Male violence against women (and indeed other men) is downstream of men's mental health. It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men. Mentally unhealthy men are dangerous (speaking as a man myself), therefore we should find ways to improve men's mental health.

> It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better".

Well, other methods haven't worked, such as trying to help or have these discussions. Or relying on science.

> Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.

Unfortunately, men generally don't care about this reasoning.

> ...we should find ways to improve men's mental health.

Unfortunately, men are the ones generally opposed to this. It's a "sign of weakness."

Let's be clear, men work hard to prevent men from improving men's mental health.

Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, including men, unfortunately.

While I agree with you, I think a lot of the “be better” rhetoric comes from plenty of men in power telling all sorts of marginalized groups the exact same thing. “Bootstraps” culture is just generally toxic.

>It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.

I think the underlying idea is that us men need to hold ourselves accountable. These issues are primarily* issues that men need to fix, and it's unrealistic to expect other demographics to do it for us. Thus, telling men to "be better" is about the most you can expect from other demographics.

*There are nuances here, obviously. Please don't try and reply with some gotcha.