Bloggasm

Kate Bornstein is a nationally-known gender expert who has recently wrote a book called 101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide. It has its predictable and unpredictable pieces of advice, but it also has some radical thoughts as well. She says that one alternative to suicide is cutting yourself. Another piece of advice is to take drugs. She describes her reasons why she gave this radical advice in this interview:

When people look at the ones—especially those like cutting and starving and taking drugs—everyone who was involved in this book gave them a lot of pause, and we went back and forth to figure out how best I could present them. I wasn’t going to knock them out because those are all things that I’ve done to stay alive. But how do you write about that? How do you say, “It’s really stupid but [Laughs] if it comes down to killing yourself or doing that, please do it!” That’s really what it came down to. And how would I say that with as much care and as much love, and without being a preachy jerk about it? That was the hard part, I think.

It does have a kind of shaky logic to it, and yes, I guess if it comes down to killing yourself or doing something slightly better, though not much, then you should do the alternative. But one of the readers in the comment made some good points:

I’ve done extensive study in abnormal psychology which includes the self-mutilating behaviors of cutting, anorexia, and bulemia. Recommending that someone do those things – EVEN as an alternative to suicide – is NOT reasonable. It is not moral. It is not responsible.

I’ve worked off and on with suicide support groups for the last two years. I have heard many, MANY different coping mechanisms suggested. Self-mutilation is never one of them.

Becoming anoretic, cutting yourself, or getting addicted to drugs will not alleviate depression. It makes depression much, much worse. Sorry if I base my opinion on scientific studies rather than “right-wing propaganda”, but I rather think my opinion is valid here.

And this is what I thought, as well, with not so many words. From what I remember hearing, taking drugs and alcohol only fuel the depression more, in fact many people actually get up the guts to kill themselves after they’ve been on drugs or are in an alcoholic haze.

Related posts: Even gay princes aren’t safe, Is your kid whiny? Chances are he or she will grow up to be a conservative.

I found this article kind of humorous: How to Spot a Baby Conservative.

It talks about a 20-year study on children who grew up to be conservatives and liberals. Future-conservatives tended to be whiny and insecure and huge tattlers. The confident, self-reliant kids ended up being liberal.

The study from the Journal of Research Into Personality isn’t going to make the UC Berkeley professor who published it any friends on the right. Similar conclusions a few years ago from another academic saw him excoriated on right-wing blogs, and even led to a Congressional investigation into his research funding.

But the new results are worth a look. In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

via the buck stops here