All-American Despair
May 30, 2019 10:55 AM Subscribe
“I have no one,” a man told me quietly over coffee. Outside, an unforgiving wind whipped through the tall grass. “The winters here are killing me.”
Writer Stephen Rodrick goes on a long trip out West documenting the interconnected tragedy of the suicide epidemic.
Writer Stephen Rodrick goes on a long trip out West documenting the interconnected tragedy of the suicide epidemic.
Well that was a punch to the gut, especially the last part.
posted by 41swans at 11:22 AM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by 41swans at 11:22 AM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
Especially notable to me:
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posted by sallybrown at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
I found something else: guns, lots of them. Guns that could be procured in an hour. A house where a wife did a gun sweep and found dozens hidden. I found suicidal men who balked at installing gun locks on their pistols because they were afraid of being caught unarmed when mythical marauders invaded their homes. And I found that the men who survived suicide attempts had one thing in common: They didn’t use guns. Pills can be vomited, ropes can break, but bullets rarely miss.(I do wonder how measures of suicide method might change if we included substance abuse that results in death in the pool.)
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posted by sallybrown at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
.
The image that one man evokes of death as a siren, a lover, hit me at home. I had a moment last week, for the first time in a while. I was safe; I am safe. In fact, I've been doing much better lately on the whole. But those terrible black minutes in which death seems to be your beloved -- You cannot be around a gun then. You cannot.
It's not too much to say that Kevin died in part because he was afraid that his guns would be taken away from him. It is repulsive to think of all the people who have built their livelihoods on creating and fueling that fear.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2019 [52 favorites]
The image that one man evokes of death as a siren, a lover, hit me at home. I had a moment last week, for the first time in a while. I was safe; I am safe. In fact, I've been doing much better lately on the whole. But those terrible black minutes in which death seems to be your beloved -- You cannot be around a gun then. You cannot.
It's not too much to say that Kevin died in part because he was afraid that his guns would be taken away from him. It is repulsive to think of all the people who have built their livelihoods on creating and fueling that fear.
posted by Countess Elena at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2019 [52 favorites]
It's a tragic topic. But I'm reading this after learning of Jonathan Metzl's study of the relationship between right-wing politics, guns, and white male suicide. (You can listen to this podcast if you want an hour long audio version.)
Metzl describes qualitative and quantitative public health evidence that how shows white US citizens will actively reject policies that would prevent this rise in suicides, and increase their own life expectancy by years, if it contradicts their racial politics. So they are actively rejecting more affordable healthcare, rejecting safer gun laws, rejecting the kinds of social support that would ameliorate their own communities' economic devastation and social isolation.
Yes, it's about toxic masculinity harming men as well as women. But it's also about whiteness -- something this article mentions in passing at the beginning and then ignores. (Unless the author is equating whiteness with rural-ness, which is kinda problematic in itself. People of color do also live in the rural communities in the US...)
posted by EllaEm at 11:58 AM on May 30, 2019 [109 favorites]
Metzl describes qualitative and quantitative public health evidence that how shows white US citizens will actively reject policies that would prevent this rise in suicides, and increase their own life expectancy by years, if it contradicts their racial politics. So they are actively rejecting more affordable healthcare, rejecting safer gun laws, rejecting the kinds of social support that would ameliorate their own communities' economic devastation and social isolation.
Yes, it's about toxic masculinity harming men as well as women. But it's also about whiteness -- something this article mentions in passing at the beginning and then ignores. (Unless the author is equating whiteness with rural-ness, which is kinda problematic in itself. People of color do also live in the rural communities in the US...)
posted by EllaEm at 11:58 AM on May 30, 2019 [109 favorites]
So they are actively rejecting more affordable healthcare, rejecting safer gun laws, rejecting the kinds of social support that would ameliorate their own communities' economic devastation and social isolation.
While reading this article I was algorithmically served an ad for a TV channel that specializes in high-conflict brilliant-loner dramas, with the tagline : "I'LL DO ANYTHING TO PROTECT WHAT'S MINE"
But it turns out when people say that they don't really mean 'anything.'
We do not understand that the things that make us feel safe are in fact the things that are leading us into danger.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:11 PM on May 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
While reading this article I was algorithmically served an ad for a TV channel that specializes in high-conflict brilliant-loner dramas, with the tagline : "I'LL DO ANYTHING TO PROTECT WHAT'S MINE"
But it turns out when people say that they don't really mean 'anything.'
We do not understand that the things that make us feel safe are in fact the things that are leading us into danger.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 12:11 PM on May 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
The author mentions Hemingway's suicide, and the initial euphemistic not-really-a-coverup as some sort of gun-cleaning mishap. This makes me wonder... what if we're not seeing a new problem, but one that's long existed but been kept hidden?
The availability of guns can explain some of the regional variations in suicide rates, but it's not like guns are new; the American West has been saturated with firearms, pretty much ever since settlers started grabbing land away from the indigenous people.
So, is the suicide rate really up that much, or have we just stopped covering them up, and we're now getting an idea of a problem that has been around for a long time? I could buy that. My family tree is littered with what are probably suicides, but to a one, nobody ever put that on paper up until the last decade or two, and older relatives are loath to admit that they might be anything other than "accidents". (Of course, truly accidental death used to be more common, too. The world has gotten safer, especially as occupational and farming injuries go.)
I'm not exactly skeptical that there's been an increase. Our society has gotten substantially harder if you're a middle-aged, highschool-educated, blue-collar white guy; even if that's because it used to be absurdly, ridiculously, ahistorically easy, the forcible transition has been and will be very ugly. But I also think suicide has been there in the "background radiation" for a while, lurking in people's family histories, and it just wasn't talked about until pretty recently.
> “To me, suicide is the most beautiful, alluring demon I’ve ever known. She’ll wear the gown and perfume, and procure the limo and the wine.”
Yes.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [26 favorites]
The availability of guns can explain some of the regional variations in suicide rates, but it's not like guns are new; the American West has been saturated with firearms, pretty much ever since settlers started grabbing land away from the indigenous people.
So, is the suicide rate really up that much, or have we just stopped covering them up, and we're now getting an idea of a problem that has been around for a long time? I could buy that. My family tree is littered with what are probably suicides, but to a one, nobody ever put that on paper up until the last decade or two, and older relatives are loath to admit that they might be anything other than "accidents". (Of course, truly accidental death used to be more common, too. The world has gotten safer, especially as occupational and farming injuries go.)
I'm not exactly skeptical that there's been an increase. Our society has gotten substantially harder if you're a middle-aged, highschool-educated, blue-collar white guy; even if that's because it used to be absurdly, ridiculously, ahistorically easy, the forcible transition has been and will be very ugly. But I also think suicide has been there in the "background radiation" for a while, lurking in people's family histories, and it just wasn't talked about until pretty recently.
> “To me, suicide is the most beautiful, alluring demon I’ve ever known. She’ll wear the gown and perfume, and procure the limo and the wine.”
Yes.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [26 favorites]
the gun thing was exactly where my mind went, three paragraphs earlier:
The Centers for Disease Control recorded 47,173 suicides in 2017, and there were an estimated 1.4 million total attempts.
Thats a really low success rate. Obviously the causes of suicidal ideation are diverse and complex, but god its just so clear that having access to guns is like an accelerant on a fire.
i thought the focus on folks not having insurance was interesting since it doesnt much matter - there arent even the necessary services most of these folks need, regardless of who is able to pay for it.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:34 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
The Centers for Disease Control recorded 47,173 suicides in 2017, and there were an estimated 1.4 million total attempts.
Thats a really low success rate. Obviously the causes of suicidal ideation are diverse and complex, but god its just so clear that having access to guns is like an accelerant on a fire.
i thought the focus on folks not having insurance was interesting since it doesnt much matter - there arent even the necessary services most of these folks need, regardless of who is able to pay for it.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:34 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I identified with this article so hard. I'm very much the likeable, but withdrawn guy with the supportive sister (that's why I identify with Arthur in the Tick, too). I'm really fortunate to be around people who won't judge me like they would in Cheyenne, but even then, there's something that can feel so humiliating about the whole experience. Like, I don't know how much that guy truly believes he needs to avoid using gun locks for quick access, and how much he just doesn't want to admit he can't be trusted around guns. I had a tangential experience a couple years ago: I was going to buy a .22 rifle for target shooting, before I realized I should never, ever own a gun. It brings this feeling that you're incapable of something other people can do, and because it's an internal, mental problem, it feels like it should be something you can will yourself out of. So do you accept the risk and possibly die because of it, or cut yourself off and live knowing you might have been wrong, that maybe you would have been just fine, and you're making a bigger deal out of things than is necessary.
I worry that by saying this much, it's opening me up for harsh words from people who are tired of it. Tired of white guys like me who have been coddled, who don't have the same fortitude that women and people of color show all the time. People may rightly point out that life isn't uniquely hard for people like me. I don't know where to go from there. The problem persists, and it can't be willed away so easily, and if you're someone who likes guns (I don't really) or long drives (these I like), it's fuel to the fire sometimes to think that they're off limits because you're broken in some way. And I don't really mean broken -- but that's how it feels, that if only you had yourself together, you could do what plenty of other people do without worry.
It's an isolating feeling; I think really, a lot of guys just don't want to bother anyone, as much as they don't want to admit it to themselves.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [55 favorites]
I worry that by saying this much, it's opening me up for harsh words from people who are tired of it. Tired of white guys like me who have been coddled, who don't have the same fortitude that women and people of color show all the time. People may rightly point out that life isn't uniquely hard for people like me. I don't know where to go from there. The problem persists, and it can't be willed away so easily, and if you're someone who likes guns (I don't really) or long drives (these I like), it's fuel to the fire sometimes to think that they're off limits because you're broken in some way. And I don't really mean broken -- but that's how it feels, that if only you had yourself together, you could do what plenty of other people do without worry.
It's an isolating feeling; I think really, a lot of guys just don't want to bother anyone, as much as they don't want to admit it to themselves.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [55 favorites]
white US citizens will actively reject policies that would prevent this rise in suicides, and increase their own life expectancy by years, if it contradicts their racial politics.As someone once put it, the most important fact about US politics is that about 30% of our voters would be happy living in a cardboard box under an overpass, eating sparrows roasted on curtain rods over burning tires, if only they were sure the brown people under the next overpass didn't have a cardboard box, or any sparrows to eat, or a curtain rod to roast them on, or any tires to burn.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [114 favorites]
“A third of the firearm suicides in Utah happened during an argument,” says Bryan. “Two people were having at it. Not necessarily physically violent, but they were yelling. And someone in the moment, almost always a man, basically just says, ‘I’m done,’ grabs a gun, shoots himself, and he’s dead.”This is the most extreme form of moral toxicity, and it's the end of the road of the radicalization that's been going on in the US for the last generation. It's the "I'll show you" impulse, with no self-regard to the consequences. It seems to me to be of a piece with the "own the libs" nonsense and voting against their own interests mostly so they can vote against someone they vociferously dislike.
Call it toxic patriarchy or radicalization or whatever, it's explicitly an abhorrent political philosophy in action.
posted by bonehead at 12:54 PM on May 30, 2019 [20 favorites]
The article used the metaphors of cowboy or bootstrap mythology a few times and I wish they would have more fully named this as a flavor of toxic masculinity. The romance of conquering nature and being the lord of your own plot of land has never existed apart from colonizing and exploiting. I don't know how anyone can fix this until we're willing to call it toxic instead of noble, or at least to outright say that any of the noble parts are inevitably yoked to these desperate, shitty outcomes.
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2019 [18 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 12:57 PM on May 30, 2019 [18 favorites]
Tired of white guys like me who have been coddled, who don't have the same fortitude that women and people of color show all the time.
One silver lining of not being coddled (or maybe, not being catered to) by society is that you learn how to self-soothe, because if you didn’t know how to be there for yourself you’d explode. (A lot of the things that people categorize as “self-care” these days.) That really does build a kind of fortitude and resilience that people with privilege in society don’t always learn how to build for themselves when they’re young, so as they age or otherwise move to the margins, they aren’t as able to fill some needs for themselves.
posted by sallybrown at 1:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [32 favorites]
One silver lining of not being coddled (or maybe, not being catered to) by society is that you learn how to self-soothe, because if you didn’t know how to be there for yourself you’d explode. (A lot of the things that people categorize as “self-care” these days.) That really does build a kind of fortitude and resilience that people with privilege in society don’t always learn how to build for themselves when they’re young, so as they age or otherwise move to the margins, they aren’t as able to fill some needs for themselves.
posted by sallybrown at 1:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [32 favorites]
I've been trying to turn this into an FPP for a while, but this is as good a place for it as any for it: Tyler Childers, "Nose On The Grindstone".
posted by mhoye at 1:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 1:02 PM on May 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
I wish the author had taken a more compassionate tone, "no one has been given and squandered more than middle-aged white men"... "they have chosen a life that values independence above all else."
Straight / white / male privileges are framed in terms of patriarchal values, which makes their explanatory power partially incongruent for anyone whose value system isn't in line with the patriarchy.
In my case I very much enjoy being taken seriously intellectually, the complete lack of violence and harassment, and being able to get away with BS that others can't. Not being taken seriously emotionally, having to build emotional skills as an adult after being taught by society to kill my emotional self as a child and teenager (which will never be a complete project), being taught to sacrifice myself to my job, reduced access to touch, empathy, and relationships with children - these are all dis-privileges.
I think there's a unselfaware and still culturally programmed view among liberal men that we obviously have it better and maybe that we are even better than women, and that it's just a matter of putting in basic effort to will ourselves out of millennia of cultural conditioning and societal expectations, which itself ties back into myths of individuality. Similarly freedom from violence is mostly a requirement for a happy life, but said privilege doesn't impart in any way the emotional skills that are also needed to get you there. If there's forward progress, every generation gets to peel back a layer or two. It's so, so slow.
posted by MillMan at 1:05 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
Straight / white / male privileges are framed in terms of patriarchal values, which makes their explanatory power partially incongruent for anyone whose value system isn't in line with the patriarchy.
In my case I very much enjoy being taken seriously intellectually, the complete lack of violence and harassment, and being able to get away with BS that others can't. Not being taken seriously emotionally, having to build emotional skills as an adult after being taught by society to kill my emotional self as a child and teenager (which will never be a complete project), being taught to sacrifice myself to my job, reduced access to touch, empathy, and relationships with children - these are all dis-privileges.
I think there's a unselfaware and still culturally programmed view among liberal men that we obviously have it better and maybe that we are even better than women, and that it's just a matter of putting in basic effort to will ourselves out of millennia of cultural conditioning and societal expectations, which itself ties back into myths of individuality. Similarly freedom from violence is mostly a requirement for a happy life, but said privilege doesn't impart in any way the emotional skills that are also needed to get you there. If there's forward progress, every generation gets to peel back a layer or two. It's so, so slow.
posted by MillMan at 1:05 PM on May 30, 2019 [15 favorites]
One silver lining of not being coddled [...] by society is that you learn how to self-soothe, because if you didn’t know how to be there for yourself you’d explode.
Bullys just know how to bully, even at the cost of their own lives, perhaps.
No universally true for all of these men, but hard not to see that as a possibility for that third who kill themselves to "win" an argument.
posted by bonehead at 1:11 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Bullys just know how to bully, even at the cost of their own lives, perhaps.
No universally true for all of these men, but hard not to see that as a possibility for that third who kill themselves to "win" an argument.
posted by bonehead at 1:11 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
There is too much blather in this article about how men are more prone to suicide because of their characters. Women attempt suicide more often than men do. The reason that more men succeed is that more men shoot or hang themselves and more women poison themselves. Shooting and hanging work much better than poison.
It is possible that men use guns and ropes more because of something innately or culturally violent about their characters, but it is equally possible than women use them less because they leave an ugly corpse.
posted by ckridge at 1:21 PM on May 30, 2019 [13 favorites]
It is possible that men use guns and ropes more because of something innately or culturally violent about their characters, but it is equally possible than women use them less because they leave an ugly corpse.
posted by ckridge at 1:21 PM on May 30, 2019 [13 favorites]
So, is the suicide rate really up that much, or have we just stopped covering them up, and we're now getting an idea of a problem that has been around for a long time?
A highway patrolman once told me that he estimated that 90 percent of non-DUI single-car accidents are impulsive suicides, but he'd always write them up as "fell asleep" or "lost control due to road conditions".
posted by Etrigan at 1:21 PM on May 30, 2019 [48 favorites]
A highway patrolman once told me that he estimated that 90 percent of non-DUI single-car accidents are impulsive suicides, but he'd always write them up as "fell asleep" or "lost control due to road conditions".
posted by Etrigan at 1:21 PM on May 30, 2019 [48 favorites]
One silver lining of not being coddled (or maybe, not being catered to) by society is that you learn how to self-soothe, because if you didn’t know how to be there for yourself you’d explode.
Dovetails very well into one of the bits that leaped out at me:
posted by Drastic at 1:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [23 favorites]
Dovetails very well into one of the bits that leaped out at me:
He hated doing anything by himself. If he needed to buy socks, he begged one of his female friends to go along. Open a checking account? He needed a gal pal to take him to the bank.Emotional labor ties right in, and how literally unhealthy unconsciously requiring it of others (no coincidence those 'others' are mostly women) is.
posted by Drastic at 1:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [23 favorites]
I do wonder what all the estranged exes and children mentioned thought of these men. Maybe if everyone you had power over flees you as soon as they possibly can, part of the problem is society, and part of it just might possibly be how you personally chose to treat them, day after day, for years.
posted by bagel at 1:41 PM on May 30, 2019 [40 favorites]
posted by bagel at 1:41 PM on May 30, 2019 [40 favorites]
I wish we as a culture would stop demonizing suicide and instead focus our efforts on helping people before they get to that point. If you’ve been isolated by decades of menial work, with no available mental health care, and you look at the future and see yourself becoming a burden on your loved ones, personal euthanasia should be an acceptable option to you.
posted by a halcyon day at 1:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by a halcyon day at 1:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Well, this isn't a hypothetical for some of us. Like, I really am very much like some of these guys (kind of a mashup, really). Because I can relate to the aspects of these guys that were presented in the article, it can be easy for me to assume they're similar to me: that they're single because they and their partners decided it was for the best, or that they're isolated because they've self-isolated. I mean, it's not easy having a relationship with someone who is really in the depths of this kind of mental illness -- a number of these guys are speculated to have been bipolar. I think we often want to see people in simple terms: he must have treated people badly, he must have done this to hurt someone. Or, alternately (and I think this happens especially often with abusive guys), he must have been a nice guy going through a rough patch.
I don't mean this to disagree with the notion that these guys could be abusers steeped in toxic masculinity, and I know suicide shouldn't frame someone's behavior in an exclusively sympathetic light. But I mean, I've sometimes worried that this will more or less be my fate if I don't get back on track, so it's discouraging to see it kind of treated as a Trumpian "reap what you sow" thing. I mean, what about the Buddhist juice bar guy, or the author of the article? This is why it's hard to put yourself out there and be honest about this sort of thing, because it feels like people are so ready to see the worst.
Anyway, if this is going to be more of a political discussion, I'll just leave it alone.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:54 PM on May 30, 2019 [43 favorites]
I don't mean this to disagree with the notion that these guys could be abusers steeped in toxic masculinity, and I know suicide shouldn't frame someone's behavior in an exclusively sympathetic light. But I mean, I've sometimes worried that this will more or less be my fate if I don't get back on track, so it's discouraging to see it kind of treated as a Trumpian "reap what you sow" thing. I mean, what about the Buddhist juice bar guy, or the author of the article? This is why it's hard to put yourself out there and be honest about this sort of thing, because it feels like people are so ready to see the worst.
Anyway, if this is going to be more of a political discussion, I'll just leave it alone.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:54 PM on May 30, 2019 [43 favorites]
And I don't really mean broken -- but that's how it feels, that if only you had yourself together, you could do what plenty of other people do without worry.
For some it's gun ownership; for others it's drinking.
posted by nickmark at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
For some it's gun ownership; for others it's drinking.
posted by nickmark at 1:58 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
“To me, suicide is the most beautiful, alluring demon I’ve ever known. She’ll wear the gown and perfume, and procure the limo and the wine.”
He grinned a bit. “She wants me, but I won’t let her have me.”
The description of this part by someone upthread as death being a siren reminds me of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", especially the last stanza:
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:16 PM on May 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
He grinned a bit. “She wants me, but I won’t let her have me.”
The description of this part by someone upthread as death being a siren reminds me of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", especially the last stanza:
I am puzzled as the oysterIf you've lost everything that matters to you, or that you've been told should matter, then it would be easy to romanticize suicide as the one thing that won't leave you.
I am troubled as the tide:
Should I stand amid your breakers?
Should I lie with death my bride?
Hear me sing, 'Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you:
Here I am, here I am, waiting to hold you'
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:16 PM on May 30, 2019 [10 favorites]
he isn’t sold on gun locks, although he uses them when his grandkids are around. “What if someone broke in and those five minutes cost me my life?”
What if suicidal ideas sneak back into your thoughts and the locks aren't in place?
Which is more likely?
posted by notsnot at 2:16 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
What if suicidal ideas sneak back into your thoughts and the locks aren't in place?
Which is more likely?
posted by notsnot at 2:16 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
His father was a mean alcoholic who worked in the nearby oil fields before retiring on disability. Often cruel, according to Tawny, their dad took particular pleasure in tormenting his youngest son. When a teenage Toby quit a hard, unforgiving job in the oil fields, his father sneered, “We’re not going to have Christmas this year because of you.”
This. Man hands on misery to man. /It deepens like a coastal shelf. The stunted stunt their young, and if there is a sure way to save them and close those sort of wounds, I haven't heard it yet.
posted by Chrischris at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
This. Man hands on misery to man. /It deepens like a coastal shelf. The stunted stunt their young, and if there is a sure way to save them and close those sort of wounds, I haven't heard it yet.
posted by Chrischris at 2:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [12 favorites]
I don't blame these men for their failed relationships, but I do think they contributed to those failures. The first guy had a girlfriend who begged him to get help, but he completely refused. He was close with his siblings, and they provided tons of emotional support despite his refusals. He had a daughter, who was villified by his siblings for not taking on the burden of doing all the emotional labor necessary to maintain a relationship with him. (Why is it her job to be interested in his life? Was he interested in hers?) One had a wife and teen daughter who were so routinely terrified by his displays of violence that the wife couldn't go into his "man cave" without instructing the daughter to call the police. Even the woke Buddhist guy was clearly leaving his family to be with a new woman. Which, okay, I don't know this for sure, but a lot of depressed men definitely do paper over their self-loathing by having affairs. It's not a stretch to think he chose a destructive method of coping.
In some cases, the guys clearly needed social-relational skills that they didn't understand how to get, or rejected as inherently "unmanly." In some cases, the guys were abusive in small and/or large ways, and the estranged families needed to separate themselves for self-preservation.
I see the "rugged individualism" sort of Libertarian ideology described in the article as of-a-piece with the inherent suspicion of others that convinces a guy who doesn't own much more than a truck, trailer, and TV that he can't put locks on his guns because surely a pack of Mad Max-style marauders is going to go allllll the way out into the middle of nowhere specifically a-viking up his driveway, and he needs that 5-minute edge to kill them before they kill him. I mean, if everyone's on their own, and might makes right, and violence and force are the way you conceptualize life, you're going to isolate yourself because everyone's a potential threat. That worldview is in itself a path to despair and abuse.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 2:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [40 favorites]
In some cases, the guys clearly needed social-relational skills that they didn't understand how to get, or rejected as inherently "unmanly." In some cases, the guys were abusive in small and/or large ways, and the estranged families needed to separate themselves for self-preservation.
I see the "rugged individualism" sort of Libertarian ideology described in the article as of-a-piece with the inherent suspicion of others that convinces a guy who doesn't own much more than a truck, trailer, and TV that he can't put locks on his guns because surely a pack of Mad Max-style marauders is going to go allllll the way out into the middle of nowhere specifically a-viking up his driveway, and he needs that 5-minute edge to kill them before they kill him. I mean, if everyone's on their own, and might makes right, and violence and force are the way you conceptualize life, you're going to isolate yourself because everyone's a potential threat. That worldview is in itself a path to despair and abuse.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 2:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [40 favorites]
This was an excellent piece of writing, something I didn't expect to even finish because I already knew most of it. I get the temptation to swing it in the direction of politics, because I wanted to do that, too. But the mention of female suicide attempts being less successful sort of stunned me once again. Sometimes it's posited that we don't mean it as much, that we do it more for the attention. But I think our rate of attempts may be as high, maybe even higher, but we just don't as often have the reliable means available.
posted by kemrocken at 2:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by kemrocken at 2:45 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
a guy who doesn't own much more than a truck, trailer, and TV that he can't put locks on his guns because surely a pack of Mad Max-style marauders is going to go allllll the way out into the middle of nowhere specifically a-viking up his driveway, and he needs that 5-minute edge to kill them before they kill him
So much self-mythologizing. You are who you tell yourself you are.
posted by rue72 at 2:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
So much self-mythologizing. You are who you tell yourself you are.
posted by rue72 at 2:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Speaking as a middle-aged white male in the American west with a crippling mental illness (PTSD and it's wonderful companions)...it seems pretty irresponsible to write articles like this or make posts about articles like this without even mentioning where folks could turn for help.
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Call 1-800-273-8255
Available 24 hours everyday
Online Chat
It's OK to not be OK, fellas.
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:23 PM on May 30, 2019 [75 favorites]
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
Call 1-800-273-8255
Available 24 hours everyday
Online Chat
It's OK to not be OK, fellas.
posted by allkindsoftime at 3:23 PM on May 30, 2019 [75 favorites]
My grandfather on my mother's side died of cancer and my grandfather on my father's side died of a sudden aneurysm while he was at a family gathering. My father also died of cancer. They didn't seem like great ways to go but I'm selfishly grateful that these are three men in my life about whose deaths I don’t have to wonder.
I've spent way too many sleepless nights thinking about the others. The things I've been told are all plausible: "Accidental drug overdose." "Fell asleep driving home alone late at night." "Undiagnosed hereditary health problem that manifested while he was home alone." I want to believe that it's true, but they were all men who had a history of mental health problems that included bouts of suicidal ideation.
I tell myself that I don't really want to know, but at 2 AM I keep turning it over in my head looking for clues and wondering if there was anything that I could/should have done that would have resulted in a different result.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:27 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I've spent way too many sleepless nights thinking about the others. The things I've been told are all plausible: "Accidental drug overdose." "Fell asleep driving home alone late at night." "Undiagnosed hereditary health problem that manifested while he was home alone." I want to believe that it's true, but they were all men who had a history of mental health problems that included bouts of suicidal ideation.
I tell myself that I don't really want to know, but at 2 AM I keep turning it over in my head looking for clues and wondering if there was anything that I could/should have done that would have resulted in a different result.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:27 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
I would like to see a movement where young people would be given the opportunity and, in fact, required to learn emotional intelligence and regulation while still in school if they lack healthy family/friend networks---because you can't do it alone and its even worse if you are stuck growing up among dysfunctional personalities, it's just a cycle that repeats across generations.
So my daughter's elementary school actually teaches emotional regulation skills to all students: Toolbox. They focus on 12 different skills, including deep breathing when you're upset, visualizing your quiet safe place, using your words, how to give an apology, how to take personal space when you're upset, etc.
I know for my child, when she was in kinder and first grades, she and her classmates felt empowered by having concrete skills to handle their big feelings in school or social settings. What's been interesting: The number of parents I talk to where we admit, "Yeah, I now practice all my tools too. It's really made a difference in our family life. And personally too."
Granted, I'm in the Bay Area. But it's a start: We're raising kids who will internalize the expectation that emotions have to be responsibly managed just like any other aspect of personhood. They'll pass that expectation along. It will, one hopes, ripple out.
posted by sobell at 3:29 PM on May 30, 2019 [49 favorites]
So my daughter's elementary school actually teaches emotional regulation skills to all students: Toolbox. They focus on 12 different skills, including deep breathing when you're upset, visualizing your quiet safe place, using your words, how to give an apology, how to take personal space when you're upset, etc.
I know for my child, when she was in kinder and first grades, she and her classmates felt empowered by having concrete skills to handle their big feelings in school or social settings. What's been interesting: The number of parents I talk to where we admit, "Yeah, I now practice all my tools too. It's really made a difference in our family life. And personally too."
Granted, I'm in the Bay Area. But it's a start: We're raising kids who will internalize the expectation that emotions have to be responsibly managed just like any other aspect of personhood. They'll pass that expectation along. It will, one hopes, ripple out.
posted by sobell at 3:29 PM on May 30, 2019 [49 favorites]
“No one up here wants to hear that you’re depressed and need help,” Emily told me. “And no one wants to even talk about getting guns out of the hands of sad people.”
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by MonkeyToes at 3:33 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I would like to see a movement where young people would be given the opportunity and, in fact, required to learn emotional intelligence and regulation while still in school
They're teaching this in my local (southern-Ontario, Canada) elementary schools too. My friend's five year old started to get upset after being told they didn't have time to go into the toy store, but then he just stopped and closed his eyes and stood there.
"Hayden honey, what are you doing?"
"I'm doing my deep breathing Mommy. I'm calming my amygdala."
Another friend of mine is a classroom assistant for late elementary school, and she says they bring instructors in now to teach the kids how to do basic yoga.
This stuff gives me hope.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 3:44 PM on May 30, 2019 [31 favorites]
They're teaching this in my local (southern-Ontario, Canada) elementary schools too. My friend's five year old started to get upset after being told they didn't have time to go into the toy store, but then he just stopped and closed his eyes and stood there.
"Hayden honey, what are you doing?"
"I'm doing my deep breathing Mommy. I'm calming my amygdala."
Another friend of mine is a classroom assistant for late elementary school, and she says they bring instructors in now to teach the kids how to do basic yoga.
This stuff gives me hope.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 3:44 PM on May 30, 2019 [31 favorites]
The Bay Area and similar environs are worlds away from Wyoming...
Have you been through the mountain west lately?
posted by Windopaene at 4:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Have you been through the mountain west lately?
posted by Windopaene at 4:01 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Have you been through the mountain west lately?
Yes. I drove across the country last fall, so went from one end of Wyoming to the other over two days. I had a wonderful conversation with the family that runs the Sikh temple outside Laramie. And?
posted by sobell at 4:23 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Yes. I drove across the country last fall, so went from one end of Wyoming to the other over two days. I had a wonderful conversation with the family that runs the Sikh temple outside Laramie. And?
posted by sobell at 4:23 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
Yeah this pretty much could’ve described my dad except the rural South and not the West. He went from “the government is coming to take my guns” in the legislative sense to “the government is coming to take my guns” in the “the ATF is in a van outside waiting to kick down the door any second now” sense.
I often say he was sort of the woolly mammoth connecting me to the modern era of MRAs and redpillers and blackpillers and whatnot. He never really got over my mom divorcing him so I spent most of my childhood hearing how women were just bitches waiting to tie you down with a baby and make you pay child support. I mean he dated and even got remarried a few times but the women always seemed to “go crazy for no reason” and disappear. So the rhetoric was familiar when I ran into it online.
But the manual labor, too, and the working weird, isolating jobs and grinding your body down. At one point he was apparently mostly itinerant chasing jobs on the oil patch, sleeping in cheap motels or a camper while working grueling hours. He went through various jobs but always seemed to be butting heads with idiot managers who couldn’t tell him what to do. Pride or stubbornness I suppose.
I’m still not 100% sure what happened since he’d Alienated me years before he shot himself but I suspect it would’ve sounded the same. He was always cranked up on the latest NRA rhetoric about the hordes from the city coming to get him and always got angry but could never quite answer why the dread urban hordes would even bother rampaging down a dirt road in the backwoods a 30 minute drive from anything that could be charitably called a town.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [24 favorites]
I often say he was sort of the woolly mammoth connecting me to the modern era of MRAs and redpillers and blackpillers and whatnot. He never really got over my mom divorcing him so I spent most of my childhood hearing how women were just bitches waiting to tie you down with a baby and make you pay child support. I mean he dated and even got remarried a few times but the women always seemed to “go crazy for no reason” and disappear. So the rhetoric was familiar when I ran into it online.
But the manual labor, too, and the working weird, isolating jobs and grinding your body down. At one point he was apparently mostly itinerant chasing jobs on the oil patch, sleeping in cheap motels or a camper while working grueling hours. He went through various jobs but always seemed to be butting heads with idiot managers who couldn’t tell him what to do. Pride or stubbornness I suppose.
I’m still not 100% sure what happened since he’d Alienated me years before he shot himself but I suspect it would’ve sounded the same. He was always cranked up on the latest NRA rhetoric about the hordes from the city coming to get him and always got angry but could never quite answer why the dread urban hordes would even bother rampaging down a dirt road in the backwoods a 30 minute drive from anything that could be charitably called a town.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 4:30 PM on May 30, 2019 [24 favorites]
The whole thing is so bleak. Take away the guns and a lot of the suicides become attempts. But what do you do with these people then? There isn't enough professional help to go around, and the people don't have the money or insurance to pay for it anyway. The problems are all solvable, and in fact they have been solved in lots of different places but the people here are blind to it. It just reads like a toxic culture in terminal decline that is going to take down the wider world with it.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [11 favorites]
From the story:
Had enough of heartbreak and pain
Had a little sweet spot for the rain
For the rain and skies of gray
Hello sunshine won’t you stay
You know I always liked my walking shoes
But you can get a little too fond of the blues
You walk too far, you walk away
Hello sunshine won’t you stay
Bruce Springsteen
posted by growabrain at 5:06 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Had enough of heartbreak and pain
Had a little sweet spot for the rain
For the rain and skies of gray
Hello sunshine won’t you stay
You know I always liked my walking shoes
But you can get a little too fond of the blues
You walk too far, you walk away
Hello sunshine won’t you stay
Bruce Springsteen
posted by growabrain at 5:06 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Take away the guns and a lot of the suicides become attempts. But what do you do with these people then?
Churches. They are to therapy as nursing is to doctoring, and often as very bad nursing by crazy people is to doctoring, but nursing can save you.
posted by ckridge at 5:20 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
Churches. They are to therapy as nursing is to doctoring, and often as very bad nursing by crazy people is to doctoring, but nursing can save you.
posted by ckridge at 5:20 PM on May 30, 2019 [3 favorites]
And yet Utah, which I would think has a high church participation rate, has a pretty high suicide rate. 6th highest in the USA according to the CDC.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:34 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:34 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
The ritual invocation of SWM privilege in this article to me seems to me to be indistinguishable from from the sort of insistence on stereotypical toughness that it's arguing against. I mean honestly what's the difference between the long-haul trucker 500 miles from home contemplating suicide and the article author in the same place? Whether you're embarrassed to ask for help because you're a Tough Guy or because you think you're too "coddled" to deserve help doesn't actually seem to me to be a meaningful distinction.
I do also think that rural and agricultural America are currently getting squeezed from both ends. We have replaced a patchwork quilt of innumerable small family farms with a 4-panel slab. The people producing our food have to pay higher prices for seed and stock than ever, while at the same time getting the lowest prices possible for the end result. My state's public radio has done a series on rural suicides in the past few years and price pressures on both ends seem to me to be a lethal factor.
posted by firebrick at 5:39 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
A highway patrolman once told me that he estimated that 90 percent of non-DUI single-car accidents are impulsive suicides, but he'd always write them up as "fell asleep" or "lost control due to road conditions".FWIW I don't have a good sense as to how he'd know that. Given I don't have any training in crash recon, but how do you tell the difference between someone that nodded off and drove off the road and someone that deliberately drove off?
I do also think that rural and agricultural America are currently getting squeezed from both ends. We have replaced a patchwork quilt of innumerable small family farms with a 4-panel slab. The people producing our food have to pay higher prices for seed and stock than ever, while at the same time getting the lowest prices possible for the end result. My state's public radio has done a series on rural suicides in the past few years and price pressures on both ends seem to me to be a lethal factor.
posted by firebrick at 5:39 PM on May 30, 2019 [5 favorites]
he isn’t sold on gun locks, although he uses them when his grandkids are around. “What if someone broke in and those five minutes cost me my life?”Which kind of gun locks take long enough to unlock that they'd stop someone from taking their own life? If you are seriously worried that in a moment of indecision you're going to top yourself, you shouldn't have guns around. Or kitchen knives, or rope, or pills, or a garage with a car in it, or live near a bridge. It is sad when someone ends their life, but who is going to decide when they can't be trusted to have life in order to preserve it?
What if suicidal ideas sneak back into your thoughts and the locks aren't in place?
Which is more likely?
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 5:51 PM on May 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Which kind of gun locks take long enough to unlock that they'd stop someone from taking their own life?
Someone who’s stumbling drunk. It might seem unlikely, but small delays or hindrances can and do reduce the suicide rate through interruption and distraction. Especially when you mix substance abuse in, making it slightly more difficult to get to that gun in that moment will save lives.
posted by sallybrown at 6:10 PM on May 30, 2019 [33 favorites]
Someone who’s stumbling drunk. It might seem unlikely, but small delays or hindrances can and do reduce the suicide rate through interruption and distraction. Especially when you mix substance abuse in, making it slightly more difficult to get to that gun in that moment will save lives.
posted by sallybrown at 6:10 PM on May 30, 2019 [33 favorites]
Which kind of gun locks take long enough to unlock that they'd stop someone from taking their own life? I
Actually, there are at least some studies, mostly involving bridge-related measures, showing that even minor roadblocks to the suicidal act can reduce rates significantly. The act is often impulsive, and impulses pass.
He had a daughter, who was villified by his siblings for not taking on the burden of doing all the emotional labor necessary to maintain a relationship with him. (Why is it her job to be interested in his life? Was he interested in hers?)
That was really horrible. He "lost touch" with her when she was a toddler. Toddlers don't lose touch. You choose not to be in their lives because you are so weak that you can't prioritize maintaining some kind of relationship with your own child over the anger and hurt of the divorce. Imagine having that kind of father turn up as a basket case when you're in your teens, expecting you to provide emotional and social support. Can't imagine why she wasn't that interested!
Whether you're embarrassed to ask for help because you're a Tough Guy or because you think you're too "coddled" to deserve help doesn't actually seem to me to be a meaningful distinction.
Adhering to the former point of view means a very high likelihood that you have lived most of your life hurting and taking from people and being resentful when you can't do it anymore. As is illustrated by the lives described in the article--men who spent decades trashing every relationship they might have had, including one with their own community.
posted by praemunire at 6:14 PM on May 30, 2019 [30 favorites]
Actually, there are at least some studies, mostly involving bridge-related measures, showing that even minor roadblocks to the suicidal act can reduce rates significantly. The act is often impulsive, and impulses pass.
He had a daughter, who was villified by his siblings for not taking on the burden of doing all the emotional labor necessary to maintain a relationship with him. (Why is it her job to be interested in his life? Was he interested in hers?)
That was really horrible. He "lost touch" with her when she was a toddler. Toddlers don't lose touch. You choose not to be in their lives because you are so weak that you can't prioritize maintaining some kind of relationship with your own child over the anger and hurt of the divorce. Imagine having that kind of father turn up as a basket case when you're in your teens, expecting you to provide emotional and social support. Can't imagine why she wasn't that interested!
Whether you're embarrassed to ask for help because you're a Tough Guy or because you think you're too "coddled" to deserve help doesn't actually seem to me to be a meaningful distinction.
Adhering to the former point of view means a very high likelihood that you have lived most of your life hurting and taking from people and being resentful when you can't do it anymore. As is illustrated by the lives described in the article--men who spent decades trashing every relationship they might have had, including one with their own community.
posted by praemunire at 6:14 PM on May 30, 2019 [30 favorites]
I do want to be fair--"lost touch" is a quote from the article, but not from the subject himself. Who knows what language he used. We only know that the author was ready to let him off the hook.
posted by praemunire at 7:31 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 7:31 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
I want to push back just a little bit on this idea of these guys being coddled. I mean, they were, but it was all bullshit.
The thing about white supremacy as an ideology is it is harmful to society as a whole. Obviously not as harmful to white dudes as to the rest of us, but insidiously harmful nonetheless. It pushes the premise that it's magic to be white. Your white dominated country is favored by God. Your white sports and white customs are favored by God.
Your kickass white military is favored by God. Your rich white president is damn near God's emissary.
You are better than everyone else. And so, if you work hard, it's going to work out for you. It has to. You're unstoppable. Even if you don't work so hard.
And for many years that happened. The USA kept getting stronger and kept kicking ass and it was a great time to be white. So it seemed 100% true, this white supremacy, it's just science, you can't argue with science. But now all that's been thrown in doubt. These same white guys who were expecting their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow got shit on -- by their own white overclass. I mean, officially no, officially it's all due to the teeming brown hordes pouring over the border like World War Z, and to Obama's hating America for so many decades of Acorn Alinsky socialist Benghazi betrayals, and to radical feminists #metooing all the straight virile men out of their jobs, but unofficially our guys can look on TV and see plenty of white billionaires still having the time of their lives, or look on social media and see freaking 20 year old multimillionaire influencers. There are plenty of winners still. What's worse, some of those winners aren't even white, or questionable at best... Omidyar, what is that? Doesn't sound Nascar to me. So these unmoored white men know that at some level they are failing despite being white, and despite plenty of success to go around to the Kims and Kanyes of this world. And that means they themselves are personally doing something wrong. It feels like a sucker punch.
Everything they've had faith in has been a lie. There may be a part of them that realizes that they were complicit in swindling themselves out of the protections they once had against rapacious capitalists, but I think in many cases they're just too deeply entrenched in their religious faith toward American white supremacy to ever fully awaken. So instead, they waken to various ruling-class abetted modes of false consciousness -- nazism, blackpill ideology, prepper survivalism, sovereign citizenship, prosperity theology -- none of which helps because it's more fakery. Why are they still failing?? They don't get it. They were promised. And eventually that just leads to their ultimate existential despair.
posted by xigxag at 7:32 PM on May 30, 2019 [20 favorites]
The thing about white supremacy as an ideology is it is harmful to society as a whole. Obviously not as harmful to white dudes as to the rest of us, but insidiously harmful nonetheless. It pushes the premise that it's magic to be white. Your white dominated country is favored by God. Your white sports and white customs are favored by God.
Your kickass white military is favored by God. Your rich white president is damn near God's emissary.
You are better than everyone else. And so, if you work hard, it's going to work out for you. It has to. You're unstoppable. Even if you don't work so hard.
And for many years that happened. The USA kept getting stronger and kept kicking ass and it was a great time to be white. So it seemed 100% true, this white supremacy, it's just science, you can't argue with science. But now all that's been thrown in doubt. These same white guys who were expecting their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow got shit on -- by their own white overclass. I mean, officially no, officially it's all due to the teeming brown hordes pouring over the border like World War Z, and to Obama's hating America for so many decades of Acorn Alinsky socialist Benghazi betrayals, and to radical feminists #metooing all the straight virile men out of their jobs, but unofficially our guys can look on TV and see plenty of white billionaires still having the time of their lives, or look on social media and see freaking 20 year old multimillionaire influencers. There are plenty of winners still. What's worse, some of those winners aren't even white, or questionable at best... Omidyar, what is that? Doesn't sound Nascar to me. So these unmoored white men know that at some level they are failing despite being white, and despite plenty of success to go around to the Kims and Kanyes of this world. And that means they themselves are personally doing something wrong. It feels like a sucker punch.
Everything they've had faith in has been a lie. There may be a part of them that realizes that they were complicit in swindling themselves out of the protections they once had against rapacious capitalists, but I think in many cases they're just too deeply entrenched in their religious faith toward American white supremacy to ever fully awaken. So instead, they waken to various ruling-class abetted modes of false consciousness -- nazism, blackpill ideology, prepper survivalism, sovereign citizenship, prosperity theology -- none of which helps because it's more fakery. Why are they still failing?? They don't get it. They were promised. And eventually that just leads to their ultimate existential despair.
posted by xigxag at 7:32 PM on May 30, 2019 [20 favorites]
It's really great that we've moved from the primitive act of characterizing people who kill themselves as shitbags, to starting to empathize based on an understanding of mental illness, to our new galaxy-brain attitude of calling them shitbags again for woke reasons.
posted by mobunited at 7:56 PM on May 30, 2019 [42 favorites]
posted by mobunited at 7:56 PM on May 30, 2019 [42 favorites]
Suicide does not feel seductive to me.
It feels like a final assertion of control over a life in which i have very little. A decision which, once made, cannot be undone by anyone. It feels like a cessation of pain. Yes, that comes at the cost of the cessation of all else, but when that gets lost in the counting of minutes between sleeps, the cost seems more and more meaningless.
It is my small voice, saying no more, and for once being heard.
I guess i think about this more than i should.
posted by allium cepa at 8:00 PM on May 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
It feels like a final assertion of control over a life in which i have very little. A decision which, once made, cannot be undone by anyone. It feels like a cessation of pain. Yes, that comes at the cost of the cessation of all else, but when that gets lost in the counting of minutes between sleeps, the cost seems more and more meaningless.
It is my small voice, saying no more, and for once being heard.
I guess i think about this more than i should.
posted by allium cepa at 8:00 PM on May 30, 2019 [17 favorites]
How dare we deny their individual RIGHT to kill themselves, nanny state!
posted by dipolemoment at 8:06 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by dipolemoment at 8:06 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think it is possible to feel both empathy and sadness for individuals and also a sense of disappointment and fear for the consequences of the cowboy-up culture, wrought more broadly. As the article points out, many of these people form the backbone of red-state support. They elect Congresspeople who pass legislation that hurts women and POC, everywhere. They elect people who hurt their own interests, WRT gun control and isolation and lack of mental health funding or support. Yes, they have been sold a false and shitty story about the nobility of being a White Man Doing Stuff All By Himself. Many of them can see that the story doesn't make sense, that it hasn't worked. But whatever benefits are gained from believing that "Cowboy masculinity" is a noble ideal, still seem to outweigh thousands and thousands of deaths from the isolation and the purposeful erosion of safety nets.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:13 PM on May 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:13 PM on May 30, 2019 [14 favorites]
I also think the context of the full squander quote is important:
"It’s easy to bash white middled-aged men in America. As a member of that privileged group, I’ll admit that much of the bashing has been warranted: No group in the history of the world has been given and squandered more than the white man. Yet the American white man is responsible for enough suicides annually that Madison Square Garden could not hold all the victims. And no matter how privileged, that’s somebody’s dad, someone’s friend, someone’s brother and someone’s husband."
IMO that is balancing empathy and honesty.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:22 PM on May 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
"It’s easy to bash white middled-aged men in America. As a member of that privileged group, I’ll admit that much of the bashing has been warranted: No group in the history of the world has been given and squandered more than the white man. Yet the American white man is responsible for enough suicides annually that Madison Square Garden could not hold all the victims. And no matter how privileged, that’s somebody’s dad, someone’s friend, someone’s brother and someone’s husband."
IMO that is balancing empathy and honesty.
posted by nakedmolerats at 8:22 PM on May 30, 2019 [16 favorites]
Something that occurred to me as I was reading the bits about Hemingway and other celebrity suicides is that you could include Hunter S. Thompson in that mix. HST was possibly his generation's Hemingway: a guy whose self-created persona was inextricably tangled with his art and which persona became deeply important to a lot of other people above and beyond his work's not-inconsiderable values, and which, in the end, completely failed him. Here's the text of his suicide note:
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:32 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.Substitute guns for bombs (?!?)--HST was not a stranger to those, certainly; he killed himself with one--and this note could have been written by some of the men in the article.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:32 PM on May 30, 2019 [6 favorites]
Per my Wyoming comment above...
I Love the Mountain West. I grew up in Kansas City, and spent many spring break and Christmas vacations skiing in Colorado. And summers being dragged to our summer vactions in remote Colorado and Montana locations, because, fly-fishing...
And everything about these places are awesome, and majestic, and crazy when viewed by a flat lander. And, we all kind of want to be that totally in-control American badass, getting shit done, regardless of whether the world is for us or against us. Right? That's pretty much the definition of American Individualism, right!?
And I get how important guns were in surviving in these inhospitable wild places, but...
The NRA, Fox News, etc.
I was raised with proper respect for guns, know how to clean them and shit...
Live in a city, and have zero need for one, will never have one, etc.
But the Mountain West has now become sad for me. Other than the specific smell of a Rocky Mountain River, it all feels like a desiccated husk of what it should be. Same could be said for a lot of "flyover country". Why would you choose to live in Seneca, Kansas? Or, Kearny, NE, or Chamberlin, SD?
And Wyoming? The are parts where you are looking at the surrounding terrain, thinking, "Well, this is one place that will NEVER be full of strip malls and condos..."
posted by Windopaene at 8:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I Love the Mountain West. I grew up in Kansas City, and spent many spring break and Christmas vacations skiing in Colorado. And summers being dragged to our summer vactions in remote Colorado and Montana locations, because, fly-fishing...
And everything about these places are awesome, and majestic, and crazy when viewed by a flat lander. And, we all kind of want to be that totally in-control American badass, getting shit done, regardless of whether the world is for us or against us. Right? That's pretty much the definition of American Individualism, right!?
And I get how important guns were in surviving in these inhospitable wild places, but...
The NRA, Fox News, etc.
I was raised with proper respect for guns, know how to clean them and shit...
Live in a city, and have zero need for one, will never have one, etc.
But the Mountain West has now become sad for me. Other than the specific smell of a Rocky Mountain River, it all feels like a desiccated husk of what it should be. Same could be said for a lot of "flyover country". Why would you choose to live in Seneca, Kansas? Or, Kearny, NE, or Chamberlin, SD?
And Wyoming? The are parts where you are looking at the surrounding terrain, thinking, "Well, this is one place that will NEVER be full of strip malls and condos..."
posted by Windopaene at 8:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've started a response to shapes that haunt the dusk 3x now. Patriarchy is the air we're breathing, and every word I try to use to set context for my own belief system, orients towards separating and specialness. Things that are undermining all of these men.
I have the same feeling that white men are also victims of this very harmful myth. But victimhood is not the myth waiting to be written. I think white men could experience the biggest rehabilitation of this century if they embraced their inability to be superior and looked to MLK and Jesus and Gandhi for hints on how to serve others. Success redefined by service and humility, compassion by witnessing our own fruitless wishes for superiority. None of the would perhaps feel better in its moment - so much smaller a dream than manifest destiny - but it would tell a much better myth that generations of white men could look to.
I wish I was better at this. I aim for it but am constantly undermined by wants for the comfort of intoxicants and snark. I am happy on some level to just get the hell out of the way and feel gratitude to see so many beautiful people succeeding. I try not to be sad at my limitations, and relieved there's still something I can do.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 9:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
I have the same feeling that white men are also victims of this very harmful myth. But victimhood is not the myth waiting to be written. I think white men could experience the biggest rehabilitation of this century if they embraced their inability to be superior and looked to MLK and Jesus and Gandhi for hints on how to serve others. Success redefined by service and humility, compassion by witnessing our own fruitless wishes for superiority. None of the would perhaps feel better in its moment - so much smaller a dream than manifest destiny - but it would tell a much better myth that generations of white men could look to.
I wish I was better at this. I aim for it but am constantly undermined by wants for the comfort of intoxicants and snark. I am happy on some level to just get the hell out of the way and feel gratitude to see so many beautiful people succeeding. I try not to be sad at my limitations, and relieved there's still something I can do.
posted by SoundInhabitant at 9:26 PM on May 30, 2019 [7 favorites]
But the Mountain West has now become sad for me. Other than the specific smell of a Rocky Mountain River, it all feels like a desiccated husk of what it should be.
Windopaene, when I was traveling around Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado last fall, I made a point of staying in local motor lodges and eating at local places in small towns.
After days of three-street towns, rolling into Fort Collins, CO, was a culture shock. This ... aggregation of REI and organic grocers and tech campuses and bookstores was just such a contrast, almost a mirage. People even seemed to carry themselves differently compared to the small towns I had been driving through or exploring.
I have loved ones in Denver. I went there and was again astounded at how you could practically feel money and careers and aspirations throbbing through different neighborhoods. And then, heading east into Kansas ... all that bright energy and those glossy lifestyle options just fell away into the fields. I was really struck by how all the articles I've read about "superstar cities" and population aggregation are not kidding.
It's so beautiful, all that wide open space under wide open skies, but the tiny towns often didn't feel like opportunities and they didn't feel connected to a broader civilization. They felt like terminals.
In the article, this quote stood out for me:
posted by sobell at 10:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [23 favorites]
Windopaene, when I was traveling around Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado last fall, I made a point of staying in local motor lodges and eating at local places in small towns.
After days of three-street towns, rolling into Fort Collins, CO, was a culture shock. This ... aggregation of REI and organic grocers and tech campuses and bookstores was just such a contrast, almost a mirage. People even seemed to carry themselves differently compared to the small towns I had been driving through or exploring.
I have loved ones in Denver. I went there and was again astounded at how you could practically feel money and careers and aspirations throbbing through different neighborhoods. And then, heading east into Kansas ... all that bright energy and those glossy lifestyle options just fell away into the fields. I was really struck by how all the articles I've read about "superstar cities" and population aggregation are not kidding.
It's so beautiful, all that wide open space under wide open skies, but the tiny towns often didn't feel like opportunities and they didn't feel connected to a broader civilization. They felt like terminals.
In the article, this quote stood out for me:
“There’s been an increase in the ‘every-man-for-himself mentality,’ ” says Dr. Craig Bryan, who studies military and rural suicide at the University of Utah. “There doesn’t seem to be as strong a sense of ‘We’re all in this together.’ It’s much more ‘Hey, don’t infringe upon me. You’re on your own, and let me do my own thing.’ ”This reported piece seems to suggest: The people of the mountain west are watching places and people and opportunities disintegrate into the wide open spaces rather than admit that connections can strengthen us when we can't do it for ourselves.
posted by sobell at 10:40 PM on May 30, 2019 [23 favorites]
i just feel like the way men are raised in this country - lots of men, at least, certainly not all - is that we're raised with something missing inside us. i'm not talking about empathy or compassion for others or whatever missing piece makes men bad partners and abusers and abandoners, because i think that's something seperate (though when men are missing both pieces things become exponentially worse for them and those around them). it's the missing thing that makes me identify with people like those in this article, despite me having nothing in common with them. i feel like a car without a steering wheel, just rolling along waiting to crash. i can look out the windows at all the paths i could and should take, but without the steering wheel i can't take those turns. in this tortured metaphor, you can try to rely on other people for help, but it's the equivalent of literally pushing a moving vehicle in another direction, which is impossible unless you find someone with immense (emotional) strength, and it's not a fair thing to ask or expect of them anyway, and so when they can't push your car onto the right path either you give up on them or they give up on you. change has to come from within. but when you can't even turn the car left or right, how are you supposed to build a steering wheel?
posted by JimBennett at 12:01 AM on May 31, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by JimBennett at 12:01 AM on May 31, 2019 [11 favorites]
The tools are out there but they really do require a lot of hard swimming upstream to reconnect with our basic humanity and fundamentally that's rooted in and supported by a desire to change.
posted by kokaku at 3:07 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by kokaku at 3:07 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
Altitude, Gun Ownership, Rural Areas, and Suicide
posted by MrVisible at 5:09 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
When altitude, gun ownership, and population density are considered as predictor variables for suicide rates on a state basis, altitude appears to be a significant independent risk factor. This association may be related to the effects of metabolic stress associated with mild hypoxia in individuals with mood disorders.Positive Association between Altitude and Suicide in 2584 U.S. Counties
Controlling for percent of age >50 yr, percent male, percent white, median household income, and population density of each county, the higher-altitude counties had significantly higher suicide rates than the lower-altitude counties. Similar findings were observed for both firearm-related suicides (59% of suicides) and nonfirearm-related suicides. We conclude that altitude may be a novel risk factor for suicide in the contiguous United States.There's a Suicide Epidemic in Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why
posted by MrVisible at 5:09 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
I grew up in Montana. Moved back to Michigan in 6th grade or so.
Letter from a friend shortly after we’d moved, informing me that a kid in my old class - a weirdo, a loner, a kid who was obviously troubled but no one in his home took any notice - had “accidentally” shot himself.
I knew it wasn’t an accident. Even that young, it wasn’t plausible but the letter had the polite window dressing of language we use to pretend everything was fine and no one needed help that wasn’t available. The “accident” wasn’t a surprise. The boy had once thrown himself from the top of the slide. Broke his arm. Another “accident”. We all signed his cast and didn’t talk about it.
My dad knew the final incident with the gun wasn’t an accident. He was a teacher, he’d had that boy in class, had seen the drawings he made, himself surrounded by monsters that tore him and hurt him. Always the boy, alone, surrounded by things that were terrible. He didn’t talk about it but I wonder if he tried to discuss with the parents, tried to alert them. I don’t know. I hope he did but I don’t want to ask.
Reconnected with a former classmate years later, she still lives out west. Wyoming actually. Nice woman, two really great kids, husband... well, often out of work, struggling with mental health issues, fighting for a job in the oil fields, bouncing between the Dakotas and Wyoming, wherever there is work. Finally a separation, and he goes suddenly off the grid.
A Facebook post a few years later, a random encounter, she was visiting a friend and ran into her estranged husband, homeless, still without help, somewhere in Wyoming. A brief reunion, a day of talking with him and trying to help, then letting him go because she recognized she couldn’t really do anything for him and it was killing her to try. Back to the shelter for him, back to her kids for her. She finds solace in keeping herself active and keeping her kids close and loved. But she is unable to forget her husband even though she knows it is better and healthier for her family to allow him to not be in their lives. He needs more help than she can give and there is no safety net available to him.
I loved living out there as a kid. My wife often wondered why I wasn’t interested in moving back. We took a vacation last summer, driving across the endless flat space to the mountains, visiting family, seeing the West with our son. She no longer wonders. It’s a place of stark beauty and amazing geography. It’s also a place of emptiness and loneliness, with pockets of community but so much space in between. I love it and I miss it and I know my feelings are colored by being a child there, in a stable family with stable parents and also by not having stayed. It was a truly amazing place to be a kid, with the freedom to roam and explore and feel safe. It is not an easy place to be a teen or an adult. Opportunities are limited by geography, by economics, by mindset. It can be a wonderful place, but it is clear so often that some viewpoints are just not going to be welcome and some concepts are not discussed. Like mental health. Like needing help.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:00 AM on May 31, 2019 [23 favorites]
Letter from a friend shortly after we’d moved, informing me that a kid in my old class - a weirdo, a loner, a kid who was obviously troubled but no one in his home took any notice - had “accidentally” shot himself.
I knew it wasn’t an accident. Even that young, it wasn’t plausible but the letter had the polite window dressing of language we use to pretend everything was fine and no one needed help that wasn’t available. The “accident” wasn’t a surprise. The boy had once thrown himself from the top of the slide. Broke his arm. Another “accident”. We all signed his cast and didn’t talk about it.
My dad knew the final incident with the gun wasn’t an accident. He was a teacher, he’d had that boy in class, had seen the drawings he made, himself surrounded by monsters that tore him and hurt him. Always the boy, alone, surrounded by things that were terrible. He didn’t talk about it but I wonder if he tried to discuss with the parents, tried to alert them. I don’t know. I hope he did but I don’t want to ask.
Reconnected with a former classmate years later, she still lives out west. Wyoming actually. Nice woman, two really great kids, husband... well, often out of work, struggling with mental health issues, fighting for a job in the oil fields, bouncing between the Dakotas and Wyoming, wherever there is work. Finally a separation, and he goes suddenly off the grid.
A Facebook post a few years later, a random encounter, she was visiting a friend and ran into her estranged husband, homeless, still without help, somewhere in Wyoming. A brief reunion, a day of talking with him and trying to help, then letting him go because she recognized she couldn’t really do anything for him and it was killing her to try. Back to the shelter for him, back to her kids for her. She finds solace in keeping herself active and keeping her kids close and loved. But she is unable to forget her husband even though she knows it is better and healthier for her family to allow him to not be in their lives. He needs more help than she can give and there is no safety net available to him.
I loved living out there as a kid. My wife often wondered why I wasn’t interested in moving back. We took a vacation last summer, driving across the endless flat space to the mountains, visiting family, seeing the West with our son. She no longer wonders. It’s a place of stark beauty and amazing geography. It’s also a place of emptiness and loneliness, with pockets of community but so much space in between. I love it and I miss it and I know my feelings are colored by being a child there, in a stable family with stable parents and also by not having stayed. It was a truly amazing place to be a kid, with the freedom to roam and explore and feel safe. It is not an easy place to be a teen or an adult. Opportunities are limited by geography, by economics, by mindset. It can be a wonderful place, but it is clear so often that some viewpoints are just not going to be welcome and some concepts are not discussed. Like mental health. Like needing help.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:00 AM on May 31, 2019 [23 favorites]
I recently made a move from a major U.S. city (ironically the kind of place people in my new home think of as a gang-infested wasteland) to serious "cowboy-up" country and it's been a terrible culture shock. People here have their families (if they have that) and nothing else. There is no larger sense of community here. I see and interact with men like the ones described in the article every day. This is gonna sound cold but - they make themselves very hard to connect with - "aggressively coarse and casual" to rude and mean seem to be the range of personality types. It's good to be reminded that there is a human soul lurking in there somewhere because otherwise there's no way you'd know.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 7:16 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 7:16 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
Upon re-read, it seems like the height of blithe white male privilege to live in cowboy-up country and indulge in an “aggressively coarse and casual” attitude.
I get that it’s a protective behavior for people — your best defense is a good offense — but can you imagine anyone other than a white man getting away with spewing profanity in a restaurant after being asked to stop?
posted by sobell at 8:05 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
I get that it’s a protective behavior for people — your best defense is a good offense — but can you imagine anyone other than a white man getting away with spewing profanity in a restaurant after being asked to stop?
posted by sobell at 8:05 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
I want to clarify for people who might be wondering if they're the people I think the world would be better off without - I don't mean people who don't do anything. If you're disabled, mentally ill, or lazy as heck, that's fine. If you never work a day in your life and other people have to feed, clothe, and clean up after you your whole life, literally or figuratively, you know, it's cool, it happens.
Causing the people in your life to fear you takes effort. Screaming, threatening, manipulating, throwing things, and punching walls are all decisions you make. If your presence in the world makes others' lives worse in this sense - if you chronically choose to inflict harm - you're the kind of person I'm not going to mourn for "galaxy-brain woke" reasons.
posted by bagel at 8:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
Causing the people in your life to fear you takes effort. Screaming, threatening, manipulating, throwing things, and punching walls are all decisions you make. If your presence in the world makes others' lives worse in this sense - if you chronically choose to inflict harm - you're the kind of person I'm not going to mourn for "galaxy-brain woke" reasons.
posted by bagel at 8:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
This is why it's hard to put yourself out there and be honest about this sort of thing, because it feels like people are so ready to see the worst.
Honestly, shapes that haunt the dusk and anyone who identifies with these men, people who see your suicidal despair and judge it and read all kinds of dark shit into your character because of it, are not your friends. In that moment, they are lacking empathy as much as any patriarchal white man does.
One thing I have learned from being deeply steeped in social justice movements and privilege discourse, is that there is a time to accept critique, and a time to say, "you are projecting your trauma onto me and I do not accept your projections."
posted by coffeeand at 8:33 AM on May 31, 2019 [15 favorites]
Honestly, shapes that haunt the dusk and anyone who identifies with these men, people who see your suicidal despair and judge it and read all kinds of dark shit into your character because of it, are not your friends. In that moment, they are lacking empathy as much as any patriarchal white man does.
One thing I have learned from being deeply steeped in social justice movements and privilege discourse, is that there is a time to accept critique, and a time to say, "you are projecting your trauma onto me and I do not accept your projections."
posted by coffeeand at 8:33 AM on May 31, 2019 [15 favorites]
And I mean, no one gets a free pass to be racist, misogynist, or abusive. I'm just saying that, around people who go around saying things that basically amount to, "I don't care if white men kill themselves," you are allowed to take care of yourself, back away, and leave that person to sort out whatever was going on for them in that moment.
posted by coffeeand at 8:48 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by coffeeand at 8:48 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
But I mean, hold up, if women attempt suicide at a much higher rate than men do, and the only reason women don't succeed is because of the gender disparities in gun ownership, then most of what's being discussed here on this thread -- patriarchy, outsourcing emotional labor, feeling guilty about being coddled OR buying into toxic masculinity to the extent that one cannot ask for help, the rugged individualist myth, the shortage of emotional resilience, lack of community, being suspicious of your neighbors/friends/ThosePeople -- all of it seems irrelevant to the question of "why are white men killing themselves".
No doubt white men do suffer from (and make us suffer because of) all of those things, but that's not why they're killing themselves, obviously, because women are trying to kill themselves too despite supposedly superior help-seeking, emotion-managing, community-building skills and their exemption from the chains of toxic masculinity.
It seems like everyone is miserable and susceptible to the seductiveness of suicide. Not just white men. Men just happen to die more often because they own guns. So now what?
Perhaps there's an argument to be made that men and women become suicidal for gendered reasons, that men are more likely to kill themselves because they're abusive and explosively angry from not having their sense of entitlement assuaged, but women are more likely to kill themselves because they have been abused or cruelly treated. So let's speak of suicidality in these terms specifically, then, if we find enough evidence to support the theory. It's a staggering idea, if it's true. So much to unpack. And it would certainly justify the way we are vilifying these white male suicide victims.
But until we can make that thesis in a credible way, perhaps we need to step back from speaking of men committing suicide as a problem stemming from male privilege.
posted by MiraK at 9:08 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
No doubt white men do suffer from (and make us suffer because of) all of those things, but that's not why they're killing themselves, obviously, because women are trying to kill themselves too despite supposedly superior help-seeking, emotion-managing, community-building skills and their exemption from the chains of toxic masculinity.
It seems like everyone is miserable and susceptible to the seductiveness of suicide. Not just white men. Men just happen to die more often because they own guns. So now what?
Perhaps there's an argument to be made that men and women become suicidal for gendered reasons, that men are more likely to kill themselves because they're abusive and explosively angry from not having their sense of entitlement assuaged, but women are more likely to kill themselves because they have been abused or cruelly treated. So let's speak of suicidality in these terms specifically, then, if we find enough evidence to support the theory. It's a staggering idea, if it's true. So much to unpack. And it would certainly justify the way we are vilifying these white male suicide victims.
But until we can make that thesis in a credible way, perhaps we need to step back from speaking of men committing suicide as a problem stemming from male privilege.
posted by MiraK at 9:08 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
Honestly, shapes that haunt the dusk and anyone who identifies with these men... there is a time to accept critique, and a time to say, "you are projecting your trauma onto me and I do not accept your projections."
There is also a time to recognize and identify with those men, and there is a time to recognize your differences with them, and to realize that you, at this point in time, may be fundamentally unlike them. If that is the case, they do not need your defense, and you do not need to defend yourself, because you are whole in ways that they are not.
Speaking for myself, that's hard when there is a vivid and intense emotional through-line between my experience and theirs. I personally have to recognize that the intensity of my view drowns out any differences there are, and those differences are important and should be recognized, regardless of the emotion present.
(For me, I identify with the incels in the thread from two days ago, and my identification was and is deep and acute. That said : I am not a redpiller. I take no part in their culture, don't even get close to their forums. And that's all the difference in the world. Hopefully, with regard to the lost men in this article, you can say the same for yourself - that you are not them, in clear and important ways.)
posted by suckerpunch at 9:11 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
There is also a time to recognize and identify with those men, and there is a time to recognize your differences with them, and to realize that you, at this point in time, may be fundamentally unlike them. If that is the case, they do not need your defense, and you do not need to defend yourself, because you are whole in ways that they are not.
Speaking for myself, that's hard when there is a vivid and intense emotional through-line between my experience and theirs. I personally have to recognize that the intensity of my view drowns out any differences there are, and those differences are important and should be recognized, regardless of the emotion present.
(For me, I identify with the incels in the thread from two days ago, and my identification was and is deep and acute. That said : I am not a redpiller. I take no part in their culture, don't even get close to their forums. And that's all the difference in the world. Hopefully, with regard to the lost men in this article, you can say the same for yourself - that you are not them, in clear and important ways.)
posted by suckerpunch at 9:11 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
This is a problem the white man has collectively, if not individually, brought upon himself. I mean, he got everything he wanted in the American West, right? Rugged individualism and all the guns he wants, money thanks to things like oilfield jobs, free reign to be as toxic as he wants to be to the people around him with the women in his life covering for him and doing all his emotional labor, no having to deal with people different from himself, a young wife who doesn't know any better than to marry him (every incel's dream, right?). Fuck the environment and any semblance of community that might have been extant at one time. And it turns out it sucks and is a very depressing way to live? That civilization and diversity and beauty and connection with others and the natural world are, in fact, major components of a happy life?
I have the utmost sympathy for any white man who lives in this culture and despairs of it. But don't perpetuate it! Either be the change you want see or get out to a place where you (and your loved ones) can leave some of the patriarchal bullshit behind and be yourself. No one would blame you for choosing the second, much easier route.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 9:16 AM on May 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
I have the utmost sympathy for any white man who lives in this culture and despairs of it. But don't perpetuate it! Either be the change you want see or get out to a place where you (and your loved ones) can leave some of the patriarchal bullshit behind and be yourself. No one would blame you for choosing the second, much easier route.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 9:16 AM on May 31, 2019 [2 favorites]
Men just happen to die more often because they own guns.
That may be a particular factor for the U.S., but there are plenty of other suicide methods that have a higher lethality than drug overdoses and are equally available to all genders (e.g. hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, jumping, etc.).
posted by inire at 9:18 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
That may be a particular factor for the U.S., but there are plenty of other suicide methods that have a higher lethality than drug overdoses and are equally available to all genders (e.g. hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, jumping, etc.).
posted by inire at 9:18 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
Suicidal despair is not exactly limited to the kind of men described in this article. While I have been fortunate never to have had a suicide amongst close friends and family, I know it's just that--fortune. (God knows there are enough angry, violent men of the kind described in the article in my extended family.) It's common enough. It carries no implications for your morality or character, white man or not. Being a white man doesn't exempt you from sympathy (though there is always the misreading of normal levels of sympathy for disdain when you're used to being the center of the universe). Suicide prevention is a worthy cause no matter where you are. The gun locks lady is fighting the good fight.
But mistreating people, abandoning your children emotionally, demanding that people, especially women, subsidize you emotionally (constantly and unreciprocatedly), terrorizing them...these are choices independent of depression and despair. The reason the people in this story who do these things are all white men are twofold: (a) our society offers a version of manhood, especially white manhood, incorporating these choices for them to latch onto and (b) it's much easier for white men to get away with them than anyone else. And so, yes, I feel a lot worse for these men's particular friends and family than I do for these men. Or for any of the less extreme cases of men who have chosen a life of "rugged individualism" (read: exploitation and abuse) only to find out what nasty bleak isolated places it leads to. You can find a fair number of such men right here in NYC.
men committing suicide as a problem stemming from male privilege.
If nothing else, male privilege includes being able to thwart gun-control measures even though they are widely popular in this country in order to preserve your hope that somehow, someday, Those Urbans will come pillaging up your driveway and give you a chance to prove your white manhood the real way.
posted by praemunire at 9:19 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
But mistreating people, abandoning your children emotionally, demanding that people, especially women, subsidize you emotionally (constantly and unreciprocatedly), terrorizing them...these are choices independent of depression and despair. The reason the people in this story who do these things are all white men are twofold: (a) our society offers a version of manhood, especially white manhood, incorporating these choices for them to latch onto and (b) it's much easier for white men to get away with them than anyone else. And so, yes, I feel a lot worse for these men's particular friends and family than I do for these men. Or for any of the less extreme cases of men who have chosen a life of "rugged individualism" (read: exploitation and abuse) only to find out what nasty bleak isolated places it leads to. You can find a fair number of such men right here in NYC.
men committing suicide as a problem stemming from male privilege.
If nothing else, male privilege includes being able to thwart gun-control measures even though they are widely popular in this country in order to preserve your hope that somehow, someday, Those Urbans will come pillaging up your driveway and give you a chance to prove your white manhood the real way.
posted by praemunire at 9:19 AM on May 31, 2019 [8 favorites]
The thing that's eating at me is the idea that all that's standing between suicidal men and their emotional recovery is their failure to
- seek help
- build community
- handle emotions
- reject patriarchy and toxic masculinity
- perform their own emotional labor
- etc.
But women are doing all these things just fine, right? But somehow women try to kill themselves way more often??? There is something we are missing.
posted by MiraK at 9:19 AM on May 31, 2019 [11 favorites]
- seek help
- build community
- handle emotions
- reject patriarchy and toxic masculinity
- perform their own emotional labor
- etc.
But women are doing all these things just fine, right? But somehow women try to kill themselves way more often??? There is something we are missing.
posted by MiraK at 9:19 AM on May 31, 2019 [11 favorites]
Maybe being on the receiving end of all that crap is harder to live with than being the perpetrator?
posted by praemunire at 9:20 AM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:20 AM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
The reason the people in this story who do these things are all white men are twofold
The reason the people in these stories are all white men is the same reason reporters keep writing stories about white retirees' political opinions. They don't think to write about anyone else. It definitely does not mean that non-white men are all well-adjusted and aren't facing alarming levels of despair thanks to our economic system acting as it's designed to.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:26 AM on May 31, 2019 [16 favorites]
The reason the people in these stories are all white men is the same reason reporters keep writing stories about white retirees' political opinions. They don't think to write about anyone else. It definitely does not mean that non-white men are all well-adjusted and aren't facing alarming levels of despair thanks to our economic system acting as it's designed to.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:26 AM on May 31, 2019 [16 favorites]
Right - if that's true, if the reasons for suicide are predominantly gendered reasons, if men suicide mostly because they are abusive and women suicide mostly because they are victims of abuse, then let's find evidence for it, and then, holy shit, try to wrap our heads around it, because that's staggering.
But we don't know that for sure yet, do we? It's dishonest for us to preach the mantra of "seek help, find community, do emotional labor" to men as an antidote for suicide when that doesn't seem to help women stop being suicidal.
And also: why AREN'T we researching the what women need in order to stop being so suicidal? Why DOESN'T seeking help, building community, and being great at emotional labor help women avoid suicidality? It's a symptom of misogyny in research communities that we aren't studying this, isn't it?
posted by MiraK at 9:28 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
But we don't know that for sure yet, do we? It's dishonest for us to preach the mantra of "seek help, find community, do emotional labor" to men as an antidote for suicide when that doesn't seem to help women stop being suicidal.
And also: why AREN'T we researching the what women need in order to stop being so suicidal? Why DOESN'T seeking help, building community, and being great at emotional labor help women avoid suicidality? It's a symptom of misogyny in research communities that we aren't studying this, isn't it?
posted by MiraK at 9:28 AM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
That may be a particular factor for the U.S., but there are plenty of other suicide methods that have a higher lethality than drug overdoses and are equally available to all genders (e.g. hanging, carbon monoxide poisoning, jumping, etc.).
Men hang themselves more, too. For whatever reason, women try to kill themselves more often, but use poison more. A lot of careful, paternalistic work has been done to keep quick, painless poisons out of people's hands, and so women succeed less even though they try more.
This being the case, attributing greater rates of male suicide to bad male character makes just as little sense as attributing school shootings to kids being no good nowadays. It's the guns.
posted by ckridge at 9:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
Men hang themselves more, too. For whatever reason, women try to kill themselves more often, but use poison more. A lot of careful, paternalistic work has been done to keep quick, painless poisons out of people's hands, and so women succeed less even though they try more.
This being the case, attributing greater rates of male suicide to bad male character makes just as little sense as attributing school shootings to kids being no good nowadays. It's the guns.
posted by ckridge at 9:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
Why DOESN'T seeking help, building community, and being great at emotional labor help women avoid suicidality?
I don't think it doesn't, it's just that women often shoulder the burdens of not only themselves but their partners (absent or otherwise), their children, other family member's and society in way men aren't expected to. It's very easy to feel like a failure for a woman who can't handle the pressure to be all things to everyone. Men partaking more in the above would help alleviate some of this pressure, while also being beneficial to the men themselves.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 9:41 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't think it doesn't, it's just that women often shoulder the burdens of not only themselves but their partners (absent or otherwise), their children, other family member's and society in way men aren't expected to. It's very easy to feel like a failure for a woman who can't handle the pressure to be all things to everyone. Men partaking more in the above would help alleviate some of this pressure, while also being beneficial to the men themselves.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 9:41 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
i just feel like the way men are raised in this country - lots of men, at least, certainly not all - is that we're raised with something missing inside us. ...i feel like a car without a steering wheel, just rolling along waiting to crash. i can look out the windows at all the paths i could and should take, but without the steering wheel i can't take those turns.
This is something which I think a lot of people - whether men or not - feel. Perhaps some men feel more stress because thy have been raised to believe that they should have control over their own lives, and failure to use that (non-existent) steering wheel is their fault. Whereas others might feel like it is society and the powers-that-be that have taken that steering wheel away.
I don't know - maybe there never has been a steering wheel for anyone, even the powerful.
posted by jb at 9:49 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
This is something which I think a lot of people - whether men or not - feel. Perhaps some men feel more stress because thy have been raised to believe that they should have control over their own lives, and failure to use that (non-existent) steering wheel is their fault. Whereas others might feel like it is society and the powers-that-be that have taken that steering wheel away.
I don't know - maybe there never has been a steering wheel for anyone, even the powerful.
posted by jb at 9:49 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I waited a bit so as to not thread shit, but boy howdy there was some wildly insensitive stuff coming from people whose whole personalities are predicated on the utmost sensitivity from every other human on earth. Sheesh.
At any rate, this video effected me more deeply than just about anything else I've ever seen on the subject. He talks about the "medicilization" of suicide and covers particularly sensitive subjects I'd never heard discussed before. I felt absolutely exhausted after watching it and don't suffer from suicidal thoughts. So massive TW for anybody who does. He even misnamed the video because he was so worried about the effect it would have on those who do.
posted by lattiboy at 10:01 AM on May 31, 2019 [13 favorites]
At any rate, this video effected me more deeply than just about anything else I've ever seen on the subject. He talks about the "medicilization" of suicide and covers particularly sensitive subjects I'd never heard discussed before. I felt absolutely exhausted after watching it and don't suffer from suicidal thoughts. So massive TW for anybody who does. He even misnamed the video because he was so worried about the effect it would have on those who do.
posted by lattiboy at 10:01 AM on May 31, 2019 [13 favorites]
MiraK: "women are trying to kill themselves too despite supposedly superior help-seeking, emotion-managing, community-building skills and their exemption from the chains of toxic masculinity. "
Are we sure women are exempt from the chains of toxic masculinity? Because it seems to be that being trapped in a relationship with a toxic person, a relationship that your religion and peers tell you is one you simply must accept and abuse is Not Talked About... for that woman, suicide may be the only exit strategy she has considered.
My very first thought in the face of the higher attempt rate for women was that conservative culture devalues and disempowers women at a far higher rate than it does for men. If the men feel trapped, the women must feel it even more, with far fewer socially acceptable forms of escape.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:10 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
Are we sure women are exempt from the chains of toxic masculinity? Because it seems to be that being trapped in a relationship with a toxic person, a relationship that your religion and peers tell you is one you simply must accept and abuse is Not Talked About... for that woman, suicide may be the only exit strategy she has considered.
My very first thought in the face of the higher attempt rate for women was that conservative culture devalues and disempowers women at a far higher rate than it does for men. If the men feel trapped, the women must feel it even more, with far fewer socially acceptable forms of escape.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:10 AM on May 31, 2019 [5 favorites]
It's the guns.
Guns are deadly when used for suicide, compared to other methods
Guns are easy to use on an impulse, and don't require planning.
Gun ownership is in the US and elsewhere a performative male behaviour. Owning a gun is an element of being a real man to a large fraction of the US population.
Poor impulse control and poor anger management are allowable male behaviours. As a man, it's ok to be angry and make sudden decisions. This shows decisiveness and confidence.
Gun ownership and poor impulse control combined lead to a high death rate from suicide. This is clear from the statistics.
Performative male behaviour and allowance of male anti-social behaviour lead to a high death rate from suicide.
Yes it is the guns. It's the guns enabled by male privilege of allowed behaviours in combination with a preformative male culture that binds their identity with possession of weapons.
This is not an argument about the incidence in the population male or female about rates of depression or other causes that might drive suicide attempts. This is an argument about lack of emotional control and possession of quick and deadly tools that can turn even a fleeting impulse into disaster.
posted by bonehead at 10:18 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
Guns are deadly when used for suicide, compared to other methods
Guns are easy to use on an impulse, and don't require planning.
Gun ownership is in the US and elsewhere a performative male behaviour. Owning a gun is an element of being a real man to a large fraction of the US population.
Poor impulse control and poor anger management are allowable male behaviours. As a man, it's ok to be angry and make sudden decisions. This shows decisiveness and confidence.
Gun ownership and poor impulse control combined lead to a high death rate from suicide. This is clear from the statistics.
Performative male behaviour and allowance of male anti-social behaviour lead to a high death rate from suicide.
Yes it is the guns. It's the guns enabled by male privilege of allowed behaviours in combination with a preformative male culture that binds their identity with possession of weapons.
This is not an argument about the incidence in the population male or female about rates of depression or other causes that might drive suicide attempts. This is an argument about lack of emotional control and possession of quick and deadly tools that can turn even a fleeting impulse into disaster.
posted by bonehead at 10:18 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
Guns, depression, and alcohol are a deadly triad, in particular. Alcohol intoxication, beyond the stage where you are a little over the driving limit and are now like way over it, promotes depressive brooding and lowers inhibitions. And there's the gun right there.....this is how my best friend died. So many people loved him , and would have dropped everything to go help him, if only he had picked up the phone instead.
posted by thelonius at 10:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 10:32 AM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's the guns.
Guns are clearly a factor in the U.S., but it's not just the guns.
The same pattern holds true in other countries with extremely limited gun ownership (e.g. the UK). More women attempting suicide, more men dying by suicide. A disparity in the types of methods used, with men using methods more likely to result in death:
The most common methods of suicide in the UK in 2012 were hanging, strangulation and suffocation (58% of male suicides and 36% of female suicides) and poisoning (43% of female suicides and 20% of male suicides).
There is some evidence suggesting that women attempting suicide tend to have a lower level of suicidal intent (i.e. the desire to actually die) than men - see for example this 2005 study. Why that is, I don't know, but it would help to explain the disparity.
posted by inire at 10:36 AM on May 31, 2019 [12 favorites]
Guns are clearly a factor in the U.S., but it's not just the guns.
The same pattern holds true in other countries with extremely limited gun ownership (e.g. the UK). More women attempting suicide, more men dying by suicide. A disparity in the types of methods used, with men using methods more likely to result in death:
The most common methods of suicide in the UK in 2012 were hanging, strangulation and suffocation (58% of male suicides and 36% of female suicides) and poisoning (43% of female suicides and 20% of male suicides).
There is some evidence suggesting that women attempting suicide tend to have a lower level of suicidal intent (i.e. the desire to actually die) than men - see for example this 2005 study. Why that is, I don't know, but it would help to explain the disparity.
posted by inire at 10:36 AM on May 31, 2019 [12 favorites]
The greater rate of "success" in male suicide makes a twisted sort of sense. Other factors aside, men often get to that point by refusing to seek help (as the article repeated that common note over and over)--so by the time the genericized statistical man moves from suicidal ideation to action, there's of course much less of the proverbial cry for help in the action, and more violence-to-self in it.
posted by Drastic at 10:40 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Drastic at 10:40 AM on May 31, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think that for most of the men profiled in the article, they are or were too mentally ill to maintain relationships and hold down a job and participate in the community. Which is tragic and a statement about the current state of mental health care in the US, but not really a gendered phenomenon. Mental illness can strike anyone.
What I think is gendered is that most of them and their loved ones explained away their illness and social/professional failures as just them fitting into a particular male archetype: the cowboy. And then these guys doubled down on that identity because it was the most beloved and socially acceptable one they could successfully perform, and they did stuff like acted purposefully coarse and collected guns.
My uncle did similar, but thankfully his machismo was channeled more into acting the "misunderstood artiste" than the "gruff cowboy," because of who he was and where he was coming from.
I feel a lot of empathy for anyone suffering the mental anguish that I'm sure that these men were suffering. But reading about the ways that some of them hurt and even terrorized the women nearest and dearest toward them was horrifying, too. Abandoning their children, the one man beating his wife and throwing her into walls so hard that her ribs broke...Jesus Christ. It seemed like for some of these men, their violence and anti-social behavior just kept escalating and escalating until finally it turned deadly.
I think the issue is the normalization and even glorification of violence. All these men were the victims and perpetrators of intense physical violence, they visited it on themselves if on nobody else. That's horrifying. Violence is horrifying. But in our culture, a violent man is often revered. How sick.
posted by rue72 at 11:04 AM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
What I think is gendered is that most of them and their loved ones explained away their illness and social/professional failures as just them fitting into a particular male archetype: the cowboy. And then these guys doubled down on that identity because it was the most beloved and socially acceptable one they could successfully perform, and they did stuff like acted purposefully coarse and collected guns.
My uncle did similar, but thankfully his machismo was channeled more into acting the "misunderstood artiste" than the "gruff cowboy," because of who he was and where he was coming from.
I feel a lot of empathy for anyone suffering the mental anguish that I'm sure that these men were suffering. But reading about the ways that some of them hurt and even terrorized the women nearest and dearest toward them was horrifying, too. Abandoning their children, the one man beating his wife and throwing her into walls so hard that her ribs broke...Jesus Christ. It seemed like for some of these men, their violence and anti-social behavior just kept escalating and escalating until finally it turned deadly.
I think the issue is the normalization and even glorification of violence. All these men were the victims and perpetrators of intense physical violence, they visited it on themselves if on nobody else. That's horrifying. Violence is horrifying. But in our culture, a violent man is often revered. How sick.
posted by rue72 at 11:04 AM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
Mod note: Folks, fighting about who has it worse is not helping anybody and it's making the conversation stall out. Please either find something constructive to say about gender differences in re: suicide or let it go.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:14 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 11:14 AM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
Delete if this is not within the scope of the discussion but I am noticing a lot of similarities between the way suicides of white men are discussed with the way suicides of various marginalized groups are discussed.
Cis white men who attempt suicide are called "abusive," highly emotional women who attempt suicide are (labelled with borderline personality disorder and) their attempts are seen as "manipulative," trans people who attempt suicide are written off as "crazy" and probably misgendered in death...
Gosh darn it, it's almost like there is a stigma associated with suicide as a whole that attaches itself to different groups in different ways.
Suicide victims get demonized in so, so many different ways.
posted by coffeeand at 1:09 PM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
Cis white men who attempt suicide are called "abusive," highly emotional women who attempt suicide are (labelled with borderline personality disorder and) their attempts are seen as "manipulative," trans people who attempt suicide are written off as "crazy" and probably misgendered in death...
Gosh darn it, it's almost like there is a stigma associated with suicide as a whole that attaches itself to different groups in different ways.
Suicide victims get demonized in so, so many different ways.
posted by coffeeand at 1:09 PM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
These particular cis white men are being called abusive because they were, in fact, abusive (or appear to have been). Not sure that’s something that’s used as a blanket descriptor for suicidal white men generally - agreed there’s a stigma there, but I don’t think that’s the route it takes.
posted by inire at 1:17 PM on May 31, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by inire at 1:17 PM on May 31, 2019 [9 favorites]
My father (a 58 year old white man who was a Classics professor from Brooklyn and never made it farther West than Cheyenne) killed himself when I was five.
I lived in rural Wyoming among people much like many of the ones discussed in this piece for five years, some of them awful, some of them lovely. I loved it out there and was planning to move back, but, you know, life.
I've been suicidal myself. I know a lot of statistics about suicide rates in communities of color and among LGBTQ folk, although I don't know anything about those from personal experience, which I think means I don't really know much.
I keep thinking all of this might give me something to say, but all I can come up with is how incredibly sad it all is--that it happens, that it seems like there are simple things we should be able to do to prevent it, that so often we aren't able to do those things.
Keep passing the open windows.
posted by newrambler at 1:34 PM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
I lived in rural Wyoming among people much like many of the ones discussed in this piece for five years, some of them awful, some of them lovely. I loved it out there and was planning to move back, but, you know, life.
I've been suicidal myself. I know a lot of statistics about suicide rates in communities of color and among LGBTQ folk, although I don't know anything about those from personal experience, which I think means I don't really know much.
I keep thinking all of this might give me something to say, but all I can come up with is how incredibly sad it all is--that it happens, that it seems like there are simple things we should be able to do to prevent it, that so often we aren't able to do those things.
Keep passing the open windows.
posted by newrambler at 1:34 PM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
Yes, some of the men in the men in the article were abusive. I don't really care about them necessarily. I care very much about the alive cis men who might be reading this thread and in a suicidal state of mind. A suicidal brain can twist anything into ammunition. If you're a cis man reading this, I just want it to be said: you're not automatically destined to be an abuser by virtue of your identity, you deserve help, you are valuable.
posted by coffeeand at 1:42 PM on May 31, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by coffeeand at 1:42 PM on May 31, 2019 [13 favorites]
There is a kind of sudden despair that makes it very dangerous to have a loaded gun around. You are plunged suddenly into misery, fear, and self-loathing, and, for that period, this seems like the only possible way to be. It is often very brief, and afterward it can be hard to remember that for that brief time you could not imagine ever feeling better. If you have any tendency at all toward this state - and it is not uncommon - it is best not to live around firearms.
posted by ckridge at 2:03 PM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by ckridge at 2:03 PM on May 31, 2019 [7 favorites]
Poor impulse control and poor anger management are allowable male behaviours. As a man, it's ok to be angry and make sudden decisions. This shows decisiveness and confidence.
This is weird to me. Apparently, world-wide, the rate of female attempts is much higher – are those all well-considered and unimpulsive?
Gun ownership and poor impulse control combined lead to a high death rate from suicide. This is clear from the statistics.
Again, this is weird to me. If you look at worldwide suicide statistics, the US comes in on place 34 – and not all countries preceding it or immediately below are gun-crazy.
Above, gun availability is made responsible for the greater rate of successful suicides in the case of men – but in many of the countries with higher or similar rates guns are not as easily accessed as seems the case in the US, and yet the ‘gender paradox’ in suicide. In my own country, where guns are illegal, suicides by men outpace suicides by women at a rate of almost 7 to 1.
There is some evidence suggesting that women attempting suicide tend to have a lower level of suicidal intent (i.e. the desire to actually die) than men
This is entirely anecdotal, but I know 14 women in my circles who tried to commit suicide – thankfully none succeeded, but the way it was done clearly showed that none of them intended for it to happen. Without fail, they were in absolutely shitty circumstances that they were fighting against for a long time without any success, and they did it as a desperate measure of being heard. Men, on the whole, have way more openings for actions, so it is easier to either make themselves heard or leave the shitty situation behind and start afresh, while women are much more often sidelined and can’t leave half as easily, so they have to resort to drastic measures to highlight just how serious a situation is. But because this tends to be the norm, I feel at least in my country it is MUCH harder for men if they are barred from the usual avenues, for whatever reason – could be lack of education, lack of social status, shitty relationships, shitty upbringing, having failed massively, illness, etc. The only man I have ever heard of connected to suicide was sadly successful.
Also, and possibly relatedly, is th gendered attitude to people with mental illnesses: if you are a woman, you are expected to be 'more sensitive', so it is more acceptable to have problems and seek support, but if you are a man, you are an irredeemable loser. This is changing slowly, but you still hear a lot of normal people espousing those beliefs quite openly (and a LOT of women perpetuating them).
highly emotional women who attempt suicide are (labelled with borderline personality disorder and) their attempts are seen as "manipulative,"
I have seen this, and the fact that women often don’t attempt ‘seriously’ is often seen as a sign of being manipulative, but in my experience - again, based on 12–15 people (each time I count that figure is slightly different) who I discussed this with openly, there is nothing worth labelling ‘manipulative’ here – all of my friends/ acquaintances felt completely powerless, disenfranchised, sidelined, unheard, and suffocatingly unhappy. Their pain was being systematically ignored by those in the community who were responsible for a good chunk of it (boyfriends, husbands, parents, etc) but any attempts at discussion fell on deaf ears, maybe for decades. They all acted absolutely on impulse when they did, but stopped short of actually trying to kill themselves, because it wasn’t about dying, it was about shrieking your impotent pain and rage into a world who wouldn’t listen otherwise. I wouldn’t say that this is manipulation – I’d say it is more akin to a desperate attempt to connect, to matter, where everything else has failed. (BTW I understand that you are not saying that women are manipulative, just paraphrasing what others are saying, but it is something you hear very often and I think that judgement is based on a profound misunderstanding on what is going on with many people who ‘communicate via suicide attempt’).
As an aside, particularly given the subject matter, I am honestly really put off by some of the comments here. Somehow, some people seem to believe they are called upon to sit in judgement over all of the world’s population.
posted by doggod at 2:19 PM on May 31, 2019 [19 favorites]
This is weird to me. Apparently, world-wide, the rate of female attempts is much higher – are those all well-considered and unimpulsive?
Gun ownership and poor impulse control combined lead to a high death rate from suicide. This is clear from the statistics.
Again, this is weird to me. If you look at worldwide suicide statistics, the US comes in on place 34 – and not all countries preceding it or immediately below are gun-crazy.
Above, gun availability is made responsible for the greater rate of successful suicides in the case of men – but in many of the countries with higher or similar rates guns are not as easily accessed as seems the case in the US, and yet the ‘gender paradox’ in suicide. In my own country, where guns are illegal, suicides by men outpace suicides by women at a rate of almost 7 to 1.
There is some evidence suggesting that women attempting suicide tend to have a lower level of suicidal intent (i.e. the desire to actually die) than men
This is entirely anecdotal, but I know 14 women in my circles who tried to commit suicide – thankfully none succeeded, but the way it was done clearly showed that none of them intended for it to happen. Without fail, they were in absolutely shitty circumstances that they were fighting against for a long time without any success, and they did it as a desperate measure of being heard. Men, on the whole, have way more openings for actions, so it is easier to either make themselves heard or leave the shitty situation behind and start afresh, while women are much more often sidelined and can’t leave half as easily, so they have to resort to drastic measures to highlight just how serious a situation is. But because this tends to be the norm, I feel at least in my country it is MUCH harder for men if they are barred from the usual avenues, for whatever reason – could be lack of education, lack of social status, shitty relationships, shitty upbringing, having failed massively, illness, etc. The only man I have ever heard of connected to suicide was sadly successful.
Also, and possibly relatedly, is th gendered attitude to people with mental illnesses: if you are a woman, you are expected to be 'more sensitive', so it is more acceptable to have problems and seek support, but if you are a man, you are an irredeemable loser. This is changing slowly, but you still hear a lot of normal people espousing those beliefs quite openly (and a LOT of women perpetuating them).
highly emotional women who attempt suicide are (labelled with borderline personality disorder and) their attempts are seen as "manipulative,"
I have seen this, and the fact that women often don’t attempt ‘seriously’ is often seen as a sign of being manipulative, but in my experience - again, based on 12–15 people (each time I count that figure is slightly different) who I discussed this with openly, there is nothing worth labelling ‘manipulative’ here – all of my friends/ acquaintances felt completely powerless, disenfranchised, sidelined, unheard, and suffocatingly unhappy. Their pain was being systematically ignored by those in the community who were responsible for a good chunk of it (boyfriends, husbands, parents, etc) but any attempts at discussion fell on deaf ears, maybe for decades. They all acted absolutely on impulse when they did, but stopped short of actually trying to kill themselves, because it wasn’t about dying, it was about shrieking your impotent pain and rage into a world who wouldn’t listen otherwise. I wouldn’t say that this is manipulation – I’d say it is more akin to a desperate attempt to connect, to matter, where everything else has failed. (BTW I understand that you are not saying that women are manipulative, just paraphrasing what others are saying, but it is something you hear very often and I think that judgement is based on a profound misunderstanding on what is going on with many people who ‘communicate via suicide attempt’).
As an aside, particularly given the subject matter, I am honestly really put off by some of the comments here. Somehow, some people seem to believe they are called upon to sit in judgement over all of the world’s population.
posted by doggod at 2:19 PM on May 31, 2019 [19 favorites]
I care very much about the alive cis men who might be reading this thread and in a suicidal state of mind
Seriously: if you are a person vulnerable to suicide contagion, or actually suicidal, reading this post (or posts like it), you really need to stop. If you have never had good advice on self-care such that you don't know why you need to stop, here is why. (The linked article itself does not follow best practices for avoiding contagion, either.)
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
Seriously: if you are a person vulnerable to suicide contagion, or actually suicidal, reading this post (or posts like it), you really need to stop. If you have never had good advice on self-care such that you don't know why you need to stop, here is why. (The linked article itself does not follow best practices for avoiding contagion, either.)
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on May 31, 2019 [4 favorites]
I can't figure out why women pick less lethal methods. It might because they are half-hoping for help and men aren't. It might be that they don't want to mess up their faces, as shooting oneself in the head and hanging oneself do. Gassing doesn't mess up the face that I know of, though, and men do that more too.
In rural China, women also poison themselves, but use highly poisonous insecticide and kill themselves more often than men do. That suggests that using poison is not necessarily a sign that one is not serious. One of the more common methods of suicide by women in India, Sri Lanka, Iran and other Middle-East countries is setting themselves on fire. It is apparently not very reliable either. I have no idea what to make of that, but it suggests that concern for appearance is not of paramount concern.
I have a feeling that choice of suicide method may be cultural in origin, and not have a lot to do with individual psychology. In suicide epidemics, it is often suicide by a particular means that becomes widespread.
posted by ckridge at 3:56 PM on May 31, 2019 [6 favorites]
In rural China, women also poison themselves, but use highly poisonous insecticide and kill themselves more often than men do. That suggests that using poison is not necessarily a sign that one is not serious. One of the more common methods of suicide by women in India, Sri Lanka, Iran and other Middle-East countries is setting themselves on fire. It is apparently not very reliable either. I have no idea what to make of that, but it suggests that concern for appearance is not of paramount concern.
I have a feeling that choice of suicide method may be cultural in origin, and not have a lot to do with individual psychology. In suicide epidemics, it is often suicide by a particular means that becomes widespread.
posted by ckridge at 3:56 PM on May 31, 2019 [6 favorites]
ckridge, it's a little old, but Émile Durkheim wrote a book on Suicide in 1897. Some of it's conclusions are still relevant today, but as you say, suicide methods are very dependent on culture.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:13 PM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:13 PM on May 31, 2019 [3 favorites]
Nothing is complicated about this. I figured it out in 1994, when Kurt Cobain shot himself. Young, rich, famous, heralded as a genius -- fucking dead. Why? He had it all. And it just meant nothing. It wasn't that great.
In one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, Adams makes note of a planet that's considered to be the happiest place in existence. It's always sunny, everybody is rich, everybody is sexy. There's nowhere better! The suicide rate is the highest in the galaxy.
Being a white guy in this country is magic. Speaking as a white guy. I have been in groups of mixed race/gender friends and stepped forward to talk to cops because I knew it would curtail any problems. It always does. Don't be fooled by people who say these guys are mad because they feel like everything's been taken away from them. They know no one has it better. And it's just...not...that...good, life just isn't always that satisfying or exciting or meaningful or rewarding, and the hard days are probably the worst but the accumulation of just plain nothing days could also do it.
There isn't any solution to despair other than to not despair anymore. Despair is an emotion, but it sells itself as logic. You CONCLUDE, RATIONALLY, that life sucks. Men are much better at this kind of bullshit than women, generally, who are usually raised to respect their own feelings. Men are raised to dismiss their own feelings, so our emotions have to be presented as Deep Thoughts. Problem is, those are harder to discount. So if you accept your Rational Objective Analysis (i.e., your feelings) as fact, you're left with how to act upon it. You can ignore it. You can try to improve the conditions of your life, which might or might not work. (Even if you improve the conditions of your life in a logically measurable way -- getting a better job, leaving a bad relationship, achieving a major goal -- this may not matter that much to your despair, which again, isn't based on logic, even if it says it is.) Or you can blow your head off.
How do we fix this? I don't know. But is it that deep? Not really.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 PM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
In one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, Adams makes note of a planet that's considered to be the happiest place in existence. It's always sunny, everybody is rich, everybody is sexy. There's nowhere better! The suicide rate is the highest in the galaxy.
Being a white guy in this country is magic. Speaking as a white guy. I have been in groups of mixed race/gender friends and stepped forward to talk to cops because I knew it would curtail any problems. It always does. Don't be fooled by people who say these guys are mad because they feel like everything's been taken away from them. They know no one has it better. And it's just...not...that...good, life just isn't always that satisfying or exciting or meaningful or rewarding, and the hard days are probably the worst but the accumulation of just plain nothing days could also do it.
There isn't any solution to despair other than to not despair anymore. Despair is an emotion, but it sells itself as logic. You CONCLUDE, RATIONALLY, that life sucks. Men are much better at this kind of bullshit than women, generally, who are usually raised to respect their own feelings. Men are raised to dismiss their own feelings, so our emotions have to be presented as Deep Thoughts. Problem is, those are harder to discount. So if you accept your Rational Objective Analysis (i.e., your feelings) as fact, you're left with how to act upon it. You can ignore it. You can try to improve the conditions of your life, which might or might not work. (Even if you improve the conditions of your life in a logically measurable way -- getting a better job, leaving a bad relationship, achieving a major goal -- this may not matter that much to your despair, which again, isn't based on logic, even if it says it is.) Or you can blow your head off.
How do we fix this? I don't know. But is it that deep? Not really.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 PM on May 31, 2019 [10 favorites]
As an aside, particularly given the subject matter, I am honestly really put off by some of the comments here. Somehow, some people seem to believe they are called upon to sit in judgement over all of the world’s population.
They're doing it wrong, they're bad people, they deserved it and brought it on themselves, they should've just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps...
It's really great that we've moved from the primitive act of characterizing people who kill themselves as shitbags, to starting to empathize based on an understanding of mental illness, to our new galaxy-brain attitude of calling them shitbags again for woke reasons.
So disappointing sometimes.
I had some thoughts about the article, but nah.
posted by bongo_x at 3:14 AM on June 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
They're doing it wrong, they're bad people, they deserved it and brought it on themselves, they should've just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps...
It's really great that we've moved from the primitive act of characterizing people who kill themselves as shitbags, to starting to empathize based on an understanding of mental illness, to our new galaxy-brain attitude of calling them shitbags again for woke reasons.
So disappointing sometimes.
I had some thoughts about the article, but nah.
posted by bongo_x at 3:14 AM on June 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
I have a feeling that choice of suicide method may be cultural in origin, and not have a lot to do with individual psychology.
Suicide by drinking lye used to be common. Why? Because it was commonly kept in homes.
posted by thelonius at 4:14 AM on June 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Suicide by drinking lye used to be common. Why? Because it was commonly kept in homes.
posted by thelonius at 4:14 AM on June 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
Mod note: One deleted. Sorry, but we've been skating on ever more thinning ice as it is with dwelling on methods of suicide, etc., but this is especially true with even ironic "faux" encomiums to specific choices. It would be best for everyone to take a step back from this type of speculation or assertion generally. Thanks.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:54 AM on June 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by taz (staff) at 4:54 AM on June 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
According to this article, worldwide suicide rates have mostly been falling over the past few decades, with the exceptions of Russian men in the 1990s and American men now.
What this might say about our present or future, I don't know.
posted by clawsoon at 11:00 AM on June 2, 2019
What this might say about our present or future, I don't know.
posted by clawsoon at 11:00 AM on June 2, 2019
This has been a less good conversation about male suicide than I've come to expect from Metafilter. This is not a conversation that I'd want to be vulnerable in.
posted by clawsoon at 11:22 AM on June 2, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 11:22 AM on June 2, 2019 [8 favorites]
worldwide suicide rates have mostly been falling over the past few decades, with the exceptions of Russian men in the 1990s and American men now.
IMO, suicide rates are a pretty good measuring stick for how a society is doing. You can argue that the individual decision to commit/complete suicide isn't a rational decision (and I'd caution you rather strongly not to make a lot of blanket judgements), but looked at across an entire population, there's pretty clearly some exogenous (to the individual) reasons that lead to higher suicide rates.
E.g.: Economic depressions and sudden dislocations seem to cause or at least worsen psychological depression, which causes suicide to increase; that much seems pretty clear.
Personally, I think the fixation on methods of suicide and comparing suicide completion rates is... well-meaning, perhaps, but ultimately misplaced. Sometimes I get the impression that some anti-suicide 'awareness' campaigners are so myopically focused on the act of suicide, that they would be satisfied with a world where nobody was able to kill themselves. To me, this doesn't seem like it would be a victory at all; it's a dehumanizing horror. Addressing suicide qua suicide, without addressing the underlying reasons why, risks simply locking people into the despairing circumstances that lead them to decide that oblivion is preferable to continued struggle.
IMO, that's the tactic taken by much of the US healthcare system: it's very likely nobody really gives a shit why you're considering killing yourself, as long as you don't. And in particular, you don't do it on their watch, their floor, their ward. You can be as miserable as you want, but as long as you keep sucking air, you're not shitting all over someone's stats for the month, and that's all that matters. And if you get caught thinking about killing yourself, you get hauled into a room that can range from hospital-like to downright prison-like (and even in the hospital-like ones, you'll get treated like a prisoner—no phone; no privacy; no belt or shoelaces, lest you kill yourself, just like a prisoner who's not allowed to cheat the executioner!), where you're held for a while like the defective you've proved yourself to be, then let go on a sort of weird bail, once you pretty-pretty-promise to be good and not kill yourself. Lesson learned: talking about killing yourself is punishable—don't get caught.
Is it really a surprise that after people have been through that, that they don't fancy a second or third go-around? When we make it that blatantly obvious that we don't care about them as people, as long as they're converting oxygen to carbon dioxide reliably, and not causing too much trouble for anyone else?
I can't look at a person in that situation—and I've seen more than a few; hell I've transported more than a few to hospitals, sometimes, to my shame, lying through my teeth that they'll somehow get help there that they almost certainly won't—and see their decision to consider killing themselves as the great sin. The great sin is that our society puts people in that position with such regularity, and does so little for people earlier along the path.
This doesn't apply, of course, to people whose suicides emerge not from depression stemming from long-term despair, but rather from medication issues or biochemical imbalances. There is, in those situations, even a reasonable chance that the healthcare system will help you. There's an analogy to cardiac care: if you're the person the system is built around (55 y/o fat white guy with chest pain?) We got you. But if you're not (45 y/o woman with abdominal pain?)... hope you have your affairs in order. Like the drunk looking for his keys under the light, the system is tailored not to what people actually need, but to what the system is good at fixing. It's no good at fixing despair, so it doesn't try.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:45 PM on June 2, 2019 [10 favorites]
IMO, suicide rates are a pretty good measuring stick for how a society is doing. You can argue that the individual decision to commit/complete suicide isn't a rational decision (and I'd caution you rather strongly not to make a lot of blanket judgements), but looked at across an entire population, there's pretty clearly some exogenous (to the individual) reasons that lead to higher suicide rates.
E.g.: Economic depressions and sudden dislocations seem to cause or at least worsen psychological depression, which causes suicide to increase; that much seems pretty clear.
Personally, I think the fixation on methods of suicide and comparing suicide completion rates is... well-meaning, perhaps, but ultimately misplaced. Sometimes I get the impression that some anti-suicide 'awareness' campaigners are so myopically focused on the act of suicide, that they would be satisfied with a world where nobody was able to kill themselves. To me, this doesn't seem like it would be a victory at all; it's a dehumanizing horror. Addressing suicide qua suicide, without addressing the underlying reasons why, risks simply locking people into the despairing circumstances that lead them to decide that oblivion is preferable to continued struggle.
IMO, that's the tactic taken by much of the US healthcare system: it's very likely nobody really gives a shit why you're considering killing yourself, as long as you don't. And in particular, you don't do it on their watch, their floor, their ward. You can be as miserable as you want, but as long as you keep sucking air, you're not shitting all over someone's stats for the month, and that's all that matters. And if you get caught thinking about killing yourself, you get hauled into a room that can range from hospital-like to downright prison-like (and even in the hospital-like ones, you'll get treated like a prisoner—no phone; no privacy; no belt or shoelaces, lest you kill yourself, just like a prisoner who's not allowed to cheat the executioner!), where you're held for a while like the defective you've proved yourself to be, then let go on a sort of weird bail, once you pretty-pretty-promise to be good and not kill yourself. Lesson learned: talking about killing yourself is punishable—don't get caught.
Is it really a surprise that after people have been through that, that they don't fancy a second or third go-around? When we make it that blatantly obvious that we don't care about them as people, as long as they're converting oxygen to carbon dioxide reliably, and not causing too much trouble for anyone else?
I can't look at a person in that situation—and I've seen more than a few; hell I've transported more than a few to hospitals, sometimes, to my shame, lying through my teeth that they'll somehow get help there that they almost certainly won't—and see their decision to consider killing themselves as the great sin. The great sin is that our society puts people in that position with such regularity, and does so little for people earlier along the path.
This doesn't apply, of course, to people whose suicides emerge not from depression stemming from long-term despair, but rather from medication issues or biochemical imbalances. There is, in those situations, even a reasonable chance that the healthcare system will help you. There's an analogy to cardiac care: if you're the person the system is built around (55 y/o fat white guy with chest pain?) We got you. But if you're not (45 y/o woman with abdominal pain?)... hope you have your affairs in order. Like the drunk looking for his keys under the light, the system is tailored not to what people actually need, but to what the system is good at fixing. It's no good at fixing despair, so it doesn't try.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:45 PM on June 2, 2019 [10 favorites]
Suicide rates have also risen dramatically in Northern Ireland (but not other parts of the U.K.) starting around 2006 for reasons that I haven't yet been able to find.
posted by clawsoon at 5:20 AM on June 3, 2019
posted by clawsoon at 5:20 AM on June 3, 2019
About connection as an antidote for suicide: The one time in my life that I would've been at risk had I been an alcoholic with a gun was when I was in a relationship with someone who had serious mental health issues and who attempted suicide at least once during the relationship. There were lots of unhealthy habits of thinking and relating that we were bringing out in each other. I'm not sure how common that is, but it did seem to be reflected in at least a couple of stories in the article. That "I'll show you how much I hurt!" pattern of relating has a contagion of its own.
I doubt that has any wider implications, though.
posted by clawsoon at 5:33 AM on June 3, 2019 [3 favorites]
I doubt that has any wider implications, though.
posted by clawsoon at 5:33 AM on June 3, 2019 [3 favorites]
There isn't any solution to despair other than to not despair anymore.
What an incredibly insensitive and unhelpful thing to say to someone with a mental illness for which there are scientifically proven, widely successful pharmaceutical & psychological treatments that can help them out of despair. Would that these resources were as readily available to these men as are guns.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:52 AM on June 5, 2019 [4 favorites]
What an incredibly insensitive and unhelpful thing to say to someone with a mental illness for which there are scientifically proven, widely successful pharmaceutical & psychological treatments that can help them out of despair. Would that these resources were as readily available to these men as are guns.
posted by allkindsoftime at 6:52 AM on June 5, 2019 [4 favorites]
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It's pretty hard to go from there to any kind of nuanced view of the contributing factors of: social isolation; impulsive personality traits; and high expense and low availability of talking therapy and meds.
I would like to see a movement where young people would be given the opportunity and, in fact, required to learn emotional intelligence and regulation while still in school if they lack healthy family/friend networks---because you can't do it alone and its even worse if you are stuck growing up among dysfunctional personalities, it's just a cycle that repeats across generations.
Sadly, this is completely off the radar for K-12 curriculum.
posted by dongolier at 11:17 AM on May 30, 2019 [34 favorites]