Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> Speaking of evidence, can Ricardo offer evidence for his insinuation
> that studies that have found "for every male diagnosed as suffering
> from depression, two to six times as many females are so diagnosed"
> are inaccurate? What's his ground for thinking so? Is it his sexist
> intuition? To my knowledge, not even Christina Hoff Sommers has
> claimed that such studies are lies made up by feminists (probably
> because findings of gender differences in rates of clinical
> depression do not necessarily come from feminist scholars).
The disproportion in rates of clinical depression between men and women is
one of those facts so widely known and accepted that like the fact that
Lansing is the capital of Michigan it does not require a source. Where
there is some debate (but not a debate involving "feminism" vs
"anti-feminism") is over the exact explanation for the discrepancy. For
example, rates of alcoholism are much higher for men than women. How many
of those male alcoholics are in fact victims of clinical depression who are
"self-medicating"? Also, how much more willing are women than men to seek
help for mental illness? Depression simply isn't very macho. Real men
aren't afraid to answer the phone or collect their mail from the
departmental office -- or at least if they are they may not want to admit
it. The difference in suicide rates between men and women is variously
explained, but it might (among other things) partially be a measure of
unreported male depression. (The conventional explanation is that women
choose inefficient means.)
Note that all the complexities are rooted in male-supremacist social
relations. Any legitimate "challenge" to the statistical fact only
strengthens the feminist position.
Carrol
