Incidentally, speaking of the differences between beautiful women and handsome men, I just ran across an interesting article in the Guardian by Barbara Ellen which makes the same point we have been making. Here’s the money quote for me:

“Where sexual objectification is concerned, fame is a game-changer for men, while merely amplifying normality for women. To suggest otherwise seems misguided at least.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/12/men-women-sex-objects

I am not sure what mental clarity one has in such moments to be able to distinguish that his action is fully a product of impulse A (the definite desire to die) rather than mingled with impulse B (a desire to be helped) or maybe even with a distinct hope to be saved that one may not consciously recognize.

In hindsight, I am also not sure how many people are capable of mentally “reconstructing” the state of mind they had at psychologically extreme points in their lives. I have zero professional expertise in any of this so maybe I talk nonsense, but my experience is that I cannot “reconstruct”, ad hoc, previous mental states with nearly the same intensity. I cannot “think myself” happy or distressed – I can evoke a sort of emotional memory of such states, but cannot really “relive” them at will. As a result, by definition I cannot tell what was the dominating impulse at a point at which I considered suicide, since I cannot recreate all of the emotional and cognitive reality in which to distinguish what drives what in the first place.

If this is a shared experience, the explanation of “they did not REALLY intend to do X” may be problematic, EVEN if it comes from the very same individuals. I may in retrospect mislabel the aspects to emotionally extreme past dynamics because I cannot evoke them at will.

“Women who attempt suicide tend to use less violent methods such as pills, whereas men tend to used more violent methods such as guns”

That can be interpreted in different ways. Obviously, if someone was making a dramatic gesture without the intent to actually die, they will use less violent methods such as pills. Someone who really wants to kill themselves with chemicals could use something more fatal like a fatal dose of insecticide rather than an overdose of prescription pills.

“In addition, many people who do finally kill themselves have made attempts; a failed attempt does not mean a non-serious attempt.”

Agreed. I have never heard that a failed suicide attempt is a non-serious event. Some of them are genuine attempts to commit suicide while some are dramatic gestures for help. Either way, anyone who is desperate enough to attempt suicide must be taken seriously. If their failed attempted suicide does not bring them the needed help they might complete the suicide next time.

I was once told the same thing re: “handsome” and effeminacy by a man. He was of the opinion that “cute” and “sweet” were worse, though.

He also claimed what I alluded to in my previous point, but unlike me he was sure convinced about it, claimed it in no uncertain terms. He said that men are “beautiful” (or “pretty”, or “handsome”, or what have you) only insofar as they possess more of the qualities that are *proper to women* (i.e. that the degree of that which we call “beauty” in a man is directly proportional to that which they call effeminacy).

I am still not sure what to make of it, on the one hand it is so… “un-egalitarian”? to even entertain the idea that the realm of the sort of physical exceptionality we call beauty may be as nearly exclusive to women as the realm of superior physical strength is to men; on the other hand, I sure cannot deny my own experience, I saw beautiful men but a few times in my life (but *when* I saw them, I am not sure they were of the effeminate sort, so there I disagree with my friend: while far more women may be beautiful, the few men who have an analogous quality have it in a way that is distinct).

I think, however, that some exceptional female beauty also has a certain androgynous touch to it – a female form so sharp in its quality that it ceases to be fully female, some feature of it breaches out. I was never quite sure how to explain it and for all the art history I have studied nobody has been able to put it into words coherently, although many have agreed on the general point (“beauty”, as one extreme end of aesthetic experience, having an androgynous quality to it).

Anyhow I ramble, I am sorry for the length of my posts, it is just a topic that has fascinated me for years.

Women who attempt suicide tend to use less violent methods such as pills, whereas men tend to used more violent methods such as guns:

The reported difference in suicide rates for males and females is partially a result of the methods used by each gender. Although females attempt suicide at a higher rate, they are more likely to use methods that are less immediately lethal. Males frequently complete suicide via high mortality actions such as hanging, carbon-monoxide poisoning, and firearms. This is in contrast to females, who tend to rely on drug overdosing. While overdosing can be deadly, it is less immediate and therefore more likely to be caught before death occurs. In Europe, where the gender discrepancy is the greatest, a study found that the most frequent method of suicide among both genders was hanging, however the use of hanging was much higher in males (54.3%) than in females (35.6%). The same study found that the second most common methods were firearms for men and poisoning for women.

Methods of suicide are frequently correlated both with traditional gender roles and availability of different methods. Men are more likely than women to both use and own firearms, which could account for the higher rates of firearm death among males. In nations where firearms have been banned, there is a drop in male suicides via gun but no change in females.

Suicide is sometimes an impulse act, and people tend to use what’s around and what they’re familiar with. The use of pills doesn’t mean a person isn’t serious, but it’s harder to gauge how much to take so it tends to be more survivable, plus (as the article says) there’s more time for discovery.

These gender differences in method were also true way back when I was in college. I remember learning about it in a course.

In addition, many people who do finally kill themselves have made attempts; a failed attempt does not mean a non-serious attempt. Here are some statistics:

Some suicide methods have higher rates of lethality than others. The use of firearms results in death 90% of the time. Wrist-slashing has a much lower lethality rate, comparatively. 75% of all suicide attempts are by self-poisoning, a method that is often thwarted because the drug is nonlethal or is used at a nonlethal dosage. These people survive 97% of the time.

A nonfatal suicide attempt is the strongest known clinical predictor of eventual suicide. Suicide risk among self-harm patients is hundreds of times higher than in the general population. It is often estimated that about 10-15% of attempters eventually die by suicide. The mortality risk is highest during the first months and years after the attempt: almost 1% of individuals who attempt suicide die within one year….

…Some 19,000, (17%) of these people are permanently disabled, restricted in their ability to work, each year, at a cost of $127,000 per person.

Incidentally, I agree with your statement above about beauty in women vs. handsomeness in men. In our society beauty in the male physique is not emphasized. It is a rare man who has the aesthetic appeal of a beautiful female. Most men know that that type of aesthetic appeal is impossible and don’t even try to go there. The ancient Greeks and Romans seemed to appreciate the male form more but our society is so strongly oriented towards the feminine that men don’t usually rise above average or above average but never rise to beautiful.

The problem with suicide, as I understand it, is that paradoxically more women *attempt* it, but more men *complete* it.

As a result of these TWO disparities, TWO generalizing conclusions can be drawn:

1) Because men are more likely to *do it successfully*, life must be harder FOR THEM in ways we do not sufficiently appreciate yet.

2) Because far more women are *drawn to the point of attempting it*, and a proportion of their failure can be imputed to using less fatal methods, life must be actually worse FOR THEM: far more of them are at that extreme point, but end up saved by luck or by their inferior ability in executing their plans. So the fact they are less able and more lucky masks the fact that the initial disproportion reflects on the greater relative hardship for women (as subjectively experienced – enough to end up there in the first place).

Same numbers, same disparities, but because the disparities are TWO, the interpretation will depend on which disparity you privilege.

(My personal experience here is atypical. The two completed suicides of people close enough for it to have an impact on me were both of women. The attempted suicides I know of are split evenly, and I ruin the statistics because I feared the consequences of survival too much to give it a try, otherwise there would be more women in that group too.
But as I said, my experience is at odds with statistics.)

Being “pretty” is not. I have always thought of “pretty” as a backhanded compliment, a sort of euphemism for what used to be “common” – it is almost as if any woman with a modicum of an aesthetic appeal got called “pretty” by default.

“Beautiful” is different, it denotes a rare quality, a *declination* from the norm. The two seem to be mutually exclusive, a pretty woman by definition cannot be beautiful and vice-versa.

We may disagree on the standard, or say that the standard is ultimately subjective, but I think most people use the words this way: what they call “pretty” is common-appealing (so, “average” fits here too), what they call “beautiful” is rare-appealing.

“Handsome” seems to be the male version of “pretty”, not of “beautiful”. I am not sure what is the male version of “beautiful”, but – if I may rase a controversial point, hoping not to offend any male interlocutors – I am not sure we have sufficient vocabulary for that precisely because this is a quality that seems to be associated with the feminine figure. Even most *women* I know claim that when they instinctively think of “beautiful”, they think of *other women*, not of men. The difference is that, unlike men, we are not sexually attracted to beautiful (or pretty, or any) women. As a result we get to derive a pure, undiluted artistic joy from a sight of a beautiful woman, without our experience being “sexually contaminated”, so to speak.

(Which is also a part of my theory that women – not men, as a stereotype would have it – are more often the true aesthetes, their experience of beauty of a human form being “pure”, not contaminated by an involontary sexual component to it. A (male) friend with whom I talk about art has a theory that, while true aesthetes of either sex are always few, men need to *overcome* something in their nature to join the club, while women of the club are naturals. Where our theories differ is that he still claims there are more men in the club and that does not resonate with my experience.)

The male equivalent of “attractive” seems to be something that imposes itself on the physical structure, rather than emanates from it. BECAUSE women are such aesthetes as will not be romantically or sexually attracted to beauty even if male beauty existed, men need to “intervene” to attract women. We seem to attract them by our presence alone, and while that presence may certainly be improved, even dramatically so (and here enter things such as carriage, diction, manners, make-up etc.), the sort of “intervention” men do seems more intense, and *necessary*.

When I think of the man I love, I would not say he is “handsome”; a better explanation would be that my appreciation of his physical features is a sort of an afterthought arising from appreciation of other qualities, bringing about a harmonious appreciation of the whole. With him, it may be that he had a sort of a reverse process that started with the physical stratum and built FROM there, not TO there.

You and Neo might be correct insofar as men often attribute their personal insecurities to things other than personal appearance. Because society worships beautiful women and splashes their images everywhere, undoubtedly other women feel pressured to match them in appearance. Men are also pressured but the pressure is often in other areas so their insecurity probably manifests differently.

It is a well known fact that men often don’t cope well. The state of the modern males is not good. The ultimate failure in dealing with life’s problems is suicide which is much more frequent among males than women. Also, despite the alleged male privilege and white privilege it is white males who are much more likely to commit suicide than black or Hispanic males.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/rates02.html