The latter half of the 20th century, in my view, was this massive backlash against the highwater mark of being pro-RTD in that era Mental health professionals came out strongly saying that 1) suicidality is by definition psychotic 2) encouraging it is enabling psychosis
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
There never is actually a good reason to kill yourself ("a permanent solution to a temporary problem") and if you act like there is then you're just being a callous monster who wants to wash your hands of other people's pain
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I think this is a really good point I don't think it's a 100% convincing point I noticed that when we had our fight over euthanasia/assisted suicide in the '90s the pro-RTD people had made this huge strategic retreat
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Nowadays if you even say "right to die" *nobody* who says that means "Everyone should have the right to kill themselves without anyone trying to stop them, suicide is the cheapest cure for depression and the one that most honestly respects the patient's wishes"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
"Right to die" now specifically means "right to die in the case of terminal illnesses that are guaranteed to cause death anyway within a certain limited window of time and in that time window guaranteed to cause immense physical suffering"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
And like if you argue that that it doesn't mean that the RTD advocates take that as an attack -- the slippery slope argument -- and staunchly deny it And even then, since the heyday of Dr. Kevorkian, they've massively lost ground
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
The disability rights movement's consensus right now is openly and passionately against RTD as a concept They argue fiercely that suicide *cannot* be a "rational" decision made dispassionately and personally within the confines of your own head It *always* has a social context
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
In particular that a disabled person is under constant psychological attack from a society that hates them and tries to brainwash them into believing in their own worthlessness Even if they seem to take their lives by their own hands it's really society that killed them
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
And even if they passionately argue for their own individual right to die, by trying to stop it you're fighting for them against the voices in their heads, which are really the voices of flesh-and-blood human beings who've been their enemies the whole time
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I think this is a very good argument that in many cases is obviously completely true, and that I have bigger problems with Suicide Discourse that says "No one can be 'driven to suicide' and suicide is never any other person's fault" than the "Suicide is never rational" stuff
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But, you know It is hard to have this argument It cuts right to the heart of a lot of things about "Why are we alive, what do we owe each other, what do we owe ourselves" and all that shit
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
I'm very insecure about saying this right now and am leaving it in this reply chain rather than putting it on main because I know people would say it's irresponsible for me to even be putting this stuff out there
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy
Like, I believe in "suicide contagion", as a practical matter obviously it's true -- the more you talk about it the more likely it is people are to do it
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