Posted on 01/26/2006 8:04:59 AM PST by SmithL
In a recent column about a UC Davis freshman who shot himself, I included a statistic from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Boys commit 86 percent of all adolescent suicides.
Eighty-six percent.
The number floored me, particularly as the mother of a son. Yet not a single e-mail, phone call or letter about the column mentioned the striking statistic.
It occurred to me that if 86 percent of adolescent suicides were girls, there would be a national commission to find out why. There'd be front-page stories and Oprah shows and nonprofit foundations throwing money at sociologists and psychologists to study female self-destruction. My feminist sisters and I would be asking, rightly, "What's wrong with a culture that drives girls, much more than boys, to take their own lives?"
So why aren't we asking what's wrong with a culture that drives boys, much more than girls, to take their own lives? Even in academia, where you can find studies on the most obscure topics, there is little research explaining why boys are disproportionately killing themselves. The Center for Adolescence at Stanford, a nationally recognized clearinghouse on teen behavior, has no one on its long roster of experts who can speak on the topic. Neither does the American Association of Suicidology, an organization dedicated to suicide prevention since 1968.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Another way of looking at it - if we weren't in the mood to blame "culture" for every difference in outcomes - is "What is it about boys that makes them much more likely to commit suicide than girls?"
True enough, more fall out from the war on boys.
There'd be front-page stories and Oprah shows and nonprofit foundations throwing money at sociologists and psychologists to study female self-destruction.
A mitigating factor is that none of that would do anything to lessen the problem, sorry Orca.
Owl_Eagle
(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Exactly. Wanna bet it's the boost of hormones during the teen years? I'm sure now there'll be a multi-million dollar taxpayer funded study on it now.
If you read the article, u find out that girls are just as likely to make the attempt as boys.
Boys just tend to use guns and ropes (as opposed to pills an knives for girls) which finish the job quicker and faster.
Actually, the rate of attempted suicide between male/female nationally is pretty close. Only, men succeed vast majority of the time. Women often choose methods which allow them to be saved after the fact (if discovered in time). Men, usually, chose far more effective means.
Guess you just beat me to it. :)
I read that, while more women attempt suicide, more men succeed because they use more violent methods (e.g. guns rather than pills).
Thanks - that doesn't surprise me.
More adult men and elderly men commit suicide than women, too. It looks like they're just more successful in their attempts than women are.
However, that raises the question of why men choose more effective means than women ...
You may be right, but if 86 percent of adolescent suicides were girls we'd hear about it night and day.
Women live on average several years longer than men. That's fine with me, since I love women, but imagine if it was reversed. Feminists would walk around wearing buttons with the phrase "Six Years & Four Months" (or whatever) printed on them to constantly remind us of the "gender gap in life expectancy". Billions would be spent on trying to close the gap. Everything feminists dislike would be blamed for the gap. Playing with dolls instead of getting more exercise by playing football, the "drudgery" of housework, motherhood, etc.
That's all pretty probable.
Bingo.
Men are just more effective.
It's the same with domestic violence -- women are just as likely to start a physical fight. Men end them.
Of course the femi-nazi's will see this as just another instance of the wrong-ness of male competitiveness and violence.
I know for a fact, that there's a feminist here in FL steamed over the fact that my 3 y/o son has *gasp* toy guns, and better yet, he gets to take them to a resturant!
Marriage.
My immediate thought as an explanation is the deliberate effort of the feminists and their cohorts in the NEA to sissify noys for the last umpteen years. Boys are naturally diffenent from girls, and the unnatural burden of sissification placed upon them is overwhelming in some cases.
I find that totally ignoring feminists is a good practice.
Hope your son has fun with his guns :-). My little boys (2 and 4) use paint stirrers as light sabers and whack each other, yelling, "Die, Sith!"
This San Francisco feminazi twists herself into a pretzel to avoid the obvious, the well known, the documented. Sheesh!
I think there's a confused gender-identity out there (the feminization of America, etc.) that is playing on boys' minds. Boys are not being taught their traditional roles, so, with role-confusion comes role-failure. Failure, real or perceived, begets suicide (not always, but it is one of the most salient factors).
I'd like to see stats on the 1950s, for instance. I believe the gender disparity would be nowhere near 86%. It might even tip toward the females? Anybody got that kind of info?
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