What's wrong with self-pity?

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What's so bad about it that one hardly ever hears anyone defend it? Is it because it tends to be both self-defeating and annoying to other people (when it's expressed), or is there something more basic than that?

If it's okay for us to love ourselves, why can't we pity ourselves as well? ("I pity myself" sounds really bizarre, doesn't it?)

― RSLaRue (RSLaRue), Thursday, 28 December 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

It's just boring, mostly. I also kind of hate people who love themselves. ("Loving" oneself, though, is all good.)

― Matt Cibula (Formerly, the Haikunym), Thursday, 28 December 2006 15:49 (seventeen years ago) link

i hate people who hate

― nathalie (stevienixed), Thursday, 28 December 2006 15:59 (seventeen years ago) link

hey i said "kind of"

― Matt Cibula (Formerly, the Haikunym), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:00 (seventeen years ago) link

ain't no time to hate

― Chad Bouche (Wrinklepaws), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:02 (seventeen years ago) link

plus I sometimes love me, usually not though. i totally fall prey to self pity though, and i can wallow around in that for weeks if'n i don't remind myself that no one is benefiting from the wallow

― Matt Cibula (Formerly, the Haikunym), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:03 (seventeen years ago) link

pitying yourself is fine. asking people to pity you is not and it isn't self-pity

― ken c (ken c), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:06 (seventeen years ago) link

having compassion for yourself is one thing, and loving yourself is another.

― molly mummenschanz (molly d), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

asking people to pity you is not and it isn't self-pity

I guess no one cares enough to share my self-pity then. I'll just go and kill myself.

― Not For Use as Infant Nog (A-Ron Hubbard), Thursday, 28 December 2006 16:24 (seventeen years ago) link

LILLINGTON, N.C. — A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party, injuring him badly enough that he needed 50 stitches, authorities said Friday. Rebecca Arnold Dawson, 34, was charged with malicious castration in a fight early Tuesday at a party hosted by the 38-year-old man's girlfriend, police said.

All three were heavily intoxicated, police Chief Frank Powers said.

Dawson is accused of grabbing the man's genitals. Police said a weapon was not used. He declined to elaborate.

"I believe he needed more than 50 stitches to repair the damage, but he is back home at this point," police Cpl. Brad Stevens said. "All we can tell you is that the injury was done with her hands."

Dawson does not have a listed phone number.

State law describes malicious castration as cutting off, maiming or disfiguring a person's genitals with the intent to hurt or render the victim impotent.

Dawson, who was released Wednesday on $50,000 bond, also was charged with offenses including assault causing serious bodily injury.

The castration arrest was the first of its kind in Lillington, a town of about 3,000 roughly 30 miles south of Raleigh, Powers said.

― daniel seward (bunnybrain), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:37 (seventeen years ago) link

I have the feeling they were playing "Detachable Penis" right before everything happened.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:38 (seventeen years ago) link

My question is whether or not malicious castration existed before Bobbitt. My other question is what castration is not malicious?

― suzy artskooldisko (suzy artskooldisko), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:42 (seventeen years ago) link

What about the German cannibal and his willing penile meat donor?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, and eunuchs.

― suzy artskooldisko (suzy artskooldisko), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:49 (seventeen years ago) link

Boston Corbett, the self-castrated executor of the popular will upon John Wilkes Booth.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Ned, you're taking a surprising amount of interest in this as a subject.

― suzy artskooldisko (suzy artskooldisko), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:57 (seventeen years ago) link

you know what, fuck it, i'm pitying myself like mad right now and i don't give a shit how lame that makes me!

i think it's just my end of year approaching quarter life crisis thing cause usually i try to make myself snap out of it asap.

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 31 December 2006 01:59 (seventeen years ago) link

Ned, you're taking a surprising amount of interest in this as a subject.

The random trivia in my head has some odd dusty corners.

Tehresa, it does not make you lame. Mock anyone who says otherwise and fix yerself a drink.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:02 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah i was trying not to drink cause i was wasted last night and i'll probably just get mopier... but that bottle of bourbon is looking mighty friendly!

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, that's understood. Play a video game at loud volume, then.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Hm, yes, the drinking. I can't figure out whether to do more or that, or less.

I thought I was being self-pitying and in a stage, but it turns out I am actually really sad, in a certain way that's new to me. It's nice, on the flip side, to realize that I am having an actual enduring emotion, instead of wild mood/drama swings that are more about myself than abt Life or Other People. But self-pity would be more indulgent and quicker to pass, which is useful.

― Laurel (Laurel), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:12 (seventeen years ago) link

Hm, yes, the drinking. I can't figure out whether to do more or that, or less.

always a tough call. jury's still out for me and my date with bourbon for tonight.

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:13 (seventeen years ago) link

hey i'm drunk too!

― baby wizard sex (gbx), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:18 (seventeen years ago) link

self-pity is fine in small doses, sometimes you can kind of enjoy wallowing, get a bit melodramatic, and then get along with your life. it's when it makes you endlessly self-centered in your interactions with other people that it's so utterly dud.

― Maria e (Maria), Sunday, 31 December 2006 02:30 (seventeen years ago) link

A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party

What an odd phrasing. Was she hidden in his ballsack?

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 31 December 2006 03:11 (seventeen years ago) link

http://img.torrid.com/is/image/HotTopic/537970_hi?wid=199

― grady (grady), Sunday, 31 December 2006 03:24 (seventeen years ago) link

just broke out the bourbon.

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 31 December 2006 03:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm already on the chardonnay and it is only 3pm nye here!

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:05 (seventeen years ago) link

yay! happy new year, trayce!

― tehresa (tehresa), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Cheers to all. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:09 (seventeen years ago) link

hay guyz i will be the last ILXor to ring in 2007.

get in touch this time tomorrow in case you forget what 2006 was like.

― grady (grady), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:11 (seventeen years ago) link

Happy new year to you too, Tehresa! And you Ned! And everyone!

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:16 (seventeen years ago) link

the distance between who you are and who you think you should be is shame and so you should try your best to love yourself as you are

― friday on the porch (lfam), Sunday, 31 December 2006 04:16 (seventeen years ago) link

To answer the original question, it's fruitless.

― Ms Misery (MsMisery), Sunday, 31 December 2006 20:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Use it. Use your hatred! Turn to our side! Feel the anger surging within you! Unleash your power! Feel the darkness! Chthonic bourbon! Magick! Seethe...seeethe...

― Abbott (Abbott), Sunday, 31 December 2006 20:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I spent way too many years hating who I was to the very core of my own being. It nearly destroyed me. Now I'm working on loving myself (vs. "loving" myself, natch) and it's been a struggle sometimes to be my own cheerleader, but it has worked insofar as I don't get envious/jealous nearly as much as I used to. I still have to fight the tendency to rate myself the worst in certain areas, but I'm doing far better now than I have ever been, and there are even times when I think "I rule". So to answer the original question: I think self-pity is a part of some of our innate natures, so I don't think there's anything wrong with it per se, but at the same time I don't think it's something to nurture or celebrate or try to preserve in ourselves. Indeed, I think we should fight those impulses more often than not, especially if those demons inside our heads telling us that we're a far inferior product to that found elsewhere in humanity haunt us to the point where they threaten our very existences.

― Phoenix (is still) Dancing (krushsister), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 03:02 (seventeen years ago) link

"A woman attacked a man in his genitals during a Christmas party"

What an odd phrasing. Was she hidden in his ballsack?

It has a sort of Biblical ring to it. "And Abraham was ninety years old and nine, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. And Ish'ma-el his son was thirteen years old, when he was circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin. . ."

― RSLaRue (RSLaRue), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 03:37 (seventeen years ago) link

po po pitiful me...

― Maria :D (Maria :D), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 04:33 (seventeen years ago) link

a bloo bloo bloo

― aidsy (aidsy), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 04:34 (seventeen years ago) link

Pity just feels yucky no matter who's doing it to whom (except maybe Mr. T). Not to say we shouldn't be able to admit doing it.

― Maria :D (Maria :D), Tuesday, 2 January 2007 04:37 (seventeen years ago) link

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