Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for men, its men and male culture fault.

When statistics show a over-representation for a disadvantage for women, its men and male culture fault.

It must be that it is very convenient to blame men and male culture, but honestly I have a hard time seeing any truth in that. Suicide is connected with depression, culture and unemployment. We know from studies that men are more often misdiagnosed when it comes to depression, with experiments where doctors rate identical profiles more correctly if the name is that of a woman. We also know that culture has a major impact on suicide rates with a strong link to gender expectations, the same gender expectation that researcher suggest is causing misdiagnoses for depression in men. We also know there is a strong correlation for increased suicide rates for men when unemployment goes up but not for women, again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit.

If we ignore that, at least make a study and look if men who do not express emotions is a valid predictor for suicide. I expect it is not but it would make for a interesting validation to read.

> again pointing towards gender expectations as the culprit

Well, that's exactly right.

In general, I wish we would move away from oversimplified "patriarchy"-based language of "aggressor" vs "victim" (which discourages male victims from coming forward and encouraged a culture of collective victim-hood we are in now, where to really leverage speaking power one must first prove that they, too, are a victim, an ultimately disabling attitude) and move towards couching all of this in the very inclusive and in no way "feminine" term like "gender expectations."

Straight men would feel personally attacked less and open to talking about unfair expectations of them more. They won't feel that any conversation about lack of fairness in cultural norms excludes them by default.

Women (and people who overall dislike the gender binary) would still be able to voice their opposition to expectations, too.

The parent wrote "macho culture" aka sexism, and yet you read it as "male culture".

Care to define what "male culture" is?

Statistical disadvantages are almost always on women's side on a variety of societal issues, yet women cope and mostly aren't loud complainers on a day-to-day (when they get together to do so male culture calls them out). It's easy to blame (some) men because older sexist men call the shots pretty much everywhere (even areas where most effective practitioners tend to be women, like cooking.) In this way women get used to coping, with injustice, unfairness, offense, from early age and in the presence of other women in their family. This may help explain further the learned ability to commiserate, so to say.

I don't know, maybe men who don't express feelings like being tough dudes and won't consider suicide, maybe the ones who suicide are the ones who do have and express lots of feeling, but misplace the venting somehow, or can't control well, who knows.

"(even areas where most effective practitioners tend to be women, like cooking.)"

Source?

I don't mean "most efficient" or anything to that end, which is a moral judgement I'm not inclined to consider, but that effectively most practitioners (you know, at home, in small business et al) are women. The phrasing was a bit bad.

Perhaps it's a regional thing, but professional cooks seem to be more often male when I notice them. In particular, I'm thinking of small husband/wife shops where the wife is likely to be the waiter/cashier/etc. (All of those roles rolled into one job.) Perhaps I don't notice the other combination?

I of course agree that traditionally the woman is more likely to cook at home.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com