Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by javajosh 4913 days ago
Literally no-one has the right to say such a hateful, awful thing to another person. Even if the content is even vaguely justified (and it might be), the speaking of such words is so awfully damaging that it crosses well over the line of abuse. There is such a thing as psychological abuse, and having someone that presumably you care and trust and know if you are listening to them speak about your personality attack you so viciously, so self-righteously is an incredibly traumatic act.

The simple fact is that you don't have the right to say that to someone, not ever. To consign someone to permanent failure, to even call into question their reality as a person ('broken') is unutterably cruel.

We all have the right to choose who is in our social life, and we have the right to choose our boundaries, as arbitrary and possibly awful - or healthy - as they may be. There really are people in the world that have serious mental illness, and it's okay to not want them in your life. But that does not give you the right to consign them to a label, and to predict their future, and to dehumanize them, calling them 'permanently broken'.