575
US men are dying much earlier than women, as death 'gender gap' widens: Study
(medicalxpress.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
575 points (100.0% liked)
science
15020 readers
106 users here now
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.
2024-11-11
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I’m a bit concerned about using the “gender gap” term. As in, I wonder if it’s going to get adopted by misogynists to pit women’s suffering (gender pay gap) against men’s suffering (gender lifespan gap).
It is certainly telling that your first reaction isn't about the real subject of the study.
Maybe you’re right, I’m sorry. It was just a first thought, and I’m trying to put thoughts out there on Lemmy less sensors to get convos going. Maybe this was an inappropriate one though and I can certainly choose better choices moving forward!
No worries. If you spend your life worrying what dickheads will think, you won't make any societal progress.
Lol this guy is shamelessly accepting your apology and dismissing any potential issues on behalf of someone else 😂
The person has already apologized for an unintentional slight. What exactly is there left to do except accept it and move on?
What are you expecting to accomplish by pushing on the issue?
You don’t accept an apology on behalf of someone else implying it was unnecessary. It’s dishonest at best.
It was an understandable faux pas in a public conversation. Not something personally offensive to a particular individual. Fucking chill.
I called you out because it didn’t seem like a mistake. I answered your question calmly when you appeared to double down.
My comment was mostly to show others that it was someone else accepting the apology.
I said 'no worries' because in normal contexts, you'd be right in that there is no issue. But in gender discussions both sides aren't accepting of commentary that switches focus to the other gender, but you may not know that if you don't join in on them often.
Obviously I can't speak for the person they responded to, nor the people reading these messages for that matter, but I can try and be reasonable. What reasonable person is going to want to do anything other than bury the hatchet after an honest mistake?
Edit: oh and sorry for getting a bit snippy with you.
Ok. Fyi I have not be trying to be confrontational after my first response. I don’t think you need to provide further justification after you said it was a mistake. Personally I think the issue was settled with your admission. I don’t mean to berate you. I should have made that clearer on my second response.
Even comparing the two issues that you brought up is ridiculous to me. Issue 1, women make slightly less in some situations for some jobs. Issue 2, men die earlier than women. These two issues are not even in the same realm of seriousness and urgency to solve.
I’d stop worrying about misogyny and start with some reflection on your own misandrist values.
Fucking hell, this pisses me off.
Lol, right? It would be funny if it weren't so depressingly common a response.
"Something bad is happening to men"
"I think we should focus on how that affects women."
Exactly. It’s like if your good friend came to you and told you they have cancer then you respond by saying, “oh that’s nice, I sat wrong and my leg fell asleep, shouldn’t you be caring about my leg????”
There is one constant with assholes: Any term or phrase can be used against someone else. It really doesn't matter what. When someone has an agenda to degrade another group of people, anything can be used as a weapon. The specifics have no meaning.
As far as your concern about this being used against someone else, sure. The most likely scenario is that this is picked up by some kind of partisan taking head and rebroadcast on a grander scale.
They’ll do that either way.
That’s sad. Sigh.
No, the way this works is the problem will go unsolved and probably even unaddressed until someone explains how men dying early is a problem for women. Then it'll get attention. It's not a real problem until it hurts women--the real victims.
So... you expect women to solve a problem made by men for men? How novel.
Society does not perceive "men are suffering" as a problem, is my point.
I think we very much do understand it's a problem and there is not a whole lot women can do about it that we aren't already doing. The majority of feminists would love for men to see a fucking therapist. They keep fighting it tooth and nail, though.
They'll either not open up at all for fear of being judged, or they'll ONLY lean on the women in their life. The one or two women in their life, because in my anecdotal experience they don't seem to stick around women they can't sleep with.
You guys want and desperately need actual emotional support, but you seemingly refuse to support each other. When we tell you to so much as just give each other the compliments you're looking for, it's met with whining because the respondents want women to do it. Even though mainly the compliments we get are...also from women, and going along with this request puts us in harm's way.
A lot of men are so beat to shit from such an early age that they can't even put a name to a lot of emotions besides anger. Which causes them to be both unable to manage what they can barely explain, and to feel significantly uncomfortable (outmatched) in marriage counseling, watching their wife run circles around them.
But biting the bullet and improving on emotional literacy via counseling and/or self-study and deep reflection never seems to strike the fancy. Their date has to teach them. And they WILL be fighting every step of the way.
I would love to date someone who doesn't define their entire existence through their job. That's nearly the entire reason two out of my four relationships fell to pieces.
-I- didn't give a shit. I met one of them when we were both homeless and said yes anyway. But if I made more money or they got laid off at any point, both of them would have a months-long binge drinking breakdown regardless of what I said.
You know you could just stop, right? That's what's incredibly frustrating about this for me. A lot of problems that are specific to men seem to be an issue of self-image, and are thus self-imposed, and you could just. Stop.
I can't make anyone not pick me up by the throat, but any day you could just wake up and decide your paycheck doesn't actually fucking matter and never date someone who thinks it does.
You could be excruciatingly nice to people for no reason instead of demanding women do it, work out what's going on with you and tell people about it, and give them both barrels if they think a human being needing help is gay.
As much as I feel for men as a group, it's the empathetic part that makes me want to hold them upside down and shake them till the sense falls out. Take. Care of each other. Fix the thing.
It's kinda sad that when men have problems, they're just expected to solve it themselves.
Words like "self-imposed" are just thrown around to handwave their issues away. But no one asks why the men think this way. Are women completely blameless?
How would women react if men were to say the lack of female representation in STEM is "self-imposed" and that women should just stop not applying for those jobs because of fear. It's unrealistic right?
To be fair, people are saying this all the time. Look up a Lemmy post about struggles of women. Ok, that was a rhetoric task because you won't find any with a significant amount of upvotes. But if you do on another platform, there will be plenty of people arguing that women should care for this themselves. Or discussing how bad it is for men, instead.
Yeah, no. I haven’t heard this rhetoric since 2018.
No, it ain't sad at all. It's infuriating. Men aren't just having these problems. They are perpetuating them after having created them.
It's the misogyny, sure. But also the xenophobia, homophobia, racism, religious extremism, warmongering, gun humping, and whatever else makes these dudes vote for the most conservative and/or biggest asshole they can find.
The same crap makes other people, including the women in their lives, not want to be around them. And of course that government they voted in ain't going to offer any assistance as whatever calamities they've forced themselves to face alone, inevitably hit.
You are victim blaming, men born this millennium have had zero part in creating them.
Of course, it’s always their own fault, if it makes you able to sleep at night.
Glad to see both sides argued here, both legitimate points. Sorry for my pointless comment.
The majority of feminists would love for men to suffer and die and will say so in as many words, has been my experience.
But moving beyond that, therapy is a lazy, bullshit answer to the problem, for a number of reasons, a few of them being insurance.
The majority of men are not mentally ill, aka they don't suffer from a diagnosable disorder. Insurance won't pay for "Apparently I need non-specific therapy."
...If he has insurance that would cover mental health services, which many men don't.
Have you ever been to a therapist? I have. They just ask pointless question after pointless question. "How did that make you feel?" "Bad." "Why did it make you feel bad?" "...Why did being screamed at by my boss make me feel bad? That's what you're asking right now?" "Does that bother you?" They purposefully do not solve problems.
Who beats men to shit from such an early age? The majority of the people providing early childhood care are women. Elementary and middle school teachers, babysitters, daycare workers, hell, because of how pointlessly cruel the family court system is in this country, it's difficult to legally be a father. Men are systematically prevented from raising children. Men have been arrested for taking their children to play in the park. Men get accused of pedophilia for existing near children.
Remember the sitcom Home Improvement, starring Tim Allen as Tim Taylor? There was an early episode that starts up with his sons playing with a few neighborhood kids, one of his kids (whichever one was played by Johnathan Taylor Thomas, remember him?) had an ordinary deck of cards, and was apparently using it to tell "fortunes." The ace of spades was the "death card." Well apparently he drew the "death card" on one of the neighborhood boys, and this scared him. He comes running in the house crying, and Tim immediately rushes over, hugs the boy, rubs his back and goes to ask what's wrong, offer comfort, "It's just a game, you're not going to die."
Wholesome little scene, right? Made me physically uncomfortable. Because if I was seen acting that way toward a young boy, I would be accused of molesting him. I have been so sexualized, my touch has been so sexualized, that I'm only allowed to touch people who intend to fuck me. I absolutely will not be seen hugging a child, even those related to me, because I don't want to end up on a list.
Early childcare is almost entirely the domain of women, and little boys emerge from this, in your words, "so beat to shit." It's his fault though, right? He should figure it out and fix it?
Judging by what women say, they want a man who earns a lot of money, who doesn't spend a lot of time at work, who has time for hobbies but doesn't play video games, go to the gym, engage in sports, play with train sets or has a boat/motorcycle/dirt bike/whatever, and who doesn't just hang around the house. The only creature real or fictional I'm aware of that fits within this criteria is Janet from The Good Place.
Society absolutely perceives that. We can hardly help perceiving it when men are gunning us down, beating us to a pulp, and demanding our constant attention.
The thing is it's a problem that society can't solve. Only men can solve it.
How do you expect men to solve a problem made by a tiny fraction of people, mostly rich men but also rich women?
It wasn’t even a year ago that the un was making statements about how war affected women disproportionately when their husbands die in war. It was quite offensive
Oof that's messed up. And I'd totally agree if she were just acknowledging that war affects women for those reasons, but it's bonkers to compare and call women "the primary victims."