A handy reference for dealing with the MRA crowd.
What follows is a response to a popular list of claims and arguments made by men’s rights activists.
1. SUICIDE: Men’s suicide rate is 4.6 times higher than that of women’s. [Dept. Health & Human Services — 26,710 males vs 5,700 females]
Not for lack of trying: women attempt it three times as often. [1] Researchers have found that gender differences in socialization is the strongest explanation for men’s relative success in suicide attempts. In the United States, for instance, it has been shown that unsuccessful suicide attempts are considered “feminine” while it is considered masculine to succeed. In other words, the fear of being labeled “feminine” or “weak” in a male supremacist culture encourages men to ensure their attempts are successfully completed. [2] The statistic given here also masks that many of these “suicides” were actually murder-suicides. In the United States, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people died in suicide…
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bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
1 comment
August 10, 2014 at 6:58 am
VR Kaine
“…it has been shown that unsuccessful suicide attempts are considered “feminine” while it is considered masculine to succeed.”
“It has been shown”?! Um, shown by who, exactly? The guy who offed himself responding from the afterlife? (“I didn’t want to appear weak!”) or the rest of the guys living and sitting around having beers, high-fiving and chest-bumping in celebrating how ole Eddie offed himself like a man, being asked to fill out a questionnaire? Would be very curious to see who they surveyed for this one, how they did it, and what the point of the survey was.
Besides that, I think the point about this stat masking the murder-suicide rate by men is far more important and far more the one to emphasize.
“WORKPLACE FATALITIES: Men account for more than 95% of all workplace fatalities.
“…One important reason for this discrepancy is that men are inclined to select work that is dangerous in order to prove their masculinity to women, to other men, and to themselves.”
Haha! Really? I selected work in construction when I was younger because it paid more than McDonald’s – that’s it. Again, would love to see who they actually surveyed to arrive at these conclusions and the quality of questions beforehand. And women in dangerous jobs or serving in the military or in extreme sports – are they “proving their masculinity to women, other men, and themselves”? Didn’t think adrenaline had a gender.
I’d be far more interested in seeing the education level of males involved in workplace accidents or deaths as well as the education levels of men involved in domestic violence, and would have a feeling that uneducated neanderthals appear very frequently in both categories.
MR advocacy is a joke and deserves to be shown as such, in my opinion, but the effort to make all roads lead to the Patriarchy here is a little much.
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