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neya 2 hours ago [-]
A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world. I personally know at least a dozen men who have been harassed by biased laws and judges when it comes to divorce. These are good men, who worked really hard and took care of their wives very well, only to get either cheated on or scammed for money and lost everything. 2 of them are even almost homeless now. Most of them have aged so poorly after just 2 years into the divorce. Their wives aren't even homemakers who sacrificed anything who are getting paid, mostly working women who have good lawyers who just abuse the laws to steal wealth. Until this system is fixed, men's mental health will always be down the toilet.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
dlisboa 2 hours ago [-]
Brazilian law is far superior to US laws on this matter.
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
There are some of the same issues in custody law as in North America but from what I read it still seems way better than in the US.
icantevenhold 1 hours ago [-]
Having these options is common in other countries too afaict (with some minor differences)
I would be really surprised if the US didnt have these options too…
dlisboa 34 minutes ago [-]
It's more that these are the only options. No other laws govern marriages. I'm sure other countries have sensible ones too. In the US they have all matter of legal dispute because it's too wide open.
za3faran 46 minutes ago [-]
In Islam, we have it much simpler. There's a dowry paid to the woman that becomes her property. Other than that, each person leaves with their own assets they came in with. If, during marriage, they acquired assets they decided to split half way (or any other percentage), that split holds post divorce.
Fidelix 1 hours ago [-]
Absolute nonsense.
Just living together, informally, is already enough for the woman to take half your assets as it's already considered `Partial Community of Property`.
I can't think of anything where Brazil is generally superior to the US in terms of law.
rubicon33 2 hours ago [-]
You don't even have to sign a contract to end up in this situation. In California at least, just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married. That needs to be fixed. Marriage should absolutely be a contractual agreement where one party is fully aware what they're giving up, signing over, or potentially losing, not something you end up in through no fault of your own.
EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
dillondoyle 2 hours ago [-]
this "just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married" is completely false and a myth. Especially in California.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
You need to really fuck up to end up common-law married. You are simply wrong about California (we don't do common law marriage at all), and in all jurisdictions I'm aware of that do have common law marriages, you need to present yourself as married in order for there to be any claim.
That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.
wahern 1 hours ago [-]
Depending on the state, you don't need to refer to each other as a spouse, just that people get (or could get) the impression you're spouses.
My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long afterward she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father's personal and real property in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.
Of course, his real mistakes occurred before he ever started cohabitating. Common law marriage rules were far down the list of wrong turns. But in any event, ironically a few years later Alabama abolished common law marriage.
rubicon33 1 hours ago [-]
Hm, this flies in stark contrast to what I've been told and what I believed, but you're right as far as I can tell, common law marriage does not apply if you simply live with someone for a long time.
For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.
skissane 31 minutes ago [-]
> EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.
Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.
colejhudson 2 hours ago [-]
Unless something has changed recently, I’m fairly certain California doesn’t recognize common-law marriages.
it's 6 months to be common law in terms of employer benefits.
rubberstamp 13 minutes ago [-]
People, especially men, need to get way more actively political than passively political in order to solve these issues. The biased judges are often ignorant and not even thinking philosophically about right or wrong or fairness in most of these cases. Also men have a natural bias to protecting women and children, which is also taken advantage of knowingly or unknowingly by the other side. People or individuals can be unfair and inconsistent, but systems can be fair and consistent. Make systems for this. Currently we don't exactly have consistent or fair systems for this. A decently defined system for the scope of handling divorce that is fair to both man, woman and children isn't something that is hard. It may feel like the brain would hurt, if you have not been thinking much.
maerF0x0 2 hours ago [-]
If men and women are the same thing with slightly different parts, then gender neutral laws make sense.
If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
I think pandora's box is open never to be shut again on the conversation if we're the same or different.
datsci_est_2015 1 hours ago [-]
> If men and women are the same thing with slightly different parts, then gender neutral laws make sense.
> If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
This framing of the issue puts the discussion down an awkward rhetorical path that is difficult to recover from.
What if it doesn't matter whether someone looks or acts different; but it matters how society treats them and the outcomes that they face.
Black chess pieces and white chess pieces are superficially, trivially distinct. Yet, the player with the white pieces wins 52% to 56% of the time.
I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
maerF0x0 32 minutes ago [-]
What you're revealing is an underlying difference in constitution of Lib/Cons (to apply labels a bit grossly), in that L is usually concerned with enforcing outcomes despite the values it violates and R is usually concerned with enforcing values/rulesets despite the outcomes it produces.
Is "right" defined by the nature of existence or just by the ends? Some would say an outcome of hunger is unacceptable, some would say there are plenty of "wrong" (try to not make that moral meaning) behaviors which should result in hunger. (Such as refusing to work or trade value for other people's property ie food)
empressario 45 minutes ago [-]
>> I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
I’m guessing you don’t have a uterus, am I right? A man doesn’t end up pregnant if the condom breaks. So don’t lecture us about your “bad faith arguments” when you’re making one.
bjt 35 minutes ago [-]
Sure, biology is not sex-blind. But the law can still be written to favor a parent that's a primary caregiver, regardless of whether that parent is male or female.
kalaksi 2 hours ago [-]
Do you have any examples of laws that couldn't just be thought out better and anchor their reasoning more accurately and neutrally? Falling back to using gender often just feels like a quick hack.
ToucanLoucan 1 hours ago [-]
Falling back to gender (or race, or whatever protected class you’d like to consider) is far less about rote equality or equity than it is about correcting earlier imbalances of power/access.
People chafe against things like DEI as arbitrary favoritism completely failing to note that yes, this policy is meant to promote equality, not to represent it. In the case of promoting female stem workers you might say it’s a policy designed to give women equal-ish access to the job market by way of giving them preferential treatment in hiring, to counteract biases of men favoring men during that process.
The ideal outcome of any policy like this is that once the systemic inequity is resolved, the policy can be retired.
4c0d3r 52 minutes ago [-]
Assuming all humans and populations of humans are interchangeable parts. We are not. Not so much "race" - which is a fairly idiotic concept as it's applied -- but hereditarianism is very much a real thing. IQ equates with life outcomes and is highly heritable. How people migrate (or are forced to migrate) can help you understand a population and population differences. Nigerians who immigrate to the U.S. now do far better than populations that were brought over during chattel slavery. Likely those who were captured by their neighbors and sold to European slavers had to lose battles of some variety. Selection effect. There are also documented differences between native populations in regions. Things like the harsh winter hypothesis pose that harsher environments lead to higher IQs. Otherwise, why doesn't every country look like Japan? If we don't diagnose the real problems societal interventions will fail to help anyone in a lasting/meaningful way.
bothers 1 hours ago [-]
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MomsAVoxell 2 hours ago [-]
Universal human rights are inalienable.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
maerF0x0 1 hours ago [-]
If a man and a woman are both drunk and have sex, the man is declared the rapist. (This is said as an example of where the laws, as applied, are not gender neutral)
MomsAVoxell 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah, not all states actualize human rights, whether they are party to the declaration or not, as well as others. I don't need to focus on any particular state - I've seen many of them - and understand that there are definitely shifting loads in the worlds cultural fabric.
michaelmrose 45 minutes ago [-]
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cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
Getting precisely 50% of the assets of a marriage that dissolves isn't a universal human right though.
MomsAVoxell 1 hours ago [-]
Well, asset management could also be held as a responsibility of the marriage in the first place, and that can only be done by way of expressing ones rights with another, properly.
That this expression has become the root of an industry of exploitation (divorce proceedings are a big circus) is clear. Rights are not a constant. They have to be expressed.
Like in vows, maybe.
mpalczewski 2 hours ago [-]
of course they have more differences than that.
no controversy of this in chimps.
no magical evolutionary moment when they became the same in humans.
biologists know this. sociologists start with an unfounded null assumption.
underlipton 1 hours ago [-]
The assumption is that biological masculinity and femininity form a spectrum based on the complex interplay of genes, environment, and time, and that, just because you know what genitals someone sports, it doesn't mean you know how their bodies and minds will respond to particular circumstances.
This cuts both ways: you will often see physically emasculated men get treated as if they're not men, to their detriment. Think of less-developed young men being cut from sports teams; they have the same in-built need for physical activity, competition, even some measure of practicing dominance, as larger boys. Deprivation leads to frustration and more.
ericmcer 2 hours ago [-]
the desired outcome seems to be that men and women are the same in situations where being a man is beneficial. In situations where being a woman is beneficial that goes away. For example 80% of healthcare workers are women, it is the biggest?(or close to) industry in the USA but I have never once seen someone pushing to correct that imbalance.
I don’t even get how I am supposed to hold my partner to the same standards I would hold a close male friend/family member. If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately. I have found just using the old adage “happy wife happy life” is most effective, but isn’t that inherently disrespectful? Like “I can’t reason with this person but if I upset them it’s gonna go poorly for me so I better let them have their way!”. The only way my relationship survives is if I have a bit of internalized misogyny and hold her to a different standard than I do myself or another man.
cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
is being a healthcare worker beneficial?
2 hours ago [-]
j45 2 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure if it's about same or universal, someone else already said it's about universal human rights that all humans must agree to demonstrate a practice of care with and towards each other.
throwawayqqq11 2 hours ago [-]
Gosh, this thread is so full of sweeping takes. Different or equal in what regard? Income? Violent behavior? Or culinary skills? Maybe we should not codify stereotypes into law...
maerF0x0 2 hours ago [-]
The current zeitgeist is trying to say that men and women are identical besides environmental cues.
dspillett 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think anybody in their right mind is saying that. The prevailing wisdom seems to be to acknowledge that there are differences in different bodies that often manifest one way in women and another in men¹ but also to acknowledge that it is a lot more complicated than that, including that the binary male/female divide is not always sufficient³ and that environmental factors can have as much effect as the more easily analysed biological ones.
“They claim men and women are no different apart from their environment” tends to be a claim made by those who can't cope with the singular “they” let alone anything else, who are trying to make those who disagree on such points seem ridiculous.
---------
[1] particularly in the endocrine system, though in other parts² which might also have an impact on how we react to things and our mental health more generally
[2] it isn't just emotional matters and related coping mechanisms: heart attacks often manifest differently in women, or if not that then the signs are often misdiagnosed, for instance
[3] either for talking about specific detailed differences, or for identifying people in terms of their identity & phycological makeup more generally
hsuduebc2 1 hours ago [-]
In 2016 it was.
2 hours ago [-]
rpdillon 2 hours ago [-]
I think that's a straw man that you won't find anybody defending.
tarpitt 2 hours ago [-]
I would argue the opposite. Women are born with something that (most) Men want. That puts them at a natural advantage.
zo1 57 minutes ago [-]
We're all here arguing the "hender pay gap", yet women have the single most amazing gift granted to them by the universe that men will never have. What I'd give to be the one to have given birth to my own children.
hsuduebc2 1 hours ago [-]
Care to elaborate? This seems like very obvious double edge sword. We as a society try to mitigate this differences.
rexpop 1 hours ago [-]
Women, likewise, want men. Did you never think of that?
Have you ever spoken with a woman?
MomsAVoxell 2 hours ago [-]
>A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world.
This, a thousand times.
And I say that as a man who has lived in multiple countries in my lifetime, raising my family, through thick and thin.
>mens mental health
I no longer see it as a man problem, its a we problem.
BigTTYGothGF 20 minutes ago [-]
I'd like to hear the women's side of the story.
intrasight 2 hours ago [-]
Equality and justice are certainly noble goals. but they are at this point merely goals. But in parallel, we very much need better support for the men going through the challenges that may come from the lack of equality in divorce proceedings.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
j45 2 hours ago [-]
That is horrifying to hear.
Maybe men don't have supports until it's rock bottom or too late.
At the same time I don't think there's many men who beleive think the standard of supporting women, and children, early and often, should never be reduced or changed. Maybe it could be expanded.
FLeXMurphy 2 hours ago [-]
Where did this happen? Just reading that is terrible.
intrasight 2 hours ago [-]
A Pittsburgh suburb. Outside my wife's window. unfortunately, her blinds were closed - otherwise, she might have seen something was about to go terribly wrong and alerted the authorities.
bothers 43 minutes ago [-]
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hi41 36 minutes ago [-]
Didn’t the marriage laws start favoring women because patriarchy caused immense bias and harm to women over the millennia and left them persecuted and penniless?
dandellion 30 minutes ago [-]
I don't think your rhetorical question adds much to the discussion at hand if we're being honest.
Huarache1 1 hours ago [-]
Make Prenups mandatory, and make sure shared parenting is the default.
datsci_est_2015 1 hours ago [-]
Everyone has a prenuptial: the state provides a default. Either explicitly, e.g. in writing, or implicitly, e.g. via court proceedings.
Huarache1 52 minutes ago [-]
Closer then, to the ratio both had while single?
cucumber3732842 31 minutes ago [-]
Equality under the law in just about every area of law would go a long ways. Divorce and family court stuff is just but one example of many
jeremyjh 2 hours ago [-]
Cool. You think that explains the findings in TFA related to adolescent boys?
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%
the percentage who experienced:
mood disorders increased from11% to 16%
generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
aivisol 2 hours ago [-]
It could. As a father of a 18yo I can tell that they are very well aware of what awaits them in their adult lives.
typeofhuman 2 hours ago [-]
Really? They may think they're aware. but don't be swayed by their confidence. As a grown man, you know life has a way of surprising you.
win311fwg 2 hours ago [-]
He's saying: They are aware of stories of problems adults face.
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold. As you point out, the future is often completely different to what you imagined, but it is what you are imagining that shapes how you feel.
neya 2 hours ago [-]
My comment is about grown men going through grief because of biased laws. What is the relation to "TFA related to adolescent boys"?
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
lazyasciiart 2 hours ago [-]
TFA means 'the article in the post'. They are asking you how your comment is relevant to the article being discussed.
neya 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, got it. The article is actually a rehash of an official government publication:
Men die by suicide at about 3 times the rate of women. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among men and boys aged 15 to 34.
This is what I was responding to.
tayo42 2 hours ago [-]
there's way to many comments projecting their issues on to the title.
2 hours ago [-]
greenowl 2 hours ago [-]
What you should have learned is a lot simpler. Don't marry the wrong woman.
thisismyopinion 2 hours ago [-]
Brilliant advice. Why didn't he think of that.
cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
It's the same advice most people give to women who are in abusive situations. Gender equality means gender equal advice, right?
iamnothere 53 minutes ago [-]
Equality usually implies trying to pull others up to the same level, not pushing them down to the same level, Harrison Bergeron style.
j45 2 hours ago [-]
It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Legally, people are marrying a law in their place of residence, marriage is a contract and agreement with the government.
Through a marriage to the government's law first, two people are married in the eyes of the law.
The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
9rx 1 hours ago [-]
> It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Of course you do. As you even point out yourself, you marry the government, which is people.
> The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
Considering that the traditional marriage process involves two people standing in front of representatives of the government and declaring promises to them it seems like it'd be a bit hard to miss? I suppose if others also don't realize that government is people then they might not realize what the people in the audience are doing? But, then again, given that the two people prepared to make those promises are usually responsible for inviting that audience to the wedding you'd think they would have questions about why they are there otherwise?
apercu 2 hours ago [-]
I started reading this thinking I would disagree, but you're right, in some countries (Canada for sure), there's a weird thing that some genders are more equal than others. I know this sounds bad, but I am a left-leaning feminist.
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
Insanity 1 hours ago [-]
I went through a divorce in Canada, there is a thing called "amiable divorce/separation". Where both parties negotiate a fair divorce agreement rather than the standard "Pay continued support for X months/years + lump sum".
So there is some variability, and of course in my case it was a "happy path" scenario where both me and my ex-wife mutually wanted the divorce.
But by default you have to pay spousal support regardless of how well-off your partner is. The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially. Which is really not a contemporary point of view to make as a blanket statement.
apercu 23 minutes ago [-]
You're not wrong.
But again, it seems weird when a male has to work 2 jobs in their 50's to send large monthly payments to a female that has a larger or equivalent net worth.
And it happens routinely. Of course, there are also a lot of men out there that just want to stiff their ex. But that doesn't mean my former example isn't happening.
gib444 2 hours ago [-]
UK is going the other way: they're consulting on giving non married couples rights.
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
afavour 2 hours ago [-]
> Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
drdaeman 2 hours ago [-]
So the actual criteria is vulnerability, not sex or gender…
afavour 2 hours ago [-]
As indicated by the use of "such as" in the original quote, yes
gib444 2 hours ago [-]
Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
And I don't make a habit of pointing out women's smaller stature to call them vulnerable?? Wtf
afavour 2 hours ago [-]
> Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
Huarache1 1 hours ago [-]
Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage, or meeting each other, as default. Make shared custody also the default, unless one side is found guilty of abuse.
It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
afavour 1 hours ago [-]
> Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage
Which would completely ignore the economic imbalance I was talking about, which occurs during the marriage.
> It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
Like I said, making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many, while the kids are young and childcare is expensive. There’s no reason why that has to be the woman but the data shows that the vast majority of the time it is.
Huarache1 49 minutes ago [-]
There probably isn't much of an economic imbalance if the prenup ratio was based on when both were single.
Even if one party earns less, I don't see how "vulnerable" that would make them if it was prior to meeting the other person.
9rx 21 minutes ago [-]
> making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many
The topic was couples/cohabitation/marriage, not child rearing. The concerns you raise would be equally applicable where the parents have decided they want absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is truth in what you are saying, but it is an entirely different topic. How to deal with the child is a negotiation that takes place around the child, not around a romantic relationship (or lack thereof).
In the romantic relationship, there is no realistic situation where one party ends up with all the money unless the other one willingly hands theirs over. But any of us can do that. I can willing give you all my money now just the same and there would be no good legal recourse if I decide it was a bad idea later. The only reason we have these ideas in the world of romance is due to the historical idea that women aren't capable of thinking for themselves.
2 hours ago [-]
2 hours ago [-]
derf_ 2 hours ago [-]
Pro-tip (for both unmarried men and women): You can sign a pre-nup even if you never have any nuptials. It turns out that people can choose to enter into a contract with each other at any time. There are plenty of reasons why people in a relationship may choose not to get legally married, but that does not mean you have to leave yourself at the mercy of the defaults in the law, which may or may not make sense for you.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
Obscurity4340 2 hours ago [-]
Are you saying there's effectively a pre-commonlaw agreement mechanism available to curtail fallout from even just a drfault commonlaw arrangement?
gib444 2 hours ago [-]
Pro tip: in Scotland (where the UK gov is taking inspiration from), that likely doesn't override rights in statutes
The law isn't simply a "default" in this matter that you can opt out of AIUI
SubmarineClub 53 minutes ago [-]
People on HN are comically unaware of how frequently pre-nups get tossed out in court.
afavour 2 hours ago [-]
I agree that divorce proceedings could be more equal than they are. But society is not gender neutral, so things like divorce proceedings aren't either. Women are far, far more likely to be stay at home parents. That means they're far more involved in childcare and far less likely to be earning money independently. That makes the situation very difficult when it comes to divorce.
treis 2 hours ago [-]
There is the underlying reality and bias. When I'd pick up my kid from Kindergarten it was me and 20-30 other moms hanging out on the playground afterwards. So yes, in that sense we may not see gender neutral outcomes.
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
MomsAVoxell 2 hours ago [-]
I would definitely have preferred to have had a couple more days a week off with my kids while they grew up, and given their Mum a chance to do her thing, too. Instead, it became my responsibility to pay the bills, and the rest of the crews right to make them. So yeah, that's what I did.
>2 years
Kids need their Dads, and Dads have to be strong as hell for them, even still, in this modern world. I am super glad to have gotten my two giant oafs into adulthood well enough to be surfing the wonders the world has in store for them both .. but yeah, you'll get your ass kicked. Be a kick ass Dad, then.
The most important thing is that your son knows you're there for him as he grows up. Maybe keep a journal, don't stop writing important things to him, notes and ideas from his Dad, for him to read when he gets his own agency over things.
hsuduebc2 1 hours ago [-]
How is it even possible for someone to prevent you from seeing your own child for two years? That would be completely illegal in my country. Can one parent really just decide to cut the other parent out of their child's life and get away with it? It's absolutely proven than this is against child's children best interest.
treis 1 hours ago [-]
It happens all the time.
How is it possible? Well, theoretically it's not. The order I got and subsequent denial of modification blatantly violate state law and appealate precedent. But it's all procedural. The standard for the underlying opinion of the judge is that if there is one fact to support that opinion then the ruling is upheld.
So I could have appealed and won. But then I go back to the same judge that doesn't think my kid should have any contact with me and all she has to do is find one fact to support that.
More often a custody order is just a piece of paper. The primary parent can screw with visitation easily and it takes time and money to go to court. The original divorce cost me $100k, another contempt motion $7k, and the failed modification $20k.
Custody ends for Fathers when they give up. I gave up unusually early (which royally pissed off the judge) and this is my punishment.
iamnothere 47 minutes ago [-]
Family court is a scam, and if you end up there you’ve already lost. For some reason your usual legal rights don’t apply; the entire system seems to be constructed to drain everyone of money. It’s basically the definition of “the process is the punishment.” I’ve never seen a good outcome from it.
Huarache1 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, this is why a prenup asset ratio and shared parenting should be the default in America (and Canada).
freedomben 2 hours ago [-]
Why not have the laws take into consideration stay at home status regardless of gender?
apercu 2 hours ago [-]
You're not wrong but in situations where there are no kids, and no one stayed home "unfair" settlements are forced.
oulipo 2 hours ago [-]
For one anecdotical story like that, there's 100 more where the man is neglecting their kid, so this should be taken with a grain of salt
DaSHacka 2 hours ago [-]
Source?
logicchains 2 hours ago [-]
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ihsw 2 hours ago [-]
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logicchains 2 hours ago [-]
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boringg 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think sharia law has anything to do with this.
cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
"Sharia" is the Arabic word for "law", so "Sharia law" just means "law law", or at least "law in places that speak Arabic" which is at least a little bit specific.
Sharia law actually has some good ideas in it. I think we should investigate Islamic banking and see if any of it would improve our economies. Because charging interest is forbidden in Islam, many of them do mortgages as a rent to own system instead, which leaves the bank on the hook if the house value crashes, instead of the buyer, so banks don't give out stupidly big mortgages that you might not want to pay back.
logicchains 2 hours ago [-]
Look it up if you don't believe me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_marital_jurisprudence . There's no splitting-half-assets in sharia law, instead on divorce the payment is based on what was agreed upon before the marriage, plus child maintenance.
dlisboa 2 hours ago [-]
> Everyone hates on Sharia law
I wonder why.
hsuduebc2 2 hours ago [-]
It's truly a mistery.
orochimaaru 2 hours ago [-]
Really? Sharia? What’s next stoning people who have sex outside of marriage…
phyzix5761 2 hours ago [-]
That's not part of Sharia law. In Islam the crime of sex outside of marriage requires a public penetrative act that is witnessed by 4 adults; basically equivalent to having sex in public in the west which is a jailable offense in many US states.
Alternatively, the accused could both do a confession in front of a judge 4 separate times but they can retract this confession at any time and avoid any punishment.
orochimaaru 2 hours ago [-]
Let’s keep Islamic perversion out of civil law.
The very fact that sex outside of marriage is considered a crime is perverse.
phyzix5761 2 hours ago [-]
Looks like you didn't read what I posted. Its only a crime if you do it publicly in front of people and they report you just like in every country in the civilized world. Sex outside of marriage is considered a sin but not a crime unless it meets the specific criteria I posted.
Your Islamophobia is showing a bit too much.
orochimaaru 1 hours ago [-]
I am unabashedly islamophobic. I consider that faith harmful to modern society. It refuses to evolve.
phyzix5761 1 hours ago [-]
Nobody is forcing it on you or on anyone else. In fact the Quran says, "There is no compulsion in religion." But we should respect the choices of other people. Just like you should be free to practice or not practice whatever you want, Muslims should have that same freedom.
orochimaaru 47 minutes ago [-]
I think the past millennia where Muslims went forcibly converting populations was just not “Islam”? Most people in the Muslim world look fondly on the glory days, don’t they?
BigTTYGothGF 21 minutes ago [-]
Hacker news, everybody.
logicchains 2 hours ago [-]
It's also worth noting that in the most minimal reading of Sharia the punishment for adultery is whipping, not stoning, as stoning isn't mentioned in the Quran, only in a statement written down a couple hundred years later by someone claiming he heard someone claiming he heard that a sheep ate the page that mentioned stoning (https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:1944).
Dem_Boys 3 minutes ago [-]
Men struggling is no surprise. Today's world is not well suited to their strengths (physical strength, risk taking, aggression, etc..). It's better suited for women and they're winning in a ton of important categories that contribute to quality of life. To compound this, the dating scene for men is abysmal. Women have so much power in the dating market and use it to their benefit as men did before them.
Men especially take this hard. I find men have a very very strong urge to get ahead, succeed, and climb the ladder of success. If they consistently fail at this AND can't find a partner it gets really rough. I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
midtake 2 hours ago [-]
I strongly oppose all comments that seem to have the causal relationship reversed, that somehow by some biological effect they are now more depressed than in the past. I think that instead the extreme demands of society are the cause and that suffering in silence is the result.
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
34 minutes ago [-]
lukeify 2 hours ago [-]
The leader of the New Zealand Green Party once stated "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
shoobiedoo 2 hours ago [-]
Being able to say that as a political figure and not getting an unequivocal drumming down by everyone else shows how far gone the west is. There is no turning this ship around.
cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
I hope you agree it's because she identified a demographic group of as causing a lot of problems, not because of which group she chose, right? The most powerful man in the world is blaming trans women for half the world's ills and we can all agree they're both bad statements?
hsuduebc2 1 hours ago [-]
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datsci_est_2015 1 hours ago [-]
The New Zealand Green Party got 13.3% of the vote. I could pull all sorts of absolute drivel from any party in any country of the world that got ~ 13.3% of the vote.
Declaring "the west gone" is something better left on a reactionary platform like X, rather than something like Hacker News.
rubicon33 2 hours ago [-]
Downvote me all you want, pessimism is never popular but its often right.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
apsurd 1 hours ago [-]
Your comment isn't saying anything though. Everything is about power. Noted.
santoshalper 11 minutes ago [-]
I don't know about white and cis, but you can't argue with facts that men are overwhelmingly the source of individual violence (as opposed to wars, etc.).
wtch98 2 hours ago [-]
> "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
burnaftercommen 2 hours ago [-]
>What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life?
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
Huarache1 1 hours ago [-]
Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media. It's pretty obvious to anyone looking at the West from the outside.
It's also a reason why the West is failing, but certainly not the only one. Social Welfare states like Europe are burning, since it was never sustainable.
America is fighting among itself, because there is no Asabiyyah (social cohesion), and the wealth inequality (wealth pump) is growing massively.
Compare that with China or Singapore, where social harmony is perhaps the most important thing in their society, food is subsidized, education as a high priority, their laws are punitive, infrastructure is extremely new, etc.
icantevenhold 50 minutes ago [-]
That’s a crazy comment for me.
I don’t think you’re open for a discussion but I’ll try; just judging from experience talking to other people who hold similar entrenched beliefs, I might be very wrong.
> Social Welfare states like Europe are burning
I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
> the West is failing
I wasn’t aware of that either! Seems to me that western countries (I assume you mean US and EU with that?) still hold most of the power worldwide?
> Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media
The opposite is also true. I think it’s just because most heroes and villains in western media are men - hell most characters are men.
Huarache1 36 minutes ago [-]
France is burning because they're defaulting and can't pay for their social welfare benefits, and Germany's economy isn't doing so well. That's a good chunk of Europe's economy in a nutshell. Only Poland I believe, has improved and officially was considered developed since 2018.
France's West African colonies are also leaving France as they inch closer to China, politically and economically.
China is rising, and so are other (previously and currently) Third World nations. It's a matter of when they take power, not if. India and Indonesia seem to be heavy hitters, for now and probably for the near future. I wouldn't count out Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda) or Latin America (Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, etc).
I stand by my statement of Western entertainment demeaning men, probably out of anger, or as something of an alibi for Hollywood after the #Metoo movement. Occupy Wallstreet is also notable for happening before this.
icantevenhold 20 minutes ago [-]
Germany has the third largest GDP worldwide so I don’t think it’s “not doing so well” considering how tiny it is.
China/Asia, South America and Africa have the most space, people and natural resources so it just makes sense that they would be more successful in the long run though.
>I stand by my statement
That is fair. I stand by mine that this doesn’t convince me.
Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power.
You can’t really be an effective or convincing villain if you’re powerless.
Huarache1 43 minutes ago [-]
Men are interested in things, while women are interested in people. That's probably why most characters are men overall. Same with men being more likely to be Autistic.
That being said, it's quite noticeable that people in the entertainment sector, who are probably marginalized, are directing some anger against men.
Ghostbusters 2016, likely started this, and I do wonder if it was to appease the women and other groups after the the #Metoo movement, where marginalized people were given a voice, to pretend that Hollywood was like them (they aren't, look at their governmental funding before #Metoo).
icantevenhold 26 minutes ago [-]
> Men are interested in things, while women are interested in people.
Seems like a generalisation. I’m a man and I’m more interested in people than in things for example.
> That's probably why most characters are men overall.
How does this follow what you wrote before; I don’t see any connection tbh
Huarache1 21 minutes ago [-]
If men are into things, then they likely are into abstractions, concepts, ideas, etc. Stories are one of these. I remember there's neurological evidence to back this up, but I have no links on me currently.
neglesaks 30 minutes ago [-]
The sex ration of completed suicides in the USSR as a whole between 1984 to 1990 was 3,9 men to 1 women.
That is, near exactly the same as in the 'capitalist' world then, and now.
(In the Slavic-predominant part of the USSR, that is Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, it was an even worse 4,6-to-1. Somewhat lower in Central Asia at ~2,7-to-1).
scott01 2 hours ago [-]
look at the sibling comment
220hertz 2 hours ago [-]
> You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
I think I need that on a T-shirt.
MINECRAFT_BIOLO 2 hours ago [-]
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thisismyopinion 2 hours ago [-]
Good lord cry me a river.
oulipo 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
>Okay snowflake.
Isn't "okay snowflake" a vilification in itself?
2 hours ago [-]
tete 3 hours ago [-]
I think the fact that in general women are considered to have more mental health issues and men committing suicide way more often shows that this headline is true.
burnaftercommen 3 hours ago [-]
Women attempt suicide more often than men do, but men are more likely to use more "effective" means (e.g. gunshot to head).
robswc 2 hours ago [-]
This is not something I think about much (fortunately), but what is the point in attempting suicide by means that are not likely to work? How do we measure "true attempts" vs "cries for help." I guess ultimately they are very close together... but all the same it seems harder to attempt and not succeed.
dabinat 2 hours ago [-]
The person may not definitively want to die, but may wake up one day and not care either way, so attempting is a roll of the dice.
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
lazyasciiart 2 hours ago [-]
I think in general people are not educated on the likelihood of success per attempt method, which seems ok.
owenpalmer 2 hours ago [-]
Men are more aggressive so they choose more aggressive methods, which work better.
typeofhuman 2 hours ago [-]
Attention.
maerF0x0 2 hours ago [-]
> cries for help.
This is the most plausible hypothesis, judging revealed preferences by the outcomes.
burnaftercommen 2 hours ago [-]
>This is the most plausible hypothesis
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
rpdillon 48 minutes ago [-]
I've been curious about the phenomenon of suicide for a while, so I've read quite a bit about it in different countries. One of the interesting things about suicide is the means of suicide is always whatever is most available or readily available in the environment. In the U.S. where guns are more available, about half of all gun deaths are suicides, and about 80% of those are men. But in some countries in Africa, men kill themselves more frequently as well, and the primary mechanism is by drinking pesticide.
My mental model is that men tend to be more extreme and less conservative than women (risk-taking is more prevalent), and this leads to more extreme approaches in how they try to kill themselves.
But it's been a while since I've read any of these statistics, and I have no special credentials. Just thinking about what we're observing.
allig256 2 hours ago [-]
How does that explain that this male vs female ratio stands in countries with low gun ownership rates?
wtch98 2 hours ago [-]
Top suicide methods in my country:
hanging/strangulation (9,164, 49%);
self-poisoning (4,098, 22%);
jumping/multiple injuries (2,423, 13%).
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
neglesaks 2 hours ago [-]
Nonsense, that is an America-centric attempt at making up a narrative. The sex differences in suicide outcomes are essentially the same in countries with low to zero firearms ownership, eg Europe, Australia, Japan. If there are no firearms available, then other almost equally lethal methods are used (hanging, trains, etc).
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
akoboldfrying 26 minutes ago [-]
Gunshot suicides account for 2.5% of suicides in England and Wales [1].
effect still remains after you look at statistics in countries with low firearm ownership
delecti 1 hours ago [-]
Commonly proposed reasons I've seen mostly involve conscientiousness around impact on their body and setting. For the most stereotypical two methods: a gunshot to the head leaves a mess and means you're going to need a closed casket, while the mess from a slit wrist in a bathtub can be washed down the drain, and easily hidden while still having an open casket. But it's harder to "succeed" with a slit wrist in a bathtub, and it takes longer, giving more time to be found or to change your mind.
dspillett 2 hours ago [-]
To ignore the terrible things going through the minds of people trying¹ and the effects attempts, especially successful ones, can have on others, for a moment²… I wonder if anyone has looked deeper into those two stats to, see if the attempt rate is actually the same but the lower success rate means that the average women in that sort of crisis position attempts more times.
--------
[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
json_hero 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, because women tend to seek more clinical assistance than men do so of course the attempt % would be higher for them as well, because how are you even gonna know that number for men if they aren't even getting recorded.. the suicide numbers are the only actual real recordable evidence unfortunately.
lazyasciiart 2 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately a lot of attempts also end up in the ER, which is the main source of numbers here.
swingandamiss 2 hours ago [-]
There's too many men in this world, a surplus. Some percent of men will be the winners (not a large percent) and the rest will be losers who never reproduce and have unhappy lives doing hard work with little reward.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
> Expressed another way, that would mean that 10% of all males surviving to adulthood would perish in combat.
> We’ll get back around to fertility rates later in the series but for how if we assume each woman in this society is having on average five live childbirths, a 2% chance of death at each stage adds up pretty quickly – a woman who gave birth five times with a 2% chance of dying each time has a total chance of dying at one stage or another of 9.607%, which as you will note is not far off from the chance of dying in a battle
newsclues 1 hours ago [-]
Historical solution: war
strbean 2 hours ago [-]
Latest figures say there are about 101.03 males per 100 females. For some reason this means most men will be losers?
swingandamiss 2 hours ago [-]
You are counting the over 50s/60s. Men die off faster and it was more equal in the older generations. That's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about men who are attempting to start their lives and a family and/or date. In that pool, there's A LOT more men than women in the western world. Particularly the USA.
wtch98 2 hours ago [-]
UN's global average sex ratio at birth of approximately 105 boys for every 100 girls
sublinear 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, thank you. I don't know why we're always so dishonest about this topic (especially the most vocal younger crowd).
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
StilesCrisis 2 hours ago [-]
> Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options.
What does this mean? Just lower your standards and there's a woman out there for you?
It's been a long time since I was single, but I never felt like that. I worked at a job with a bunch of other men and didn't have a lot of social outlets that involved women. My candidate pool was close to zero. I eventually recognized this and found ways to broaden my pool, but it wasn't easy.
sublinear 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not prescribing anything. I'm describing the situation.
I'm only speculating that I think the past used to be (a lot) worse. Competition was higher across the board for significantly worse options across the board.
So much of the modern era is defined by the desire for social change, but nobody seems to pause and think what that must mean regarding the perception of their options (and themselves). It means even your worst option today probably isn't that bad or is already more similar to you than you want to believe. I think this all boils down to mortality. Other people change slower than you have time for, so on some level you do have to either compromise or make your own changes at the pace you prefer. You can't spend life looking at the rear view mirror and a horizon that never comes.
A casual look on social media tends to confirm that the same people not liking their options also think they were "born in the wrong era" or similar.
cowlevel 1 hours ago [-]
I don't know anyone who likes me sexually or romantically. Are you telling me that's not normal?
sublinear 1 hours ago [-]
You'd be surprised. How are you so sure of that? You're the judge, not me.
2 hours ago [-]
Sanzig 2 hours ago [-]
The vast majority of heterosexual men who are unsuccessful romantically has nothing to do with their "status." A bit of self-confidence and the ability to listen to and empathize with women is literally all it takes. Women don't want to date chuds, shocker.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
harimau777 2 hours ago [-]
How are men supposed to develop that self confidence?
delecti 54 minutes ago [-]
Exercise, self-improvement (reading, hobbies), socializing. Go do things with people. It requires effort, and can be intimidating.
opwieurposiu 53 minutes ago [-]
Go take some social dance lessons like swing or salsa.
SubmarineClub 47 minutes ago [-]
lol, how can you be this delusional
alasano 2 hours ago [-]
Does it imply also fewer men getting diagnosed? I presume it does.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
I don't understand this. If you want to compare mental health issue rate, why not compare mental health directly? Instead of a related factor?
It's 26%women/19%men some mental health issue and 7%women/4%men serious mental health issue
How do you measure mental health directly? Everything has a sampling bias
nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
Meeting DSM-IV diagnostic criteria
dghlsakjg 2 hours ago [-]
Great. How do you determine that men and women are seeking treatment at the same rate, and that diagnoses are being given out at the same rates for matching symptoms across genders?
It could just as much be the case that men are diagnosed at a lower rate because they seek out care less often (many studies point at this being true) or that men who do seek care are not diagnosed at as high of a rate despite having the same symptoms (men report higher rates of dissatisfaction with mental care, and other studies show gender bias in diagnosis - men get told to "man up" in so many words-, or men get misdiagnosed because symptoms for the same mental illness vary between men and women)
malfist 2 hours ago [-]
Sure. And how do you determine what percentage of a population fits that DSM-IV criteria?
kelseyfrog 2 hours ago [-]
You might be interested in operationalization. Every measurement is also an operationalization - even things like temperature, speed, and weight.
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
cucumber3732842 3 hours ago [-]
Men and women have different mental health crisis spirals.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower. Which is worse depends on who you ask.
free652 3 hours ago [-]
Right on point.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
Men have a higher “success” rate, women attempt at a higher rate. Something to consider as well.
bryanrasmussen 2 hours ago [-]
well if you succeed the first time I doubt you will try again.
flerchin 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cnity 3 hours ago [-]
Male violence against women (and indeed other men) is downstream of men's mental health. It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men. Mentally unhealthy men are dangerous (speaking as a man myself), therefore we should find ways to improve men's mental health.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
While I agree with you, I think a lot of the “be better” rhetoric comes from plenty of men in power telling all sorts of marginalized groups the exact same thing. “Bootstraps” culture is just generally toxic.
burnaftercommen 2 hours ago [-]
>It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better". Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.
I think the underlying idea is that us men need to hold ourselves accountable. These issues are primarily* issues that men need to fix, and it's unrealistic to expect other demographics to do it for us. Thus, telling men to "be better" is about the most you can expect from other demographics.
*There are nuances here, obviously. Please don't try and reply with some gotcha.
jasonlotito 2 hours ago [-]
> It always struck me as backward to try and shame men into "being better".
Well, other methods haven't worked, such as trying to help or have these discussions. Or relying on science.
> Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.
Unfortunately, men generally don't care about this reasoning.
> ...we should find ways to improve men's mental health.
Unfortunately, men are the ones generally opposed to this. It's a "sign of weakness."
Let's be clear, men work hard to prevent men from improving men's mental health.
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
Toxic masculinity hurts everyone, including men, unfortunately.
georgeburdell 2 hours ago [-]
This is a trap, just like it’s a trap when my wife asks me what’s wrong, I give an honest answer, and then I’m scorned for being weak [1]. Men need to cultivate an internal compass. The government can alleviate the issue by stopping the systemic preference of women that they have instituted in education, employment, and law.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
Forgeties79 2 hours ago [-]
I’m having a hard time buying the argument that the law prefers women when women just had their bodily autonomy stripped away across the US only a few years ago and the very real, awful history that lead to the “me too” movement due to years of women not being taken seriously in the eyes of the law.
I have a feeling this comment will not sit well with you but I am very much willing to engage this in good faith. I don’t see what you’re seeing. There are definitely domains where different genders have the advantage, but to act like the law as a whole benefits women over men…that dog don’t hunt IMO
Education, there is a stronger argument there (re admissions and such, not safety). I agree that has gotten messy as hell at the very least.
Workplace, similar to my issue with the law claim.
Thorentis 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
lotsofpulp 1 hours ago [-]
That is where the debate ends. Either a woman has the autonomy to make decisions about what happens to her body, or she does not.
As for georgeburdell thinking women are more advantaged against men, he should do some experiments applying to jobs with equivalent credentials as a man vs a woman, both in child bearing years. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the average man in that age range will need or ask for fewer days off than the average woman.
nonethewiser 42 minutes ago [-]
But your test doesnt work if the baby/fetus etc. is a person, which is what abortion opponents think. If its a person then your test (does the woman have autonomy to make decisions about her body) has a contradiction. In that case, one expression (abortion) of one person's autonomy would transgress the other. You are not actually addressing the crux of the issue so your argument only works for people who already agree the fetus isn’t a person, which is the very thing being disputed. You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.
lotsofpulp 40 minutes ago [-]
I didn't posit a test. The previous posts discuss [women's] bodily autonomy, so either one can assume women should always have bodily autonomy, or the other option which is women sometimes do not have bodily autonomy.
>You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.
As an aside, the data overwhelmingly shows neither women nor doctors are choosing to abort viable fetuses willy nilly. The real world effect is, as the data shows, to cause doctors to think about their financial and criminal liabilities before their patients' well being.
>so either one can assume women should always have bodily autonomy, or the other option which is women sometimes do not have bodily autonomy
Framing it as a question of women's bodily autonomy assumes there is only one person involved, which is exactly what abortion opponents dispute. So your framing doesn't settle the issue.
The crux of the issue is if and when the thing in the tummy is a person.
atmavatar 56 minutes ago [-]
Surely a solution to that problem would be to institute equal maternity and paternity leave while making it socially acceptable and even encouraged for men to take advantage of said leave.
The men would get the benefit of spending time with their newborn children in a way they cannot do today, while their significant others get the benefit of another person available to help them out full-time through the child's early months. The cherry on top is that businesses would be far less able to view women as men who take more time off.
icantevenhold 31 minutes ago [-]
This is the case in Germany but the problem is still not fully solved.
But it’s a lot better!
lotsofpulp 43 minutes ago [-]
It does not matter if men are mandated to take the leave, biological differences such as the effects of menstrual cycles will make it so, on average, women will request and/or need more days off. Also, the effects of pregnancy beyond the minimum parental leave duration will pretty much only affect women's ability to work, not men's.
akoboldfrying 34 minutes ago [-]
In some sectors, notably academic STEM faculty positions, women are drastically preferred over equivalently qualified men. From "National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track" (Williams and Ceci, PNAS 2015 [1]):
> Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference.
In a meta-analysis of 57 such studies, Galos and Coppock (Science Advances 2023 [2]) found a small 1.2% bias favouring women overall, with gender-coded fields generally have a preference for applicants of that gender (5.1% towards women in nursing, admin, early childhood education; 3.0% towards men in trades, engineering, executive roles).
I read through the underlying report, but the survey itself is extremely unremarkable.
There were only 12 very vague questions - and none actually asked the respondent about how they felt personally: "Where do you believe stereotypes about masculinity primarily come from?"
Only about 2/3 of the respondents even identified as male - this isn't a serious study of how men themselves feel. It's more of a survey about the public perception of men.
rpdillon 41 minutes ago [-]
I had the same experience, I read the attached link, just read a lot of fluff, found the link to the actual report, and it wasn't much better. There's definitely an interesting discussion to be had about this topic, but the original post does not carry the right information to have that discussion, IMO.
bradlys 1 hours ago [-]
Most things posted related to this subject on HN are essentially slop from a research perspective.
Few are even reading the article. It's mostly a way to start a discussion and vent.
legitster 1 hours ago [-]
This was a particular lazy government report that just happens to touch on a nascent gender war, but it is shocking how much published research in psychology is more or less like this.
datsci_est_2015 1 hours ago [-]
Ah, interesting. Would another opinionated, but fair, framing of the survey be "If you are a man, how victimized do you feel due to your identity?"?
_qua 3 hours ago [-]
National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues. I'm sure they'll come out with a nice report on strategies to improve men's wellbeing that won't make a lick of difference unless the world at large starts to shift.
redanddead 2 hours ago [-]
> National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues
It starts with an objective report on reality
It's like taking your blood pressure or blood sugar, it starts with data in health
This is public health and this report is the measuring instrument
icantevenhold 28 minutes ago [-]
This report is not an objective report on reality however (if such a thing is even possible when it comes to culture / psychology)
asdfman123 2 hours ago [-]
Government reports like this sometimes motivate additional studies and think pieces, which in turn creates a framing that may be used later when society decides it's truly ready for change.
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
bragh 2 hours ago [-]
This all is just pure virtue signaling and the only beneficiary will be some NGO who gets some money and produces a report and a slide deck which only they will read. It's like the Soviet joke of "we had a 4 hour meeting about improving production in communism in the factory today and after this we will work not better and not worse than before". Until that suffering actually causes measurable damage that affects something on a grand scale that the country needs, nothing really will happen.
pojzon 36 minutes ago [-]
We live in a world that desperately needs drastic measures to change it.
But we live too comfortably for anyone to take those actions.
Like a boiling frog, ppl will wake up when its too late.
lostlogin 3 hours ago [-]
So it shouldn’t be reported on?
harimau777 2 hours ago [-]
Can you expand on this? It seems to me that deep seated cultural issues are the sort of thing that therapy is supposed to address. However, I may be looking at this from the wrong angle.
doright 2 hours ago [-]
The people who see issues with themselves get therapy. The ones that see no issues with themselves don't.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
Exoristos 2 hours ago [-]
Is efficacy not part of your calculus?
malfist 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?
nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
The report gives no indication its a male problem. It’s just a survey targeting men. Maybe its a general mental health problem. We know mental health issues in women have increased over the same time period.
malfist 2 hours ago [-]
Okay? What's your point? That the report didn't find every problem, it just found one problem?
nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
The claim is its a MALE mental health problem. Where is the evidence?
malfist 2 hours ago [-]
This report? The existence of a male mental health problem does not imply the existence or absence of a female mental health problem or any other type if mental health problem.
nonethewiser 1 hours ago [-]
>The existence of a male mental health
Maybe you can you disambiguate your phrasing here. Which do you mean?
1.There is a MALE mental health problem -- some mental health problem wholly or partially unique to men
2. There is a mental health problem observed among men
If #1, where is the evidence? A men-only survey can't show it. If you surveyed left-handed people and 30% had anxiety, that doens't mean there is a left-handed anxiety problem.
If #2, we agree on what the research shows, but it brings your original point into question: "Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?" Which problem are we recognizing? Labeling a general problem a male one assumes a diagnosis, which points the search for causes and fixes at men when nothing in this report shows that's where they are, and other available information shows worsening mental health in women as well.
lakeviewterrace 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
marksbrown 3 hours ago [-]
The birds they sing,
At break of day.
Start again I heard them say.
Dwell not on what has passed away,
Or what is yet to ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There's a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
Got my hand slapped by HR for posting Movember stuff or International Men's day stuff. Silence is a learned response.
seanclayton 2 hours ago [-]
> Movember stuff or International Men's day stuff
Which one was it?
bittercynic 2 hours ago [-]
Maybe I'm missing some context around this, but from skimming the wikipedia pages, both seem fine? Is one of them considered controversial?
Kye 1 hours ago [-]
There's this weird performative social media hostility to it that leaks out into reality. I don't think most people are really bothered by them even if they don't know what they're about.
ihsw 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
faeyanpiraat 2 hours ago [-]
In this context probably both
polarsanel 2 hours ago [-]
National pedantic's day
halfmatthalfcat 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jodrellblank 1 hours ago [-]
As much as everyday has been Women's day, Mother's day, Father's day, All Saints' day.
How many men dying in battles or enslaved building pyramids, or getting lung diseases in coal mines were celebrating "Men's day" throughout history?
halfmatthalfcat 1 hours ago [-]
So the commanders of those men dying in battle or the ones running the companies whose coal miners were dying, or or or...just because men have suffered doesn't mean men has a cohort have not been at the top of the food chain. The point is that it is men controlling everyone else: men, women, etc until somewhat recently, historically.
So no, not useless and maybe should help color the conversation a bit more on WHY men are feeling as they are, because the power dynamics of society are shifting, of which men have been led to believe that they would, in fact, be at the top forever.
jodrellblank 1 hours ago [-]
> "just because men have suffered doesn't mean men has a cohort have not been at the top of the food chain"
It does mean exactly that. 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, assume half were men, what specific benefit did they get from the German leader at the time having a penis? Zero. Zero benefit. Russia is conscripting 300,000 people/year into their war in Ukraine since 2022. What benefit do they get from Putin being a man at the top? Zero. Zero benefit.
Men and women have done dirty, dangerous, and back-breaking work through history, but the harder it is physically and the more likely to have injury and death associated with it, the more likely it's a "man's job". Plenty of women carrying children bent double standing in water plantint rice all day or picking tealeaves. Not so likely for women to be conscripted, laying stone for roads or railway, digging foundations and wells, bricklaying, construction, carving roadways through mountains, loading ships as dock workers, shipbuilding, soldiering, mining, oil drilling, blacksmithing, chemical refining, chimney sweeping, sewer cleaning.
Most men through history had no position of power whatsoever, and were not at the top of anything, and most men alive today don't and aren't.
halfmatthalfcat 52 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't matter about the objective power of any given man, I don't know why you keep reverting back to the laymen example. The virtue of men being at the top is in and of itself the issue. From the micro to the macro, you can find gender power imbalances that are residual from the sociological evolution of humans. We have been socially conditioned to rank men higher then women, and white men at the top. And now that that notion is being refuted and dismissed by a growing part of society, that's where the reckoning is.
Who held what job when, who died when, who actually held power when is irrelevant.
robswc 2 hours ago [-]
I don't believe I suffer, but it seems pretty obvious why someone would do it in silence. Many times when I tried to get help from institutions for anything nobody seemed to care much at all. It's like you could either deal with your problems in silence or deal with them "out loud" and have people pretend to care while looking helpless.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
SoftTalker 2 hours ago [-]
Institutions don't and cannot care. You're looking in the wrong place.
mihaaly 1 hours ago [-]
I have difficulties, mostly due to overload, and sometimes it would be good looking at it from an other angle, discussing with someone. There are some male peers I am being able to discuss certain matters, usually a different detail with different peers, but not everything. I look with curiosity how my wife is able to discuss things with a professional. My concern are usually: the professional can only know about what she explains, the way she explains, the amount she explains. The output can only be based on that constrained input (sessions are bound by time). Probably it is not a surprise that things do not get changed much. I have no time for that - did I mention that I am overloaded? By the time I was able to tell it in a decent granularity, complemented by details from people knowing me a certain way - no-one have full picture - so the picture is not distorted by looking through my eyes only, by all this time I'd be really frustrated that things went on and we got nowhere. And all those assume that I am able to phrase and express clearly what the heck is going on, very difficult sometimes. Also that the professional is good at listening and is not trying to force a pattern on me. I am from an upbringing that taught me doing something when something is wrong, try my best and accept what comes out of it. Suggestions of others are pieces that may help or may not. Possibly pretty random (e.g. the person was basically me in that scenario and came out well, so they really know what they are doing, not just meddling for some reason).
Yeah, getting any external help is difficult. Need some inner source some way, accepting some level of 'flaws'.
dubcanada 3 hours ago [-]
westcentralonline.com ? Surely there has to be a better link to this report then a small local news website?
FWIW, in these sorts of situations I try to link the place where I found the news. If some tiny local news website brought something to my attention that the bigger players don't, then I think they deserve to be rewarded with the add revenue if people follow my link.
j45 3 hours ago [-]
One seems written by a real human more than the other.
fierycatnet 2 hours ago [-]
Things really got worse for me when I got older. It's like at certain point, society just forgets that you exist as a person too.
2 hours ago [-]
greenowl 2 hours ago [-]
This is not exclusive to males. One could argue females actually have it worse.
Kirth 1 hours ago [-]
One could argue that but when they do it's almost always as a way to tell the aggrieved party or victim that they're invalid.
atestu 2 hours ago [-]
Exhibit A
nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
He has a point.
I think the broader point is that both genders have seen a decline in mental health over the same time period. Scoping by gender is a choice. One I am highly suspicious of when people are happy to chime in with their change suggestions.
pylua 2 hours ago [-]
Too much emphasis on forming connections and not enough focus on providing ample opportunities to climb the success ladder.
Try solving a difficult problem that has more meaning other than trying to form a problem that is easier solve.
mpalczewski 2 hours ago [-]
yes which is why traditional therapy doesn't work as well for men. It started out with Freud "helping" women.
teunispeters 1 hours ago [-]
A lot of the infrastructure got closed in Canada circa 1980s, or 1990s. Some tools are still available - sometimes - and I finally got my diagnosis following through with that, almost 20 years ago now. Anyway, this is partially "there's no tools available to help", and partially a "culture of not talking".
One of the consequences is that - while all of my issues have underlying biological causes (and thus, I can see specialists to mitigate that, somewhat) - I've been on a waiting list for ADHD now for 3 years, with no idea when I'll actually be able to see anyone. Thankfully, otherwise, my cPTSD - I got enough tools in the year after the diagnosis that it's no longer - most of the time - causing any trouble.
Now I was homeless when I started (this IS related to me being able to get help) - but those paths are not easy to get through. That help has been inaccessible to me since I stabilized my housing and employment situations.
So yeah, I'm not surprised. I've met a LOT of people who need more help than they could get ... providing they were open to reaching out. This is entirely related to "homeless epidemic". Mind "shortage of work", "cuts by companies who moved their offices south of the border" are related to this, too.
d_burfoot 54 minutes ago [-]
One of the deepest problems with being a man is the palpable, omnipresent sense that there are too many dudes. It is just a fact of the human condition that a large fraction of males are biologically superfluous. Society tries to equalize outcomes by promoting monogamy, but this strategy is losing effectiveness in the face of dating apps and extended premarital relationships. Historically, violence and war also tended to reduce the population of males, but violence has declined enormously compared to previous eras.
bijowo1676 2 hours ago [-]
modernity and its toxic feminism is causing untold suffering and increased male suicide
adipose 1 hours ago [-]
for as long as records of it have existed, men have died by suicide at higher rates than women globally and across the Western world
does this fact change anything about your claim that those two things are "causing" the increased male suicide?
bijowo1676 1 hours ago [-]
it doesn't change anything, because it is false
adipose 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
1 hours ago [-]
jlos 2 hours ago [-]
Men feel isolated because they are. They don’t reach out because they intuit being vulnerable will not help them.
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
TFNA 2 hours ago [-]
I have spent a lot of time in countries with strong male community even to this day: cafe culture where the menfolk of the town meet daily, sometimes for hours. I speak the languages and can be a full participant.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or up to three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
jlos 19 minutes ago [-]
Basically agree with you, adding that you’re likely a better candidate for individualism.
Most men (most people) don’t do well as true individuals. They need the inane group cohesion.
gib444 2 hours ago [-]
> Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
A $500,000 total comp engineer with a wife and a house in California set to retire at 50 vs a $60,000 bar tender in Ohio with a hotter wife and muscles. Who's higher in the chain? Genuine question
TFNA 1 hours ago [-]
Now imagine a culture where neurodivergent but wealthy you has to regularly sit at a cafe table or attend religious observance with men who are overwhelmingly the latter type. Being ostracized or mocked daily would still sting in spite of your enviable wealth.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.."
― Henry David Thoreau
thewanderer1983 2 hours ago [-]
Australian Government did something similar for woman a few years back. The research of which set the foundation for it being assigned national security importance. During that research they found these men issues as detailed here in this article. No action was taken. Only on how it affected woman. Now some action has started, hopefully Canada doing something about it will push them to do more.
throw7 2 hours ago [-]
I couldn't help noticing the linked report didn't mention religion (at all?). The list of participating organizations listed one church (Renew Church and maybe one other spiritual organization).
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit.
Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
cowlevel 1 hours ago [-]
it doesn't help that most religions are somewhere between a cult and a scam, and do not offer spiritual enlightenment.
vantechno 2 hours ago [-]
It is very difficult to talk about illness, especially chronic illness. It is one thing to break a bone, or need stitches; something entirely different to say you have chronic migraines or POTS. Every time I mention it I fear I'm sacrificing future employment opportunities.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
zkmon 2 hours ago [-]
It's the nature making decisions here. It has decided to lower the sprawl of human race to rebalance the ecosystem. The nature's correcting forces restore the equilibrium. Governments focussed on worker-driven economy rather than family well-being would naturally force everything towards genderless robotic societies which are ideal for work. European nations even started making policies specifically for punishing people opting to not to work. The world is taken over by powerful new races of creatures - governments, businesses, data and AI. They are nature's agents working to control the human growth. Human race is degraded to an unnecessary biological mass.
FLeXMurphy 3 hours ago [-]
> The findings will now help guide the development of Canada's first Federal Men and Boys' Health and Well-being Strategy, expected to be released in early 2027.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
> As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me that I wasn't a victim, but I was a perpetrator,
That is just tragic :(
2 hours ago [-]
throwawayqqq11 2 hours ago [-]
Wikipedia says nothing about protests, only indicates neglect as the driver for suicide. Guess its drummed up internet drama taken at face value again.
redanddead 2 hours ago [-]
that would be disastrous, this is about public health
lezojeda 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
nfca 1 hours ago [-]
There is certainly more pressure, and workplaces can be a minefield for men. God forbid a man is rude to a woman; it can't simply be "rudeness", it now has to have its own classification of "mansplaining", "toxic masculinity" etc. and therefore a greater seriousness.
I have seen and experienced this myself: in one past company, the HR person openly held the view that if a woman accuses a man of "harassment", it's probably true. In other words, HR itself operated with an attitude of 'guilty until proven innocent' against men.
I was once personally accused of "racism" against people of my own race (but across a political divide) by a former female colleague who was of a different race altogether. Thankfully, this was over LinkedIn chat outside of work where we also worked for different employers. I shudder to think what would have happened if this had been inside a workplace.
I don't blame women at all for this. I don't believe women are perpetuating this OR benefitting from this. This is a worse situation for everyone.
zubiaur 2 hours ago [-]
As Charles Darwin deliberated, and concluded... MARRY MARRY MARRY. Q.E.D.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
the Western society has adopted capitalism (money is God and money above all), and enjoys Capital when times are good and incomes are high.
However, for some strange reason, the West refuses to use dialectic materialism to explain when times are bad, when males feel lonely or face increased suicide rates.
material conditions explain everything, both when times are good, and when times are bad.
The solution is to obtain (via any means necessary) better material conditions, which might include redistribution by force or political action
neglesaks 15 minutes ago [-]
As I posted earlier, the sex suicide ratio in the USSR was equivalent to or worse, than contemporary and current ('capitalistic') sex suicide ratio. Material 'explanations' of the issue do not suffice here.
brianleb 2 hours ago [-]
Women are about 1.8x more likely to attempt suicide[1], but men are about 4x as likely to die by suicide.[2] Rates of suicide in female adolescents appear to be increasing at a faster pace than in male adolescents.[3] There is a body of literature suggesting a link to social media.
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
pizzafeelsright 1 hours ago [-]
The correct number in some people's minds would be zero, or less than now.
We all suffer, 100%, but some of us are able to choose the suffering as opposed to having it thrust or fall upon us.
Being healthy is suffering the exercise. Being unhealthy is suffering without.
_3u10 3 hours ago [-]
I found living there depressing, I left, life is better.
djmips 2 hours ago [-]
where did you go that was better for you
cs02rm0 2 hours ago [-]
Like those social media videos about how therapists won't tell you, because they'll lose their business, that the real way to feel better is to just go to Italy. :)
The poor mental health is the symptom, not the disease. Men are suffering in the modern economy. That is triggering other things such as failure to start higher education and failure to start families. I work with guys every day who want families but also realize the financial impossibilities. They aren't earning 200k. They do not have rich parents. They will not own a house before hitting 40.
I did a yearly career counseling/updating session with a guy a month ago who's "long term goal" was to buy a dog. A dog needs a yard. A dog needs an owner who is home regularly. So he figured that in the next 10 years he might be able to get a small house and switch to a job with more regular hours. THAT is where depression starts. A good man with a good job and all he can envision for himself is maybe... one day... if he saves every penny... he might get to adopt a puppy.
The answers are not in more government-sponsored therapy sessions. The answer is to improve jobs, to give the working man a future to look for.
WarmWash 3 hours ago [-]
"Men need to be happier but they cannot live in the image they have lived in for the last few eons of evolution."
Good luck with that.
Jtarii 2 hours ago [-]
Literally nothing stopping men from being confident, strong providers if they want to be. Most do not because that is hard and videogames and porn is easy.
azan_ 2 hours ago [-]
That’s a very good example of how problems of men vs women are approached. Women typically get support (which is great! We should continue that) and men are typically blamed for being weak. It’s same pattern for many things, like mental health (like here), general health („it’s not our fault that men don’t take care of themselves”) to men being less educated than women.
Jtarii 1 hours ago [-]
There would first need to be a fundamental change in the way boys are socialised, shifting them more towards how girls are socialised. Which I don't see happening any time soon. You can't help people that don't want to be helped and a significant portion of men's brains are in a permanent state of rejecting all help offered to them.
"Traditional Masculinity" is just in general maladaptive in the current age.
rpdillon 30 minutes ago [-]
I got downvoted earlier today for saying that there's nobody out there that would argue that men and women are exactly the same, except for a little bit of environmental nudging.
That appears to be exactly what you're arguing here: All we need to do is socialize boys more like we socialize girls, and then the men they become will be happier in our society. Is that your position?
If so, can you say a little bit more about what you mean or what you envision that socialization would look like for boys?
jodrellblank 1 hours ago [-]
"Literally nothing" stopping the perfectly spherical massless man in a social, environmental, cultural and economic vacuum from self-actualising into an ubermensch. Go gett'm, Tyger - The Stars, Your Destination!
Jtarii 1 hours ago [-]
Women are successful because they became more like men, to catch up men now need to become more like women, which they will not do because that would be gay.
_3u10 2 hours ago [-]
It’s easy to fix, find a country that Canada chastises and move there.
Pull up freedom house and pick any country rated 15 to 60 and see if you like it. Within 3 or 4 you will think, this place is awesome.
flatline 2 hours ago [-]
The comments are revealing. "Men think...", "women need..." We are caught in a semantic-linguistic trap, debating a false dichotomy and pointing out all the places it has respectively harmed us.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.
Many people want to avoid AI slop because it has a low signal to noise ratio.
foxtrottbravo 1 hours ago [-]
I do not share this position but I understand it may be someones legitimate opinion in general. I do not understand it here - when we are talking about a report like that.
Is it better to go unreported if the alternative is that an LLM was used in the articles creation?
sltkr 33 minutes ago [-]
Most people don't have time to read every article posted to Hacker News. Avoiding the AI slop in favor of human-written articles that promise a higher return on investment seems like a reasonable strategy. For that to work, AI slop must be accurately labeled as such.
Jtarii 1 hours ago [-]
If I wanted to read llm output I would just load up a chatgpt tab.
foxtrottbravo 1 hours ago [-]
Should the issue be disregarded because someone else has used an LLM when producing it? Honestly asking.
Jtarii 1 hours ago [-]
Yep.
tamimio 2 hours ago [-]
This is results of general misandry culture in the past two decades or three, it isn’t just laws or hard artifacts you can trace and correct, it is the general acceptance that it’s ok to ridicule men, insult them and belittle them publicly and all over media, and if a man objects it he is gaslighted and called all sort of bad names like insecure or whatever, a man in control? God forbid he is controlling misogynistic {insert other terms}, men natural way of doing things are also attacked, from simple ways of how they sit or act all the way to natural instinct for intimacy where men are visually stimulated yet are attacked or ridiculed for it, and many more examples. And unless a major cultural shift happens, this won’t go anywhere, you can look at the numbers and I don’t mean serious ones like suicides but also employments and others, look up female/male hiring ratio in the past year or two, or in jobs where women get shoved into very niche fields for virtue signaling, not because they are indeed competent, and many more. And obviously very little studies about that because whos gonna fund such research? After all, scientists mostly go with their sponsors directions.
neglesaks 1 hours ago [-]
Misandric culture has been a thing for more than those two decades obviously, but in this age of easily-peddled one- or few-liner "arguments" (trivial to claim and spread, far more difficult to effectively bring to a stop) on 'social media', misandric memes and memetic content has exploded in both prevalence and impact, that is in the twenty years since facebook and twitter et al that serves as seedbeds for these toxicities came to.
Someone else here asked why a mens issue would also affect adolescents? Simple: Adolescents, naturally including boys, are the heaviest consumers of 'social media', and are thus most heavily exposed to it. The rest of us are mostly exposed to the second-order effects, namely misandric culture and institutional misandric bias which seems to be powered by the same memetic toxicity that we've witmessed on SoMe the past two decades.
Men and boys are thinking and feeling beings, too.
TacticalCoder 2 hours ago [-]
Well because men are physically stronger than women and because some men are wife-beaters or rapists or cheating on their wife, since decades already now there's been a movement to portray all men as raping pigs.
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
alala-lala-lon 2 hours ago [-]
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j45 3 hours ago [-]
1) "Poor men's health carries economic costs"
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
holsta 1 hours ago [-]
> 1) "Poor men's health carries economic costs"
>
> Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
That's not what is meant by "economic cost". Helping young men feel better early long term is obviously better and cheaper for society than letting them grow up and live a whole life where they suffer and hurt themselves or others.
Nothing about this is surprising or unknown. We know how to prevent and treat despair-related lives. It's a political choice that most of the world has insufficient or even broken (mental) healthcare. We could choose to vote differently, but we don't.
johnnyApplePRNG 2 hours ago [-]
I blame individualism.
Nobody cares about anyone else hardly at all in Canada.
Male / Female ... makes no difference.
If you can't cut it, there's the street bub. Enjoy your tent and/or shelter ridden by gangs and bedbugs.
alala-lala-lon 2 hours ago [-]
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fleroviumna 2 hours ago [-]
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nonethewiser 2 hours ago [-]
1) Are we sure this is even a male problem? Apparently the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%. What was the answer for women? Turns out they dont ask the question but we know related metrics like anxiety, depression, etc. show a similar trend. What does it say about the views of the Canadian health ministry that they would target this survey at men only?
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
3) Bring back the Boy Scouts
dagenleg 1 hours ago [-]
I think this whole discourse is unhealthy and frankly more toxic for the HN community than the political threads. At least those get flagged right away. Time and time again these threads about male suffering/under-representation/discrimination end up being upvoted, with malcontents flocking to them and filling the comments with generalized statements about women, paranoia about divorce rape and of course the ever-present disdain towards feminism.
This is getting really tiring and it's frankly a shame to see the inexorable slide of HN into a sexist echochamber. The irony of it is, I'm pretty sure that a large part of self-victimising posters in this thread were complaining about the SJW oppression olympics just five years prior.
I get where different kinds of bigotry come from; when things get bad, outgroups are always going to be blamed and scapegoated, whether racial or class-based. Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces. How bad things must be for someone’s designated oppressor outgroup to constitute 50% of the population, people who resemble them and face largely the same problems? Seriously, do all these people who make sweeping generalisations and talk about “women” as some kind of monolithic entity ever actually talk to women or have female friends? It’s bizarre.
qball 1 hours ago [-]
>Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces.
The root of problem is that you don't find it inherently obscene to do the same to men.
That's literally all it is. If you think women are worth more than men you are, in a system of equality, objectively wrong.
If you want women to be socially worth more than men, what are you going to give men to uphold that deal? Because the longer you answer "nothing, fuck you", the worse this gets.
dagenleg 16 minutes ago [-]
Who says I don't? Of course it would be obscene, that's my whole point. What I said about othering half of the population applies in both directions. Yes, it would also be wrong and absurd to blame men for social problems!
I'm calling out the petty sexism that I'm seeing far too often, how did you manage to read it as an attack on all men? There's that victim mentality again. Nobody except a small minority of deranged fanatics calls for women to be socially worth more than men.
However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
qntty 46 minutes ago [-]
I don't blame women for men's problems, but just to be pragmatic about the situation, the kinds of comments you're referring to are usually a response to this same kind of micromanaging of thought. Doubling down on it probably won't be an effective response.
datsci_est_2015 1 hours ago [-]
Hey, maybe this is a chance for chuds to exercise some self-reflection and reconsider the merits of intersectionality. I doubt it, though, as a "chud" is pretty much by definition someone who is incapable of self-reflection.
thom 2 hours ago [-]
Wow, all time worst comments section on HN, that's quite an achievement.
NalNezumi 2 hours ago [-]
Haven't this been known for a loooooooong time now...? I recall listening to TED talk (silly times) at least 15 years ago already talking about how behavioral pattern difference of seeking help between men/women pointing to this.
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
2 hours ago [-]
halfmatthalfcat 2 hours ago [-]
A lot of men decrying the fall of man after having been at the top for aeons. Zero perspective or awareness. Everyone deserves positive mental health but that doesn’t mean men need any more power or special treatment than they’ve already had throughout history. More coping skills with reversion to what a normal mean should be.
rpdillon 20 minutes ago [-]
You've structured your thinking such that it seems that you're not able to tease apart the distinction between the individual and the group. This is a very dangerous mistake that I think a lot of the rhetoric over the past 20 years has encouraged a whole generation to engage in, but it's deeply divisive and unconstructive.
Telling one of the millions of poor white men that they have zero perspective or awareness because they want help because they are suicidal doesn't help them.
In the end, this entire framing is a mistake. It's always the rich versus the poor, and the rich love to have the poor arguing among themselves about who's causing the problems. People need to work together.
2 hours ago [-]
DaSHacka 1 hours ago [-]
Oh I'm Aeons old? Neat, I thought I was 20. Glad to hear I benefitted from all that patriarchy in my past lives. Guess it only makes sense I pay my just desserts now, to women who themselves must have experienced Aeons of discrimination at my personal hand in their apparent past lives.
halfmatthalfcat 1 hours ago [-]
Yeah and as a millennial I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
rpdillon 14 minutes ago [-]
So let's push this forward a little bit. Do you think that the world that you're going to hand off to your children is going to have equality, equal rights for all, great health care for everyone, and racial harmony?
Because what's going to happen is you're eventually going to get a little bit older and the next generation is going to say, "I'm sick and tired of cleaning up the millennials' messes" and that'll be because they're young, and they're not familiar with how messy the world is, and they think the mess is some kind of unusual abberation.
And if you're lucky, some of them will resent you personally because you're part of that generation. That's what I meant when I said, in my other comment replying to you, that conflating the group and the individual is not constructive.
DaSHacka 56 minutes ago [-]
> Yeah and as a millennial
Yeah I think everyone can kinda tell lol
I'm still not sure if your profile and website are satire or not. A bit too on the nose (typical big-3 U.S. city liberal selfhating millenial white "male-feminist" who likes nerdy things like Star Trek and virtue signalling online, it checks every box lol)
> I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately
The vast majority of Women's Suffrage occurred multiple generations before boomers were even born, how is this their issue either? Arguably they're the ones that kept in motion how things are now, in that the dynamic has been totally reversed.
> and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
What debt, exactly? And how is flipping the discrimination 'paying it back'? Is the expectation that we keep the women-only programs and opportunities for an Aeon to "cancel out" the Aeon of "male dominance", despite the fact that it doesn't (and can't) impact those who supposedly benefitted during that time (as they're dead)?
I think you'll find that predictably, "revenge for the original sin of your ancestors" is not a super popular concept among young people who never even lived to experience those supposed benefits.
neglesaks 9 minutes ago [-]
Original Sin has had a surprising resurgence among the sociologically schooled in these times...
halfmatthalfcat 47 minutes ago [-]
Yesh - glad we could have this conversation that didn't devolve into ad hominem attacks.
redanddead 2 hours ago [-]
it's inappropriate and frankly odd to bring up abstract notions of history for a government mandated health report
it's like talking about feelings in math
halfmatthalfcat 2 hours ago [-]
I'm talking about the discourse in this thread and I can talk about or bring up whatever points I want, as can anyone else. Feel free to disagree.
redanddead 2 hours ago [-]
just more noise making clear conversation and decisive action harder
i fail to see where preconceptions about past aeons fits into a report about statistics, feel free to clarify, ideally with numbers
halfmatthalfcat 2 hours ago [-]
Oh ok, me supplying "numbers" will definitely change the conversation we have going right now.
Vaslo 2 hours ago [-]
What you’ve said with your careless comment: “Men have been on top for so long who cares if both the good ones and bad ones kill themselves or get locked up in mental hospitals or abuse drugs.”
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
neglesaks 1 hours ago [-]
Exactly. They are drowning the problem in generalized abstraction. Ironically, it's the result of 'social media' memetic indoctrination where posting one line of emotionally laden bs takes about ten seconds. However correcting it with proper perspective and refuting the erroneous use of a general abstraction and adding historical facts, perspective and nuance in a well written package can take me an hour, in which timespan the original one liner would already accumulated ten or fifty 'retweets' because the emotional hook of simplistic, emotional is extremely effective.
And, the audience that ends up sharing this misandric memery is generally not receptive to nuanced, reasoned argument to the contrary once hooked.
halfmatthalfcat 2 hours ago [-]
Totally what I said, thanks for the recap.
dyauspitr 2 hours ago [-]
Men’s happiness and women’s happiness are inversely proportional.
hack1312 2 hours ago [-]
Happiness is not a zero-sum game
recursive 2 hours ago [-]
If they were inversely proportional, it would be unity-product I guess.
triceratops 2 hours ago [-]
Hmm...if I'm miserable my partner will be happier? What a life hack, I gotta try that /s
dyauspitr 53 minutes ago [-]
That’s the gist.
triceratops 52 minutes ago [-]
Then you're with the wrong person. Find someone else.
burnaftercommen 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
xg15 2 hours ago [-]
I have read lots of calls to have those tough conversations, but almost never any content from the conversations themselves. So, how would they look?
neglesaks 2 hours ago [-]
The premise is already offered by the preceding post: Blame the man/men up front for the ailment, as a select few overtly seem to volunteer in this whole comments section.
xg15 2 hours ago [-]
I'm amazed how much of the discussion in this thread is purely meta without even so much as saying what specific issues we are talking about.
tarxvf 2 hours ago [-]
This does not match my experiences in the slightest.
whoanoway 2 hours ago [-]
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everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
0x1ch 2 hours ago [-]
It starts in college, having lived through those first couple sentences verbatim. There is a group / pack mentality around this behavior as well, but I'm not really educated on psychology enough to describe it further.
FLeXMurphy 2 hours ago [-]
The interesting thing about this is you don't need schooling to get in the way of education.
Exoristos 2 hours ago [-]
This is an interesting musing but does not offer possible solutions. Men supporting men comes to my mind as an obvious category.
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
I think there are a few potential solutions.
- Currently, the dominant ideology is that there is a victim hierarchy, and if you're in the wrong group (ie, you're privileged) then your opinions and needs don't matter. Moving away from this sort of identitarianism would one important step.
- I think it's important to try to understand why male socialization has fallen apart. (statistically, yes, I'm sure a lot of you still socialize) It's clearly a gendered effect, and I'm genuinely not sure what a reasonable explanation would be. (your comment, men supporting men would play nicely here, although I'm not sure how we make that happen.)
Exoristos 29 minutes ago [-]
To your first point, I am aware of the rhetoric, without having encountered it myself, but would be skeptical it amounts to "dominant ideology" or policy.
To the second, I had more in mind male-centered institutions offering male-tailored solutions; perhaps funded, promoted, or helmed by men. I wasn't expecting those suffering, or the average man, to bear responsibility for solving men's issues.
pojzon 27 minutes ago [-]
If we look at history of our spieces, we came down from a tree 5min ago.
We are in 95% still the same animal and 5% intelligent human.
Vast majority of all of our weird discussions is about us not accepting this fact.
In this case its:
1) Men are competing with each other for resources and women
2) Women only want strong resourceful men
3) Our only purpose was defined by first living cell being born - we have to sustain life
Outcome of the above is:
Nobody cares about men that dont succceed (which ofcourse will cause a lot of men depression).
Exoristos 12 minutes ago [-]
I spent my teen years in a rural community and observed, and formed, a lot of strong bonds with men. Back in the city, I still see examples of kindness and camaraderie among boys and men. So all I can say is my experience doesn't bear out what your point 1 is asserting. My own view of modern men's isolation is that it's a fairly recent pathology.
neglesaks 7 minutes ago [-]
The above are indeed simple, hard, physical facts of the matter that few wish to address.
edit: typo
mrluckysmith 2 hours ago [-]
I have had similar experience in my personal life in multiple relationships, including my wife. I've learned to never complain about anything in front of women and just white knuckle whatever difficulties I get at any given moment. This approach helped me secure more respect and better overall response from women. Showing weakness triggers the disgust response that you mentioned. It could be masked under pity, but you lose respect quickly. Working through my issues with male friends is more productive for me.
The only woman who actually cares for me has been my mother.
neglesaks 2 hours ago [-]
I know many that echo that exact experience(s), sadly.
adipose 1 hours ago [-]
what is a "weak" man, in your usage here?
what are non-anecdotal things that support the idea, "When [women] see a weak man, what they feel is disgust."
do men demonstrate the same "disgust" when _they_ "see a weak man"? why or why not?
2 hours ago [-]
shermantanktop 2 hours ago [-]
> try "choosing" to be attracted to an 80 year old woman
Not a great example. Elderly women may not be your thing, but nursing homes are apparently hotbeds of STDs. There's someone out there for everyone.
campbell000 1 hours ago [-]
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garciasn 2 hours ago [-]
Someone hurt you; I'm sorry for that. But, you're making sweeping generalizations about ~50% of the world's behavior and, while this may be your perception, I think you could use some genuine therapy to help w/the struggles you clearly are facing.
E: I am so baffled how the HN community could be so very anti-female here that they would advocate for this sort of commentary by downvoting.
dghlsakjg 1 hours ago [-]
They aren't anti-female, they are down-voting your personal take.
You invalidated a lived experience that a lot of people can confirm by telling someone that their feelings are so unrealistic that they need therapy.
> But, you're making sweeping generalizations about ~50% of the world's behavior
sounds a lot like "not all (wo)men"... yeah, but enough of them for many men to have learned to be cautious around vulnerability with women. Its the same thing as guys who don't understand the man vs. bear thing.
d--b 2 hours ago [-]
Nah, that's simply not true in the general case.
There are subcultures in which men showing vulnerability are considered bad. But in those subcultures, men are just as mean to other men as women are. And women embracing this are usually not very "empathy this" and "acceptance that" towards anybody.
There is definitely a part of feminist culture is openly aggressive toward men in general while being "empathy this" towards women. But they are usually way more aggressive towards cocky men than weak men.
moolcool 2 hours ago [-]
No offence, but comment seems like incel podcast gobbledygook
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
Did your "no offense" actually do any work here?
moolcool 2 hours ago [-]
Fair point, take all the offence you like.
everdrive 2 hours ago [-]
If it helps, I'm happily married with two children.
monkey_monkey 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
moolcool 2 hours ago [-]
Do you think your spouse is disgusted by you when you show weakness?
TimedToasts 2 hours ago [-]
Yes
Fricken 2 hours ago [-]
So if a man is a position of weakness just label him an incel and then it's ok to be disgusted with him, you're saying.
moolcool 2 hours ago [-]
That isn't at all what I'm saying.
cowlevel 2 hours ago [-]
Thus proving GGP's point.
SoftTalker 3 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
martythemaniak 3 hours ago [-]
Is there anything noteworthy about Minister Michel?
dlord 1 hours ago [-]
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SoftTalker 3 hours ago [-]
As another commenter noted, "sometimes there can be things that only other men understand"
vigilantpuma 3 hours ago [-]
Is your suggestion then having two health ministers? More than two?
SoftTalker 1 hours ago [-]
My suggestion is that if you're going to present a "Men and boys’ health and well-being strategy" then the public face and leadership of that should be male.
How would it be received if a male were presenting a strategy on women and girls well-being?
ballmerpoint 2 hours ago [-]
His solution is being coy to drive up engagement. At this rate it’ll take another couple rounds before anyone figures out the real objection.
nsoam 3 hours ago [-]
I’m not a Canadian but I googled the name and I immediately understood.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
There are some of the same issues in custody law as in North America but from what I read it still seems way better than in the US.
I would be really surprised if the US didnt have these options too…
Just living together, informally, is already enough for the woman to take half your assets as it's already considered `Partial Community of Property`.
I can't think of anything where Brazil is generally superior to the US in terms of law.
EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
https://www.wgslawfirm.com/family-law/divorce-mediation/2025...
That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.
My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long afterward she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father's personal and real property in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.
Of course, his real mistakes occurred before he ever started cohabitating. Common law marriage rules were far down the list of wrong turns. But in any event, ironically a few years later Alabama abolished common law marriage.
For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.
It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.
Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/famil...
If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
I think pandora's box is open never to be shut again on the conversation if we're the same or different.
> If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
This framing of the issue puts the discussion down an awkward rhetorical path that is difficult to recover from.
What if it doesn't matter whether someone looks or acts different; but it matters how society treats them and the outcomes that they face.
Black chess pieces and white chess pieces are superficially, trivially distinct. Yet, the player with the white pieces wins 52% to 56% of the time.
I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
Is "right" defined by the nature of existence or just by the ends? Some would say an outcome of hunger is unacceptable, some would say there are plenty of "wrong" (try to not make that moral meaning) behaviors which should result in hunger. (Such as refusing to work or trade value for other people's property ie food)
I’m guessing you don’t have a uterus, am I right? A man doesn’t end up pregnant if the condom breaks. So don’t lecture us about your “bad faith arguments” when you’re making one.
People chafe against things like DEI as arbitrary favoritism completely failing to note that yes, this policy is meant to promote equality, not to represent it. In the case of promoting female stem workers you might say it’s a policy designed to give women equal-ish access to the job market by way of giving them preferential treatment in hiring, to counteract biases of men favoring men during that process.
The ideal outcome of any policy like this is that once the systemic inequity is resolved, the policy can be retired.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
That this expression has become the root of an industry of exploitation (divorce proceedings are a big circus) is clear. Rights are not a constant. They have to be expressed.
Like in vows, maybe.
no controversy of this in chimps.
no magical evolutionary moment when they became the same in humans.
biologists know this. sociologists start with an unfounded null assumption.
This cuts both ways: you will often see physically emasculated men get treated as if they're not men, to their detriment. Think of less-developed young men being cut from sports teams; they have the same in-built need for physical activity, competition, even some measure of practicing dominance, as larger boys. Deprivation leads to frustration and more.
I don’t even get how I am supposed to hold my partner to the same standards I would hold a close male friend/family member. If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately. I have found just using the old adage “happy wife happy life” is most effective, but isn’t that inherently disrespectful? Like “I can’t reason with this person but if I upset them it’s gonna go poorly for me so I better let them have their way!”. The only way my relationship survives is if I have a bit of internalized misogyny and hold her to a different standard than I do myself or another man.
“They claim men and women are no different apart from their environment” tends to be a claim made by those who can't cope with the singular “they” let alone anything else, who are trying to make those who disagree on such points seem ridiculous.
---------
[1] particularly in the endocrine system, though in other parts² which might also have an impact on how we react to things and our mental health more generally
[2] it isn't just emotional matters and related coping mechanisms: heart attacks often manifest differently in women, or if not that then the signs are often misdiagnosed, for instance
[3] either for talking about specific detailed differences, or for identifying people in terms of their identity & phycological makeup more generally
Have you ever spoken with a woman?
This, a thousand times.
And I say that as a man who has lived in multiple countries in my lifetime, raising my family, through thick and thin.
>mens mental health
I no longer see it as a man problem, its a we problem.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
Maybe men don't have supports until it's rock bottom or too late.
At the same time I don't think there's many men who beleive think the standard of supporting women, and children, early and often, should never be reduced or changed. Maybe it could be expanded.
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52% the percentage who experienced: mood disorders increased from11% to 16% generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold. As you point out, the future is often completely different to what you imagined, but it is what you are imagining that shapes how you feel.
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/publications/health...
And in here, you will find:
This is what I was responding to.Legally, people are marrying a law in their place of residence, marriage is a contract and agreement with the government.
Through a marriage to the government's law first, two people are married in the eyes of the law.
The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
Of course you do. As you even point out yourself, you marry the government, which is people.
> The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
Considering that the traditional marriage process involves two people standing in front of representatives of the government and declaring promises to them it seems like it'd be a bit hard to miss? I suppose if others also don't realize that government is people then they might not realize what the people in the audience are doing? But, then again, given that the two people prepared to make those promises are usually responsible for inviting that audience to the wedding you'd think they would have questions about why they are there otherwise?
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
So there is some variability, and of course in my case it was a "happy path" scenario where both me and my ex-wife mutually wanted the divorce.
But by default you have to pay spousal support regardless of how well-off your partner is. The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially. Which is really not a contemporary point of view to make as a blanket statement.
But again, it seems weird when a male has to work 2 jobs in their 50's to send large monthly payments to a female that has a larger or equivalent net worth.
And it happens routinely. Of course, there are also a lot of men out there that just want to stiff their ex. But that doesn't mean my former example isn't happening.
https://www.setfords.co.uk/2026/09/01/new-rights-for-cohabit...
At the request of the family law lobby, naturally ...
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/a-fairer-end-to-...
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
And I don't make a habit of pointing out women's smaller stature to call them vulnerable?? Wtf
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
Which would completely ignore the economic imbalance I was talking about, which occurs during the marriage.
> It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
Like I said, making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many, while the kids are young and childcare is expensive. There’s no reason why that has to be the woman but the data shows that the vast majority of the time it is.
Even if one party earns less, I don't see how "vulnerable" that would make them if it was prior to meeting the other person.
The topic was couples/cohabitation/marriage, not child rearing. The concerns you raise would be equally applicable where the parents have decided they want absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is truth in what you are saying, but it is an entirely different topic. How to deal with the child is a negotiation that takes place around the child, not around a romantic relationship (or lack thereof).
In the romantic relationship, there is no realistic situation where one party ends up with all the money unless the other one willingly hands theirs over. But any of us can do that. I can willing give you all my money now just the same and there would be no good legal recourse if I decide it was a bad idea later. The only reason we have these ideas in the world of romance is due to the historical idea that women aren't capable of thinking for themselves.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
The law isn't simply a "default" in this matter that you can opt out of AIUI
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
>2 years
Kids need their Dads, and Dads have to be strong as hell for them, even still, in this modern world. I am super glad to have gotten my two giant oafs into adulthood well enough to be surfing the wonders the world has in store for them both .. but yeah, you'll get your ass kicked. Be a kick ass Dad, then.
The most important thing is that your son knows you're there for him as he grows up. Maybe keep a journal, don't stop writing important things to him, notes and ideas from his Dad, for him to read when he gets his own agency over things.
How is it possible? Well, theoretically it's not. The order I got and subsequent denial of modification blatantly violate state law and appealate precedent. But it's all procedural. The standard for the underlying opinion of the judge is that if there is one fact to support that opinion then the ruling is upheld.
So I could have appealed and won. But then I go back to the same judge that doesn't think my kid should have any contact with me and all she has to do is find one fact to support that.
More often a custody order is just a piece of paper. The primary parent can screw with visitation easily and it takes time and money to go to court. The original divorce cost me $100k, another contempt motion $7k, and the failed modification $20k.
Custody ends for Fathers when they give up. I gave up unusually early (which royally pissed off the judge) and this is my punishment.
Sharia law actually has some good ideas in it. I think we should investigate Islamic banking and see if any of it would improve our economies. Because charging interest is forbidden in Islam, many of them do mortgages as a rent to own system instead, which leaves the bank on the hook if the house value crashes, instead of the buyer, so banks don't give out stupidly big mortgages that you might not want to pay back.
I wonder why.
Alternatively, the accused could both do a confession in front of a judge 4 separate times but they can retract this confession at any time and avoid any punishment.
Your Islamophobia is showing a bit too much.
Men especially take this hard. I find men have a very very strong urge to get ahead, succeed, and climb the ladder of success. If they consistently fail at this AND can't find a partner it gets really rough. I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
Declaring "the west gone" is something better left on a reactionary platform like X, rather than something like Hacker News.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
It's also a reason why the West is failing, but certainly not the only one. Social Welfare states like Europe are burning, since it was never sustainable.
America is fighting among itself, because there is no Asabiyyah (social cohesion), and the wealth inequality (wealth pump) is growing massively.
Compare that with China or Singapore, where social harmony is perhaps the most important thing in their society, food is subsidized, education as a high priority, their laws are punitive, infrastructure is extremely new, etc.
I don’t think you’re open for a discussion but I’ll try; just judging from experience talking to other people who hold similar entrenched beliefs, I might be very wrong.
> Social Welfare states like Europe are burning
I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
> the West is failing
I wasn’t aware of that either! Seems to me that western countries (I assume you mean US and EU with that?) still hold most of the power worldwide?
> Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media
The opposite is also true. I think it’s just because most heroes and villains in western media are men - hell most characters are men.
France's West African colonies are also leaving France as they inch closer to China, politically and economically.
China is rising, and so are other (previously and currently) Third World nations. It's a matter of when they take power, not if. India and Indonesia seem to be heavy hitters, for now and probably for the near future. I wouldn't count out Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda) or Latin America (Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, etc).
I stand by my statement of Western entertainment demeaning men, probably out of anger, or as something of an alibi for Hollywood after the #Metoo movement. Occupy Wallstreet is also notable for happening before this.
China/Asia, South America and Africa have the most space, people and natural resources so it just makes sense that they would be more successful in the long run though.
>I stand by my statement
That is fair. I stand by mine that this doesn’t convince me. Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power. You can’t really be an effective or convincing villain if you’re powerless.
That being said, it's quite noticeable that people in the entertainment sector, who are probably marginalized, are directing some anger against men.
Ghostbusters 2016, likely started this, and I do wonder if it was to appease the women and other groups after the the #Metoo movement, where marginalized people were given a voice, to pretend that Hollywood was like them (they aren't, look at their governmental funding before #Metoo).
Seems like a generalisation. I’m a man and I’m more interested in people than in things for example.
> That's probably why most characters are men overall.
How does this follow what you wrote before; I don’t see any connection tbh
That is, near exactly the same as in the 'capitalist' world then, and now.
(In the Slavic-predominant part of the USSR, that is Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, it was an even worse 4,6-to-1. Somewhat lower in Central Asia at ~2,7-to-1).
I think I need that on a T-shirt.
Isn't "okay snowflake" a vilification in itself?
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
This is the most plausible hypothesis, judging revealed preferences by the outcomes.
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
My mental model is that men tend to be more extreme and less conservative than women (risk-taking is more prevalent), and this leads to more extreme approaches in how they try to kill themselves.
But it's been a while since I've read any of these statistics, and I have no special credentials. Just thinking about what we're observing.
hanging/strangulation (9,164, 49%);
self-poisoning (4,098, 22%);
jumping/multiple injuries (2,423, 13%).
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
Try again.
[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15834784/
--------
[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
> Expressed another way, that would mean that 10% of all males surviving to adulthood would perish in combat.
> We’ll get back around to fertility rates later in the series but for how if we assume each woman in this society is having on average five live childbirths, a 2% chance of death at each stage adds up pretty quickly – a woman who gave birth five times with a 2% chance of dying each time has a total chance of dying at one stage or another of 9.607%, which as you will note is not far off from the chance of dying in a battle
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
What does this mean? Just lower your standards and there's a woman out there for you?
It's been a long time since I was single, but I never felt like that. I worked at a job with a bunch of other men and didn't have a lot of social outlets that involved women. My candidate pool was close to zero. I eventually recognized this and found ways to broaden my pool, but it wasn't easy.
I'm only speculating that I think the past used to be (a lot) worse. Competition was higher across the board for significantly worse options across the board.
So much of the modern era is defined by the desire for social change, but nobody seems to pause and think what that must mean regarding the perception of their options (and themselves). It means even your worst option today probably isn't that bad or is already more similar to you than you want to believe. I think this all boils down to mortality. Other people change slower than you have time for, so on some level you do have to either compromise or make your own changes at the pace you prefer. You can't spend life looking at the rear view mirror and a horizon that never comes.
A casual look on social media tends to confirm that the same people not liking their options also think they were "born in the wrong era" or similar.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
It's 26%women/19%men some mental health issue and 7%women/4%men serious mental health issue
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
It could just as much be the case that men are diagnosed at a lower rate because they seek out care less often (many studies point at this being true) or that men who do seek care are not diagnosed at as high of a rate despite having the same symptoms (men report higher rates of dissatisfaction with mental care, and other studies show gender bias in diagnosis - men get told to "man up" in so many words-, or men get misdiagnosed because symptoms for the same mental illness vary between men and women)
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower. Which is worse depends on who you ask.
I think the underlying idea is that us men need to hold ourselves accountable. These issues are primarily* issues that men need to fix, and it's unrealistic to expect other demographics to do it for us. Thus, telling men to "be better" is about the most you can expect from other demographics.
*There are nuances here, obviously. Please don't try and reply with some gotcha.
Well, other methods haven't worked, such as trying to help or have these discussions. Or relying on science.
> Safety for women is a facet of healthy men.
Unfortunately, men generally don't care about this reasoning.
> ...we should find ways to improve men's mental health.
Unfortunately, men are the ones generally opposed to this. It's a "sign of weakness."
Let's be clear, men work hard to prevent men from improving men's mental health.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
I have a feeling this comment will not sit well with you but I am very much willing to engage this in good faith. I don’t see what you’re seeing. There are definitely domains where different genders have the advantage, but to act like the law as a whole benefits women over men…that dog don’t hunt IMO
Education, there is a stronger argument there (re admissions and such, not safety). I agree that has gotten messy as hell at the very least.
Workplace, similar to my issue with the law claim.
As for georgeburdell thinking women are more advantaged against men, he should do some experiments applying to jobs with equivalent credentials as a man vs a woman, both in child bearing years. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the average man in that age range will need or ask for fewer days off than the average woman.
>You have to address if the thing inside the tummy is a person or not, and when.
As an aside, the data overwhelmingly shows neither women nor doctors are choosing to abort viable fetuses willy nilly. The real world effect is, as the data shows, to cause doctors to think about their financial and criminal liabilities before their patients' well being.
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/04/raw-data-abor...
Framing it as a question of women's bodily autonomy assumes there is only one person involved, which is exactly what abortion opponents dispute. So your framing doesn't settle the issue.
The crux of the issue is if and when the thing in the tummy is a person.
The men would get the benefit of spending time with their newborn children in a way they cannot do today, while their significant others get the benefit of another person available to help them out full-time through the child's early months. The cherry on top is that businesses would be far less able to view women as men who take more time off.
> Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference.
In a meta-analysis of 57 such studies, Galos and Coppock (Science Advances 2023 [2]) found a small 1.2% bias favouring women overall, with gender-coded fields generally have a preference for applicants of that gender (5.1% towards women in nursing, admin, early childhood education; 3.0% towards men in trades, engineering, executive roles).
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1418878112
[2]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ade7979?hl=en-GB
There were only 12 very vague questions - and none actually asked the respondent about how they felt personally: "Where do you believe stereotypes about masculinity primarily come from?"
Only about 2/3 of the respondents even identified as male - this isn't a serious study of how men themselves feel. It's more of a survey about the public perception of men.
Few are even reading the article. It's mostly a way to start a discussion and vent.
It starts with an objective report on reality
It's like taking your blood pressure or blood sugar, it starts with data in health
This is public health and this report is the measuring instrument
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
But we live too comfortably for anyone to take those actions.
Like a boiling frog, ppl will wake up when its too late.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
Maybe you can you disambiguate your phrasing here. Which do you mean?
1.There is a MALE mental health problem -- some mental health problem wholly or partially unique to men
2. There is a mental health problem observed among men
If #1, where is the evidence? A men-only survey can't show it. If you surveyed left-handed people and 30% had anxiety, that doens't mean there is a left-handed anxiety problem.
If #2, we agree on what the research shows, but it brings your original point into question: "Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?" Which problem are we recognizing? Labeling a general problem a male one assumes a diagnosis, which points the search for causes and fixes at men when nothing in this report shows that's where they are, and other available information shows worsening mental health in women as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
Which one was it?
How many men dying in battles or enslaved building pyramids, or getting lung diseases in coal mines were celebrating "Men's day" throughout history?
So no, not useless and maybe should help color the conversation a bit more on WHY men are feeling as they are, because the power dynamics of society are shifting, of which men have been led to believe that they would, in fact, be at the top forever.
It does mean exactly that. 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, assume half were men, what specific benefit did they get from the German leader at the time having a penis? Zero. Zero benefit. Russia is conscripting 300,000 people/year into their war in Ukraine since 2022. What benefit do they get from Putin being a man at the top? Zero. Zero benefit.
Men and women have done dirty, dangerous, and back-breaking work through history, but the harder it is physically and the more likely to have injury and death associated with it, the more likely it's a "man's job". Plenty of women carrying children bent double standing in water plantint rice all day or picking tealeaves. Not so likely for women to be conscripted, laying stone for roads or railway, digging foundations and wells, bricklaying, construction, carving roadways through mountains, loading ships as dock workers, shipbuilding, soldiering, mining, oil drilling, blacksmithing, chemical refining, chimney sweeping, sewer cleaning.
Most men through history had no position of power whatsoever, and were not at the top of anything, and most men alive today don't and aren't.
Who held what job when, who died when, who actually held power when is irrelevant.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
Yeah, getting any external help is difficult. Need some inner source some way, accepting some level of 'flaws'.
Like maybe https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/healthy-livi...
I think the broader point is that both genders have seen a decline in mental health over the same time period. Scoping by gender is a choice. One I am highly suspicious of when people are happy to chime in with their change suggestions.
Try solving a difficult problem that has more meaning other than trying to form a problem that is easier solve.
One of the consequences is that - while all of my issues have underlying biological causes (and thus, I can see specialists to mitigate that, somewhat) - I've been on a waiting list for ADHD now for 3 years, with no idea when I'll actually be able to see anyone. Thankfully, otherwise, my cPTSD - I got enough tools in the year after the diagnosis that it's no longer - most of the time - causing any trouble.
Now I was homeless when I started (this IS related to me being able to get help) - but those paths are not easy to get through. That help has been inaccessible to me since I stabilized my housing and employment situations.
So yeah, I'm not surprised. I've met a LOT of people who need more help than they could get ... providing they were open to reaching out. This is entirely related to "homeless epidemic". Mind "shortage of work", "cuts by companies who moved their offices south of the border" are related to this, too.
does this fact change anything about your claim that those two things are "causing" the increased male suicide?
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or up to three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
Most men (most people) don’t do well as true individuals. They need the inane group cohesion.
A $500,000 total comp engineer with a wife and a house in California set to retire at 50 vs a $60,000 bar tender in Ohio with a hotter wife and muscles. Who's higher in the chain? Genuine question
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit. Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Silverman
That is just tragic :(
I have seen and experienced this myself: in one past company, the HR person openly held the view that if a woman accuses a man of "harassment", it's probably true. In other words, HR itself operated with an attitude of 'guilty until proven innocent' against men.
I was once personally accused of "racism" against people of my own race (but across a political divide) by a former female colleague who was of a different race altogether. Thankfully, this was over LinkedIn chat outside of work where we also worked for different employers. I shudder to think what would have happened if this had been inside a workplace.
I don't blame women at all for this. I don't believe women are perpetuating this OR benefitting from this. This is a worse situation for everyone.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Darwin
However, for some strange reason, the West refuses to use dialectic materialism to explain when times are bad, when males feel lonely or face increased suicide rates.
material conditions explain everything, both when times are good, and when times are bad.
The solution is to obtain (via any means necessary) better material conditions, which might include redistribution by force or political action
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35598742/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/data/index.html
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11225381/
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
We all suffer, 100%, but some of us are able to choose the suffering as opposed to having it thrust or fall upon us.
Being healthy is suffering the exercise. Being unhealthy is suffering without.
I did a yearly career counseling/updating session with a guy a month ago who's "long term goal" was to buy a dog. A dog needs a yard. A dog needs an owner who is home regularly. So he figured that in the next 10 years he might be able to get a small house and switch to a job with more regular hours. THAT is where depression starts. A good man with a good job and all he can envision for himself is maybe... one day... if he saves every penny... he might get to adopt a puppy.
The answers are not in more government-sponsored therapy sessions. The answer is to improve jobs, to give the working man a future to look for.
Good luck with that.
"Traditional Masculinity" is just in general maladaptive in the current age.
That appears to be exactly what you're arguing here: All we need to do is socialize boys more like we socialize girls, and then the men they become will be happier in our society. Is that your position?
If so, can you say a little bit more about what you mean or what you envision that socialization would look like for boys?
Pull up freedom house and pick any country rated 15 to 60 and see if you like it. Within 3 or 4 you will think, this place is awesome.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.
https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector/50429475
Is it better to go unreported if the alternative is that an LLM was used in the articles creation?
Someone else here asked why a mens issue would also affect adolescents? Simple: Adolescents, naturally including boys, are the heaviest consumers of 'social media', and are thus most heavily exposed to it. The rest of us are mostly exposed to the second-order effects, namely misandric culture and institutional misandric bias which seems to be powered by the same memetic toxicity that we've witmessed on SoMe the past two decades.
Men and boys are thinking and feeling beings, too.
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
That's not what is meant by "economic cost". Helping young men feel better early long term is obviously better and cheaper for society than letting them grow up and live a whole life where they suffer and hurt themselves or others.
Nothing about this is surprising or unknown. We know how to prevent and treat despair-related lives. It's a political choice that most of the world has insufficient or even broken (mental) healthcare. We could choose to vote differently, but we don't.
Nobody cares about anyone else hardly at all in Canada.
Male / Female ... makes no difference.
If you can't cut it, there's the street bub. Enjoy your tent and/or shelter ridden by gangs and bedbugs.
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
3) Bring back the Boy Scouts
This is getting really tiring and it's frankly a shame to see the inexorable slide of HN into a sexist echochamber. The irony of it is, I'm pretty sure that a large part of self-victimising posters in this thread were complaining about the SJW oppression olympics just five years prior.
I get where different kinds of bigotry come from; when things get bad, outgroups are always going to be blamed and scapegoated, whether racial or class-based. Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces. How bad things must be for someone’s designated oppressor outgroup to constitute 50% of the population, people who resemble them and face largely the same problems? Seriously, do all these people who make sweeping generalisations and talk about “women” as some kind of monolithic entity ever actually talk to women or have female friends? It’s bizarre.
The root of problem is that you don't find it inherently obscene to do the same to men.
That's literally all it is. If you think women are worth more than men you are, in a system of equality, objectively wrong.
If you want women to be socially worth more than men, what are you going to give men to uphold that deal? Because the longer you answer "nothing, fuck you", the worse this gets.
I'm calling out the petty sexism that I'm seeing far too often, how did you manage to read it as an attack on all men? There's that victim mentality again. Nobody except a small minority of deranged fanatics calls for women to be socially worth more than men.
However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
Telling one of the millions of poor white men that they have zero perspective or awareness because they want help because they are suicidal doesn't help them.
In the end, this entire framing is a mistake. It's always the rich versus the poor, and the rich love to have the poor arguing among themselves about who's causing the problems. People need to work together.
Because what's going to happen is you're eventually going to get a little bit older and the next generation is going to say, "I'm sick and tired of cleaning up the millennials' messes" and that'll be because they're young, and they're not familiar with how messy the world is, and they think the mess is some kind of unusual abberation.
And if you're lucky, some of them will resent you personally because you're part of that generation. That's what I meant when I said, in my other comment replying to you, that conflating the group and the individual is not constructive.
Yeah I think everyone can kinda tell lol
I'm still not sure if your profile and website are satire or not. A bit too on the nose (typical big-3 U.S. city liberal selfhating millenial white "male-feminist" who likes nerdy things like Star Trek and virtue signalling online, it checks every box lol)
> I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately
The vast majority of Women's Suffrage occurred multiple generations before boomers were even born, how is this their issue either? Arguably they're the ones that kept in motion how things are now, in that the dynamic has been totally reversed.
> and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
What debt, exactly? And how is flipping the discrimination 'paying it back'? Is the expectation that we keep the women-only programs and opportunities for an Aeon to "cancel out" the Aeon of "male dominance", despite the fact that it doesn't (and can't) impact those who supposedly benefitted during that time (as they're dead)?
I think you'll find that predictably, "revenge for the original sin of your ancestors" is not a super popular concept among young people who never even lived to experience those supposed benefits.
it's like talking about feelings in math
i fail to see where preconceptions about past aeons fits into a report about statistics, feel free to clarify, ideally with numbers
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
And, the audience that ends up sharing this misandric memery is generally not receptive to nuanced, reasoned argument to the contrary once hooked.
- Currently, the dominant ideology is that there is a victim hierarchy, and if you're in the wrong group (ie, you're privileged) then your opinions and needs don't matter. Moving away from this sort of identitarianism would one important step.
- I think it's important to try to understand why male socialization has fallen apart. (statistically, yes, I'm sure a lot of you still socialize) It's clearly a gendered effect, and I'm genuinely not sure what a reasonable explanation would be. (your comment, men supporting men would play nicely here, although I'm not sure how we make that happen.)
To the second, I had more in mind male-centered institutions offering male-tailored solutions; perhaps funded, promoted, or helmed by men. I wasn't expecting those suffering, or the average man, to bear responsibility for solving men's issues.
We are in 95% still the same animal and 5% intelligent human.
Vast majority of all of our weird discussions is about us not accepting this fact.
In this case its:
1) Men are competing with each other for resources and women
2) Women only want strong resourceful men
3) Our only purpose was defined by first living cell being born - we have to sustain life
Outcome of the above is:
Nobody cares about men that dont succceed (which ofcourse will cause a lot of men depression).
edit: typo
The only woman who actually cares for me has been my mother.
what are non-anecdotal things that support the idea, "When [women] see a weak man, what they feel is disgust."
do men demonstrate the same "disgust" when _they_ "see a weak man"? why or why not?
Not a great example. Elderly women may not be your thing, but nursing homes are apparently hotbeds of STDs. There's someone out there for everyone.
E: I am so baffled how the HN community could be so very anti-female here that they would advocate for this sort of commentary by downvoting.
You invalidated a lived experience that a lot of people can confirm by telling someone that their feelings are so unrealistic that they need therapy.
> But, you're making sweeping generalizations about ~50% of the world's behavior
sounds a lot like "not all (wo)men"... yeah, but enough of them for many men to have learned to be cautious around vulnerability with women. Its the same thing as guys who don't understand the man vs. bear thing.
There are subcultures in which men showing vulnerability are considered bad. But in those subcultures, men are just as mean to other men as women are. And women embracing this are usually not very "empathy this" and "acceptance that" towards anybody.
There is definitely a part of feminist culture is openly aggressive toward men in general while being "empathy this" towards women. But they are usually way more aggressive towards cocky men than weak men.
How would it be received if a male were presenting a strategy on women and girls well-being?