My response to VICE regarding an Upcoming Story including this Community

[SHThrowAway213]

I have actually just gone and read the article, and it is ridiculous. I'm pretty sure more people would be doing lasting damage to themselves if the info on this site isn't avaible.
They call this site an atrocity, why, because we are not censoring people here?
So they say in suicide prevention they reduce the access of means because it helps a person not have the means to end their life and that can help people not become suicidal. Like...no. That's not how it works most of the time.
And then they say we are a digital access to the means.
We are just posting information which is around elsewhere on the web. That doesn't make us an access site.
"What these groups are doing are harmful and even evil" Holy shit, shut the fuck up!
This group has been very helpful and it welcomes and respects each person and actually understands that their feelings towards death and doesn't try to patronize them. We walk the fine line between choice and actually encouraging? What? Even if a post is seen as even remotely encouraging, people pull them up on it.
"There is no way to fully control the way people talk about suicide in digital spaces. She's seen even more extreme forums on the dark web." This actually depends on the certain website, most websites censor talk like this, unless it fits a certain narrative.
"Those folks are actively encouraging, supporting, people ending their life"
Like I said, anything remotely encouraging, it gets dealt with. We are supportive towards them though, as it is their choice.
The answer isn't to censor talk about suicide...great, glad we are in agreement in that, that means the website shouldn't be shut down as that would be censoring us. "Suicide prevention can be so fixated on saving lives that it neglects the quality of life that it is fighting to preserve"
Extremely good point, not a lot of places say that.
We don't treat suicidal people with respect/not being able to talk make these feelings worse.
Again, very good. No-one knows I want to die because I don't want to be looked down on, and that is why this website is important, because I can actually talk here. They don't think getting rid of this website would help the suicide rate in a signifying way.
You know what, neither do I.
If we actually helped people and it was relibe we wouldn't need this website/ the mental health service isn't great. I'm guessing so? It's a good point but sometimes even if a person is getting help, they still end up dying.
Most of it was saying this site is harmful and dangerous, but they did say that procedures and services to put in place to help isn't that great and needs more funding. And while it doesn't mention us by name, they did mention Fix The 26, which does. This article is very prolife biased, as expected but at least it does point out the issues of the health service and others as well.

 

[ManWithNoName]

This article is very prolife biased, as expected but at least it does point out the issues of the health service and others as well.

That is true, and I also noticed in the documentary about Callie Lewis had a similar focus: the health services. The documentary was made in the UK and was criticizing the NHS, whereas the Vice article is based in the States, and critical of the system here. That is all good of course, but I suspect their solution will be to build more looney bins, tall and gray, and even privatize them so they are profit-driven (a very scary prospect) bureaucrats, as always, being stupid and corrupt.

 

[imsorrythatimhere]

Thanks for this website dude :)

 

[ManWithNoName]

BTW is vice going to do their article only in text format, or be doing a video presentation?

 

[Imgonnadie]

wait for the vice vid. even if it's inaccurate trash it'll be lit

 

[kkatt]

This community has kept me alive for 30 years.
In that time I have had a predator prosecuted and seen some leave us but many stick around because they found a place they were understood.
I have no doubt that more lives are saved than suicides occur.
It's totally normal for grieving loved ones to look for someone to blame and it's easier to blame a community you don't understand than accept that your loved one was hurting and you didn't know or weren't able to help.
Take a look at Exit international's files. They explain that of the registered patients,very few actually use the service,but having that in place is a comfort that allows them to continue. The pro-choice community works in exactly the same way.
I hope it is always in existence somewhere,because for the truly desperate,it is the best hope.

 

[FTL.Wanderer]

It's terrifying to me that "researchers," with advanced degrees and (hopefully) many trained in the empirical sciences, express as fact what should be obvious to anyone out of elementary school is a moral evaluation. Whether life is good or bad or suicide is right or wrong are not questions of science. They're questions of individual and cultural values, sentiments. Nowhere in medicine or science is there any concrete evidence of objective morality. There simply is no hard reason anyone MUST continue living if she/he concludes life isn't worth its inevitable costs.

And speaking of costs, who among those adamantly opposed to self-determination is going to pay to keep alive the growing numbers of people who can't afford the ever-increasing costs of living? Who is going to provide the vulnerable poor safe housing in countries like the US where the US government itself concludes NOWHERE in the US is there adequate affordable housing? Who is going to provide the millions of desperate sufferers from chronic pain an escape from the second-by-second torture of broken bodies? Who's going to sit with those the rest of the community has cast out as terminally unfit for what other research psychologists are increasingly concluding is a fundamental human need--sufficient companionship? Who among those wanting to shut down access to information and communities like this one is going to give sustaining, meaningful employment to millions of people barely surviving from paycheck to paycheck on increasingly precarious contract or low-wage labor? Who among them will guarantee those whose entire lives are ripped apart by hard-to-prove-in-courts yet no less catastrophic bigotries an end to the compounding suffering many other community members are only too happy to perpetuate? On and on, none of these so-called experts can offer enough of an escape from suffering for all of us that we all want to stay alive. In fact, many of them toss out those of us they know they can't help, first labeling us as incorrigibles to justify the dismissal. Yet still, out they come to pontificate on what is right or wrong and what the law should be.

2021 and we're still building policy based on some people's religious or secular-religious ideas of the way the world ought to work. It's intellectually shameful and profoundly cruel given those commanding others to keep living can neither sufficiently decrease everyone's suffering nor even provide for everyone's basic survival needs. I will never, NEVER, relinquish my bodily autonomy.