The Good Die Young

Today's paper reports that the suicide rate in Japan is ballooning, with 71% of victims salarymen. A recent piece noted that the suicide rate among Australian males has quadrupled since 1971, while the number of women killing themselves, lower to begin with, has remained steady. The figures in Canada and the US are similar. In Canada, men kill themselves at three to four times the rate women do, and the suicide rate has roughly doubled since 1950. Despite the availablity of new anti-depressant drugs.

What could be clearer evidence that men are currently oppressed? This is a situation that needs attention, yet all efforts are focussed instead at improving the lot of women, and scapegoating men. And these figures do not even include the many other male suicides probably recorded as traffic accidents.

But then, when men kill themselves, apparently, it is their own fault. It is because they do not express their emotions enough, usually. Becuase, in the worlds of the story on Japan, they are not "comfortable with any display of public or private emotion." But if women kill themselves, it is society's fault.

Or, of course, their husband's.