Page 5461 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 16 November 2010
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Movember come from years of experience that show that the community needs to be more aware of men’s health and the wellbeing issues associated with men’s health. Clinton has said to me that he has an understanding of the tragedy of prostate cancer because of the experiences of his friends who have suffered from the disease. He understood only too well the consequences of testicular cancer. One of his best mates suffered from that disease when he was only in his 30s.
He understood that depression in men is one of the most debilitating illnesses that men can face, because until then men thought they had to ignore it, to be seen to be strong and to be resilient. Clinton said to me that he knew that blokes were blokes. They are tough and strong, and showing emotion is a sign of weakness. Blokes should not even hug their dads or their best mates.
I think that is very much an issue for men from a certain era, a certain age, and I think that is something that I see with my brother, my husband and people of our generation. And a lot of men in my circle never got to hug their dads. As Clinton said to me today, he never hugged his dad but he has now learned to hug his mates and their dads. And that is almost the same.
Blokes do not have society’s permission to express their feelings and emotions in the way that women sometimes do. If I get teary today, that is just one of the things that Vicki does. But men are expected to bottle them up.
Clinton saw this happening in farming communities when he was growing up, when drought or financial difficulty or even government intervention ripped the heart out of generations of farming practice. He saw the statistics of farmers whose depression had put them at such a low ebb that the only way out was suicide. I note that the member for Leichhardt, the independent, Bob Katter, speaks at length and with passion about this issue.
Clinton has seen it in his own family. Many years ago a teenage cousin, seemingly happy in life, put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. A nephew in his early 20s recently attempted to take his life because that life had become too much for him to bear. And closer to home, Clinton experienced it himself when he went through a profound feeling of failure as a bloke when his family home burned to the ground in the 2003 bushfires. It may have been an unfounded, perhaps even an imagined, failure but the feeling was real and I think it stays with him even today.
Men’s health and men’s wellbeing are what Movember is all about and that is why people like Clinton have participated in Movember. Back in 2006 he had the singular achievement of raising $1,500 for the Movember cause and he promises to show me the photo of a hirsute Clinton. He said that it took a while for the mo to actually register on his face.
Working closely with someone like Clinton, I get to see some of his personal encounters. One of the reasons for that is that we share personal experiences—the good times, the bad times, the fun times and the sad times. This is good because to share is to care, and to care is to give permission, which men historically have been denied, to express their feelings—the happiness, the sadness, the successes, the failures, the satisfaction and the frustrations.
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