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Meanwhile, male suicides still outnumber female suicides by 3:1 for every age group. What a fantastic demonstration of the fact that a statement doesn't have t

• scarmig 3y ago
  1. I have plenty of bones to pick with Haidt, but he's not one to deemphasize male suffering for the purposes of politically correct rhetoric. He explicitly points out in the article that even now, teen male suicide far outpaces teen female suicide. 2. It is genuinely interesting if we're moving from a 4:1 to 2:1 M:F suicide rate, and I think that can be placed on social media. And if there is a single concrete cause of the change in ratio, that increase in female suicide rates can be reversed. That would be a good thing, even if it only improves young women's lives. 3. As unfair as it is, people don't give a shit about male suicide rates; the general response is "they deserve it," and no argumentation is going to change their minds. If people start seeing suicide as an issue that affects both sexes, perhaps that can provide the basis for some policy that will have the unintended effect of helping male suicide rates.
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    > He explicitly points out in the article that even now, teen male suicide far outpaces teen female suicide. Which makes the headline, which is the only thing the vast majority of people will look at (something the author is well aware of), even more disingenuous bordering on dishonest.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • scarmig 3y ago
      There have been literally thousands of articles and blog posts that point out in the headline that men kill themselves far more than women do. People don't care. Maybe there's an advantage to identifying a primarily male-affecting issue with a group deemed socially more worthy of sympathy? I'm not saying I like it, but there's a massive crisis, and it's better to pose the crisis in a way that garners sympathy, even if that means working with unjust public biases instead of working against them.
      • jakderrida 3y ago
        >There have been literally thousands of articles and blog posts that point out in the headline that men kill themselves far more than women do. People don't care. So when they don't make it the headline, it's a conspiracy. When they make it the headline, it's still a conspiracy? At a certain point, we need to accept the fact that you're the one that's hopeless.
  • fieldcny 3y ago
    #3 is an absurd statement, as a society we do not say that men deserve it. Are there individuals that do say that? If they do they are not good humans and as such their point of view doesn’t really matter. There is a broader point that is being missed and that is, in the Anglo-sphere people don’t care much about mental health at all, we stigmatize mental health as a weakness (thanks puritans!), so yes men don’t seek access to mental healthcare as openly as women and that drives other outcomes like higher suicide rates, higher levels of stress related medical issues and in the extremes mass-shootings.
    • scarmig 3y ago
      We absolutely do say exactly that, in (lack of) action and word. And the people who shrug at male suicide do matter: they design public policy that results in the outcomes. A "fun" fact: the majority of men who commit suicide do seek mental health services. And the mental health system fails them. Shifting it purely to a matter of "men are just too toxic to seek mental health services" is just a thinly veiled way to blame men for their suicides.
      • atmavatar 3y ago
        I'd like to think that few people go so far as to suggest men who commit suicide deserve it. That said, there's definitely a general apathy towards male suicide (and fatalities in general), naturally following from the fact that men are and always have been considered disposable.
        • scarmig 3y ago
          I'd concede that it's rare (though not unheard of) for someone to explicitly say "men who commit suicide deserve it." But that's too narrow a definition. It's incredibly common (including in the comment I was responding to) for someone to say "men have high suicide rates because they don't seek mental healthcare" or "men need to build stronger social circles" or variations. The key point is that it puts the onus on individual men, not on society at large. With other groups, at the very least the framing would be "X group doesn't have as much access to mental health services as other groups." It's the agentic framing of male suicide rates that I'm condemning, because the reigning ideology is that every man is a hyperagent and any misfortune that befalls him is a result of his personal failings.
  • tuatoru 3y ago
    > 3. ... people don't give a shit about male suicide rates; the general response is "they deserve it," Yes, for decades this attitude has been caricatured by the fake-but-entirely-too-plausible news headline "Male suicide rate increasing; women most affected". Something I would expect to see in the Guardian if not elsewhere.
    • scarmig 3y ago
      Reminds me of the famous feminist quote: "Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat. Women often have to flee from the only homes they have ever known. Women are often the refugees from conflict and sometimes, more frequently in today’s warfare, victims. Women are often left with the responsibility, alone, of raising the children." Source: https://clintonwhitehouse3.archives.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.html https://clintonwhitehouse3.archives.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/ht...
      • jakderrida 3y ago
        https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-victims-of-war/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/hillary-clinton-victims-of... Holy crap, it's true. Oh well. Still would have been a thousand times better than Trump.
• gotoeleven 3y ago
  Im not sure that a world where girls kill themselves at the same rate as boys is a healthy one.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • golergka 3y ago
    I don't really have an opinion, but people at large usually perceive a world where gender differences are negligible to be a healthier one. Why do you think it's the opposite in this case?
  • goku12 3y ago
    Such a skewed ratio of suicide among males and females point more to a problem with social order than to an innate susceptibility of males to suicide. That means that the current situation is certainly unhealthy, compared to if male suicide rates can be lowered to match female suicide rate.
  • cwillu 3y ago
    This is a great example of a statement whose emotional valence is dramatically wrong compared to the literal meaning: a world where girls kill themselves at the same near-zero rate as boys is _exactly_ what a healthy world should be.
  • lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Assuming a world in which the rate of girls killing themselves is ~0% and boys is ~5%, I imagine most would think the world would be healthier if the numbers were more similar at ~0%. Phrasing it as “at the same rate” makes me think... yeah, should they be different? I do see the point that the rate going up is bad and it’s currently trending closer in the wrong direction but I can also see how one might read the comment as suggesting that the rates specifically should not be the same.
• kemotep 3y ago
  What is the opposite conclusion for this headline? That young adults aren’t committing suicide more than previous generations?
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    Ok, I'll bite: The conclusion implied by the headline ("Especially for Girls") is that female suicides are a larger problem than male suicides, while the numbers say the exact opposite, by a huge margin.
    • karaterobot 3y ago
      I think it's more like: how would you rewrite this headline? Would you just leave off the second clause completely? Otherwise, if it does seem salient that the increase in suicide rate is higher among girls, how would you include that information without making people angry because they think that doing so ignores the historically higher rates among males? To me, it seems like an okay headline. The focus of the story is on the change, so it's not wrong to focus on the areas that change more.
      • p-e-w 3y ago
        > how would you rewrite this headline? "An Analysis of Suicide Rates in the Anglosphere" Shocking, right? It's basically an admission that the facts are too complex to compress into a half-sentence, and if the reader wants to understand them they should read the actual article. But social cargo cult science has been operating like tabloid journalism for so long that this wouldn't even be considered.
      • klipt 3y ago
        "Gender suicide gap narrows"
        • nhinck2 3y ago
          That would accurately describe a situation where suicide rates were minimising absolutely due to one group decreasing disproportionately. The title as-is is accurate
• treve 3y ago
  I read the article, and the title seems to me as accurate and the most significant outcome. Suicide rates going up is a major cause for concern. They are up across the board and significantly up for women. If you think there's some agenda here, I suspect that it's actually your own confirmation bias that's popping up.
  • p-e-w 3y ago
    > the title seems to me as accurate and the most significant outcome That's exactly my point. The title is accurate. In the sense that its factual claims are correct. But the same headline also implies conclusions that are not correct at all. And, knowing how the social "sciences" operate, this is not an accident.
    • treve 3y ago
      I'm saying that the implied conclusions you read from just the headline, is not what the majority of people in this thread (including me) read. I sincerely doubt there's a hidden agenda here. Male suicides are not less important, and not ignored in neither the article nor headline. Perhaps you're looking for some agenda, and perhaps that does exist in other places on the internet (apparently you read things you don't approve on on mastodon?). Whatever conclusions you drew from that, this article and title just doesn't seem like a good example of that and probably the wrong thing to get upset about. In my opinion it's a good article and the title is both accurate and highlights the most significant conclusion.
• wh313 3y ago
  I'm confused about how the article minimizes the suicide rate in boys. It even has multiple paragraphs analyzing why this gap exists. It seems like you're framing gender dynamics as a zero-sum game, where improving the situation of one results in stepbacks the other. I agree that men do face significant struggles in today's society [1], but there are ways to move forward in ways that benefit everyone [2]. [1] Perry, Grayson. The Descent of Man. United Kingdom: Penguin Publishing Group, 2017. [2] hooks, bell. Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. United Kingdom: Pluto Press, 2000.
  • deaddodo 3y ago
    Because men already have a hell of a time getting support, sympathy or understanding without the issue being reframed as "well it is toxic masculinity's fault", "you should have seen a psychiatrist" or "yeah but women try more and that's totally not a sign of attention seeking behavior as opposed to genuine fatigue/despair with life". So yeah people represented by the more afflicted group will find it particularly offensive that it's being reframed in yet another female-centric manner.
    • definitelyreal 3y ago
      Are you saying that attempting suicide, potentially multiple times, is not a sign of genuine despair? What would you consider a “genuine” enough sign of despair? You start by saying that men have a harder time getting sympathy, and then minimize the same issue for women by implying that women who attempt suicide aren’t “trying” as hard and they don’t feel ‘actual’ distress but rather they are being manipulative. There are a lot of ways to get attention, which is a totally normal thing for humans to want, and if someone is that desperate for it I think it’s safer to go ahead and assume it’s because they are actually unhappy and it’s worth addressing rather than calling them a liar?
    • jrflowers 3y ago
      You make a good point, there can be no improvement in male suicide rates until any and all record keeping of female suicides ceases entirely. As posters online our first duty upon seeing an article like this is to demand that nobody ever write anything like this until such a time that it is deemed worthy of study by us, the posters
• HWR_14 3y ago
  As the article points out, female suicide attempts far outnumber male suicide attempts. That male suicide succeeds more often is due to the methods used. If you are using suicide as a proxy for mental health, then suicide attempts seem as valid a proxy as suicides. But even if that wasn't the case, there is a measurable difference in the rate of change. The number of female suicides is increasing at a far faster rate than male suicides.
  • klipt 3y ago
    > suicide attempts seem as valid a proxy as suicides. In a sense they're inversely correlated, since if at first you succeed, you'll never attempt again. Unless you're specifically controlling for that by not counting subsequent attempts by the same person.
  • epoxia 3y ago
    I would like to point out that you can only attempt once if you "succeed". Attempts recount the same individuals suffering.
  • scarmig 3y ago
    1. Male and female suicide attempts are fundamentally different qualitatively, as evidenced by the fact that men succeed at approximately 10x the rate of women (and, to preempt the usual response, this extends to places where guns are illegal and account for a small minority of suicide methods). This is due to a difference in intent: women attempt suicide as a cry for help; men attempt suicide to end their suffering. Both are bad situations, but it's wrong to equate them, and the latter is clearly worse, because men don't have help available as even an option. 2. Suppose men succeed at suicide 30% of the time, and women succeed at suicide 3% of the time. The greatest risk factor for suicide attempts is having previously attempted suicide. A useful exercise: calculate the gender ratio of suicide attempts, assuming equal likelihood of a first attempt and repeating attempts until success.
  • ryathal 3y ago
    Using suicide attempts has the same problem as the 50% of marriages end in divorce statistic.
• cf1241290841 3y ago
  Daniel Schmachtenberger uses the categories of truthful, not true and missing context. Truthful means the person communicating thinks it to be true (misinformation), not true being disinformation and missing context while true, misleading without context. Its the landscape of framing. By now people should be familiar with the works of Edward Bernays.
• 1650325502 3y ago
  From the preface to the article: > I believe Zach has made some real discoveries here. He demonstrates a pattern in girls’ suicide rates that has not been noticed or much discussed, as far as we can tell. The article headline mentions girls, not in an attempt to downplay boys' suicides, but rather to emphasize a discovery that they believe that others haven't yet made. For the same reason, a headline, "Suicide Rates Are high for Gen Z Across the Anglosphere, Especially for Boys" (note high; not up), doesn't discount that girls are also committing suicide. This headline would be apt for an article which highlights the gendered discrepancy in raw rates, rather than the gendered discrepancy in rates of increase.
• thefz 3y ago
  > Meanwhile, male suicides still outnumber female suicides by 3:1 for every age group. > What a fantastic demonstration of the fact that a statement doesn't have to be false in order to be highly misleading. Suicide rates can be rising but especially for girls, all the while keeping the ratio valid. One fact does not make the other invalid.