6 ms·

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the vi

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.

AStonesThrow 1y ago
[dead]
tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade: The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand. The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.
- stirfish 1y ago
  That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader. It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.
- CrazyStat 1y ago
  What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?
  - reliabilityguy 1y ago
    Because the latter implies some external attribute to it?
    - wat10000 1y ago
      That's what makes the latter more accurate.
      - reliabilityguy 1y ago
        How come?
        wat10000 1y ago
        Because there often is an external attribute, especially if you consider illness to be “external” as is conventional for most deaths caused by illness.
        reliabilityguy 1y ago
        Some illnesses are internal though, e.g., various genetic disorders people are born with, or some mental illnesses, etc.
  - tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
    I don't have a big issue with that particular phrase itself. Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. But really it's the transparent and ham-handed attempts by some others to smooth over the sharp edges of reality merely by re-phrasing how things are written. People generally don't want pity, but these re-phrasings accomplish nothing other than to make clear that one person feels sorry for another.
    - watwut 1y ago
      > Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. No, passive voice is not in general designed to conceal or obscure the actor. Especially not in the sentence here. There were valid similar complains about crime reporting. But the language there was different. The sentence "The innocent McKay family was inadvertently affected by this enforcement operation" is trying to hide culpability. We can discuss that. These two are incomparable: - A deputy-involved shooting occurred. (Ok, we are avoiding the actor. We do not know who was shooting.) - A person died by Suicide. (Clear to anyone who done what.)
    - haswell 1y ago
      > Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. No one is an island. We’re all deeply intertwined/interconnected. We’re the sum total of our lived experiences and without a doubt some have lived far more challenging lives than others and are influenced by factors that would lead just about anyone down a dark path. The grief felt by those left behind is the result of that aforementioned interconnectedness. Getting back to the quoted bit, isn’t this a bit like saying “attributing grief to anyone other than the person experiencing it is oxymoronic”? My point is not to diminish the impact on those left behind in any way. Clearly this is a traumatic event that causes excruciating grief. But I think we also need to be honest about the environmental factors that lead to suicide. Hopelessness is one of the large causes. If there are systemic reasons causing people to feel hopeless, and if those systemic problems could theoretically be changed/improved, and such improvement lowered the suicide rate, there’s a strong case to be made that the systemic factors share the responsibility. > Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. I don’t think it’s a given. Clearly some lives are far more complicated than others. There exists a subset of people for whom that complication will become an insurmountable problem. Often those people have been traumatized, or have never learned the tools necessary to work through their feelings. Some people are bullied into killing themselves. Should that be attributed wholly to the person who was bullied?
  - octopoc 1y ago
    It assigns agency to the person who died. Think about it this way: I have relative who is vegan, so she has been trying to convince me to kill myself for many years now. I can still choose whether I do it though, and obviously I chose not to so far, although during COVID I didn’t have much other social interaction, so I nearly went through with it. I had agency throughout though. I’m not dead because I chose not to go through with it. That’s the difference.
    - lokeg 1y ago
      What?
      - octopoc 1y ago
        Agency is the ability to act. If someone dies against their own will, they don’t have agency, which is why we don’t use language like “they committed their own death” to refer to such instances.
    - marliechiller 1y ago
      whats veganism got to do with comitting suicide?
      - octopoc 1y ago
        Many vegans think everyone else is evil/demonic for eating meat. “Meat is murder” etc etc. So the natural conclusion to that is, according to several vegans I know, that everyone who eats meat should be forced to either stop being a mass murderer or kill themselves. Keep in mind there was a point where I was vegan, I know several vegans, so I know what I’m talking about. They’re not shy about it either—look up That Vegan Teacher on YouTube for relatively middle-of-the-road vegan behavior in action.
        nosefrog 1y ago
        I was vegan for 7 years, one of my vegan friends had the opinion that human hospitals should be banned and only animal hospitals should be allowed.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    The latter implies that suicide just happened to the person, like they got hit by a bus. The former correctly attributes the action to the person who killed themselves. Certainly the motivations and causes that drive people to suicide are complex, but ultimately it is a choice the person makes. "Committed" is perhaps not the best word, since it's associated with crimes (and suicide is not a crime in many places anymore), but it's at least more active.
JdeBP 1y ago
For context: Suicide was a crime in the United Kingdom until 1961. * https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents * https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296 https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296
lanfeust6 1y ago
Except colloquially no one today thinks the word has any bearing on whether the victim looks bad. It just means they're responsible for the act. I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.
- lostmsu 1y ago
  This seems to be a common topic in the current pendulum swing.
- wat10000 1y ago
  Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves. It follows from that fact that if someone kills themselves, at least one of those things was not true. And those things can and often are thrust on people, or at least occur against the will of the person. In this case, a bad situation was thrust on a whole bunch of people, and it ended up killing some of them.
  - lanfeust6 1y ago
    > Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves. Correct. This has no bearing. > it ended up killing some of them. No, and it's irresponsible and unhelpful to act like agency and choice is not part of the equation. As if to say that basically everyone chooses the same way (euthanasia) in the face of terminal illness, or depression. Tautologically, if you want to convey that help is out there and that a better life is possible, then you're saying people have a choice to make.
    - wat10000 1y ago
      There's a lot of agency in heart attacks too, but we still say that the heart attack killed them, not that they killed themselves with a heart attack. There is agency, but it's equally irresponsible and unhelpful to act like outside factors are not part of the equation, and that someone who drives a person to suicide is blameless. Let's say someone jumps out of a burning building and they're killed by the fall. Did they have agency? Responsibility? Should we describe that as "committed suicide"?

"died by suicide" is just a modern replacement for "committed suicide", because that phrase dates back to when it was a crime, so it's regarded as making the victim look bad.

AStonesThrow 1y ago

[dead]

tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago

I say this as someone whose father killed himself when I was in 5th grade: The "victims" who suffer after a suicide are the living, not the dead. These kinds of "modernizations" are transparent PC nonsense made up by well-intentioned do-gooders who have no idea how to represent the interests of other people who have a lived experience that they don't understand. The person is dead either way. There's literally no way to sugarcoat this fact. We'd rather you just speak in plain, honest language than trying to make it sound less bad somehow.

stirfish 1y ago
That's a really hard thing to go through. I'm sorry you had to bear that as a fifth grader. It's possible that both you and your dad are victims in different ways.
CrazyStat 1y ago
What makes “committed suicide” any more plain or honest than “died by suicide”?
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  Because the latter implies some external attribute to it?
  - wat10000 1y ago
    That's what makes the latter more accurate.
    - reliabilityguy 1y ago
      How come?
      - wat10000 1y ago
        Because there often is an external attribute, especially if you consider illness to be “external” as is conventional for most deaths caused by illness.
        reliabilityguy 1y ago
        Some illnesses are internal though, e.g., various genetic disorders people are born with, or some mental illnesses, etc.
- tjwebbnorfolk 1y ago
  I don't have a big issue with that particular phrase itself. Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. But really it's the transparent and ham-handed attempts by some others to smooth over the sharp edges of reality merely by re-phrasing how things are written. People generally don't want pity, but these re-phrasings accomplish nothing other than to make clear that one person feels sorry for another.
  - watwut 1y ago
    > Although the passive voice is designed to conceal or obscure the actor, which doesn't accomplish anything here. No, passive voice is not in general designed to conceal or obscure the actor. Especially not in the sentence here. There were valid similar complains about crime reporting. But the language there was different. The sentence "The innocent McKay family was inadvertently affected by this enforcement operation" is trying to hide culpability. We can discuss that. These two are incomparable: - A deputy-involved shooting occurred. (Ok, we are avoiding the actor. We do not know who was shooting.) - A person died by Suicide. (Clear to anyone who done what.)
  - haswell 1y ago
    > Attributing a suicide to anyone other than the actor starts to appear oxymoronic very quickly. No one is an island. We’re all deeply intertwined/interconnected. We’re the sum total of our lived experiences and without a doubt some have lived far more challenging lives than others and are influenced by factors that would lead just about anyone down a dark path. The grief felt by those left behind is the result of that aforementioned interconnectedness. Getting back to the quoted bit, isn’t this a bit like saying “attributing grief to anyone other than the person experiencing it is oxymoronic”? My point is not to diminish the impact on those left behind in any way. Clearly this is a traumatic event that causes excruciating grief. But I think we also need to be honest about the environmental factors that lead to suicide. Hopelessness is one of the large causes. If there are systemic reasons causing people to feel hopeless, and if those systemic problems could theoretically be changed/improved, and such improvement lowered the suicide rate, there’s a strong case to be made that the systemic factors share the responsibility. > Yes life is complex and whatnot -- that's a given, we don't need a reminder every time anything happens. I don’t think it’s a given. Clearly some lives are far more complicated than others. There exists a subset of people for whom that complication will become an insurmountable problem. Often those people have been traumatized, or have never learned the tools necessary to work through their feelings. Some people are bullied into killing themselves. Should that be attributed wholly to the person who was bullied?
- octopoc 1y ago
  It assigns agency to the person who died. Think about it this way: I have relative who is vegan, so she has been trying to convince me to kill myself for many years now. I can still choose whether I do it though, and obviously I chose not to so far, although during COVID I didn’t have much other social interaction, so I nearly went through with it. I had agency throughout though. I’m not dead because I chose not to go through with it. That’s the difference.
  - lokeg 1y ago
    What?
    - octopoc 1y ago
      Agency is the ability to act. If someone dies against their own will, they don’t have agency, which is why we don’t use language like “they committed their own death” to refer to such instances.
  - marliechiller 1y ago
    whats veganism got to do with comitting suicide?
    - octopoc 1y ago
      Many vegans think everyone else is evil/demonic for eating meat. “Meat is murder” etc etc. So the natural conclusion to that is, according to several vegans I know, that everyone who eats meat should be forced to either stop being a mass murderer or kill themselves. Keep in mind there was a point where I was vegan, I know several vegans, so I know what I’m talking about. They’re not shy about it either—look up That Vegan Teacher on YouTube for relatively middle-of-the-road vegan behavior in action.
      - nosefrog 1y ago
        I was vegan for 7 years, one of my vegan friends had the opinion that human hospitals should be banned and only animal hospitals should be allowed.
- kelnos 1y ago
  The latter implies that suicide just happened to the person, like they got hit by a bus. The former correctly attributes the action to the person who killed themselves. Certainly the motivations and causes that drive people to suicide are complex, but ultimately it is a choice the person makes. "Committed" is perhaps not the best word, since it's associated with crimes (and suicide is not a crime in many places anymore), but it's at least more active.

JdeBP 1y ago

For context: Suicide was a crime in the United Kingdom until 1961. * https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents https://legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/contents * https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296 https://bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14374296

lanfeust6 1y ago

Except colloquially no one today thinks the word has any bearing on whether the victim looks bad. It just means they're responsible for the act. I guess some people take comfort in the idea that suicide is thrust on people and they take no responsibility for their actions.

lostmsu 1y ago
This seems to be a common topic in the current pendulum swing.
wat10000 1y ago
Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves. It follows from that fact that if someone kills themselves, at least one of those things was not true. And those things can and often are thrust on people, or at least occur against the will of the person. In this case, a bad situation was thrust on a whole bunch of people, and it ended up killing some of them.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  > Healthy, sane people in good situations don't kill themselves. Correct. This has no bearing. > it ended up killing some of them. No, and it's irresponsible and unhelpful to act like agency and choice is not part of the equation. As if to say that basically everyone chooses the same way (euthanasia) in the face of terminal illness, or depression. Tautologically, if you want to convey that help is out there and that a better life is possible, then you're saying people have a choice to make.
  - wat10000 1y ago
    There's a lot of agency in heart attacks too, but we still say that the heart attack killed them, not that they killed themselves with a heart attack. There is agency, but it's equally irresponsible and unhelpful to act like outside factors are not part of the equation, and that someone who drives a person to suicide is blameless. Let's say someone jumps out of a burning building and they're killed by the fall. Did they have agency? Responsibility? Should we describe that as "committed suicide"?