Stephen Fry should resign from being President of MIND (warning about sexual abuse)

[EnthusiasmDisturbed]

According to Stephen Fry from an interviews he gave in the US

There are many great plays which contain rapes, and the word rape now is even considered a rape,” he said. “If you say: ‘you can’t watch this play, you can’t watch Titus Andronicus, or you can’t read it in a Shakespeare class, or you can’t read Macbeth because it’s got children being killed in it, it might trigger something when you were young that upset you once, because uncle touched you in a nasty place’, well I’m sorry. It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place, you get some of my sympathy, but your self-pity gets none of my sympathy because self-pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity.

“Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.”

How can he keep his position with such an attitude. Everyone who works in MH knows of the horrendous impact that sexual abuse can have on someone's life for some it's a life long struggle.

Maybe it's his own feelings that he is fighting against, this is not the first time he has been shown to lack empathy but to have such opinions

I hope he steps down

[applecatchers36]

Interesting radio programme that SF might benefit from listening to!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b070dksr

[fusionconfusion]

Dione I simply misphrased this (think accidentally deleted part of the sentence) as the whole of my post was about how avoidance maintains difficulty.. The sentence should read the trigger warning IS seen as maintaining because it buys into the idea that yadda yadds.

Trigger warnings reduce natural exposure, maintain hyper vigilance and encourage avoidance. So there is a bit of harm there, yes.

[Onedaftmonkey]

As a survivor of rape I think he is the biggest wanker alive. People like him need to be made as pathetic as the pricks who do these acts. I hope he suffers through his mental illness as I have suffered these last 27 years. Celebrities should not have gobs like the Blackwell tunnel. I hope you never sleep another full nights rest in your life. Asshole

[FelicityFunknickle]

Sorry onedaftmonkey

[PiperChapstick]

I'm a survivor of sexual abuse and I agree with most of what he says although he didn't word it very well.

Although I did when I heard it coming from him, as I think he's the king of self pity, no?

[Kidnapped]

I genuinely don't intend to be crass here. Do some types of mental illness display themselves in ways that appear to be self-absorbed or self-pitying behaviour to an outsider?

So if Stephen Fry for example says that he's really upset that a few people slagged him off on Twitter, and it isn't fair, etc (here's his farewell speech), then could could you attribute at least some of that self-pitying behaviour to his mental illness? Or is it just pure attention-seeking twattery on his part, with nothing to do with his mental illness?

Hard to know, I suppose. And different from person to person.

[oliviaclottedcream]

I took his comments to be him articulating his own struggle with self pity. He's already apologised for causing offence anyway..Perhaps he was a little clunkier than usual but hats off to him for pointing out the "infantilism of society" As he deftly put it. He was talking about the social and cultural censorship towards exploring themes such as rape and infanticide seen in Shakespeare classics including Macbeth and Titus Andronicus. I couldn't agree or support his views more!!!

As for that odious, smug, self regarding, toss-pot Piers Morgan remarking that Fry "doesn't sound like he used to sound"? Bloody good thing too IMO...Maybe he's going to start doing more thought provoking and important work than the usual light weight frivolity we're used to getting from him.