Wading in the land of "emo" students (shrug/scratch head, etc.)

[newblksusan]

I have a student who is a "cutter" (and rather proud of it, by the way. She wrote a great research paper about it and she's one of my very best students so it's hard for me to "argue" with her because she's so intelligent --- even about cutting herself. But I digress. . .) and she was trying to explain "emo" to me and how cutting is such a "emo

Comments

My student IS a hard one to figure out. . .

[newblksusan]

I was just looking over her paper as I read your post. She acknowledges that her "struggle with the blade" is a dangerous one that almost led to her suicide (for real). But she also argues that it's a coping mechanism that helps to deal with stressful or emotional situations. She ends up quoting someone named Alex Williams who wrote "Not Acting on the Urge to Cut Is A Serious Problem," and another freelance writer, Batya Swift Yasgur who "also argues that self-injury should be tolerated because fo the benefits that it can provide such as anti-suicidal behavior