Edvard Munch, “Despair/Wikimedia Commons
Feminism to Forlorn Men: Go Hang
Bettina Arndt, Quadrant, May 06 2026
Last Christmas, one of Australia’s major suicide prevention groups had a call from a very distressed, suicidal man. The counsellor did his best to support him and arranged to keep in touch. But there was no answer to the counsellor’s follow up calls. Following their organisation’s duty of care rules, the counsellor made a call to NSW police, fearing the man was at imminent risk of harm.
The police reaction was shocking. “Is there a female partner who could be at risk? Is he likely to hurt her,” asked the police officer, whose immediate concern was not checking on the man in crisis but rather assessing the risk that the suicidal man could be violent.
Welcome to the latest triumph of feminist policy innovation: a system that looks at the man standing on the edge of the abyss — the group dying by suicide at three times the rate of women — and decides the most urgent question to ask is not ‘How do we save you?’ but ‘Have you been hurting women?’ It is a policy of breathtaking intellectual dishonesty and moral inversion.
It all started in Victoria but could become official policy across the country The 2021 Victorian government’s MARAM Framework Document is prescribed for over 6,000 organisations and approximately 392,000 professionals in Victoria, including mental health, drug/alcohol, homelessness, family and health services. The Framework is based on the premise that significant numbers of men who commit suicide each year have a history of using family violence. Responding to suicide risk “should consider the risk of the person using violence to themselves, their family and community,” explains the document.