Printer-friendly version

Self-injury is commonly thought of as an issue for women, especially teenage girls, and much of the population of self-injury support websites is female. Male self-injurers are not generally seen as a big part of the population but research may show that there are more male self-injurers than researchers originally thought.

Research

While past research has indicated more women self-injure recent aggregated research has found that that the female to male ratio for self-injury is fairly similar. Males are found to be more likely to hit and burn themselves while females are more likely to cut and burn themselves.¹ If there genuinely is a major difference between the genders or if these more recent studies point to bias in data collection hasn't been agreed upon. 

If You're A Male Self-Injurer

Self-injury isn't a behavior limited to women, not at all. Also, cutting isn't the only form of self-injury out there. It's neither more nor less legitimate than something like hitting yourself, hitting your body against something or burning yourself. 

Men are often taught to hold in their emotions and to keep from showing any 'weakness'. This is an unfortunate part of many cultures but don't less this hold you back. Keeping in your emotions doesn't equal strength and an act of self-injury does not equal weakness. Self-injuring doesn't mean you're gay, it has nothing to do with homosexuality. Neither does it mean you should be labeled as anything by your peers.

While there are ignorant people don't let your fear of not being legitimized let yourself from getting the help you may need.

Gabrielle: My father was a self-injurer. He is the sort to deny most emotions but the positive ones and, of course, anger. He didn't consider the fact that he used to hit himself in front of his family to be self-injury. It took many years before he'd accept it and not until late 2010/early 2011 did he enter therapy (for different reasons, his self-injury had been dealt with by then) to learn how to express his feelings in ways that were outside of what was acceptable in his culture when growing up. He's come a long way since he used to punch himself in front of me and my family during the time I first started self-injuring.

^[1] http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/23/2/240#R13

---

LifeSIGNS has a helpful page for male self-injurers.