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The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

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Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#101

Post by bakhy »

M8 wrote: post #99
bakhy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nothi…

"we are kinda equal" Which gender legally gets the kids, house and alimony in +90% of divorces?

We could start listing examples of injustices, each one of us could find them, and we would only get farther from finding any solution, or farther from just having a meaningful discussion.

I am not negating that there are prejudice against men. I simply wish to point out the obvious - these prejudice are a product of patriarchy.

It was not feminism that painted the picture of the man as incompetent parent. It is a very old tenet of patriarchy, that mothers are better parents. That men go around drinking, fighting, they are too aggressive, too incompetent at small housework... These things are really old. They are patriarchy.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#102

Post by bakhy »

smil wrote: post #96
bakhy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P.S. The way Hacker News is "moderated" sucks. It was really easily predictable that this would bring me downvotes, irrelevant of how well or poor it may have been written. Dissenting opinions have little place here.

Your opinion isn't dissent, it's the generally accepted view.

Not here it isn't.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#103

Post by mattlutze »

GhotiFish wrote: post #11
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…

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.

Like a lot of people have said, modern shows are very much into the everyman male lead. Bryan Cranston's character in Malcolm in the Middle, Ed O'Neill's Al Bundy, Tim Taylor playing, once again, the affable rough-though-bumbling dad.

The thing is these are all prime-time sitcoms and comedies.

There's just as many popular shows where this isn't the case. Dramas rarely have this sort of soft, incorrigible-but-loveable archetype.

I'm not super-current on my media, but Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Walking Dead, Mad Men... most everything on HBO, Showtime, AMC, and FX run with strong, deep, emotionally complex male characters who grow and discover themselves, alongside the female characters.

And the male characters in these dramas are, on the whole, much more identifiable and aspirational.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#104

Post by bakhy »

smil wrote: post #94
bakhy wrote: post #86

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

Interesting. You were the first to mention feminism, and created a straw man which you used to express your disdain for men's rights in general. Tragic, really.

What's really tragic is that you don't have any actual reply, other than immediately resorting to such a condescending tone and deliberate misinterpretation of what I said.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#105

Post by facepalm »

bakhy wrote: post #100
facepalm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that women don't need to prove their worth to society. They can bear children. What can men do? If they can't find a way to make themselves useful, what is their place?

That's extremely reductionist. We are human beings, not reproduction machines. The concept of "worth" is much more complex. I don't think a woman can simply bear children, and she's good. I presume you were trying to make a point that this may be a "core" biological difference, which will always lead to a difference in suicide statistics between men and women. You may be right, you may be wrong, but it is in any case…

"You may be right, you may be wrong, but it is in any case too early, maybe even defeatist to talk about that now"

After hundreds of thousands of years of existance of humans you think it is too early to talk about that? I consider that ridiculous. You can not simply escape reality by crying "reductionism".

Of course it is a statement of averages. Not every woman is fine, things can get in the way. But on average, woman will be considered to be valuable to society no matter what.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#106

Post by mattlutze »

bakhy wrote: post #101
M8 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we are kinda equal" Which gender legally gets the kids, house and alimony in +90% of divorces?

We could start listing examples of injustices, each one of us could find them, and we would only get farther from finding any solution, or farther from just having a meaningful discussion. I am not negating that there are prejudice against men. I simply wish to point out the obvious - these prejudice are a product of patriarchy. It was not feminism that painted the picture of the man as incompetent parent. It is a ve…

> these prejudice are a product of patriarchy.

Is this the argument to make, though?

It forces the assertion that "if not for patriarchy, these prejudices wouldn't exist."

I'm not sure that that logically follows.

> It was not feminism that painted the picture of the man as incompetent parent. It is a very old tenet of patriarchy, that mothers are better parents. That men go around drinking, fighting, they are too aggressive, too incompetent at small housework... These things are really old. They are patriarchy.

You're certain this paragraph is true? Patriarchy holds a male at the head of the organizational unit under the belief that that person will do a better job managing that organization. This doesn't lead to "he's the head of the house but a useless parent." I'm fairly certain that that is a modern invention for comedy.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#107

Post by lmz »

sukilot wrote: post #78
esthlos wrote: post #51

I'd like to offer a different perspective. Suicide is a violent crime, the killing of a human being. Now, if we believe Wikipedia, then around 90% of homicides in the US will be committed by males. It seems reasonable that the male-female ratio should be about the same in the UK. Then a 0.8 ratio of male to female suicides could be accounted for by the increased male homicide rate alone. The Wikipedia page: http://en…

For whatever reason, men tend to choose more lethal forms of self harm (guns, cars) than women (cutting, pills)

Maybe it's that gap in STEM education we hear about that leads to women being unable to choose properly lethal methods.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#108

Post by barry-cotter »

smil wrote: post #96
bakhy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P.S. The way Hacker News is "moderated" sucks. It was really easily predictable that this would bring me downvotes, irrelevant of how well or poor it may have been written. Dissenting opinions have little place here.

Your opinion isn't dissent, it's the generally accepted view.

I am proud to have been the first to downvote him but I upvoted his response to you because you're wrong. I don't consider the time engaging him would take to be worth it but I disagree with it. I'm sympathetic to some of what some MRAs say but think some of them are vile people of the same ilk as Amanda Marcotte but on the other side. But the most important thing about MRA is that it's a movement doomed to fail because no one cares about men qua men. They might care about their personal friends and relatives but men as a group? No one cares. As such lift heavy, be awesome and deal with it as best you can.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#109

Post by bakhy »

facepalm wrote: post #105
bakhy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extremely reductionist. We are human beings, not reproduction machines. The concept of "worth" is much more complex. I don't think a woman can simply bear children, and she's good. I presume you were trying to make a point that this may be a "core" biological difference, which will always lead to a difference in suicide statistics between men and women. You may be right, you may be wrong, but it is in any case…

"You may be right, you may be wrong, but it is in any case too early, maybe even defeatist to talk about that now" After hundreds of thousands of years of existance of humans you think it is too early to talk about that? I consider that ridiculous. You can not simply escape reality by crying "reductionism". Of course it is a statement of averages. Not every woman is fine, things can get in the way. But on average, wo…

What are you talking about? :D

I meant, given that we are right now facing this problem of high suicide rates among men, it is definitely too early and too defeatist to ascribe it to biological differences. (If that is what you were trying to say. As I already said, I'm not sure if I understood correctly what you were trying to say.) We have to look at our culture and at ways in which we can change this. Maybe in the end we won't make the problem go away completely, but we must try. That is what I meant.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#110

Post by barry-cotter »

forgottenpass wrote: post #41
angersock wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was maybe a useful message ten, twenty years ago. The problem is that, honestly, a lot of these feelings are messy. They aren't expressions of weakness, they aren't some magical key used to unlock progress, they're not even something that's easily sympathized with. They can be the white-hot anger of being pulled off a project or ignored for the nth time in class or being made fun of. They can be the bubbling col…

The idea men should express themselves combined with the limits on socially acceptable expression have always been a strong indicator to me that "men showing emotion" isn't about men showing emotion. The social limits on expression aren't even based on a laughably bad interpretation of "heathy" expression. It straight up means to continue conforming like you always have, but additionally cry and show emotional weakne…

And you expected different? Social life is a game of shared expectations and showing you understand when to lie and not to, how to act by the rules for children and when to break them. Most moral discussion is posturing, just as most social discussion is an attempt to score political points.
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