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Comment by sundvor | Hacker News Reader

Or workplace deaths, 10:1, or suicides 3.5:1 or higher.

Women attempt suicide two to four times more often than men. (However, men tend to use more violent, and effective, methods of suicide, so succeed more frequently than women.)

Are you suggesting that women are too incompetent to kill themselves?

The less sexist explanation is that women generally use suicide attempts as a way of asking for help while men generally use suicide attempts as a way of escape.

Stated in those terms, both groups are very competent at achieving the end goal.

Easy, tiger - you may want to consider switching to decaf.

Each component of what I stated in response to the comment above is accurate, and an appropriate explanation of the implied assumption in it that suicide lies more commonly with men than women (a common misconception arising from what I explain).

isnt this explanation even more sexist? ..

I wonder how true this really is, and how many attempts by women were mostly just looking for attention. Not to downplay the seriousness of it, it just might be a different class of self harm.

Claiming that feminism does not talk about these issues is at best a sign of naivety about feminism and at worst being disingenuous.

One may disagree with their conclusion that the origin of these problem also has to do with patriarchy, but to claim that these forms of suffering that disproportionately affect men are ignored by feminists is false.

Oh, usually when one corners them in a debate they will grudgingly mumble something about the draft, but find me a spontaneous protest that the draft only inducts men, or about circumcision! They can be badgered into it but they have no actual vigor for it. I did find the various -- when the idea that the draft would apply in the US to women -- responses of "This isn't the kind of equality I wanted" very amusing in a bitterly cynical way.

The draft is very low on most people's protest agenda because it's a coercive thing. Very few people will argue for more coercion, and especially not towards violence.

Meanwhile, women have fought long and hard to be accepted as equals in the (voluntary) military.

And you will find many supporters if instead the selective service, you'd support e.g a year of mandatory social service.

You'll also find support to abandon the draft. (it's a highly unnecessary measure in the face of a professional military). You might even find support to have an egalitarian draft if we move further away from a professional military and instead institute mandatory military service.

But "here's a really bad idea that disproportionality affects a specific group, we should double down to affect more groups negatively" just isn't a proposition appealing to many people - male or female.

> The draft is very low on most people's protest agenda because it's a coercive thing. Very few people will argue for more coercion, and especially not towards violence.

But this is pretty much the same reason that we don’t see outcry about the lack of women working on garbage trucks: it’s not a desirable thing.

Mainstream feminism and the activist reporters ignore the issue. It's inconvenient to the narrative they adhere to.

The Google gender pay gap lawsuit was covered extensively a few years ago. It's outcome (men were actually underpaid based on the data) that resulted in a large number of male employees at Google getting payouts and salary boosts was essentially ignored.

You're obviously right, as "feminists" is way too broad (as is "patriarchy", really).

It's still unsatisfying at some level though. Reading left-leaning news (say the BBC), you're far more likely to read a story about desirable equality that doesn't mention the undesirable side. To be clear, I'm not opposed to equality at all. The discussion often just doesn't seem to be nuanced.

Can you link to any examples?

A quick google search gave me these:

https://thefeministshop.com/blogs/the-feminist-shop-blog/why...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-patriarchy-is...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09589236.2018.15...

I'm sure someone with more time (or better yet: deeper familiarity with academic feminist analysis than I have) could find many more.

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