Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

mosaicscience.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 359 posts

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#81

Post by DanBC »

GhotiFish wrote: post #46
GhotiFish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh? I hardly feel threatened by basically everything you just listed there. Do you? I get the feeling if you asked most women: "Do you think men are awful?" The answer would be "Yes but we love them anyway." and, to be on a less cutsey point. There was a time in my life where I was seriously depressed, and it was not because I thought society treated men poorly on average. It was because I thought I would have no pl…

haha, wow. That was at +5. You MRA guys don't mess around!

I downvoted you for aggressive tone. I fucking loathe MRAs.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#82

Post by tdkl »

vijayr wrote: post #37
GhotiFish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. In most stories, arn't protagonists primarily male? Arn't they typically courageous, or intelligent, or unyielding, or strong, or determined? I don't understand.

Look at some of the stories from the media. Some airlines will not allow males sit next to unaccompanied children. A theme park bans single males from bird watching, "in case they are predators". Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny, to most people. If a little girl has a problem, it is immediately attended to, whereas if a little boy has a problem, he is told to "be a man and su…

> Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muuFygvXPAM

Imagine this "witty banter" about female mutilation.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#83

Post by vacri »

steve19 wrote: post #42
curun1r wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right about society's role, but I see a much more pernicious tendency that I think damages boys and, eventually, men. Society teaches boys to bottle up their feelings. "Be a man" means be strong, and don't show emotion. Crying is a sign of weakness. And god forbid you talk about your emotions...that's a female thing. But the thing is, those activities are what allow us to be vulnerable and what allow u…

My experience has taught me the opposite. My grandfather and father were never taught to express feelings. Both were products of their time and circumstances. And there is nothing wrong with that. Both were successful in life despite the odds being stacked against them. I do not have children. I would not have a clue how to raise a girl, but if I had a boy, I would be teaching him stoical techniques to dealing with p…

You can do both: be stoic and also be able to discuss your weaknesses. See toughness as a virtue, but not pursue it to a fault.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#84

Post by roel_v »

pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #59
vijayr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at some of the stories from the media. Some airlines will not allow males sit next to unaccompanied children. A theme park bans single males from bird watching, "in case they are predators". Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny, to most people. If a little girl has a problem, it is immediately attended to, whereas if a little boy has a problem, he is told to "be a man and su…

Going off of that Vice article, sometimes I think that a 40/60 ratio of men to women would be favorable... it'd probably reflect the proportions of our hunter gatherer ancestry, and a lot of psychological benefits would come with that I'd imagine. But everything else she said was extremely misandrist and sexist.

"sometimes I think that a 40/60 ratio of men to women would be favorable..."

Without wanting to turn this into a race thing, there are sociological circumstances which sort of give us a glimpse (in subsets of the population) of what that could look like - and it's not pretty... See e.g. http://www.economist.com/node/21532296, which is one of the lesser emotionally charged discussions of it, but I'm sure you can find the right Google terms to find dozens of other articles about it yourself.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#85

Post by tdkl »

sukilot wrote: post #75
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid question, but most people I know (including my boys) identify far more with the guys on Big Bang Theory than Bruce Willis in Die Hard, and those guys are every negative archetype of maleness (sexist, unable to care for oneself, etc) wrapped up in a pseudo-intellectualized package. The one exception was Penny's boy friend, who filled "stupid jock".[1] What Bruce Willis brings to the table is this idealize…

BBT has had nerdy women for a few seasons already. And most of the characters take care of themselves in their own apartment, and have highly respected careers. The nerdy women are actually a bit stronger than the nerdy men.

> The nerdy women are actually a bit stronger than the nerdy men.

Of course, they have to be, it's a modern sitcom. The most attractive one is also only a waitress/failed aspiring actress.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#86

Post by bakhy »

Queue male rights activists to explain to us how this is all feminism's fault :/ Tragic, really. Things like this seem to obviously stem from patriarchy. But instead of dismantling patriarchy, a small group of men simply blame everything on feminists. Those feminists, how dare they fight for themselves before they have solved the problems of men! :D

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#87

Post by mpweiher »

vijayr wrote: post #37
GhotiFish wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. In most stories, arn't protagonists primarily male? Arn't they typically courageous, or intelligent, or unyielding, or strong, or determined? I don't understand.

Look at some of the stories from the media. Some airlines will not allow males sit next to unaccompanied children. A theme park bans single males from bird watching, "in case they are predators". Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny, to most people. If a little girl has a problem, it is immediately attended to, whereas if a little boy has a problem, he is told to "be a man and su…

The Femitheist article was actually satire. Yeah, I also didn't quite get it either, though I was thinking that it must be satire, it was so over the top. Poe's law in action, I guess, and well-executed!

"I now no longer present my satirical works without making it clear that they are not serious, as many people have been unable to recognize that fact on their own, despite the over-the-top and theatrical style of said presentations."

http://www.femitheist.net/p/cp-faq.html

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#88

Post by Red_Tarsius »

The media have been churning out self-reinforcing stereotypes for decades. The effects are as subtle as lethal.

A few years ago I was very stressed out. I thought that talking about my problems (college, family, whatever) would have helped me. I shared my worries and fears with a few my female friends. Bad idea.

> “A man who’s needing help is seen as a figure of fun”

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#89

Post by bakhy »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #10

The demonization of all things male has had a pernicious effect on boys and men over the last 20 years. I've seen it negatively impact friends and, worse, my own boys. Oone of the best things I ever did was cut the live TV feed and the commercials that only show men as drunken idiots, drunken leches, or bumbling idiots (notice: drunken and idiots is a repeating theme). As a society, we need to come to terms with masc…

Demonization of all things male? That's just ridiculous. There are nasty things both men and women have to struggle with.

I'd say the problem with male suicides probably exists for longer than 20 years. Patriarchy has existed for a long time, and together with it its accompanying set of high expectations of men. Pressures to be strong, successful, never show emotion or weakness, to serve your family,.. there is nothing new there. It used to come with much more rewards, but feminism has eroded that away. So now we are kinda equal, while the old cultural norms still survive, causing pain to men.

Patriarchy is the common enemy.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#90

Post by xai3luGi »

unexistance wrote: post #48
ca3dmon wrote: post #3

what in god's name is that font literally unreadable!

hah didn't notice that, I've set my firefox to force use my choice of font all the time

Wow, I didn't think there was anyone else on the web who did that! Most people's browsers obey web designers rather than their users.
Post reply on HN