Forevergrey wrote:
Nothings more constructive that saying "Oh, let the cutters slice their bodies into peices, its a fine, happy and healthy thing to do, not a disorder in the slightest". Isn't that right, PTLIS?
Um, no, that's not right, nor do I think he ever implied it.
(EDIT: Gee, look, I read him correctly. :P Though PTLIS may have been wrong on one point since Forevergrey's statement was constructive: it made it patently clear to me that he didn't understand PTLIS's post at all.)
Let's look at what he said again, shall we?
Despite the fact that
PTLIS wrote:
[Bitching]
Erm. Shut the fuck up if you haven't cut yourself in the past or know someone (IRL) who has done so because frankly you just don't know what you are talking about, it's the same as <i>me</i> having a conversation about birthing pains and saying that they're just a figment of a woman's imagination. If you have no experience on the topic at point then you aren't justified in debating it; at the very least it would be nice if you did some research first (but not firsthand).
[/Bitching]
(I would have enlarged or bolded the "Bitching" tags if I didn't think they were already obvious enough to anyone who had attentively read his post.)
PTLIS also wrote:
<b>The point?</b>
Well basically what I am trying to get across here is the fact that both of these cases were very different, the cutting done for different reasons (irrelevant really) and for different effects (exactly the point). What I am trying to explain is that you can't have a generalized statement about a subject as complex as this and I am sure that if I had time to do enough research I would be able to find at least a dozen distinct different reasons for cutting, all with different outcomes, some positive and some will almost certainly have ended in the death of the cuter, whether accidentally or intentionally.
(Emphasis on the last bit added by yours truly.)
True, he didn't explicitly spell out in words the fact that he acknowledges that there are cases in which cutting is a VERY BAD THING which would qualify as a disorder. But when he mentions "different outcomes,
some positive and
some will almost certainly have ended in the death of the cuter, whether accidentally or intentionally" I don't think I'm over-interpreting when I read it to mean "different outcomes,
some positive and
some [negative, and tragically so]." Presumably it was a belief that in the latter cases cutting is
not "a fine, happy and healthy thing to do" which led him to try and help his friend "Kyle."
Finally, PTLIS wrote:
For me the cutting was massively beneficial and no-one knew about it until years after I had stopped, for Kyle the cutting was a cry for help, which he got.
Anyway I vote yes it is stupid because despite all this I still think it is, i know it helped me but I know for a fact that there are other, less destructive things which would probably have had the same outcome.
(Again, emphasis added by moi.)
Sounds to me like he's saying that, while cutting
is stupid (did you guys somehow miss that line?) and dangerous and in some cases leads to some VERY BAD OUTCOMES (up to and including death) which are to be avoided (again, c.f. Kyle) there are also instances in which it is
truly not harmful to others. Even if it never happened this way any other time in all of creation, his experience (assuming it was described accurately) at least proves the possibility of such.
If your problem is that you think his cutting
was harmful to others, I would ask: "How so?" Since no one knew about it until long afterwards, there was no reaction of "My god, PTLIS is cutting himself!" which I agree has the potential to deeply distress those who love him, and thereby add to their suffering. Instead, by being helpful to him the cutting could be seen as being helpful to them as well. If you are going to say that cutting hurts those around you since it causes you anguish of the physical subtype (which you've all been saying, and which I agree with), then you have to concede that it can help them if it relieves you of anguish of the mental subtype. Since it doesn't sound like PTLIS came down with any infections or other complications as a result of his cutting, that would leave its overall effect on him and his loved ones as a positive one. Again granted that we have no objective way of knowing whether the cutting actually played any role in his recovery, I am inclined to believe him since he's the one who lived through it, certainly moreso than I would believe any whose claims amounted to somehow knowing what's going on in his head better than he does.
While it is entirely presumptive of me to do this, and I would wholeheartedly implore PTLIS to straighten me out and correct me if I am off-base, I will here attempt to restate PTLIS's closing point since I feel it was somewhat confusingly worded. If you didn't get it and only had the rest of his post to go on, then you might have been left with a few misconceptions which might have contributed to this argument. (Yes, argument. Wherever it may be located, a thread is no longer a debate when statements such as the one Forevergrey made are being posted.)
PTLIS wrote:
Anyway I vote yes it is stupid because despite all this I still think it is, i know it helped me but I know for a fact that there are other, less destructive things which would probably have had the same outcome.
My reading:
In any case, I still acknowledge that cutting is in some sense negative because I am certain that there are other things I could have done which would also have helped me. I don't know of any specific things, though, and their existence does not negate the fact that, in the end, cutting had a positive effect on my life, and so it is foolish for anyone to make the general claim that all cutting is TEH DEBIL.
He never said that all cutting is good; what he said was that you can't make
any blanket statement about it. It is neither all good nor all bad. As with everything in life, it must be judged on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, we can't judge a particular case until it's in our past, so by all means
please try your best to help those who cut themselves (as he helped his friend) but don't try and invalidate others' experiences by saying "No, you're wrong. That thing you did? It can never help anyone, and if you think it helped you, well then you're an idiot."