Emma Watson is Wrong About Male Suicide

== Resolution == My opponent says something nonsensical about definitions. However, my argument was that Emma Watson *never actually said* that men don"t seek help for "suicide," she said that they don"t seek help for "depression." So the proposition my opponent has to prove is that men are *just as likely* as women to seek help for depression. I never contested the definition of "suicide." == Rebuttal == R1) Robin Williams My opponent claims that Robin Williams proves that there are obvious warning signs that people can use to prevent suicide. However, people were *shocked* at Robin Williams"s death. My opponent claims that Robin Williams"s suicide was *not* surprising to "anyone involved," presumably meaning that Robin Williams"s family knew he had Parkinson"s and suffered from depression. However, this simply proves my point: even seeing those warning signs, no one in Robin Williams"s family was able to recognize that he was a suicide risk and stop him. If it was *so obvious* that Williams"s was going to commit suicide, my opponent is suggesting that no one in his family cared about him enough to stop him. That is obviously not true. The bigger issue was that Williams"s was living with largely untreated depression because as a man and as a celebrity, he didn"t want to face the stigma of going to therapy. Men are actually better at hiding their depression than women. According to Scientific American, "men are also more likely to be depressed for a longer period of time and to have their depression go undetected than are women." [1] My opponent suggests that it would border on criminal negligence for a doctor not to ensure that a Parkinson"s patient is in psychotherapy because Parkinson"s causes decreased dopamine, but not *every* Parkinson"s patient is depressed nor does every Parkinson"s patient commit suicide. Parkinson"s patients are merely at an increased statistical likelihood of depression. It"s simply not that easy to tell who is going to kill themselves and who isn"t. People know their own brains better than anyone else, so the *best option* to prevent suicide is for people to seek treatment for themselves, but the studies I provided last round prove that men *do* seek help much less often than women. Criticism: New offcase argument My opponent talks about how men don"t need to turn into women in order to seek treatment. He says (in regards to Robin Williams), "It was not the patients fault for not being woman enough." My opponent, through his use of language, reifies the same stereotypes that Emma Watson was critiquing, specifically that seeking treatment somehow makes you a woman -- or womanly. The idea that gender is binary and that "men must act like men" and "women must act like women" is the very *problem* in our society that causes men to be afraid to seek treatment for what they perceive as a "woman"s disease" (according to my source from last round). Vote my opponent down to reject his binary view of gender and embrace Emma Watson"s view of a society that does not care whether men are acting masculinely or femininely. R2) Bad statistics?, good statistics? Hospitalizations for suicide attempts is a good proxy for the total number of attempted suicides. My opponent never explains why these numbers are bad. He merely reiterates that men are four times more likely than women to (successfully) commit suicide and says that this does not constitute a "meaningful gap" in the suicide rates between men and women. However, 4 times more suicides *is* an *enormous* gap. If I told you that women were four times more likely to die in car crashes than men, you would want to know what it is about women"s driving that causes them to die so much more often. Likewise, with men killing themselves four times more often than women, you want to know *why* this gap exists. And the answer is that men are far *less* likely to seek treatment for their depression. In addition, my opponent argues that if you account for repeated suicide attempts, the gap narrows. However, the "suicide rate" is the total number of people who successfully kill themselves per year. It *does* include repeated attempts where the person was "successful" on their last try. So this argument holds no weight. As my opponent said in Round 2, men kill themselves at a rate that is between four and ten times higher than that of women. So Emma Watson was not wrong. Men are not only less likely to seek treatment, but are more likely to kill themselves. R3) Cry for help My opponent claims that maybe women use pills more often because they "care how their body is found." That"s a silly argument because people who commit suicide either don"t care about or have vastly discounted the impact their suicide will have on loved ones. If they cared about what loved ones would feel after they passed, they wouldn"t kill themselves at all. Furthermore, my source said that women are more likely to attempt suicide as a cry for help, rather than a legitimate attempt to end their lives, which explains much of these statistics. I think most people realize that taking 50 Tylenol is less likely to kill you than putting a gun in your mouth and pulling the trigger. Regardless, it"s not my burden to explain the gap between successful male and female suicide. It"s my opponent"s burden to prove either that (a) the gap doesn"t exist, or (b) the gap is not remotely caused by men being less likely to seek therapy. My opponent has utterly failed to do either. In fact, he doesn"t even contest that men are less likely to seek treatment (and has dropped this argument). Since this is one of the things he has to prove, he automatically loses. R4) Man hating My opponent essentially drops all my arguments here. And if anything, my opponent is engaging in man-hating by trying to impose his rigid view of masculinity upon men (as explained above, when my opponent implies that men would "become women" if they sought help more readily and were more open with how they were feeling). The burden that gender norms impose on men is enormous. They can"t cry without feeling like they are doing something "wrong" in society"s eyes, even when tragic things happen (like the loss of a parent). They can"t seek treatment for depression because that would be unmanly (as this debate explains). They can"t step down from any fight, even if they have to risk their life for a stupid reason. These gender norms are crushing and dangerous. My opponent should lose for perpetuating them alone. But obviously, Emma Watson doesn"t hate men. She just wants men to stop killing themselves at a rate that is so much higher than women. If anything, she loves men and doesn"t want to see them suffer (by not seeking treatment) due to the imposition of gender norms upon them. [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com...