Men’s Rights Activists and their MGTOW fellow travelers would probably be a lot more effective in fighting male suicide if there weren’t so many of them who think suicide is kind of cool.
In the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit today, a fellow called Zombocom1911 posted a link to a story about a man who slashed his own throat with a straight razor while sitting at the kitchen table in front of his wife and kids.
To Zombocom1911, the obvious question raised by this deeply unsettling story was this: “Can suicide be considered MGTOW?”
Chillingly, some of Zombocom1911’s compadres on the MGTOW subreddit seem to think the answer is “yes.”
aanarchist, while acknowledging that the man’s actions were “really f*cked up,” couldn’t quite contain his admiration.
“what a badass to do that sh*t in front of his own family,” he wrote in a comment that actually got upvotes from his peers. “it’s like looking them in the eye and going all f*ck you, death is preferable to slavery.”
Yes, I’m sure his wife and children benefitted enormously from this lovely message.
aanarchist went on to suggest that large numbers of men killing themselves could strike a powerful blow against women and feminists.
i’d say that suicide is letting feminism win but in reality the worst possible thing for women and feminism is a reduction in the male population. women’s comforts are built upon an abundance of manpower. if you cut down the population of men enough they go through some pretty strifey periods cuz no one’s there to provide for them.
You may recall a gentleman at Return of Kings making a strikingly similar argument not long ago — although his preferred method of man-elimination was to send as many men as possible to die horribly in wars.
You may also recall how, several years ago, Men’s Rights activists turned a fellow MRA who burned himself alive outside of a family courthouse in Maine into a sort of Men’s Rights martyr, celebrating him in song and doing their best to disseminate the frankly terroristic manifesto he left behind, in which he urged other men to take up his cause by firebombing courthouses and police stations.
There are, to be sure, some MRAs and MGTOWs who are genuinely concerned about male suicide, though very few of them have actually done anything at all about it. They might start by trying to convince their ideological compatriots that suicide is not actually cool.
Yes it is. It just so happens to be a more social science. In fact it has become more and more scientific over the years.
ETA: I didn’t realize that he was already banned when I wrote this post.
What the heck did I just read?
Mnemni:
(Many comments later)
David Futrelle:
Aw, I was curious about their suggestions to make your writing clearer. /s
Actually, that’s not 100% sarcasm, I really am curious. Unless mnemni was a troll, all I can think is that they are completely unfamiliar with the manosphere and the behavior of its inhabitants. It was pointed out several times to them that the rest of us understood perfectly that David was only talking about that specific group.
From another person who is struggling with suicidal thoughts (not at the moment, thank the gods): Seconding this.
It is very possible to pity those who are victims of suicide, and agree with those who want to end their life on their own terms rather than suffer from painful and incurable illnesses, and still find the idea tragic, especially when it’s someone who had so much ahead of them.
On topic of the post:
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/wwyp.gif
Using suicide to “Get back” at a wife and kids?! What the hell is wrong with you?! What the fuck happened in your life to give you such a moral failing that you think this kind of talk is A-fucking-okay?!
Story time:
*TW: TALK OF PERSONAL SUICIDAL THOUGHTS*
(Don’t know if it’s necessary, considering the topic, but I’m going to be talking directly about my own thoughts of suicide, so better safe than sorry.)
When I was younger, I actually did think about committing suicide much more often than I do now. (I’m very thankful I’m not thinking about it as often.) I had just gotten my abusive step-father sent to prison (hopefully for the rest of his natural life), and I had pulled out of court-mandated therapy because I felt like it wasn’t helping anymore.
I thought about lying in bed and overdosing on my mom’s pills. I thought about locking myself in the bathroom with a kitchen knife, and slitting my wrists in the tub. I thought about where I could get a gun. I thought about how close we lived to the freeway.
You know what stopped me? The thought of my younger siblings finding my dead body. The thought of my mom finding my body. The thought of my mom getting a call late at night from the police saying they found me, after she spent hours looking.
I thought about my little brother, who was ten. I thought about my little sister, who was eight. I thought about how they had just lost their father, and they weren’t allowed to know why for the longest time. I thought about how my brother had yelled at me during an argument while I was watching them (mom still had to work, now more than ever) that it was my fault that his father was now absent from his life, because he didn’t know why he was in jail.
I thought about my mom, who had just gotten out of a relationship with an abuser, and had told me how sorry she was for failing me for not finding out sooner. How she told me she wanted that man dead for what he’d done to me. How she held me as I cried in her arms in the courthouse, because I, a fourteen year old child, was terrified to go into the courtroom and tell a room full of strangers how that man sitting over there violated me night after night after night and how he and his mother threatened me to keep me silent about it.
What the fuck would that do to them? How many years of therapy would they have to go through to at least find some semblance of normalcy in their lives again? Would they understand why I did it, or why I felt the need to end my suffering? Would they miss me? Would they hate me? Would they hate themselves for not being able to stop me? It wouldn’t be their fault, I’m the one who would do it, but would they blame themselves?
In the end, I always stopped after that thought. I told myself I couldn’t put my family through that. I couldn’t hurt them the way I’d been hurt, solely because I wanted to stop hurting.
I had to push through it, I had to keep living, for their sake.
And yeah, that nasty little voice in my head, that claimed to be The Voice of Reason mocked me for it.
You’re a fucking coward. You can’t even end it properly!
You must want to suffer then.
Stop being selfish! They’re suffering because of you! You took that man away from them, and now they’re suffering for it! Do the right thing and end it! Serve your penance!
It’s been years now, and I’m so fucking glad I didn’t listen to that voice. It still pops up every now and again, but now, at least, I have people I can go to to ask for help when it gets too loud for me to bear, and I’ll soon be in a more calm place where hopefully the peace and quiet and happiness will drown that fucker out for good.
*/TW: TALK OF PERSONAL SUICIDAL THOUGHTS*
So, considering my personal history with the idea of ending my own life, fuck these assholes. How fucking dare they twist someone’s personal suffering into a rallying cry.
I need to go do something else for a bit. This wasn’t what I was expecting to have to do today, that’s for damn sure.
Thank you, David. I was starting to find mnemni’s comments very disturbing and upsetting.
@mnemni, if you’re still reading:
Just stop. Suicide is not a topic to “well, actually” about. It’s really hard to talk about, especially for those who have been affected by it or who have been suicidal. And trust, there are plenty of people who know more than you do about it. If you’re trying to split hairs to make some sort of point, you are not helping. You’re actually minimizing the experiences of survivors and silencing our voices.
Strange because I earn much more than my Hubby. In fact, we went for a whole year where he wasn’t working and we lived off my income so I am not aware that women need men to “provide for them”. Not in the world that I live in where women work just as much as men. But alas, I don’t live in the MRA world where only men work.
@Paradoxical, I am so sorry for what you went through. You can have all the hugs (if you want ’em).
I know the voice you’re talking about. I’ve been down that road. But not because of any trauma, not because of an abusive relationship. And that lack of any driving forces… that in itself made the voice stronger. I wasn’t even strong enough to hold on when I was supposed to be so much better off than so many people. How could I deserve to keep going?
And, well, I’m still here… so I guess I’m winning?
@ CMH
Maybe by adding footnotes?
@ PI
So sorry you had to go through that =/ but glad you are okay! (And getting more okay as we speak!)
Thirding. Those feelings have retreated almost beyond reach, but I don’t kid myself about how easily they can return. Hugs for everyone who wants them.
MGTOW are hateful and mean. That post and its comments are all the evidence anyone needs.
I normally lurk here, and I know that Mnemni has already been banned –
But I feel like it might explain a lot to say that, the way there are pro-eating disorder sites and communities on the internet, there are also pro-suicide sites. They’re organized along similar lines, with the warnings against discussing “methods” and the “no hate” demands. And they function much the same way. Quite a bit of Mnemni’s rhetoric, especially their conviction that other people who experience suicidal ideation will agree with them, suggests to me that they might be involved in that world.
/ramble on
I never found suicide to be about courage but rather desperation and being unable to see any other path out of the pain. I don’t say that in judgment of those who went to the edge and over. I almost did myself and it wasn’t courage that took me there or pulled me back. It was Hope, the lack of which drove me forward and a tiny amount that pulled me back.
Also thinking of PI mentioning how family would be affected. It aways seemed to me that as long as the brain is finding reasons why it would be bad, then the was still room to back away.
/ramble off
Talk about “going ghost”….literally!
Why do these people remind me of Rowan North (from the new Ghostbusters movie)?
If Mnemni wasn’t a troll, I’m wondering what their point was. It’s not David who needed to do the clarification here. It was coming across as if Mnemni thought some suicides were cool, and it’s not as if there aren’t people who romanticize suicide.
This is the most troubling line to me…
Unless it’s for medical reasons, you shouldn’t be working up the courage to end your life.
@Hu’s On First,
I believe Rowan North is the true reason so many redpillians hate this movie. He is a distillation of every embittered MGTOW type I’ve run across.
He was one of the few things I liked about that regrettably sub par movie.
@Tabby Lavalamp,
yeah, when I asked if they were okay, and why were they defending suicide, I wasn’t concern trolling I was genuinely concerned for them. A lot of troubled people come to these threads, it’s not so long since someone left an actual suicide note here, and they’ve not been back AFAIK.
@Zatar : I believe that, similarly to how people confuse every possible mental problem with each other, people often confuse psychoanalysis, who is contested, and the wider field of psychology, who have bits of it contested, but exactly like some bits of physics or biology are contested.
Maybe a bit more contestation, given the bad rep social sciences get in term of reproductibility and statistical significance of its discovery. But the amount of rotten bits will never prevent the field to be studied scientifically.
Hi everyone,
I know Mnemni’s banned, and maybe I should just leave well enough alone, but I feel the need to come out and state my position on suicide as well.
Suicide is a Bad Thing.
I’m not saying that suicides are bad people; there but for a million factors go I. I’m not saying that suicide isn’t sometimes the best and most humane choice, as in the cases of terminal illness. But suicide is still a Bad Thing.
As for it being courageous? Well I got some experience there. I’ve called myself a fucking coward for not being “strong” enough to kill myself in some dark times. But you know what’s braver? Living. Choosing to continue through depression and exhaustion and pain that you believe is never going to stop. For other people, for the occasional tiny glimmer of joy, for the desperate hope that things will get better. Choosing to keep living even though I consider life a fucking literal death march is the bravest thing I have ever done. And every moment that I have a suicidal thought or impulse (multiples every week for years and years) and choose to ignore them, I am demonstrating strength of character.
Suicide is a selfish (if often understandable) act that always leaves collateral damage. It is definitely Not Cool.
*end rant*
I can’t help feeling that some of these ghastly people would see the man who murders his family and then himself is some kind of hero. I have certainly seen sympathy for the man ‘who couldn’t take it anymore’.
I don’t post on here much.
But I have suicidal depression, and I’ve had it for about two years. Mine is thankfully mild and I have some coping strategies that have kept me alive. Mostly, these take the form of rules and routines. There are rules that govern what I do, and routines to distract myself when the voice that urges self-destruction gets too loud.
The idea that I’m only alive because I’m a ‘coward’ who can’t ‘bring myself to do the deed’ is not just offensive, it’s patently false. Persistently being alive is a function of hope, not cowardice.
I can understand the romanticism under the notion, though; it’s very common in the young. Suicide is often confused with martyrdom; after all if sacrificing your life for a noble cause is brave, isn’t sacrificing yourself for no reason equally brave? This is the sort of thought-experiment that people who have little or no experience with despair often flirt with. But it’s not a thought-exercise for those of us who actually have to deal with it day to day.
Romanticizing suicide is no different than romanticizing horrific war injuries or tuberculosis; it sounds cool in novels but the reality is a lot less interesting. Tuberculosis doesn’t make you interestingly slim and pale and faint a lot; it just saps away all your health until it kills you. There’s no point in being interestingly slim and pale if you can’t so much as walk between two rooms without coughing up blood.
Likewise, losing a limb in a horrific battle sounds neat-o, but the reality is that you can’t walk or take a piss without assistance and you fucking hate it, because you remember living without these limitations. It sucks, and it doesn’t somehow compensate you by making you interesting.
Suicide doesn’t make you interesting. Threatening suicide doesn’t make you interesting. Being suicidal doesn’t make you interesting. Mnemni, if you’re falling into this ‘my life is boring and dull and maybe if something terrible happened to me, I’d be more interesting and folks would like me’ trap, STOP.
People will like you or they won’t. They’ll be interested or not. Let go of this idea that ‘interesting’ is a value other people give you with their attention. It’s not a currency. It won’t buy you a better life.
Just go be alive somewhere. That’s good, by itself. Full stop.
@Nan,
Thank you for shedding some light. That’s awful.
I have a semi-related question : is there a medical term for having very short suicide fantasy ? To give a concrete example, seeing a road and suddenly having 2-3 seconde where the brain imagine in gory detail how it could be used for a quick suicide.
I don’t really know if it’s something common or not, but the only period where I don’t remember such episodes were when I was actually depressed, so I guess it’s benign. But I still regulary wonder about why it happen.
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m41zsbrSG21qan7ako1_500.gif
That voice is an asshole. Maybe it’s my Inner MGTOW.
Fuck yeah, we are!
Which is kind of what pissed me off most about their little screed.
The “Voice of Unreason” constantly told me that the reason I couldn’t kill myself, the reason I talked myself out of it, the reason why I hesitated, was because I was a coward. Because I lacked courage.
The awful voice in my head used that exact same reasoning that they did to get me to kill myself.
Gods above the idea that killing yourself is “courageous” pisses me off for that reason alone.
@Ohlmann
It’s common. Among people who aren’t depressed I believe it’s often associated with OCD or other anxiety disorders, but is not *always* connected to a psychiatric condition.
Separate post so I won’t run out the edit window on my last one! Sorry!
I think I know what you’re talking about! There is a phenomena where the human brain will occasionally think something really awful like “I could kill myself right now” or “I could set fire to this place so easily” or “I could kill everyone in this room and make it look like an accident”. And immediately after it happens, you think to yourself “WOW. WTF brain?!”
There is a name for it, but I can’t find it on Google or anything right now. My google-fu is too weak…
It does appear to be a normal human phenomenon, if it’s any consolation.
@Nan
That makes a lot of sense to me as well. I wish it didn’t, but it does. I’ve always been horrified by those eating-disorder sites as it is, the idea of there being something analogous for suicide is frightening.
@PI
Thank you for explaining so well why the “courage” framing is awful, I don’t think I did a good enough job with that. I’ve had that voice too, telling me that if only I weren’t so cowardly, if only I weren’t so squeamish, etc etc I would kill myself. It’s dangerous to reinforce that further, because that line of thinking is really insidious, and external confirmation of it could be downright deadly.