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[MorleyDev]

And no, guns doesn't explain it as the gender gap persists in countries that are almost completely gun-free.

Fyi, it's not just guns. Men are also more likely to attempt suicide by throwing themselves from a building, hanging themselves, or stepping in front of a train. Women are more likely to try cutting or overdose. The former set has a higher success rate than the latter. That forms part of the reason the rates are higher even in non-gun places like the UK.

[Dorsidwarf]

-In this post, Dorsidwarf mis-identifies someone in a text-based environment-

I have to bring this up, but what the fuck are you even talking about and how is it related to me, by name? I didn't even mention anything about SJWs or non-SJWs so shut the fuck up. I'm not downplaying or upplaying anything to do with SJWs, because they weren't part of the conversation before wierd interjected.

Apologies, someone pointed out earlier that I seem to have mistaken you for Rolan, apparently.

[Reelya]

Ack sorry I shouldn't get so agitated even still. But it's a good reason to address ideas rather than people.

EDIT But I really dislike the argument "more women try and committ suicide" because it doesn't change the fact that many more men have the worse outcome.  It's like arguing against a (made up) fact that "100 women died in hospital" with "ah, but more men went to the hospital, so we don't need to concern ourselves with the dead women now. It's all equal".

Also "proximate causes" isn't really sufficient for an equality issue. e.g. the proximate cause that few women study Engineering is that few women enrol in Engineering. And we could well argue "but more men are turned away from studying Engineering than women", and that would be a fact, because many more men enrol than women, therefore most who are turned away are men, too. But the fact that more men are rejected from Engineering degrees than women doesn't "excuse" the low female student intake.

If we were going by the same standard that dismisses male suicide the lack of women in Engineering would be the end of the story (since they didn't apply for the degree), but clearly any equity issue needs to deal with underlying causes and never blame the victims. And I think the dismissals of male suicide almost all come down to "well the male did this or that (used gun/didn't seek help)" so it's pure victim blaming logic. And of course, that doesn't really fly. Differing outcomes by gender is proof itself that the underlying system is unfair, no matter how many steps you need to go back in causality. That's the standard we use in systemic bias against women, so we do need to apply the same standard for men, too.

[Frumple]

But it's that attitude. Any problem that specifically seems to affect men: "haven't we already done enough". Well clearly not, if one group is disproportionately suffering some outcome.

Except it's not even remotely "haven't we already done enough". People, especially those left-inclined ones you seem to be railing about, have been pushing for better mental health resources for basically forever, usually as part of a general campaign to improve health care on the whole. That includes suicide prevention and what's related to it both for men who are more likely to succeed if they try and less likely to try, and women who are less likely to succeed but more likely to try.

If you're trying to say that men need more efforts directed to them to reduce success rates, despite the fact that the actual problems causing the attempts (i.e. what mental health can help with, what political efforts can realistically address, and so on) is less prevalent with them, well, guess what? Firearm control is part of the general platforms the folks you're yelling at tend to lean towards. So is support for increased funding for mental health care. So is support for men to actually fucking use the resources we have available. So is cultural attempts to drag men towards social practices that help mitigate the issue (such as talking to people about their problems, acknowledging emotions, and all that rot). And on, and on, and on.

Also being in a public news journal means close to jack all when it comes to psych research, particularly when it's a subject where specific attention outside of what we already have isn't really needed. You don't need explanatory research, we already have the goddamn explanation. Of course public awareness is going to be low, it is for suicide in general. And so on. There's not some kind of damn mystery going on here.

Also that first one is the one you already linked to. And I already addressed. The statistic is sensational bullshit, we know exactly what's causing boys and young men to take their lives -- same as everyone else, with the addition of a handful of cultural issues (we're aware and working on it!) -- and little effort is made to understand the trend because it takes basically no effort to understand it. And hey, the second one repeats the same goddamn statistic. How someone spends twenty years on suicide research and fucks that up I have no idea. Hopefully it was just the PhD not paying attention.

All that said, there actually is a handful of suicide prevention programs in the US directed specifically towards majority male demographics. It's just mostly focused on veterans and military (and even that has been about seven different kinds of fight and continues to be complete friggin' misery to keep going and getting better) because the conservative side of our culture is fucked up (when it comes to psych issues in particular) and has been fighting tooth and nail to do everything they can to make health care -- particularly mental health care -- worse and the cultural issues leading to higher rates of success that much stronger. You can expect that to get worse still over the next few years

Seriously though, do you really not realize you're yelling at just about the only people in this country trying to address the problem you're going off about? Or that fixing the general problem will largely address the specific one? That the culture problems are in fact ones that are trying to be softened? All that mess? To a massive extent there's not specific measures needed or existent because every freaking thing that could be done on that front is already being done, either as part of the general efforts against suicide or from efforts related to other cultural issues.

[Reelya]

Seriously though, do you really not realize you're yelling at just about the only people in this country trying to address the problem you're going off about? Or that fixing the general problem will largely address the specific one? That the culture problems are in fact ones that are trying to be softened? All that mess?

Who am I yelling at in particular? I've referenced the media as complicit in not giving a fuck, and that the research community hasn't really had any interest in pursuing the issue. I haven't mentioned anyone else specifically.

Yeah, but I don't actually buy into your argument that the people you have in mind are addressing any of these issues. The problem is that I don't think these promises are rational or realistic. We make changes to some unrelated systems, then everyone's problems are going to be fixed like magic? It's like something a religious cult would tell you where you do the ritual then all your worldy problems will go away so you don't need to actually address them. Things don't work like that.

So men shouldn't worry about any of their existing "here and now" problems because once the feminist utopia exists they won't be problems? Sure, I'd support that if they had a good plan to do that but I see a lot of holes in any perfect plan of any ideology. But until this utopia comes into existence, can men at least mention that they have some problems or are you going to scream at them to wait for the coming utopia? perhaps we can check to see if any of these issues for men actually get better in e.g. Sweden first, and then at least you can have an objective case going on there.

[Grim Portent]

Seriously though, do you really not realize you're yelling at just about the only people in this country trying to address the problem you're going off about? Or that fixing the general problem will largely address the specific one? That the culture problems are in fact ones that are trying to be softened? All that mess?

Who am I yelling at in particular? I've referenced the media as complicit in not giving a fuck, and that the research community hasn't really had any interest in pursuing the issue. I haven't mentioned anyone else specifically.

Yeah, but I don't actually buy into your argument that the people you have in mind are addressing any of these issues. Basically they're promising that if you fix problems specifically for one sub-demographic all the other demographic's problems will be fixed like magic, and any attempts to look at problems of other sub-demographics is verboten because "you'll be fixed up just wait. Until then - shut up".

The problem is that I don't think these promises are rational or realistic. We make changes to some unrelated systems, then everyone's problems are going to be fixed like magic? It's like something a cult would tell you where you do the ritual then all your worldy problems will go away so you don't need to actually address them. Things don't work like that.

So men shouldn't worry about any of their existing "here and now" problems because once the feminist utopia exists they won't be problems? Sure, I'd support that if they had a good plan to do that but I see a lot of holes in any perfect plan of any ideology.

How is him saying that a general increase to funding for and the the provision of free services from mental health care, the reduction of access to means of suicide for men specifically and changes in education to address the cultural issues that contribute to suicide, in any way indicative of attempts to fix the problems of women instead of the problem in general?

[Frumple]

@ Ree: You brought it up trying to play off substantiative differences in conservative vs. liberal excesses as oppression olympics, specifically in relation to how much more sizable and impactful for the former tends to be. If you're not yelling at someone in particular you were making a pretty good attempt at it regardless.

... also they're not promising to fix things for one sub-demographic. I'm not even sure where the hell you're getting that from. Suicide research and prevention efforts are almost always general things, not gender specific, and to the extent there's a female lean it's because they're trying to kill themselves a lot more. Ninja'd a bit, but eh. Though the edit whackamole seems to be starting again and what that's addressing isn't there anymore, so alright, you've found my silver bullet, I quit, have fun.

[Neonivek]

@ Ree: You brought it up trying to play off substantiative differences in conservative vs. liberal excesses as oppression olympics, specifically in relation to how much more sizable and impactful for the former tends to be. If you're not yelling at someone in particular you were making a pretty good attempt at it regardless.

... also they're not promising to fix things for one sub-demographic. I'm not even sure where the hell you're getting that from. Suicide research and prevention efforts are almost always general things, not gender specific, and to the extent there's a female lean it's because they're trying to kill themselves a lot more. Ninja'd a bit, but eh. Though the edit whackamole seems to be starting again and what that's addressing isn't there anymore, so alright, you've found my silver bullet, I quit, have fun.

Oddly enough Reelya never actually referred to any party of government. Someone else did and accused him of basically "Playing to the conservatives because only the Liberals care!"

[Reelya]

How is him saying that a general increase to funding for and the the provision of free services from mental health care, the reduction of access to means of suicide for men specifically and changes in education to address the cultural issues that contribute to suicide, in any way indicative of attempts to fix the problems of women instead of the problem in general?

Because reduction of access to means of suicide has no effect for a start. Gun reduction isn't going to budge it, unless you ban ropes, trains and tall buildings too. I support gun reduction for other reasons, but it's not going to solve this specific issue.

Also, you have things like domestically battered men who are turned away from support services right now. It's very common: the stories are endless, e.g. a guy who rang a hotline seeking support services, then got abused by the women on the line. The answer to that isn't more feminists running things, because they are in fact running those services right now. If lots of people are saying a specific group of people who dominate that sector of the community support services are in fact part of the problem, funding the same people more isn't the answer. the people who work in that sector are actually abusive and dismissive of male victims of domestic violence right now. How is expanding their "franchise" into more aspects of life going to help men, specifically?

We need more community health / welfare services for men, but they should probably be run by men, who receive comparable funding for the same level of need as women. But ... it's not the sort of idea that the feminist groups have been very happy about any time it's brought up.

EDIT: let me cite an example from Australia.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/story-of-domestic-violence-against-men-is-hidden-complicated-and-disputed-20151122-gl55v7.html

Recently the federal government launched a $100 million women's safety package to help combat domestic violence against women and children. Two million of that package was allocated for men but not for the victims. Instead it was used to increase funding for MensLine for tools and resources to support perpetrators not to reoffend.
...
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said to Brisbane Times last month that she would be approaching Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about launching a domestic violence awareness campaign that includes male victims. Ms Palaszczuk has also changed her language around domestic violence after hearing of the men it has impacted.

Alright, so basically zero dollars for male victims (even though they are like 40% of victims according to detailed surveys), and money allocated for male "offenders" rehab only. Annastacia Palaszczuk, a female state premier, then bravely brought up the issue of male victims getting some resources. So feminist should be cheering right?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/19/annastacia-palaszczuk-warned-dont-put-domestic-violence-against-men-above-women

The premier of Queensland has been warned not to recognise male victims of domestic violence at the expense of women after she said she had changed her language to include male victims.

Annastacia Palaszczuk, who has committed to ending domestic violence, told a community cabinet event violence against men is something that needs to be addressed more.

“I do understand that there are a number of men have gone through or are going through domestic violence,” she said on Sunday, according to Fairfax Media.

“I actually did change my language when it did become public because it was brought to my attention that there was some serious issues surrounding some men in our community needing help as well.

“I do think that is something we do need to address a bit more.”

Right, so to address male victims "a bit more" than "not at all" is 100% too much according to mainstream feminist groups.

[Neonivek]

Yes but those men are depriving women of those services.

Says the Oppression Olympics...

[penguinofhonor]

Reelya: There's actually some data suggesting that restricting access to guns reduces total suicides.

[Grim Portent]

@ Ree: You brought it up trying to play off substantiative differences in conservative vs. liberal excesses as oppression olympics, specifically in relation to how much more sizable and impactful for the former tends to be. If you're not yelling at someone in particular you were making a pretty good attempt at it regardless.

... also they're not promising to fix things for one sub-demographic. I'm not even sure where the hell you're getting that from. Suicide research and prevention efforts are almost always general things, not gender specific, and to the extent there's a female lean it's because they're trying to kill themselves a lot more. Ninja'd a bit, but eh. Though the edit whackamole seems to be starting again and what that's addressing isn't there anymore, so alright, you've found my silver bullet, I quit, have fun.

Oddly enough Reelya never actually referred to any party of government. Someone else did and accused him of basically "Playing to the conservatives because only the Liberals care!"

Frumple brought it up to point out that, in the US at least, the problems of (successful) suicide rates being higher in young men, and the problem of suicide attempts being higher in women, were both being addressed by one side of the aisle already as part of a general platform of improving mental health, attempted cultural shifts, and gun control, and in his perception undermined by the other side of the aisle. Same point he raises in most discussions about outreach programs and public services.

Because reduction of access to means of suicide has no effect for a start. Gun reduction isn't going to budge it, unless you ban ropes, trains and tall buildings too. I support gun reduction for other reasons, but it's not going to solve this specific issue.

Also, you have things like domestically battered men who are turned away from support services right now. It's very common: the stories are endless, e.g. a guy who rang a hotline seeking support services, then got abused by the women on the line.

The answer to that isn't more feminists running things, because they are in fact running those services right now. If lots of people are saying a specific group of people who dominate that sector of the community support services are in fact part of the problem, funding the same people more isn't the answer.

We need more services for men, but they should probably be run by men, who receive comparable funding for the same level of need as women. That's not something they've been willing to consider.

The domestic abuse angle and the mens usage of more lethal suicide methods are cultural problems, though the domestic abuse support for men is woefully underfunded, but I suspect staffing issues would be there regardless of available finances because of cultural perceptions from other men if nothing else.

In the case of suicide the question to ask isn't why more men die, we know why, they use methods that will actually do the trick, what we should be asking and trying to address is why more men choose guns, hanging or jumping off buildings while women choose cutting their wrists and poison, which both have a low success rate. The number of women who want to kill themselves and try is higher than the number of men who try which indicates that women need more prevention efforts than men at the moment, the latter just have a much better success rate due to different methods and need better mitigation efforts for their attempts.

[Reelya]

In the case of suicide the question to ask isn't why more men die, we know why, they use methods that will actually do the trick, what we should be asking and trying to address is why more men choose guns, hanging or jumping off buildings while women choose cutting their wrists and poison, which both have a low success rate. The number of women who want to kill themselves and try is higher than the number of men who try which indicates that women need more prevention efforts than men at the moment, the latter just have a much better success rate due to different methods and need better mitigation efforts for their attempts.

I'd argue that the lower level of successful suicides means than men actually need more prevention efforts. if women attempt it 4 times as much but only succeed 1/4 times compared to a man, then the female chance per attempt is really low compared to a man. Say 75 men commit suicide and 25 women do, but "4 times the women as men attempted it".

So lets work out a range of figures. Assuming 100% male suicides are sucessful, that's 300 female attempts leading to 25 successes, that's a total success chance of 8% of the male's success chance. Just to check we can assume only 50% of males are successful then there would have been 150 male attempts, 600 female attempts leading to 25 female deaths, meaning 4% of female attempts succeed vs 50% of male attempts, or again 8% successful female attempts per successful male attempts.

So if you have limited resources but want to save the maximum number of lives, it would be foolish to prevent female suicide attempts, as you'd have to intervene in 12 times as many cases to get the same result.

[Grim Portent]

Possible. There's going to be an ideal ratio of assigning limited resources to minimize deaths, but the problem I see is money spent on at risk women is more likely to prevent an attempt at suicide, while money spent on at risk men is less likely to actually go to someone who would have tried to commit suicide because of the very big difference in the number of attempts, and might wind up being less efficient an expense as a result.

EDIT: Depending on the methods being used of course, but a lot of suicide prevention is an active process that can only be used to help so many people at once rather than something passive that helps everyone who can see/access it./EDIT

Also in a callous sense women probably cost the system in general more when they try to commit suicide because they die less and therefore need medical care afterwards, which costs a decent chunk of money if you have subsidized or free healthcare, especially once you factor in the higher number of attempts, which means more survivors, while men are more often dead on discovery and most of the followup costs involved come from a pine box and a mop, so arguably the prevention of the former is a better way to cut expenses than the latter.

Of course money's not really the big cost involved in suicide prevention I'd say, it's available work hours that can be divided up. Only so many guidance counselors, psychiatric professionals and the like around, and they're often considered lower priority than other medical professions for getting their training encouraged.

Also interesting note, at least here in Scotland deprivation has a link with successful suicides, the bottom 10% being 3 times more likely to commit suicide than the top 10%, so the most at risk group is men from low income areas/families. Not surprising, but kind of neat.

[Reelya]

That's a silly argument. You're saying because it's a scatter gun and you can't really tell who's at risk you should fund the extra money to women more.

but since men account for 75% of the successes they are still a better investment even if you can't target at-risk people. If you only target women at random you'd have to spend 4 times as much to intervene in the same number of "successful" suicide attempts.

If you can target at-risk people the odds are ~12 to 1 in favor of preventing male attempts (as per my last post), and in the completely blind scenario it's still 3 to 1 in favor of men.