"Vulnerability" isn't an argument against this forum, stop using it.

[RainAndSadness]

One of the more common arguments used against the accessability of this forum is the notion that they need to protect vulnerable adults from the content of this forum. I'm sure you noticed whenever the media or anti-choice activists talk about this forum, they ususally frame their opposition to this community as a concern for said "vulnerable adults". Just look up some news articles or some social media posts, you'll find it rather quickly. I want to talk about the reasons why that's a harmful talking point because you might think, 'hey it makes sense, we should protect vulnerable people', right?
Actually, no - because it's a strategic talking point to justify censorship, nothing else. Let's talk about vulnerability.

There are a few problems with that term. First, there are no non-vulnerable people. Everyone is vulnerable. You are vulnerable, I am vulnerable. The people that oppose this community are vulnerable. Some are more vulnerable than others considering their circumstances and background, true - but all of us are vulnerable to a certain degree. That's the nature of life and it's why so many of us seek to have a choice when it comes to the right to die. That's actually a very important factor when we talk about individual autonomy that's often disregarded: vulerability. We all know that we can go from a healthy person in complete control of their life to a suffering and beddridden individual in a matter of seconds. We're at the mercy of circumstances we can't control, all of us. Right at this very moment. My brother died in a car crash. Fingersnap - dead. When I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis a while ago, the symptoms also came out of nowhere. You wake up and your life has changed, suddenly you're tormented with physical pain every second of your life. This can happen to me, this can happen to you. That makes us all vulnerable by default. Nobody is in control. You might think you are but it's a facade and that's life. There are many members of this community whose life changed drastically in a matter of a short time period, most members here probably at some point thought their life is going well. Truth is, that can change very quickly. And that's why so many people actually seek information about their right to die, it gives them back some sense of control over their own life. It's a very natural desire and I think most viewers of this website do so because(!) they're aware of their own vulnerability. For many of us, how we go is the only aspect that we can truly control in our life. In a chaotic world like ours, in which almost all countries outlawed assisted suicide, being able to leave on your own terms is a huge privilege. And that's wrong. It shouldn't be a privilege, it should be a human right. And that's one aspect that's discussed in this forum.
So my point is: vulnerability isn't an argument against individual autonomy, it's an argument in favor of individual autonomy. And going after this forum because it provides a place for conversations you're not allowed to have anywhere else is simply morally bankrupt.

Back to my point. As I just established, every single person is vulnerable to some degree, pretending that there are vulnerable and non-vulnerable people is absurd. So when anti-choice groups say we should take down this forum to protect "vulnerable people", it's essentially an empty talking point to give their argument of censorship - targeting consenting and autonomous adults - emotional weight. Because that's their actual goal, none of these discussions around this forum are about vulnerable people, they're a red herring to ban certain content for all adults. Let's make that very clear. We're talking about attempts to censor the internet under the disguise to protect certain people. What they actually mean is that nobody should be allowed to the view sensitive information that's discussed in this forum. And that's just wrong and your framing is dishonest and it's also harmful for the following reason. People who are mentally ill and that's who you actually mean when you talk about vulnerable people, are capable of making sane and conscious decisions that are well thought out and rational, which is also confirmed by this study.

So let's bury this horrible talking point as well that we need to protect (aka take away individual autonomy from) people who suffer from mental health conditions.
If someone has a mental illness, it still doesn't justify the following three things:
1. deciding what content they're allowed to see online and which communities are suitable for them
2. treating them like children, patronizing and gaslighting them, pretending to know better what's good for them
3. protectig them from "themselves", which is a dogwhistle for taking away their individual autonomy and interfering with deeply personal decisions

We have to make one thing clear. None of the people that talk about vulnerable people in the context of sanctioned-suicide really care about "vulnerable people" in the first place, it's simply a talking point to deplatform a community of consenting adults that agree with each other about certain ethical topics, period. That's why they never put forward any solutions to improve the lives of people who are actually vulnerable. Not one article that's ever been written about this forum, none, have ever brought forward constructive solutions to improve the lives of our members. Instead they've been busy smearing and slandering this community as a malicious death cult. And that doesn't make sense because this forum contains tens of thousands of threads and discussions addressing our needs - you would think if any of the journalists that wrote these articles about this forum truly cared about the reasons that brought members into this community, they'd talk about that. But they don't. Instead of taking the insane value that this forum provides and turning it into something constructive, they want to take it down. They want to shrug all the problems of this society under the rug and pretend these problems don't exist because it's uncomfortable and nobody wants to talk about it. That's actually what these people care about. So let's just call out their actual agenda. It's never been about protecting "vulnerable people".

And here is the deal, vulnerability is often thrown in as a killer argument in discussions around suicide and assisted suicide. People are doing this right now - exactly in this moment - in the discussion around MAID, Canadian assisted suicide options which are about to become a lot more accessable, essentially allowing people to die that aren't terminally ill. That's a good thing. But people don't like that and now they use "vulnerable people" (aka disabled and mentally ill people, that's who they're referring to) as a shield to sabotage the conversation regarding individual autonomy and the right to die.

Look. Everyone who suffers, doesn't matter if it's mental or physical pain, is especially vulnerable and we should respect their individual autonomy regardless. I think vulnerable people should have control over their own life and the circumstances around their death. Why is that so difficult to understand? Isn't it cruel, to infringe on the individual autonomy of vulnerable people? Maybe you should address this issue from that perspective for once.

It's quite simple, anti-choice groups don't like that people who are vulnerable take back control over their own lives. And that's what it's about. There is a clear hierarchy in this society and us vulnerable people are at the very bottom. We don't get to have a say in anything. Me neither by the way, I'm included in the list of vulnerable people and that's why I'm speaking up. I don't want to make this thread about me but I'm suffering from a long list of mental health conditions myself. I'm not very old either and being trans is a struggle I've dealt with my entire life. I'm vulnerable according to suicide preventionists. But despite all of these factors I still have the mental capacity to make my own decisions and take matters into my own hands. I decide in which communities I participate, which content I want to see and what ressources I want to read. And I'm pretty sure that's a sentiment that's shared among this community of vulnerable people.

And of course I can't speak for this forum. I can't speak for anyone else but that's my impression I got after engaging in communities like this one for years. If other vulnerable people want to speak up, that's your thread. You don't even need to agree with me. Because you get a voice here, as someone who is vulnerable I want people who suffer to have a voice. And I'm quite tired of people talking over us.

I'm out.

 

[hopeless302]

if the vulnerability argument doesn't work, they'll resort to the classic "think of the childrens!" talking point which is infinitely more tricky to argue against. You can get the public to back a lot of messed up policies if you convince them that it'll keep kids safe.

 

[Rounded Apathy]

Given most talk around this seems to be in the US, I don't think it's possible to separate the religious aspect from all of these "movements" - Christianity isn't the only faith that frowns on taking one's life, but it's definitely the backdrop against which all of this is happening. When it comes to a society so thoroughly culturally indoctrinated, I can only imagine this view can easily spill over into the formerly and even never religious; people just see the taking of one's own life as inherently bad.

Let's be real, western culture(s) have a terrible relationship with death in general. We do everything we can in order to delay it as much as possible, ignore it as much as possible, remove ourselves from the reality of it as much as possible, etc. To an extent I think this is part of human nature, but cultural reinforcement of death and dying as something that's bad or evil isn't and doesn't help. You can fear and dislike something while also accepting it with as much grace as possible as the inevitability it is. People in hospice and palliative care as well as cultural anthropologists often talk about this - there's no good to come from vilifying the inevitable.

But that brings me to some other cruxes of this trend which I believe also interestingly overlaps with more industrialized nations - consumerism, and the medicalization of death. If you die, you can't play the part of cog in the machine any longer. If you accept that you'll die, you may not feed into the system trying to fight it. If death (and notably, aging) aren't scary, you won't buy anti-aging creams, or "longevity-boosting superfoods", or whatever other hot topic of the day is that some business has shelled out tons in order to psychologically pick apart how to get under our skin and sell a solution to alleviating these fears we have of the inevitable. That same mindset has bled into the health"care" industry (and what a pity that it indeed is an industry); preserve life at all costs. The baby that would've died without that machine made by some massive bio-tech firm; the unconscious adult on death's door from a near fatal accident who we've had to carve up just to keep the vitals running; the senior in their twilight years who would die without a constant stream of pills provided by our pharmaceutical overlords - almost no one would think for a second that letting any of these three pass on would be a decision even worth considering. "Life at all costs; death as a last resort" = "death is failure; death is giving up".

-----

A returning word more to the original point: I'm not an American but those who want to limit access to spaces like this, I believe, use the term "vulnerable" as a shorthard for something like "vulnerable to the corruption of suicidal ideation". Which is ridiculous for many reasons, namely that basically every prevention resource emphasises that talking to someone about suicide does not increase their risk one way or the other. As a corollary, no one whose totally fine is going to just stumble on a site like this, especially given its relative obscurity in search indexing. What they'd find first would be accounts of celebrity suicides, a Harvard page about the lethality of suicide methods ("no more open bodies of water!"), or Wikipedia's article on suicide methods, which lists even more ways. That said, I don't think these types would be against censoring a site like Wikipedia, which would really be a step into dangerous territory. It's one of the most valuable resources on the entire web, in my opinion.

Most US suicides involve firearms, but how many people campaigning against these online spaces are for any measures to make them less available and/or accessible? How many are going to actively steer children away from gratuitous depictions of violence in media - not just lobbying to ban violent media - and do the hard work of being an actual parent and provide support to struggling youth? There absolutely are tragic cases of what I'd consider preventable suicides that occur, but these efforts are horribly misguided. You don't need to find SaSu to know that you can die by drowning, shooting or hanging yourself, jumping in front of a train of from a great height. Nothing on the internet is the problem; our sick society is. Typical ignoring the cause in favour of the symptoms.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I do completely agree with you that their definition of 'vulnerable' relates primarily to the ability- or rather the non ability to make a rational and informed decision. This seems to be largely decided (according to them) by: age (maturity of thinking) and the mental ability to understand the decision.

However- in the case of depression- there does seem to be this idea that the person's thinking has become misaligned or negatively tainted- so I get the sense that they also disregard this as 'logical' thinking. (Not saying I do- I'm refering to the suicide 'gatekeepers' out there.)

I also agree with you that the presence of a physical or mental illness doesn't mean that a person isn't capable of thinking for themselves and I would argue that everyone here seems to display a clear and reasoned argument as to what they want- whether that be a firm wish to CTB, a hesitancy or a wish to get better despite having CTB ideation.

I think the problem lies in convincing these 'gatekeepers' that we are thinking rationally for ourselves- and it's not the depression/ mental illness talking.

I wonder if the main problem though is accessibility. Would you agree that maybe there ARE some people who are genuinely vulnerable? I suppose I'm largely thinking about young children and perhaps there are one or two cases where people are acting impulsively. Not saying they're wrong to think like this- just saying maybe it isn't a completely thought out idea.

I guess the concern is- do you need to be 'vetted' in order to view the information here? (Sorry, I joined before I 'browsed' the site much.) Plus- how much can we expect mods to do to ensure the person logging on is in fact of age and in a rational state of mind? I admire that there was an initial screening (and am massively grateful to the mods) but I wonder how easy it is to hoodwink the system? It should of course absolutely be up to the parents to 'protect' their children but it's easier and more sensational for the press and government to blame the internet rather than a grieving and angry family after the fact.

I think I'd struggle to argue as to whether there are 'vulnerable' people in society. I'd struggle even more on how you would detect them and greater still- whether you could or should restrict them access to websites like this.

Still- I absolutely agree that this whole 'vulnerable' angle is the best strategy they have for attacking sites like this and it's the narrative they feel most comfortable with to basically strip everyone here of their right to choose- ie we're all mentally screwed up- so need to be protected from the part of ourselves that apparently isn't us...

 

[makethepainstop]

To any pro-life darlings seeing this, please note that I am about as vulnerable as: an angry 30 foot shark, a rabid congress of rabid baboons, or a rogue African bull elephant of good age. See not vulnerable member here!

 

[ksp]

i haven't read any points in this thread (yet), just the title:

"Vulnerability" isn't an argument

it's been bothering me for a long time: i am not more vulnerable than any person alive!

i don't need any 'help', and i'm don't need 'guidance' - i'm able to make my own decisions through introspection

society and media needs to accept death as a fact of life, in a calm and mature discussion, without being condescending; i don't need to be forced feed the usual platitudes, or 'protection' implied

only in this website is where i get honest, intelligent, and unbiased input, that i will consider when i self-analyze

ps. all points above are very sharp and rational ! closed-minded media is part of the problem

 

[SamTam33]

To claim that we're "vulnerable" to SOMETHING THAT IS GUARANTEED TO HAPPEN makes little sense to me.

It's like declaring we're "vulnerable" to aging.

We're all going to end up in the same damn place.

So you want to take the scenic route? More power to you. Why the hell do you care if I take the expressway?

If it's going to happen anyway, it makes much more sense to me that an individual would want to exert as much control over it as they possibly could.

 

[well2hell]

All good points, @RainAndSadness. My main qualm with expanding MAID is that it enables governments to offer it as a solution where they fall short of their duties to people in need of health and/or social care, namely the most vulnerable people — the disabled and the poor.

But as you point out, I haven't seen a massive backlash against the Canadian government in the media against their failure to provide adequate care, even though that is precisely where the discussion should be at - not MAiD in itself.

 

[Whale_bones]

So excellently stated, @RainAndSadness . Your words convey much of my thoughts when I hear these groups make empty, facetious claims about "protecting vulnerable adults" but I'm often just so frustrated, so worn out by how unauthentic they are, I can't put together the words to express it, and I just feel a mix of anger and disgust that ends up in me having to look away from the screen.

Through no fault of my own, so much of my autonomy and choice has already been taken away. Just as you say, this is a chaotic aspect of life that will happen inevitably to many people, and we don't get a choice when it does. I have a progressive muscle disease where I can't control much of my body, can't do activities that are considered normal for the average person, and lose more and more basic abilities as time goes on. That happened because of a genetic error, and it's inevitable that my quality of life is very low because of it.

But you know what isn't inevitable? How other people react to it, how people treat me, and whether they take away the few important decisions I CAN still make, and that I have the right to make. It's not inevitable that I have to suffer a drawn-out and painful death, that I have to be alone and in hiding at the end, experiencing the closing of my life as a final isolated, distressing experience, all for fear of legal repercussions for myself and others. It's extremely important to me, specifically *because* of the choices and autonomy I've already lost, to have the dignity and respect of choosing my time, place and manner of death. Being in control of these things means I can seek out a sense of peace.

SaSu has meant I don't have to be completely isolated while I think about these things, because the social stigma and, most importantly, legal repercussions are ever-present in every in-person interaction. My country (US) and many others already do everything they can to take away choice surrounding the actual event of death, and the fact that they then go on to try to prevent us from even speaking about it makes me so angry, saddened and exhausted. How can someone possibly justify taking away this ONE space we have, this one place where it's viewed as our right to make our own personal decisions?

The same people who claim they know what's best for "vulnerable people" would never, ever be okay with a stranger stomping all over their personal decisions. They want to have full rights and autonomy for themselves, and they feel they deserve it, but they can put people in another category- a category of less deserving- when they designate them as "vulnerable". Yet we're some of the people who most need and deserve to have our personal autonomy respected, because for many of us it is one of the most important aspects of life and death.

 

[TAW122]

Excellent post @RainAndSadness and yes, pro-lifers are using bad faith arguments to deplatform and censor us. Also, good point about how mental illness does not preclude one from having decision making capacity. This is important not just in Canada's MAID program, but also in one of TRTNLE's podcast (Podcast #4 - The 'Lack of Clarity of Thought' Argument).

A returning word more to the original point: I'm not an American but those who want to limit access to spaces like this, I believe, use the term "vulnerable" as a shorthard for something like "vulnerable to the corruption of suicidal ideation". Which is ridiculous for many reasons, namely that basically every prevention resource emphasises that talking to someone about suicide does not increase their risk one way or the other. As a corollary, no one whose totally fine is going to just stumble on a site like this, especially given its relative obscurity in search indexing. What they'd find first would be accounts of celebrity suicides, a Harvard page about the lethality of suicide methods ("no more open bodies of water!"), or Wikipedia's article on suicide methods, which lists even more ways. That said, I don't think these types would be against censoring a site like Wikipedia, which would really be a step into dangerous territory. It's one of the most valuable resources on the entire web, in my opinion.

Most US suicides involve firearms, but how many people campaigning against these online spaces are for any measures to make them less available and/or accessible? How many are going to actively steer children away from gratuitous depictions of violence in media - not just lobbying to ban violent media - and do the hard work of being an actual parent and provide support to struggling youth? There absolutely are tragic cases of what I'd consider preventable suicides that occur, but these efforts are horribly misguided. You don't need to find SaSu to know that you can die by drowning, shooting or hanging yourself, jumping in front of a train of from a great height. Nothing on the internet is the problem; our sick society is. Typical ignoring the cause in favour of the symptoms.

Good points, especially about how even the preventionists' resources claim that talking about 'suicide' doesn't increase the risk of suicide, yet they (suicide preventionists) want to censor, twist, and hijack the narrative. Just proves their hypocrisy. With regards to most US suicides being done via firearms, yes, again, they fail to address cause for suicides but blame the symptoms.

The same people who claim they know what's best for "vulnerable people" would never, ever be okay with a stranger stomping all over their personal decisions. They want to have full rights and autonomy for themselves, and they feel they deserve it, but they can put people in another category- a category of less deserving- when they designate them as "vulnerable". Yet we're some of the people who most need and deserve to have our personal autonomy respected, because for many of us it is one of the most important aspects of life and death.

Exactly, and those same people are essentially hypocrites. Sometimes I just wish they (preventionists, prohibitionists, and pro-lifers) get a taste of their own medicine and see if they like it. Chances are, like you said, they won't. Personally, I think if a said 'stranger' violated their personal decisions and say, and then they later come to respect the right to die, I would think that would be worthwhile. But anyhow, yes those people either can't make connection (I don't like it when some stranger(s) tell me how to live, make decisions for me, so I shouldn't do that to others - referring to the prolifers), or they do, but are just being disingenuous about it and picking and choosing (being illogical).

 

[TAW122]

Just as a little bump since I had something else to add to this thread just recently. I just had a thought of another silly argument that pro-lifers like to use is "It's easy to die because (insert real life example, stories) said person died when they don't want to." Then they proceed to use many examples of people who died tragically, suddenly, or through other causes (man-made, nature, accidental, etc.) I also see this quite a few times even on Reddit's SW subreddit where even the suicidal people (not just pro-lifers alone) claim that people who don't want to die, end up dying. I would deduce that to be just random probability, some individual(s) just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and end up dying whether to a man-made cause, nature's cause, or just their own health (disease, illnesses, accidents, etc.). Pro-lifers also claim it is really easy to die (by accident or even intentional) but that's for another thread altogether as I have a really thorough rebuttal to their claim.

(Additional talking point)
In addition to this, another point I want to make is that because prolifers don't have the right to detain us against our will, they needed a justification to do so. Therefore, in order to gain said authority to make decisions for us and impose their will, they asserted the notion that wanting to die is considered irrational and indicative of a mental illness. Therefore, because it is a mental illness, now they suddenly have the backing of the legal system, the healthcare system, and other institutions supporting them, giving them power. Finally, with that power they then use it as justification to violate our free will, dignity, and rights. It is very fucked up, just by making a baseless, non-objective claim, and then using the institutions around them to do what they do against people like us.

In short, because prolifers don't inherently have authority over us, they have to fabric some authority with the backing of major institutions and peer support (majority of people in the meatspace as well as other communities are pro-lifers) in order to give 'justification' and 'authority' to rule over us.

 

[ayb]

The term "vulnerability" has nothing to do with being mentally competent or having mental capacity. If it did then these people would know that the majority of the mentally ill are actually mentally competent with decision-making capacity: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17906238/

So if the term "vulnerability" doesn't refer to competence/capacity, then it's completely and utterly meaningless. Everyone here is a capable and consenting adult. There is no obligation to live.

 

[BipolarExpress]

By many people's standards, I am vulnerable as a disabled, queer, trans person of colour. I experience multiple forms of marginalisation, oppression, and discrimination. And it is precisely because of my vulnerability that I am considering ending my life, since the people who want to force me to live are the same ones who will subject me to exactly the same kind of mistreatment that spurs me toward suicidality in the first place. If they want to protect vulnerable people, they should start by making policy improvements. (In my case, I don't think even policy would fix my problems, since most of them are about my mental health and things that I can't even explain to people without sounding ridiculous.)