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#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 s

#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.
    - abathur 3y ago
      > The key point is that it puts the onus on individual men, not on society at large. A gentle nudge, I hope. I'm not sure how the examples you give place any undue onus on individual men, nor how they absolve society at large. I read both examples as gesturing at how the society socializes boys and what it expects of men. I doubt many would suggest individual men are making abstract, rational, uninfluenced, ruggedly-individual decisions to prefer suicide over seeking mental healthcare. We're all responsible for how we expect people to perform their gender (and how our personal expectations factor in to what society at large expects), but the most-direct way to change those expectations is to reject them at scale. In this case, men have the greatest leverage to initiate change. The point isn't that millions of men need to individually make a quiet decision to seek mental healthcare in secret--it's that millions of men can change the weather here if they individually choose to reject traditional expectations (including the reigning hyperagent ideology you cite) and make space for others to follow. I hope it's obvious that retooling our gendered expectations of men (as a society) is a thread that's at least worth pulling on with respect to reducing male suicide rates. I hope it's also clear that a lot of individual men would have roles to play in that process. You're right that it isn't the whole story. Creating the preconditions for men to readily seek mental healthcare doesn't matter much if the care isn't obtainable for other reasons. But I think it's a reasonable focus until there's good evidence that men are motivated to seek care that isn't ~accessible. --- Few social problems are best addressed with an answer from one perspective. Some people over-flatten the gender pay gap, for example, into something inflicted on women by a culture that doesn't value them like it does men. Some people over-flatten it into something women inflict on themselves when they aren't as likely to negotiate a higher salary, ask for raises, job-hop, work in more dangerous industries, put in gobs of overtime, pursue management positions, get STEM degrees, and so on. Some read the former as shirking personal responsibility and begging society for equal outcomes. Some people read the latter as putting the onus on individual women, not on society at large. We can break out of frames like these and focus on helping people flourish. Some of us may not be able to walk and chew gum--but some of us can walk, and some of us can chew gum.
      - em-bee 3y ago
        i think you are right on point with expectations being the problem. i grew up without friends for various reasons, and i spent a lot of time alone and isolated, but, at the same time i also grew up without anyone ever putting any kind of undue expectations on me. of course i was expected to help at home with some housework, but when it didn't happen i was never made to feel guilty about it. i believe for me this freedom from expectations counteracted the negative effects of not having friends. it allowed me to pursue my interests only limited by financial resources. when i saw as a young adult how many people had expectations on others, i did what you suggest, and reject the whole idea. i had no desire to fit in. it's one reason why i left europe at the time. i realized one of the problems europe has with immigrants is that expectation to assimilate and fit in. that particular problem is less strong in the US due to the less homogeneous society there, but it does exist there too. it's just a bit easier there to find your tribe as it were which lessens the difficulty of needing to fit in. this is at the macro level, on the other hand at the individual level the problem remains. again for me that meant that since i grew up alone, it was a lot easier to stay away from people who had expectations that i didn't want to fulfill. if you weren't able to accept me as the person i was, you were not going to gain my friendship. i expect many others are not able to do that so easily. for them, losing a friend, or having trouble finding friends hurts a lot more. i have a few friends. and i do want more friends, but not to the degree that i would give up my individuality as a human being in order to get those friends. in fact the worst experiences in my life were when people confronted me with specific expectations that i could not fulfill. my reaction was to protect myself by disconnecting from them.
p-e-w 3y ago
> as a society we do not say that men deserve it. Are there individuals that do say that? Visit any Mastodon server and you can see this and other blood-curdling statements posted every day, often by people under their real name, and to the thunderous cheering of the crowds.
- piva00 3y ago
  Mastodon and Twitter are their own toxic bubbles, basing what is the current zeitgeist on that is a recipe for a warped worldview.
piva00 3y ago
> 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 Not only that, in general men don't seek help from friends in the same way that women do with their social circles. It's not only professional help but camaraderie and support among men is very different (and lacking) compared to women. This is all in general terms, of course.

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.
  - abathur 3y ago
    > The key point is that it puts the onus on individual men, not on society at large. A gentle nudge, I hope. I'm not sure how the examples you give place any undue onus on individual men, nor how they absolve society at large. I read both examples as gesturing at how the society socializes boys and what it expects of men. I doubt many would suggest individual men are making abstract, rational, uninfluenced, ruggedly-individual decisions to prefer suicide over seeking mental healthcare. We're all responsible for how we expect people to perform their gender (and how our personal expectations factor in to what society at large expects), but the most-direct way to change those expectations is to reject them at scale. In this case, men have the greatest leverage to initiate change. The point isn't that millions of men need to individually make a quiet decision to seek mental healthcare in secret--it's that millions of men can change the weather here if they individually choose to reject traditional expectations (including the reigning hyperagent ideology you cite) and make space for others to follow. I hope it's obvious that retooling our gendered expectations of men (as a society) is a thread that's at least worth pulling on with respect to reducing male suicide rates. I hope it's also clear that a lot of individual men would have roles to play in that process. You're right that it isn't the whole story. Creating the preconditions for men to readily seek mental healthcare doesn't matter much if the care isn't obtainable for other reasons. But I think it's a reasonable focus until there's good evidence that men are motivated to seek care that isn't ~accessible. --- Few social problems are best addressed with an answer from one perspective. Some people over-flatten the gender pay gap, for example, into something inflicted on women by a culture that doesn't value them like it does men. Some people over-flatten it into something women inflict on themselves when they aren't as likely to negotiate a higher salary, ask for raises, job-hop, work in more dangerous industries, put in gobs of overtime, pursue management positions, get STEM degrees, and so on. Some read the former as shirking personal responsibility and begging society for equal outcomes. Some people read the latter as putting the onus on individual women, not on society at large. We can break out of frames like these and focus on helping people flourish. Some of us may not be able to walk and chew gum--but some of us can walk, and some of us can chew gum.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      i think you are right on point with expectations being the problem. i grew up without friends for various reasons, and i spent a lot of time alone and isolated, but, at the same time i also grew up without anyone ever putting any kind of undue expectations on me. of course i was expected to help at home with some housework, but when it didn't happen i was never made to feel guilty about it. i believe for me this freedom from expectations counteracted the negative effects of not having friends. it allowed me to pursue my interests only limited by financial resources. when i saw as a young adult how many people had expectations on others, i did what you suggest, and reject the whole idea. i had no desire to fit in. it's one reason why i left europe at the time. i realized one of the problems europe has with immigrants is that expectation to assimilate and fit in. that particular problem is less strong in the US due to the less homogeneous society there, but it does exist there too. it's just a bit easier there to find your tribe as it were which lessens the difficulty of needing to fit in. this is at the macro level, on the other hand at the individual level the problem remains. again for me that meant that since i grew up alone, it was a lot easier to stay away from people who had expectations that i didn't want to fulfill. if you weren't able to accept me as the person i was, you were not going to gain my friendship. i expect many others are not able to do that so easily. for them, losing a friend, or having trouble finding friends hurts a lot more. i have a few friends. and i do want more friends, but not to the degree that i would give up my individuality as a human being in order to get those friends. in fact the worst experiences in my life were when people confronted me with specific expectations that i could not fulfill. my reaction was to protect myself by disconnecting from them.

p-e-w 3y ago

> as a society we do not say that men deserve it. Are there individuals that do say that? Visit any Mastodon server and you can see this and other blood-curdling statements posted every day, often by people under their real name, and to the thunderous cheering of the crowds.

piva00 3y ago
Mastodon and Twitter are their own toxic bubbles, basing what is the current zeitgeist on that is a recipe for a warped worldview.

piva00 3y ago

> 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 Not only that, in general men don't seek help from friends in the same way that women do with their social circles. It's not only professional help but camaraderie and support among men is very different (and lacking) compared to women. This is all in general terms, of course.