Emma Watson is Wrong About Male Suicide

Understanding the Math:Part of the problem here is understanding the basics of the math behind the statistics that are being used. To demonstrate this I’ll present a hypothetical situation using the facts that have been presented so far. Lets take a hypothetical species that I’ll call lemmings. Lets say that 1000 males, and 1000 females are born each year to these lemmings that are suicidal. Finally, lets say that after 10 years they die naturally, but that each year they will make a suicide attempt. It’s easy to see that if the success rate is equal that the attempt, and suicide ratios will remain equal. Lets say that we’re able to change the suicide rate by making cyanide less accessible, and that females tend to favor poison to jumping off a cliff. Now if we change the success rate to be 30% for males and 2% for females what happens? Well this graphs shows what happens, and as you can see after 10 generations the attempt ratio settles down at about 2.8 female attempts for each male attempt, and 5 male suicides for each female suicide. This is similar to what happens with humans, but at a much longer scale since we have longer life expectancies, and don’t have a scheduled time when an attempt would happen with the exception of spring[7]. Cry for Help, and Invalid Sources:My opponent says that her source claims that women “cry for help” using poisoning. However, her source is a wiki that is easily edited, and prone to containing stereotypes along with personal bias. The source, wikigender.org, even cites wikipedia rather than cite the direct sources. It is little more than a commonly repeated stereotype with no actual data to back it up.Even more so, my opponents claim that “If they cared about what loved ones would feel after they passed, they wouldn't kill themselves at all.” Is clearly false by most measures of suicide victims. One sign of suicide is “Making arrangements for family members.”[16] If they didn’t care then they wouldn’t bother to make arrangements. In many ways it’s thinking about being a shame, or a burden to the family that is their justification[16].Acetaminophen/Paracetamol Misconceptions:Acetaminophen, Tylenol, is actually extremely lethal. My opponent is under the misconception that Acetaminophen isn’t lethal, and that’s why women choose it. The truth is actually the opposite. Because women choose it we work to reformulate, and repackage it so that it isn’t very effective. In the UK it has been repackaged, and the result was a decrease in death by 43%[8]. No drug manufacturer wants their drugs assotiated with suicide so they're more than likely to help prevent it.In the Asia-Pacific area men have access to a very powerful pesticide which makes the likelihood of death much higher for poisoning. As a result the international community has been looking at how to repackage, or reformulate the poison so that it doesn’t affect people[9].Guns:For men gun ownership is close to 45 percent, and only 15 percent for women[10]. Furthermore it’s gun ownership that correlates to gun deaths more than gender. When you split the US in half with 49 million people in the states with the highest gun ownership, and 50 million people in the states with the lowest gun ownership. The states with the highest rate of gun ownership from 2001 - 2005 accounted for 16.5 thousand firearm suicides, but the non firearm states only accounted for 4.3 thousand. Now if my opponent were correct we’d expect the men to be dead set at killing themselves, and find another reliable method like hanging to accomplish it. What’s amazing is that the non firearm deaths for both groups is the same at 9 thousand[11]. [15]Simply by a change in the accessibility to guns reduced the firearm suicides by 75%. There was no emasculating of men to accomplish this small task. If the guns aren't there then the guy defaults to the same ineffective methods women use.At this point, if the data existed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the hanging risk for men had more to do with the large portion of men with a literal noose around their necks as a neckties.Williams:I had thought that my opponent would have apologized, and dropped this point to discuss this more rationally.My opponent has put themselves into contradiction. First my opponent claims that untreated depression is the most common cause of suicide. Had these events been 5 years ago my opponent may have had a point. However, 4 years ago treatment of depression of Parkinson's patients became standard practice[13]. Since Williams had been diagnosed and began early treatment the depression was being treated.Williams suicide has more in common with tragic end of life issues where someone is given a diagnosis that they may not want to live with. Blaming Williams masculinity as my opponent has is man hating. It blinds us to any rational solution to the problem, and makes us think that if only men were more like women.Vote Pro:You should consider voting Pro by looking at the quality of our sources, and our arguments. My opponent has relied upon poor sources, and common stereotypes. If you’ve understood my argument then you should know that men have easy access to weapons, and the means to kill themselves beyond what women typically have access to. The measurable gaps are easily explained by the differences in success rates. Furthermore my opponent blaming Robin Williams death on his masculinity rather than the disease and end of life issues that are fact demonstrates my final burden of man hating.If all we do is look at male suicide, and dismiss it by saying they need to be more feminine than we do a disservice to the victims, and hamstring ourselves in addressing the issue for future victims.Thank you, I'd say more, but I had to edit this down to meet the character limit.[7] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com...[8] http://www.bmj.com...[9] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[10] http://www.gallup.com...[11] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu...[12] http://www.acha-ncha.org...[13] http://www.pdf.org...[14] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[15] New England Journal of Medicine 2008;359:672-3[16] http://www.helpguide.org...