Dear
MEN

The empire that devoured its kings

Let’s begin with honesty.

This day is not about glorifying men for being “strong.” It’s about acknowledging the quiet ache behind that strength, the exhaustion that comes from constantly having to be unshakable.

Men are not flawless heroes. They are human. Shaped by a world that demanded perfection, endurance, and silence. They have been fathers who built stability from scarcity, brothers who became anchors when the family was falling apart, partners who carried emotional storms they never spoke about.

They’ve been taught to hold it all; the fear, the pressure, the responsibility; and call it strength. But what we often forget is that even strength has a breaking point.

---

The other day, I was having a regular conversation with a male friend of mine. Something in his tone felt different. A quiet heaviness I couldn’t ignore. When I gently asked if everything was alright, he hesitated before admitting he’d cried by himself the night before. “Why?” I asked. A little worried, my mind already spiralling through a thousand unspoken fears. He replied, “I don’t know. I just felt like crying.”

For a moment, I couldn’t find the right words. That simple confession hit me harder than I expected, because it reminded me of something I can never forget.

In 2020, I lost a friend to suicide. He had been fighting depression in silence. The night before, we’d spoken. It was during the COVID lockdown. He was stuck at his client’s home in another city for about a month, trapped by travel restrictions, and just wanted to come back. We lived in the same area, so he called to ask about the situation around here. I told him what I knew and helped him figure out the formalities. I could sense the weight in his voice. The exhaustion and the desperate longing to return home.

After a while, he even laughed and said he couldn’t make rotis and that it was becoming a real problem now that all the restaurants were closed during that time. He used to live alone in a big apartment, which somehow made the silence heavier. I told him not to worry, that I’d make some extra and send them over with my husband. He laughed again and said he’d come by himself.

We talked for a while and then hung up. I waited for his call over the following two days. It never came, nor did he, only the devastating news that he had hanged himself in his own apartment, not long after he returned home.

Even now, the memory of that day sends a chill down my spine.

It reminds me how close despair can live beside us, hidden in the quiet moments, in the messages we read, in the smiles we think we understand. And it reminds me, painfully, that sometimes, even when we try to help, it is not enough.

---

For generations, men have been told to suppress their pain. To swallow it whole and move on. And beneath that silence, there’s a quiet army of men fighting invisible battles, with depression, loneliness, and the fear of being seen as weak.

Today, on International Men’s Day, we don’t celebrate their endurance.
We acknowledge their humanness.
Because before they were fathers, husbands, or sons, they were people.
And they deserve to live as such.

The Cost of Silence

The same system, that silenced women, taught men that tenderness was shameful, vulnerability was weakness, and love was earned only through power. And that’s how it began. This slow, invisible suicide of the soul. Every minute, somewhere in the world, a man takes his own life.
Every. Single. Minute!

Globally, in nearly every country, men die by suicide at much higher rates than women. (TIME)

And in India, the numbers cut even deeper.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), over 73% of all suicides in India are by men.
An unspoken epidemic that barely makes the news.

Year	Total Suicides (India)	Male %	Female %
2020	153,052	71.2%	28.8%
2021	164,033	72.5%	27.5%
2022	170,924	72.9%	27.1%
2023	180,131	73.4%	26.6%

Source: National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) – Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2020–2023
NCRB Official Report

Studies from The Lancet (2023) and WHO (2022) reveal men are:

• 40% more likely to die from stress-related cardiac issues,
• twice as likely to develop substance dependencies,
• and far less likely to seek psychological help.

Because help, they were told, is for the weak.
And weakness, they were told, is unforgivable.

So, instead, they work harder. They drink deeper. They smile wider.
Until one day, they simply vanish.

These aren’t mere statistics. They are lives uncounted. Screams unheard. Ashes in silence.
Behind each number is a man who never learned he was allowed to cry.

This isn’t a weakness crisis. It’s a human crisis!

Men are dying, not from failure, not from war, but from the pressure to never seem like they’re failing.

You Are Not Invisible Because You Are Privileged

Yes! You do have structural advantage in many areas, by virtue of gender.
But privilege does not make you immune to pain.

The equation isn’t “Privilege = Immunity.”
It’s “Privilege + Expectation = Pressure.”
And that pressure does not care how many degrees you hold, how many awards you’ve won, how many trophies you display. It cares only that you keep delivering. And no longer ask for keeping.

And the world still calls it privilege.
But tell me, what kind of privilege demands that you never fall apart?
That you suffocate behind a smile? That you bury your grief beneath your ribs and call it manhood? If power means silence, then it was never a power. It was punishment wearing a suit.

The System That Swallowed Its Creators

Patriarchy!
The empire built on dominance, pride, and silence, was meant to crown men kings.
But it crowned them keepers of their own prisons.

Patriarchy didn’t just wound women. It devoured men too. It wounded everyone.
It stripped men of tenderness and called it masculinity.
It stripped women of agency and called it tradition.
It erased every other gender and called it unnatural.
It rewarded control and punished vulnerability.

And in the ruins of all that damage, Feminism was born!
It was born to oppose a culture that forgot what humanity means.

Feminism exists because patriarchy did first.
It had to be born because humanity forgot how to breathe equally!

What we often forget is that patriarchy never served men either! It simply caged them in a different room. The system that taught women to stay small also taught men to stay stone.
Men were told not to cry.
Women were told not to speak.
Both were told to endure.
Others were told to disappear.

The cage was built long before any of us were born. One that crowned men with power, yet chained them to expectations; one that handed women submission and called it virtue.

This fight is never about women winning. It’s about humanity remembering.

A Word To You

Dear men, hear this:
This sword-in-hand approach taught you to be sharp and in the process made you bleed inside. And if you believe you must carry everything, you will eventually carry nothing but your scars.

You deserve to rest your sword.
You deserve to feel what you were never allowed to.
You deserve to live! Not just perform.

What Can You Do?

Speak into the silence. Say the words: I’m hurting.
Admit you cannot fix everything. Let someone else carry a part.
Learn that strength can be tenderness. That leadership can be listening.
Unlearn: “Man up.” Relearn: “I need a hand.”
Join the fight. Not for dominance, but for humanity.

The Reckoning

The real revolution isn’t gendered. It’s human.
It begins when a man says, “I’m not okay” and no one laughs.
When a boy cries and no one says “man up.”
When a father breaks down and his family doesn’t call it failure, but feeling.

That’s when patriarchy truly starts to crack.

Here’s To The Men Who Are Done Pretending

To the men tired of being strong.
To the men learning that love doesn’t make them lesser.
To the ones choosing therapy over tantrums, connection over control,
You are rewriting the story.
You are proof that strength and sensitivity can coexist.
That masculinity is not a weapon. It’s a soul.

The Way Forward

Patriarchy divided us.
It made men the enforcers, women the survivors, and everyone else the collateral.
But the truth is simpler. We all bled under the same system.
The future will not be built on blame.
It will be built on understanding.

The world doesn’t need stronger men.
It needs freer men! Ones who can love without fear, lead without dominance, cry without apology, and rise without stepping on someone else’s back.

A new brotherhood is forming, not of warriors, but of witnesses.
Men who see, men who listen, men who unlearn.

It begins when a man looks at another and says, “You don’t have to do this alone.”
When we stop blaming each other and start seeing the system that oppressed us.
When gender minorities are not forced to explain their existence but embraced as equals in our collective becoming.

This isn’t feminism versus masculinity.
This is humanity reclaiming itself.

Because patriarchy may have written our past,
but what comes next, that we write together!