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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

#111

Post by _pmf_ »

facepalm wrote: post #92
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.

In Germany there was a funny incident recently: the Green political party decided to change all the wording in their publications to be gender neutral. In German often jobs have two names, somewhat like "captain" and "captainness" for male and female captains. And so on. They decided to change everything to "captain/ness". The funny thing was that they properly gendered all positive personae appearing in their public…

> But they forgot about the negative appearances.

"Forgot".

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#112

Post by catlover99 »

Perhaps the simple principle that behind every great love/success lays a great suicide. You can't give yourself completely and keep the man inside. Maybe current society places too much value (amongst men) on complete commitment which in turn leads to a type of internal suicide, a loss of self and identity, which may manifest itself in a less internal but instead physical response (a true suicide).

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#113

Post by _pmf_ »

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…

China's and India's fad of aborting female offspring is not really very helpful. They're setting themselves up for some really, really nasty future.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#114

Post by bakhy »

mattlutze wrote: post #106
bakhy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ag…

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

Implications cannot be automatically reversed, as anyone visiting this site should know ;) I.e. "Patriarchy => prejudice X" does not automatically imply "!Patriarchy => !prejudice X".

As for your explanation on patriarchy, it is simplistic. Probably all ideological systems that humans have ever followed have been rich with mythology, symbolism, and various ideals. Patriarchy, like any other human system of thought, is not merely such a cold, pseudo-rational conclusion. There are always ideals that come with a system, most importantly, in this case, the concept of the ideal man and woman.

Basically, ask yourself, why was it thought that men would better "manage the organization"? What characteristics were idealized in men to make them fit this role? What is the ideal "man of the family"?

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#115

Post by Crito »

vacri wrote: post #83
steve19 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are often at odds, when the pressure to discuss your feelings is external.

Many times in my life people around me have pressured me to express how I feel about some recent event. I often resist this for a number of reasons. I might consider my feelings towards the matter to be deeply personal and private. I may realize that my feelings toward the matter will, if vocalized, cause distress to others. I may not have strong feelings at all, and expressing that may cause distress to others. Sometimes I just have nothing at all to say, and my insistence that I have no thoughts on the matter is taken as me being resistant to share what I think.

Summer camps when I was a teenager, the deaths of distant relatives, and the suicides of classmates that I did not know well are common places to the later examples.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#116

Post by bakhy »

barry-cotter wrote: post #108
smil wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beca…

This is pretty rude. You do know I can read your comment too? :D

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#117

Post by Nursie »

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…

There's a HUGE difference between "don't sweat the small stuff" and "keep your feelings to yourself".

All of those things you mention are of the former, not the latter category.

One can be stoic and unconcerned with the problems the world throws at you but still connect to people on an emotional level. This is something older generations of my extended family absolutely failed at, due mostly to old-fashioned englishness, and now the younger generations feel few emotional bonds between ourselves and have basically dispersed.

It's OK to be a tough man who can take it on the chin, and also to admit you love your friends and family.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#119

Post by Nursie »

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…

>> Feminism is cool whereas MRA is not

The extreme voices of feminism are pretty awful, but AFAICT the entire MRA movement is made up of arseholes.

It doesn't have to be, and there are issues to be addressed. It's just a shame it seems to be addressed by misogynist dickholes.

Re: The male suicides: how social perfectionism kills

#120

Post by Crito »

sukilot wrote: post #74
cmelbye wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In older stories, sure. But the "action hero" died a while ago. Have you not noticed the rise of the weak male lead in movies/TV/commercials? It's hugely prevalent in romantic comedies, but even TV shows like Modern Family (bumbling Phil and razor-sharp Claire) depict archetypes that are becoming quite common. The formula is a charming yet incompetent male lead who's mainly driven by sex, paired with a strong, capabl…

Why do you prefer seeing men only as action hero? In fact, many boys will grow up to be goofy dads.

That's quite the false dichotomy. Why would the opposite of "bumbling moron father" be "action hero", rather than "competent father"?

The John McClanes of this world, if in fact they exist at all, are exceptionally few and far between. Good competent fathers though? Those are hardly Hollywood inventions.

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