What follows is a response to a popular list of claims and arguments made by men’s rights activists.

1. SUICIDE: Men’s suicide rate is 4.6 times higher than that of women’s. [Dept. Health & Human Services — 26,710 males vs 5,700 females]

Not for lack of trying: women attempt it three times as often. [1] Men are more likely to succeed because we are trained for violence, trained for emotional detachment, and trained to deal with problems ourselves rather than seeking help from others. Moreover, we are socialized with a sense of self-importance that can lead men to believe family members would be better off dead without them or to use suicide as a form of revenge against people close to them. The statistic given here also masks that many of these « suicides » were actually murder-suicides. In the United States, an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people died in suicide attacks…