A Design for Death

I'm not offended. I'm just exhausted and feeling like trying to engage your above comment in good faith is a huge uphill battle that I'm extremely tired of trying to fight.

I never wanted to fight it to begin with. But it's essentially been unavoidable due to the detail of being a woman trying to support myself "in a man's world" as it were.

It's one of the things that makes me suicidal, which is also not something useful to talk about. No one ever reads that and concludes "It must be an impossibly bad problem that it makes her feel that way." No one ever reads that and goes "If I had been dealing with what she's been dealing with for more than a decade, I'd be suicidally depressed too. This really, really needs to change!"

Nope. It just gets interpreted as "Whiny bitch! No wonder no one wants to hire her! Also, shut up about your problems and quit making everything into Gender Wars!"

It doesn't make any difference how carefully I frame it, someone is pretty much guaranteed to say something amazingly shitty and dismissive.

Under other circumstances, I might be happy to talk with you about reasons why I'm skeptical that women really voluntarily choose and prefer to "care" about others. But I'm just not up for that discussion tonight and I also didn't want to not reply at all.

Have a good evening.

Really old versions of Microsoft Access could use Clippy via VBA:

  Set Clippy = Application.Assistant.NewBalloon
  With Clippy
    .Heading = "Human Deletion"
    .Text = "It looks like you're trying to kill yourself"
    .Icon = msoIconAlertWarning
    .Button = msoButtonSetOK
    .Show
  End With

I don't want to go so far as saying that alone would make me consider suicide, but I was effectively deaf for a little over a week once in college with a sinus infection—mine, which I never even had one of until college so was unacquainted with at the time, get up to some weird shit with fair frequency, unfortunately.

Even so, I could still kind-of hear, just not well enough to understand people most of the time, or enjoy music whatsoever (zero enjoyment possible, just a muted mess), or tell how loudly I was talking (I ended up being way too quiet, mostly, I gather). I felt significantly cut off from everything and everyone around me.

It was pretty fucking bad, and I'm not even unusually into music or anything like that.

I'd have said being blind was 100% for sure worse than being deaf before that. Now? Hell, I don't know anymore. Blind's probably still worse, but deaf was awful. Either plus any one other significant problem and I bet I'd be giving... options some serious thought.

The ends don’t justify the means. Sometimes to live and suffer a fate worse than death is better to die.

Also I hate this idea the they’re making death slick.

And the way the article is romanticizing a man who will assist you in, for many; a coward’s way out.

This worries me greatly; have we so quickly forgotten the past?

As Schopenhauer mentions, a good way to feel better about your situation is to consider those who are less fortunate.

I don’t see what your gender has to do with it. In South Africa I belong to a class of “previously disadvantaged” people. I choose to ignore this distinction and the advantages conferred on those “previously advantaged.” I even refuse to accept any advantages from the government arising as a result of my skin colour.

That difference might exist and sure it might make my life harder, but in my view life is about action not results and as long as my shoulder is to the wheel, one glance at the abject poverty around me is enough to keep me pushing.

I’m sorry to hear about your situation and wish you luck.