27 1 / 2012

fyeahpoliscipanda: vincentwilde: THERE ARE NO QUEER TEEN SUICIDES - Unknown artist - 2004 - Portland, OR - Single page flyer. I have a print out of this hanging in my office. I would also then extrapolate this: There are no teen* suicides. How could someone who can’t legally choose their poisons and friends, drive a vehicle, even leave their own house, or make their own decision about sexual activity possibly have the legally sound form of consent? If you legally can’t make the choice to suicide with cigarettes and alcohol, how could you make the choice to end your own life? You technically can’t.  But then again, doesn’t this definition of suicide as free from external cause beg the question? Is there such a thing as suicide that is not a reaction to an external condition that poses a problem with no other solution obvious to the individual, except perhaps euthanasia? Is there suicide that isn’t also murder? Are we not then redefining suicide as not “killing one’s self” but “the induced killing of one’s self”? Would a alternate term be perhaps caco-thanasia? I wouldn’t translate that directly to murder, except for the hyperbolic rhetoric used to push a needed counter narrative. It could be manslaughter, negligence, et cetera. But that piece of terminology isn’t the point; murder in common parlance is basically the umbrella term, with murder/manslaughter/etc as technical sub terms. But it’s the delineation between who is the principle actor that is important. These terms all denote the action of external forces against the individual. Suicide is similar, but in a different group, as it indicates the action of the individual alone. It’s akin to “pedophile” being the common umbrella term and pedo/hebe/ephebe-phile being the subgroups. This taxonomic conflation of general and technical terms is often a communication problem. * Teen here being the term that denotes in common usage Teen-Below-The-Age-Of-Majority, or underage. Since there is a range of ages which vary by jurisdiction the general term is used for brevity.

fyeahpoliscipanda:

vincentwilde:

THERE ARE NO QUEER TEEN SUICIDES - Unknown artist - 2004 - Portland, OR - Single page flyer.

I have a print out of this hanging in my office.

I would also then extrapolate this: There are no teen* suicides. How could someone who can’t legally choose their poisons and friends, drive a vehicle, even leave their own house, or make their own decision about sexual activity possibly have the legally sound form of consent? If you legally can’t make the choice to suicide with cigarettes and alcohol, how could you make the choice to end your own life?

You technically can’t. 

But then again, doesn’t this definition of suicide as free from external cause beg the question? Is there such a thing as suicide that is not a reaction to an external condition that poses a problem with no other solution obvious to the individual, except perhaps euthanasia? Is there suicide that isn’t also murder? Are we not then redefining suicide as not “killing one’s self” but “the induced killing of one’s self”? Would a alternate term be perhaps caco-thanasia?

I wouldn’t translate that directly to murder, except for the hyperbolic rhetoric used to push a needed counter narrative. It could be manslaughter, negligence, et cetera. But that piece of terminology isn’t the point; murder in common parlance is basically the umbrella term, with murder/manslaughter/etc as technical sub terms. But it’s the delineation between who is the principle actor that is important. These terms all denote the action of external forces against the individual. Suicide is similar, but in a different group, as it indicates the action of the individual alone. It’s akin to “pedophile” being the common umbrella term and pedo/hebe/ephebe-phile being the subgroups. This taxonomic conflation of general and technical terms is often a communication problem.

* Teen here being the term that denotes in common usage Teen-Below-The-Age-Of-Majority, or underage. Since there is a range of ages which vary by jurisdiction the general term is used for brevity.

Permalink 661 notes