There's so much I could say in response to your points, but you're too deeply entrenched in your position so I'm not going to spend any time on a response other than to say reliance upon the gender-based suicide success figures is a tell for someone who is cherry-picking data: it's not an honest argument.
The difference in men and women's suicide rate is not a reflection on men being more suicidal, in fact, men attempt suicide at a lower rate than women! Men are less suicidal than women! The difference is that if a man attempts suicide, he is much more likely to succeed, whereas women are much more likely to survive. If you want to use suicide as a measure of gender-based wellbeing, success is a meaningless statistic[1], because it's a reflection of metholodgy... suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are a much better measure of wellbeing.
[1] Unless, I guess, you want to go down some sort of line of thinking where women are attempting suicide for attention and "know" they'll survive so actually it doesn't count and men's use of more violent means is actually proof that men are suffering more.
It's convenient that you ignored the majority of my post because I am "too deeply entrenched", and then cherry-picked its one weak point while claiming I am cherry-picking and dishonest. I'll try the same tactic next time I disagree with someone.
We can try a different measure of health if you'd like. Surely I cannot be cherry-picking data if the effect is visible across multiple categories, right? Going down the list of highest-cause-of-death [0], death rates per 100,000 here [1] (sorry, hard to find more up-to-date data including age-adjusted rates of death by cause and gender):
Heart Disease (23.1% of deaths): Men 298.9, Women 210.4 (men 42% more likely)
Cancer (21.0% of deaths): Men 217.5, Women 151.3 (men 44% more likely)
Accidents (6.1% of deaths): Men 55.2, Women 25.8 (men 114% more likely)
Chronic lower respiratory diseases (5.5% of deaths): Men 48.0, Women 36.0 (men 33% more likely)
Cerebrovascular disease (5.3% of deaths): Men 42.5, Women 41.3 (men 3% more likely)
Alzheimers disease (4.3% of deaths): Men 18.5, 24.9 (women 35% more likely)
Diabetes mellitus (3.1% of deaths): Men 26.4, Women 19.5 (men 35% more likely)
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis (1.8% of deaths): Men 17.8, Women 12.5 (men 42% more likely)
Influenza and pneumonia (1.7% of deaths): Men 19.3, Women 14.2 (men 36% more likely)
Intentional self-harm (suicide) (1.7% of deaths): Men 18.4, Women 4.7 (men 291% more likely)
If female suicide attempts (0.6%/yr) resulted in death as often as male suicide attempts (0.4%/yr), from the above cited Figure 7, we would see an increase of 27.6 deaths per 100,000 in women. Let's look at death rates per 100,000 in 2021 [2]. Comparing people of the same race, the age-adjusted death rate per 100,000 people for men was 304.7 higher for whites, 458.3 for blacks, 187.0 for Asians, 480.9 for Native Americans, and 315.8 for Hispanics. Weighting that by demographics [4], that averages 320.4.
Let me put that statistic a few different ways for you:
If women were as effective as men at suicide, every successful female suicide would need to include her killing 10 other same-age women to equalize the age-adjusted death rate between men and women for all causes.
The difference in age-adjusted death rate between men and women is larger in magnitude than if there were a second, equally fatal, heart disease, that only impacted men.
You’re absolutely cherry picking. You’re just using whichever numbers provide surface level confirmation of your latest point, without asking the questions about why. You did it with the suicide rate and now you’re doing it with death rates. Females of almost every species of mammal have greater life expectancies than males of the same species! Death rate is a meaningless number in the context of how men are treated by the system unless you can demonstrate that the system is the cause for this higher death rate.
As I said in my original comment, there’s lots of issues that face men that are worth talking about and need to be addressed. I do not dispute that, however, I dispute that you characterise these things as in competition with issues that face women and that men are suffering more in this competition of your own invention. You can advocate for the issues you care about without the self-pitying minimisation of issues faced by others.
I can go further in justifying my position if you’d like, but I’d rather not unless you ask me to. I have no interest in explaining why I believe men have a lower life expectancy as a direct result of the system if you’re just going to tell me my points are meaningless again.
To be clear, I never said that men’s issues are in competition with women’s issues. Both genders have their own, unique issues which deserve attention. I only advocated for attention to be drawn to a men’s issue, and noted how (in my opinion) society typically places more weight on women’s issues than men’s issues. I engaged in this “competition” after you said “that the healthcare system prioritises women over men doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny”. And nowhere that I am aware of have I minimized any of the issues that others face.
You’ve made no effort to explain why these things matter: you’ve just churned out numbers. I don’t want to read more numbers, I know many of the numbers. The value you can provide in this conversation is with your understanding of the issues and your perspective on what can be done… not with NIH footnotes.
These topics have a great deal of depth, there’s many different aspects to consider — for example, life expectancy is a pretty weak measure, what about quality of life?
Go back and read your first comment. Pretend you’re coming into this topic cold: you know nothing of the subject, what do you learn from your comment?
* mens issues are brushed aside
* testosterone levels are lowest in 100 years
* people only care about men when it’s about fertility because fertility is a women’s issue
* men are being wished out of existence so women can enjoy plastics and pesticides
* nobody cares about the mental health impact of infertility in men
* low testosterone impacts men negatively
* if this was about women, people would care
* nobody cares about mens issues unless they impact women
* society thinks only women deserve care
There’s nothing in that comment except mindless complaining about men being victimised by society because they’re not women. There’s nothing of value. Then, when challenged on your statements, you’ve churned out numbers that look on the surface to show that men are suffering but actually under any scrutiny demonstrate nothing of the sort.
If you’re speaking to your personal feelings, that’s valid, if you personally feel that as a man you’re not valued, that’s something you can absolutely share insight into and it’ll be valuable for everyone here but you have to… do that. Embrace how you feel. Don’t frame your feelings as if they’re facts about the world, because then when you’re challenged on them, you’re spinning in circles posting meaningless numbers that don’t say what you think they say.
You should feel valued as a person. You should express your feelings. You should not try to justify your feelings with numbers — you don’t need to. The greatest irony (to me, anyway) is that so much of how we think about masculinity is based on intelligence and logic and rationality. You don’t need to rationalise your feelings. Feel them. Be hurt. And then you don’t need to dig deeper and deeper into numbers to support you in crafting some grand narrative about why this isn’t about feelings it’s about facts! I’m not sad, I’m intellectually perturbed!
I’m straying deep into the bowels of my own life experience now, but, why not: in my experience, the big difference between men and women is that men turn their negative feelings into narratives, and women turn their negative feelings inwards. The reason you see so many men complaining is not because men have it worse; but because of how masculinity manifests.
Even if every man on earth has a perfect life, except for you, your sadness would still be valid. Your pain would still be valid. You would still deserve kindness and respect. I categorically disagree with your absurd assertions that the male suicide rate is somehow a reflection of how men have it worse than women, but I don’t for one second think it invalidates any pain and sadness you’re feeling. They’re completely unrelated, ones a grand theory, and the other is you.
If you want to challenge my theories, I’d love to hear meaningful insight from you, I would sincerely appreciate it, but I don’t want numbers. They don’t say anything.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment and showing compassion. I appreciate it. I’ll keep what you’ve said in mind in discussions in the future and will probably be a better contributor for it. I agree with some of your comment and disagree with other parts.
I agree that it can be exhausting to conjure facts to support one’s belief. I’m a believer in what I call “n=1 statistics” - if something happens to me, or to someone else, that’s good enough and worth acting on. It doesn’t matter if a statistically significant amount of people experience the same thing. That doesn’t validate or invalidate anyone’s experience.
I disagree that statistics are nothing of value. For one, they can provide us a large-scale look at where our problems as a society are. There are problems with statistics, sure. They can’t do everything. They’re just one tool we can use in our quest to make the world a better place. Second, though they’re masked behind numbers, every statistic is a real person (in this case): the extra men who die are fathers who leave behind a spouse children. They are children whose parents lament their death. They are people who overdosed on heroin, gassed themselves out in their garage, or hung themselves in their bedrooms. They’re not just men, either; they’re the young girls who kill themselves due to social pressure or bullying, the mothers who leave children behind after a battle with breast cancer, etc.
I also disagree that life expectancy is a weak measure. In a lot of common cases, having died also probably means having had a miserable life (or part of it). Suicide is often preceded by sexual assault or depression or other psychological suffering. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and kidney issues are usually long and expensive battles that can be financially and morally debilitating to individuals and their families. Heart disease and cancer, at least, are also correlated with exposure to environmental toxins and stress. If someone is dying early from these conditions, there were probably burdens placed on them that in part caused that. I’ll concede that life expectancy is not the ultimate goal, but I think it is non-negligible when discussing outcomes between people (especially medically), given how we die.
You make an interesting point about how men and women express their frustration. Maybe that is related to why women have done a much better job raising attention regarding their issues and presenting a (mostly) unified front that has allowed for their progress. While we are busy theorycrafting, they’re busy acting and correcting.
The difference in men and women's suicide rate is not a reflection on men being more suicidal, in fact, men attempt suicide at a lower rate than women! Men are less suicidal than women! The difference is that if a man attempts suicide, he is much more likely to succeed, whereas women are much more likely to survive. If you want to use suicide as a measure of gender-based wellbeing, success is a meaningless statistic[1], because it's a reflection of metholodgy... suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are a much better measure of wellbeing.
See Figure 7 on your own link: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
[1] Unless, I guess, you want to go down some sort of line of thinking where women are attempting suicide for attention and "know" they'll survive so actually it doesn't count and men's use of more violent means is actually proof that men are suffering more.