I mean saying that genetics is why MBB is “more fun to watch” is just wrong, whether or not something’s fun to someone is mostly due to personal taste and social influences

But I think the overarching reason is just adding stuff that was completely unnecessary to add, like “over half the population is women but no one watches the WNBA!” makes it seem like you wanted to talk about women being weaker than men more than actually answering the question that was asked

Do you not see the problem of a judge posting right-wing conspiracy theories?

I mean, you obviously don’t and will probably just have some fun and creative insult to lay on me for daring to question you, but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try to pretend like you’re still living in the same reality as the rest of us, instead of exhibiting one of the most out-there persecution complexes I’ve ever seen

Ok I’m from the Berkshires and I have to say we don’t really contribute that much. Most of us are just poor and stuck in retail, personal care, or fast food, and the few rich people are mostly involved in the arts.

I do think we need more help than we get, but that’s simply because the area isn’t as developed or interconnected with the rest of the state, and a lot of us are stuck here due to being poor rather than by choice. Accomplishing that will require more resources per capita than elsewhere in the state. But it’s not like we’re the only ones who should be getting more resources per capita—low-income people in eastern MA also need more help than the average person for similar reasons.

We do have at least one disadvantage relative to the urban poor in that our representatives have to lobby for communities that are way farther apart, meaning even if rural and urban representatives are securing the same funding for their districts, the higher cost of trying to develop a larger area diminishes the rural representative’s returns relative to the urban representative. It’s a problem inherent to our representatives belonging to winner-takes-all single-member districts.

But we aren’t better than the rest of the state. We just need more help.

Yeah the app is annoying, I tried editing some things I noticed I worded wrong when I was reading the original comment and somehow I replied to myself instead of making an edit. Really confusing lol.

I mean if I’m being perfectly honest I’m also trying to get myself into academic writing mode so I can finish a college paper I need to do. That comment helped with that a lot lol. But mostly, you responded to what I said with stuff that’s not only completely wrong but dangerous if it were to be believed, since you’d be fooling people into thinking that oppressed people have it better than they actually do, and that mental health is better under authoritarian or theocratic regimes than democratic ones. No way in hell was I gonna let that slide

No? Everything you said was just the complete opposite conclusion of what virtually every fact about the topic would suggest, so I wanted to bring those facts up for you and for anyone else who might be misinformed by what you’re saying.

That doesn’t explain how women attempt suicide at much higher rates than men, and more likely to suffer from depression. Of course it’s possible that more men suffer from mental illness and they’re just not reporting it, but that’s getting into the realm of speculation, because it could very well be the case that even more women suffer from mental illness and are not reporting it.

Of course, more men commit suicide successfully relative to women, but a huge part of that has to do with gun ownership being a traditionally masculine behavior.

90% of suicide attempts using guns are fatal, compared to 4% using other methods, and 86% of firearm suicide victims are men. Rather than simply being more stressed, this most likely stems from the fact that nearly twice as many men personally own a gun than women, male gun owners are about 40% more likely to own multiple guns over female gun owners, and men who grow up in gun-owning households are much more likely to go hunting, practice shooting, and use airsoft guns.

Even for women who become gun owners,women become gun owners on average 8 years later than men, and are less likely than male gun owners to practice shooting or go hunting, less likely to consume gun-related media content, less likely to keep a loaded gun within easy reach than male gun owners, and more likely to be in favor of increased regulations than male gun owners.

And furthering the correlation between gun ownership and suicide, female gun owners are 35x more likely to kill themselves with a gun than women who don’t own guns.

This is all US-centric data but I imagine the trends hold steady in at least most of the Western world. All of this is to say that the rate of suicidal thoughts and attempts are more worth considering in determining the impact of stressors on mental health, because the difference in suicide rates between men and women is almost as much a function of gun ownership as it is mental health issues, and when we look at mental health issues alone, women are worse off than men.

Also, your general point about oppressed people being less stressed makes no sense. Oppressed people aren’t going to feel as safe seeking help as non-oppressed people. Compared to whites, for example, BIPOC are less likely to have access to mental health services, to seek out those services, less likely to receive needed care, more likely to receive poor quality of care, and more likely to end services prematurely. This suggests that the reported rate of mental illness in minority communities is significantly lower than what it actually is. But even when you take the reported rates at face value, Native Americans and people of multiple races are more likely to seriously consider, plan, and actually commit suicide than whites. So the idea that people who experience oppression are less likely to be stressed doesn’t hold based on either the available data or the data that we’d expect to be available under favorable reporting conditions.

And yes, religion plays an important role in decreasing the rate of suicide, but the manner in which it does so is probably more coercive than anything else, as loved ones of suicide victims and those who attempt suicide are more likely to be stigmatized in religious communities. This suggests that people in religious communities could very easily want to kill themselves at a similar or even higher rate to people in non-religious communities, but avoid doing so out of fear of failing the attempt or of bringing harm or shame to their loved ones.

I imagine a similar methodology is at play in authoritarian states, given that authoritarian regimes’ legitimacy would be undermined by a high suicide rate, thereby encouraging stigmatization and underreporting of the practice at all levels of society in order to prevent that.

I mean whether men or women have more stressors is kind of an impossible thing to quantify or measure. So I wouldn’t chalk it up to men being more stressed than women. If anything women have more reason than men to be stressed out given that we live in a, y’know, patriarchy.

It probably has to do with a mix of things, like how a lot of the men who would be in the oldest cohort right now died in WWII, how toxic masculinity disincentivizes men from reaching out for help, and how a lot of unhealthy behaviors are traditionally seen as masculine, like drinking, smoking, and murder. I’m sure other elements are a part of it too but stress is probably only related indirectly if at all

I mean yes the geographic Berkshire hills go beyond Berkshire county. But anyone from the Berkshires knows “the Berkshires” by itself means you’re talking about the county. If you mean the hills you’d need to specify that