Comment on Why can't I argue against claims of suffering?

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TootSweet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

Do you have some reason to think they’re not suffering? That they’re feigning suffering to manipulate you or something? If not, don’t be a dick and tell them they’re not. That’s basically gaslighting.

Imagine going to the doctor and saying you’ve been having terrible headaches and the doctor’s response is “I don’t think you’re having headaches.”

No one can prove they’re actually having any particular feeling. But everyone has feelings constantly. If they’re saying they feel a certain way, their assertion is automatically more valid than your denial. You don’t live in their head. They do.

People sometimes feel a certain way for no apparent reason. (Depression, for instance, is sometimes idiopathic.) But it’s not as if people aren’t really having feelings. And you have no basis on which to tell them they’re not. Nor that their feelings are baseless (or for that matter not baseless.)

If someone says they feel a certain way, there’s usually no constructive benefit that can come from denying that they even have those feelings.

I personally suspect that in most cases even those who use their own feelings to manipulate others (folks suffering from “cluster B” personality disorders, for instance) generally are still subjectively having the feelings they use to manipulate. If they say “you hurt me deeply” because you set a reasonable boundary or some such, it’s probably the case that they do indeed feel “deeply hurt” even if they are using that feeling as a weapon against you. (And, again, don’t be assuming they are unless you’ve got good reason to.) Denying that they feel that way is a) probably strictly false and b) completely unconstructive even if you are (in some sense) correct. Better would be to work out a solution/compromise that works even in the presence of those feelings. (And in extreme situations, it can theoretically be best to, for instance, cut off all contact with a manipulative person. But even in that case, I don’t really see how denying the manipulative person’s feelings could be helpful.)

All that said, when it comes to manipulative people, I can understand the impulse to deny their feelings. It’s cathartic in a really unhelpful vindictive kind of way. But still, it’s unhelpful.

But I think I’ve gone way off on a tangent here. You’re not asking about manipulative people so far as I can tell. The example you gave was just transphobic conspiracy-theory-level bullshit that you’re trying to pass off as somehow lOgIcAl.

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