depression comix

Story/Art © 2017 Clay

231 "You can't."

Published 49 Comments

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  6. Before replying to this comic with anger, please ask yourself if you’re angry because someone drew a comic about someone who isn’t you suffering, and think about what your anger says about yourself and your own levels of empathy. I would like to foster an open community with acceptance, but the only thing unacceptable here is the intolerance of the suffering ot other people. Thank you.

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  7. 1) It may not happen to everyone, but it happens.
    2) Frequency of suicide attempts isn’t a measurement of the number of people who suffer
    3) There are many comics here that illustrate particular forms of suffering that aren’t mine. They are still someone’s story. Not all of them match everyone, and that’s OK. Get over it.

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  9. Being supportive of your friends and family and yourself is so very important. I’ve met people who have been told they can’t do things all their lives. It’s so sad! Everyone has great potential for so many different things!

    Reply

  11. And the super entitled Bro police are here to remind us all who is the most important. MEN. So sick of this especially since that Gamergate garbage. Anybody so much as mentions women, or women’s issues, every time they show up in force to get the focus back on THEMSELVES! The attention goes specifically to women for even a second and they have fits, first its the “back in the kitchen ” jokes, and sooner or later someone starts yelling about “feminiazis” The idea that a straight white male is not 100% the focus of EVERYTHING is a battle cry to them.

    And women DO attempt suicide more, but men are more likely to succeed at it . Primarily from easier access and familiarity with firearms.

    NOBODY is saying that men don’t have their own issues, a society that punishes little boys for their feelings, tenderness, or empathy of any sort till a lot of them as men are unable to express love, or care without feeling at the least ashamed and at worst “not real men” or the ever poplar FAG” and are taught the only expression of self is violence or domination. Its terrible, little boys are driven to be heartless, super aggressive hyper achieving monsters, or they are not “REAL MEN” and its a tragedy.

    But the above is also VERY true. So many women have a long litany of things they are told they can’t do, can’t love to do, or can’t enjoy. Mustn’t get dirty dear. Mustn’t play with that, its a boy toy, Don’t be so assertive, that is the “B” word. Oh no! You are not a size three! You are only valid/human if you are skinny/pretty/fashionable/wearing makeup. And if you are not in a VERY limited rages of sizes you better get used to wearing a sack, because the people who make clothes don’t believe you even exist, and they don’t care.

    Mustn’t do sports, mustn’t ride a motorcycle, mustn’t fix things yourself sweetie, get a man to love you and he will fix things for you, assuming you put out anyway. Don’t find someone who you love, find someone who can support you! A man makes you The list goes on and on.

    Can you picture if you, a 28 year old guy wanted a vasectomy, but nobody will do it, because you need to be a parent to be “fulfilled”? Women under 40 run into that wall constantly of they want their tubes tied. ” Oh honey, you will change your mind , then you will thank us” Of course you will want to have a baby, All REAL women want children! As a lot of society values them as a uterus first, and as a person with unique hopes and dreams, dead last if at all.

    And if after a refusal for sterilization surgery, and an insurance system stacked more and more every day to prevent contraception, and half the country trying to shut down family planing clinics. She gets pregnant, accidentally, or worse still involuntarily, She is branded a slut and a whore, or a lazy welfare bitch, with the wonderful “Fulfilling” “Child of god” that society tries to teach her is her primary reason for being alive.

    I wish the ‘bros’ here could all get a chance to see both side of it. Its very “educational”

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  12. And the super entitled Bro police are here to remind us all who is the most important. MEN. So sick of this especially since that Gamergate garbage. Anybody so much as mentions women, or women’s issues, every time they show up in force to get the focus back on THEMSELVES! The attention goes specifically to women for even a second and they have fits, first its the “back in the kitchen ” jokes, and sooner or later someone starts yelling about “feminiazis” The idea that a straight white male is not 100% the focus of EVERYTHING is a battle cry to them.

    And women DO attempt suicide more, but men are more likely to succeed at it . Primarily from easier access and familiarity with firearms.

    NOBODY is saying that men don’t have their own issues, a society that punishes little boys for their feelings, tenderness, or empathy of any sort till a lot of them as men are unable to express love, or care without feeling at the least ashamed and at worst “not real men” or the ever poplar FAG” and are taught the only expression of self is violence or domination. Its terrible, little boys are driven to be heartless, super aggressive hyper achieving monsters, or they are not “REAL MEN” and its a tragedy.

    But the above is also VERY true. So many women have a long litany of things they are told they can’t do, can’t love to do, or can’t enjoy. Mustn’t get dirty dear. Mustn’t play with that, its a boy toy, Don’t be so assertive, that is the “B” word. Oh no! You are not a size three! You are only valid/human if you are skinny/pretty/fashionable/wearing makeup. And if you are not in a VERY limited rages of sizes you better get used to wearing a sack, because the people who make clothes don’t believe you even exist, and they don’t care.

    Mustn’t do sports, mustn’t ride a motorcycle, mustn’t fix things yourself sweetie, get a man to love you and he will fix things for you, assuming you put out anyway. Don’t find someone who you love, find someone who can support you! A man makes you complete! The list goes on and on.

    Can you picture if you, a 28 year old guy wanted a vasectomy, but nobody will do it, because you need to be a parent to be “fulfilled”? Women under 40 run into that wall constantly if they want their tubes tied. ” Oh honey, you will change your mind, then you will thank us” Of course you will want to have a baby, All REAL women want children! As a lot of society values them as a uterus first, and as a person with unique hopes and dreams, dead last if at all.

    And if after a refusal for sterilization surgery, and an insurance system stacked more and more every day to prevent contraception, and half the country trying to shut down family planing clinics. She gets pregnant, accidentally, or worse still involuntarily, She is branded a slut and a whore, or a lazy welfare bitch, with the wonderful “Fulfilling” “Child of god” that society tries to teach her is her primary reason for being alive.

    I wish the ‘bros’ here could all get a chance to see both side of it. Its very “educational”

    Reply

    • I’m sure most of us have seen (if not experienced) something like this, whether it’s the “be a man” or “get back in the kitchen” brand of BS. I’m just glad I never listened and went and did it all anyway, my family didn’t buy into a lot of the gender crap. My dad taught me to make jams and jellies as well as how to fix my car. My mom taught me how to wire a lamp and how to bake a cake, I am so thankful I had two good examples of “you can do anything” rather than a lifetime of “you can’t”, and I hope society moves a little more towards “you can” than “you can’t” by the time my brother’s kids are listening to these messages.

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  13. I believe a lot of our self-esteem issues come from having our limitations set for us, being told what we do and what we like is not what is expected from us, we have to conform to what people want us to be. So even if we feel a calling, we are told we are odd for listening to it and that we shouldn’t do it. We are not permitted to feel happy if we partake in whatever is outside society’s expectations of us (especially when regarding things like race and gender).

    In the first panel, she is playing with construction toys. Kids will play with anything but right from the start we set limitations — walk into a Toys’r’Us and you’ll know the girls toys section because all the packages will be pink or pinkish-purple. There will be few if any construction toys — although Lego has a few lines they are more like doll-houses you construct with lego and the packages are pink/purple and the themes are princesses and friends. The message is there.

    In the second panel, we have a girl who likes comics and games, and although things have improved over the past few decades we still have “fake geek girl” slanders and GG. In the third panel, science and academia is still primarily a white man’s game with women and minorities facing higher discrimination (see http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/04/discrimination-starts-even-before-grad-school-study-finds.html ).

    Now everyone faces a series of “can’t”s in their lives regardless of race and gender. But the amount of can’ts depends greatly on race and gender, and it’s something we shouldn’t dismiss because it makes us uncomfortable.

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  15. I had the opposite problem. Instead of telling me I couldn’t do things, teachers would complain that I wasn’t “living up to my potential”. I got so sick of that phrase. Nothing I did ever satisfied them, no matter how much effort I put into it.

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  17. That’s a “game” they loved to play in the old GDR (eastern Germany) a lot, just to make sure people stick where they had been put. You can’t just sleep over at your father’s place (even though it’s your own father), you can’t dance to this or that kind of music, you can’t be a good girl solely because you’re living in an orphanage so everyone has to pay attention whenever you’re around, you can’t just say what comes to your mind, you can’t become a teacher because your throat is slightly smaller than the average (seriously, that’s what they told a teenager who wanted to become a teacher!) and so on …
    If you didn’t listen to the “you can’t” choir (and sometimes even if you did), your final destination was a “correction institution” for children, a mental asylum where they usually made you really ill, or jail – whichever was closest, I presume. Sometimes, you got all three of those.

    Granted, those “you can’t”s were not exactly the same “you can’t”s as those in the comic, but they did just the same: limiting your development. The teenager mentioned above, although not a teenager anymore, still believes all those “you can’t”s even though she consciously *knows* that it’s all garbage, and she still suffers from those inside voices. They’re burnt into layers of her mind that she can’t(!) just clean up and brush out, you see. So she would often just sit and be paralyzed by those decade-old voices instead of being able to get up and do what she likes and is actually good at, after just one tiny mishap … and nothing we say would convince her of the opposite. Why are those old voices louder than us?

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  19. “No, you can’t play football with your brother and cousins. Be a little lady!”
    “No, you can’t be an actress/writer/artist. The ones who make it are special.”
    “No, you can’t stay out past nine. You’ll get into trouble!”

    :sigh: So many “can’t”s, so many restrictions. So much wasted potential. 🙁

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