It's great when you're straight

Benny B

Well-known member
and you go

oh yeah right. that's just patriarchy mate.

it's just maybe not that helpful

Yeah, but who actually said this though? Not you, not me, not babboon. Of course it would be glib if that was all you said. And nobody is recommending saying that as an intervention in an individual suicide risk case, that would be absurd.

What I see happening quite a lot (not just here) is male suicide statistics getting bandied around with a lot of seriously unexamined assumptions as to how they are to be interpreted. And, unfortunately, they are often employed very cynically to shore up some very dodgy beliefs.

So, you get stuff like this, from guys like Warren Farrell

"The subtitle of the book is "Why Men are the Disposable Sex." Farrell argues that historically both sexes were disposable in the service of survival: women risked death in childbirth; men risked death in war. However, Farrell notes, there is a key difference: women's disposability emanated more from biology; men's expendability required socialization.[5]

Farrell observes various characteristics of modern US society, such as the tendency to assign higher-risk jobs - soldier, firefighter, coal miner, and so on - to men: almost all of the most hazardous professions are all-male, and segments within professions have higher percentages of men as their level of hazard increases. Other statistics, in conjunction with the lack of public outcry or mobilization around them, point in the same direction of male expendability. Men are victims of violent crime twice as often as women and are "three times more likely to be murder victims". Suicide rates are much higher for men than for women. While the death rates for breast cancer and prostate cancer are comparable, the US spends six times as much on breast cancer.[6]

These statistics, Farrell suggests, can only be explained if US society places greater value on the lives of women than of men."

Now, I'm not saying anyone here is taking it that far, but suicide figures are being used to demonstrate that the patriarchy is just a thing of the past, invented by the guardian, totally dismissed at the outset. Dodgy assumptions.
 

luka

Well-known member
ah poor corpsey! get well soon corpsey we love you and are sending a thousand rays of healing cosmic love and compassion directly into your gullet.
 

luka

Well-known member
patriarchy is one of those words that are incredibly useful in terms of elucidating structural inequality but are liable to become blunt instruments and one word answers for all the world's woes. that's the point at which it becomes glib. the point at which it becomes an excuse for not thinking.
 

Benny B

Well-known member
patriarchy is one of those words that are incredibly useful in terms of elucidating structural inequality but are liable to become blunt instruments and one word answers for all the world's woes. that's the point at which it becomes glib. the point at which it becomes an excuse for not thinking.

Sure, but I think the bigger problem is men hear that one word and just switch off, dont listen to the explanation, deny it exists. I think we need to keep using it though.
 

luka

Well-known member
im not proposing we throw it in the bin. just pointing out the problem with these grand, big picture, diagnostic words. capitalism is another good one. there's a tendency for their definitions (always vague and ill-defined at the best of times) to elide into 'everything' or 'the way things are'
 

luka

Well-known member
https://www.boston.com/culture/life...l&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

A business dedicated to ax-throwing and drinking beer sounds like something you’d find in a remote Midwestern town, a rural curiosity run by guys who look like Paul Bunyan. But ax-throwing venues are a growing trend, and the Boston area will soon have two of them.

One of the places arriving in the area, Urban Axes, is part of a larger chain based in Philadelphia that has plans to open in Somerville’s Union Square sometime this summer. Courtney Osgood, a representative for the company, wouldn’t confirm the space’s address, but she said that it will have a capacity of 80 to 100 people. She said the spot will be less focused on the bar aspect and more on the ax throwing, with three to four arenas, each holding four targets.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Now, I'm not saying anyone here is taking it that far, but suicide figures are being used to demonstrate that the patriarchy is just a thing of the past, invented by the guardian, totally dismissed at the outset. Dodgy assumptions.

I don't think that's true at all - it looks to me like cwmbran_city is just saying your invocation of patriarchy as a sufficient explanation for the male suicide epidemic and the failure of the NHS to contain it is inadequate, which I think is reasonable.
 

luka

Well-known member
lool that's your finest moment. you'll never top that. might as well retire for real now.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nice knowing you guys!

(edit: jk, I'm obviously going to be here until the heat-death of the universe)
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Lol when did I ever say this?

Well baboon articulated it most explicitly in this thread, though you've been heading in a similar direction:

...the undoubted male suicide crisis has nothing to do with ignoring this crisis to focus instead on patriarchal attitudes. It's almost the opposite - the continued fixation from men on maintaining fixed gender roles (which obviously disadvantages women massively; the less appreciated aspect being that men also suffer hugely from a system they in essence created)...

Sounds like there's been a mutual misunderstanding because c_c only said he doesn't think patriarchal attitudes have that big an effect in the male suicide phenomenon or in the present mismanagement of the NHS, and not - as you said - that it's "a thing of that past" in general.
 
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