Why are most homeless people male?
Do me a favour. Try to blank your mind, and keep calm. Take a deep breath in. Now, think of a homeless person. A homeless person wearing layers and layers of clothes, usually in a mixture of browns and greys. A homeless person with a shopping cart full of plastic bags and hidden treasures. Imagine this homeless person walking down the street in the late evening. In your mind, is this person a male, or a female?
I bet you were imagining a male. But why?
Is it because you read my title, and therefore I have manage to plant a perconceived notion, subtlely, into your mind?
If so, then, it proves how easily the human mind can be manipulated. It shows how easy it is to plant an idea into someone’s head. Especially if you use a tool called ‘doubt’. Hey, don’t miss this penalty Beckscum. Those posts are looking a little lower than usual, you may want to keep it low. Oh, and there seems to be a bit of a breeze from left to right, you may want to aim further to the left then. *Beckscum kicks the penalty and blazes it to the far left and above the post*. Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
But, if I didn’t manage to manipulate your mind, or, if you hadn’t read the title in the first place, and yet you still answered ‘male’, then, it is fair for us to ask, why does it seem most homeless people are male? After all, it should be the other way around, since males have a much lower life expectancy than females.
Is it because males are loved less? Is it because males take more, and larger, risks in life? Is it because society protects women more than men? Or are there simply more males in society than females? Or, are there approximately equal number of homeless people in each gender, only that we tend to see more homeless males, simple because the homeless females are at ‘home’ somewhere cooking dinner?
Hmm. Life changing questions indeed.
