Costa Mesa Suicide Cleanup

Comments about Suicide and Suicide Cleanup

Every suicide cleanup has its differences, but many of these, about 73%, share demographic similarities. White males commit suicide for about 73% of the suicides in the United States. Why so many white males choose suicide remains unclear, especially when compared to the numbers for other demographic groups.

Demographic Group

Any one "group" consists of our personal beliefs about what makes up a "group." We usually agree when we use a term like "family group" because we all understand the meaning of "family." Families have a long history and we see them everywhere.

Problems of definition arise when we try to describe or explain other "groups." (See short essay, "Genetics and Hatred") What we usually mean by the term group has something to do with economic, social, cultural, or physical characteristics. When we begin to add these variable together we come up with what sociologists refer to as demographic groups. So when I use the term demographic group I mean something similar between members of an economic, social, cultural, or people sharing a common heritage and, usually, physical characteristics.

Demographic group designations in suicide cleanup become important when trying to figure out why suicide occurs at all. Suicide cleanup throughout the ages occurred without much thought given to "professionalism" or bloodborne pathogens. Only since congress inadvertently created the multi-million dollar suicide cleanup industry did professionalism and money enter our suicide cleanup task.

My suicide cleanup service matches these numbers, it seems. For white women my suicide cleanup experience matches our government's numbers, about 17%. If I received suicide cleanup calls in Orange County I would have numbers for Orange County suicide cleanup.

Older White Males

In the United States, older white males create a greater risk for committing suicide. Speculation about their greater risk for suicide usually finds loneliness, illness, and loss of social status among the top reasons for their suicide risks. Because white males born in the United States share greater status, more choices, they have fewer social and cultural constraints to blame for their power and status decline, Put another way, other demographic groups have fewer options at birth than whites. Of course this is all changing, but the die is cast for older white males.

Metaphorically, we might say, "white males were and are born at first base, whereas some other demographic groups were born somewhere in a ballparks parking lot." For certain, such metaphors hold for 50 years ago within African American populations.

So how do we reach this curiosity found by suicide cleanup technicians, cleaning after white male suicides for most suicide cleanup calls?

Speculation about older white males note many risk factors for this demographic group. Overall, the following variables come to play for many older white males in the United States:

Relatively more power,*
More social isolation,
More freedom,
More willingness to aggress
More guilt,
More Perceived Responsibility.
Less opportunity to ventilate,
Easy access to guns.
Alcoholism
Divorce

More Power

"White males have more power" in the sense that they enjoy greater freedom to move about. Few white males create security concerns in the way that black males and hispanic males cause concerns.

Until most recently in United States history, white males dominated positions of power and authority within social, political, and cultural structures. They were accepted, literally, at face value as a "presence" in social gatherings. As a consequence, power and authority vested in this demographic group continues from its own momentum, but slowly loses its prior control and influence. Our society becomes more diverse every day, and every day power slowly diversifies among demographic groups as well as within such groups.

Social Isolation

"More social isolation" applies to the loss of peers, family members, and co-workers. We here, "It's lonely at the top," and for good reason. The structure of housing re-enforces this isolation. We all know about neighbors going decades without acknowledging one another.

Add middle-class housing norms to the white male world and white males at the "top" move farther and farther away from one another. They tend to know fewer neighbors, and when they do it's for appearances sake. No one wants to look like a snob.

Freedom

Like any other ideal, freedom exists about as far as your neighbor allows your freedom to exist, existentially speaking. Put into my own experience, my neighbor has the freedom to smoke marijuana because I do not object. So it goes with others around our country.

Freedom also means freedom to do and freedom from. We have freedom to go to any church of our choice or no church at all. Until we became aware of the restriction in middle-eastern countries, this freedom seemed like a minor ideal. Now we know it's more than a matter of life and death.

Freedom in a white maleness context means greater discretionary income. A white male born into a white, middle-class, educated family usually grows into a prosperous future, at least until the 21st century. Manners of speech, social discourse that is, and grooming for upward mobility shrouded white males with born-to-succeed figuratively tattooed on their forearms. In this case, long-sleeve, white shirts became part of their upper-middle-class uniform.

By virtue of their whiteness white males have a social mobility freedom denied to other demographic groups, even to this day. Few neighborhoods exist where white males may not safely visit or pass. Freedom to come and go as one pleases must amount to something of great value for those who live day-to-day without it.

With their demographic freedoms white males inherit an oppositional place in the world. They must somehow try to keep their unspoken place of power in the world without actually admitting to having this power.

For white males freedom to use violence seems to come naturally, in some cases. Indeed, if we listen to popular commercial radio we hear about these freedoms. Note the monumental amount of time devoted to 2nd Amendments rights to have a weapon. Few would deny anyone these rights, it seems to me. But listen to the white propagandists on commercial radio and we might think the of our right to own a weapon really is under attack.

Handguns, rifles, shotguns, and more speak to the white males' interest in weapons of personal violence. Look on any news rack and find half-a-dozen gun and rifle magazines promising the latest technologies and latest threats to the 2nd Amendment. Note the pictures depict white males, not brown males, and not black males. If these magazine were to depict black males sporting these military assault weapons, cries of "Black Panthers" are coming would echo off city hall.

More Willingness to Aggress

It's hard not to stereotype white males and their willingness to aggress. The truth probably belongs more to males in general than to anyone demographic group. With white males and suicide, suicide cleanup shows self-murder follows from some sort of inner-directed willingness to aggress against self. Suicide cleanup reveals blunt force trauma death scenes among this group follows self-hate.

Elsewhere I've written more on this inner-directed self-hatred in terms of recent findings in psychoanalysis. There the object of hate and violence does not consist of the self, per se, but that part of self bifurcated to "other." Since I do not have time, resources, or training enough to expound on these phenomena, I'll avoid going any further in this direction. Suffice it to say white males see their internal self as a hate object in suicide cases.

Male hormones, testosterone, play some role in the male's willingness to use violence against themselves. Social and cultural values also place violence against others in high esteem. Monday night football testifies to the power of violence in Unites State's culture. Violent western movies and war movies give hint of the male propensity toward violence. Suicide cleanup proves the case.

More Guilt

With power and authority comes guilt. With divorce and isolation comes guilt. White males without a sense of responsibility and guilt for failed goals and outcomes probably suffer psychotic episodes. We would expect guilt to play a prominent role in the lives of once influential white males. These males know intuitively they owe their place in the world to the color of their skin.

Once out of their higher status, whatever status situation they may have earned or acquired, some sense of guilt grows. They may verbally blame others, "If only she hadn't taken the car" and so on. Ultimately guilt sets in for life-mistakes where life-opportunities were available. In fact, for a white male acting in good faith, life become a greater threat to their own sense of justice and dignity.

More Perceived Responsibility

Anyone reading this far must gasp at my phrase, "More Perceived Responsibility" because I'm writing about white male power and privilege. In the light of 2007 and the Wall Street derivatives crash, white male responsibility probably strikes most people as an oxymoron. But I'm talking about males with a sense of responsibility and willing to criticize their own actions.

These males feel guilt and shame as well as responsibility for a life less-than-desired.

Perhaps the suicide victim used many years chasing a personal or professional goal. Perhaps the suicide victim ignored their family while chasing a goal yet to be defined. Perhaps their purpose in life was to have a purpose.

In the end, at least the end as they believed it, their elusive goal strayed beyond their reach. Perhaps their goal remained beyond their reach from the beginning of their quest. Now guilt sets in for time lost, finances lost, opportunities lost, and friends and family lost.

Of course we find anger in an extraordinarily wide mix of white, US males, not just the suicidal. Such anger arises from life in white society. White society following WW II carried with it some responsibilities, duties, and ideals. It also carried a potential to suffer a crashing world-view.

Less Opportunity to Ventilate

Whether white, black, brown, or pink, males in US society suffer unknown psychological hazards. The hazards of being male confuse boys and men alike. "Don't cry" follows us from the time we first fall on our face while learning to walk until we reach our death bed. Showing weakness in any form somehow diminishes our "manhood."

By the time a working-class male reached mid-life, the ability to cry may have vanished with years of male indoctrination. As a result pressure to conform to this social norm requires ignoring the internal need to ventilate aggression, disappointment, and more.

Hypertension in black males kills millions every year. From boyhood on black males suffer from social stigmas concocted by a white society ignorant of what it means to be a black male in the USA. It seems ironic that white males privileged by their male position and their white privileges should be the ones to heap the most hatred and stigmatizing upon black males, one of the least protected social groups in the USA.

Oddly, black males then tend to die in their 50s from hypertension, often with relationships to racism instigated by hateful white males. Ironically, white males of the bigoted strip come to suffer the hardships of being male (as their black brethren do) while guilt builds for not excelling in respect to their privileged white, social status.

A visit to most white working class or middle-class locker rooms or barracks will confirm the above statements.

Easy access to guns

Until the 1980s buying a gun in the US for white, adult males came as easily as buying pecan pie. Then a very sick man tried to shoot President Reagan. Thereafter the government became more interested in gun registration. People in the National Rifle Association (NRA) became a little more paranoid than before. Today they are very paranoid. I for one would never deny anyone's right to have a firearm, unless they were a bad person, or suicidal.

Suicide cleanup after white males shows their weapon of choice remains the handgun. Some times rifles or shotguns used. I'm convinced from my years of suicide cleanup work that had fewer males been drinking and not had access to guns, they would be alive today.

The Six Gun Mystique remains alive and well in the USA. Our popular cultural icons typically have some connection to guns. During their rise to prominence, a majority of movie actors somehow come into contact with guns.

From Shane to the Magnificent Seven, the handgun plays a major role in its influence of male identity. In southern states, maleness means owning a gun or firearm of some sort, it seems.

Alcoholism

Alcoholism factors into white male suicide in many cases as shown during suicide cleanup. Many times during suicide cleanup I've removed beer bottles, whisky bottles, and wine bottles. It may be that the white males' interest in alcohol adds to any illusions of grandeur one imagined and finally lost.

Alcohol plays a prominent role in our society. It should be no surprise the 1970s women's movement began with the women's movement to oust alcohol from our society.

Any Monday night a visit to commercial television reveals select programming for alcohol related advertising. No other drug in the USA accounts for so much discord and expense than alcohol. No other drug has a wide acceptance and known powers of intoxication by so many. In the hands of someone suffering from the above suicidal variables, alcohol diminishes resistance to suicide.

Blurred thinking, magnified guilt and anger, and finally a disgust with self leads the gun totting alcoholic to suicide. Most suicide cleanup work involves just such scenes. Often times alcoholism leads to exacerbate, if not create some of the mentioned suicidal variables.

Divorce

Divorce may follow the beginning of alcoholism, or alcoholism may follow divorce. In either case divorce carries a powerful stimulus for suicide among older white males. The loss of a life-long partner destroys part of one's self concept. The other, their spouse, in some ways defines who we are and who we become. Without limits set by this other, alcoholism leads to horrific ends.

Divorce means an end to power over another in some ways. It means a loss of freedom from some sorts of menial tasks as well as loss of income in some cases. Even health insurance may play a role in divorce.

Loss of family recognition and lost honor among children come into the picture for some suicidal males. It would be hard to find a greater loss than a divorce from a responsible, caring spouse.

Television's rise to prominence during the 1950s offered ideals seldom experienced in real families. Ossie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver portrayed life in the nuclear family as ideals. Comparing the real family to such models lead to unrealistic goals and expectations for family members. Nonetheless, television continued to set the mark for what made white men what white men should be expected to become.

So popular, commercial television afforded our society an opportunity to learn male roles as never before. Roles that never existed as portrayed.

The Six Gun Mystique rose like never before as white males socialized to the role of strong males immolated what they saw since boyhood, guns in men's hands.

I recall Roy Rogers and Dale Evans fighting for justice. Rarely did the gun come into play. Such outcomes followed The Lone Ranger and Tonto, but not as strictly. Before long death by handgun and rifle became common place. Young boys immolated what they watched. Ideals about man-hood reinforced our role of the gun in society.

Most importantly, we lived in a white male dominated society. Television reinforced this idea.

As society changed, especially in the 1960s, white male "baby boomers" saw their dominant roles changing from all directions. Not only did African American and Hispanics become more socially prominent, they earned and won the rights so often save for white males.

Now young, educated African American surgeons, lawyers, and other professionals gained access where many white males could not. US society began to give more reward for merit. White males began to witness a slow, steady erosion of their dominant position.

All of this gives background to an emerging anger nationwide. We see it and we hear it in local and national politics. With unemployment and other social pressures, white males may experience anger not present in other generations. As a consequence we witness white male suicides in number uncommon to other demographic groups.

We might find higher numbers of suicides in male Hispanics suffering from poverty, loss of family connections, and illness. Within migrating labor groups no one counts suicides. In fact, we might have expected some migrating Hispanic groups to have performed suicide cleanup for suicides and even buried the suicide victim in a nameless hole along side the road. We can never know.

We Don't Know One Another

What we do know about suicide victims we know about each other. This means that in the end, no one really knows anyone else. We can only guess and hope to come close to the truth. Surprise suicides proves these words out.

Everybody’s different and everybody’s OK in their style of living. We don’t agree with what everybody does, but in the end we must agree everyone shares similarities and differences. This alone perplexes those of us trying to understand suicide. Everybody has their own desires and fears.

For baby boomer, white males these ideas may seem foreign, especially to those males with a drive to reach the “top.” Or, at least, white males with a sense of belonging at the “top” may not share my ideas about similarities.

In fact, a social code for "individualism" permeates US society's culture, especially as it applies to white males. However true or fictional this "code" may be is not important. The fact that white males believe in it speaks to their denial of similarities to others. Few white, southern males will admit to having more similarities to black, southern males than differences.

Differences do exist, and these differences make each of us unique, but not somehow less-than-others. For some, simply understanding that it’s OK for everyone to think and exist differently helps the world become a healthier place, generally speaking.

When white males do admit to similarities, its for rejecting other demographic groups. White male identity becomes a crisis identity for many during these times. Rather than look at the many different stages of maturity people go through, some white males insist everyone goes through the same experiences as they do.

As a result, others should achieve as much, according to these males. They become fixated on identity and when their identity no longer serves as an avenue to security and recognition, the following identity crisis becomes lethal. Add stressors like unemployment, divorce, loss of a home or relative or friend, and the pressure becomes too much.

So whose to blame? No one's to blame. It's about a fact of life and social, cultural change.

Suicide cleanup technicians soon come to understand that no one can be blamed for another's suicide, except in exceptional cases. We see evidence of some or all stressful conditions experienced by white males. For other demographic group members, white male suicide may seem like "cowardice" or "weakness." These terms will not do. There's a lot more going on then we might imagine.

We would all do well to help everyone understand there is no way we can really understand one another, not fully. So we cannot expect to change others to change as we might want. Not everyone will think or choose to look like us. Let it be. There's more than enough suicide cleanup work to go around without throwing darts.

Suicide cleanup for the white male means more than cleaning. Suicide cleanup for the white male means to understand white males in our society and culture live within a contradictory, multi-meaning existence with hazards we cannot see. If we try hard enough, we may begin to understand why we see so many familiar variables during suicide cleanup in Costa Mesa.

Black Female Suicides

In the US black females attempt suicide most often, but succeed less often. Answering this question goes right to the heart of a major variable for suicide. Living with others and avoiding loneliness.

Black females, usually because of poverty or low-incomes, live with others living with similar conditions. They form close bonds with these others. Local churches also create a sense of unity and belonging, something missing to the other-directed white males (See David Reisman's The Lonely Crowd)

Black females, at least until recently, came into the world at the bottom or near the bottom of the social hierarchy in the USA. Since the beginning of language and before, females came at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Until the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s did women find a wider, louder voice to make demands on the status-quo.

In some ways black women's social rights gained as a result. Of course the civil rights movement brought about great changes in the lives of black women. One need only mention "Rosa Parks" and the idea of self-identity, self-assertion, and community recognition and involvement come to mind. What could buttress the self's sense of belong more so?

Today a small minority of black women have gained "middle-class" status and professional careers. As role models they signal a new beginning and rising expectations among other black women.

Meanwhile, social institutions continue to serve black females and their need for some sort of solidarity during suicidal moments. Compared to white males, black women have social networks of great strength. It is a rare day when I perform suicide cleanup for a black females.

Hispanic Female Suicides

After 8 years in the suicide cleanup business I finally performed suicide cleanup for a female Hispanic. She shot herself in the head with a small caliber handgun. Seated in a storage shed, she finished her last cigarette, half a can of Miller's light beer, and made a last glance at a sexist rag, Suicide Girls.

I mention this book because of its subject, suicide girls. Suicide cleanup often uncovers items related to a suicide victim's ideation. This book, I must admit, played some part in this young woman's suicide. No doubt suicide cleanup duties were to follow this young woman sooner or later, but I cannot help thinking this book played a role in a Hispanic female's move to suicide.

Suicide Cleanup for Women of Color

Suicide cleanup for other "women of color" rarely occurs anywhere. In the Philippines, oddly enough, women rarely commit suicide. I say, "oddly enough" because the status of women in the Philippines remains low even at this stage of the 21st century.

Some young women in the Philippines become virtual slaves in various countries because of their poverty. Their families have little to offer, and a Philippine woman can earn money for her family. I mean, if all goes well. Too often, like in middle-eastern countries, women brought into homes for domestic chores become little more than slaves.

The point here is that if we were to suspect suicide cleanup to occur in one demographic group more often than others, we would look to female demographic groups, not white males.

Whatever the explanation for the many white male suicides world-wide, I may have hit upon a useful idea above. In suicide cleanup work, I will continue using what I know to clean, and remain open to new ideas to help stop suicide.

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