A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world. I personally know at least a dozen men who have been harassed by biased laws and judges when it comes to divorce. These are good men, who worked really hard and took care of their wives very well, only to get either cheated on or scammed for money and lost everything. 2 of them are even almost homeless now. Most of them have aged so poorly after just 2 years into the divorce. Their wives aren't even homemakers who sacrificed anything who are getting paid, mostly working women who have good lawyers who just abuse the laws to steal wealth. Until this system is fixed, men's mental health will always be down the toilet.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
Brazilian law is far superior to US laws on this matter.
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
There are some of the same issues in custody law as in North America but from what I read it still seems way better than in the US.
> Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
This should not even be an option. If you worked your ass off to acquire wealth before marriage, someone new into your life should not be entitled to that.
You can definitely make a fair argument for wealth built together as partners. That is really fair. They can even have 100% of that. But wealth accumulated before that should not even be up for discussion as there was 0 contribution from the other partner.
It's more that these are the only options. No other laws govern marriages. I'm sure other countries have sensible ones too. In the US they have all matter of legal dispute because it's too wide open.
It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
The issue isn't assets, it's alimony. Brazil has the same issues with alimony as the U.S. does. Most modern countries do. (Asset splits are generally governed by statute and case law. Asset-related conflicts are about whether prenups are valid, or whether an asset is community/marital property subject to split. These same issues arise in Brazilian divorces.)
Also...Britney Spears and most other famous women with unfamous (or less succesful) husbands would like to weigh in on this conversation. It's not that men always get "screwed." It's simply that the more successful partner always ends up paying the other partner.
> Brazil has the same issues with alimony as the U.S. does.
No, it doesn't. Alimony for former partners is very rare in Brazil. If it happens it has a fixed period: a former partner will only pay alimony for 1 or 2 years, if any. Only in some very exceptional cases it exceeds that.
Maybe you're confusing it with child support, which is different.
And bear in mind I'm not red-pilling things here (don't associate me with those nutjobs please). In fact women still get the short end of the stick in Brazil when it comes to these things, it's much harder for them to start over after divorce. I'm just stating how much more logical it is when you have fixed and sane rules.
In Islam, we have it much simpler. There's a dowry paid to the woman that becomes her property. Other than that, each person leaves with their own assets they came in with. If, during marriage, they acquired assets they decided to split half way (or any other percentage), that split holds post divorce.
You don't even have to sign a contract to end up in this situation. In California at least, just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married. That needs to be fixed. Marriage should absolutely be a contractual agreement where one party is fully aware what they're giving up, signing over, or potentially losing, not something you end up in through no fault of your own.
EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
this "just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married" is completely false and a myth. Especially in California.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
You need to really fuck up to end up common-law married. You are simply wrong about California (we don't do common law marriage at all), and in all jurisdictions I'm aware of that do have common law marriages, you need to present yourself as married in order for there to be any claim.
That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.
Depending on the state, you don't need to refer to each other as a spouse, just that people get (or could get) the impression you're spouses.
My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long afterward she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father's personal and real property, and his dog[1], in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.
Of course, his real mistakes occurred before he ever started cohabitating. Common law marriage rules were far down the list of wrong turns. But in any event, ironically a few years later Alabama abolished common law marriage.
[1] Dog survived after heroic efforts by, IIRC, University of Alabama, but had pretty severe scaring.
All states in the U.S. that currently recognize or formerly recognized common law marriage require the couple to present themselves as a married couple, either by using the same last name, sharing bank account, or referring to each other as husband and wife, in addition to cohabitation.
It's a factual inquiry. There's no magic thing that's sufficient or necessary, though the things you list tend to strongly favor a finding of marriage unless you can rebut them. The core elements tend to be whether there was a mutual agreement (usually implicit) to marry and whether you held yourself out that way. In a dispute both sides present their evidence and a judge decides. Of course in a dispute one side will be claiming there was no agreement. It's not contract law; the inquiry can be far less mechanical.
Hm, this flies in stark contrast to what I've been told and what I believed, but you're right as far as I can tell, common law marriage does not apply if you simply live with someone for a long time.
For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.
> EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.
Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.
What you're revealing is an underlying difference in constitution of Lib/Cons (to apply labels a bit grossly), in that L is usually concerned with enforcing outcomes despite the values it violates and R is usually concerned with enforcing values/rulesets despite the outcomes it produces.
Is "right" defined by the nature of existence or just by the ends? Some would say an outcome of hunger is unacceptable, some would say there are plenty of "wrong" (try to not make that moral meaning) behaviors which should result in hunger. (Such as refusing to work or trade value for other people's property ie food)
>> I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
I’m guessing you don’t have a uterus, am I right? A man doesn’t end up pregnant if the condom breaks. So don’t lecture us about your “bad faith arguments” when you’re making one.
A man still ends up legally and morally responsible for the child.
Certainly women have have nine months of hard work men spared. On the other hand it is not a very big par of a lifetime. A man can end up with more work and responsibility long term.
My ex carried our kids for 9 months. I did a lot to support her but I agree that does not compare with the constant physical impact of pregnancy.
Once they were born we were pretty much equal parents bar breastfeeding/expressing. As they got older I became the primary parent because she was just not good with older kids. By the time each was seven or eight I was the primary parent. By the time they were eight or nine I was home educating them I has also the sole earner. When the younger one was a teenager I divorced and became a single parent. You really think 9 months of pregnancy outweighs all that?
Sure, biology is not sex-blind. But the law can still be written to favor a parent that's a primary caregiver, regardless of whether that parent is male or female.
Trying to interpret your comment in the best way possible, I'd say that my viewpoint is that it matters more how society treats a pregnant woman and the man that impregnated her, rather than the fact that the woman got pregnant and the man didn't.
It's probably best for laws to be dynamic to how cultural norms evolve regarding impregnation, which means unfortunately for hyperrational technocrats, it's best to pay attention to outcomes rather than focus on things like "biological differences between man and woman". An unwed woman getting pregnant in 1940 USA is treated culturally much differently than an unwed woman getting pregnant in 2026 USA, for example.
Do you have any examples of laws that couldn't just be thought out better and anchor their reasoning more accurately and neutrally? Falling back to using gender often just feels like a quick hack.
Falling back to gender (or race, or whatever protected class you’d like to consider) is far less about rote equality or equity than it is about correcting earlier imbalances of power/access.
People chafe against things like DEI as arbitrary favoritism completely failing to note that yes, this policy is meant to promote equality, not to represent it. In the case of promoting female stem workers you might say it’s a policy designed to give women equal-ish access to the job market by way of giving them preferential treatment in hiring, to counteract biases of men favoring men during that process.
The ideal outcome of any policy like this is that once the systemic inequity is resolved, the policy can be retired.
Assuming all humans and populations of humans are interchangeable parts. We are not. Not so much "race" - which is a fairly idiotic concept as it's applied -- but hereditarianism is very much a real thing. IQ equates with life outcomes and is highly heritable. How people migrate (or are forced to migrate) can help you understand a population and population differences. Nigerians who immigrate to the U.S. now do far better than populations that were brought over during chattel slavery. Likely those who were captured by their neighbors and sold to European slavers had to lose battles of some variety. Selection effect. There are also documented differences between native populations in regions. Things like the harsh winter hypothesis pose that harsher environments lead to higher IQs. Otherwise, why doesn't every country look like Japan? If we don't diagnose the real problems societal interventions will fail to help anyone in a lasting/meaningful way.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
If a man and a woman are both drunk and have sex, the man is declared the rapist. (This is said as an example of where the laws, as applied, are not gender neutral)
Yeah, not all states actualize human rights, whether they are party to the declaration or not, as well as others. I don't need to focus on any particular state - I've seen many of them - and understand that there are definitely shifting loads in the worlds cultural fabric.
Well, asset management could also be held as a responsibility of the marriage in the first place, and that can only be done by way of expressing ones rights with another, properly.
That this expression has become the root of an industry of exploitation (divorce proceedings are a big circus) is clear. Rights are not a constant. They have to be expressed.
The assumption is that biological masculinity and femininity form a spectrum based on the complex interplay of genes, environment, and time, and that, just because you know what genitals someone sports, it doesn't mean you know how their bodies and minds will respond to particular circumstances.
This cuts both ways: you will often see physically emasculated men get treated as if they're not men, to their detriment. Think of less-developed young men being cut from sports teams; they have the same in-built need for physical activity, competition, even some measure of practicing dominance, as larger boys. Deprivation leads to frustration and more.
the desired outcome seems to be that men and women are the same in situations where being a man is beneficial. In situations where being a woman is beneficial that goes away. For example 80% of healthcare workers are women, it is the biggest?(or close to) industry in the USA but I have never once seen someone pushing to correct that imbalance.
I don’t even get how I am supposed to hold my partner to the same standards I would hold a close male friend/family member. If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately. I have found just using the old adage “happy wife happy life” is most effective, but isn’t that inherently disrespectful? Like “I can’t reason with this person but if I upset them it’s gonna go poorly for me so I better let them have their way!”. The only way my relationship survives is if I have a bit of internalized misogyny and hold her to a different standard than I do myself or another man.
> have never once seen someone pushing to correct that imbalance.
Conservative men rights advocates find such proposition insulting to men. It is not a manly men job.
Men in those positions are mocked by supposedly pro-male groups
> If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately.
Why are you dating someone like that? Genuine question. I dont know ANY woman that cries that often. Not a single one.
I'm not sure if it's about same or universal, someone else already said it's about universal human rights that all humans must agree to demonstrate a practice of care with and towards each other.
Gosh, this thread is so full of sweeping takes. Different or equal in what regard? Income? Violent behavior? Or culinary skills? Maybe we should not codify stereotypes into law...
I don't think anybody in their right mind is saying that. The prevailing wisdom seems to be to acknowledge that there are differences in different bodies that often manifest one way in women and another in men¹ but also to acknowledge that it is a lot more complicated than that, including that the binary male/female divide is not always sufficient³ and that environmental factors can have as much effect as the more easily analysed biological ones.
“They claim men and women are no different apart from their environment” tends to be a claim made by those who can't cope with the singular “they” let alone anything else, who are trying to make those who disagree on such points seem ridiculous.
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[1] particularly in the endocrine system, though in other parts² which might also have an impact on how we react to things and our mental health more generally
[2] it isn't just emotional matters and related coping mechanisms: heart attacks often manifest differently in women, or if not that then the signs are often misdiagnosed, for instance
[3] either for talking about specific detailed differences, or for identifying people in terms of their identity & phycological makeup more generally
We're all here arguing the "hender pay gap", yet women have the single most amazing gift granted to them by the universe that men will never have. What I'd give to be the one to have given birth to my own children.
I have thought of that. Regardless, there is a pretty obvious discrepancy of supply/demand in heterosexual relationships, which only becomes more evident through my relations with women.
Equality and justice are certainly noble goals. but they are at this point merely goals. But in parallel, we very much need better support for the men going through the challenges that may come from the lack of equality in divorce proceedings.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
Maybe men don't have supports until it's rock bottom or too late.
At the same time I don't think there's many men who beleive think the standard of supporting women, and children, early and often, should never be reduced or changed. Maybe it could be expanded.
A Pittsburgh suburb. Outside my wife's window. unfortunately, her blinds were closed - otherwise, she might have seen something was about to go terribly wrong and alerted the authorities.
Social contributions towards retirement should be lower, but taxes should be higher so the government can get the same money from man they've raised as from woman.
People, especially men, need to get way more actively political than passively political in order to solve these issues. The biased judges are often ignorant and not even thinking philosophically about right or wrong or fairness in most of these cases. Also men have a natural bias to protecting women and children, which is also taken advantage of knowingly or unknowingly by the other side. People or individuals can be unfair and inconsistent, but systems can be fair and consistent. Make systems for this. Currently we don't exactly have consistent or fair systems for this. A decently defined system for the scope of handling divorce that is fair to both man, woman and children isn't something that is hard. It may feel like the brain would hurt, if you have not been thinking much.
The other side of the story is already in the comments. They cheated. Convenience. Some of them even literally confessed literally that.
I am curious, is it because you think women can do no wrong and can only be victims? Otherwise, why would you say that in a narrative about declining men's mental health with hard data points by a government agency?
Didn’t the marriage laws start favoring women because patriarchy caused immense bias and harm to women over the millennia and left them persecuted and penniless?
The idea behind an uneven split is that, in a lot of marriages, the partners do not act fully independently of each other. In marriages where one partner stops working to have or raise kids, they do so knowing the other partner will continue to work. Splitting according to the ratio before marriage would suit this (extremely common) type of relationship very poorly, because the partner who raised a child would have an interrupted career while the other wouldn't. It would be unfair and would discourage this (normal, often desirable) type of relationship
I started reading this thinking I would disagree, but you're right, in some countries (Canada for sure), there's a weird thing that some genders are more equal than others. I know this sounds bad, but I am a left-leaning feminist.
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
I went through a divorce in Canada, there is a thing called "amiable divorce/separation". Where both parties negotiate a fair divorce agreement rather than the standard "Pay continued support for X months/years + lump sum".
So there is some variability, and of course in my case it was a "happy path" scenario where both me and my ex-wife mutually wanted the divorce.
But by default you have to pay spousal support regardless of how well-off your partner is. The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially. Which is really not a contemporary point of view to make as a blanket statement.
> The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially
And this was exactly what happened to my friends. The women who sought alimony actually earned much more. The financial burden was so tough that it turned a good hard working member of the society into almost a criminal (if you don't pay alimony, you can be even arrested for it in some countries).
But again, it seems weird when a male has to work 2 jobs in their 50's to send large monthly payments to a female that has a larger or equivalent net worth.
And it happens routinely. Of course, there are also a lot of men out there that just want to stiff their ex. But that doesn't mean my former example isn't happening.
Cool. You think that explains the findings in TFA related to adolescent boys?
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%
the percentage who experienced:
mood disorders increased from11% to 16%
generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
He's saying: They are aware of stories of problems adults face.
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold. As you point out, the future is often completely different to what you imagined, but it is what you are imagining that shapes how you feel.
I’m the father of a 17 year old. He is very aware of the many challenges facing his generation and this is not a topic of concern for him or his peer-group. It’s almost as if this particular thread is dominated by selection bias.
More generally - we can ask if there is data in this study or another one that supports the idea that teen mental health issues are substantially due to their fears of unfair divorce terms they may face 20 years in the future. In my experience as a former teen and father of two, that is simply not happening and I’d need to see the data that says it is before I take it seriously.
They don’t have any real worries about how they will feel in their 30s because they think 7th grade was a long time ago and they don’t quite believe they are actually going to be 30 some day.
My comment is about grown men going through grief because of biased laws. What is the relation to "TFA related to adolescent boys"?
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
I guess you missed the last part of my comment. Women are majorly incentivised legally to walk out of a marriage while being financially rewarded for it. Even if you marry the "right" woman, it doesn't guarantee she won't turn into the "wrong" woman over time. And in modern times, it doesn't take a lot for that transition especially with social media really rallying to take advantage of the legal loopholes - eg. you can cheat on your partner AND walk away with 50% of the marital wealth.
Hmmm yes my country expects women to earn their own money (the government is paying for your university degree so you better use it you lazy harlots!) but then people start whining about declining birth rates. You just can't win.
It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Legally, people are marrying a law in their place of residence, marriage is a contract and agreement with the government.
Through a marriage to the government's law first, two people are married in the eyes of the law.
The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
> It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Of course you do. As you even point out yourself, you marry the government, which is people.
> The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
Considering that the traditional marriage process involves two people standing in front of representatives of the government and declaring promises to them it seems like it'd be a bit hard to miss? I suppose if others also don't realize that government is people then they might not realize what the people in the audience are doing? But, then again, given that the two people prepared to make those promises are usually responsible for inviting that audience to the wedding you'd think they would have questions about why they are there otherwise?
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
Is this actually borne out by the data? According to a quick Google search, men make up 73% of Canadian homicide victims and 66% of the homeless population.
> Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage, or meeting each other, as default. Make shared custody also the default, unless one side is found guilty of abuse.
It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
> Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage
Which would completely ignore the economic imbalance I was talking about, which occurs during the marriage.
> It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
Like I said, making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many, while the kids are young and childcare is expensive. There’s no reason why that has to be the woman but the data shows that the vast majority of the time it is.
> making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many
The topic was couples/cohabitation/marriage, not child rearing. The concerns you raise would be equally applicable where the parents have decided they want absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is truth in what you are saying, but it is an entirely different topic. How to deal with the child is a negotiation that takes place around the child, not around a romantic relationship (or lack thereof).
In the romantic relationship, there is no realistic situation where one party ends up with all the money unless the other one willingly hands theirs over. But any of us can do that. I can willing give you all my money now just the same and there would be no good legal recourse if I decide it was a bad idea later. The only reason we have these ideas in the world of romance is due to the historical idea that women aren't capable of thinking for themselves.
Pro-tip (for both unmarried men and women): You can sign a pre-nup even if you never have any nuptials. It turns out that people can choose to enter into a contract with each other at any time. There are plenty of reasons why people in a relationship may choose not to get legally married, but that does not mean you have to leave yourself at the mercy of the defaults in the law, which may or may not make sense for you.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
I agree that divorce proceedings could be more equal than they are. But society is not gender neutral, so things like divorce proceedings aren't either. Women are far, far more likely to be stay at home parents. That means they're far more involved in childcare and far less likely to be earning money independently. That makes the situation very difficult when it comes to divorce.
There is the underlying reality and bias. When I'd pick up my kid from Kindergarten it was me and 20-30 other moms hanging out on the playground afterwards. So yes, in that sense we may not see gender neutral outcomes.
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
I would definitely have preferred to have had a couple more days a week off with my kids while they grew up, and given their Mum a chance to do her thing, too. Instead, it became my responsibility to pay the bills, and the rest of the crews right to make them. So yeah, that's what I did.
>2 years
Kids need their Dads, and Dads have to be strong as hell for them, even still, in this modern world. I am super glad to have gotten my two giant oafs into adulthood well enough to be surfing the wonders the world has in store for them both .. but yeah, you'll get your ass kicked. Be a kick ass Dad, then.
The most important thing is that your son knows you're there for him as he grows up. Maybe keep a journal, don't stop writing important things to him, notes and ideas from his Dad, for him to read when he gets his own agency over things.
How is it even possible for someone to prevent you from seeing your own child for two years? That would be completely illegal in my country. Can one parent really just decide to cut the other parent out of their child's life and get away with it? It's absolutely proven than this is against child's children best interest.
How is it possible? Well, theoretically it's not. The order I got and subsequent denial of modification blatantly violate state law and appealate precedent. But it's all procedural. The standard for the underlying opinion of the judge is that if there is one fact to support that opinion then the ruling is upheld.
So I could have appealed and won. But then I go back to the same judge that doesn't think my kid should have any contact with me and all she has to do is find one fact to support that.
More often a custody order is just a piece of paper. The primary parent can screw with visitation easily and it takes time and money to go to court. The original divorce cost me $100k, another contempt motion $7k, and the failed modification $20k.
Custody ends for Fathers when they give up. I gave up unusually early (which royally pissed off the judge) and this is my punishment.
Family court is a scam, and if you end up there you’ve already lost. For some reason your usual legal rights don’t apply; the entire system seems to be constructed to drain everyone of money. It’s basically the definition of “the process is the punishment.” I’ve never seen a good outcome from it.
I strongly oppose all comments that seem to have the causal relationship reversed, that somehow by some biological effect they are now more depressed than in the past. I think that instead the extreme demands of society are the cause and that suffering in silence is the result.
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
The leader of the New Zealand Green Party once stated "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
Being able to say that as a political figure and not getting an unequivocal drumming down by everyone else shows how far gone the west is. There is no turning this ship around.
I hope you agree it's because she identified a demographic group of as causing a lot of problems, not because of which group she chose, right? The most powerful man in the world is blaming trans women for half the world's ills and we can all agree they're both bad statements?
Is it even possible to step back from this level of polarization? Centrists quickly get shoved into one side or the other depending on where their funding or family loyalties are. It just keeps ratcheting up when I start to think it's starting to level off
Honestly, yes I think it is possible for things to get better because they have frankly been FAR worse, for reference see most of human history. Most of us lived our formative years in an era of unprecedented peace, we currently find ourselves in an era of transition which often leads to periods of tribalism and strife.
The New Zealand Green Party got 13.3% of the vote. I could pull all sorts of absolute drivel from any party in any country of the world that got ~ 13.3% of the vote.
Declaring "the west gone" is something better left on a reactionary platform like X, rather than something like Hacker News.
Seems like a fairly high percentage for a green party. Are you saying it was low because of their comments? Did they lose media support or have to apologize?
I'm not well-read on New Zealand politics outside of the broadest strokes (e.g. positive indigenous involvement). I would imagine very few people on this forum are well-read on New Zealand politics, given the demographics that we can probably collectively safely assume.
> Seems like a fairly high percentage for a green party.
Which makes this statement, unless you're well-read on New Zealand politics, pretty strange. Do you even know if they have something like ranked choice voting, or vote-for-party rather than vote-for-candidate, that could greatly impact the performance of smaller national parties?
Downvote me all you want, pessimism is never popular but its often right.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
I don't know about white and cis, but you can't argue with facts that men are overwhelmingly the source of individual violence (as opposed to wars, etc.).
> "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
>What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life?
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media. It's pretty obvious to anyone looking at the West from the outside.
It's also a reason why the West is failing, but certainly not the only one. Social Welfare states like Europe are burning, since it was never sustainable.
America is fighting among itself, because there is no Asabiyyah (social cohesion), and the wealth inequality (wealth pump) is growing massively.
Compare that with China or Singapore, where social harmony is perhaps the most important thing in their society, food is subsidized, education as a high priority, their laws are punitive, infrastructure is extremely new, etc.
I don’t think you’re open for a discussion but I’ll try; just judging from experience talking to other people who hold similar entrenched beliefs, I might be very wrong.
> Social Welfare states like Europe are burning
I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
> the West is failing
I wasn’t aware of that either! Seems to me that western countries (I assume you mean US and EU with that?) still hold most of the power worldwide?
> Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media
The opposite is also true. I think it’s just because most heroes and villains in western media are men - hell most characters are men.
France is burning because they're defaulting and can't pay for their social welfare benefits, and Germany's economy isn't doing so well. That's a good chunk of Europe's economy in a nutshell. Only Poland I believe, has improved and officially was considered developed since 2018.
France's West African colonies are also leaving France as they inch closer to China, politically and economically.
China is rising, and so are other (previously and currently) Third World nations. It's a matter of when they take power, not if. India and Indonesia seem to be heavy hitters, for now and probably for the near future. I wouldn't count out Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda) or Latin America (Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, etc).
I stand by my statement of Western entertainment demeaning men, probably out of anger, or as something of an alibi for Hollywood after the #Metoo movement. Occupy Wallstreet is also notable for happening before this.
Germany has the third largest GDP worldwide so I don’t think it’s “not doing so well” considering how tiny it is.
China/Asia, South America and Africa have the most space, people and natural resources so it just makes sense that they would be more successful in the long run though.
>I stand by my statement
That is fair. I stand by mine that this doesn’t convince me.
Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power.
You can’t really be an effective or convincing villain if you’re powerless.
"Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power."
I agree with the statement, but not the context.
Looking at Velma, Dragon Age: Veilguard, Ghostbusters 2016, Star Wars sequels, She-Hulk, and much more, a good chunk of such Western media feels like they have some disdain for a large portion of fans who watch them.
Like a Superiority complex formed out of deeprooted insecurities of their feelings towards men.
You could argue men have reacted to this in the same way, especially in Instagram and the like.
If you're going to use art to back up your point that society hates men, then there is a literal mountain of artwork throughout humanity that vilifies women.
Germany made its money through high end production (which is handled by Asia) and its Mittelstand (which like most of the West, is starting to slow down massively).
Germany is still in a good position for Europe, but it can't compete as well as it once did compared to Asia or the US. Even then, the US is having issues with China.
Men are interested in things, while women are interested in people. That's probably why most characters are men overall. Same with men being more likely to be Autistic.
That being said, it's quite noticeable that people in the entertainment sector, who are probably marginalized, are directing some anger against men.
Ghostbusters 2016, likely started this, and I do wonder if it was to appease the women and other groups after the the #Metoo movement, where marginalized people were given a voice, to pretend that Hollywood was like them (they aren't, look at their governmental funding before #Metoo).
If men are into things, then they likely are into abstractions, concepts, ideas, etc. Stories are one of these. I remember there's neurological evidence to back this up, but I have no links on me currently.
> I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
As a resident of Portland OR, I'm all too familiar with people pointing to protests confined to a few downtown city blocks as evidence of the entire city being burned to the ground.
Seems like France/Europe is currently suffering from that same sort of propaganda. "Europe is so far gone because thr Gucci store in Paris got looted and some cop cars burned."
French protests are known for their ferocity in European context, yes. But what was dominant in the recent weeks were not protests, it was the rioting. Obviously.
People protesting poor school conditions don't burn down their schools or random public buildings.
Your description seems to ignore that a historic town hall that survived two world wars was invaded and torched, and burnt to the ground, and that entire neighbourhoods -public spaces- in major cities have been turned into warzones from weeks of riots involving hundreds of thousands of people, causing extensive property damage, widespread feeling of insecurity and environmental damage.
Your takeaway from this was apparently 'looted luxury store and burned cop cars'.
Is it your source of news that's to blame for that misapprehension, or your personal stance on things?
The sex ration of completed suicides in the USSR as a whole between 1984 to 1990 was 3,9 men to 1 women.
That is, near exactly the same as in the 'capitalist' world then, and now.
(In the Slavic-predominant part of the USSR, that is Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, it was an even worse 4,6-to-1. Somewhat lower in Central Asia at ~2,7-to-1).
I think the fact that in general women are considered to have more mental health issues and men committing suicide way more often shows that this headline is true.
This is not something I think about much (fortunately), but what is the point in attempting suicide by means that are not likely to work? How do we measure "true attempts" vs "cries for help." I guess ultimately they are very close together... but all the same it seems harder to attempt and not succeed.
The person may not definitively want to die, but may wake up one day and not care either way, so attempting is a roll of the dice.
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
I've been curious about the phenomenon of suicide for a while, so I've read quite a bit about it in different countries. One of the interesting things about suicide is the means of suicide is always whatever is most available or readily available in the environment. In the U.S. where guns are more available, about half of all gun deaths are suicides, and about 80% of those are men. But in some countries in Africa, men kill themselves more frequently as well, and the primary mechanism is by drinking pesticide.
My mental model is that men tend to be more extreme and less conservative than women (risk-taking is more prevalent), and this leads to more extreme approaches in how they try to kill themselves.
But it's been a while since I've read any of these statistics, and I have no special credentials. Just thinking about what we're observing.
Nonsense, that is an America-centric attempt at making up a narrative. The sex differences in suicide outcomes are essentially the same in countries with low to zero firearms ownership, eg Europe, Australia, Japan. If there are no firearms available, then other almost equally lethal methods are used (hanging, trains, etc).
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
Commonly proposed reasons I've seen mostly involve conscientiousness around impact on their body and setting. For the most stereotypical two methods: a gunshot to the head leaves a mess and means you're going to need a closed casket, while the mess from a slit wrist in a bathtub can be washed down the drain, and easily hidden while still having an open casket. But it's harder to "succeed" with a slit wrist in a bathtub, and it takes longer, giving more time to be found or to change your mind.
Yeah, because women tend to seek more clinical assistance than men do so of course the attempt % would be higher for them as well, because how are you even gonna know that number for men if they aren't even getting recorded.. the suicide numbers are the only actual real recordable evidence unfortunately.
To ignore the terrible things going through the minds of people trying¹ and the effects attempts, especially successful ones, can have on others, for a moment²… I wonder if anyone has looked deeper into those two stats to, see if the attempt rate is actually the same but the lower success rate means that the average women in that sort of crisis position attempts more times.
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[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
There's too many men in this world, a surplus. Some percent of men will be the winners (not a large percent) and the rest will be losers who never reproduce and have unhappy lives doing hard work with little reward.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
> Expressed another way, that would mean that 10% of all males surviving to adulthood would perish in combat.
> We’ll get back around to fertility rates later in the series but for how if we assume each woman in this society is having on average five live childbirths, a 2% chance of death at each stage adds up pretty quickly – a woman who gave birth five times with a 2% chance of dying each time has a total chance of dying at one stage or another of 9.607%, which as you will note is not far off from the chance of dying in a battle
You are counting the over 50s/60s. Men die off faster and it was more equal in the older generations. That's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about men who are attempting to start their lives and a family and/or date. In that pool, there's A LOT more men than women in the western world. Particularly the USA.
Yes, thank you. I don't know why we're always so dishonest about this topic (especially the most vocal younger crowd).
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
> Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options.
What does this mean? Just lower your standards and there's a woman out there for you?
It's been a long time since I was single, but I never felt like that. I worked at a job with a bunch of other men and didn't have a lot of social outlets that involved women. My candidate pool was close to zero. I eventually recognized this and found ways to broaden my pool, but it wasn't easy.
I'm not prescribing anything. I'm describing the situation.
I'm only speculating that I think the past used to be (a lot) worse. Competition was higher across the board for significantly worse options across the board.
So much of the modern era is defined by the desire for social change, but nobody seems to pause and think what that must mean regarding the perception of their options (and themselves). It means even your worst option today probably isn't that bad or is already more similar to you than you want to believe. I think this all boils down to mortality. Other people change slower than you have time for, so on some level you do have to either compromise or make your own changes at the pace you prefer. You can't spend life looking at the rear view mirror and a horizon that never comes.
A casual look on social media tends to confirm that the same people not liking their options also think they were "born in the wrong era" or similar.
The vast majority of heterosexual men who are unsuccessful romantically has nothing to do with their "status." A bit of self-confidence and the ability to listen to and empathize with women is literally all it takes. Women don't want to date chuds, shocker.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
Does it imply also fewer men getting diagnosed? I presume it does.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
Great. How do you determine that men and women are seeking treatment at the same rate, and that diagnoses are being given out at the same rates for matching symptoms across genders?
It could just as much be the case that men are diagnosed at a lower rate because they seek out care less often (many studies point at this being true) or that men who do seek care are not diagnosed at as high of a rate despite having the same symptoms (men report higher rates of dissatisfaction with mental care, and other studies show gender bias in diagnosis - men get told to "man up" in so many words-, or men get misdiagnosed because symptoms for the same mental illness vary between men and women)
You might be interested in operationalization. Every measurement is also an operationalization - even things like temperature, speed, and weight.
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
Men and women have different mental health crisis spirals.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower. Which is worse depends on who you ask.
This is a trap, just like it’s a trap when my wife asks me what’s wrong, I give an honest answer, and then I’m scorned for being weak [1]. Men need to cultivate an internal compass. The government can alleviate the issue by stopping the systemic preference of women that they have instituted in education, employment, and law.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
Just a few days ago my wife told me that a woman should never express empathy to a man when he complains about life being difficult (because apparently then he will spend the rest of his life complaining, and never grow up). This is a wisdom she learned from her mother.
From my perspective, that's a complete idiocy. (And incompatible with love.) But she is not the first woman I heard to express a similar opinion. It's in the culture.
I’m having a hard time buying the argument that the law prefers women when women just had their bodily autonomy stripped away across the US only a few years ago and the very real, awful history that lead to the “me too” movement due to years of women not being taken seriously in the eyes of the law.
I have a feeling this comment will not sit well with you but I am very much willing to engage this in good faith. I don’t see what you’re seeing. There are definitely domains where different genders have the advantage, but to act like the law as a whole benefits women over men…that dog don’t hunt IMO
Education, there is a stronger argument there (re admissions and such, not safety). I agree that has gotten messy as hell at the very least.
Workplace, similar to my issue with the law claim.
I read through the underlying report, but the survey itself is extremely unremarkable.
There were only 12 very vague questions - and none actually asked the respondent about how they felt personally: "Where do you believe stereotypes about masculinity primarily come from?"
Only about 2/3 of the respondents even identified as male - this isn't a serious study of how men themselves feel. It's more of a survey about the public perception of men.
I had the same experience, I read the attached link, just read a lot of fluff, found the link to the actual report, and it wasn't much better. There's definitely an interesting discussion to be had about this topic, but the original post does not carry the right information to have that discussion, IMO.
This was a particular lazy government report that just happens to touch on a nascent gender war, but it is shocking how much published research in psychology is more or less like this.
National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues. I'm sure they'll come out with a nice report on strategies to improve men's wellbeing that won't make a lick of difference unless the world at large starts to shift.
Government reports like this sometimes motivate additional studies and think pieces, which in turn creates a framing that may be used later when society decides it's truly ready for change.
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
This all is just pure virtue signaling and the only beneficiary will be some NGO who gets some money and produces a report and a slide deck which only they will read. It's like the Soviet joke of "we had a 4 hour meeting about improving production in communism in the factory today and after this we will work not better and not worse than before". Until that suffering actually causes measurable damage that affects something on a grand scale that the country needs, nothing really will happen.
Can you expand on this? It seems to me that deep seated cultural issues are the sort of thing that therapy is supposed to address. However, I may be looking at this from the wrong angle.
The people who see issues with themselves get therapy. The ones that see no issues with themselves don't.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
The report gives no indication its a male problem. It’s just a survey targeting men. Maybe its a general mental health problem. We know mental health issues in women have increased over the same time period.
This report? The existence of a male mental health problem does not imply the existence or absence of a female mental health problem or any other type if mental health problem.
Maybe you can you disambiguate your phrasing here. Which do you mean?
1.There is a MALE mental health problem -- some mental health problem wholly or partially unique to men
2. There is a mental health problem observed among men
If #1, where is the evidence? A men-only survey can't show it. If you surveyed left-handed people and 30% had anxiety, that doens't mean there is a left-handed anxiety problem.
If #2, we agree on what the research shows, but it brings your original point into question: "Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?" Which problem are we recognizing? Labeling a general problem a male one assumes a diagnosis, which points the search for causes and fixes at men when nothing in this report shows that's where they are, and other available information shows worsening mental health in women as well.
HR is overwhelmingly subservient to feminist orthodoxy and feminist orthodoxy is categorically hostile to any implication that men require any emotional support on a societal level.
The birds they sing,
At break of day.
Start again I heard them say.
Dwell not on what has passed away,
Or what is yet to ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There's a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
I don't believe I suffer, but it seems pretty obvious why someone would do it in silence. Many times when I tried to get help from institutions for anything nobody seemed to care much at all. It's like you could either deal with your problems in silence or deal with them "out loud" and have people pretend to care while looking helpless.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
I have difficulties, mostly due to overload, and sometimes it would be good looking at it from an other angle, discussing with someone. There are some male peers I am being able to discuss certain matters, usually a different detail with different peers, but not everything. I look with curiosity how my wife is able to discuss things with a professional. My concern are usually: the professional can only know about what she explains, the way she explains, the amount she explains. The output can only be based on that constrained input (sessions are bound by time). Probably it is not a surprise that things do not get changed much. I have no time for that - did I mention that I am overloaded? By the time I was able to tell it in a decent granularity, complemented by details from people knowing me a certain way - no-one have full picture - so the picture is not distorted by looking through my eyes only, by all this time I'd be really frustrated that things went on and we got nowhere. And all those assume that I am able to phrase and express clearly what the heck is going on, very difficult sometimes. Also that the professional is good at listening and is not trying to force a pattern on me. I am from an upbringing that taught me doing something when something is wrong, try my best and accept what comes out of it. Suggestions of others are pieces that may help or may not. Possibly pretty random (e.g. the person was basically me in that scenario and came out well, so they really know what they are doing, not just meddling for some reason).
Yeah, getting any external help is difficult. Need some inner source some way, accepting some level of 'flaws'.
Men struggling is no surprise. Today's world is not well suited to their strengths (physical strength, risk taking, aggression, etc..). It's better suited for women and they're winning in a ton of important categories that contribute to quality of life. To compound this, the dating scene for men is abysmal. Women have so much power in the dating market and use it to their benefit as men did before them.
Men especially take this hard. I find men have a very very strong urge to get ahead, succeed, and climb the ladder of success. If they consistently fail at this AND can't find a partner it gets really rough. I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
You are a good friend and truly the solution to the problem is simply people looking for the people in their lives that are struggling and being there for them, its amazing what just a little acknowledgment from a friend (or even a stranger) can do for someone.
One day I was at a store checking out and the attendant was rather brusk and didn't seem particularly friendly, but he was wearing a watch that I liked and I simply stated that I liked his watch and he lit up, the whole dynamic changed in an instant. I wasn't trying to be nice I literally just liked his watch but after seeing how he opened up and changed after that statement I realized just how much joy can be created with a simple compliment. I try to genuinely compliment people more often now.
> I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
You're a good dude
I have a friend like this too. He graduated out of an IT program into the post AI world, in a kind of small town. He's working at a grocery store, convinced he's unlovable (and unfuckable), and he's started to talk about ending it sometimes. Super good dude, just needs some wins, but life has not been good to him
Very similar situation to my friend! Can't move up in career, working at a dead end job, women either ghost him or are rude when he talks to them.
The unlovable part really hit the nail on the head. I can't begin to explain what a lack of relationship and sex life has done to him. He questions EVERYTHING about himself because of this. "Maybe I'm ugly" "Maybe I'm a bad talker" "Maybe I'm not smart enough"
I think the broader point is that both genders have seen a decline in mental health over the same time period. Scoping by gender is a choice. One I am highly suspicious of when people are happy to chime in with their change suggestions.
FWIW, in these sorts of situations I try to link the place where I found the news. If some tiny local news website brought something to my attention that the bigger players don't, then I think they deserve to be rewarded with the add revenue if people follow my link.
One of the deepest problems with being a man is the palpable, omnipresent sense that there are too many dudes. It is just a fact of the human condition that a large fraction of males are biologically superfluous. Society tries to equalize outcomes by promoting monogamy, but this strategy is losing effectiveness in the face of dating apps and extended premarital relationships. Historically, violence and war also tended to reduce the population of males, but violence has declined enormously compared to previous eras.
This isn't really the case! And, FWIW, it is neither true that monogamy is some clever invention nor that many women are meaningfully hypergamous. In all the high-quality data I see, women are just single more just as men are, they just don't talk about it as much in places you or I read (it seems like psychometrics implies the median woman is more okay with being single than the median man. Part of it could be that).
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.."
― Henry David Thoreau
It is very difficult to talk about illness, especially chronic illness. It is one thing to break a bone, or need stitches; something entirely different to say you have chronic migraines or POTS. Every time I mention it I fear I'm sacrificing future employment opportunities.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
A lot of the infrastructure got closed in Canada circa 1980s, or 1990s. Some tools are still available - sometimes - and I finally got my diagnosis following through with that, almost 20 years ago now. Anyway, this is partially "there's no tools available to help", and partially a "culture of not talking".
One of the consequences is that - while all of my issues have underlying biological causes (and thus, I can see specialists to mitigate that, somewhat) - I've been on a waiting list for ADHD now for 3 years, with no idea when I'll actually be able to see anyone. Thankfully, otherwise, my cPTSD - I got enough tools in the year after the diagnosis that it's no longer - most of the time - causing any trouble.
Now I was homeless when I started (this IS related to me being able to get help) - but those paths are not easy to get through. That help has been inaccessible to me since I stabilized my housing and employment situations.
So yeah, I'm not surprised. I've met a LOT of people who need more help than they could get ... providing they were open to reaching out. This is entirely related to "homeless epidemic". Mind "shortage of work", "cuts by companies who moved their offices south of the border" are related to this, too.
Men feel isolated because they are. They don’t reach out because they intuit being vulnerable will not help them.
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
I have spent a lot of time in countries with strong male community even to this day: cafe culture where the menfolk of the town meet daily, sometimes for hours. I speak the languages and can be a full participant.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or up to three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
> Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
A $500,000 total comp engineer with a wife and a house in California set to retire at 50 vs a $60,000 bar tender in Ohio with a hotter wife and muscles. Who's higher in the chain? Genuine question
Now imagine a culture where neurodivergent but wealthy you has to regularly sit at a cafe table or attend religious observance with men who are overwhelmingly the latter type. Being ostracized or mocked daily would still sting in spite of your enviable wealth.
There is certainly more pressure, and workplaces can be a minefield for men. God forbid a man is rude to a woman; it can't simply be "rudeness", it now has to have its own classification of "mansplaining", "toxic masculinity" etc. and therefore a greater seriousness.
I have seen and experienced this myself: in one past company, the HR person openly held the view that if a woman accuses a man of "harassment", it's probably true. In other words, HR itself operated with an attitude of 'guilty until proven innocent' against men.
I was once personally accused of "racism" against people of my own race (but across a political divide) by a former female colleague who was of a different race altogether. Thankfully, this was over LinkedIn chat outside of work where we also worked for different employers. I shudder to think what would have happened if this had been inside a workplace.
I don't blame women at all for this. I don't believe women are perpetuating this OR benefitting from this. This is a worse situation for everyone.
Australian Government did something similar for woman a few years back. The research of which set the foundation for it being assigned national security importance. During that research they found these men issues as detailed here in this article. No action was taken. Only on how it affected woman. Now some action has started, hopefully Canada doing something about it will push them to do more.
I couldn't help noticing the linked report didn't mention religion (at all?). The list of participating organizations listed one church (Renew Church and maybe one other spiritual organization).
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit.
Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
> The findings will now help guide the development of Canada's first Federal Men and Boys' Health and Well-being Strategy, expected to be released in early 2027.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
Wikipedia says nothing about protests, only indicates neglect as the driver for suicide. Guess its drummed up internet drama taken at face value again.
It's the nature making decisions here. It has decided to lower the sprawl of human race to rebalance the ecosystem. The nature's correcting forces restore the equilibrium. Governments focussed on worker-driven economy rather than family well-being would naturally force everything towards genderless robotic societies which are ideal for work. European nations even started making policies specifically for punishing people opting to not to work. The world is taken over by powerful new races of creatures - governments, businesses, data and AI. They are nature's agents working to control the human growth. Human race is degraded to an unnecessary biological mass.
As Charles Darwin deliberated, and concluded... MARRY MARRY MARRY. Q.E.D.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
the Western society has adopted capitalism (money is God and money above all), and enjoys Capital when times are good and incomes are high.
However, for some strange reason, the West refuses to use dialectic materialism to explain when times are bad, when males feel lonely or face increased suicide rates.
material conditions explain everything, both when times are good, and when times are bad.
The solution is to obtain (via any means necessary) better material conditions, which might include redistribution by force or political action
As I posted earlier, the sex suicide ratio in the USSR was equivalent to or worse, than contemporary and current ('capitalistic') sex suicide ratio. Material 'explanations' of the issue do not suffice here.
Women are about 1.8x more likely to attempt suicide[1], but men are about 4x as likely to die by suicide.[2] Rates of suicide in female adolescents appear to be increasing at a faster pace than in male adolescents.[3] There is a body of literature suggesting a link to social media.
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
Haven't this been known for a loooooooong time now...? I recall listening to TED talk (silly times) at least 15 years ago already talking about how behavioral pattern difference of seeking help between men/women pointing to this.
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
Like those social media videos about how therapists won't tell you, because they'll lose their business, that the real way to feel better is to just go to Italy. :)
The comments are revealing. "Men think...", "women need..." We are caught in a semantic-linguistic trap, debating a false dichotomy and pointing out all the places it has respectively harmed us.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.
The poor mental health is the symptom, not the disease. Men are suffering in the modern economy. That is triggering other things such as failure to start higher education and failure to start families. I work with guys every day who want families but also realize the financial impossibilities. They aren't earning 200k. They do not have rich parents. They will not own a house before hitting 40.
I did a yearly career counseling/updating session with a guy a month ago who's "long term goal" was to buy a dog. A dog needs a yard. A dog needs an owner who is home regularly. So he figured that in the next 10 years he might be able to get a small house and switch to a job with more regular hours. THAT is where depression starts. A good man with a good job and all he can envision for himself is maybe... one day... if he saves every penny... he might get to adopt a puppy.
The answers are not in more government-sponsored therapy sessions. The answer is to improve jobs, to give the working man a future to look for.
I do not share this position but I understand it may be someones legitimate opinion in general. I do not understand it here - when we are talking about a report like that.
Is it better to go unreported if the alternative is that an LLM was used in the articles creation?
Most people don't have time to read every article posted to Hacker News. Avoiding the AI slop in favor of human-written articles that promise a higher return on investment seems like a reasonable strategy. For that to work, AI slop must be accurately labeled as such.
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
> 1) "Poor men's health carries economic costs"
>
> Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
That's not what is meant by "economic cost". Helping young men feel better early long term is obviously better and cheaper for society than letting them grow up and live a whole life where they suffer and hurt themselves or others.
Nothing about this is surprising or unknown. We know how to prevent and treat despair-related lives. It's a political choice that most of the world has insufficient or even broken (mental) healthcare. We could choose to vote differently, but we don't.
Literally nothing stopping men from being confident, strong providers if they want to be. Most do not because that is hard and videogames and porn is easy.
That’s a very good example of how problems of men vs women are approached. Women typically get support (which is great! We should continue that) and men are typically blamed for being weak. It’s same pattern for many things, like mental health (like here), general health („it’s not our fault that men don’t take care of themselves”) to men being less educated than women.
There would first need to be a fundamental change in the way boys are socialised, shifting them more towards how girls are socialised. Which I don't see happening any time soon. You can't help people that don't want to be helped and a significant portion of men's brains are in a permanent state of rejecting all help offered to them.
"Traditional Masculinity" is just in general maladaptive in the current age.
I got downvoted earlier today for saying that there's nobody out there that would argue that men and women are exactly the same, except for a little bit of environmental nudging.
That appears to be exactly what you're arguing here: All we need to do is socialize boys more like we socialize girls, and then the men they become will be happier in our society. Is that your position?
If so, can you say a little bit more about what you mean or what you envision that socialization would look like for boys?
"Literally nothing" stopping the perfectly spherical massless man in a social, environmental, cultural and economic vacuum from self-actualising into an ubermensch. Go gett'm, Tyger - The Stars, Your Destination!
Women are successful because they became more like men, to catch up men now need to become more like women, which they will not do because that would be gay.
This is results of general misandry culture in the past two decades or three, it isn’t just laws or hard artifacts you can trace and correct, it is the general acceptance that it’s ok to ridicule men, insult them and belittle them publicly and all over media, and if a man objects it he is gaslighted and called all sort of bad names like insecure or whatever, a man in control? God forbid he is controlling misogynistic {insert other terms}, men natural way of doing things are also attacked, from simple ways of how they sit or act all the way to natural instinct for intimacy where men are visually stimulated yet are attacked or ridiculed for it, and many more examples. And unless a major cultural shift happens, this won’t go anywhere, you can look at the numbers and I don’t mean serious ones like suicides but also employments and others, look up female/male hiring ratio in the past year or two, or in jobs where women get shoved into very niche fields for virtue signaling, not because they are indeed competent, and many more. And obviously very little studies about that because whos gonna fund such research? After all, scientists mostly go with their sponsors directions.
Misandric culture has been a thing for more than those two decades obviously, but in this age of easily-peddled one- or few-liner "arguments" (trivial to claim and spread, far more difficult to effectively bring to a stop) on 'social media', misandric memes and memetic content has exploded in both prevalence and impact, that is in the twenty years since facebook and twitter et al that serves as seedbeds for these toxicities came to.
Someone else here asked why a mens issue would also affect adolescents? Simple: Adolescents, naturally including boys, are the heaviest consumers of 'social media', and are thus most heavily exposed to it. The rest of us are mostly exposed to the second-order effects, namely misandric culture and institutional misandric bias which seems to be powered by the same memetic toxicity that we've witmessed on SoMe the past two decades.
Men and boys are thinking and feeling beings, too.
Well because men are physically stronger than women and because some men are wife-beaters or rapists or cheating on their wife, since decades already now there's been a movement to portray all men as raping pigs.
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
1) Are we sure this is even a male problem? Apparently the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%. What was the answer for women? Turns out they dont ask the question but we know related metrics like anxiety, depression, etc. show a similar trend. What does it say about the views of the Canadian health ministry that they would target this survey at men only?
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
1) Yeah, we should probably have both sets of data, but seeing this in any subset is alarming
2) Yeah, that sucks
3) Scouting is still around! As an Eagle Scout, I don't think the issue is that girls can be in Scouts now.
I wished there were (separate) girl troops when I was in it, and was part of an Explorers troop (BSA subtype with men and women, 18–21, affiliated typically with a fire station, police station, or hospital). Men and women can learn the skills that Scouting teaches together, but you need community members to help support the troop.
I hope all of my kids are in Scouting one day, because it helped me without hurting me, but the door is wide open and plenty of people aren't walking through.
Per your note on point #1, one thing we need is good data, but I'd say the other thing we need is to support our friends in getting off the couch and hanging out. Check in on the people you haven't heard from for a while. I have reached out to men I knew from college several times to get lunch or dinner and learned they don't have a good social network. The modern world gives us so many amazing opportunities, but a lot of them are hard or scary to take advantage of alone. Go grab some friends and work through them together. It won't fix everything, but it'll fix some things.
I think this whole discourse is unhealthy and frankly more toxic for the HN community than the political threads. At least those get flagged right away. Time and time again these threads about male suffering/under-representation/discrimination end up being upvoted, with malcontents flocking to them and filling the comments with generalized statements about women, paranoia about divorce rape and of course the ever-present disdain towards feminism.
This is getting really tiring and it's frankly a shame to see the inexorable slide of HN into a sexist echochamber. The irony of it is, I'm pretty sure that a large part of self-victimising posters in this thread were complaining about the SJW oppression olympics just five years prior.
I get where different kinds of bigotry come from; when things get bad, outgroups are always going to be blamed and scapegoated, whether racial or class-based. Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces. How bad things must be for someone’s designated oppressor outgroup to constitute 50% of the population, people who resemble them and face largely the same problems? Seriously, do all these people who make sweeping generalisations and talk about “women” as some kind of monolithic entity ever actually talk to women or have female friends? It’s bizarre.
I don't blame women for men's problems, but just to be pragmatic about the situation, the kinds of comments you're referring to are usually a response to this same kind of micromanaging of thought. Doubling down on it probably won't be an effective response.
I am not part of the thought police, nor do I promote the nebulous feminist oppressive agenda that half of the posters here seem to be fighting against. I doubt my expression of disdain for casual misogyny qualifies as micromanaging of anything. I just think the whole thing is ridiculous and ultimately self-destructing.
>Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces.
The root of problem is that you don't find it inherently obscene to do the same to men.
That's literally all it is. If you think women are worth more than men you are, in a system of equality, objectively wrong.
If you want women to be socially worth more than men, what are you going to give men to uphold that deal? Because the longer you answer "nothing, fuck you", the worse this gets.
Who says I don't? Of course it would be obscene, that's my whole point. What I said about othering half of the population applies in both directions. Yes, it would also be wrong and absurd to blame men for social problems!
I'm calling out the petty sexism that I'm seeing far too often, how did you manage to read it as an attack on all men? There's that victim mentality again. Nobody except a small minority of deranged fanatics calls for women to be socially worth more than men.
However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
> However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
Amen. Hallmark of misogynistic, reactionary commentary on the internet. Almost guaranteed to appear. Like we need an internet law about it...
This is the type of stuff that Elon Musk greatly overestimates dominates public opinion because of his X echo chamber, leading him to waste $500 million on election advertisements.
Hey, maybe this is a chance for chuds to exercise some self-reflection and reconsider the merits of intersectionality. I doubt it, though, as a "chud" is pretty much by definition someone who is incapable of self-reflection.
A lot of men decrying the fall of man after having been at the top for aeons. Zero perspective or awareness. Everyone deserves positive mental health but that doesn’t mean men need any more power or special treatment than they’ve already had throughout history. More coping skills with reversion to what a normal mean should be.
You've structured your thinking such that it seems that you're not able to tease apart the distinction between the individual and the group. This is a very dangerous mistake that I think a lot of the rhetoric over the past 20 years has encouraged a whole generation to engage in, but it's deeply divisive and unconstructive.
Telling one of the millions of poor white men that they have zero perspective or awareness because they want help because they are suicidal doesn't help them.
In the end, this entire framing is a mistake. It's always the rich versus the poor, and the rich love to have the poor arguing among themselves about who's causing the problems. People need to work together.
Oh I'm Aeons old? Neat, I thought I was 20. Glad to hear I benefitted from all that patriarchy in my past lives. Guess it only makes sense I pay my just desserts now, to women who themselves must have experienced Aeons of discrimination at my personal hand in their apparent past lives.
Yeah and as a millennial I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
So let's push this forward a little bit. Do you think that the world that you're going to hand off to your children is going to have equality, equal rights for all, great health care for everyone, and racial harmony?
Because what's going to happen is you're eventually going to get a little bit older and the next generation is going to say, "I'm sick and tired of cleaning up the millennials' messes" and that'll be because they're young, and they're not familiar with how messy the world is, and they think the mess is some kind of unusual abberation.
And if you're lucky, some of them will resent you personally because you're part of that generation. That's what I meant when I said, in my other comment replying to you, that conflating the group and the individual is not constructive.
I'm still not sure if your profile and website are satire or not. A bit too on the nose (typical big-3 U.S. city liberal selfhating millenial white "male-feminist" who likes nerdy things like Star Trek and virtue signalling online, it checks every box lol)
> I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately
The vast majority of Women's Suffrage occurred multiple generations before boomers were even born, how is this their issue either? Arguably they're the ones that kept in motion how things are now, in that the dynamic has been totally reversed.
> and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
What debt, exactly? And how is flipping the discrimination 'paying it back'? Is the expectation that we keep the women-only programs and opportunities for an Aeon to "cancel out" the Aeon of "male dominance", despite the fact that it doesn't (and can't) impact those who supposedly benefitted during that time (as they're dead)?
I think you'll find that predictably, "revenge for the original sin of your ancestors" is not a super popular concept among young people who never even lived to experience those supposed benefits.
What you’ve said with your careless comment: “Men have been on top for so long who cares if both the good ones and bad ones kill themselves or get locked up in mental hospitals or abuse drugs.”
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
Exactly. They are drowning the problem in generalized abstraction. Ironically, it's the result of 'social media' memetic indoctrination where posting one line of emotionally laden bs takes about ten seconds. However correcting it with proper perspective and refuting the erroneous use of a general abstraction and adding historical facts, perspective and nuance in a well written package can take me an hour, in which timespan the original one liner would already accumulated ten or fifty 'retweets' because the emotional hook of simplistic, emotional is extremely effective.
And, the audience that ends up sharing this misandric memery is generally not receptive to nuanced, reasoned argument to the contrary once hooked.
A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world. I personally know at least a dozen men who have been harassed by biased laws and judges when it comes to divorce. These are good men, who worked really hard and took care of their wives very well, only to get either cheated on or scammed for money and lost everything. 2 of them are even almost homeless now. Most of them have aged so poorly after just 2 years into the divorce. Their wives aren't even homemakers who sacrificed anything who are getting paid, mostly working women who have good lawyers who just abuse the laws to steal wealth. Until this system is fixed, men's mental health will always be down the toilet.
What I really learned from these men is never sign a contract where the other party is incentivized to break it.
Brazilian law is far superior to US laws on this matter.
You only get to choose either:
* Partial Community of Property - the default: applies only to property acquired after the marriage; in case of divorce only that property is split 50/50
* Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
* Separation of Property - no property is shared at all; in case of divorce nothing at all is split. If you want buy and share property you have to do it explicitly. This is also mandatory in cases where one of the spouses is 70+ years old
Divorce is much less litigious here. It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
There are some of the same issues in custody law as in North America but from what I read it still seems way better than in the US.
> Universal Community of Property - applies to all property before and after the marriage; in case of divorce all property is split 50/50
This should not even be an option. If you worked your ass off to acquire wealth before marriage, someone new into your life should not be entitled to that.
You can definitely make a fair argument for wealth built together as partners. That is really fair. They can even have 100% of that. But wealth accumulated before that should not even be up for discussion as there was 0 contribution from the other partner.
Some people want that. It also has religious implications, some people believe the Bible says that's how marriage should be.
But you have to go out of your way to choose it.
Having these options is common in other countries too afaict (with some minor differences)
I would be really surprised if the US didnt have these options too…
It's more that these are the only options. No other laws govern marriages. I'm sure other countries have sensible ones too. In the US they have all matter of legal dispute because it's too wide open.
Of course. After divorce, men do better financially. Women are happier. Men dont loose everything in divorce.
It's basically impossible to lose all of your assets. It works the same for men or women.
The issue isn't assets, it's alimony. Brazil has the same issues with alimony as the U.S. does. Most modern countries do. (Asset splits are generally governed by statute and case law. Asset-related conflicts are about whether prenups are valid, or whether an asset is community/marital property subject to split. These same issues arise in Brazilian divorces.)
Also...Britney Spears and most other famous women with unfamous (or less succesful) husbands would like to weigh in on this conversation. It's not that men always get "screwed." It's simply that the more successful partner always ends up paying the other partner.
> Brazil has the same issues with alimony as the U.S. does.
No, it doesn't. Alimony for former partners is very rare in Brazil. If it happens it has a fixed period: a former partner will only pay alimony for 1 or 2 years, if any. Only in some very exceptional cases it exceeds that.
Maybe you're confusing it with child support, which is different.
And bear in mind I'm not red-pilling things here (don't associate me with those nutjobs please). In fact women still get the short end of the stick in Brazil when it comes to these things, it's much harder for them to start over after divorce. I'm just stating how much more logical it is when you have fixed and sane rules.
Absolute nonsense.
Just living together, informally, is already enough for the woman to take half your assets as it's already considered `Partial Community of Property`.
I can't think of anything where Brazil is generally superior to the US in terms of law.
In Islam, we have it much simpler. There's a dowry paid to the woman that becomes her property. Other than that, each person leaves with their own assets they came in with. If, during marriage, they acquired assets they decided to split half way (or any other percentage), that split holds post divorce.
You don't even have to sign a contract to end up in this situation. In California at least, just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married. That needs to be fixed. Marriage should absolutely be a contractual agreement where one party is fully aware what they're giving up, signing over, or potentially losing, not something you end up in through no fault of your own.
EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
this "just habituating with someone for 10 years is enough for the courts to consider you effectively married" is completely false and a myth. Especially in California.
Only a few states have something like the common-law 'marriage' you picture - but it's a really high bar.
There needs to consideration AND usually clear intent to marry (w/ nuance of course);
You can't simply fall into this by happenstance because you cohabitate for {n} amount of years.
California does have a (ever barrowing) Marvin Action.
But it's an incredibly high bar and not family court
You need to prove that essentially a contract exists between the parties; * e.g. consideration *
https://www.wgslawfirm.com/family-law/divorce-mediation/2025...
You need to really fuck up to end up common-law married. You are simply wrong about California (we don't do common law marriage at all), and in all jurisdictions I'm aware of that do have common law marriages, you need to present yourself as married in order for there to be any claim.
That's not some "oh, we live together, and under old-timey understandings that means we're married" requirement. That's publicly making a pattern of referring to each other as your spouses, often including at least some public documentation. Common law marriage is much more about protecting people who failed to dot their 'i's and cross their 't's when registering their marriage than it is about surprising a breakup partner with divorce precedings.
Depending on the state, you don't need to refer to each other as a spouse, just that people get (or could get) the impression you're spouses.
My father's last "marriage" was like this. After several divorces he was dead set on never getting married again, made sure only his (or her) name was on any purchases, and made sure his friends knew the situation. After a messy breakup where he discovered she had been diverting money for drugs and hiding bills, her lawyer managed to convince an Alabama court to find a common law marriage. Not long afterward she ended going to prison for arson after setting aflame some of my father's personal and real property, and his dog[1], in piques of spite. I think those felony convictions happened prior to or at least concurrent with the common law marriage proceedings.
Of course, his real mistakes occurred before he ever started cohabitating. Common law marriage rules were far down the list of wrong turns. But in any event, ironically a few years later Alabama abolished common law marriage.
[1] Dog survived after heroic efforts by, IIRC, University of Alabama, but had pretty severe scaring.
All states in the U.S. that currently recognize or formerly recognized common law marriage require the couple to present themselves as a married couple, either by using the same last name, sharing bank account, or referring to each other as husband and wife, in addition to cohabitation.
It's a factual inquiry. There's no magic thing that's sufficient or necessary, though the things you list tend to strongly favor a finding of marriage unless you can rebut them. The core elements tend to be whether there was a mutual agreement (usually implicit) to marry and whether you held yourself out that way. In a dispute both sides present their evidence and a judge decides. Of course in a dispute one side will be claiming there was no agreement. It's not contract law; the inquiry can be far less mechanical.
Hm, this flies in stark contrast to what I've been told and what I believed, but you're right as far as I can tell, common law marriage does not apply if you simply live with someone for a long time.
For the record I had heard this from a lawyer, not some random person.
> EDIT: Turns out this is NOT true, or at least, nothing I can find seems to point to it being true. Just habituating with someone for a long time is not enough.
It isn't true in California, it appears. It is true in a number of other places worldwide, Australia in particular.
Even in Australia, a de facto relationship – in which partners have a right to a property settlement upon separation – requires more than mere cohabitation of sexual/romantic partners. However, in practice, relatively few long-term cohabitating partners will be found not to be in a de facto relationship.
Unless something has changed recently, I’m fairly certain California doesn’t recognize common-law marriages.
In BC it's 6 months.
Really? Looks like two years from their site.
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/life-events/divorce/famil...
it's 6 months to be common law in terms of employer benefits.
If men and women are the same thing with slightly different parts, then gender neutral laws make sense.
If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
I think pandora's box is open never to be shut again on the conversation if we're the same or different.
> If men and women are the same thing with slightly different parts, then gender neutral laws make sense.
> If men and women have meaningful differences then it makes sense to have gendered laws.
This framing of the issue puts the discussion down an awkward rhetorical path that is difficult to recover from.
What if it doesn't matter whether someone looks or acts different; but it matters how society treats them and the outcomes that they face.
Black chess pieces and white chess pieces are superficially, trivially distinct. Yet, the player with the white pieces wins 52% to 56% of the time.
I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
What you're revealing is an underlying difference in constitution of Lib/Cons (to apply labels a bit grossly), in that L is usually concerned with enforcing outcomes despite the values it violates and R is usually concerned with enforcing values/rulesets despite the outcomes it produces.
Is "right" defined by the nature of existence or just by the ends? Some would say an outcome of hunger is unacceptable, some would say there are plenty of "wrong" (try to not make that moral meaning) behaviors which should result in hunger. (Such as refusing to work or trade value for other people's property ie food)
Yeah, precisely. I was just linking to the Disparate Impact Wikipedia page recently as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact
You managed to be wrong about both liberals and conservatives, assuming you meant the U.S. political spectrum.
>> I'm calling it out here because it's a typical technocratic bad-faith argument that I'm personally tired of hearing.
I’m guessing you don’t have a uterus, am I right? A man doesn’t end up pregnant if the condom breaks. So don’t lecture us about your “bad faith arguments” when you’re making one.
A man still ends up legally and morally responsible for the child.
Certainly women have have nine months of hard work men spared. On the other hand it is not a very big par of a lifetime. A man can end up with more work and responsibility long term.
My ex carried our kids for 9 months. I did a lot to support her but I agree that does not compare with the constant physical impact of pregnancy.
Once they were born we were pretty much equal parents bar breastfeeding/expressing. As they got older I became the primary parent because she was just not good with older kids. By the time each was seven or eight I was the primary parent. By the time they were eight or nine I was home educating them I has also the sole earner. When the younger one was a teenager I divorced and became a single parent. You really think 9 months of pregnancy outweighs all that?
Sure, biology is not sex-blind. But the law can still be written to favor a parent that's a primary caregiver, regardless of whether that parent is male or female.
I don't think a couple gets to choose who's carrying the baby for 9 months...Is the law and society supposed to just ignore that?
What?
Trying to interpret your comment in the best way possible, I'd say that my viewpoint is that it matters more how society treats a pregnant woman and the man that impregnated her, rather than the fact that the woman got pregnant and the man didn't.
It's probably best for laws to be dynamic to how cultural norms evolve regarding impregnation, which means unfortunately for hyperrational technocrats, it's best to pay attention to outcomes rather than focus on things like "biological differences between man and woman". An unwed woman getting pregnant in 1940 USA is treated culturally much differently than an unwed woman getting pregnant in 2026 USA, for example.
Do you have any examples of laws that couldn't just be thought out better and anchor their reasoning more accurately and neutrally? Falling back to using gender often just feels like a quick hack.
Falling back to gender (or race, or whatever protected class you’d like to consider) is far less about rote equality or equity than it is about correcting earlier imbalances of power/access.
People chafe against things like DEI as arbitrary favoritism completely failing to note that yes, this policy is meant to promote equality, not to represent it. In the case of promoting female stem workers you might say it’s a policy designed to give women equal-ish access to the job market by way of giving them preferential treatment in hiring, to counteract biases of men favoring men during that process.
The ideal outcome of any policy like this is that once the systemic inequity is resolved, the policy can be retired.
Assuming all humans and populations of humans are interchangeable parts. We are not. Not so much "race" - which is a fairly idiotic concept as it's applied -- but hereditarianism is very much a real thing. IQ equates with life outcomes and is highly heritable. How people migrate (or are forced to migrate) can help you understand a population and population differences. Nigerians who immigrate to the U.S. now do far better than populations that were brought over during chattel slavery. Likely those who were captured by their neighbors and sold to European slavers had to lose battles of some variety. Selection effect. There are also documented differences between native populations in regions. Things like the harsh winter hypothesis pose that harsher environments lead to higher IQs. Otherwise, why doesn't every country look like Japan? If we don't diagnose the real problems societal interventions will fail to help anyone in a lasting/meaningful way.
Universal human rights are inalienable.
Distinction is always going to be less effective than universally agreed declaration. We can declare: all human beings have equal rights.
Pandora's box is the universality aspect, which must be manifest by those agreeing to declare the nature of ones rights in respect to others rights, both for oneself and for others. This is the reason a distinction-based legal position is poor policy.
We cannot distinguish between a man and a woman if we are agreeing to the universality of their equal human rights.
The we part is the difficult part, apropos pandora's boxes. But ultimately, universality is very empowering to the individual.
If a man and a woman are both drunk and have sex, the man is declared the rapist. (This is said as an example of where the laws, as applied, are not gender neutral)
Yeah, not all states actualize human rights, whether they are party to the declaration or not, as well as others. I don't need to focus on any particular state - I've seen many of them - and understand that there are definitely shifting loads in the worlds cultural fabric.
Does that still happen if the women penetrate the man?
If the woman regrets it? Yeah, probably.
Getting precisely 50% of the assets of a marriage that dissolves isn't a universal human right though.
Well, asset management could also be held as a responsibility of the marriage in the first place, and that can only be done by way of expressing ones rights with another, properly.
That this expression has become the root of an industry of exploitation (divorce proceedings are a big circus) is clear. Rights are not a constant. They have to be expressed.
Like in vows, maybe.
Men and women are different, but now women make more money than men but the laws were written when the opposite was true
of course they have more differences than that.
no controversy of this in chimps.
no magical evolutionary moment when they became the same in humans.
biologists know this. sociologists start with an unfounded null assumption.
The assumption is that biological masculinity and femininity form a spectrum based on the complex interplay of genes, environment, and time, and that, just because you know what genitals someone sports, it doesn't mean you know how their bodies and minds will respond to particular circumstances.
This cuts both ways: you will often see physically emasculated men get treated as if they're not men, to their detriment. Think of less-developed young men being cut from sports teams; they have the same in-built need for physical activity, competition, even some measure of practicing dominance, as larger boys. Deprivation leads to frustration and more.
What spectrum lies between “can become pregnant” and “can make someone pregnant” other than “cannot do either”?
You seem to be treating stereotypes as facts.
the desired outcome seems to be that men and women are the same in situations where being a man is beneficial. In situations where being a woman is beneficial that goes away. For example 80% of healthcare workers are women, it is the biggest?(or close to) industry in the USA but I have never once seen someone pushing to correct that imbalance.
I don’t even get how I am supposed to hold my partner to the same standards I would hold a close male friend/family member. If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately. I have found just using the old adage “happy wife happy life” is most effective, but isn’t that inherently disrespectful? Like “I can’t reason with this person but if I upset them it’s gonna go poorly for me so I better let them have their way!”. The only way my relationship survives is if I have a bit of internalized misogyny and hold her to a different standard than I do myself or another man.
is being a healthcare worker beneficial?
> have never once seen someone pushing to correct that imbalance.
Conservative men rights advocates find such proposition insulting to men. It is not a manly men job.
Men in those positions are mocked by supposedly pro-male groups
> If I knew a dude who freaked out and yelled/sobbed several times a month over something inane like where to get dinner I would drop them immediately.
Why are you dating someone like that? Genuine question. I dont know ANY woman that cries that often. Not a single one.
Maybe be wise and break up.
I'm not sure if it's about same or universal, someone else already said it's about universal human rights that all humans must agree to demonstrate a practice of care with and towards each other.
Gosh, this thread is so full of sweeping takes. Different or equal in what regard? Income? Violent behavior? Or culinary skills? Maybe we should not codify stereotypes into law...
The current zeitgeist is trying to say that men and women are identical besides environmental cues.
I don't think anybody in their right mind is saying that. The prevailing wisdom seems to be to acknowledge that there are differences in different bodies that often manifest one way in women and another in men¹ but also to acknowledge that it is a lot more complicated than that, including that the binary male/female divide is not always sufficient³ and that environmental factors can have as much effect as the more easily analysed biological ones.
“They claim men and women are no different apart from their environment” tends to be a claim made by those who can't cope with the singular “they” let alone anything else, who are trying to make those who disagree on such points seem ridiculous.
---------
[1] particularly in the endocrine system, though in other parts² which might also have an impact on how we react to things and our mental health more generally
[2] it isn't just emotional matters and related coping mechanisms: heart attacks often manifest differently in women, or if not that then the signs are often misdiagnosed, for instance
[3] either for talking about specific detailed differences, or for identifying people in terms of their identity & phycological makeup more generally
In 2016 it was.
I think that's a straw man that you won't find anybody defending.
I would argue the opposite. Women are born with something that (most) Men want. That puts them at a natural advantage.
We're all here arguing the "hender pay gap", yet women have the single most amazing gift granted to them by the universe that men will never have. What I'd give to be the one to have given birth to my own children.
Care to elaborate? This seems like very obvious double edge sword. We as a society try to mitigate this differences.
There is an asymmetry in the amount of sexual desire between men and women.
The status quo of "sexual liberation" doesn't do much to mitigate this difference. We no longer live in a monogamous society.
Women, likewise, want men. Did you never think of that?
Have you ever spoken with a woman?
I have thought of that. Regardless, there is a pretty obvious discrepancy of supply/demand in heterosexual relationships, which only becomes more evident through my relations with women.
Equality and justice are certainly noble goals. but they are at this point merely goals. But in parallel, we very much need better support for the men going through the challenges that may come from the lack of equality in divorce proceedings.
Last week's tragedy here, with a father throwing his two young kids off a roof before jumping himself, has caused our community to focus - at least for a while - on what was missing and what our system did wrong and what could have been sone better to prevent that from having happened.
That is horrifying to hear.
Maybe men don't have supports until it's rock bottom or too late.
At the same time I don't think there's many men who beleive think the standard of supporting women, and children, early and often, should never be reduced or changed. Maybe it could be expanded.
Where did this happen? Just reading that is terrible.
A Pittsburgh suburb. Outside my wife's window. unfortunately, her blinds were closed - otherwise, she might have seen something was about to go terribly wrong and alerted the authorities.
>A good start would be enforcing truly gender neutral laws by governments all over the world.
This, a thousand times.
And I say that as a man who has lived in multiple countries in my lifetime, raising my family, through thick and thin.
>mens mental health
I no longer see it as a man problem, its a we problem.
Would be nice to force men to take care exactly the same about the children.
Kid takes immense toll on the body, career development and retirement savings of the woman.
Untill men could give birth to the child the truly gender neutral laws are unreachable goal.
Also men live shorter life - should their tax rate be higher?
> Also men live shorter life - should their tax rate be higher?
If anything it should be the opposite: men spend fewer years post-retirement and thus as less of a burden on social security and pensions.
Social contributions towards retirement should be lower, but taxes should be higher so the government can get the same money from man they've raised as from woman.
But men on average spend more years working than women. Women's life expectancies are longer, but they retire earlier, by about 2 years: https://www.fairstone.ca/en/learn/budgeting-and-saving/whats...
No, we could treat people in family court equally by gender, and look to the specifics of the case to help decide on what to do.
The rest of your comment is full of non-sequiturs, and even an outright error.
People, especially men, need to get way more actively political than passively political in order to solve these issues. The biased judges are often ignorant and not even thinking philosophically about right or wrong or fairness in most of these cases. Also men have a natural bias to protecting women and children, which is also taken advantage of knowingly or unknowingly by the other side. People or individuals can be unfair and inconsistent, but systems can be fair and consistent. Make systems for this. Currently we don't exactly have consistent or fair systems for this. A decently defined system for the scope of handling divorce that is fair to both man, woman and children isn't something that is hard. It may feel like the brain would hurt, if you have not been thinking much.
I'd like to hear the women's side of the story.
The other side of the story is already in the comments. They cheated. Convenience. Some of them even literally confessed literally that. I am curious, is it because you think women can do no wrong and can only be victims? Otherwise, why would you say that in a narrative about declining men's mental health with hard data points by a government agency?
Didn’t the marriage laws start favoring women because patriarchy caused immense bias and harm to women over the millennia and left them persecuted and penniless?
So, the solution is to penalize innocent men who had nothing to do with those events, let alone that era? How is that even a logically sound stance?
I don't think your rhetorical question adds much to the discussion at hand if we're being honest.
Make Prenups mandatory, and make sure shared parenting is the default.
Everyone has a prenuptial: the state provides a default. Either explicitly, e.g. in writing, or implicitly, e.g. via court proceedings.
Closer then, to the ratio both had while single?
The idea behind an uneven split is that, in a lot of marriages, the partners do not act fully independently of each other. In marriages where one partner stops working to have or raise kids, they do so knowing the other partner will continue to work. Splitting according to the ratio before marriage would suit this (extremely common) type of relationship very poorly, because the partner who raised a child would have an interrupted career while the other wouldn't. It would be unfair and would discourage this (normal, often desirable) type of relationship
I started reading this thinking I would disagree, but you're right, in some countries (Canada for sure), there's a weird thing that some genders are more equal than others. I know this sounds bad, but I am a left-leaning feminist.
I've seen first hand where spouses of equal education and opportunity are treated as traditional values applied.
And nearly always it's the male that has to take a second job/cash in their retirement to meet societies demands.
I went through a divorce in Canada, there is a thing called "amiable divorce/separation". Where both parties negotiate a fair divorce agreement rather than the standard "Pay continued support for X months/years + lump sum".
So there is some variability, and of course in my case it was a "happy path" scenario where both me and my ex-wife mutually wanted the divorce.
But by default you have to pay spousal support regardless of how well-off your partner is. The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially. Which is really not a contemporary point of view to make as a blanket statement.
> The assumption is that women will be worse off after a divorce financially
And this was exactly what happened to my friends. The women who sought alimony actually earned much more. The financial burden was so tough that it turned a good hard working member of the society into almost a criminal (if you don't pay alimony, you can be even arrested for it in some countries).
You're not wrong.
But again, it seems weird when a male has to work 2 jobs in their 50's to send large monthly payments to a female that has a larger or equivalent net worth.
And it happens routinely. Of course, there are also a lot of men out there that just want to stiff their ex. But that doesn't mean my former example isn't happening.
Cool. You think that explains the findings in TFA related to adolescent boys?
From a better write up of this same story:
Young men aged 15 to 24 show concerning trends in their self-rated mental health and rates of mental illness. For instance, between 2012 and 2022:
the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52% the percentage who experienced: mood disorders increased from11% to 16% generalized anxiety disorder increased from 4% to 10%
It could. As a father of a 18yo I can tell that they are very well aware of what awaits them in their adult lives.
Really? They may think they're aware. but don't be swayed by their confidence. As a grown man, you know life has a way of surprising you.
He's saying: They are aware of stories of problems adults face.
It is absolutely true that someone else's life doesn't define their own future path, but that doesn't mean they don't latch onto those stories and project the negativity onto themselves. One cannot see the future, so it is quite common to look to others to predict what the future may hold. As you point out, the future is often completely different to what you imagined, but it is what you are imagining that shapes how you feel.
I’m the father of a 17 year old. He is very aware of the many challenges facing his generation and this is not a topic of concern for him or his peer-group. It’s almost as if this particular thread is dominated by selection bias.
More generally - we can ask if there is data in this study or another one that supports the idea that teen mental health issues are substantially due to their fears of unfair divorce terms they may face 20 years in the future. In my experience as a former teen and father of two, that is simply not happening and I’d need to see the data that says it is before I take it seriously.
They don’t have any real worries about how they will feel in their 30s because they think 7th grade was a long time ago and they don’t quite believe they are actually going to be 30 some day.
there's way to many comments projecting their issues on to the title.
My comment is about grown men going through grief because of biased laws. What is the relation to "TFA related to adolescent boys"?
Now, to answer your data points regardless - I don't think you understand that divorce isn't in isolation, it obviously affects entire families, including children. So, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more data showing these young boys are from broken homes.
TFA means 'the article in the post'. They are asking you how your comment is relevant to the article being discussed.
Oh, got it. The article is actually a rehash of an official government publication:
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/health/publications/health...
And in here, you will find:
This is what I was responding to.What you should have learned is a lot simpler. Don't marry the wrong woman.
> Don't marry the wrong woman.
I guess you missed the last part of my comment. Women are majorly incentivised legally to walk out of a marriage while being financially rewarded for it. Even if you marry the "right" woman, it doesn't guarantee she won't turn into the "wrong" woman over time. And in modern times, it doesn't take a lot for that transition especially with social media really rallying to take advantage of the legal loopholes - eg. you can cheat on your partner AND walk away with 50% of the marital wealth.
Brilliant advice. Why didn't he think of that.
It's the same advice most people give to women who are in abusive situations. Gender equality means gender equal advice, right?
Equality usually implies trying to pull others up to the same level, not pushing them down to the same level, Harrison Bergeron style.
Hmmm yes my country expects women to earn their own money (the government is paying for your university degree so you better use it you lazy harlots!) but then people start whining about declining birth rates. You just can't win.
Equality under the law in just about every area of law would go a long ways. Divorce and family court stuff is just but one example of many
It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Legally, people are marrying a law in their place of residence, marriage is a contract and agreement with the government.
Through a marriage to the government's law first, two people are married in the eyes of the law.
The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
> It's important for people to remember they don't marry other people.
Of course you do. As you even point out yourself, you marry the government, which is people.
> The first time I came across this it made me wonder how much people are aware of this central, third party in between the two people in their marriage.
Considering that the traditional marriage process involves two people standing in front of representatives of the government and declaring promises to them it seems like it'd be a bit hard to miss? I suppose if others also don't realize that government is people then they might not realize what the people in the audience are doing? But, then again, given that the two people prepared to make those promises are usually responsible for inviting that audience to the wedding you'd think they would have questions about why they are there otherwise?
UK is going the other way: they're consulting on giving non married couples rights.
https://www.setfords.co.uk/2026/09/01/new-rights-for-cohabit...
At the request of the family law lobby, naturally ...
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/a-fairer-end-to-...
"The very limited set of protections under the current law can leave cohabitants facing significant financial difficulties when relationships end, which disproportionately affects vulnerable groups such as women, and children..."
Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
> Women...so naturally vulnerable ?! In 2026?
All else aside for a second... yes? Women are both physically and economically (primarily when they are stay at home moms) vulnerable. No, that doesn't mean I'm saying that no men are vulnerable at all but averaged out to a population it's clear.
Is this actually borne out by the data? According to a quick Google search, men make up 73% of Canadian homicide victims and 66% of the homeless population.
So the actual criteria is vulnerability, not sex or gender…
As indicated by the use of "such as" in the original quote, yes
Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
And I don't make a habit of pointing out women's smaller stature to call them vulnerable?? Wtf
> Economically disadvantaged often through choice is not "vulnerable". It's "economically disadvantaged", at best.
It leaves them economically vulnerable. When 100% of the income is going into one person's bank account that means they have the opportunity for economic control over their partner. Their partner does not have savings of their own to speak of. No, healthy relationships do not work that way. But a lot of relationships do.
Also, it's often not "through choice". A lot of the time childcare is more expensive than one parent leaving their job. A lot of families can't afford an alternative.
Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage, or meeting each other, as default. Make shared custody also the default, unless one side is found guilty of abuse.
It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
> Force a Prenup ratio equal to the assets they had at the exact point prior to marriage
Which would completely ignore the economic imbalance I was talking about, which occurs during the marriage.
> It's 2026, and women are starting to outearn men in some cities. Why make men the sole breadwinners of the family?
Like I said, making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many, while the kids are young and childcare is expensive. There’s no reason why that has to be the woman but the data shows that the vast majority of the time it is.
There probably isn't much of an economic imbalance if the prenup ratio was based on when both were single.
Even if one party earns less, I don't see how "vulnerable" that would make them if it was prior to meeting the other person.
> making a parent a stay at home parent is simply economic reality for many
The topic was couples/cohabitation/marriage, not child rearing. The concerns you raise would be equally applicable where the parents have decided they want absolutely nothing to do with each other. There is truth in what you are saying, but it is an entirely different topic. How to deal with the child is a negotiation that takes place around the child, not around a romantic relationship (or lack thereof).
In the romantic relationship, there is no realistic situation where one party ends up with all the money unless the other one willingly hands theirs over. But any of us can do that. I can willing give you all my money now just the same and there would be no good legal recourse if I decide it was a bad idea later. The only reason we have these ideas in the world of romance is due to the historical idea that women aren't capable of thinking for themselves.
How are you economically disadvantaged by having the choice to not get a job?
Pro-tip (for both unmarried men and women): You can sign a pre-nup even if you never have any nuptials. It turns out that people can choose to enter into a contract with each other at any time. There are plenty of reasons why people in a relationship may choose not to get legally married, but that does not mean you have to leave yourself at the mercy of the defaults in the law, which may or may not make sense for you.
This is especially important if there are children involved in your situation.
Are you saying there's effectively a pre-commonlaw agreement mechanism available to curtail fallout from even just a drfault commonlaw arrangement?
Pro tip: in Scotland (where the UK gov is taking inspiration from), that likely doesn't override rights in statutes
The law isn't simply a "default" in this matter that you can opt out of AIUI
People on HN are comically unaware of how frequently pre-nups get tossed out in court.
I agree that divorce proceedings could be more equal than they are. But society is not gender neutral, so things like divorce proceedings aren't either. Women are far, far more likely to be stay at home parents. That means they're far more involved in childcare and far less likely to be earning money independently. That makes the situation very difficult when it comes to divorce.
There is the underlying reality and bias. When I'd pick up my kid from Kindergarten it was me and 20-30 other moms hanging out on the playground afterwards. So yes, in that sense we may not see gender neutral outcomes.
The bias however is absurdly strong. My first lawyer said I should have taken my ex's offer of slightly less than 50/50. She said that my ex's floor was 50/50 and that if we couldn't show that we could effectively coparent they'd give it to the Mom.
That's exactly what happened and it held through her completely cutting me off from my son. I even went through a modification try and the same Judge upheld the situation.
As a result I haven't spoken with my son in almost 2 years now.
I would definitely have preferred to have had a couple more days a week off with my kids while they grew up, and given their Mum a chance to do her thing, too. Instead, it became my responsibility to pay the bills, and the rest of the crews right to make them. So yeah, that's what I did.
>2 years
Kids need their Dads, and Dads have to be strong as hell for them, even still, in this modern world. I am super glad to have gotten my two giant oafs into adulthood well enough to be surfing the wonders the world has in store for them both .. but yeah, you'll get your ass kicked. Be a kick ass Dad, then.
The most important thing is that your son knows you're there for him as he grows up. Maybe keep a journal, don't stop writing important things to him, notes and ideas from his Dad, for him to read when he gets his own agency over things.
How is it even possible for someone to prevent you from seeing your own child for two years? That would be completely illegal in my country. Can one parent really just decide to cut the other parent out of their child's life and get away with it? It's absolutely proven than this is against child's children best interest.
It happens all the time.
How is it possible? Well, theoretically it's not. The order I got and subsequent denial of modification blatantly violate state law and appealate precedent. But it's all procedural. The standard for the underlying opinion of the judge is that if there is one fact to support that opinion then the ruling is upheld.
So I could have appealed and won. But then I go back to the same judge that doesn't think my kid should have any contact with me and all she has to do is find one fact to support that.
More often a custody order is just a piece of paper. The primary parent can screw with visitation easily and it takes time and money to go to court. The original divorce cost me $100k, another contempt motion $7k, and the failed modification $20k.
Custody ends for Fathers when they give up. I gave up unusually early (which royally pissed off the judge) and this is my punishment.
Family court is a scam, and if you end up there you’ve already lost. For some reason your usual legal rights don’t apply; the entire system seems to be constructed to drain everyone of money. It’s basically the definition of “the process is the punishment.” I’ve never seen a good outcome from it.
Yes, this is why a prenup asset ratio and shared parenting should be the default in America (and Canada).
Why not have the laws take into consideration stay at home status regardless of gender?
This is the way I'd prefer!
You're not wrong but in situations where there are no kids, and no one stayed home "unfair" settlements are forced.
For one anecdotical story like that, there's 100 more where the man is neglecting their kid, so this should be taken with a grain of salt
Source?
I strongly oppose all comments that seem to have the causal relationship reversed, that somehow by some biological effect they are now more depressed than in the past. I think that instead the extreme demands of society are the cause and that suffering in silence is the result.
What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life? What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media? What do you expect when men are uniquely dehumanized and calling men less-than is okay regarding height, looks, money, or outward masculinity? If anything I am surprised that the numbers indicating suffering in silence aren't worse.
The leader of the New Zealand Green Party once stated "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
I strongly believe (or hope) that in the future the idea of viewing everything through a lens of group theory and identifying who has privilege and who suffers the most in terms of stereotypical cohorts, which is the dominant medium for attributing blame in society at large now, will be viewed by future societies with disdain.
Being able to say that as a political figure and not getting an unequivocal drumming down by everyone else shows how far gone the west is. There is no turning this ship around.
I hope you agree it's because she identified a demographic group of as causing a lot of problems, not because of which group she chose, right? The most powerful man in the world is blaming trans women for half the world's ills and we can all agree they're both bad statements?
Maga and woke are two sides of the same retarded coin. Choosing some group and blaming them for everything bad in the entire universe.
Somehow many people think the problem is choosing the wrong group. Nope; the problem is choosing a group, full stop.
Is it even possible to step back from this level of polarization? Centrists quickly get shoved into one side or the other depending on where their funding or family loyalties are. It just keeps ratcheting up when I start to think it's starting to level off
Honestly, yes I think it is possible for things to get better because they have frankly been FAR worse, for reference see most of human history. Most of us lived our formative years in an era of unprecedented peace, we currently find ourselves in an era of transition which often leads to periods of tribalism and strife.
This, this right here! A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
The New Zealand Green Party got 13.3% of the vote. I could pull all sorts of absolute drivel from any party in any country of the world that got ~ 13.3% of the vote.
Declaring "the west gone" is something better left on a reactionary platform like X, rather than something like Hacker News.
Seems like a fairly high percentage for a green party. Are you saying it was low because of their comments? Did they lose media support or have to apologize?
I'm not well-read on New Zealand politics outside of the broadest strokes (e.g. positive indigenous involvement). I would imagine very few people on this forum are well-read on New Zealand politics, given the demographics that we can probably collectively safely assume.
> Seems like a fairly high percentage for a green party.
Which makes this statement, unless you're well-read on New Zealand politics, pretty strange. Do you even know if they have something like ranked choice voting, or vote-for-party rather than vote-for-candidate, that could greatly impact the performance of smaller national parties?
Downvote me all you want, pessimism is never popular but its often right.
It's a zero-sum game. Everyone, and I mean everyone, is pursuing power. Power means different things, in different contexts, but it always gets back to power.
The most obvious form of power is resources and money. But there are so many other forms. These identity and gender issues we've seen over the last 10 years have absolutely, undoubtedly been at the core about one thing: power.
Now before you get all upset, pursuing power isn't always a bad thing. If you've been historically marginalized, aren't you within your right as a human being to seek equality? The question really is in how you do it, and who suffers as a result, and how far you take it. It's very easy to swing the pendulum back too far, and end up in a society that may or may not be any better but just different.
Your comment isn't saying anything though. Everything is about power. Noted.
In the last election cycle, major political party and pundits made it their agenda to frame male violence as good manly man thing.
I don't know about white and cis, but you can't argue with facts that men are overwhelmingly the source of individual violence (as opposed to wars, etc.).
There are many kinds of violence, of which physical is but one. Arguably not all dominated by men.
> "I am a violence prevention minister and I know who causes violence in the world, it is white, cis men."
That may well be true, but its also true that the main victims of that violence are "white, cis men"
But people love to lump other people together by shallow characteristics because looking at individuals is hard, and looking at systems individuals live in.
>What do you expect when most men have been priced out of a happy life?
Most PEOPLE are being priced out of a happy life. I'm not aware of any "man tax" men are having to pay when they go out to eat, or when buying groceries, or renting/paying their mortgage.
Your anger is misplaced. You we're raised to believe that a mans job was to earn a high enough income to provide for their family, and now that shit is expensive, that perception society forced unto you makes you feel like a "failure". You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
>What do you expect when most men are villainized in the stories that dominate narratives in modern media?
Most men are not being made up as villains. This reads like your algorithm/news feed is trying to enrage you.
Are there idiots out there who are attributing the wrongdoings of certain men, and/or the issues of men as a whole to individuals? Yes, but that some idiots voice their opinions on social media is nothing new, nor is it unique to men to be unfairly judged on the internet. Every demographic has bullshit thrown their way these days.
Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media. It's pretty obvious to anyone looking at the West from the outside.
It's also a reason why the West is failing, but certainly not the only one. Social Welfare states like Europe are burning, since it was never sustainable.
America is fighting among itself, because there is no Asabiyyah (social cohesion), and the wealth inequality (wealth pump) is growing massively.
Compare that with China or Singapore, where social harmony is perhaps the most important thing in their society, food is subsidized, education as a high priority, their laws are punitive, infrastructure is extremely new, etc.
That’s a crazy comment for me.
I don’t think you’re open for a discussion but I’ll try; just judging from experience talking to other people who hold similar entrenched beliefs, I might be very wrong.
> Social Welfare states like Europe are burning
I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
> the West is failing
I wasn’t aware of that either! Seems to me that western countries (I assume you mean US and EU with that?) still hold most of the power worldwide?
> Men and their ideals, are portrayed as inherently evil in a good chunk of western media
The opposite is also true. I think it’s just because most heroes and villains in western media are men - hell most characters are men.
France is burning because they're defaulting and can't pay for their social welfare benefits, and Germany's economy isn't doing so well. That's a good chunk of Europe's economy in a nutshell. Only Poland I believe, has improved and officially was considered developed since 2018.
France's West African colonies are also leaving France as they inch closer to China, politically and economically.
China is rising, and so are other (previously and currently) Third World nations. It's a matter of when they take power, not if. India and Indonesia seem to be heavy hitters, for now and probably for the near future. I wouldn't count out Africa (Nigeria, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda) or Latin America (Mexico, El Salvador, Brazil, etc).
I stand by my statement of Western entertainment demeaning men, probably out of anger, or as something of an alibi for Hollywood after the #Metoo movement. Occupy Wallstreet is also notable for happening before this.
Germany has the third largest GDP worldwide so I don’t think it’s “not doing so well” considering how tiny it is.
China/Asia, South America and Africa have the most space, people and natural resources so it just makes sense that they would be more successful in the long run though.
>I stand by my statement
That is fair. I stand by mine that this doesn’t convince me. Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power. You can’t really be an effective or convincing villain if you’re powerless.
"Of course men are the villains when they hold the most power."
I agree with the statement, but not the context.
Looking at Velma, Dragon Age: Veilguard, Ghostbusters 2016, Star Wars sequels, She-Hulk, and much more, a good chunk of such Western media feels like they have some disdain for a large portion of fans who watch them.
Like a Superiority complex formed out of deeprooted insecurities of their feelings towards men.
You could argue men have reacted to this in the same way, especially in Instagram and the like.
If you're going to use art to back up your point that society hates men, then there is a literal mountain of artwork throughout humanity that vilifies women.
Nobody should be villified for who they are, especially on Mainstream media. That's my point.
Germany made its money through high end production (which is handled by Asia) and its Mittelstand (which like most of the West, is starting to slow down massively).
Germany is still in a good position for Europe, but it can't compete as well as it once did compared to Asia or the US. Even then, the US is having issues with China.
Men are interested in things, while women are interested in people. That's probably why most characters are men overall. Same with men being more likely to be Autistic.
That being said, it's quite noticeable that people in the entertainment sector, who are probably marginalized, are directing some anger against men.
Ghostbusters 2016, likely started this, and I do wonder if it was to appease the women and other groups after the the #Metoo movement, where marginalized people were given a voice, to pretend that Hollywood was like them (they aren't, look at their governmental funding before #Metoo).
> Men are interested in things, while women are interested in people.
Seems like a generalisation. I’m a man and I’m more interested in people than in things for example.
> That's probably why most characters are men overall.
How does this follow what you wrote before; I don’t see any connection tbh
If men are into things, then they likely are into abstractions, concepts, ideas, etc. Stories are one of these. I remember there's neurological evidence to back this up, but I have no links on me currently.
> I live there and wasn’t aware that it’s burning - Europe also isnt a singular entity.
As a resident of Portland OR, I'm all too familiar with people pointing to protests confined to a few downtown city blocks as evidence of the entire city being burned to the ground.
Seems like France/Europe is currently suffering from that same sort of propaganda. "Europe is so far gone because thr Gucci store in Paris got looted and some cop cars burned."
Historically, French protests have always been rowdy and widespread. I don't think Portland's protests were even close to what France has seen.
French protests are known for their ferocity in European context, yes. But what was dominant in the recent weeks were not protests, it was the rioting. Obviously.
People protesting poor school conditions don't burn down their schools or random public buildings.
Your description seems to ignore that a historic town hall that survived two world wars was invaded and torched, and burnt to the ground, and that entire neighbourhoods -public spaces- in major cities have been turned into warzones from weeks of riots involving hundreds of thousands of people, causing extensive property damage, widespread feeling of insecurity and environmental damage.
Your takeaway from this was apparently 'looted luxury store and burned cop cars'.
Is it your source of news that's to blame for that misapprehension, or your personal stance on things?
edit: typo
The sex ration of completed suicides in the USSR as a whole between 1984 to 1990 was 3,9 men to 1 women.
That is, near exactly the same as in the 'capitalist' world then, and now.
(In the Slavic-predominant part of the USSR, that is Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, it was an even worse 4,6-to-1. Somewhat lower in Central Asia at ~2,7-to-1).
look at the sibling comment
> You're not a failure, you're just someone living in a capitalist society.
I think I need that on a T-shirt.
I think the fact that in general women are considered to have more mental health issues and men committing suicide way more often shows that this headline is true.
Women attempt suicide more often than men do, but men are more likely to use more "effective" means (e.g. gunshot to head).
This is not something I think about much (fortunately), but what is the point in attempting suicide by means that are not likely to work? How do we measure "true attempts" vs "cries for help." I guess ultimately they are very close together... but all the same it seems harder to attempt and not succeed.
The person may not definitively want to die, but may wake up one day and not care either way, so attempting is a roll of the dice.
It also may be down to what was available to them at the time. There’s a famous case study where a lot of women in the UK were dying by putting their heads in the oven and gassing themselves in the 1950s. The UK government changed the formulation of gas that was being piped to homes and the suicides stopped. If those women really were dead-set on suicide, they would have just chosen a different method.
What people who’ve never had extreme depression might not realize is that in those low moments it feels like you will always feel this way and it will never ever change. Then you wait an hour or so and the feeling passes. So a person may not feel suicidal 24 hours a day, only at specific moments. But in those low moments, the chances of suicide dramatically increase and as the UK case shows, accessibility to quick suicide methods makes a big difference.
I think in general people are not educated on the likelihood of success per attempt method, which seems ok.
Men are more aggressive so they choose more aggressive methods, which work better.
Attention.
> cries for help.
This is the most plausible hypothesis, judging revealed preferences by the outcomes.
>This is the most plausible hypothesis
It's not the most plausible hypothesis. Men are more likely to own firearms than women are, therefore they're more likely to attempt suicide by firearms.
How does that explain that this male vs female ratio stands in countries with low gun ownership rates?
I've been curious about the phenomenon of suicide for a while, so I've read quite a bit about it in different countries. One of the interesting things about suicide is the means of suicide is always whatever is most available or readily available in the environment. In the U.S. where guns are more available, about half of all gun deaths are suicides, and about 80% of those are men. But in some countries in Africa, men kill themselves more frequently as well, and the primary mechanism is by drinking pesticide.
My mental model is that men tend to be more extreme and less conservative than women (risk-taking is more prevalent), and this leads to more extreme approaches in how they try to kill themselves.
But it's been a while since I've read any of these statistics, and I have no special credentials. Just thinking about what we're observing.
Nonsense, that is an America-centric attempt at making up a narrative. The sex differences in suicide outcomes are essentially the same in countries with low to zero firearms ownership, eg Europe, Australia, Japan. If there are no firearms available, then other almost equally lethal methods are used (hanging, trains, etc).
The sex difference in completed suicides is nearly universally 3-to-1 to 4-to-1.
Top suicide methods in my country:
hanging/strangulation (9,164, 49%);
self-poisoning (4,098, 22%);
jumping/multiple injuries (2,423, 13%).
All three are equally available to men and women and anyone else.
In terms of rate, male suicide rate 17.2 per 100,000. Female suicide rate of 5.4 per 100,000
London has the lowest overall rate of just 7.3 per 100,000, 65% of the national rate. North East being highest at 14 per 100k.
The highest population group being Males aged 50-54 years, being 27.9 per 100,000
Wales is even worse, with Males aged 45-49 years being 32.3 per 100,000, and overall 21.6 (male) // 7.5 (female)
Generally the worse the economic opportunities, the higher the rate. Middle aged men are most at risk, men in general are at high risk, and guns have nothing to do with it
Gunshot suicides account for 2.5% of suicides in England and Wales [1].
Try again.
[1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15834784/
Even controlling for that the pattern holds.
effect still remains after you look at statistics in countries with low firearm ownership
Commonly proposed reasons I've seen mostly involve conscientiousness around impact on their body and setting. For the most stereotypical two methods: a gunshot to the head leaves a mess and means you're going to need a closed casket, while the mess from a slit wrist in a bathtub can be washed down the drain, and easily hidden while still having an open casket. But it's harder to "succeed" with a slit wrist in a bathtub, and it takes longer, giving more time to be found or to change your mind.
Yeah, because women tend to seek more clinical assistance than men do so of course the attempt % would be higher for them as well, because how are you even gonna know that number for men if they aren't even getting recorded.. the suicide numbers are the only actual real recordable evidence unfortunately.
Unfortunately a lot of attempts also end up in the ER, which is the main source of numbers here.
To ignore the terrible things going through the minds of people trying¹ and the effects attempts, especially successful ones, can have on others, for a moment²… I wonder if anyone has looked deeper into those two stats to, see if the attempt rate is actually the same but the lower success rate means that the average women in that sort of crisis position attempts more times.
--------
[1] Speaking as one who did some decades ago, as irritating as life is right now I'm glad I bucked the trend of any “men have a higher 'success' rate” stat.
[2] Sometimes my nerd side takes control and empathy takes a back seat.
There's too many men in this world, a surplus. Some percent of men will be the winners (not a large percent) and the rest will be losers who never reproduce and have unhappy lives doing hard work with little reward.
In the past we had large wars, harsh labor, that killed off men, but not today. There's roughly 5% males born than females. India and China have aborted 10s of millions of female babies. In the Western world, massive numbers of men (from low to high skilled) have move there. So here we are, men everywhere, roaming around grocery stores trying to talk to women, 70 to 80% of the population on dating apps are males, bars are filled with men. It's not a good time to be a low status man.
https://acoup.blog/2025/07/18/collections-life-work-death-an...
> Expressed another way, that would mean that 10% of all males surviving to adulthood would perish in combat.
> We’ll get back around to fertility rates later in the series but for how if we assume each woman in this society is having on average five live childbirths, a 2% chance of death at each stage adds up pretty quickly – a woman who gave birth five times with a 2% chance of dying each time has a total chance of dying at one stage or another of 9.607%, which as you will note is not far off from the chance of dying in a battle
One difference there is that's a 9.607% chance of dying after reproducing, whereas for men 10% die (before?) reproducing
Historical solution: war
Latest figures say there are about 101.03 males per 100 females. For some reason this means most men will be losers?
You are counting the over 50s/60s. Men die off faster and it was more equal in the older generations. That's not what we are talking about here. We are talking about men who are attempting to start their lives and a family and/or date. In that pool, there's A LOT more men than women in the western world. Particularly the USA.
UN's global average sex ratio at birth of approximately 105 boys for every 100 girls
Yes, thank you. I don't know why we're always so dishonest about this topic (especially the most vocal younger crowd).
Men and women are far too picky compared to the past. That's why they die alone. It's that simple.
There's nothing wrong with this if it means you're happier than being stuck in a relationship you don't want, but you can't have it both ways.
Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options. Not liking your options is vastly different from having no options at all. Your options can change if you make the change within as well. The fact that this is such a modern and loud problem also points to the lack of competition you'd face compared to the past. We've overcomplicated this beyond belief. That's not nature's doing.
> Most people reading this know exactly who they'd be with if they just said yes to their options.
What does this mean? Just lower your standards and there's a woman out there for you?
It's been a long time since I was single, but I never felt like that. I worked at a job with a bunch of other men and didn't have a lot of social outlets that involved women. My candidate pool was close to zero. I eventually recognized this and found ways to broaden my pool, but it wasn't easy.
I'm not prescribing anything. I'm describing the situation.
I'm only speculating that I think the past used to be (a lot) worse. Competition was higher across the board for significantly worse options across the board.
So much of the modern era is defined by the desire for social change, but nobody seems to pause and think what that must mean regarding the perception of their options (and themselves). It means even your worst option today probably isn't that bad or is already more similar to you than you want to believe. I think this all boils down to mortality. Other people change slower than you have time for, so on some level you do have to either compromise or make your own changes at the pace you prefer. You can't spend life looking at the rear view mirror and a horizon that never comes.
A casual look on social media tends to confirm that the same people not liking their options also think they were "born in the wrong era" or similar.
I don't know anyone who likes me sexually or romantically. Are you telling me that's not normal?
You'd be surprised. How are you so sure of that? You're the judge, not me.
The vast majority of heterosexual men who are unsuccessful romantically has nothing to do with their "status." A bit of self-confidence and the ability to listen to and empathize with women is literally all it takes. Women don't want to date chuds, shocker.
Also, dating apps are pointless. Go volunteer for a community organization or join a pickleball league. Don't force it.
How are men supposed to develop that self confidence?
Exercise, self-improvement (reading, hobbies), socializing. Go do things with people. It requires effort, and can be intimidating.
Go take some social dance lessons like swing or salsa.
> Women don't want to date chuds, shocker.
An alarming number of my wife's female friends married chuds, or seem to only pursue chuds.
One of her friends is cheated on by almost every man she's dated. She also almost exclusively seems to date men who have been to prison
Obviously "not all women" but come on. Women date chuds all the time.
lol, how can you be this delusional
Does it imply also fewer men getting diagnosed? I presume it does.
I remember reading something about mental health in Iceland being much more even between men and women due to less perceived stigma and more equality, leading to men seeking help.
I don't understand this. If you want to compare mental health issue rate, why not compare mental health directly? Instead of a related factor?
It's 26%women/19%men some mental health issue and 7%women/4%men serious mental health issue
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness
How do you measure mental health directly? Everything has a sampling bias
Meeting DSM-IV diagnostic criteria
Great. How do you determine that men and women are seeking treatment at the same rate, and that diagnoses are being given out at the same rates for matching symptoms across genders?
It could just as much be the case that men are diagnosed at a lower rate because they seek out care less often (many studies point at this being true) or that men who do seek care are not diagnosed at as high of a rate despite having the same symptoms (men report higher rates of dissatisfaction with mental care, and other studies show gender bias in diagnosis - men get told to "man up" in so many words-, or men get misdiagnosed because symptoms for the same mental illness vary between men and women)
Sure. And how do you determine what percentage of a population fits that DSM-IV criteria?
You might be interested in operationalization. Every measurement is also an operationalization - even things like temperature, speed, and weight.
Eliding or obscuring the act of operationalization leads to reification - treating concepts like real tangible things. I wish reification was taken as seriously as our taboo of anthropomorphization. It happens way more, and sneakily smuggles in human values into the sciences. In some ways it's unavoidable, but being opaque about it and doing it without knowing is a sin.
Men and women have different mental health crisis spirals.
It's like the difference between killing yourself drunk crashing your car into a pole vs winding up in a wheelchair because you crashed into everything of value on the street before hitting the same pole slower. Which is worse depends on who you ask.
Right on point.
Men have a higher “success” rate, women attempt at a higher rate. Something to consider as well.
well if you succeed the first time I doubt you will try again.
This is a trap, just like it’s a trap when my wife asks me what’s wrong, I give an honest answer, and then I’m scorned for being weak [1]. Men need to cultivate an internal compass. The government can alleviate the issue by stopping the systemic preference of women that they have instituted in education, employment, and law.
[1] To head things off, I’m fine, thanks to a few sessions of therapy a few years back
Just a few days ago my wife told me that a woman should never express empathy to a man when he complains about life being difficult (because apparently then he will spend the rest of his life complaining, and never grow up). This is a wisdom she learned from her mother.
From my perspective, that's a complete idiocy. (And incompatible with love.) But she is not the first woman I heard to express a similar opinion. It's in the culture.
I’m having a hard time buying the argument that the law prefers women when women just had their bodily autonomy stripped away across the US only a few years ago and the very real, awful history that lead to the “me too” movement due to years of women not being taken seriously in the eyes of the law.
I have a feeling this comment will not sit well with you but I am very much willing to engage this in good faith. I don’t see what you’re seeing. There are definitely domains where different genders have the advantage, but to act like the law as a whole benefits women over men…that dog don’t hunt IMO
Education, there is a stronger argument there (re admissions and such, not safety). I agree that has gotten messy as hell at the very least.
Workplace, similar to my issue with the law claim.
I read through the underlying report, but the survey itself is extremely unremarkable.
There were only 12 very vague questions - and none actually asked the respondent about how they felt personally: "Where do you believe stereotypes about masculinity primarily come from?"
Only about 2/3 of the respondents even identified as male - this isn't a serious study of how men themselves feel. It's more of a survey about the public perception of men.
I had the same experience, I read the attached link, just read a lot of fluff, found the link to the actual report, and it wasn't much better. There's definitely an interesting discussion to be had about this topic, but the original post does not carry the right information to have that discussion, IMO.
Most things posted related to this subject on HN are essentially slop from a research perspective.
Few are even reading the article. It's mostly a way to start a discussion and vent.
This was a particular lazy government report that just happens to touch on a nascent gender war, but it is shocking how much published research in psychology is more or less like this.
Ah, interesting. Would another opinionated, but fair, framing of the survey be "If you are a man, how victimized do you feel due to your identity?"?
National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues. I'm sure they'll come out with a nice report on strategies to improve men's wellbeing that won't make a lick of difference unless the world at large starts to shift.
> National health reports cannot fix deep-seated cultural issues
It starts with an objective report on reality
It's like taking your blood pressure or blood sugar, it starts with data in health
This is public health and this report is the measuring instrument
This report is not an objective report on reality however (if such a thing is even possible when it comes to culture / psychology)
Government reports like this sometimes motivate additional studies and think pieces, which in turn creates a framing that may be used later when society decides it's truly ready for change.
So no, they can't change the world, but sometimes they can plant a seed.
This all is just pure virtue signaling and the only beneficiary will be some NGO who gets some money and produces a report and a slide deck which only they will read. It's like the Soviet joke of "we had a 4 hour meeting about improving production in communism in the factory today and after this we will work not better and not worse than before". Until that suffering actually causes measurable damage that affects something on a grand scale that the country needs, nothing really will happen.
We live in a world that desperately needs drastic measures to change it.
But we live too comfortably for anyone to take those actions.
Like a boiling frog, ppl will wake up when its too late.
So it shouldn’t be reported on?
Can you expand on this? It seems to me that deep seated cultural issues are the sort of thing that therapy is supposed to address. However, I may be looking at this from the wrong angle.
The people who see issues with themselves get therapy. The ones that see no issues with themselves don't.
That is what "deep-seated cultural issues" means. Some subset of the population aren't seeing a problem with their own behavior. They see nothing that needs addressing. The rest have to learn how to put up with or avoid them.
Is efficacy not part of your calculus?
Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?
The report gives no indication its a male problem. It’s just a survey targeting men. Maybe its a general mental health problem. We know mental health issues in women have increased over the same time period.
Okay? What's your point? That the report didn't find every problem, it just found one problem?
The claim is its a MALE mental health problem. Where is the evidence?
This report? The existence of a male mental health problem does not imply the existence or absence of a female mental health problem or any other type if mental health problem.
>The existence of a male mental health
Maybe you can you disambiguate your phrasing here. Which do you mean?
1.There is a MALE mental health problem -- some mental health problem wholly or partially unique to men
2. There is a mental health problem observed among men
If #1, where is the evidence? A men-only survey can't show it. If you surveyed left-handed people and 30% had anxiety, that doens't mean there is a left-handed anxiety problem.
If #2, we agree on what the research shows, but it brings your original point into question: "Isn't recognizing there is a problem the first step on fixing the problem?" Which problem are we recognizing? Labeling a general problem a male one assumes a diagnosis, which points the search for causes and fixes at men when nothing in this report shows that's where they are, and other available information shows worsening mental health in women as well.
Got my hand slapped by HR for posting Movember stuff or International Men's day stuff. Silence is a learned response.
> Movember stuff or International Men's day stuff
Which one was it?
Maybe I'm missing some context around this, but from skimming the wikipedia pages, both seem fine? Is one of them considered controversial?
HR is overwhelmingly subservient to feminist orthodoxy and feminist orthodoxy is categorically hostile to any implication that men require any emotional support on a societal level.
In this context probably both
He didn't say xor. Maybe it was worded as "your recent posts have caused controversy" and no specific post was called out.
Pedantry can be useful, but you have to at least be correct about it.
National pedantic's day
The birds they sing, At break of day. Start again I heard them say. Dwell not on what has passed away, Or what is yet to ring, Forget your perfect offering, There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
That was great man, thanks. And true!
Courtesy of Canadian Legend, Leonard Cohen!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8-BT6y_wYg
I don't believe I suffer, but it seems pretty obvious why someone would do it in silence. Many times when I tried to get help from institutions for anything nobody seemed to care much at all. It's like you could either deal with your problems in silence or deal with them "out loud" and have people pretend to care while looking helpless.
To be sure, not referencing mental health here but rather virtually any issue institutions claim to care about.
Institutions don't and cannot care. You're looking in the wrong place.
I have difficulties, mostly due to overload, and sometimes it would be good looking at it from an other angle, discussing with someone. There are some male peers I am being able to discuss certain matters, usually a different detail with different peers, but not everything. I look with curiosity how my wife is able to discuss things with a professional. My concern are usually: the professional can only know about what she explains, the way she explains, the amount she explains. The output can only be based on that constrained input (sessions are bound by time). Probably it is not a surprise that things do not get changed much. I have no time for that - did I mention that I am overloaded? By the time I was able to tell it in a decent granularity, complemented by details from people knowing me a certain way - no-one have full picture - so the picture is not distorted by looking through my eyes only, by all this time I'd be really frustrated that things went on and we got nowhere. And all those assume that I am able to phrase and express clearly what the heck is going on, very difficult sometimes. Also that the professional is good at listening and is not trying to force a pattern on me. I am from an upbringing that taught me doing something when something is wrong, try my best and accept what comes out of it. Suggestions of others are pieces that may help or may not. Possibly pretty random (e.g. the person was basically me in that scenario and came out well, so they really know what they are doing, not just meddling for some reason).
Yeah, getting any external help is difficult. Need some inner source some way, accepting some level of 'flaws'.
Men struggling is no surprise. Today's world is not well suited to their strengths (physical strength, risk taking, aggression, etc..). It's better suited for women and they're winning in a ton of important categories that contribute to quality of life. To compound this, the dating scene for men is abysmal. Women have so much power in the dating market and use it to their benefit as men did before them.
Men especially take this hard. I find men have a very very strong urge to get ahead, succeed, and climb the ladder of success. If they consistently fail at this AND can't find a partner it gets really rough. I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
You are a good friend and truly the solution to the problem is simply people looking for the people in their lives that are struggling and being there for them, its amazing what just a little acknowledgment from a friend (or even a stranger) can do for someone.
One day I was at a store checking out and the attendant was rather brusk and didn't seem particularly friendly, but he was wearing a watch that I liked and I simply stated that I liked his watch and he lit up, the whole dynamic changed in an instant. I wasn't trying to be nice I literally just liked his watch but after seeing how he opened up and changed after that statement I realized just how much joy can be created with a simple compliment. I try to genuinely compliment people more often now.
Good for you for working on things with your friend. Best of luck.
> I have a close friend going through this now and he is contemplating ending it. I'm visiting him everyday just to try to bring a smile to his face
You're a good dude
I have a friend like this too. He graduated out of an IT program into the post AI world, in a kind of small town. He's working at a grocery store, convinced he's unlovable (and unfuckable), and he's started to talk about ending it sometimes. Super good dude, just needs some wins, but life has not been good to him
Very similar situation to my friend! Can't move up in career, working at a dead end job, women either ghost him or are rude when he talks to them.
The unlovable part really hit the nail on the head. I can't begin to explain what a lack of relationship and sex life has done to him. He questions EVERYTHING about himself because of this. "Maybe I'm ugly" "Maybe I'm a bad talker" "Maybe I'm not smart enough"
Things really got worse for me when I got older. It's like at certain point, society just forgets that you exist as a person too.
This is not exclusive to males. One could argue females actually have it worse.
One could argue that but when they do it's almost always as a way to tell the aggrieved party or victim that they're invalid.
Exhibit A
He has a point.
I think the broader point is that both genders have seen a decline in mental health over the same time period. Scoping by gender is a choice. One I am highly suspicious of when people are happy to chime in with their change suggestions.
westcentralonline.com ? Surely there has to be a better link to this report then a small local news website?
Like maybe https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/healthy-livi...
FWIW, in these sorts of situations I try to link the place where I found the news. If some tiny local news website brought something to my attention that the bigger players don't, then I think they deserve to be rewarded with the add revenue if people follow my link.
One seems written by a real human more than the other.
One of the deepest problems with being a man is the palpable, omnipresent sense that there are too many dudes. It is just a fact of the human condition that a large fraction of males are biologically superfluous. Society tries to equalize outcomes by promoting monogamy, but this strategy is losing effectiveness in the face of dating apps and extended premarital relationships. Historically, violence and war also tended to reduce the population of males, but violence has declined enormously compared to previous eras.
This isn't really the case! And, FWIW, it is neither true that monogamy is some clever invention nor that many women are meaningfully hypergamous. In all the high-quality data I see, women are just single more just as men are, they just don't talk about it as much in places you or I read (it seems like psychometrics implies the median woman is more okay with being single than the median man. Part of it could be that).
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.." ― Henry David Thoreau
Too much emphasis on forming connections and not enough focus on providing ample opportunities to climb the success ladder.
Try solving a difficult problem that has more meaning other than trying to form a problem that is easier solve.
yes which is why traditional therapy doesn't work as well for men. It started out with Freud "helping" women.
It is very difficult to talk about illness, especially chronic illness. It is one thing to break a bone, or need stitches; something entirely different to say you have chronic migraines or POTS. Every time I mention it I fear I'm sacrificing future employment opportunities.
And it goes without saying, if you are disabled you will miss out on a lot, often we are just trying to not make it any worse.
modernity and its toxic feminism is causing untold suffering and increased male suicide
for as long as records of it have existed, men have died by suicide at higher rates than women globally and across the Western world
does this fact change anything about your claim that those two things are "causing" the increased male suicide?
it doesn't change anything, because it is false
GQ has a good article https://archive.is/QmDHJ on https://www.reddit.com/r/BoyDinnerDiaries/
A lot of the infrastructure got closed in Canada circa 1980s, or 1990s. Some tools are still available - sometimes - and I finally got my diagnosis following through with that, almost 20 years ago now. Anyway, this is partially "there's no tools available to help", and partially a "culture of not talking".
One of the consequences is that - while all of my issues have underlying biological causes (and thus, I can see specialists to mitigate that, somewhat) - I've been on a waiting list for ADHD now for 3 years, with no idea when I'll actually be able to see anyone. Thankfully, otherwise, my cPTSD - I got enough tools in the year after the diagnosis that it's no longer - most of the time - causing any trouble.
Now I was homeless when I started (this IS related to me being able to get help) - but those paths are not easy to get through. That help has been inaccessible to me since I stabilized my housing and employment situations.
So yeah, I'm not surprised. I've met a LOT of people who need more help than they could get ... providing they were open to reaching out. This is entirely related to "homeless epidemic". Mind "shortage of work", "cuts by companies who moved their offices south of the border" are related to this, too.
Men feel isolated because they are. They don’t reach out because they intuit being vulnerable will not help them.
Why would we question their feelings??
Male loneliness is a symptom of community breakdown along with growing economic expectations from institutions (corporations and government) that rely on them for revenue and labor.
Smaller local communities do value men’s contributions, but those have been liquidated in favour of Institutional Liberalism.
So as a man, you now *have* to live as an individual. The state is hostile to your interests, the market is hostile to your interests, and, as a group (not individually), women are hostile to your interests.
But as a man you can define your own worth apart from social validation, find other like minded men for camaraderie, and still lead a meaningful life.
I have spent a lot of time in countries with strong male community even to this day: cafe culture where the menfolk of the town meet daily, sometimes for hours. I speak the languages and can be a full participant.
As a man, I find those cultures just as vexsome as the cultures of isolation and anomie. Men talking one-on-one or up to three-four people have a good dynamic. But when men assemble into larger groups and a public male society, they inevitably talk about football, fucking women, toilet humor, and other inane things. Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
Basically agree with you, adding that you’re likely a better candidate for individualism.
Most men (most people) don’t do well as true individuals. They need the inane group cohesion.
> Also, a pecking order is always established in large male groups, and men on this neurodivergence-heavy site are likely to be at the very bottom of it. Be careful what you wish for.
A $500,000 total comp engineer with a wife and a house in California set to retire at 50 vs a $60,000 bar tender in Ohio with a hotter wife and muscles. Who's higher in the chain? Genuine question
Now imagine a culture where neurodivergent but wealthy you has to regularly sit at a cafe table or attend religious observance with men who are overwhelmingly the latter type. Being ostracized or mocked daily would still sting in spite of your enviable wealth.
In the chain of what??
If they are jealous, you.
The mistake here is trying to stack rank people as if there is a universal ideal. Society is not a linear chain, its a multidimensional web.
I - genuinely - do not aspire to either of these lives, although pieces of both appeal.
There is certainly more pressure, and workplaces can be a minefield for men. God forbid a man is rude to a woman; it can't simply be "rudeness", it now has to have its own classification of "mansplaining", "toxic masculinity" etc. and therefore a greater seriousness.
I have seen and experienced this myself: in one past company, the HR person openly held the view that if a woman accuses a man of "harassment", it's probably true. In other words, HR itself operated with an attitude of 'guilty until proven innocent' against men.
I was once personally accused of "racism" against people of my own race (but across a political divide) by a former female colleague who was of a different race altogether. Thankfully, this was over LinkedIn chat outside of work where we also worked for different employers. I shudder to think what would have happened if this had been inside a workplace.
I don't blame women at all for this. I don't believe women are perpetuating this OR benefitting from this. This is a worse situation for everyone.
Australian Government did something similar for woman a few years back. The research of which set the foundation for it being assigned national security importance. During that research they found these men issues as detailed here in this article. No action was taken. Only on how it affected woman. Now some action has started, hopefully Canada doing something about it will push them to do more.
I couldn't help noticing the linked report didn't mention religion (at all?). The list of participating organizations listed one church (Renew Church and maybe one other spiritual organization).
We're more than just a body (physical) and a mind (soul), but also spirit. Spirit in the sense of conscientiousness from the divine, or a sense of awe of the foresaid.
it doesn't help that most religions are somewhere between a cult and a scam, and do not offer spiritual enlightenment.
> The findings will now help guide the development of Canada's first Federal Men and Boys' Health and Well-being Strategy, expected to be released in early 2027.
It would not surprise me to see protesting over this, as has been similarly done in the past. The person who organized a men's-support-group some years back in Canada, if I remember right, ended up committing suicide after it was forced to be shut down by protestors.
Earl Silverman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Silverman
> As a victim, I was re-victimized by having these services telling me that I wasn't a victim, but I was a perpetrator,
That is just tragic :(
Wikipedia says nothing about protests, only indicates neglect as the driver for suicide. Guess its drummed up internet drama taken at face value again.
that would be disastrous, this is about public health
It's the nature making decisions here. It has decided to lower the sprawl of human race to rebalance the ecosystem. The nature's correcting forces restore the equilibrium. Governments focussed on worker-driven economy rather than family well-being would naturally force everything towards genderless robotic societies which are ideal for work. European nations even started making policies specifically for punishing people opting to not to work. The world is taken over by powerful new races of creatures - governments, businesses, data and AI. They are nature's agents working to control the human growth. Human race is degraded to an unnecessary biological mass.
As Charles Darwin deliberated, and concluded... MARRY MARRY MARRY. Q.E.D.
"My God, it is intolerable to think of spending ones whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. No, no won’t do.
Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps. Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St. Marry — Marry — Marry Q.E.D."
First cousin, preferably?
Some downvoter is not a Darwin afficionado.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Darwin
the Western society has adopted capitalism (money is God and money above all), and enjoys Capital when times are good and incomes are high.
However, for some strange reason, the West refuses to use dialectic materialism to explain when times are bad, when males feel lonely or face increased suicide rates.
material conditions explain everything, both when times are good, and when times are bad.
The solution is to obtain (via any means necessary) better material conditions, which might include redistribution by force or political action
As I posted earlier, the sex suicide ratio in the USSR was equivalent to or worse, than contemporary and current ('capitalistic') sex suicide ratio. Material 'explanations' of the issue do not suffice here.
Women are about 1.8x more likely to attempt suicide[1], but men are about 4x as likely to die by suicide.[2] Rates of suicide in female adolescents appear to be increasing at a faster pace than in male adolescents.[3] There is a body of literature suggesting a link to social media.
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35598742/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/data/index.html
[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11225381/
As a nit in an area where words matter, the title's phrasing of "Too many men suffering" implies that there is a correct number of men that should be suffering.
The correct number in some people's minds would be zero, or less than now.
We all suffer, 100%, but some of us are able to choose the suffering as opposed to having it thrust or fall upon us.
Being healthy is suffering the exercise. Being unhealthy is suffering without.
Haven't this been known for a loooooooong time now...? I recall listening to TED talk (silly times) at least 15 years ago already talking about how behavioral pattern difference of seeking help between men/women pointing to this.
By now I would've hoped the conversation have moved from re-recognizing the problem and iterative solution seeking?
Silent suffering of this cohort have for the last maybe 10 years been too profitable segment to milk out of, to actually try to solve the underlying issue. (manosphere for example being one of the vicious extractor of this suffering)
The solution have always had some alignment with the observation that for guys, a sense of belonging, purpose, (and if younger) guidance and healthy rawmodels have been important. It warms me to see how some local efforts have addressed this. How much lively the surrounding became when they installed a free-to-use outdoor gym and football courts, for people to mingle. (and for the older cohort, Frisbee golf court apparently).
It doesn't help that when this conversation comes up, people start to project a lot and inevitably people will start to bring up women (in antagonistic tone) creating a cesspool of bitterness to hijack the conversation.
Predictably, many of the comments here are already about women
I found living there depressing, I left, life is better.
where did you go that was better for you
Like those social media videos about how therapists won't tell you, because they'll lose their business, that the real way to feel better is to just go to Italy. :)
The comments are revealing. "Men think...", "women need..." We are caught in a semantic-linguistic trap, debating a false dichotomy and pointing out all the places it has respectively harmed us.
I'd argue there's room for men's issues under (4th-wave, intersectional) feminism. The patriarchy mostly benefits a few at the top, but it has also privileged men disproportionately over at least the last few millennia and if we want to have a real conversation about it we have to have a common set of agreements on which to advance that conversation. We're not there yet as a society, we don't have the language or concepts to make this work on any side of the issue. I guess I'm arguing that some people actually do, but it's where we get into areas of gender deconstruction that start raising sharp objections, which is also part of the semantic-linguistic trap.
https://archive.is/M2Kbe (to avoid the 403 Forbidden and annoying CAPTCHas)
The poor mental health is the symptom, not the disease. Men are suffering in the modern economy. That is triggering other things such as failure to start higher education and failure to start families. I work with guys every day who want families but also realize the financial impossibilities. They aren't earning 200k. They do not have rich parents. They will not own a house before hitting 40.
I did a yearly career counseling/updating session with a guy a month ago who's "long term goal" was to buy a dog. A dog needs a yard. A dog needs an owner who is home regularly. So he figured that in the next 10 years he might be able to get a small house and switch to a job with more regular hours. THAT is where depression starts. A good man with a good job and all he can envision for himself is maybe... one day... if he saves every penny... he might get to adopt a puppy.
The answers are not in more government-sponsored therapy sessions. The answer is to improve jobs, to give the working man a future to look for.
Man, this comment section smells like TwoX.
403 forbidden
Coming through for me now.
It seems that this is mostly written by LLM:
https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector/50429475
What difference does it make?
Many people want to avoid AI slop because it has a low signal to noise ratio.
I do not share this position but I understand it may be someones legitimate opinion in general. I do not understand it here - when we are talking about a report like that.
Is it better to go unreported if the alternative is that an LLM was used in the articles creation?
Most people don't have time to read every article posted to Hacker News. Avoiding the AI slop in favor of human-written articles that promise a higher return on investment seems like a reasonable strategy. For that to work, AI slop must be accurately labeled as such.
If I wanted to read llm output I would just load up a chatgpt tab.
Should the issue be disregarded because someone else has used an LLM when producing it? Honestly asking.
Yep.
1) "Poor men's health carries economic costs"
Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
2) What's deadly about this space is that surveys can be toxic.
Too often, it's researchers looking to slowly understand things, have people open themselves up, then leave them like that, for little to no progress in 5-10 years.
That kind of system needs supply, no?
3) I have heard from some men that sometimes there can be things that only other men understand. That can be similar to women's health issues can be understood differently, or men can feel more comfortable with other men.
4) It's important for authors to try and be aware of their own unconscious biases. Much like medicine is horribly behind at understanding women's health (for example, women hearts are not the same as men's), it means the inverse can be true too, beginning with asking men.
> 1) "Poor men's health carries economic costs" > > Yet.. they say a man's worth is "not" the value they put in the bank account.
That's not what is meant by "economic cost". Helping young men feel better early long term is obviously better and cheaper for society than letting them grow up and live a whole life where they suffer and hurt themselves or others.
Nothing about this is surprising or unknown. We know how to prevent and treat despair-related lives. It's a political choice that most of the world has insufficient or even broken (mental) healthcare. We could choose to vote differently, but we don't.
"Men need to be happier but they cannot live in the image they have lived in for the last few eons of evolution."
Good luck with that.
Literally nothing stopping men from being confident, strong providers if they want to be. Most do not because that is hard and videogames and porn is easy.
That’s a very good example of how problems of men vs women are approached. Women typically get support (which is great! We should continue that) and men are typically blamed for being weak. It’s same pattern for many things, like mental health (like here), general health („it’s not our fault that men don’t take care of themselves”) to men being less educated than women.
There would first need to be a fundamental change in the way boys are socialised, shifting them more towards how girls are socialised. Which I don't see happening any time soon. You can't help people that don't want to be helped and a significant portion of men's brains are in a permanent state of rejecting all help offered to them.
"Traditional Masculinity" is just in general maladaptive in the current age.
I got downvoted earlier today for saying that there's nobody out there that would argue that men and women are exactly the same, except for a little bit of environmental nudging.
That appears to be exactly what you're arguing here: All we need to do is socialize boys more like we socialize girls, and then the men they become will be happier in our society. Is that your position?
If so, can you say a little bit more about what you mean or what you envision that socialization would look like for boys?
"Literally nothing" stopping the perfectly spherical massless man in a social, environmental, cultural and economic vacuum from self-actualising into an ubermensch. Go gett'm, Tyger - The Stars, Your Destination!
Women are successful because they became more like men, to catch up men now need to become more like women, which they will not do because that would be gay.
It’s easy to fix, find a country that Canada chastises and move there.
Pull up freedom house and pick any country rated 15 to 60 and see if you like it. Within 3 or 4 you will think, this place is awesome.
I blame individualism.
Nobody cares about anyone else hardly at all in Canada.
Male / Female ... makes no difference.
If you can't cut it, there's the street bub. Enjoy your tent and/or shelter ridden by gangs and bedbugs.
This is results of general misandry culture in the past two decades or three, it isn’t just laws or hard artifacts you can trace and correct, it is the general acceptance that it’s ok to ridicule men, insult them and belittle them publicly and all over media, and if a man objects it he is gaslighted and called all sort of bad names like insecure or whatever, a man in control? God forbid he is controlling misogynistic {insert other terms}, men natural way of doing things are also attacked, from simple ways of how they sit or act all the way to natural instinct for intimacy where men are visually stimulated yet are attacked or ridiculed for it, and many more examples. And unless a major cultural shift happens, this won’t go anywhere, you can look at the numbers and I don’t mean serious ones like suicides but also employments and others, look up female/male hiring ratio in the past year or two, or in jobs where women get shoved into very niche fields for virtue signaling, not because they are indeed competent, and many more. And obviously very little studies about that because whos gonna fund such research? After all, scientists mostly go with their sponsors directions.
Misandric culture has been a thing for more than those two decades obviously, but in this age of easily-peddled one- or few-liner "arguments" (trivial to claim and spread, far more difficult to effectively bring to a stop) on 'social media', misandric memes and memetic content has exploded in both prevalence and impact, that is in the twenty years since facebook and twitter et al that serves as seedbeds for these toxicities came to.
Someone else here asked why a mens issue would also affect adolescents? Simple: Adolescents, naturally including boys, are the heaviest consumers of 'social media', and are thus most heavily exposed to it. The rest of us are mostly exposed to the second-order effects, namely misandric culture and institutional misandric bias which seems to be powered by the same memetic toxicity that we've witmessed on SoMe the past two decades.
Men and boys are thinking and feeling beings, too.
Well because men are physically stronger than women and because some men are wife-beaters or rapists or cheating on their wife, since decades already now there's been a movement to portray all men as raping pigs.
So it's no surprise that young gullible persons (both men and women), after that insane propaganda campaign that commences with kids at a young age, eventually got convinced all men were worthless pigs.
And now, cry me a river, there are national health report findings saying that "too many men suffer in silence".
Maybe it's time we look out as to whom are the actual people responsible for this state of affair?
You cannot spit in the air and expect it to not eventually come back in your face.
P.S: as a sidenote and very, very, very interestingly these same movements that describe men as pigs turn a complete blind-eye to actual patriarchal societies and religions, which is honestly quite shameful.
1) Are we sure this is even a male problem? Apparently the percentage who reported "very good" or "excellent" mental health fell from 70% to 52%. What was the answer for women? Turns out they dont ask the question but we know related metrics like anxiety, depression, etc. show a similar trend. What does it say about the views of the Canadian health ministry that they would target this survey at men only?
2) There sure are a lot of people in these discussions who come ready with their diagnosis for men. It's quite the entry-point.
3) Bring back the Boy Scouts
1) Yeah, we should probably have both sets of data, but seeing this in any subset is alarming
2) Yeah, that sucks
3) Scouting is still around! As an Eagle Scout, I don't think the issue is that girls can be in Scouts now.
I wished there were (separate) girl troops when I was in it, and was part of an Explorers troop (BSA subtype with men and women, 18–21, affiliated typically with a fire station, police station, or hospital). Men and women can learn the skills that Scouting teaches together, but you need community members to help support the troop.
I hope all of my kids are in Scouting one day, because it helped me without hurting me, but the door is wide open and plenty of people aren't walking through.
Per your note on point #1, one thing we need is good data, but I'd say the other thing we need is to support our friends in getting off the couch and hanging out. Check in on the people you haven't heard from for a while. I have reached out to men I knew from college several times to get lunch or dinner and learned they don't have a good social network. The modern world gives us so many amazing opportunities, but a lot of them are hard or scary to take advantage of alone. Go grab some friends and work through them together. It won't fix everything, but it'll fix some things.
I think this whole discourse is unhealthy and frankly more toxic for the HN community than the political threads. At least those get flagged right away. Time and time again these threads about male suffering/under-representation/discrimination end up being upvoted, with malcontents flocking to them and filling the comments with generalized statements about women, paranoia about divorce rape and of course the ever-present disdain towards feminism.
This is getting really tiring and it's frankly a shame to see the inexorable slide of HN into a sexist echochamber. The irony of it is, I'm pretty sure that a large part of self-victimising posters in this thread were complaining about the SJW oppression olympics just five years prior.
I get where different kinds of bigotry come from; when things get bad, outgroups are always going to be blamed and scapegoated, whether racial or class-based. Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces. How bad things must be for someone’s designated oppressor outgroup to constitute 50% of the population, people who resemble them and face largely the same problems? Seriously, do all these people who make sweeping generalisations and talk about “women” as some kind of monolithic entity ever actually talk to women or have female friends? It’s bizarre.
I don't blame women for men's problems, but just to be pragmatic about the situation, the kinds of comments you're referring to are usually a response to this same kind of micromanaging of thought. Doubling down on it probably won't be an effective response.
Majority of the comments does. Even when the issues in questuon were cause ... by other men.
And no, they are not response to micromanaging of thought ideas. They have gender ideology in mind they want to enforce and are using it.
I am not part of the thought police, nor do I promote the nebulous feminist oppressive agenda that half of the posters here seem to be fighting against. I doubt my expression of disdain for casual misogyny qualifies as micromanaging of anything. I just think the whole thing is ridiculous and ultimately self-destructing.
>Yet there’s something inherently obscene about blaming women for the social issues modern society faces.
The root of problem is that you don't find it inherently obscene to do the same to men.
That's literally all it is. If you think women are worth more than men you are, in a system of equality, objectively wrong.
If you want women to be socially worth more than men, what are you going to give men to uphold that deal? Because the longer you answer "nothing, fuck you", the worse this gets.
Who says I don't? Of course it would be obscene, that's my whole point. What I said about othering half of the population applies in both directions. Yes, it would also be wrong and absurd to blame men for social problems!
I'm calling out the petty sexism that I'm seeing far too often, how did you manage to read it as an attack on all men? There's that victim mentality again. Nobody except a small minority of deranged fanatics calls for women to be socially worth more than men.
However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
> However, I do find that last line of yours telling, the implication of betrayal, and the promise of future reckoning. Pray do tell me: what exactly is going to get worse? What happen next? Women to be driven back into the kitchens? The beta uprising?
Amen. Hallmark of misogynistic, reactionary commentary on the internet. Almost guaranteed to appear. Like we need an internet law about it...
This is the type of stuff that Elon Musk greatly overestimates dominates public opinion because of his X echo chamber, leading him to waste $500 million on election advertisements.
Hey, maybe this is a chance for chuds to exercise some self-reflection and reconsider the merits of intersectionality. I doubt it, though, as a "chud" is pretty much by definition someone who is incapable of self-reflection.
Just wanted to let everybody know that this is the thread that has convinced me I should leave HN.
A lot of men decrying the fall of man after having been at the top for aeons. Zero perspective or awareness. Everyone deserves positive mental health but that doesn’t mean men need any more power or special treatment than they’ve already had throughout history. More coping skills with reversion to what a normal mean should be.
You've structured your thinking such that it seems that you're not able to tease apart the distinction between the individual and the group. This is a very dangerous mistake that I think a lot of the rhetoric over the past 20 years has encouraged a whole generation to engage in, but it's deeply divisive and unconstructive.
Telling one of the millions of poor white men that they have zero perspective or awareness because they want help because they are suicidal doesn't help them.
In the end, this entire framing is a mistake. It's always the rich versus the poor, and the rich love to have the poor arguing among themselves about who's causing the problems. People need to work together.
Oh I'm Aeons old? Neat, I thought I was 20. Glad to hear I benefitted from all that patriarchy in my past lives. Guess it only makes sense I pay my just desserts now, to women who themselves must have experienced Aeons of discrimination at my personal hand in their apparent past lives.
Yeah and as a millennial I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
So let's push this forward a little bit. Do you think that the world that you're going to hand off to your children is going to have equality, equal rights for all, great health care for everyone, and racial harmony?
Because what's going to happen is you're eventually going to get a little bit older and the next generation is going to say, "I'm sick and tired of cleaning up the millennials' messes" and that'll be because they're young, and they're not familiar with how messy the world is, and they think the mess is some kind of unusual abberation.
And if you're lucky, some of them will resent you personally because you're part of that generation. That's what I meant when I said, in my other comment replying to you, that conflating the group and the individual is not constructive.
> Yeah and as a millennial
Yeah I think everyone can kinda tell lol
I'm still not sure if your profile and website are satire or not. A bit too on the nose (typical big-3 U.S. city liberal selfhating millenial white "male-feminist" who likes nerdy things like Star Trek and virtue signalling online, it checks every box lol)
> I'm thrilled to have to clean up the boomer's messes but we don't get to choose what we inherit unfortunately
The vast majority of Women's Suffrage occurred multiple generations before boomers were even born, how is this their issue either? Arguably they're the ones that kept in motion how things are now, in that the dynamic has been totally reversed.
> and yes, we do have to pay the debts of our ancestors whether we like it or not.
What debt, exactly? And how is flipping the discrimination 'paying it back'? Is the expectation that we keep the women-only programs and opportunities for an Aeon to "cancel out" the Aeon of "male dominance", despite the fact that it doesn't (and can't) impact those who supposedly benefitted during that time (as they're dead)?
I think you'll find that predictably, "revenge for the original sin of your ancestors" is not a super popular concept among young people who never even lived to experience those supposed benefits.
Original Sin has had a surprising resurgence among the sociologically schooled in these times...
Yesh - glad we could have this conversation that didn't devolve into ad hominem attacks.
it's inappropriate and frankly odd to bring up abstract notions of history for a government mandated health report
it's like talking about feelings in math
I'm talking about the discourse in this thread and I can talk about or bring up whatever points I want, as can anyone else. Feel free to disagree.
just more noise making clear conversation and decisive action harder
i fail to see where preconceptions about past aeons fits into a report about statistics, feel free to clarify, ideally with numbers
Oh ok, me supplying "numbers" will definitely change the conversation we have going right now.
What you’ve said with your careless comment: “Men have been on top for so long who cares if both the good ones and bad ones kill themselves or get locked up in mental hospitals or abuse drugs.”
Thanks for letting us know explicitly what people like you are about.
Exactly. They are drowning the problem in generalized abstraction. Ironically, it's the result of 'social media' memetic indoctrination where posting one line of emotionally laden bs takes about ten seconds. However correcting it with proper perspective and refuting the erroneous use of a general abstraction and adding historical facts, perspective and nuance in a well written package can take me an hour, in which timespan the original one liner would already accumulated ten or fifty 'retweets' because the emotional hook of simplistic, emotional is extremely effective.
And, the audience that ends up sharing this misandric memery is generally not receptive to nuanced, reasoned argument to the contrary once hooked.
Totally what I said, thanks for the recap.
Wow, all time worst comments section on HN, that's quite an achievement.
Men’s happiness and women’s happiness are inversely proportional.
Happiness is not a zero-sum game
If they were inversely proportional, it would be unity-product I guess.
Hmm...if I'm miserable my partner will be happier? What a life hack, I gotta try that /s
That’s the gist.
Then you're with the wrong person. Find someone else.