BoumTAC

Suicide and Feminicide: The Deaths We Don't Count the Same Way

Published on February 26, 2026

In France, 107 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner in 2024. 107 feminicides that bear witness to unacceptable domestic violence, a tragedy that repeats itself year after year. Each death is one too many, each life cut short is a collective failure.

But there exists another statistic, equally staggering, that we talk about infinitely less: approximately 9,000 people commit suicide each year in France. And among these 9,000 souls who chose to leave this world, 75 to 80% are men.

Let's do the math: 6,750 men, 2,250 women. A surplus of 4,500 men who take their own lives each year. 4,500 versus 107. A ratio of 42 to 1.

These numbers are not here to establish a hierarchy of suffering. Death is death, whether it comes from an outside hand or one's own. But they raise a dizzying question: why this asymmetry in our collective attention? Why do certain deaths mobilize public opinion, the media, politicians, while others slip into deafening silence?

The Bourdain Effect: When Lost Love Becomes Fatal

LindyMan, this modern thinker who draws from ancient wisdom to decode our era, has a name for this phenomenon: the Bourdain Effect. Named after Anthony Bourdain, a man who seemed to have everything to be happy.

Anthony Bourdain. Famous chef, successful writer, host of a cult CNN show, millions in the bank, overflowing creativity, respected by all. A man who traveled the world, explored cultures, tasted life in all its forms. From the outside, a dream existence.

Then he meets Asia Argento, an Italian actress. He falls in love. And when paparazzi photograph her in the arms of a French journalist, Bourdain hangs himself in his hotel room. No alcohol in his blood, no drugs. Just a man destroyed by a breakup.

"This struggle to live, that's what he calls love. There are men who threaten to take their own lives when the woman they adore does not grant their wishes. They risk nothing: they have nothing to lose."

Esther Vilar

If a man with an apparently perfect life can collapse like this, what does it say about us, mere mortals? What does it say about this masculine vulnerability that we obstinately refuse to recognize?

The Three Risks of Male Existence

In his article on the asymmetry of breakups, LindyMan identifies three major risks that hang over a man's life:

The first is physical: the fear of dying violently, of being killed, of suffering an assault. In our civilized societies, this risk exists but remains relatively low.

The second is financial: the fear of ruin, of poverty. A tangible, measurable risk that one can anticipate by checking their bank account or evaluating their value in the job market.

But the third risk is romantic breakup. And no one teaches you how to manage that one. No one tells you that a separation can annihilate you as surely as a bullet or bankruptcy. Yet some men literally lose everything: their mental health, their financial stability, their very identity.

If this phenomenon has persisted for millennia, it reveals something fundamental about masculine nature and its relationship to love.

Idealization: Our Superpower and Our Curse

I wrote in my article on bodycount this uncomfortable truth: man possesses this troubling capacity to idealize woman. He transforms her into a princess, places her on a pedestal, makes her his muse, his queen, the center of his universe.

This idealization is not a flaw. It's what gives us this extraordinary energy to surpass ourselves, to build, to create. Women give us superpowers. They push us to become better, stronger, more accomplished. Without this capacity for idealization, man struggles to find that inner flame that propels him forward.

"I had no courage; no purpose and not even any great desire to live before I had you."

Adam Trask in East of Eden by Steinbeck

But here's the trap: when this idealized woman leaves, when she breaks this princess image we had constructed, our entire world collapses. Because we haven't simply lost a partner – we've lost our source of energy, our reason to fight, our very identity.

Can a woman understand what it means to place one's entire existence in the hands of another being? Understand that without this presence, the world suddenly loses its colors, that getting up in the morning becomes an insurmountable effort?

The Multifactorial Nature of Suicide: Breakup as the Trigger

We're told that suicide is multifactorial. Layoff, drug consumption, financial problems, illness, accident. It's true, no one commits suicide for a single isolated reason. If losing one's job were enough, unemployment offices would be littered with corpses.

But observe carefully: the common factor, the recurring trigger, is romantic breakup. One doesn't commit suicide because they lost their job. One commits suicide because their wife left after they lost their job. One doesn't commit suicide because they had an accident leaving them disabled. One commits suicide because their partner leaves them once they are diminished.

Romantic breakup is the bullet that finishes off the already wounded animal.

And who initiates these breakups? The statistics are eloquent: 70% of divorces are requested by women. In non-married relationships, this figure rises even higher. Women leave. Men stay, or rather, men would like to stay.

The Fundamental Asymmetry: How Men and Women Experience Breakups

The entire difference is there: men and women don't experience breakups the same way. This asymmetry is documented, observed, lived by all who have eyes to see.

When a woman leaves a man, she has already mourned. She's thought about it for months, maybe years. She prepared her exit, anticipated her new life, sometimes even found a new partner before even announcing the separation. The day she pronounces the fatal words, she's already on the other side of the bridge.

The man, on the other hand, falls into the void. Without preparation, without a safety net. The breakup hits him like a club. He thought he was building, she was preparing her escape. He idealized, she disenchanted.

We use the same word "love" but we're not talking about the same thing. Masculine love is total idealization, an investment of one's entire being. Feminine love is more pragmatic, more conditional, more reversible.

This difference is not a moral judgment. It's a biological, evolutionary reality. Women must be able to detach to survive and protect their offspring. Men must invest totally to build and protect. These opposing reproductive strategies create this painful asymmetry.

Invisible Psychological Violence

Let's now talk about what no one talks about: the psychological violence that men suffer.

When we evoke domestic violence, we immediately think of blows, physical injuries, feminicides. And that's legitimate – these violences are real, measurable, photographable. A bruise, a broken rib, a lifeless body: tangible evidence.

But how do you photograph humiliation? How do you measure methodical psychological destruction? How do you prove years of emotional manipulation?

Women have developed a more subtle, more refined form of violence: psychological cruelty. Shit testing – those constant emotional tests to gauge the strength, confidence, value of a man. Public humiliation. Emotional manipulation. Withdrawal of affection as a control weapon. Veiled threats of departure. Every man can testify to this.

Some will say: "It's in female nature, you have to learn to deal with it." Perhaps. But some women go too far. And when a man dares to complain, he's ridiculed: "You're not a man," "You're too sensitive," "Man up."

Psychological violence suffered by men is systematically minimized, even denied. A man who suffers emotionally is a weak man. A man who admits his distress is pathetic. A man who cries over a woman is ridiculous.

So he keeps silent. He takes it. He accumulates. Until the day he can't anymore.

Silent Death versus Mediatized Death

107 feminicides make the headlines. Government campaigns are launched. Associations mobilize. Budgets are allocated. Entire society rises up, horrified, and demands solutions. Rightfully so.

But 6,750 men who commit suicide each year? A statistical non-event. A footnote in public health reports. No campaigns, no mobilization, no viral hashtags.

Why this difference? Because a feminicide has an identifiable culprit: the violent man. It's simple, binary, mediagenic. But a male suicide? Who's the culprit? His wife who left him? She didn't kill him, she just left. His boss who laid him off? It was economically rational. Himself? A coward who couldn't cope.

It's so much more comfortable to point at a monster than to question our relational structures, our contradictory expectations toward men, our collective denial of masculine suffering.

The 4,500 Invisible Deaths

Let's calculate coldly: 6,750 male suicides minus 2,250 female suicides equals a surplus of 4,500 men who end their lives each year.

If we accept the hypothesis – supported by research and millennial experience – that a significant portion of these male suicides finds its origin in romantic breakups initiated by women, what does that say?

That women kill men? No, that would be absurd and insulting. They don't pull the trigger, don't strike the knife blow.

But can we ignore that they possess considerable emotional destructive power? That a woman, by leaving a man at the wrong time or by manipulating him in a thousand ways to benefit from him, can thus trigger a spiral from which he will never recover?

I know these words will shock. That I'll be accused of "victim blaming," of transferring responsibility, of absolving men of their own choices.

But I'm simply asking the question: if we demand that men become aware of their potential physical violence, if we ask them to control their brute force, can't we ask women to become aware of their potential emotional violence?

Love as a Weapon

Women possess an extraordinary power over men. They can elevate them so high, give them superhuman strength, transform them into heroes.

But this same power can destroy. A woman before a man in love is someone who possesses a cistern of water facing a man dying of thirst in the desert. She can give him to drink. She can also look away while he agonizes.

"It is easy to direct a man's strength while it is impossible to resist it."

Lee in East of Eden by Steinbeck

This quote from Steinbeck sums it all up: masculine strength is irresistible but easy to direct. A woman who understands this principle holds immense power. She can orient this strength toward construction, creation, fulfillment. Or toward destruction.

All Deaths Count

I'm not seeking to absolve violent men. A feminicide is an abominable, inexcusable crime that deserves total societal reprobation. Let's continue to condemn and punish.

But I refuse the current imbalance of our collective attention. 107 women killed by men: a collective shame that mobilizes media, politicians, and associations. 4,500 surplus men who kill themselves each year: a non-issue. And even if all these suicides aren't directly caused by a romantic breakup, if only half are – a conservative estimate – that's still 2,250 men. That's 21 times more than feminicides.

Some women will say: "But it's not my fault if a man commits suicide." Excellent point. But in that case, is it men's fault if women always choose the wrong one? We must not forget that only a very small minority of men are violent.

This asymmetry in our attention says a lot about our collective blind spots. About what we choose to see and what we prefer to ignore. We must stop denying masculine suffering under the pretext that it doesn't produce mediagenic corpses. Psychological violence exists and destroys just as surely as physical violence.

Women have immense power over men's mental health and emotional survival. With power comes responsibility. If we ask men to control their physical strength, we must ask women to become aware of their emotional strength.

Psychological violence, moral harassment, destructive emotional manipulation: all of this is already illegal. Yet these laws are only applied in one direction. A man who raises his hand is condemned – rightly so. But a woman who psychologically destroys a man year after year remains invisible to justice. This asymmetry must stop.

All deaths count. All deaths deserve our compassion. All deaths call for our collective questioning about the toxic dynamics between men and women.

Instead of pointing fingers at one another, we should all – men and women – become aware of the power we hold over the other sex and learn to exercise it with more wisdom. Because ultimately, we are all dangerous to each other. In one way or another, we can all destroy the one who loves us.