At The Edge of the Coin (Updated 14/4/16)

The path to extremism is often one in which someone only sees one side of any given issue – usually, at first, this is unintentional. It may be that this is because it is how the media chooses to portray this situation, it may be because a person knows some extremists and gets their information only from them, it may be that society as a whole does not even realize that there is another side to an issue. In order to avoid extremism, it is often necessary to take a few moments to reassess whether we actually know all the details of a story. This helps us pause and take a truly analytical view of whether the belief we have of something is actually true. We need to deliberately take this time in order to do this, because often we will never see the other side of things if we do not deliberately seek it out. This information will often never be consistently handed to us.

If someone is standing on a the heads side of a coin, they cannot see the side of the coin that says just as loudly, just as equally – tails! Likewise, if someone sits upon the tails side of a coin they cannot see the side that says heads. It is only when you straddle the edge of this coin that you can turn and see both heads and tails equally, in clear view, with no disillusions of what is really laid out before you. Granted, sometimes one side will be in a bit worse shape than the other or vice versa and other times they’ll be fairly equal, but the fact of the matter is it is necessary to seek both sides of an issue in order to have an educated viewpoint. It is when you wrap yourselves wholly in heads or tails that you become uneducated and easily misled.

Often in the media, there are topics brought up which have silent, rarely or never talked about, male victims. These male victims may be nearly, as, or more likely to be victims of these issues, even though the media refuses to talk about them, and resources and understanding are severely lacking. Some of these issues have been talked about on this site already, such as domestic violence, rape, and education. Some however, do not fit in these previous categories, and thus will be mentioned here.

The purpose of this is to bring to light the victims of these various issues, as many people are not even aware that men may need support, attention, and prevention information just as much as women do. Thus this post will highlight silent victims of various crimes and circumstances in order to provide a more balanced account of how things are in the world. Prevention information should be provided to men and women alike so that they can help themselves in the face of one of these situations, without discrimination or preconceived bias.

Additionally, the purpose of bringing attention to male victims is not, and never has been, to minimize or silence female victims. The purpose is not to flip the coin to show heads instead of tails – male victims being highlighted instead of female victims. Instead, the purpose is to balance the coin on its side, and allow knowledge, prevention information, after-the-fact help, and coverage to both sets of people harmed by these atrocities. By doing this, help will be given as needed to men and women alike, as well as information to help prevent these issues in the first place and to understand why they happen and how to help.