Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” ― Franklin Leonard

Article mentioning suicide is the leading cause of deaths in young men in the opening paragraph.

You: probably due to their past privilege

Suicide is the leading cause of death among young men because a combination of medical science and safety regulations have made all the other causes incredibly unlikely.

Why is it not the leading cause of death for young women then?

Because something else kills more of them.

I don't see how this kind of truism helps the discussion.

Honestly, looking at the ONS data I grabbed, it's not even a truism. Male suicide is the top (non-accidental, which isn't mentioned in the article) cause of death among all people aged 15-45 in England and Wales. Boys and Men in that age category just do twice as much dying overall, and the only significant categories (of my arbitrary cutoff) that women are doing worse in is cancer and childbirth.

Oh I was specifically talking about onion2k's statement that essentially boiled down to "X is not the leading cause of death for young women because something else is", which is a truism and not useful in any way.

The interesting information here would be why it is for one cohort but not the other.

One thing I've noticed about this line is it gets used from all sorts of groups feel like they are the ones which were oppressed / the other group is the oppressor.

I don't think it's a particularly useful thing to say about yourself because, as you say, lots of people use it to try to claim they're being oppressed when really they're just losing their privilege.

It's very accurate when you're looking from the outside inwards though, such as this case where someone is claiming men are becoming irrelevant when obviously it's just that others are being seen more equally.

> lots of people use it to try to claim they're being oppressed when really they're just losing their privilege.

FWIW, "those people are oppressors, and are now being treated equally" is just as emotionally charged.

I generally think it's not a particularly useful thing for anyone to say.

This quote only works for those who experienced both sides of the change. And the problems brought up in the article is mostly about the younger generations.

I find it ironic when people say that, the quote could easily be used in the opposite direction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com