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Dan Goodley has expressed very succinctly how I feel about communications on this email list. I can understand that some people might be upset by what they see as blasphemous language or swear words with sexual connotations or content that jars with personal and perhaps painful meditations on Remembrance Sunday. However, the response that shocked and worried me was the suggestion that it might be desirable for Larry to be censored and even disciplined by his employer. I have to restrain myself from commenting as strongly as I would like on that suggestion! I sincerely hope that Larry is neither censored nor disciplined, also that neither Larry nor anyone else feels the need to self-censor for their own protection when they are posting messages that, like Larry' s, are relevant to understanding situations that are disabling and question academic and lay models. The only bit Larry's messages that bothered me was that I initially misread the closing remarks in his second email as "shouting" at the person who posted the original message about the book and conference. When I re-read that message and Larry's, it seemed more of a heart- felt plea for everyone to pay attention to the view that suicide is not best understood as a "medical problem". I would hope that members of this email list would recognise that to be a valid point of view that needs a bit of shouting about to be noticed. Also that a certain amount of anger at general acceptance of the "illness" model is not unreasonable when it affects us personally. Finally, I would like to congratulate Larry on steering clear of Lake Vrnwy. That is not meant to be funny. I find it a deeply disturbing place (that unintended metaphor only struck me on re- reading for typos). I was taken there once as a child, it scared the wits out of me as we were driving alongside it and I had inconsolable "hysterics" until we left the lake behind us. When my mother took me out of the car to comfort me at the lakeside I was even more terrified by the "malevolence" of the lake and the fact that I knew it wanted me to jump in and drown myself. No one else (my mother, father and younger brother) was affected. I remain very wary of approaching certain types of bodies of water and have had panic attacks when caught unawares by them. Before that incident I was in no way affected by those sorts of water. (Even to describe what I mean by "those sorts of water" makes me uneasy). I can't explain why as a child of about eight or nine I found Lake Vrnwy so terrifying, why I thought it wanted to kill me by compelling me to jump in. The only reason that I have gone into such detail is that if anyone has not experienced this sort of thing then they might take my comment to Larry to be a joke or trivialising of his experience with Lake Vrnwy. I believe that some people actually find it a pleasant place that they would choose to visit. For my part, if I were suicidal it would be all that was needed to make up my mind! It is not, to me, a "depressing" place and there are no associated memories linking it to depressing events or to distressing events other than encountering the place itself. How DO you fit those sort of personal experiences into an "illness model"?? Liz Panton ________________End of message________________ This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies). Enquiries about list administration should be sent to [log in to unmask] Archives and tools are located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can VIEW, POST, JOIN and LEAVE the list by logging in to this web page.