FTL.Wanderer
Enlightened
- May 31, 2018
- 1,783
There's a popular online blog started by a social worker therapist about why she opposes suicide. It's not surprising that a professional who makes money counseling the suicidal opposes suicide. But her blog's comment section is many years old and 95% or more of the many, many, many commenters are people describing how miserable their lives are and why, therefore, they are pro-suicide. The stories are heartbreaking. The therapist/social worker comments sometimes, but despite having a PhD in her field, she gives the most vacuous responses full of false assumptions, irrelevant personal values, and irritating platitudes. Again, nothing new to anyone who's ever announced publicly they're suicidal.
What makes me fume, though, is that this ... therapist actively censors comments that break no laws whatsoever whenever the commenter criticizes the therapist's viewpoint strongly enough. Recently, another blog owner commented on the site I'm talking about. She mentioned her struggles with gender identity--how painful it's been emotionally, how she's been in numerous treatments to no avail, how she's poor and barely surviving due to the widespread discrimination, and how she suffers gravely from isolation and loneliness. This blogger also criticized the therapist for her position that suicide is never, ever justifiable. That therapy is always appropriate and effective. The therapist replied by calling the other blogger insensitive and cruel for opposing others' access to suffering-ending therapy. Several other commenters respectfully chimed in, pointing out the therapist had misrepresented the other blogger's position as "no one should ever get therapy." The other blogger had said that some people's cases are so very bad that therapy is ineffective for THEM. Because the therapist couldn't "win" the argument against the other blogger and because other commenters supported the other blogger, the therapist then deleted the entire thread.
I wrote in to the therapist that her censorship was ineffective, anti-intellectual, and counter-productive. Her reply was essentially that suicidals cannot think clearly and so our arguments are invalid by definition. To think that this is the kind of reasoning that keeps suicide functionally illegal or painfully impractical for so many people the world doesn't want and who can't, therefore, afford to stay alive, and for whom life is extremely lonely and painful. I'm very grateful for sanctionedsuicide.com, but being relegated to hidden forums keeps our perspectives, experiences, values, and rational arguments out of the broader public political/legislative domain where we--our numbers--need to be to challenge the oppressive and unjust status quo. I'm so disillusioned and angry I can barely get out of bed.
What makes me fume, though, is that this ... therapist actively censors comments that break no laws whatsoever whenever the commenter criticizes the therapist's viewpoint strongly enough. Recently, another blog owner commented on the site I'm talking about. She mentioned her struggles with gender identity--how painful it's been emotionally, how she's been in numerous treatments to no avail, how she's poor and barely surviving due to the widespread discrimination, and how she suffers gravely from isolation and loneliness. This blogger also criticized the therapist for her position that suicide is never, ever justifiable. That therapy is always appropriate and effective. The therapist replied by calling the other blogger insensitive and cruel for opposing others' access to suffering-ending therapy. Several other commenters respectfully chimed in, pointing out the therapist had misrepresented the other blogger's position as "no one should ever get therapy." The other blogger had said that some people's cases are so very bad that therapy is ineffective for THEM. Because the therapist couldn't "win" the argument against the other blogger and because other commenters supported the other blogger, the therapist then deleted the entire thread.
I wrote in to the therapist that her censorship was ineffective, anti-intellectual, and counter-productive. Her reply was essentially that suicidals cannot think clearly and so our arguments are invalid by definition. To think that this is the kind of reasoning that keeps suicide functionally illegal or painfully impractical for so many people the world doesn't want and who can't, therefore, afford to stay alive, and for whom life is extremely lonely and painful. I'm very grateful for sanctionedsuicide.com, but being relegated to hidden forums keeps our perspectives, experiences, values, and rational arguments out of the broader public political/legislative domain where we--our numbers--need to be to challenge the oppressive and unjust status quo. I'm so disillusioned and angry I can barely get out of bed.