“ Women live in a much friendlier, much less cutthroat world”

Really? Please be sure to remind all of the women who don’t live in the safe, mostly progressive Western countries of our world, that they should be thankful for their lot.

Perhaps non-Western women and girls can comfort themselves with the knowledge that men have to work longer hours AND fight on frontlines AND struggle to ask women out on a date (what a laughable point to argue), while they face issues like:

• greater illiteracy
• reduced resources for coping with poverty
• reduced access to healthcare and services, and greater maternal mortality
• greater risk of dying from preventable diseases
• various restricted rights (judicial, civic, property, travel etc)
• continued practice of genital mutilation
• Indigenous women being among the most disadvantaged groups on Earth
• lower life expectancy than Western women
• reduced internet access
• reduced primary education
• lack of access or means of holding a bank account

This is just a sample list of widely-known issues the global female population faces, and the research data and detailed statistics available on these is much more far-reaching than what I’ve very quickly scrambled together.

And when you talk about male v female suicide attempts and rates, you need to acknowledge that the reason the outcomes of suicide attempts are much higher for men than for women, is because men use more violent and ‘guaranteed’ methods, like firearms (this fact is from the very same source you linked to) or vehicle accidents. Women tend to use more unpredictable methods like poison (again, you will see this in the source you linked to).

This article is full of generalisations and selective application of research data, not to mention a clear bias toward the conditions and rights of a smaller proportion of the world’s female population. The need for and goals of feminism extend far beyond what you’ve decided to focus on here, which is a shame. Men need to be included in conversations around feminism and gender equality — but they need to be productive conversations, not what is essentially a pissing contest about who has it worse.

As a woman, I do want equality. I recognise that being a white woman in a financially and politically secure Western country affords me various privileges that many women around the world do not enjoy, and that is the reason I’m a feminist and believe in the need for gender equality.