The Gentle Art of Cutting Yourself Open

Errrm. I don't know where to start, really. Whilst I admire the clear and thoughtful presentation of the points involved, I'm not really sure that I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Benwell's arguements. Whilst I DO agree that self-mutilation is a horrible and rather futile way of trying to get your anger and desire for attention across , I have never been in the position of feeling the need to do it myself. My sister did, and so did a number of my friends (Seymour included) and most still bear the scars to this day. What I cannot agree with, however, is the idea that people who do it should wear 'long sleeves' to cover their arms on stage. You what? Do you want people with ugly faces to wear bags on their heads as well, to spare your tender tastes? And for how long do you propose they do this? Till it scabs over? A couple of months? The rest of their lives? If the scars are deep enough, they never go away. Everyone knows what they are, and where they're from, so you could end up suggesting that they not be allowed to go swimming! And I would like to see anyone try and tell my sister that she couldn't wear short sleeves anymore. She'd take your head off at the neck and hand it back to you. And rightly so. And I'm not even going to go INTO your comments about drugs and live acts, because I'm taking up too much space, but suffice to say, I wasn't very impressed by either. I think that basically, the article tried to put too much responsibility on to bands, not to entertain, but to NOT OFFEND. And for fuck's sake, I thought that was what we paid them for. I think that Greg Dawn Parade had the best approach: Do what you like to yourself, but don't expect me to help or applaud.

i think if people do self-mutilate then i'm not gonna condemn that, what i do resent is fuckwits like Richey Manic and Casey Chaos doing it publicy, on stage (C.C) and in the press (R.E).
The same goes for Sid Vicious and Iggy Pop.
It's irresponsible and if they never did it then the number of self-mutilators would be a tiny proportion of what they are today.

I once had a girlfriend who cut herself not so long ago... now she truly did have some shit going on in her life and she felt she couldn't explain it anybody for reasons I'll never know... She felt the only way to relieve the pressure was to cut. It's not for me to say if it's right or wrong, but not everybody does it for attention and it's for this reason I hate people like Casey Chaos as due to people like him the people with the real problems get ridiculed and tagged "attention seekers" when in reality they are not and the name callers just simply add to their already turbulent lives.

Also about the drugs point... it makes no sense, it's no different to hearing your mates do on about the latest joint they blazed! Bands are people too, why not let them talk and act like everybody else?

... are in the minority sadly. it is the fault of the genuine attention seekers that people become incredibly ignorant of those with real problems.
of course it would be a ridiculous assertion to make to assume that everyone who cuts themselves does it purely for the attention. however sad it may seem, though, the majority do it both for attention and to emulate fuckwits like Casey Chaos and Richey Edwards.

no bands shouldn't have to alter their lifestyle just so their fans don't mimic something that is dangerous, but it's irresponsible to make self-mutilation part of a band's image or act.

James K, the above post wasn't a response to your post as such, I just tagged it on to the end of the conversation at the time.
rachelle

fucking hell....
ok then, my responses to various points in this thread's postings, as they flood out...

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right, one comment i noticed below which is preying on my mind the most currently anyway is the somewhat naive idea that the likes of "Last Resort" will help self-harmers. I spose i ought to lay my cards on the table here [which i wouldnt have managed, 9 months back], just so it doesnt sound like i'm mouthing off vitriolicly without any idea of what i'm on about. basically.....i suffer from severe depression, have been hospitalised since december at least as much as i have been out, and yes i've been self harming for godknows how many years now.

BUT back to good ol Papa Roach....every time i hear that fucking song [far too much now i've started a new job and they've the radio on all day], i feel increasingly [personally i guess] offended and more and more angry. For gods sake: look at it -- a nascent nu-metal band, potential audience of disaffected, angsty teens [ok simplifying it here but that's a lotof their audience], and out of their *entire* recorded material their first UK single is a track all about self-mutilation and suicide. Target audience! hey, kids!!.. There's absolutely fuck all heartfelt sentiment within that song, it seems like a purely career- and sales-orientated move to have that as yr debut single. And given the lyrics are so dumbly obvious, to ensure it doesn't even come close to going over any listeners heads what it is theiy're talking about........
It's the mere fact they're fucking USING the issues of suicide/self-harm for pure commercial and financial game, to get more fans, that makes me sick to the stomach, and makes me loathe coby dick infinitely. oh jesus christ, give me strength.

Do you remember the manics releasing 'die in the summertime', nirvana releasing 'radio-friendly unit shifter', the Thowing Muses releasing kristen Hersch's most painful/explicit work as singles?! I certainly don't. The whole 'Last Resort' thing seems so sickeningly calculated right down to the last damn detail, tailored to the audience that's there, ensuring them success and devotion from those who reckon they 'feel their pain' or whatever [verbatim what one fan on a recent R1 documentary about nu-metal said]......this is why i take it so personally, why i get so angry and offended by it every time i hear it; why id like an hour in a soundproof windowless room with coby dick, a cricketbat and my rage.


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re: Amen -- an actual excuse he has proffered to a close friend who toured with the band [when they went out with one of their support act's members], was that he slashes his arm open onstage to "oxygenate his blood". Seriously. I don't know enough with regards to Casey though to comment more. Just thought i'd throw that one in.........


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educating teens is not something that'll significantly bring down numbers of those who self-mutilate. Dealing with the problems, the history, and issues that they have locked away inside themselves that bring them to self-harm is what will -hopefully- acheive that in the long-run [and it is not a quick and simple process a lot of the time].

to say that were it not for richey/casey/whoever making their self mutilation so public, then the numbers of those who do would be a tiny proportion of what they are, is also a silly thing to say. I truly believe that those that do as a result of the aboves' influence are rather the small proportion......if it seems at all to be otherwise, it's only due to the lack of attention and awareness these problems get, outside of the tedious connection between rock stars and 'copycat' fans [or however you term it]..
.......when i started, it was not from reading about Richey or whatever - that was shortly after, ironically - and that was around the time of his disappearance probably, and i only subsequently found out about the background to the 'holy bible'-period goings-on in much greater, graver detail through the press a while after that [i never even knew about the 4 REAL incident at the time either]. But fuck that's just me. However i still feel strongly that to say the majority of those who self-harm either suffering from whatever sort of depression, mental illness, having suffered some form of abuse on whatever level....to say that without these rock stars doing it, the majority of all of them would NOT do it [or wouldn't find the initial urge to do it] is very very wrong, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge/understanding of those who do self-harm and their reasons.


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It's naive and far too pointless to make broadbrush generalisations with regards to why Richey Edwards cut himself. this was fucking far from someone who purely did it for media attention. you don't write things like 'the holy bible' without you actually possessing all those emotions yourself, for you to be able to write with such complete clarity and empathy and accuracy about such subjects. there were clearly a lot of problems within richey -- icant start to try and explain away some of his behaviour/actions as i don't know the full reasoning behind them all, it'd be wrong for me to and thus so shouldn't you. I'm pretty certain of the fact that Richey's self-mutilation began long before the Manics got any press though, before they even came to be --- and i simply cannot fathom how the fuck james K you can make a claim that he PROMOTED self-mutilation! come on...if the press played up those [largely private, with a v few exceptions] actions and packaged it into another piece of the Manics image [which they sadly seemed to do], that's summat else entirely....
And the fact you add to that, "most self-mutilators will be manics fans. probably." [however throwaway/wry it may be intended, or due to lack of awareness], just diminishes any worth at all in what you're saying to quite negligible levels..



Richey more than anything actually shed a light on the entire subject - his articularcy and eloquence in his lyrics [about as far from the contrived self-loathing-by-numbers shit of "Last Resort" as possible]and interviews actually both helped many out there to understand more about it all, and made a connection with many out there suffering, both manics fans and non-fans even. i kinda hesitate to say this [out of fear of presumptuousness], but to an extent of ppl's choosing he was and what he said/wrote were things fellow sufferers could relate to, maybe even make a few of those suffering realise that it's not just puberty-related teen-hormonal-angst crap [[what i dismissed mine as being for years, despite it worsening, until i was told to see somebody and i was diagnosed], but something more severe - in richey,here was someone -- a high-profile someone at that -- discussing these things. soemone comfortable enough to speak of it all. someone in the public eye & having to live through it, publically, as it worsened - and not of his own choice, in the last 12 months before his disappearance.
If you'd rather, please sustitute Richey for Kristen Hersch in there, if that gives what i'm saying more credence/worth. It still makes the same point i hope.

personally, i would rather richey was never found. but these are for much much more different reasons than your rather callous [sorry..] ones in the article......



The only real knowlegdeable sense [spoken on the direct level of the self-mutilation subject here...and v much *imho* ;)] anyone has spoken in this thread was, mostly, from Mark Taylor. I am glad someone did.
As he said quite simply and rightly [and more fucking succcinctly than me], "Naive and underesearched articles like this don't do any good for anyone".

i'm sure parts of this have been said below by others, but i just felt compelled to add my own [lengthy, sorry] coment to this, it being something so close to heart.

over & out..

++pete x

but I don't agree that EVERYONE who cuts themselves has a genuine problem.
self-harm IS a serious problem but is minute, most self-mutilators are attention seeking Manics fans who want people to admire how fucked up they are.

I wanted to make this a slightly different thread to question peoples idea's of constructing something from problems of being destructive.

I'll admit I've been through a lot of shit over the past few years, a lil bit of bullying, nan dying of lung'n'breast cancer, then grandad who I was really close to being depressed, then having a stroke and going into a coma for 4months around the time of my gcses, heart break, etc...

but for me it was more important to create something [take a look around] and in the face of everything, fight back and improve my worth and self-respect. Tho I'm obviously a slightly different kind of person. The whole troubled writer cliché probably springs to mind.

Maybe it's because of this distinction I find it hard to even consider slicing my arm open or smashing something into a million pieces. I dunno. I don't really understand what is achieved, what release there is other than a momentary rush. Perhaps it's the whole short-term fix versus long term desire. I guess that idea can be applied to a lot of things, be it love, careers or whatever. Maybe there is a nature/nurture link within this, which makes people different in this way. Tho I guess the few people we hear about in bands, who create music and still cut are an obvious example prooving me totally and utterly wrong.. tho maybe they're extreme cases and personalities, hence the ability to be a star and as their life is magnified so are there problems and the closer things get to them, the more they'll need these short-term releases.

I'm not trying to judge, just expressed a few idea's.

And you don't think there's something wrong with all attention seeking Manics fans... ;)

Hmm.

That's a joke, by the way.

there is something inately wrong with manics fans :p

you're wrong
the majority of those who proudly make their self mutilation public in showing it off for some effect [or whaatever]are those 'without the problem' [to invert yr phrase], well perhaps...

but in the whole number of those who do...that is not the case.
Believe me.
plus yr repeated assertion that most self-mutilators are 'fucked up manics fans' not only trivialises the entire issue, and especially those fans who *are* ill and whose actions have ZERO to do with the band; but making such sweeping generalisations shows that you really do not know enough about the whole issue of this and understand the extent and depth of the problem - that as someone else said, is still fairly taboo outside of well the music press/alternative music scene i suppose [i know i'm gonna disagree/regret that phrase later, hmm..] - thus leading to people's lack of understanding of it all...

for fucks sake:
how many fans do the manics have?
how many of them self harm with pride for some 'fucked up image' effect?
you really think that they make up anyting *like* the majority of those who self-harm, let alone worldwide?..
i don't know why i'm bothering here, seeing as yr 'not budging' and happy to keep to yr ill-informed generalisations, so [it appears]you can seemingly just keep making anti-manics-fan comments... ;)

ho hum.....

very true, - those copyist fans trivialise it *infinitely* more.
just that expressing those opinionis/views with such certainty + unbudging conviction doesn't help matters..twas all i was trying to impress here, sorry :)

[meant to post this while on earlier but a fucking unwritten pressrelease sidetracked me, ugh..]
but no - that's a lot of sense spoken there sean, nice one. some ppl could do well by reading and taking on one or two of those points, the article's original author included ;)
good to see we're all fairly united here in wanting to lynch coby dick and exact our own personal revenge on him tho, rather than it just being me, heheh..

and in answer to yr q, i'm suffering from bad insomnia currently, and it's fucking my sleep pattern up nicely as you can see - tonight shouldnt be as bad, i hope ;)

I do know several people who cut themselves,it's part of my job. They all have a history of abuse or mental illness.

Freak shows aren't new, with or without the music , chasey chaos is just a showman. Coby Dick it trying to be clever, but hell, upsetting parents sells records.

Richey Edwards, like Kurt Cobain was ill, a completely different ball game.

And there's a distinction between attention seeking as in 'look at me look at me this seems to be the best way to get people to look at me' and a cry for help. A lot of people who self injure are diagnostically alexithymic - unable to adequately verbalise their emotions. This means that the way most people would use to attain help and support - asking for it - is cut off. In this case cutting, as well as being a way to vent emotions which people can't talk out or get rid of in any other way and which can be unbearably distressing, can be the only way to say help me. Self injury could be seen in a way as survival instinct rearing it's head and preventing someone from becoming so overwhelmed by their emotions that they become totally unable to cope. And if someone has low self esteem then they may well not feel they deserve help - and this feeling is not helped by all the people saying that anyone who self-injures is attention seeking or a freak. I know people who have lost friends when they told people who they thought they could trust about their self-injury, hoping to get the emotional support they need to quit, and instead of getting this they have been sneered at in disgust, revulsion and contempt and told to just get a grip and grow up, and in the meantime to 'not talk to me any more - why do you expect me to deal with your fucked-upness'. And accusing anyone at all ever who self-injures and dares to show the scars of being attention seeking and a fake is not helpful to people who already feel inadequate and who believe the way they feel is shameful. If people who cut are told to hide it all the time then how is anyone with a genuine problem ever to get help? People always seem to assume that someone is a fake and only adjust that opinion based on later evidence, as opposed to taking someone on trust and revising their opinion if there seems to be a real case for branding someone an attention seeker. I find it hard to imagine anyone cutting themselves simply because they want people to think they're fucked up - but then I really can't see why anyone would see fuckedupness as something to aspire to or to be admired for.

Ok that's incredibly rambling and in no coherent order because there was a lot I wanted to get in there that was all interconnected and difficult to fit together, and because it's not exactly an easy subject to talk about. But there's my 2 cents.

J.B. phone home!