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The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

mosaicscience.com

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Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#191

Post by kaitai »

beachstartup wrote: post #21

look, men are disposable. and it's always been this way, biologically speaking. throughout most of history, mens' purpose was disposability - through soldiering, exploring, entrepreneurialism (the high risk / high reward activities), or just working your fuckin' ass to the bone in the fields of fealty or a in a grey cubicle (the low risk / low reward activities). let's define some terms. "meaning of life" (note i did…

Women have been disposable throughout history too. Even in societies that respected women, maternal mortality (death during childbirth) was pretty common (and still is in the US). In societies that didn't like having so many women, abortion or infanticide were/are common (see sex ratios in China and India today).

Men get killed in wars and at work. Women get killed in wars and having babies. Both are exposed to different kinds of violence (men in the street, women at home). In your paradigm of meaning of life = reproduction, you fail to point out that women are disposable after they've squeezed out a kid. And whether they want to squeeze out a kid? You don't even ask.

Your dystopian view is not fun for anyone, let me assure you.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#192

Post by parennoob »

Nursie wrote: post #165
DanBC wrote: post #154

Vaguely frustrating that this thread had been taken over by MRAs. Suicide is complex. Suicide is common - it's a leading cause of death for some men. We need to make it acceptable for men to seek help when they are suicidal. This does not mean that we need men to talk and talk and talk about their intimate feelings. But we do need to make it so men can say "I'm not having a good day" and have someone else say "is it…

>> But we do need to make it so men can say "I'm not having a good day" and have someone else say "is it the kind of thing you want to talk to me about?" And you know what? This is exactly what my most outspoken-feminist female friend does. The MRAs have the wrong of things IMHO, and I'm glad I have good friends.

> This is exactly what my most outspoken-feminist female friend does.

Outspoken feminism can mean many things.

Examples of outspoken feminism also include Jezebel, a mainstream feminist website that is highly popular with my female friends. It publishes an article saying "Have You Ever Beat Up a Boyfriend? Because, Uh, We Have" that includes lines like "...slapped a guy when "he told me he thought he had breast cancer. (Okay, that one made us laugh really hard.)" [1] (Note that men can get breast cancer.)

I'm not quite sure it's only the so-called MRAs that 'have the wrong kind of thing'. Mainstream feminism can also be pretty ridiculous.

[1] http://jezebel.com/294383/have-you-ever-beat-up-a-boyfriend-...

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#193

Post by Nursie »

parennoob wrote: post #192
Nursie wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But we do need to make it so men can say "I'm not having a good day" and have someone else say "is it the kind of thing you want to talk to me about?" And you know what? This is exactly what my most outspoken-feminist female friend does. The MRAs have the wrong of things IMHO, and I'm glad I have good friends.

> This is exactly what my most outspoken-feminist female friend does. Outspoken feminism can mean many things. Examples of outspoken feminism also include Jezebel, a mainstream feminist website that is highly popular with my female friends. It publishes an article saying "Have You Ever Beat Up a Boyfriend? Because, Uh, We Have" that includes lines like "...slapped a guy when "he told me he thought he had breast cance…

In my case I meant my most outspoken feminist friend - i.e. someone who does not hide it and folds feminism into her outlook on life and her everyday actions.

Also please note that at no point have I said "all feminism is good and right all the time", I think much of the hysterical stuff on the net is counterproductive (at best) and some of it is downright hostile to all men.

--edit-- But I think that there is 'good' feminism in abundance as well, whereas I don't think that this exists very much in the MRA space.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#194

Post by ceejayoz »

smorrow wrote: post #145
parennoob wrote: post #8

I think this article puts the euphemism 'social perfectionism' on the subtle, and in some cases blatant anti-male stance that pervades US and UK society today. Sports teams fall over themselves to wear pink for Mother's Day, hardly anyone celebrates Father's Day. [1] Time Magazine publishes an article on how "Men are Obsolete". [2] Politicians routinely trumpet the 77% pay gap despite it being "more complicated than…

> female teacher in California who had sex with her 14-year old male student gets only two years in prison Having sex with someone without their consent is rape, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a bad thing. A woman raping, in terms of actual consequences, isn't the same thing as a man raping. If a woman "raped" me, didn't get pregnant by it, didn't give me any skanky diseases, and didn't publicly accuse me o…

> Having sex with someone without their consent is rape, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a bad thing.

Yes, it does.

> If a woman "raped" me, didn't get pregnant by it, didn't give me any skanky diseases, and didn't publicly accuse me of being the rapist, then I'd probably enjoy it.

Jesus Christ.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#195

Post by draugadrotten »

roel_v wrote: post #84
pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sweden have imported so many males from middle east that it's now more men than women in Sweden for the first time in 300 years.

"More boys are born in Sweden, the average life expectancy of males has gone up and it's mostly men who move here from other countries." http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#196

Post by DanBC »

This article mentions England a lot. You can get detailed statistics from our Office for National Statistics.

If you want to know suicide rates in different regions you want the (unfortunately named) NUTS3 document: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/about-ons/business-transparency/fr...

If you want deaths registered in 2013 (note the registered there. Somone could die in 2012 but have a death registered in 2013) you want this page: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-i... which links to a spreadsheet with the data.

They use a clear definition of what they count as suicide.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#197

Post by parennoob »

DanBC wrote: post #189
parennoob wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law doesn't care what you think. Calling it rape when a male student does it, but not when a female teacher does it is definitely evidence of bias in reporting.

There is a bias there. The reporting is often disgusting - "hot teachers fuck their students". A small part of the problem is that rape is defined as penetration by a penis. See for example the UK sexual offence act which jas several very serious criminal offences that carry the same penalty. Rape: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/1 Assault by Penetration: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/4…

> The reporting is often disgusting - "hot teachers fuck their students".

I have never seen that sort of wording in mainstream news outlets. Tabloids like the Daily Mail -- possibly. But one thing in common is that they almost never call it rape when the perpetrator is female, which it is in the case I linked (look up CA law on the subject). On the other hand, even when it is an unproven accusation against a male, they freely use the word without even bothering to add "alleged".

> A small part of the problem is that rape is defined as penetration by a penis.

Apart from the fact that your linked laws are UK ones, and the case I was referring to was CA in the US -- how is this a "small part of the problem"? It is a huge problem if laws literally say that only men can rape.

I think some part of this disconnect might be due to the differences between US and UK reporting. I'm guessing UK tabloids sensationalize stuff more but are also more careful about actual allegations due to stricter libel laws, whereas US media is more directly anti-male in its reporting.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#198

Post by lazyant »

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…

Yes, name a tv show where the man is the idiot and the woman the smart or normal one (all of them). Name a sitcom where the man is smart and the woman an idiot (none of them, and 'Married with children' doesn't count, they were all idiots. Of course I'm not advocating portraying women as idiots).

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#199

Post by kazinator »

lazyant wrote: post #198
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…

Yes, name a tv show where the man is the idiot and the woman the smart or normal one (all of them). Name a sitcom where the man is smart and the woman an idiot (none of them, and 'Married with children' doesn't count, they were all idiots. Of course I'm not advocating portraying women as idiots).

In a TV show in which people are portrayed as unusually smart (not merely normal), most of them will be male.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#200

Post by Dewie3 »

sliverstorm wrote: post #52
Dewie3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And taking your own life isn't such a big deal if it's all just a game. Achievements or none; they won't matter to you when you're in the ground.

Well, if none of it matters, might as well stick around. It's not like you have anything better to do.

How brilliant. How is that a better argument than "if you don't like it here, you might as well kill yourself."?

Oh I see. Because you implicitly value "doing" as better than "not doing", no matter what. So in that case, "living" must be better than "not existing", but definition. Hence you should stay around. How brilliant. Got any more brilliant arguments which are by default true by your own axioms?

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