Showing posts with label Articles on Pressures on men to exaggerate sexual interest in women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Articles on Pressures on men to exaggerate sexual interest in women. Show all posts

Sep 18, 2010

Men in westernized societies far too likely to commit suicide

Suicide: Top 10 Cause of Death in U.S Men

Posted Jun 04 2009 10:33pm 1 Comment

The news of David Carradine’s death ( David Carradine Dead From Apparent Suicide ) might have not registered with me had I not read of his cause of death, reportedly by hanging. That’s how my brother took his life four years ago.

xchng_firearm_1 Did you know that suicide is the number 8 cause in the United States for death among men? They make up 80% of total suicide deaths. For women, it’s the 17th most common reason for death. Women do make more attempts (60%), but men use more violent and “sure” ways of dying, which makes them more likely to die from their attempt.

istock_pillbottle For men, using a gun is the most common method of suicide - 11.2 out of 100,000, while it only happens in 1.5/100,000 women. The second most common in men is suffocation (including hanging), followed by poisoning. For women, the most common cause is poisoning. These statistics were taken from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center.

Questions

While we don’t know the circumstances around Mr. Carradine’s death, if you’ve ever known someone who has committed suicide, you know that their death leaves behind many questions. Did anyone notice anything? Could I have done something? Should I have done something? Why didn’t he say something?

If I learned anything through my experience it’s that asking these questions don’t do anything because the one person who could answer them is no longer with us.

Going through with it

A social worker told me something interesting after JP died. She said that for most, the actual suicide isn’t the first time he or she wanted to do it. She explained that JP probably had planned this before but got interrupted or something stopped him from following through. Who knows? Maybe he got a phone call, thought of something, and then didn’t go through it that particular day - only to do it another one, the day he did die.

xchng_a_man_walking Is is surprising that so many men successfully end their lives? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s surprising at all. Even in today’s society, where men are given more freedom to be who they want to be, there’s still a huge stigma attached to mental illness, including depression and anxiety. It’s much harder for a man, in general, to admit he needs help than a woman to do so. Men are expected to suck it up, hide their feelings, move on. A woman can cry all weekend after a break up, for example, but a man is expected to go out on the town, find a new partner maybe.

And sometimes, it just happens because even if the man reaches out, the system fails him. That’s what happened with my brother. He had reached out, he needed help, but the mental health system failed him. Instead, he self-medicated his pain and, given the outcome, not very successfully.

Help yourself

With Father’s day coming up, one of the best things for yourself, your own gift if you’re a father and a gift to yourself just because if you’re not, is to take care of your own mental health. Don’t let despair take over. Don’t let anxiety eat away at you. Don’t self medicate with alcohol and drugs. It doesn’t work.

If you break a leg, you get it casted. If your appendix bursts, you get it removed. If your brain is making you sick, that can be looked at and helped. Do it for you. Do it for those who love you. Do it for people like Mr. Carradine and my brother (and the 2 sons he left behind) who didn’t get the help they needed. Please.

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Dec 13, 2009

Creating pressures on men to be openly heterosexual in order to avoid losing manhood

What they (the anti-man forces who control various traditional and modern human institutions like science and media) do, is to create extreme expectations on men to be heterosexual, if they're straight, mainstream, regular guys. And since 'heterosexuality' is seen as synonymous with manhood, men have this extreme pressure to oblige. They have no space to say they don't want to date women. Because it means you're not a man and you lose your position in the race for manhood as well as your public following if you're a celebrity.

This pressure that media keeps creating in a yet non-heterosexualized society like India seems extremely contrasting, when many macho male superheroes find it difficult to answer questions about who they're dating and what they like to date. Because they don't date. In fact, it is a serious affront to Indian culture which has no space for dating between unmarried males and females to be asked such a question. Men in most cases just keep quiet or fib.

But, then there are some who run away with it, and exploit this new criteria of manhood being enforced by the media and give it power.

The westernized media needs celebrities to be heterosexual in order to support its heterosexualization agenda.

A similar pressure is being build up on young males through Peer-pressure and through social networking internet channels like Orkut, that ask your sexual orientation as well as whether or not you're interested in dating. Now, with dating being increasingly being enforced as the new proof of manhood for the youth, as part of building up a previously unexisting 'heterosexual' identity, it is impossible for men to live their life according to their natural instincts and needs. I know innumerable common straight males who don't do dating (or are only forced to do it), but they keep on their profile accounts stuff like, "looking for dating women" and sexual orientation 'straight' (which is wrongly defined as being heterosexual).

Sep 1, 2009

Historical evidence of "pressures on men to be heterosexual"

SEX & CHARACTER
by Otto Weinenger
Selected by Kevin Solway
from the 1906 English Edition

excerpts from the section "Women and Mankind" dealing with sexual mores
(complaining about the morals of the early 1900s in Germany/England etc.):

Masculine chastity is laughed at, and the feeling that woman is the evil influence in man’s life is no longer understood, and men are not ashamed of their own lust.

It is now apparent from where this demand for “seeing life,” the Dionysian view of the music-hall, the cult of Goethe in so far as he follows Ovid, and this quite modern “coitus-cult” comes. There is no doubt that the movement is so widespread that very few men have the courage to acknowledge their chastity, preferring to pretend that they are regular Don Juans. Sexual excess is held to be the most desirable characteristic of a man of the world, and sexuality has attained such pre-eminence that a man is doubted unless he can, as it were, show proofs of his prowess. Chastity, on the other hand, is so despised that many a really pure lad attempts to appear blas, rou,. It is even true that those who are modest are ashamed of the feeling; but there is another, the modern form of shame – not the eroticist’s shame, but the shame of the woman who has no lover, who has not received appraisement from the opposite sex. Hence it comes that men make it their business to tell each other what a right and proper pleasure they take in “doing their duty” by the opposite sex. And women are careful to let it be known that only what is “manly” in man can appeal to them: and man takes their measure of his manliness and makes it his own. Man’s qualification as a male have, in fact, become identical with his value with women, in women’s eyes.

But God forbid that it should be so; that would mean that there are no longer any men.

(Submitted by vbk)