For decades women have made immense strides in fighting for gender equality. Brave women such as Susan B. Anthony who stood up to fight for a women’s right to vote and be heard in the political world, or Oprah Winfrey who inspires millions of young women to be their best selves. While all these amazing strides in women rights have been ongoing the last century, there has been a lack of attention to some of the problems that men face in their daily lives.

I am writing this article not to undermine the many problems women face today in Western society, but hope to begin to break the silence of issues that men also have to overcome. Feminism and the feminist movement has done great work to achieve equality and rights for women, but most of that has been focused only at women, and I hope to begin the conversation about gender discrimination and psychological burdens that the men in our society face.

To begin, I would like to address the unfair assumptions that men are a threat to the safety of children and that women are better suited for the protection of children.This has been a continuing problem in Western societies.

A clear example of this is the 2010 court case Fischer vs British Airways where Mirko Fischer of Luxembourg sued the airline after he was told to switch seats with a woman. The airline had a policy that prevented adult men from sitting next to unaccompanied child passengers.

Fischer was asked to switch seats with his pregnant wife who had asked to sit next to the window. In an interview with the BBC, Fischer said of the incident. “I felt humiliated and outraged. They accuse you of being some kind of child molester just because you are sitting next to someone,” Fischer told BBC.

British Airways is not the only company that has these policies, other airlines such as Virgin Australia, Qantas and Air New Zealand all have similar policies. A man on a Virgin Australia flight was even forced to switch seats with a stranger when the flight attendants had asked the stranger to “please sit in this seat because he is not allowed to sit next to minors.”

Imagine the kind of image that was portrayed, to have a flight attendant tell another passenger that you are “not allowed to sit next to minors” is extremely dehumanizing and utterly appalling. The humiliation that a man would experience in this situation is indescribable. Being compared to a child predator simply because of his sex is wrong.

A sad twist to this idea is that when it comes to assaults of children by parents, men are not the majority perpetrators. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Children & Families, in 2015 the total amount of children abused by mothers was almost double that of fathers, with 257,409 victims abused by their mothers alone and only 132,738 victims abused by only the father. And worse, the same goes for murders by parents, while in 2015 where 309 children were killed by their mothers, and only 170 by their fathers.

Of course, both men and women are capable of being a good parent, but it is wrong to assume that a mother will always be better than a man for a child. Men are just as capable for loving their children as mothers, and just being a man does not correlate to them being a predator; I believe that the idea that men are bad parents is a driving force in why many fathers end up leaving their children.

The next issue that men face is also faced by women—mental disorders. Women and men both experience mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression and dysphoria at similar rates. The problem lies with the ability of men to seek help for these issues.

A study conducted in 1993 and posted to the psychological news forum Psychotherapy showed that nearly two-thirds of mental health outpatient visits were made by women. University of Missouri Counseling Psychology Professor Glenn Good, Ph.D. explained how these tendencies are not the result of natural biology. “I don’t think that it’s biologically determined that men will seek less help than women, So if that’s true, then it must mean that it’s socialization and upbringing: men learn to seek less help,” Good said.

Local psychologist Marcia S. Gibson explained in a phone interview some of the issues that men who do come forward often face: “Specifically that men come to me with, anxiety, depression and marital issues,” Gibson said. These are many of the same issues that women face in today’s society.

That last issue Gibson mentioned, marital issues, is one that is rarely considered when it comes to issues that men face in relationships. According to the National Conference Against Domestic Violence, one in four men will be the victim of some form of domestic violence in their life, and one in seven will be the victim of extreme domestic violence. These men are trapped in terrible situations and are being taught to just deal with it instead of seeking the help the most certainly need.

When men don’t come forward with their issues and try to bottle it up, they can make terrible life-ending decisions. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC, in 2015, men committed suicide 3.5 times than women, an astonishing 21.1 suicides for every 100,000 residents in the US. Men need to be able to speak openly about their issues and not face judgment or humiliation, if they cannot, these rates will continue to stay high.

The final issue that I would like to address is the early childhood care systems that are designed to help women become strong and treat boys as either problematic or defective. To begin, our elementary school classrooms are ran by a majority female staff.

At local elementary school John L Sipley, men account for only seven of the dozens of early childhood teachers, three of whom specialize in certain fields such as behavioral services or physical education.

This can create a problem as teachers, especially in kindergarten are seen as parental figures to the children. The US Census Bureau reported that in 2016 there were 17.22 million children living in single mother homes. When these kids go to a school where they are also greeted and grow with mainly female teacher, they lack the proper father figure that many boys need in their life to show them what it means to be a man.

Even people such as rapper Tupac Shakur needed a father in his life. “I know for a fact that if I had a father, I’d have some discipline, I’d have more confidence. You need a man to teach you how to be a man,” Shakur said.

Also, the use of elementary schools “Zero Tolerance” policies hurt boys in the classroom for punishing them for things are can be described as normal boy behavior. In an interview with Kristen Sheets, a kindergarten teacher at John L Sipley, she described how the school’s policy on roughhousing and teasing. “We do not tolerate either behavior. Being respectful and being safe are two of our classroom rules,” Sheets said.

It, of course, should be the concern of schools to ensure student safety and respectful attitudes, but boys show signs of being more aggressive than their female counterparts. “Overall, I would say boys have been more aggressive [in my office], I have definitely have had girls who have been aggressive in my office, but in general, more boys,” Gibson said.

Schools should not completely try to snuff boys desires to roughhouse and be aggressive but should find ways such as sports like wrestling to help them get that energy out.

I want to be very clear, I am not saying that men “have it worse” than women, nor am I saying that women have it worse than men. When it comes to discrimination in today’s society, it’s impossible to label an entire group.

People experience discrimination on different levels than others. A poor man may face more discrimination for his gender than a rich woman might, and vise versa. It’s a fruitless effort to try and fight to see who is more oppressed. That energy should be instead spent on working to fight the stereotypes and discrimination that plagues our society,

With the great progress that we’ve made as a country to crack down on gender roles and make them seem like a thing of the past, it’s time to help those affected on the other side of the spectrum.

We cannot expect to make progress in our society while men are being hurt by incorrect assumptions and social discrimination. It’s working to eradicate sexism that will truly help us see an egalitarian society. I deeply believe that men and women are and should be treated as equals, and I hope this can start the discussion of how we can all reach that goal.