Suicide is often met with illogical contempt, and is therefore curiously evaded in our culture which is counterproductive to preventing this horrific tragedy. We sometimes feel obliged to aim our persecutions and hostilities directly at the victims and already tormented, which is hypocritical and wrong. are hesitant to acknowledge and verbalize our feelings of disgrace toward suicide, as they are in bad taste. This is known as the stigma of suicide and no-one is quite sure why this behavior occurs. Perhaps acknowledging the stigma and dissecting it thoroughly will provide insight as to when it happens and optimistically end it all together.
A stigmatizer wastes no time when attacking the assailant by claiming suicide is an act of cowardice, even refering to it as the, “the coward’s way out”. A coward succumbs to fear, and according to Fredrick Nueman, a journalist for psychology today:
Feelings of fear are engendered by dangerous situations. The individual who feels fear is impelled into the “fight or flight” reaction. Someone encountering a threat gets ready to fight or to run away. This reaction serves an obvious purpose, as do all other feelings. In this case—and in the others—the action called for has a survival function. It is unpleasant to be afraid, but it is critically important.
The fight or flights response is by its virtue and incredibly unpleasant one, offering us two primitive solutions to complex problems which may require a new spar or sail response. College students are but one emerging category of suicide participants who are consistently faced with complex issues the animalistic fight or flight must respond to but are ill-equipped to handle. We are faced with things never before experienced such as, new confusing information, harder curriculum, and strangers all without the vital protection we have depended on our entire lives, and we must now transcend these fears and in a productive manner. In spite of everything, new freshman advance into the unknown and face it all heroically. So then, the stigmatizer believes a paradox: suicide is a coward’s way of allowing fear, an instinctual life protecting mechanism, to protect us from living. The exact opposite of a coward is a hero, he who is courageous; disallowing fear to influence behavior. Suicide is often long thought about, people brave through their fears for months before deciding upon the final act. When faced with the great unknown, horror runs deep in the veins. The amount of charisma needed to override such terror is ample proof to define suicide as an act of bravery, extreme valor in the face of death, from which every fear stems. If a suicidal person was indeed a coward, and did allow fear to dictate their actions, then there would be the whole topic of discussion would be nonexistent,
The hypocrisy of a suicide stigmatizer lies in the claim that anyone who has committed suicide is an overly selfish individual. Suicide can easily be considered a selfish act, but to pronounce the dead a selfish person is simply unfounded. Week after week we hear stories like Madison Holleran, a 2014-2015 freshman at University of Penn who took her own life.
“My daughter’s stress was self induced, and although we had started her in therapy to address her issues, she hid the severity of those issues from everyone…Madison also left her parents a note as well as gifts for the family on top of the parking garage.”
Hiding your true emotions emotional issues from loved ones is common among suicide participants, as it excuses others from being obliged to cheer them up. Refusing to tell people your struggle is an act of selflessness, not wanting others to be burdened by these feelings of anguish. Madison also left nice note and gifts to her parents, in her last moments she thought about the people that cared about her. Yes it is a selfish act, but in many cases, it is one of the only selfish acts the victim has ever committed.
Finally, the most destructive claim in a stigmatizer’s arsenal; Suicide is the result of unintelligent, faulty, or crazy thinking. Again it would be false to say that every act of suicide is completely logical and sane. Likewise overgeneralizing this information is dangerous and sometimes the assailant is fully aware of the implications of his/her action. Someone who perceives incredible anguish for whatever the reason has a right to his own reality. Reality is directly related to the perception of individuals. Despite being capable of speech, it is impossible for us to know the feelings and implications related to a death wish. Who are we to day they are wrong? Simply because we fear the unknown alternative, we find it more comforting to say that life should be cherished and anyone who goes against this is obviously unstable.
A stigma is a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance. People who actively seek to belittle those who have committed suicide are directly involved with the stigma of suicide. Victims and assailants of suicide are brave, unselfish, and not always insane, illogical or otherwise. One of the problems associated with suicide is that people unlikely, and presumed unwilling to seek help. They are likely unwilling to allow their negative thoughts to worry others, or supply evidence for the prosecution they want no part of. A stigmatizer perspective provides this prosecution, and as a result are responsible for at least some of the self loathing and self termination of the defendant.
Works Cited
Madison Holleran’s Father Says the Promising Track Star Killed Herself over University Stress.” NewsComAu. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
Neuman, Fredrick. “Fighting Fear.” The Purpose of Feelings. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2014.
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Counterintuitive Fall 2022 
Awaiting feedback.
Disclaimer: Stigmatist according to this website is not a word. According to google(also not a word) a stigmatist is defined as “a person whose body is marked by religious stigmata ” though this has little literal bearing over the essay, I found the word too appealing to ignore. I encourage you to read “stigmatist” in a figurative sense. Thank you
Feedback provided. —DSH
Suicide is commonly persecuted, when instead it should be analyzed to attempt to possibly bring suicides to an end.
Noted. Recommending understanding over prosecution gets right to the heart of it, Stephen. —DSH
Try not to use “seems” because it makes you look unsure of what you are saying. Make a clear standpoint on the topic.
“It seems the topic of suicide is actively and curiously evaded in many aspects of our culture.”
Saying something along the lines of,
Suicide is actively and curiously evaded in our culture, which is counterproductive to preventing this horrific tragedy.
Noted. That is one badass sentence, Marcus. —DSH
with your permission I’m going to steal this. Thats one badass sentence
Yeah go for it glad i could help!
First Paragraph:
We sometimes think that suicide is a selfish act, one that is committed by someone who is unstable, unintelligent, or crazy. In our modern culture we look down on those who commit suicide, we harass the already tormented because of the choice they made. It is this negativity, these poor responses and hostility aimed at suicide victims that is causing the evasion of the suicide topic in many aspects of our culture. We aren’t quite sure why suicide is surrounded by so much negativity or why we feel this way about it, but dissecting and acknowledging suicide thoroughly may provide insight as to why and when this negativity and hate occurs. By doing so we may be able to end it all together.
Noted. That’s very fine work, Benjamin. I have an opinion on this. Suicide frightens us because it’s always an option. We do anything to distance ourselves from the idea of it because any other response threatens our resolve against it. —DSH
Not talking about suicide does nothing to prevent it.
Noted. You’re developing quite a gift for crafting these pithy arguments, John. —DSH
I can read stigmatist figuratively, Drew, but there’s already a word, stigmatizer, for a person who wants to stigmatize another.
I don’t know how much help you want. You’re welcome to as much as you wish, but you need to let me know that you’re open not just to receiving it but to responding to it.
Too many “this”s and “it”s. Trim at least half of them and improve your directness and clarity by half.
I have a dozen observations about your first paragraph when you want them.
Use block quotes for lengthy citations. I’ve done one for you. Doing so will assist your reader visually and also avoid the problem of knowing how to punctuate quotes within quotes (something you should ask about anyway for future reference).
Your ambition is ample, Drew, and I encourage it. Suicide warrants hard thinking, deep reactions, and bold pronouncements, but writing about it seriously as you’re doing requires precision and clarity.
Yes, fear is primal. Deep animal feeling is not compatible with reasoning, so claiming that it allows us to evaluate is just too confusing as stated. I want very much to agree with your brilliant conclusion that suicide protects us from living when to live is the threat, but first you need to identify life as the threat (rhetorically incompatible with the term “life-threatening”). How do I say this? The first 90% of brilliance is easy to a smart guy. All the work is in achieving the last 10%. The trouble with working toward brilliance is that with raised stakes, success is more rewarding but the failure rate is higher and failure is more embarrassing because the aspiration is so obvious. You can’t pretend you weren’t trying. You have it in you to write brilliantly, but you aren’t showing the discipline.
Do you want specifics? Choosing at random:
Your semicolon sends the wrong message. A colon would mean, “what follows is the doctrine of the stigmatist.” The semicolon says: I am starting a new sentence. I read it twice to mean you were announcing your own claim. Next, this is no place to be fair. You have no obligation to concede ground when you’re rooting out hypocrisy. Terrible tactics. Then you choose passives: “be considered” and “to pronounce,” when you should be pinning the considerations and pronouncements on your stigmatist. Your “now let us examine” is an announcement best avoided. Anyone wavering will consider it an invitation to bail. You could say:
Please cleanse this paragraph of the second person, Drew. The several “you” and “your” uses misplace your observations onto the reader.
Do you want my help on other bits that have achieved 90%?
—Watch
Grade recorded. Always improvable with revisions.
Noted I will make revisions. Please dont hold back when providing feedback, rip my essays to shreds if you must, otherwise I’m learning nothing. Like most I tend to be biased when it comes to my work, but your feedback keeps me grounded.
Will do, Drew. But ask specifically for another round of comments after you’ve revised to reflect these.
I completely overhauled one of the paragraphs in particular, but I am unsure where to go from here. You said you had observations about my first paragraphs, and I would very much like to see them. I did fix some things in the first paragraph but the skeleton remains the same. In other words I would like to have some feedback when you are ready
I have only a few moments before a conference call, Drew, but let me start with praise for your hard work and congratulations on bringing greater clarity to your first paragraph (all I’ve read so far).
Problems remain that cost your readers comprehension.
—Suicide is met with contempt (so the first part of the pair works). But, suicide is not evaded. The topic is evaded, not suicide. (Maybe active not passive verbs would help. We despise suicide, illogically, and those who attempt it, and therefore avoid talking about it, again illogically?)
—We can aim hostility (so that part of the pair works). But we don’t aim persecutions. People suffer persecutions. We persecute.
—Something’s missing from the sentence that begins: are hesitant
—To avoid opening with “This is,” which requires explanation, consider answering the question first: No one is quite sure why this stigma of suicide exists. Or better: No one is quite sure why we stigmatize suicide and those who attempt it.
—You use “it” three times to refer to stigma, I think, not to suicide. So, is it the stigma you want to end? I’m not sure. Can you clarify the antecedents?
As discussed in class my definition essay makes many rebuttals toward a stigmatic perspective. I would ask for feedback on how I could separate or lengthen this essay.
Feedback provided. —DSH
For clarity’s sake, Drew, because the quotes make paragraph numbers easy to misconstrue, I’ve numbered your paragraphs temporarily. Remove them when they no longer serve us.
P1. You make many claims that might be disputed (and for which the disputes might benefit from advance refutation). I’ll make as many rebuttals as I can. Some I find repulsive but hope you’ll find them helpful.
1. You call contempt illogical, which is true if you mean logic has no part in it, but is false if you mean it’s unreasonable. Since contempt, like disgust, is not rational but visceral, it’s pointless to demand that it be logical. You might just as well point out that disgust at drinking a glass of our own spit is illogical. Of course it is; it moments ago came from our mouths, yet we’re disgusted anyway.
2. You say we’re hypocritical to be hostile toward and persecute the suffering victims, which is true if we try to pretend not to be hostile, but is not hypocritical at all if we’re open about our hostility and don’t see the suicide (meaning the person who attempts suicide) as a victim.
3. You say we’re hesitant to verbalize the disgrace of suicide. This may be a restatement of 2. We are hypocritical if we don’t acknowledge our real reactions.
4. You claim that nobody knows where the stigma originates. A simple refutation would be to say that the stigma originates from anger and fear. We detest the act because it repudiates the value of life and we fear it because it makes us vulnerable. We want distance to protect us from our own sense of what a relief it would be to stop fighting and give in.
P2. Neuman and countless others miss the third option: spite. No action is required at all of those who simply shrink into the earth raising both their middle fingers at the danger, the situation, the life that threatens them. We are affronted by those who don’t fight back or retreat from threats but simply object and blame the world.
P3. This one is mean. You illustrate with the overwhelmed college student whose choices are to fight or flee when neither is easy. You paint the “can’t fight” well. You suggest but don’t say that suicide is an embrace of the logical alternative: to flee. The obvious rebuttal is: drop out. Your opponent needs to know why leaving the toxic environment is no escape; otherwise, he will insist that suicide is the cowardly choice of several exit strategies.
P4. Whether suicide is selfish or not, calling it so doesn’t seem hypocritical to me. I’m missing something. What is the hidden opinion of the person who (hypocritically) calls it selfish?
As for your quote, it contains a germ of evidence for the selfishness claim. The parent thinks the child was selfish (self-induced stress). The parent thinks the child was willful (resisted therapy, didn’t share her anguish). The child doled out the blame (I’m the generous one who leaves gifts).
P5. Seems reasonable but can easily be read as its opposite. Refusing to share anything (including pain and struggle) is a profoundly selfish way to keep the anguish to oneself. Maybe it relieves them from cheering me up. Maybe it permits me to wallow. Maybe it’s a test to see if they care enough to really help me.
P6. An entirely reasonable person could easily look at these sneakers and offer a winged green-gold thing with fins that flies onto your foot and fastens itself, Drew. Manic-depressives live long lives if they stay on their medication and kill themselves when they run out and plunge into depression. They can’t be blamed for a chemical imbalance that unhinges them and that can be regulated. Without claiming that one has to be insane to kill oneself, your opponent can observe that we are all at the mercy of our body chemistry, which can sometimes be so powerfully motive that it overwhelms our very survival instinct.
P7. Of course there’s no excuse for belittling the sufferer. That shame spiral is hard to thwart, especially if those offering help are rebuffed. There’s a connection to addiction here you may or may not choose to investigate. The addict, especially a closet drunk or secret user wishing to maintain a reputation, will deny needing help at all costs, lashing out at those who want to confront the “problem” the addicts see as a coping skill. They think they’re fighting. They may not feel able to relinquish the mechanism they rely on (they may be incapable of seeking help), but it must surely look selfish to their desperate loved ones who watch them slowly self-destruct.
Drew, if there are new counterarguments or refutations here that you haven’t anticipated or don’t feel you’ve already sufficiently refuted, then I’ll have given you something to respond to in your rebuttal argument (and you can leave this definition essay alone).
OR: if you prefer to enlarge and enhance your existing essay by adding additional refutations, you can post a combination essay to meet your deadline and call it Definition/Refutation—Drew Mueller.