression that isolates men is bound with the expectation that women will compensate for it and the very same gender norms making vulnerability shameful for men are connected to those that make women’s labour obligatory. These are not separate problems competing for attention but differential consequences to the same structures of inequality. Treating women’s problems as peripheral in a discussion about men’s mental health doesn’t just neglect women but misunderstands the problems attempting to be resolved by Movember.
“Both/and” is only useful when a multitude of causes receive more than symbolic attention. Those who want to insist we can accommodate both must prove that both are, in fact, being accommodated, beginning with the Trinity campus. Grow the moustache and raise the money, but don’t mistake the performance of concern for the work of change. When November ends, the men who need support will still need support, and the women expected to provide it will have lives of their own. If Movember cannot reckon with the relationship between these realities, then its legacy will be to make the unequal status quo look compassionate.
