Women attempt suicide more but complete it less than men

Evidence

There is only one solution available to the woman when rejection runs its course: suicide. But it would seem that she resorts to it less than the man. The statistics are very ambiguous: if one considers successful suicides, there are many more men than women who put an end to their lives; but suicide attempts are more frequent in women. This may be because they settle more often for playacting: they play at suicide more often than man, but they want it more rarely. It is also in part because such brutal means are repugnant to them: they almost never use knives or firearms. They drown themselves more readily, like Ophelia, showing woman’s affinity for water, passive and full of darkness, where it seems that life might be able to dissolve passively. On the whole, this is the ambiguity I already mentioned: the woman does not sincerely seek to take leave of what she detests. She plays at rupture but in the end remains with the man who makes her suffer; she pretends to leave the life that mistreats her, but it is relatively rare for her to kill herself. She does not favor definitive solutions: she protests against man, against life, against her condition, but she does not escape from it. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1752

Categorization

• QUESTION: Beauvoir’s ‘playacting’ reading of female suicide attempts deserves testing against modern suicide data — do attempt/completion ratios still hold?
• XREF: Connects to the immanence/transcendence frame and to the ‘ambiguous self’ theme that runs throughout The Second Sex.