Discussion Encouragement Missionaries

[TiredHorse]

If it is forum law that members encouraging a member to die will be banned, shouldn't pro-life missionaries proselytizing for members to live be similarly banned? At least questioned as to their motives? This is a place where people can explore their choices without judgement or pressure, a pro-choice forum, and being insidiously bullied to live can be as damaging as being aggresively bullied to die.

I am reluctant to speak for the forum as a whole, but I will go out on a limb and hazard that vacuous plattitudes and shallow clichés delivered even by the most well-meaning missionary are not just profoundly offensive to those of us who have been flogged with them for far too long IRL, sometimes even triggering, but I daresay they are potentially counterproductive.

I treasure this forum as a place safe from the bullying of those who would like the vicarious thrill of seeing us die, but it has also been a place safe from those who would claw at us with their shallow, ignorant pleas for us to convert to their ideology of irrelevant optimism, and I fear recent events may bring the missionaries flooding in.

This is not a place for evangelism. We don't come here to influence or be influenced; we come here for reliable information, for honest community, for the genuine compassion of fellow travellers on the darkest of all paths. Could there not be safeguards developed to ban those deemed guilty of proselytizing, just as there are safeguards against those guilty of using the forum for stalking or exploitation, for making sales, or for harassment?

 

[Severen]

Well on the bright side, if this site lets all these pro lifers join and unleash their verbal diarrhea, then the owners of this site, can more easily claim, their website is pro choice. So this would benefit the site, I think. It would make the site, less of a target.

 

[TAW122]

Yes, that is indeed a problem and well written @TiredHorse. I too get nauseated at the torrent of pro-life, anti-choice rhetoric that is spewed by pro-lifers in just about every place. Anytime there is any discussion of death, right-to-die, or suicide (not on here) on various other places, there is always this 'suicide prevention' reminder whether it is the dreadful number, or text number, and/or suicide prevention websites being placed in the content. Basically, 99% of places are already anti-suicide while the 1% (this place and a few very tiny communities around the Internet) has pro-choice, thus our place is very sacred.

@Severen, the problem with that is these pro-lifers not only want to spew their verbal diarrhea on this platform, this sanctuary, but they always want 'more' and if we appease them too much, then they will keep eroding at the pro-choice stance that our current members and atmosphere this place has. @Threads (who isn't on here anymore or has gone MIA) has once said that this place is a good place for people like us, but one of the worst things is having anti-choice, suicide-preventionist groups and organizations come in and start causing trouble.

 

[Severen]

Yes, that is indeed a problem and well written @TiredHorse. I too get nauseated at the torrent of pro-life, anti-choice rhetoric that is spewed by pro-lifers in just about every place. Anytime there is any discussion of death, right-to-die, or suicide (not on here) on various other places, there is always this 'suicide prevention' reminder whether it is the dreadful number, or text number, and/or suicide prevention websites being placed in the content. Basically, 99% of places are already anti-suicide while the 1% (this place and a few very tiny communities around the Internet) has pro-choice, thus our place is very sacred.

@Severen, the problem with that is these pro-lifers not only want to spew their verbal diarrhea on this platform, this sanctuary, but they always want 'more' and if we appease them too much, then they will keep eroding at the pro-choice stance that our current members and atmosphere this place has. @Threads (who isn't on here anymore or has gone MIA) has once said that this place is a good place for people like us, but one of the worst things is having anti-choice, suicide-preventionist groups and organizations come in and start causing trouble.

How about just creating a section for pro lifers and confining them to that section?

 

[Stillnotsure]

I wholeheartedly agree with @TiredHorse and I have worn both caps. I had a job that required me to harass suicidal folks with antisuicide jargon. I myself have been suicidal, even while saying these things. If we allow very pro-lifers on here, we will lose the safe place we have come with our quiet voices. In truth we desperately want to know we are not alone in our suffering, and this forum has provided that. If someone wants to politely state why they believe an individual should stay alive at all costs, let it be so, but if it crosses into the ALL CAPS yelling style opinion pushing, we should censor it.

 

[Severen]

I wholeheartedly agree with @TiredHorse and I have worn both caps. I had a job that required me to harass suicidal folks with antisuicide jargon. I myself have been suicidal, even while saying these things. If we allow very pro-lifers on here, we will lose the safe place we have come with our quiet voices. In truth we desperately want to know we are not alone in our suffering, and this forum has provided that. If someone wants to politely state why they believe an individual should stay alive at all costs, let it be so, but if it crosses into the ALL CAPS yelling style opinion pushing, we should censor it.

How can we lose a safe space if they are confined to one forum and if they post their shit outside of it, they get banned etc... This would offer a great defense against pro lifers accusing this site of being pro suicide. They won't have a leg to stand on.

 

[ArtsyDrawer]

How about just creating a section for pro lifers and confining them to that section?

It'll turn into "if you give a mouse a cookie" situation. First, you give them their corner to preach from, then they will start protesting that, since they got their corner, they're being oppressed by being confined into said corner and that if the admins are truly pro choice, they must let them into the "forbidden section".