If you ask around, most people believe that eating disorders are the domain of the female population. Whenever this "belief" arises in conversation, I counter with the argument that, while it might seem that women suffer from eating disorders more than men, I believe it's MORE about the space that is given to women to talk about their eating disorders....and the absence of that for men to surmount their own shame to address their self-destructive relationship with food and body. In the same way that people are now wondering why it seems that there are so many more people today being abused, I argue that it's not that there are MORE people being abused...it's that there is more of a forum of acceptance for discussing it and addressing it than ever before. Abuse. Eating Disorders....these and other horrors people endure, have been going on forever. Voices to speak of them seem to be more amenable to shouting these days. And everyone benefits from that phenomenon.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/13/sports/olympics/figure-skating-adam-rippon.html